Trump gutted the weather service. Then Texas flooded.
It's a brutal reminder that in disasters, we need the federal government.
🗣️ Paid subscribers make Public Notice possible. If you appreciate our fiercely independent coverage of American politics, please support us. 👇
Over the weekend, torrential rains struck central Texas, causing the Guadalupe River to surge more than 20 feet in 90 minutes. Evacuation orders were issued, but too late. Flash floods killed at least 82 people, including 28 children, with dozens of girls still missing as of Sunday evening, many of them kids from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp.
State and local officials blamed federal weather forecasters for underestimating the amount of rainfall. The weather service predicted four to eight inches of rain; instead central Texas received more than 10 inches, and possibly up to 18 in some places.
Officials in Texas did not link their critique of federal forecasts directly to the administration of President Donald Trump. But many on social media and elsewhere have pointed out that Trump and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have made drastic cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Retired federal scientists warned that the cuts could hamstring forecasts and make extreme weather events less predictable and more dangerous.
The New York Times reported that “crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas … prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.”
Did Trump’s cuts cause excess deaths in Texas? It will probably be some time before we have a definitive answer to that question, if we ever do at all. We do know two things now, though.
First, Trump’s administration has worked to destroy the safety net, which makes all kinds of disasters — extreme weather, earthquakes, contagious disease, individual health events — much more likely to be much more deadly.
And, second, Trump has made these cuts in such a way that whenever there is a disaster, people are going to link the results to the policies of one Donald Trump.
Trump’s attack on the weather service
Trump’s attack on forecasting capability is unprecedented and inexcusable. He fired 24,000 employees at NOAA (they were reinstated — then re-fired). The budget for 2026 cuts more than a quarter of the agency’s funding, including all of it for the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which conducts weather and climate research.
James Franklin, former chief of the National Hurricane Center, told USA Today that the cuts “will stop all progress” in US forecasting.
There’s a similar story at the NWS. Former NWS meteorologist Brian Lamarre explained to NPR in May that the NWS had 5,000-6,000 employees 30 years ago. That has gradually whittled down to 4,500 — and then another 550 were cut by DOGE or quit without being replaced. As a result, “for the first time in the history of the National Weather Service, the agency is below 4,000 people.”
Lamarre says there are eight offices of the 122 that are not able to sustain 24/7 staffing — a dangerous situation since disasters can obviously occur anytime.
“I don't think the current situation is sustainable,” Lamarre concluded.
Despite these longterm problems, NWS officials claim they had adequate staffing. Independent meteorologist Matt Lanza categorically stated that “in this particular case, we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within NOAA and the NWS played any role at all.”
There are still questions, though. Federal cuts have affected staffing in Texas. The San Angelo forecast office has only 19 staffers for 23 positions, while the San Antonio one has only 20 for 26 positions. Some leadership roles weren’t filled, which was a concern before the floods hit.
A note from Aaron: Enjoying this piece from Noah? Then please sign up to support our work 📈 Paid subscribers keep PN free for everyone 📈
A reporter told Secretary of Health and Human Services Kristi Noem during a news conference on Saturday that he had not gotten emergency alerts on his phone before 7:00am — much too later since the flash flooding occurred overnight.
“Wasn’t that a fundamental failure of the federal government’s responsibility to keep us safe?” he asked.
Noem responded with a long filibuster in which she said weather is hard to predict and insisted Trump is “upgrading the technology” of an “ancient system.” She did not explain how he is going to do that while slashing the organization’s budget.
During her news conference, Noem did not tout the contribution of MAGA Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who promised to introduce a bill to criminalize chemical weather-changing discharges into the atmosphere — a bizarre conspiracy theory in line with her claim that forest fires are caused by “Jewish space lasers.”
Everyone recognizes that Trump is trying to kill us
Whatever the responsibility of Trump in this case, there appears to be a bipartisan consensus that the federal government has a major role to play in disaster preparedness, and a bipartisan concern that Trump’s gutting of federal agencies has undermined the government’s ability to play that role.
Local officials, aware of the cuts, rushed to blame the federal government. Reporters asked Trump officials about their failures, and those officials acknowledged that the federal government should try to increase forecasting accuracy.
The Atlantic, despite some mealy mouthed passive voice, admitted that “just a year ago, the US was better at predicting storms’ tracks than it had ever been. But now … the country is rapidly losing state-of-the-art forecasting.” Even Grok, Elon Musk’s AI, blamed the Trump/DOGE cuts for undermining flood preparedness.
It might seem obvious that a botched disaster would implicate Trump. And yet, for some 50 years, Republicans have been trying to convince people that government only harms and never helps.
Ronald Reagan famously sneered at federal disaster relief efforts, joking in 1986, “I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help,” even as his homophobic administration ignored the AIDS crisis. Trump has pushed a similar line, claiming he plans to phase out FEMA aid after 2025, leaving states to struggle and their people to die horribly in future disasters.
And yet, the very viciousness and arbitrariness of Trump’s cuts has helped the make the federal role in managing disasters more salient and more visible. Even before the final vote last Friday to pass Trump’s horrific reconciliation bill that slashes $1.1 trillion from Medicaid, a hospital in rural southwest Nebraska announced it was closing because of the funding precariousness caused by the bill.
Derrick Van Orden, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin who has been gloating about millions losing healthcare and school lunches, wrote an urgent letter to the Democratic governor of his state begging him to protect rural hospitals — rural hospitals that are now on the chopping block because Van Orden voted to withdraw their funding. If a ghoulish Republican can make the connection between withdrawal of federal aid and catastrophic consequences for normal humans, then anyone can do it.
We may not know for sure whether federal cuts worsened the harm in Texas. What is clear though is that, even with adequate preparation, disasters are disastrous. They threaten lives and property, they hurt the most vulnerable — poor people, people with few resources, people in rural areas where help and hospitals may be far away.
Trump has spent half a year boasting about how he is withdrawing our collective ability to help those facing personal and collective emergencies. The result is that everyone — local officials, mainstream media, social media users, even Grok — thinks of him and his cuts as soon as there is a disaster. We are now all more aware than we have been in decades of the extent to which the federal government is, contra Reagan, a vital help.
Maybe that will create the political will to reverse these horrible policies, and renew our commitment to helping, and our capacity to help, each other. That would be an important, and possibly even a transformative, outcome. The horrific Texas flooding, though, suggests that before that happens, many more people under Trump’s watch will die.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s newsletter, please do your part to keep Public Notice free by signing up for a paid subscription.
Thanks for reading, and for your support.
The incompetence of this administration on full display as they scramble to play the blame game. They are so owned by the fossil fuel industry that the very mention of climate change is seemed as a threat- as the rest of the developed world works to reduce the impact of previous policies which harmed our air and water quality this administration has buried its heads in the sand and has taken an eraser to all research which supports the need to lessen emissions and reduce the carbon footprint. We pay the price for the actions of this administration- and it is only beginning!
My feeling is that the flash floods were definitely enhanced by global warming which makes hydrological events more extreme. We know that on the fossil fuel industry's behalf Trump has been waging war on those parts of the government that deal with the effects of global warming, i.e. NOAA, the NWS, the NHC. Even satellite coverage data is being restricted. All of this does not serve the public. Any sane government seeks to aid its citizenry. In a democratic form of government, an educated citizenry is essential for making informed choices. Yet Trump is attempting on many fronts to dumb us down. In a nutshell, Trump's government is both sociopathic toward its own citizenry and antipathetic to democracy.