When Karen Evans arrived at the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a senior adviser this spring, her mandate was clear: help the Department of Homeland Security tighten its control over the agency and rein in spending.
She quickly became known as the “final gatekeeper” for all funding requests. “Her nickname was the terminator,” a former senior official told CNN. “She was terminating grants, terminating contracts, terminating people.”
Oftentimes, that meant no money went to communities across the country that were either preparing for or recovering from a calamity.
“Her intent was just to put out the least amount of money possible and not put any money into places or activities that didn’t align, or even suggested may not align with their priorities,” said another former senior official who worked with Evans. “She was going through, line by line, and disapproving things. She often didn’t know what they meant or what would happen.”
To some inside the administration, Evans has been an effective force in DHS’ push to improve efficiency, cut perceived waste and reshape FEMA to fit the president’s priorities.
Now Evans, a longtime government employee with limited emergency management experience, is set to lead the FEMA — the third person to hold the position in the first 10 months of President Donald Trump’s second term.
To critics, Evans’ appointment suggests that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem intends to accelerate the dismantling of FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster response to the states. Noem has publicly criticized FEMA, vowing to “clean house” and calling the agency partisan, bloated and ineffective.
More than a dozen current and former FEMA insiders, who spoke to CNN anonymously for fear of retribution, described Evans as a DHS loyalist who brooks no opposition, often clashing with staff and instilling fear. In recent months, multiple senior sources said Evans helped orchestrate the removal of dozens of FEMA staffers and seasoned emergency management experts, allowing DHS to consolidate control.
She’s also been at the center of several controversial moves at FEMA — from allegedly pushing to strip grant funding from Muslim organizations, to enforcing Noem’s new policy requiring her sign-off on all spending over $100,000, which was blamed for slowing the response to deadly floods in Texas over the summer.
“She’s the enforcer for DHS,” one former senior FEMA official told CNN. “Her job was to effectively grind FEMA to a halt.”
DHS declined to comment for this story, and Evans did not respond to detailed questions from CNN.
Evans is stepping into FEMA’s top job as the agency’s future hangs in the balance. There’s fierce debate over whether FEMA should stay part of the Department of Homeland Security, how much responsibility it should have during disasters, and who gets to call the shots — and control the money.
During Trump’s first term, Evans — a government employee of nearly three decades who has primarily worked in information technology and cybersecurity — served as a senior official with the Department of Energy before moving to DHS.
She left government during the Biden administration, returning to DHS last winter.
In March, Trump nominated her for DHS undersecretary of management, and she quickly became a key player, advising top brass — including those reshaping FEMA’s future, multiple sources said.
The administration withdrew her nomination in July. A DHS spokesperson said it would let her focus on FEMA, calling her leadership “critical” amid the overhaul of the agency.
Evans was shifted into FEMA full time, tasked with helping Noem and Corey Lewandowski — Trump’s longtime ally turned DHS special government employee — drive their mission to shrink the agency.
She would work alongside the then-newly appointed acting FEMA administrator, David Richardson, another DHS loyalist with little experience managing natural disasters. Noem and Lewandowski tapped Richardson for the top job after firing his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton, for feuding with leadership and opposing the administration’s plan to eliminate FEMA.
At FEMA, Evans quickly earned a reputation as a hard-charging leader who would deliver DHS results.
She tightened the funding funnel, cutting a litany of spending deemed wasteful. But some say her strict oversight has made it harder for the agency to deliver aid to communities by forcing staff to review and rewrite thousands of spending requests, multiple sources said.
“We had to ensure we were being polite and respectful,” a senior FEMA official told CNN. “We had to write proposals to say things like, ‘We respectfully request your approval for …’ and couldn’t say things like, ‘Without this there will be a significant problem’ — as that was deemed ‘threatening.’”
DHS has repeatedly defended its delivery of FEMA assistance, saying the agency is operating far more efficiently under Trump and Noem, though some agency insiders dispute those claims.
As of September, hundreds of millions of dollars in FEMA funds were still caught up in the funding approval process awaiting signatures from Noem, according to two sources with knowledge of the backlog.
Along the way, Evans has clashed with FEMA staff, including high-ranking officials, multiple sources said.
“I’ve been in meetings where she just completely dressed down senior executives in front of everybody,” a longtime FEMA official said. “The environment she created is just so toxic.”
Evans also drove some of the agency’s most high-profile disruptions. This summer, she helped orchestrate the abrupt firing of two dozen IT staffers, including two top executives, following a cybersecurity breach, three sources told CNN.
Noem called their actions “incompetence” at the time and accused the workers of downplaying the breach and obstructing DHS efforts to resolve it. According to sources, Evans had long clashed with one of the executives fired in the incident.
“There’s an example of something that was blown way out of proportion for an outcome,” one former senior official with firsthand knowledge of the incident told CNN.
Evans also oversaw the removal of the grants branch director and then her replacement, leaving staff in limbo and fearful that any action could lead to termination, multiple sources said. Several senior officials say DHS never offered an explanation for the moves.
By early fall, she was promoted to FEMA chief of staff, and her authority continued to grow. Some considered her the agency’s de-facto leader, as Noem and DHS became increasingly frustrated by Richardson’s public gaffes and what they believed was his inability to champion the department’s overhaul of FEMA to Congress and the public. Last week, Richardson resigned as the administration prepared to oust him, and Evans took the role.
Even before joining FEMA full time, Evans sparked concern among agency leaders for her part in efforts to strip security funding from Muslim nonprofits, as first reported by CNN. According to two sources, Evans was the first to float the idea of disqualifying all Muslim groups from security grants to FEMA officials.
She spent months leading attempts to block the groups from receiving funds that are used to bolster security at mosques and to protect against hate crimes, according to five former officials.
“There was a real effort by Karen to put Muslim organizations in the light of being terrorists so they would be removed from FEMA grants,” one official said.
It began with a call this spring, when DHS raised concerns that Muslim organizations with anti-Israel views were receiving federal funding.
“She proposed that, to show impartiality, maybe all Muslim organizations should be banned,” a former senior FEMA official told CNN.
FEMA leaders — unsure whether the proposal originated with Evans or if she was just the messenger — instructed her not to put the request in writing, given it could be discriminatory and illegal, the sources said.
After pushback, the idea of a blanket ban ended, but Evans and DHS continued to press the issue.
On multiple occasions, she sent back lists of Muslim organizations that had cleared background checks to DHS’ intelligence office, two sources said.
“She said, ‘How could this be? There are still Muslim organizations here,’” one official told CNN. “It was a case of, just keep asking until you get the answer that you want.”
Ultimately, dozens of Muslim groups were disqualified from receiving grants, multiple sources said.
A DHS spokesperson said FEMA used “resources including the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and law enforcement” to determine that “multiple grant subrecipients had supported or were affiliated with organizations or individuals associated with terrorism or terrorist activities.”
DHS denied that the department ever considered imposing a blanket ban on Muslim organizations receiving these security grants.
“DHS and FEMA do not make policy decisions on the basis of religion,” the spokesperson wrote to CNN. “Such claims are ludicrous and deeply unserious.”
Evans’ lack of significant emergency management experience has raised concerns, given the agency’s primary role of helping states and communities respond to and recover from the worst natural disasters and national emergencies.
The FEMA administrator is required to have such experience — a post-Katrina reform — but like her predecessors this year, Evans will serve as the “Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Administrator,” a title that allows her to run the agency without Senate confirmation.
“The emergency manager is who you call when systems fail — and that culture is one built upon extensive lessons learned from the past,” a senior FEMA official told CNN. “We just keep getting further and further away from this central tenant.”
But that notion of a “central tenant” is in flux as the agency nears an inflection point.
Evan’s appointment comes just weeks before the new FEMA Review Council, a committee formed by Trump and co-chaired by Noem to decide the agency’s future, is expected to deliver recommendations to reshape the agency.
Meanwhile, dozens of lawmakers have signed on to a bipartisan bill known as the “FEMA Act” that would remove the agency from DHS and make it independent — a change Noem strongly opposes, multiple sources told CNN.
Noem is pushing the FEMA Review Council to recommend keeping the agency within DHS, where she would retain control, despite proposals to move it closer to the White House under the National Security Council or as a Cabinet-level agency, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.
The debate is about more than bureaucracy. States across the country have complained for months about critical funding delays and a lack of guidance on what support will be available going forward.
Amid all this, some see Evans as a placeholder. Sources say she has proved herself a loyal soldier, ready to carry out the vision of Noem and Lewandowski.
“Karen doesn’t have any real power,” a former senior official said. “Karen is there to do whatever she’s told.”
