Texas, the Flood, and the Very High Cost of ‘Small Government’

You know what’s more offensive than politicizing a tragedy? Refusing to prevent the next one.

You know what’s more offensive than politicizing a tragedy?

Refusing to prevent the next one.

Let’s talk about what just happened in Texas. 

Last Friday, flash floods ripped through Central Texas, killing well over 100 people—including 28 children.  It’s the deadliest natural disaster to strike the region in a century. Girls are still missing. Families are still waiting.

The New York Times reported that crucial positions were vacant at the local National Weather Service offices. Meteorologists, hydrologists—people who literally issue flood warnings and work with local authorities—just not there.

Why? Staffing shortages. Budget cuts.  Millionaire-at-birth narcissists gutting the federal government until it bleeds.

And meteorologists begged for this to not happen. They saw it coming.  Five former National Weather Service directors — from both parties — issued a desperate warning in May that staffing cuts had pushed America’s forecasting system to the brink of collapse. Their exact words?

“Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”

• The San Angelo NWS office—which covers the hardest-hit areas—was missing its senior hydrologist, meteorologist-in-charge, AND staff forecaster.

• The San Antonio office was short a warning coordination meteorologist AND science officer.

These are the exact people whose job it is to communicate with local emergency managers. AccuWeather’s chief meteorologist said it outright:

“Evacuations could have reduced the fatalities—if officials had heeded warnings from both public and private sources.”

Now, after decades of building a world-class forecasting system, we watched it fail.  Because it was sabotaged. Not by God. Not by nature.

By the party of “deregulate everything,” of “privatize disaster relief,” of “faith-based emergency planning.”

By the same reality TV performer who sharpied a hurricane path on a weather map in 2019 just took a chainsaw to NOAA, the NWS, and the very people whose job is to save lives before disaster strikes.

By the people who think weather warnings are woke.

By the people who spent last Fall exploiting the horrors of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina to bludgeon a Democratic president.   

_______

And before we go further let me say that this is not about blame.  This is about cause and effect.  We should also point out that the girls at that camp had no cell phones, so it’s possible that they couldn’t have been reached in time.

But this issue speaks to the rancorous heart of the conservative/liberal divide, which is: Are we going to be a society that takes care of each other, or not?

________

The legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, Tom Feehy, has stated that staffing shortages for forecasting and emergency management positions hae worsened since Trump took office.

But Trump’s defenders are blaming the NWS — the very agency he decimated — for not being fast enough, loud enough, omnipresent enough to cover for the government; as they’re slowly turning into a hollowed-out shell of lobbyists, ideologues, and grifters.  Texas officials, of course, also blamed the NWS. Because why take responsibility when you can pass the buck downstream?

Republicans did what they do best: They cut funding for local warning systems, refused to raise taxes, and then stood in front of microphones to deliver their contribution to disaster response:

“We’re praying.”

Praying? You don’t need prayers, Mike Johnson — you need sirens, infrastructure, meteorologists, functioning institutions, and politicians who care about life, beyond fetuses.

Kerr County, where nearly 70 people drowned, didn't have a flood warning system.  Camp Mystic had already banned phones, iPads, smartwatches, so no alerts got through.

 Why?

Their top official said:

“Taxpayers won’t pay for it.” When asked if people might reconsider now that children are dead? “I don’t know.”

Texas Rep. Briscoe Cain, chair of the Texas House Freedom Caucus, had this to say:

“We must not allow this great tragedy to be used to grow government.”

Grow government? Sir, nobody’s asking for a billion-dollar bureaucracy. We’re asking for a damn weather siren. We’re asking for someone who’d pick up the phone and say: “Get those kids out of the flood zone.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene she showed up with her usual fondue of chemtrails and conspiracies:

“I am introducing a bill to ban weather modification.”

Because if there's one thing more dangerous than climate denial, it’s weaponized idiocy in power.   Instead of funding flood control, she’s pushing a fantasy novel where a retired Joe Biden controls the clouds.

And now you’ve got DHS Dog Assassin Kristi Noem trying to spin this like a Lifetime movie:

“Texas is amazing in how it responds to disasters. You are an example to the nation.”

Really? Because the example I’m seeing is a flood-prone county with no flood warning system, an understaffed federal weather agency, and kids drowning while state officials pass the PR baton to each other.  

And where is FEMA? Gutted.Where’s the National Security Council? Decapitated and weaponized.Where’s NOAA? Defunded and smeared as “climate alarmists.”

This wasn’t just an accident. This was the logical endpoint of MAGA governance:A world where everything is someone else’s problem, every expert is “deep state,” and every institution is for sale.

The System Isn’t Broken. It’s Working As Intended.

And I know it’s tempting to demand accountability from Donald Trump and Elon Musk - but don’t forget Governor Greg Abbott.

Abbott is a dedicated climate change denier and science rejector who continues to block any statewide climate preparedness initiatives.  He promotes fossil fuel expansion, sues the EPA, and blames green energy every time the power grid fails — even though it’s Texas’s deregulated fossil-heavy grid that’s to blame.

He’s gutted emergency preparedness funding, refused to modernize infrastructure, and allows developers to build in flood-prone areas without proper mitigation.

Texas has become America’s testing ground for extreme weather, and Abbott is the crash-test dummy who keeps insisting the wall is fine.

Remember Hurricane Harvey in 2017?  One of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history. Over 100 people dead. Abbott photo-opped, then disappeared from the climate conversation.

Winter Storm Uri in 2021 was a deep freeze that killed 246 Texans, shut down the power grid, and revealed Texas’s deadly commitment to deregulation over human survival.  It wasn’t just predictable — it had already been predicted. By scientists. Repeatedly.

And now the Guadalupe River Flash Floods.  At least 100 dead, including children at a Christian summer camp, 160 still missing as of this writing, and Abbott still won’t admit the climate is changing.

Because Abbott and his allies profit from disaster. Deregulated energy markets, construction kickbacks, privatized disaster response — it’s all money.

Every time they do nothing, they’re doing their job — serving corporate overlords and endangering the vulnerable.  Climate denial isn’t a bug. It’s policy.

Every child drowned, every Texan frozen to death, every family burned out of their home is a direct result of decisions made by men who think climate change is a hoax and capitalism is religion.

Greg Abbott is the only man who can look at a flooded children’s camp and think, “But have we installed enough razor wire in the river yet?”

And what’s Congress saying?

National Dems remain terrified of using climate change as a cudgel.  Abbott hands them body counts, FEMA bills, and preventable tragedies. And yet, they still talk about “bipartisanship” while the GOP lights another match and tosses it into dried brush.

Hakeem Jeffries called for a bipartisan investigation. Good.  Speaker Mike Johnson?

“All we know to do at this moment is pray.”

You’re the Speaker of the House, not a church greeter. What do you think your job is, exactly?

This is not about blame.

This is about cause and effect.This is about cuts that kill, cowardice that buries kids, and ideology that treats disaster prevention like socialism.

You don’t get to say “don’t politicize the tragedy” after you defunded the people who could have helped prevent it.

Trump’s budget eliminated all of NOAA’s climate research labs.They’ve slashed 600 jobs at the National Weather Service.They’ve cut 40% of funding to agencies that research heart disease, strokes, suicide, and even cancer.They gutted USAID, which prevented 92 million deaths over two decades. Now it’s being dismantled for parts.

Fourteen million deaths predicted. Four million children.

This is not “weaponizing grief.”It’s demanding competence.

And if your answer to 100+ deaths is “Thoughts and prayers,” you’re not a leader—you’re an accessory.

This is a slow-motion attack on the idea of a functioning state.   A privatized, deregulated, dying America where every disaster is an opportunity for profit, deflection, or distraction.  This is the future Stephen Miller dreams of at night, after he slips out to feed.

We need investigations.We need accountability.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

We need spines .

Because if Democrats don’t stand up for the First Amendment, the National Weather Service, the FDA, the NSC, the EPA, the USDA, the CDC, and the rule of law, then no one will.

We owe the dead more than thoughts and prayers.

We owe the living a warning system, a functioning weather service, and elected officials with a spine.

And until we get those things, we’re not politicizing tragedy.We’re trying to stop the next one.