The death toll from last week’s catastrophic flash floods in central Texas has now reached a staggering 82 lives lost — 28 of them children. And heartbreakingly, that number is almost certain to rise. At least 40 more people are still unaccounted for, including ten young girls from Camp Mystic, the popular summer camp nestled along the Guadalupe River that’s become the center of national attention.
This isn’t just another natural disaster. This is now one of the deadliest floods in modern U.S. history. It’s a gut-wrenching tragedy with no end in sight, and naturally, the left is already scrambling to pin the blame on President Trump.
Right on cue, leftists are dragging out the tired talking points about budget cuts. On Monday morning, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer fired off a letter to the acting inspector general of the Commerce Department, demanding an investigation into whether supposed Trump-era “cuts” to the National Weather Service somehow caused the flooding or worsened the death toll.
It’s a shameless attempt to politicize a tragedy. Schumer’s targeting of FEMA and local NWS offices is nothing more than a distraction — another classic blame-Trump move from Democrats who never let a crisis go to waste. Rather than focus on real solutions or honoring the victims, Schumer is more interested in scoring political points with baseless accusations.
The finger-pointing frenzy is in full swing on social media, with viral posts now blaming everything from DOGE to vague “federal budget cuts” for the tragedy. However, these claims were literally debunked last week. For example, WIRED admitted that the NWS did its job perfectly.
But meteorologists who spoke to WIRED say that the NWS accurately predicted the risk of flooding in Texas and could not have foreseen the extreme severity of the storm. What’s more, they say that what the NWS did forecast this week underscores the need to sustain funding to the crucial agency.
They’re not alone either. On Monday, the left-wing outlet Politico also admitted that the anti-Trump narrative surrounding the tragedy is dead wrong.
And let’s be clear: Just as my Playbook colleague Zack Stanton set out in yesterday’s newsletter, there’s still absolutely no evidence that Trump’s NWS cuts had any impact on what happened in Texas on Friday morning. As you’d expect, local and national reporters alike have been digging away at this angle incredibly hard — and so far, the picture that’s emerging is one of a National Weather Service that did its job as a catastrophic weather event unfolded.
Also, in a detailed timeline posted to X, the Department of Homeland Security detailed how the National Weather Service (NWS) actually delivered precise forecasts and issued multiple escalating warnings well before the worst of the flooding began.
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The post outlines a string of proactive alerts beginning the morning of July 3, including forecast briefings, flood hazard outlooks, and a formal Flood Watch for Kerr County issued by early afternoon. As conditions worsened, NWS released flash flood warnings throughout the night, triggering emergency alerts and NOAA Weather Radio notices. By the early hours of July 4, a Flash Flood Emergency had been declared for key parts of Kerr County, and DHS notes that local law enforcement began reporting flooding more than three hours after those initial alerts went out.
As for the claim that the NWS was understaffed because of cuts? That’s bogus too:
Whoops… there goes the narrative pic.twitter.com/YdIuzVBszG
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 6, 2025
Bottom line: federal forecasters gave the region ample warning — over 12 hours of lead time overall and more than three hours for the flash flood emergency — but the left is ignoring that to fit its preferred narrative because it is desperate to find some scandal to pin on Trump.
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