Trump Cuts Already Costing Lives In Texas
No call for schadenfreude, though.
Meteorology experts had warned repeatedly that Donald Trump’s deranged chainsaw killer approach to federal spending cuts had compromised the National Weather Service (and its parent, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The mindless cuts threatened to turn back the clock on forecasting to pirate level: “Arr, when the stars begin to huddle, the earth will soon become a puddle.”
Five former NWS directors from Democratic and even Republican administrations raised alarms in a May open letter: “Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.” That nightmare came true last Friday when Texas was hit with catastrophic flooding that’s resulted in at least 70 deaths, including 21 children. Bringing nightmares to life is what the current Trump administration does best.
During an interview on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, still in the afterglow of passing horrible legislation, nonetheless somberly noted, “In a moment like this, we feel just as helpless as everyone else does ... all we know to do at this moment is pray.”
Of course, faith without works is dead, and Republicans aren’t simply passive observers. They actively enabled this outcome. It’s unclear what praying to a flood-making God will accomplish. Surely, God understands that floods kill people — there’s Biblical precedent — but God is seemingly sporting enough to give humanity the knowledge to prepare for floods. God’s not to one who gutted this critical infrastructure.
Texas officials immediately blamed the National Weather Service for its forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated the severity of the storms. The NWS did issue a flash flood warning at 1:14 a.m. on Friday and a more extreme “get your ass out of here” warning at 4:03 a.m. as “the situation became extremely dangerous and life-threatening.” Of course, the timing wasn’t ideal as most people were probably asleep.
The NWS lost almost 600 employees over the past few months after the Trump administration fired probationary federal employees and offered buyouts and early retirements. This government prioritizes ICE funding but has no concerns about extreme weather crossing the border.
Drawing a direct line from these cuts to the disaster in Texas is not politicizing a tragedy. It’s simple awareness of cause and effect. Andrea Thompson wrote a piece for Scientific American back in May about “How Trump’s National Weather Service Cuts Could Cost Lives.”
Ultimately, storm experts say, disruption caused by existing and proposed cuts will hit multiple fronts. An understaffed and underfunded NWS could mean that a tornado warning doesn’t come in time, that a hurricane forecast is off just enough so that the wrong coastal areas are evacuated or that flights are less likely to be routed around turbulence. “The net result is going to be massive economic harm,” said climate scientist Daniel Swain during one of his regular talks hosted on YouTube. “As we break these things, eventually it will become painfully and unignorably obvious what we’ve broken and how important it was. And it’s going to be unbelievably expensive in the scramble to try and get it back—and we might not be able to get it back.”
The NWS’s San Angelo office is responsible for some of the areas hit hardest by Friday’s flooding and reportedly was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster, and meteorologist in charge. The office in San Antonio also had major vacancies, including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer. These are key positions that work with local emergency managers during a flood and help them warn and evacuate local residents.
Republicans don’t hesitate to blame Democratic policies on immigration and law enforcement if just one white woman is murdered while jogging. The death toll in Texas is far more expansive. Almost a dozen young girls are missing from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp. One has already been declared dead. (Sadly, these numbers could be worse by the time you read this.)
Yet, this disaster probably won’t derail Trump’s presidency. Voters might complain during the flood, but otherwise, they appreciate cuts to government agencies that aren’t the police or military. Unfortunately, you can’t bomb or shoot at extreme weather conditions.
Kerr County judge Rob Kelly said in in an interview that his county, located in what’s known as Flash Flood Alley, doesn’t have a warning system because they’re expensive and local residents don’t want to spend the money. “Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” Kelly said, and when asked if they might reconsider after all the flooding and death, his answer was simply, “I don’t know.”
What we do know is that after a catastrophe, the nation’s dumbest people quickly emerge to remind us they’re in charge so don’t get your hopes up over any constructive response. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on Saturday morning that she was “introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlit intensity. It will be a felony offense.”
I appreciate that she’s clarified that controlling the weather — killing people in the process and costing billions in property damage — is more than a simple misdemeanor. This isn’t like going 70 in a 50 mph zone. You’re not getting off with only a warning, no matter how hot and blonde you are.
“We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering,” Greene ranted.
Kandiss Taylor, a Georgia Republican who might actually hold office someday, declared the floods “FAKE WEATHER.”
“Hurricane Helene left me powerless for 16 days & caused $57K in damage,” she posted on social media. “This isn’t just climate change.’ It’s cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation. If fake weather causes real tragedy, that’s murder.”
Greene has previously claimed that a mysterious “they” can control the weather. However, even if these morons believe the 1980s G.I. Joe cartoon was a documentary, villains with that sort of technology usually have world-conquering ambitions and make their demands known before unleashing devastating weather events. Sure, it’s a holiday weekend and families are seeing the latest Jurassic World movie, but Cobra Commander would’ve delivered his cackling “This was just a small demonstration of my might!” speech by now.
In The Avengers episode “A Surfeit of H20” from 1965, the diabolical mastermind plans to sell his flood-making machine to the highest bidder for military applications: “Relentless, never-ceasing rain … rockets and planes grounded, whole armies bogged down and washed away. Centuries of agricultural wealth destroyed in a few minutes. A great flood to order!” (Watch below.)
Trump’s concentration camp overseer Kristi Noem told reporters that the president “is currently upgrading the technology in the National Weather Service … we needed to renew this ancient system that has been left in place with the federal government.”
This clearly contradicts the administration’s actual treatment of the NWS. The infamous Project 2025 insisted that weather prediction science was part of the “climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
We put climate-change-denying buffoons and charlatans in charge of the government, and the results have already proven disastrous. This is a collective “we,” by the way, because that’s how democracy works. Unfortunately, some Democrats have suggested that Texas residents brought this on themselves — apparently including the drowned children who can’t actually vote.
Ron Filipkowski at MeidasTouch posted while the corpses were still wet, “The people in Texas voted for government services controlled by Donald Trump and Greg Abbott. That is exactly what they getting.”
The “they” here is misleading, considering that 4,835,250 Texans voted for Kamala Harris. That’s almost twice the combined number of Harris voters in Oregon and Washington state. If we’re condemning almost 5 million Harris voters in Texas, then we should condemn ourselves because America collectively re-elected Trump.
But even if Texas were 100 percent Trump country, these people wouldn’t deserve to wash away. Once again, “you didn’t choose me as your leader so you deserve to die” is almost exactly what Lex Luthor says in the upcoming Superman movie. He’s the bad guy.
Now, I would like to believe that Texas voters will reject the Trump administration and toxic Republican governance. After all, Democratic voters — with some prominent exceptions — don’t have a cult-like devotion to their party, so if they are upset about rising crime and prices, they will take it out on their Democratic officials. Kathy Hochul won election in 2022 but by a narrow margin that — along with Andrew Cuomo’s perfidy — helped Republicans flip the House. It’s hard to imagine a similar scenario occurring in Texas. An actual flood could run as a Republican next year on an anti-trans platform and comfortably win by double digits. It’s disappointing. However, my support for desperate, suffering people isn’t transactional.
The kids definitely didn't choose this, but it's harder and harder to muster sympathy for the parents when I see a photo taken at a prayer service of an overly kitted-out, tacti-cool pickup truck with the post assassination-attempt photo of Trump painted on the hood. They still don't deserve it, but damn do I despair of them learning anything from this.
They aren't just the dumbest people in the nation who are in charge, they are also the most evil and the most cruel people in the nation. It's quite a toxic combination.
Glad that you included the "faith without works is dead" quote from James, Stephen. If we had a real Fourth estate, the reporters would ask fake Christian Mike Johnson about that. He has the power to do more than to pray about it, but he won't because he's evil and delights in cruelty to others These ghouls have debased faith and prayer to the point that both are meaningless coming from them.