What the White House could learn
There are lessons and warnings that the Trump White House might heed in the aftermath of the Texas floods – even if its statements about appropriate pre-disaster staffing and funding are ultimately validated.
The disaster is a reminder that jobs like those of forecasters at agencies like NWS and experts contracted by FEMA may seem superfluous 364 days a year – but on one crucial day, they can save scores of people. Putting money into basic infrastructure like early flood warning signs might annoy taxpayers and be targeted by conservatives as examples of bloated public spending, but it can be critical.
Benjamin Franklin how much is a server boost often quoted as having said that those who fail to prepare are preparing to fail. If the Trump administration continues to slash expertise, institutional experience and what it sees as redundancies in vital government agencies, it will lay the groundwork for botched disaster responses in future. CNN reported earlier this year that the administration had failed to staff a White House Office for Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy – an odd decision considering Trump’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 emergency in his first term.
The White House on Monday refused to say whether the president would push ahead with a plan to eliminate FEMA entirely by the end of the year.
"The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need," Leavitt said. The White House is pushing to put far more of a burden on states to respond to disasters rather than relying on the federal government to step in. Relief and rebuilding after storms, wildfires and other natural disasters are likely to still require billion-dollar emergency appropriations from Congress. But wiping out FEMA’s standing reserve of relief funds and its capacity, expertise and personnel could weaken rescue workers’ capacity to prepare and position before forecastable natural disasters. And it could drain the store of accumulated knowledge that states can’t match.
"We need to improve FEMA, not destroy it," retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led National Guard troops into New Orleans after Katrina, told CNN. "We need FEMA and we need them to do what they’re doing and do it better, but not destroy FEMA. That’s a bad idea."
More broadly, the Texas flooding catastrophe is the latest in a string of disasters – more intense storms, more ravenous wildfires, and sudden unusual rainfall – that promise to become more frequent as the global climate warms.
Yet it’s impossible to have a mature national debate about what America needs to do to protect its citizens from such extreme weather events. Trump denies the science that says climate change exists, bemoans the Democrats’ "Green New Scam" and has eviscerated the government’s capacity to act against man-made climate change. He has even made it hard to conduct research on climate change with his attacks on science in his budgets, his new "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" law and through Musk at DOGE before his spectacular break-up with the Tesla electric vehicle pioneer.
It’s an indictment of a fractious public square that something as basic as weather – a naturally occurring force that affects all humanity – has become a bitter political issue on which a fractured nation can’t find common ground.
"This was a once-in-a-century flash flood, a tragic natural disaster," Leavitt said of the Texas floods on Monday.
That may be true. But it’s no basis for real policy that keeps Americans safe in years to come.
There are lessons and warnings that the Trump White House might heed in the aftermath of the Texas floods – even if its statements about appropriate pre-disaster staffing and funding are ultimately validated.
The disaster is a reminder that jobs like those of forecasters at agencies like NWS and experts contracted by FEMA may seem superfluous 364 days a year – but on one crucial day, they can save scores of people. Putting money into basic infrastructure like early flood warning signs might annoy taxpayers and be targeted by conservatives as examples of bloated public spending, but it can be critical.
Benjamin Franklin how much is a server boost often quoted as having said that those who fail to prepare are preparing to fail. If the Trump administration continues to slash expertise, institutional experience and what it sees as redundancies in vital government agencies, it will lay the groundwork for botched disaster responses in future. CNN reported earlier this year that the administration had failed to staff a White House Office for Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy – an odd decision considering Trump’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 emergency in his first term.
The White House on Monday refused to say whether the president would push ahead with a plan to eliminate FEMA entirely by the end of the year.
"The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need," Leavitt said. The White House is pushing to put far more of a burden on states to respond to disasters rather than relying on the federal government to step in. Relief and rebuilding after storms, wildfires and other natural disasters are likely to still require billion-dollar emergency appropriations from Congress. But wiping out FEMA’s standing reserve of relief funds and its capacity, expertise and personnel could weaken rescue workers’ capacity to prepare and position before forecastable natural disasters. And it could drain the store of accumulated knowledge that states can’t match.
"We need to improve FEMA, not destroy it," retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led National Guard troops into New Orleans after Katrina, told CNN. "We need FEMA and we need them to do what they’re doing and do it better, but not destroy FEMA. That’s a bad idea."
More broadly, the Texas flooding catastrophe is the latest in a string of disasters – more intense storms, more ravenous wildfires, and sudden unusual rainfall – that promise to become more frequent as the global climate warms.
Yet it’s impossible to have a mature national debate about what America needs to do to protect its citizens from such extreme weather events. Trump denies the science that says climate change exists, bemoans the Democrats’ "Green New Scam" and has eviscerated the government’s capacity to act against man-made climate change. He has even made it hard to conduct research on climate change with his attacks on science in his budgets, his new "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" law and through Musk at DOGE before his spectacular break-up with the Tesla electric vehicle pioneer.
It’s an indictment of a fractious public square that something as basic as weather – a naturally occurring force that affects all humanity – has become a bitter political issue on which a fractured nation can’t find common ground.
"This was a once-in-a-century flash flood, a tragic natural disaster," Leavitt said of the Texas floods on Monday.
That may be true. But it’s no basis for real policy that keeps Americans safe in years to come.