Emergency preparedness, Trump-style

Trump and Texas Republicans Show How Not to Prepare for the Climate Crisis

Kenny Stancil for the Revolving Door Project

More than 120 people, including dozens of young summer camp attendees, have died in Central Texas from flooding intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis. With search-and-rescue operations ongoing and active flash flood warnings in the region, the death toll is expected to continue climbing.

Over last weekend, Texas officials quickly tried to blame the carnage on inadequate warnings from the National Weather Service (NWS), which has been gutted by the Trump administration. Donald Trump himself lied about this, too. When asked if he thinks the federal government should rehire recently fired meteorologists, he erroneously claimed that “nobody expected” this flooding and that NWS staff “didn’t see it.”

However, NWS provided accurate forecasts and warnings despite everything that Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE wrecking crew have been doing to impair the agency.

We sorely need a return to the Rooseveltian ideal of big government that works for working people, including by phasing out the fossil fuel industry and protecting us from increasingly frequent and severe storms, heatwaves, and wildfires.

That’s not to suggest that the Trump administration’s ill-advised cuts to the federal forecasting apparatus couldn’t have contributed to lethal havoc on the ground. Local NWS offices were missing key officials, which may have undermined swift and cohesive coordination between forecasters and local emergency managers.

Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization (the union representing NWS workers), told The New York Times that the agency’s San Angelo office, which covers many of the hardest-hit areas, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster, and a meteorologist-in-charge.

The nearby NWS office in San Antonio “also had significant vacancies, including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer,” the Times reported. “Staff members in those positions are meant to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate.” The warning coordination meteorologist reportedly left on April 30, accepting the Trump administration’s early retirement offer. This runs counter to Trump’s weekend claim that his policies didn’t lead to vacancies.

In early May, CNN reported that 30 of NWS’ 122 weather forecast offices around the country were missing a meteorologist-in-charge. Former and current agency personnel made clear that the absence of chief meteorologists and other leaders could jeopardize timely communications between forecasters, the media, and local emergency managers. 

Texas Officials Compounded Trump’s Recklessness

Making matters worse, Texas lawmakers earlier this year refused to pass a bill that would have improved local disaster warning systems. Rob Kelly, the top elected official in Kerr County, the flood-prone jurisdiction where most of the deaths have occurred, said that officials considered installing a warning system years ago but declined due to the purportedly high cost.

In the aftermath of increasingly common climate disasters, it becomes clear why, when someone asserts that investments in risk reduction are “expensive,” the response should be, “compared with what?”

According to The Guardian, “Questions are also being asked” about whether Kerr County officials “had approved development along the river bank that may have skirted rules issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that control where homes may be built in areas vulnerable to flooding.”

It should be noted here that advocates of the so-called abundance agenda, which we have warned is an attempt to launder unpopular neoliberal policies, have repeatedly held up Texas as a model to be emulated, implying that circumventing environmental regulations to build more housing is sound policy.

Similar Disasters Are Coming. Trump Must Be Held Accountable

Amid the flooding on July 4, Trump signed into law the GOP’s budget reconciliation bill, which will curtail clean energy and expand the fossil fuel combustion that supercharges extreme weather. A few days earlier, the Trump administration submitted a budget request to Congress that would eliminate all climate research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent agency of NWS.

On July 5, Trump approved Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) request for a major disaster declaration. While it remains to be seen, the federal response could be hobbled due to Trump and Musk’s ongoing war on FEMA.

In short, the Trump administration is simultaneously exacerbating climate change and eroding society’s ability to understand, prepare for, and respond to it. This is precisely the opposite of what should be happening right now.

The deadly Texas floods will not be the last manifestation of extreme weather turbocharged by fossil fuel pollution. In an era of escalating climate threats, we need a stronger public sector with more resources to mitigate risks, help people weather storms, and adapt for the future.

For too long, neoliberal Democrats have joined Republicans in bashing the government and calling for deregulation, austerity, and privatization. In February, Matthew Yglesias went so far as to encourage Democrats to “channel their inner DOGE,” portraying party elites’ abandonment of FDR’s New Deal politics—from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama—as a step in the right direction.

In fact, we sorely need a return to the Rooseveltian ideal of big government that works for working people, including by phasing out the fossil fuel industry and protecting us from increasingly frequent and severe storms, heatwaves, and wildfires.

In the meantime, congressional Democrats must not neglect their oversight duties. They ought to launch investigations and ruthlessly question the Trump administration’s culpability in the Texas flooding disaster.