Authorization for the largest residential flood insurance program in the U.S. is set to expire Tuesday, leaving homeowners unable to access new coverage and potentially wreaking havoc on home sales in flood-prone areas.
Millions of policyholders rely on the National Flood Insurance Program to secure flood coverage that is rarely part of standard homeowners policies and is required for mortgages in areas deemed high-risk. If Congress is unable to pass a spending bill before midnight Tuesday, the NFIP, like much of the federal government, will freeze.
Claims could still be paid, but with two months left in the Atlantic hurricane season and winter weather on its way, homeowners and renters would be unable to buy, renew, or add to policies.
That would also thwart real estate transactions where mortgages require flood insurance. Lenders are prohibited from issuing government-backed mortgages for properties in FEMA-designated “ special flood hazard areas ” unless the building or mobile home is covered by flood insurance. Since private insurance does not offer flood coverage in many parts of the U.S., buyers often depend on the NFIP.
“Each day a shutdown continues, the effects on the housing sector grow,” said Shannon McGahn, executive vice president and chief advocacy officer at the National Association of Realtors.
NFIP supports nearly half a million home sales annually, according to NAR. Past lapses have shown the potential impact on the market: During a roughly 30-day freeze in June 2010, NAR estimated 1,400 home sales were canceled or delayed each day.
The problem would be most acutely felt in Florida where about 14,800 monthly home sale closings depend on securing flood insurance. Texas, with 3,500 monthly closings, would also be impacted.
Flood insurance access is "just one of the many ways the extended shutdown could worsen the outlook for the housing market across the country,” said Francis Torres, associate director for housing and infrastructure projects at the Bipartisan Policy Center, citing housing vouchers and FHA-backed loans for first-time homebuyers as other areas that could be undermined by limited funds and staff.
“There is a direct through-line between a protracted shutdown and worsening conditions for the nation's housing crisis,” said Torres.
Congress created the NFIP through the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968. It was meant to improve flood insurance access and affordability but also to set floodplain management standards.
“It’s not just an insurance program, and that’s probably the most misunderstood aspect,” said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
The over 22,500 communities participating in the program must adopt minimum standards to access the program. They can also apply for mitigation funding to reduce risk ahead of time.
The FEMA-managed program has over 4.7 million policies representing $1.3 trillion in coverage.
NFIP’s last long-term reauthorization was in 2012. Since the end of 2017, its continuation has depended on 33 short-term reauthorizations. Lawmakers, industry groups and policyholders have long called for NFIP reform to give the program stability and to address issues with floodplain mapping, affordability and solvency.
Floods are the “most common and widespread” type of disaster in the U.S., according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, occurring in every state and territory and putting pressure on the insurance system. But only about 4% of homeowners had flood coverage as of November 2024, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The GAO has cautioned that FEMA maps “may not reflect current flood risks," and Berginnis said the agency has a long way to go in mapping flood zones: “We’ve only mapped about a third of the nation’s floodplains, and we wonder why flood losses keep going up,” he said.
The NFIP has also struggled to set premium prices that balance affordability with solvency. The program borrows from the U.S. Treasury when it cannot payout claims and currently owes almost $23 billion.
A group of House lawmakers introduced a bill last week to reauthorize the program until Nov. 21. But Congress must look at a longer term solution, said Amanda Devecka-Rinear, executive director of the disaster-survivor advocacy group New Jersey Organizing Project.
“It’s not fair to storm survivors and their communities to have this unpredictability and instability,” she said.
FILE - Floodwaters surround homes and vehicles in the community of Pajaro in Monterey County, Calif., on March 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, file)
Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week.
They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows and pulled occupants from cars. They have scuffled with protesters and shoved them to the ground.
The government says the actions are necessary to protect officers from violent attacks. The encounters in turn have riled up protesters even more, especially as videos of the incidents are shared widely on social media.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis reflects a broader shift in how the federal government is asserting its authority during protests, relying on immigration agents and investigators to perform crowd-management roles traditionally handled by local police who often have more training in public order tactics and de-escalating large crowds.
Experts warn the approach runs counter to de-escalation standards and risks turning volatile demonstrations into deadly encounters.
The confrontations come amid a major immigration enforcement surge ordered by the Trump administration in early December, which sent more than 2,000 officers from across the Department of Homeland Security into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Many of the officers involved are typically tasked with arrests, deportations and criminal investigations, not managing volatile public demonstrations.
Tensions escalated after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent last week, an incident federal officials have defended as self-defense after they say Good weaponized her vehicle.
The killing has intensified protests and scrutiny of the federal response.
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota asked a federal judge to intervene, filing a lawsuit on behalf of six residents seeking an emergency injunction to limit how federal agents operate during protests, including restrictions on the use of chemical agents, the pointing of firearms at non-threatening individuals and interference with lawful video recording.
“There’s so much about what’s happening now that is not a traditional approach to immigration apprehensions,” said former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña.
Saldaña, who left the post at the beginning of 2017 as President Donald Trump's first term began, said she can't speak to how the agency currently trains its officers. When she was director, she said officers received training on how to interact with people who might be observing an apprehension or filming officers, but agents rarely had to deal with crowds or protests.
“This is different. You would hope that the agency would be responsive given the evolution of what’s happening — brought on, mind you, by the aggressive approach that has been taken coming from the top,” she said.
Ian Adams, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said the majority of crowd-management or protest training in policing happens at the local level — usually at larger police departments that have public order units.
“It’s highly unlikely that your typical ICE agent has a great deal of experience with public order tactics or control,” Adams said.
DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement that ICE officer candidates receive extensive training over eight weeks in courses that include conflict management and de-escalation. She said many of the candidates are military veterans and about 85% have previous law enforcement experience.
“All ICE candidates are subject to months of rigorous training and selection at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they are trained in everything from de-escalation tactics to firearms to driving training. Homeland Security Investigations candidates receive more than 100 days of specialized training," she said.
Ed Maguire, a criminology professor at Arizona State University, has written extensively about crowd-management and protest- related law enforcement training. He said while he hasn't seen the current training curriculum for ICE officers, he has reviewed recent training materials for federal officers and called it “horrifying.”
Maguire said what he's seeing in Minneapolis feels like a perfect storm for bad consequences.
“You can't even say this doesn't meet best practices. That's too high a bar. These don't seem to meet generally accepted practices,” he said.
“We’re seeing routinely substandard law enforcement practices that would just never be accepted at the local level,” he added. “Then there seems to be just an absence of standard accountability practices.”
Adams noted that police department practices have "evolved to understand that the sort of 1950s and 1960s instinct to meet every protest with force, has blowback effects that actually make the disorder worse.”
He said police departments now try to open communication with organizers, set boundaries and sometimes even show deference within reason. There's an understanding that inside of a crowd, using unnecessary force can have a domino effect that might cause escalation from protesters and from officers.
Despite training for officers responding to civil unrest dramatically shifting over the last four decades, there is no nationwide standard of best practices. For example, some departments bar officers from spraying pepper spray directly into the face of people exercising Constitutional speech. Others bar the use of tear gas or other chemical agents in residential neighborhoods.
Regardless of the specifics, experts recommend that departments have written policies they review regularly.
“Organizations and agencies aren’t always familiar with what their own policies are,” said Humberto Cardounel, senior director of training and technical assistance at the National Policing Institute.
“They go through it once in basic training then expect (officers) to know how to comport themselves two years later, five years later," he said. "We encourage them to understand and know their training, but also to simulate their training.”
Adams said part of the reason local officers are the best option for performing public order tasks is they have a compact with the community.
“I think at the heart of this is the challenge of calling what ICE is doing even policing,” he said.
"Police agencies have a relationship with their community that extends before and after any incidents. Officers know we will be here no matter what happens, and the community knows regardless of what happens today, these officers will be here tomorrow.”
Saldaña noted that both sides have increased their aggression.
“You cannot put yourself in front of an armed officer, you cannot put your hands on them certainly. That is impeding law enforcement actions,” she said.
“At this point, I’m getting concerned on both sides — the aggression from law enforcement and the increasingly aggressive behavior from protesters.”
Law enforcement officers at the scene of a reported shooting Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
People cover tear gas deployed by federal immigration officers outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
A man is pushed to the ground as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
A woman covers her face from tear gas as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
