This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump and first lady Melania Trump will be visiting Texas today, a week after the devastating flash floods swept through the Hill Country of central Texas, taking so many lives. The banks of the Guadalupe River rose more than 23 feet in under an hour. The death toll statewide has reached 121 and counting. Kerrville police officer Jonathan Lamb gave an update yesterday for Kerr County, which was hardest hit.
JONATHAN LAMB: As of 8 a.m. this morning, there have been 96 confirmed deaths: 60 adults and 36 children. The number of missing remains at 161, and there remain five campers and one counselor from Camp Mystic among the missing.
AMY GOODMAN: Many questions have been raised about whether this extreme event could have been less deadly and how communities could have been more prepared, from local to state and federal levels. Texas Governor Greg Abbott scolded a reporter who asked him who’s to blame for the deadly flood disaster.
GOV. GREG ABBOTT: You asked, and I’m going to use your words: “Who’s to blame?” Know this: That’s the word choice of losers. … Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say, “Don’t worry about it, man. We got this. We’re going to make sure that we go score again, that we’re going to win this game.” The way winners talk is not to point fingers. They talk about solutions.
AMY GOODMAN: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has called again for the elimination of FEMA — that’s the Federal Emergency Management Agency — accusing it of a “slow” response. But FEMA officials say the agency’s response was a result of Noem’s own policy, which requires her, the secretary of homeland security, to sign off on any work costing more than $100,000 before deploying personnel — something which she apparently failed to do promptly. On Sunday, after the Friday of the flash floods beginning, she was sending out Instagram photos of herself, asking her viewers to choose which photograph should be her official photograph of her on horseback. Noem is denying the claims that she got in the way of FEMA. FEMA has already lost 20% of its permanent staff since the start of the year as a result of DOGE reduction efforts.
Meanwhile, acting FEMA head David Richardson is nowhere to be found. He’s yet to visit Texas. Richardson made headlines just last month for reportedly telling FEMA staff he didn’t know the U.S. has a hurricane season.
President Trump has said he wants to eliminate FEMA. He was asked by a reporter Sunday if his cuts may have had impact.
REPORTER: Are you investigating whether some of the cuts to the federal government left key vacancies at the National Weather Service or in the emergency coordination?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No.
COMMERCE SECRETARY HOWARD LUTNICK: They did not.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, they didn’t. I’ll tell you, if you look at that — that — what a situation that all is. And that was really the Biden setup. That was not our setup. But I wouldn’t blame Biden for it, either. I would just say this is a hundred-year catastrophe, and it’s just so horrible to watch.
AMY GOODMAN: Scientific research and programs related to weather and climate change have also come under attack by the Trump administration. The floods occurred on July 4th. That’s the same day President Trump signed his budget into law, locking in further cuts.
For more on the role of climate change and the Trump administration’s dismantling of critical agencies and research, we’re joined now by Monica Medina, former top official at NOAA — that’s the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — also co-host of The Scientista Podcast.
Monica, thanks so much for joining us. Why don’t we start off by you responding to Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, saying only losers look at who’s to blame? Can you talk about the whole structure of emergency response, and then talk about the role of climate change?
MONICA MEDINA: Thank you so much, Amy, for having me on. And thank you for continuing to cover this story the way you have.
And I want to start by saying my heart goes out to the families of the victims, to the people who lost their lives in this tragic event. It was entirely preventable. Many of the lost, those lost lives, could have been saved if links in our disaster response chain hadn’t been broken.
And I will start by responding to the governor’s comments, which I found incredibly callous. To compare this tragedy to a football game is really what trivializes it and what causes people to think thunderstorms and extreme weather isn’t the threat to their lives that it is.
And the same with the president. Their budget, their proposals, all the way back to before the election, we saw with Project 2025 this was what they planned to do. And they have followed through. They have cut crucial parts of the Weather Service. They are cutting research. They’re cutting the data collection. They’re cutting the satellites that give us the ability to be prepared for these storms. So, what we know with climate change is that these storms are more rapidly intensifying and more severe. So, at a moment when we need to up our game on disaster preparedness and on response, we are cutting the very links in the chain that keep people safe.
And now it will be on individuals to take action in their own hands. And sometimes that can be even more disastrous, because, as in this case, when people started finally to try to evacuate, they all tried to evacuate at once, and that caused traffic jams and people to get stuck in places where they were vulnerable. And again, the children on the banks of this river were never able to really protect themselves from this devastation.
And a lot of people in that chain of support, that lifeline of response and preparation, a lot of those links in that chain were broken. And without having to think about who in particular was responsible, we can look at why it happened and what we can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
AMY GOODMAN: So, a lot of people don’t understand what the National Weather Service is. It was under you when you were one of the top officials at NOAA. If you can explain how the National Weather Service has been cut, the kinds of people who are no longer — I mean, when talking about the gold mine, the reservoir of knowledge, what they did, and who is missing in those local offices because of these massive cuts?
MONICA MEDINA: In this particular case, the office was missing a hydrologist and a meteorologist in charge, a coordinator, the person whose very job it is to know who to call, where in the chain — if there might be a break in the chain, where to go down the chain, farther down, and make that phone call that could save lives. So, crucial people were missing because of the cuts. One took a buyout. One position was never — was never filled. So, we know that those cuts are devastating. And more are on the way. You talked about, earlier in your newscast, the fact that the State Department is now preparing for mass layoffs. Those could happen in any agency. It could happen in FEMA. It could happen at NOAA. And they’re planning for more cuts. So we are missing the people who can make the difference. AI isn’t going to save us, the models aren’t going to save us, the pieces of paper on which the forecasts are written aren’t going to save us, if we aren’t making that person-to-person connection.
It’s that last mile where things seem to have really broken down in this particular case. The Weather Service made forecasts that were — that gave people time to prepare. But the break came somewhere along that chain. And in fact, maybe we could have jumped the chain, connected some of those links, if we’d had more weather people in that local office. They are not bureaucrats sitting in Washington. That was something that the local congressman, Chip Roy, said: “Oh, we don’t need more bureaucrats in Washington.” These people in the local offices are community members. They live and work in these places all over the country.
And if people think this was a freak accident and couldn’t happen to them, they should think again. Pay attention to the weather. Pay attention to the warnings that come hours in advance. And I hope the president, when he’s there today, will see the impact of the cuts and see how devastating these storms are and how every link in the chain is vital, and, in fact, we need to strengthen that chain, not weaken it and break it.
AMY GOODMAN: Former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said staffing cuts by the Trump administration may have contributed to the July 4th flood’s tragic outcome. He was speaking on CNN.
RICK SPINRAD: I am convinced that the staff cuts that we saw were a contributing factor to the inability of the emergency managers to respond. The staffing was just fine — and the White House has concurred with this — to get the forecast out, to get the watches and warnings issued. But when you send a message, there’s no guarantee it’s being received, so someone needs to follow up. And that’s the warning coordination meteorologist, a position that was vacant.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response to that, Monica Medina, a position that was vacant?
MONICA MEDINA: Agree 100% with Rick. This is exactly what I mean by skipping the chain. The person in that office knew — who used to work there, had been there for years — knew the people to call on the ground where this might have the greatest impact. And what we’re missing is those extra helping hands. Yes, we can get the forecast out, but now we have to choose between getting the forecast out in a timely way or making those calls, taking in the data that we need.
We know we’re losing forecasters all over the country. And the weather architecture that we have, our weather forecasting system, depends on data being collected all over the country. Weather doesn’t just happen in one place. It’s systemic. And we need a Weather Service that’s strong and ready for these powerful storms that can move and pop up quickly. We can’t afford to have a skeleton crew. Yes, they had enough people to get out the forecast — and they did — but they didn’t have enough people to go that extra mile.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the FEMA head. I mean, I think if you polled most people in this country, 99.99% would absolutely not know his name, David Richardson. We have seen him nowhere. Now, let’s be clear: He replaced another Trump appointee who felt that FEMA should not be dismantled, so he was pushed out. And then you have Kristi Noem and this issue of her having to approve every $100,000 or more expenditure. Why that mattered in these critical days was that there is a FEMA rapid response team, but they didn’t have the approval to move forward. The significance of this and Kristi Noem’s role in actually blaming FEMA as they are dismantling it?
MONICA MEDINA: Yes, the president, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, state officials, they all are now trying to run from this problem, but they are responsible for it. It is on them. The president calling it a Biden problem, that’s absurd. The Biden FEMA administrator said she would have been on the ground and she would have prepositioned assets to be able to respond more quickly in that disaster. This is a complete reversal of decades of policy by both Republican and Democratic administrations to be prepared, more and more prepared, for these kinds of events.
And, in fact, what they’re doing is making people in those places more vulnerable. And it’s not just flood — you know, this flood alley in Texas. It could be a fire. It could be a hurricane. It could be a flood in another part of the country, even in a city, like San Diego, or San Antonio, a month ago, had — more than 10 people died in a flash flood like this.
We have to be ready. The weather is more extreme because of climate change. It can happen more quickly. It’s more deadly. And these emergency managers, people in positions of responsibility, need to be on the ground, need to be at the ready, not posing for their photographs on their LinkedIn pages and Instagram pages. They need to be caring about and compassionate for the people who are in harm’s way.
AMY GOODMAN: Monica Medina, finally, this issue of the climate catastrophe. The same day of the floods, you have President Trump signing off on the budget that eviscerates support for renewable energy and supercharges a fossil fuel economy. As people point the finger at who’s responsible and say, “Come on, this is — no one could have predicted this,” isn’t that at the heart of climate change, unpredictability, but more severe and more frequent climate catastrophes like this one?
MONICA MEDINA: It’s at the very heart of what we’re seeing today and why it’s even more tragic that this legislation is happening and going into effect. It was ludicrous that the speaker of the House said, “All we can do is pray.” That is not true. We have the capacity. We are not powerless. What we are doing is making ourselves powerless by taking away the tools, by taking away the high technology and the know-how and the people that can give us the ability to be prepared for storms like this and to save lives. That’s what’s at risk here.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the cost of NOAA per person in this country, Monica Medina?
MONICA MEDINA: It’s trivial. It costs the equivalent, for each citizen, of a cup of coffee. It’s less than $5 a year per citizen to have the kind of warnings and watches that NOAA is responsible for. And if you put in, if you add in the satellites and all the other research that we do to keep improving those forecasts and giving people more time to prepare, that’s two cups of coffee in a year to cover the cost of all of that. It’s trivial. We can afford it. We are not like other countries who can’t afford to put these systems in place.
We have built them up with hard work and incredible research over a hundred years. And now we’re dismantling it in the space of a few short weeks and months. We are firing the people. We’re stopping taking in the data. We’re ending the research. We’re turning off the satellites. We’re doing everything we possibly can to put our heads in the sand in the midst of what is increasingly dangerous weather.
AMY GOODMAN: Monica Medina, I want to thank you for being with us, former principal deputy administrator of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, during the Obama administration, as well as a former assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. She also co-hosts The Scientista Podcast.
Coming up, a federal judge has issued a nationwide injunction against President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. We’ll speak with the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Black Waters,” performed by Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman in our Democracy Now! studio.
