Federal Judge Finds FEMA Official Deliberately Deleted Signal Messages Amid Agency Staffing Cuts Lawsuit
NewsData.io · United States · Sep 15, 2026
A federal judge found that senior FEMA official Karen Evans intentionally deleted Signal messages during litigation challenging the Trump administration's plan to cut FEMA's workforce roughly in half, including the non-renewal of thousands of temporary disaster-response workers known as COREs. Judge Susan Illston ruled Evans acted with 'intent to deprive' plaintiffs of relevant communications and ordered the government to pay associated attorney fees. The underlying lawsuit, brought by federal employee unions, centers on whether DHS improperly took control of FEMA staffing decisions in ways that would undermine disaster-response capacity. The case has broader implications for the use of temporary and contract workers in federal agencies and the legal risks of workforce reduction efforts.
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