HOT TOPICS | Did DOGE Cuts Lead To The Texas Flooding?! - July 7th, 2025
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning, my friends. I am subbing for Don again today while he just squeezes out the last 48 hours of his vacation and his reentry is going to be brutal coming back to Trump's America. So bear with me as we get through some really heartbreaking news today. I want to bring on Peter, whom all of you know and love, to help talk about the tragedy unfolding in Texas with these floods.
First, Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us. You have been so generous with your time. The Lemon Nation, as you know, adores you. And you're not done. I'm not done. But you're just about as close. You're just about as good as it gets. So thank you for subbing in, especially so last minute. But yes. Jen, as we were talking this morning on the editorial call, the tragedy in Texas is so heartbreaking. Latest estimates suggest that some 80, 81 people have been killed in this horrific flooding. There are still more than a dozen folks who are missing. There are... according to Texas officials, a number of people who we don't even know are missing yet because they may have been camping out on the shores of the Guadalupe River, and we just don't know that they are out there.
So it's a sad situation. It's a tragedy. And first and foremost, our sympathy goes to the families of those who have been lost, to the families of those who are still missing. But Jen, as we discussed earlier, This is still a political story. It is a fundamentally inherently political story, and we cannot lose sight of that. We must walk and chew gum at the same time here, have thoughts and prayers for those who are going through so much heartbreak right now, but also recognize that this was likely preventable. Yes?
100%, this was preventable. And this is just, remember right after Trump came into office, they cut the FAA. What happened? A plane went down. And now you have the FAA saying stuff like, we don't have enough people. Elon Musk, Donald Trump fired them. Now they are firing the National Weather People and the NOAA. And I live in Tornado Alley, and it is the lifeline of what you have to do in the spring if you live in the Plains. You get advance warning, and these massive tornadoes come through. And they level, completely level neighborhoods. My little nephew was at his daycare. And his daycare got completely leveled. But because of advance warning, the teachers were able to put all the kids in an interior room and cover them.
But here's the problem with America right now. We are getting primed to accept that preventable deaths are just the way that it is. And think about the gun violence. We are primed by you can see people get shot in public places. People get shot in schools. People get shot in churches. People get shot in movie theaters. And these same politicians trot out their hypocritical MAGA Christianity thoughts and prayers. Their thoughts and prayers would mean something if they backed it up with policy. In Australia, they had a mass shooting and then they dealt with it and they've not had a mass shooting since then. Ours only gets exacerbated. And so when you get to preventable deaths and losing somebody who was healthy one second and then the very next second is dead is a very difficult thing to process.
And then your brain as a human being, you jump to how did this happen? Can this be prevented? And in this case, if we're gonna live in this country, We need the country run like a government, not a business. And Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans have lied to the public and said, we're going to start running government like a business. Well, what do businesses do? They look out for profits and profits only and dick over everybody else. And so that's what's happened here. But in a stunning development, I was shocked to see Trump on the tarmac say that he still wants to completely defund FEMA. Yeah. Did you see that?
I did.
What happened in the Texas floods and how many people were affected?
I did. I think 20% cuts to FEMA have already happened across the board. There is a funding freeze that DOGE is still pursuing. Jen, I believe that you relayed to me that the National Weather Service and the NOAA, state by state, it's varied, but it's around 20% to 40% cuts to their budget nationwide.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:16–4:31
2
What happened in the Texas floods and how many people were affected?
4:31–10:47
3
Why do hosts say NOAA and National Weather Service budget cuts may have worsened the forecasting?
10:47–23:09
4
How did local Texas officials describe the discrepancy between forecasted and actual rainfall?
23:09–28:28
5
What conspiracy theories and online reactions emerged after the Texas flooding?
28:28–55:47
6
How are FEMA, Medicaid and broader federal cuts linked to the political debate over responsibility?
55:47–1:04:17