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The Trump administration is facing outrage and despair in the wake of deadly flooding in Texas, as Democrats in Congress are asking whether the president’s cuts to the National Weather Service limited emergency response efforts — and, if so, how.
Nearly 100 people, including more than two dozen children, have been confirmed dead and dozens more remain missing following the flooding in Kerr County. Multiple Texas officials, including the mayor of Kerrville, which suffered immense devastation, have criticized the NWS’s forecasting and warnings ahead of the flood.
In a letter Monday to the agency’s inspector general, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., asked for an investigation into what role, if any, the Trump administration’s recent layoffs and other reductions in staff may have played in the death toll and property damage.
Schumer’s letter cites a New York Times report that quotes former NWS officials as saying the agency’s forecasts were as good as could be expected, but that key staffing shortages due to Trump’s cuts left areas without officials to coordinate with local emergency managers to warn local residents and help them evacuate. “To honor the lives of those lost, we have a responsibility to the American people to determine whether preventable failures contributed to this tragedy — and to ensure that it never happens again,” Schumer wrote.
That sentiment was echoed by Texas Democrat Rep. Joaquin Castro, who said during an CNN interview over the weekend that he couldn’t state conclusively that the NWS cuts had played a role in the government’s readiness for and response to the Texas floods, but that an investigation is warranted. “I don’t think it’s helpful to have missing key personnel from the National Weather Service,” Castro said. in response to a question about how cuts at the agency may have affected readiness and response to the flooding.
Trump said Sunday he opposes an investigation into the NWS, and the White House has said it is “disgusting” and “false” to link vacancies at the organization to the flood response in any way.
Needless to say, that defensiveness is unlikely to stop inquiries into whether the administration’s slash-and-burn approach to the federal bureaucracy contributed to a more deadly outcome in Texas — just as some people feared it would.