Deadly Texas Floods Were Inevitable After Trump’s Cuts

One of the first departments that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE tore apart when they came into power was the National Weather Service. These cuts led to meteorologists losing their jobs, weather prediction and forecasting technology left unattended, and countless other cuts that made it nearly impossible to get early warnings out to American citizens. The deadly floods in Texas are a direct result of these cuts, as the local weather stations were grossly understaffed. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

As of Monday morning this week, more than 80 people had been pronounced dead from the devastating floods that hit Texas beginning on Friday. Hundreds more are missing, including 27 young girls from a campsite. This is catastrophic. This is devastating. And so far, and probably, you know, forever, the only thing Republicans have given us are thoughts and prayers because when a tragedy strikes a potentially preventable, uh, tragedy, Republicans, all they can do is give us their thoughts and prayers. And then of course, you have people like Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Christie Nome, who have of course attempted to blame the floods on President Biden. They have both gone out there in the media and told us that somehow some way, the man who's been out of office for almost six months now, he is responsible for these floods and these deaths in Texas. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And yes, folks, even though this was a natural disaster, this was a weather event, there are still fingers to point in blame. And let's start with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. One of the first things that these idiots, these absolute brain dead morons did when they came into power with Donald Trump was they slashed the National Weather Service. They cut 12% of the total workforce of the National Weather Service. These are forecasters, these are monitors, predictors, analysts, meteorologists, 600 of them, 12% of the total workforce gone. And of course, with the hiring freeze, that is still in effect within the federal government. These 600 vital pieces of our first warning system are still missing. So we're operating below capacity for the people whose job it is to track things like this, predict things, look at the indicators. Here's one. In, in Houston, there are only 10 meteorologists remain in the office that previously boasted 16. A single electronics technician now supports operations rather than the four previously employed San Angelo. The National Weather Service Office closest to the Eye of Friday Night Storm currently lacks a senior hydro, uh, hydrologist, a staff forecaster, and a meteorologist in charge.

So yes, without these vital cogs in our weather prediction machine, we cannot fully understand, predict, prevent what's gonna happen.

We need these people. But Donald Trump, Trump gave Elon Musk the keys to the castle. Musk came in with his frigging chainsaw, slashed and burned, and now countless people are dead. We may never know the full death toll. We may never, if even find all the bodies folks, all of these deaths are on this administration. They're on Elon Musk, and they're on those little idiot teenagers that are running Doge who actually made these decisions. In the end, you cannot deny that. You cannot run away from it. You cannot scapegoat somebody else for it. We may not have been able to prevent the flood, but we could have had earlier warnings. We could have saved lives had these people still been there. How many lives? We'll never know. But even if we could have saved one life, two, three, maybe not have had 27 young girls swept away from their campsite, but we'll never know because they did this damage and they are the ones who need to be held responsible for it. Now, legally speaking, of course, we cannot hold them accountable in court, but in the court of public opinion, we absolutely can. This cannot be swept under the rug. They did this, they knew it was gonna happen. They were warned that firing all these people from the National Weather Service would lead to death and destruction. And they did it anyway because they simply don't care.