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Over the Fourth of July vacation weekend, a deluge of rain brought about Texas’ Guadalupe River to rise greater than 26 toes in 45 minutes. The floodwaters swept away folks, together with youngsters at summer time camps, houses, and companies. Every week later, some 120 folks have been confirmed killed, with practically 200 nonetheless lacking.
However as households picked by way of the rubble and emergency staff looked for our bodies, the Trump administration’s response signaled that they don’t appear to really feel any specific sense of urgency in the case of serving to the victims recuperate.
Usually, the Federal Emergency Administration Administration deploys a myriad of assets to catastrophe zones, together with search and rescue groups, support staff who go door-to-door to help victims, and employees who can arrange semi-permanent areas the place people and companies impacted by a storm or flood may also work out subsequent steps. It’s a marathon, and getting off the beginning line with urgency is essential.
“These [disasters] are a really long-haul sort of factor,” Margaret Cooney, a senior staffer on the Middle for American Progress who focuses on local weather disasters, instructed HuffPost. “And one of many issues that helps of us in these communities get by way of it’s FEMA.”
However in Texas, FEMA’s search and rescue groups weren’t deployed till Monday, greater than three days after the flooding began, per a report from CNN. Plus, Sec. Kristi Noem, whose Division of Homeland Safety oversees FEMA, reportedly not too long ago began requiring any expenditure over $100,000 to be permitted first by her, so when Texas wanted instant assist, FEMA officers had been slowed down by paperwork. The division didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the report.
Some Democrats are already saying Noem’s actions value lives.
“Youngsters in Texas died as a direct results of Kristi Noem’s negligence,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said on BlueSky on Thursday. “She needs to be faraway from workplace earlier than her incompetence will get Oregonians killed in a wildfire.”
However writ massive, the response to the Texas floods largely encapsulates what the Trump administration has been aiming in the direction of since January — decimating and undermining the packages that warn of impending catastrophe, coordinate the response, and work to reduce hurt. And it’s a terrifying warning of what’s to come back.
“I can’t let you know how dangerous their therapy of FEMA has been,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow on the Brookings Institute who research efficient public administration, instructed HuffPost. “It’s shortsighted and naive.”
In 2024, President Donald Trump campaigned partly on sending catastrophe reduction “again to the states,” which means that states ought to shoulder extra of the prices for disasters.
“We need to wean off of FEMA, and we need to convey it right down to the state degree,” he told reporters throughout a White Home briefing as not too long ago as final month. “A governor ought to have the ability to deal with it, and albeit, if they will’t deal with it, the aftermath, then perhaps they shouldn’t be governor,” Trump added later.
However that was additionally earlier than the Texas floods. On Friday, The Washington Post reported that the White Home was backtracking on its plans to eradicate the company.
However in a press release, White Home spokesperson Abigail Jackson instructed HuffPost the Washington Publish’s headline “didn’t precisely characterize the Trump Administration’s continued efforts to overtake FEMA,” whereas additionally calling FEMA “a bloated forms that disincentivized state funding in their very own resilience.”
“President Trump is dedicated to right-sizing the Federal authorities whereas empowering State and native governments by enabling them to higher perceive, plan for, and in the end tackle the wants of their residents,” Jackson stated.
The administration has stated it plans on increasing the amount of damage a storm has to do earlier than the federal authorities will declare a catastrophe, making it tougher for a state to be eligible for FEMA funds. Below the brand new plan, states could be pressured to cowl extra of their very own restoration prices, and that the response can principally be dealt with by native first responders.
Kamarck says that plan is vital to its personal destruction. “The elemental undeniable fact that the Trump administration doesn’t get is that the larger the disaster, the extra the primary responders there are [also] victims,” she stated.
Important harm has already been performed. As a part of an effort led by Elon Musk earlier within the yr, civil servants have been laid off en masse, together with at FEMA, which has seen some 25% of employees depart the company since Trump returned to energy. For a division that has traditionally been underfunded and understaffed, it’s devastating.
The reasoning behind the cuts was that these jobs had been supposedly a waste of taxpayer {dollars} though officers at FEMA and NOAA, which offers assets for forecasting and warning of disasters, stated a lot of these positions had been crucial — and cutting them could lead to tragedies.
“It’s terrifying as a result of these organizations maintain us secure,” Tom Di Liberto, a local weather scientist at NOAA who was fired by Trump, told PBS in March. “They nonetheless have that job however now they must do it with much less folks.”
The Nationwide Climate Service, which is a part of NOAA and performs an important function in forecasting harmful climate and speaking to the general public, has lost 600 employees since January. The Trump administration has additionally made it tougher for states and localities to get cash for warning programs and has cut contracts intended for disaster preparedness.
“Not absolutely funding FEMA and NOAA goes to devastate communities,” Cooney stated. “These companies give communities a preventing probability.”
So as to add to the disorganization, as of July FEMA is now on its second director in six months: Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, was abruptly fired in May and changed by David Richardson, who beforehand labored in an anti-terrorism unit at DHS. Neither man has any expertise in emergency administration. Richardson has yet to make any public statements concerning the Texas flooding.
Put collectively, and it seems to be virtually just like the Trump administration is doing all the pieces it may possibly to make disasters just like the flood in Texas even worse.
“There can be extra pure disasters,” Kamarck stated. “In order that they’ve bought to get their act straight.”
There’s common consensus that natural disasters are getting worse. An analysis launched by NOAA in early 2025 famous that every yr was breaking information: “In 2024, there have been 27 particular person climate and local weather disasters with at the least $1 billion in damages, trailing solely the record-setting 28 occasions analyzed in 2023,” the report stated. And the World Meteorological Affiliation present in a 2021 evaluate that the rate of natural disasters had increased fivefold over the earlier 50 years: “A catastrophe associated to a climate, local weather or water hazard occurred each day on common over the previous 50 years.”
It bodes sick for the long run. A Might 2025 report from the Urban Institute discovered that if the Trump administration’s new catastrophe funding calculations had been in place between 2008-2024, 71% of storms and floods wouldn’t have met the brink for a presidential declared catastrophe.
States with massive populations, like Florida, Texas, California and New York — all of which have faced main catastrophes in that interval — would have misplaced tens of millions of {dollars}, and native governments could be dealing with extreme monetary shortfalls in the event that they had been now not capable of depend on the federal authorities for assets, leaving states and their residents within the lurch.
The Trump administration has been claiming that latest cuts didn’t affect the tragedy in Texas. However both manner, the scenario presents a glimpse of what letting states deal with their very own catastrophe response seems to be like, notably when wanting funds.
In Kerr County, the place the worst of the flooding occurred, native officers had been attempting to get FEMA funding for a flood warning system for years. However, according to NPR, their funding software had been turned down by the state of Texas, which was liable for administering the funds. Nor may they get funds through a state-level grant program.
So when the flood got here earlier this month, native officers had been unprepared. Some had been even stranded themselves.
Within the aftermath, Texas officers had been quick to point the finger on the federal authorities, saying climate forecasters didn’t ship out ample warnings, though the Nationwide Climate Service, which is run by NOAA, despatched out a number of warnings earlier than the catastrophic flooding started.
Cooney says the actual problem was the extent of coordination between NWS and native authorities on the bottom. “Coordination simply wasn’t there as a result of positions haven’t been stuffed,” she stated.
It’s unclear in the event that they ever can be.
CORRECTION: This story has been amended to precisely mirror how a lot the Guadalupe River rose and to make clear the place it’s within the state.
