How Donald Trump Failed Texas

Yes, he helped thousands suffer...

Anyone who was following the news back in February and March knew that Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s cuts were going to result in pure disaster. Not that they care, because only the poor and working class pay the price for their stupidity.

I knew it was eventually going to catch up to them, and boy, did it—the chain of events that followed the floods in Texas left me shocked.

Today, we are examining the actions taken by Trump and his administration that significantly impacted their constituents in Texas who supported their presidential campaign.

VIA NPR

A recent New York Times report revealed that thousands of calls to FEMA’s disaster assistance line went unanswered in the immediate days after the flood. They concluded that it was partially due to the Department of Homeland Security allowing the call center contracts to terminate.

As a result, about two-thirds of the calls to FEMA’s disaster assistance line went unanswered on both July 6 and 7. According to the NYT, it took five days after the floods to reinstate the call center contracts.

When Kristi Noem was asked about this on NBC, she denied everything and proceeded to call it “fake news”, which is funny because Noem is the person who personally signed off on the new DHS contracts instituted five days after the floods.

VIA NBC

Trump Golfed and Vance ate Sushi While Texans suffered

Trump spent the whole weekend of the floods golfing at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey.

JD Vance and his wife dined at the Michelin-starred Soichi Sushi in San Diego.

I think the two sentences above speak for themselves.

Trump’s Budget Cuts Left the National Weather Service Gutted

The night of the deadly flood, the National Weather Service (NWS) was missing a key person on its staff: the warning coordination meteorologist.

But that’s not even the start of it. That was followed by about 400 more experts who also took an early retirement offer in April.

You may be asking yourself: Why did so many key experts all take an early retirement offer at the same time? Well, the early retirement option was given to federal employees across the federal government as a part of the DOGE cuts.

The goal was to shrink the federal government so that it could save money, but in reality, it only led to thousands of people suffering as a part of its aftermath. More than 120 people were killed, including children.

The missing WCM employees are absolutely crucial - they are the ones who interact with emergency managers and public officials to ensure that they know how to respond to the severe weather event they are going through. Their work is done before the weather arrives, with a slew of strategic measures they take to ensure their instructions will keep people safe.

They gave people about three hours to evacuate their communities at about 1 am, and then proceeded to claim that “you can do a lot in three hours."

Sorry, you expect people to just all wake up at 1 am and completely evacuate within three hours? That’s insane!

As of January, the NWS had about 4,400 staff members, but now they have about 3,700 employees. Some of the offices are now so understaffed that they don’t operate 24/7 anymore, and they don’t launch weather balloons, which is a vital source of weather data.

As climate change continues to escalate, I firmly believe that we require an increased number of NWS workers to tackle the extreme weather changes we face.

This disaster wasn’t just about rising water — it was about a government that let its guard down, slashed the safety nets, and then acted shocked when everything broke.

Trump, Noem, and their crew can scream “fake news” all they want. Still, no amount of spin can change the reality: real people died, real communities were devastated, and it all traces back to decisions made by leaders more interested in golf, sushi, and gutting public institutions than protecting the people they were elected to serve.

Texans deserved better. America deserves better. And no, three hours of warning at 1 a.m. doesn't cut it.