“I’m going to give you everything you want,” President Trump told disaster-stricken residents and local officials. “I’m going to give you more than any president would have ever given you.”
That was in January, in Los Angeles, in the wake of the catastrophic Palisades and Eaton fires. If Trump could express such magnanimity in California, typically the blue-state butt of his partisan jabs and threats, imagine what he’ll tell red-state Texans on Friday when he visits the flood-ravaged Hill Country, where the usually easy-going Guadalupe River turned mass killer on the Fourth of July.
He’s sure to promise that the federal government will spare no expense. (Note: California is still waiting.) But words are cheap, especially for the truth-challenged Trump. Even as the president, playing Daddy Warbucks, promises money in the moment, he must be held to account for his administration’s continued mindless axing of federal funds and government-wide expertise (a process greenlighted on Tuesday by the ever-accommodating Supreme Court) — and not least in gutting essential agencies that forecast weather, warn of storms and then help Americans recover from disasters.
Trump isn’t to blame for the deaths and destruction in Texas. But raising questions about the effect of his, and the now-disfavored Elon Musk’s, reckless rampage through government offices isn’t “depraved and despicable,” as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt fulminated on Monday. It’s merely holding the government to account, which is, to be sure, a foreign concept to a president accustomed to impunity. (Leavitt’s protestations are particularly rich considering that Trump falsely blamed then-President Biden after Hurricane Helene during last year’s campaign, and initially suggested on Sunday that the Texas tragedy was somehow a “Biden set-up.”)
For a decade now, Trump has exploited Americans’ disdain of government, even when he’s at the head of it. But Americans don’t like government until they need it, and they expect it to keep them safe in the meantime. Because Trump is taking Musk’s chainsaw to federal agencies, with the acquiescence of Congress’ Republican majorities, he should be on the defensive from here on out for every emergency, crisis and tragedy that might have been prevented or at least mitigated by federal action.
Most of Trump’s proposed and attempted cuts have yet to take effect. Some — say, cutbacks in public health and scientific research programs — might not be fully felt for years. Yet even if administration reductions, eliminations and layoffs aren’t culpable this time, in this tragedy, what about the next? Because there will be a next time.
Consider: Climate change is demonstrably turbocharging the number and intensity of severe storms, yet Trump’s budget calls for closing the National Severe Storms Laboratory, which has pioneered forecasting technology for years.
It’s way past time to ignore the familiar post-catastrophe mantra that people inappropriately politicize calamity by raising questions, proposing remedies and, yes, laying blame: Only thoughts and prayers allowed. We’ve heard it in recent days not only from the likes of Leavitt, but also from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his fellow Republican, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who inserted further cuts to weather forecasting funds as part of the One Big Ugly Bill that Trump signed into law on the Fourth, as Texans dealt with the flood nightmare.
The victims deserve more. We all do.
For months since Trump took office and began his slashing spree on Day 1 with his executive orders, critics and experts have predicted that his actions could boomerang, in particular when it comes to weather-related threats, such as the hurricane season underway.
Just to cite one example: Back in April, Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San Jose, the senior Democrat on the House committee that oversees the National Weather Service, complained (presciently?), “Chaotic and illegal firings, coercions to resign, reductions in force, and a general obsession with destroying the morale of dedicated public servants have left the National Weather Service’s work force so strained they cannot carry out their duties as they once did.”
So when we have a natural disaster like that in Texas, where survivors lament inadequate warnings, why should Lofgren or anyone else keep quiet and just think and pray? It’s political, but it’s proper as well that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York asked for an investigation of whether staffing shortfalls at the weather service contributed to the Texas flood’s death toll. A Republican, Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, cited Texas’ plight at a Senate hearing on Wednesday to complain that Trump’s federal hiring freeze has also left his state and others short of meteorologists, and without 24/7 coverage when tornadoes ripped through Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas in May.
Early evidence and anecdotes suggest that federal forecasters did their job in warning Texans of flooding hours in advance. But years of penny-pinching and antitax zeal at the local and state levels, especially, meant that the region — known as “flash flood alley” — had no system in place to adequately transmit the warnings to rural residents in the dead of night.
Yet the feds — Trump mainly — still have much to answer for. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, was among the earliest targets of his misnamed Department of Government Efficiency. Trump said he wants to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency completely.
Months before the storm, a union official representing staff of the weather service, Tom Fahy, told the New York Times that its offices nationwide were “struggling to maintain operations” amid what the agency acknowledged as “severe shortages” of meteorologists and other employees. After the storm, Fahy said that vacancies at the two offices overseeing the Texas Hill Country were roughly double what they were when Trump took office. The longtime “warning coordination meteorologist” for the Hill Country in April announced that he was “sad” to prematurely end his career amid the administration cutbacks and early-retirement offers.
A local media outlet lamented the man’s departure: “The importance of experience” in the job he’d held “cannot be understated.” Abbott is being defensive, as he should be. “Who’s to blame?” the three-term governor snapped at a reporter on Tuesday. “That’s the word choice of losers.” Expect more such vituperation when the Guv greets his friend, the president, on Friday — from both men — should anyone suggest they bear any blame.
Losers? If the word fits…
@Jackiekcalmes
@jackiecalmes.bsky.social
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