Dozens of FEMA employees suspended after signing an open letter critical of the Trump Administration

The Trump administration placed several Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees on administrative leave a day after dozens of current and former officials signed an open letter questioning the agency's conduct and alleged lack of preparedness to respond to disasters, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

The missive, according to the report, was signed by some 180 current and former agency employees and sent Monday to members of Congress and other officials. In it, they argued that the current leadership lacks the necessary experience to run the agency and that cuts to essential programs jeopardize responses to potential catastrophes, potentially creating, in their view, a crisis similar to the one experienced after Hurricane Katrina.

On Tuesday night, the FEMA administrator's office notified several workers that they were in "non-service status," meaning they would maintain their salary and benefits but be removed from their duties for the time being. According to the WaPo, the suspended employees include at least two who had participated in the federal response to the flooding in Texas in July.

According to The New York Times, about 36 employees were suspended. All of them signed the letter with their full names.

The suspension also comes a month after the Trump administration furloughed nearly 140 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who sent their own letter critical of the federal agency's leadership. Similar initiatives protesting the current leadership have emerged at the National Institute of Health, NASA and the National Science Foundation.

The letter points to the absence of a Senate-confirmed experienced agency administrator, the reduction of mitigation, recovery and training programs, as well as the imposition of policies that limit the autonomy of career civil servants as major concerns. They also demanded that Congress protect FEMA from interference by the Department of Homeland Security, defend its employees from "political firings," and evaluate making the agency an independent agency with cabinet rank.

Jeremy Edwards, a former FEMA press secretary and one of the signers of the letter, underlined the significance of having several employees sign the missive, even stamping their names.

“The fact that 180 people signed onto the letter, with a supermajority of them still working in the building, and dozens of those people wanted to attach their real names signifies the severity of the problem,” Edwards said. “They are that scared of us being so inadequately unprepared. It speaks a lot to the situation right now.”