A Judge Ruled the Order to Gut FEMA's Disaster Teams Was Illegal. She Also Found Its Former Chief Set Signal Messages to Auto-Delete After Being Sued.

A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration's order to cut the Federal Emergency Management Agency's workforce nearly in half was illegal, and separately found that the agency's former acting chief violated federal records law by using an auto-deleting Signal chat after she had been named in the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in Northern California wrote that the Department of Homeland Security "acted arbitrarily and capriciously" when it revoked FEMA's authority to renew contracts for its Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery teams, known as CORE. Those workers make up about 40% of FEMA's staff and are often the first federal personnel on the ground after hurricanes and other large disasters, overseeing aid distribution and long-term funding to states and communities.

CORE employees have traditionally served two-to-four-year contracts that were almost always renewed. Amid the administration's push to shrink the federal government in 2025, DHS limited FEMA to renewing those contracts 180 days at a time while it weighed a long-term plan to downsize the agency. In January, DHS told FEMA to let at least some contracts lapse so employees would be forced out as their terms ended.

Illston pointed to a 2006 law in which Congress said the homeland security secretary "may not substantially or significantly reduce" FEMA's "authorities, responsibilities, or functions." She also noted that DHS was exempt from President Trump's January 2025 hiring freeze, yet chose to interpret "new hires" under that freeze to include CORE renewals. "There is no evidence in the record reflecting reasoned decision for this about-face or for the subsequent conditions DHS placed on FEMA's renewal authority," she wrote.

The Signal finding came in a separate filing. Illston said former acting FEMA head Karen Evans and former DHS deputy chief of staff Joseph Guy violated federal law and department policy by using the encrypted app. Evans created a chat that "would appear to be highly relevant to this case" with messages set to auto-delete after four weeks. In March, after she had been named as a defendant, Evans shortened the auto-delete timer. She did not back up her messages until April 2026, "by which point the most timely messages were long since deleted," the judge wrote. The court found her actions intentional. "Evans should have known better," Illston wrote. "She previously served as Chief Information Officer at DHS, in charge of the agency's records preservation policies."

The consequences are procedural but sharp. Illston barred the administration from relying on any prior testimony denying the plan to dramatically reduce FEMA staffing or DHS's involvement, and said that going forward "the Court will presume that the lost Signal messages would have been unfavorable to Defendants because they would have been further evidence of Defendants' plan, DHS's control, and Defendants' implementing actions."

The ruling is a win for the American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO, which brought the suit, but it is not yet a full remedy. The unions asked the court to rescind every non-renewal notice sent to CORE employees this year, return workers to their jobs and block a plan to cut 50% of the agency's staff. Illston said that relief would be too broad, because FEMA is no longer systematically declining to renew CORE contracts and there is no current sign it is acting on the 50% plan. She did find that DHS "continues to usurp FEMA's authority" by ordering it to offer contracts of no more than 180 days, and told the parties to negotiate the scope of relief.

A FEMA spokesperson said the agency "continues to maintain a roster of experienced leadership and support staff across headquarters and regional offices" and is "making the agency leaner, faster and laser-focused on supporting state, local, tribal and territorial partners." Since Trump took office, the administration has argued FEMA is ineffective, partisan and bloated. A 2023 Government Accountability Office report found the agency was short more than 6,000 employees.