Shutdown 2025: perspective from “alt-FEMA”

Federal Shutdown

What does this mean for FEMA?

Well, it happened.

The government has shut down. We won’t go into detail about the who and why, because we are sure you already know these answers (Emergency managers and disaster responders are notorious for staying up to date on current events—it’s in our blood). Now is the time to break down how the shutdown will affect not only interagency capacity and the impacts for employees, but also the impacts for Americans who rely on FEMA to be there before, during, and after disaster strikes.

Shutdown Notice

FEMA employees received emails announcing the impending government shutdown. They were, in all honesty, very lackluster in explaining the potential impacts. The core notice was this:

Shutdown Notice

FEMA emloyees received emails announcing the impending Government shutdown. They were, in all honesty, very lackluster in explaining the potential impacts. The core notce was this:

Exempt employees will continue working with normal pay
Excepted employees will continue working without pay until funding is restored
Non-exempt employees will be furloughed and may not perform any work

If this is your first government shutdown as a federal employee, you may not know that in “the before times”—prior to the current administration—employees would receive several in-depth and explanatory emails about the potential lapse in funding and how specific roles and operations would be affected. These editors have been informed by FEMA staff that this did not happen this time around, and that it appeared the agency—specifically leadership—was wholly unprepared for this to occur. Some staff reported not even knowing, on the day of, how their roles would be affected or if they would be furloughed.

Since they failed to explain the impacts, we decided to take a crack at it.

Let’s break this down a bit more and explain who and what roles are impacted, as well as how this may affect disaster work, grants, and other aspects pertaining to the disaster response cycle.

Examples of Exempt employees: Disaster-funded positions under the Disaster Releif Fund include

Public Assistance and Individual Assistance staff working on declared disasters
Hazard Mitigation (Hazard Mitigation Grants Program, Hazard Mitigation Assistance, Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities) Personnel tied to active disaster operations
Regional Recovery Division staff funded by the DRF

In short: If your pay comes from disaster operations funding (DRF), you are likely exempt.

Examples of Excepted FEMA Roles:

These employees are not exempt, but their work is “necessary for the protection of life and property” under OMB Circular A-11, Section 124. They must continue reporting to duty, even without immediate pay.

NRCC / RRCC staff supporting ongoing incidents
Watch officers in the National Watch Center / Regional Watch Centers
Continuity of Operations (COOP) personnel
Field Leadership & Response Coordinators
Essential administrative support needed for life-safety mission execution (limited HR, travel, finance)

In short: These are people who must work to protect lives or property, even if funding lapses — they’ll receive back pay once appropriations resume.

Examples of Non-Exempt Employees (Furloughed — no work allowed):

These employees are funded by annual appropriations (e.g., salaries paid from base budgets, not DRF or WCF) and whose duties are not deemed essential under OMB guidance. They must be furloughed and cannot perform any work — including checking email or Teams — during the lapse.

HQ administrative staff not tied to life-safety missions
Policy analysts, planners, and training personnel not supporting DRF or COOP missions
Non-disaster-funded Mission Support staff
Grants management staff not tied to open disaster operations (e.g., preparedness grants)
Program analysts or coordinators working on non-emergency policy development

In short: If you’re funded by annual appropriations and your work isn’t directly life-safety or DRF-related, you’d be furloughed.

Agency Operations Impacted:
These activities are non-essential and non-funded during a lapse.

Public Engagement & Non-Mission Communications
Public Affairs will limit output to disaster communications only.
Website updates, non-disaster social media, and outreach campaigns will be paused.
Community engagement events, unless related to life-safety, will be canceled.
External visibility will be reduced, and outreach programs will be suspended.Response from the Current Administration:

from Brassville: “‘It’s the Inequality, stupid'”

“‘It’s the Inequality, stupid'” [to paraphrase the Clinton-era message]

Since Reagan (and I would argue Nixon) Rs have ’tilted the ice’ and have effectively installed Trickle Down philosophies as the common, central economic norm — rejecting the New Deal and Great Society ideals as extreme.

Trickle down is now orthodoxy. Again, Trickle Down came with tax cuts to the wealthy, deregulation of industries, demonization of unions, to name a few. various markets were becoming less and less competitive as mergers and leverage buyouts accelerated, creating greater levels of wealth consolidation. As a result, the social contract and social safety net are generally forgotten, or labeled as worse.

How this played out during recent election cycles:

–When Dems are in power, they are politically restricted to still working within the Trickle down norms. So, any Democratic party successes are within the existing, skewed playing field. When Ds are in power, they are politically restricted to still working within the Republicans norms.

So, any Democratic party successes are within the existing, skewed playing field. As a result, wealth inequality is the orthodoxy. So, even now as the strongest economy in the world, so many Americans do not benefit from any such gains.

Put another way, it mirrors the current “weather vs climate” arguments -i.e.: ‘economy ‘ is to ‘weather’ as ‘wealth inequality ‘ is to ‘climate. So when Dems respond to the ‘weather,’ they do not /can not fix any of the fundamentals of ‘climate change‘. As a result, the 2024 presidential elections pigeon-holed Ms. Harris as the more-of-the-same candidate who didn’t understand the economic lives of average Americans [granted, there was a lot of mis- / dis- and skewed information btw FOX, corporate media and social media algorithms, but that’s a discussion for another time…]

So how do we get the pendulum to swing back? I’d like to propose a few ideas in other posts that I will refer to as “‘We the People,”‘ proposals as part of future posts.

First & foremost: Corporation’s Are NOT People. This country has to codify in statue – and probably in a constitution amendment in order to neutralize the current SCOTUS.

In 2025, are we a country, a confederation of states, or geographic home base for corporations

Reading the following HSNewsWire article [link below] on supply chains and the language differences between the private sector vs government, i am reminded of the 1976 movie Network.

https://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20250122-securing-supply-chain-resilience-requires-a-common-vocabulary-and-vision?page=0,1

Network. Paddy Chayefsky. Big 70s all-star cast.

There’s a great soliloquy – no not Peter Finch/Howard Beale’s “I’m mad as hell and i’m not going to take it anymore…” The one i often think of is the Ned Beaty/network CEO:

“‘ You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?! You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West.

There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, Yen, Rubles, Pounds, and Shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet.

That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.

And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and e****enical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.