The Texas Floods: Who is to Blame?

It is unfortunately normal these days that any significant event is immediately politicized. Social media is particularly responsible for this phenomenon as posters race to post an interpretation of events that fits their partisan political leanings before relevant facts are known. The floodwaters in Texas had not likely even crested before fingers of blame were being pointed in various directions. It was fairly hard for anyone to blame Democrats given that Republicans control both the federal government and the government in Texas (though that didn't stop some folks from trying), but there was a very public disagreement between federal and Texas officials. As is often the case in such tragedies, there is plenty of blame to go around.

Finger pointing started immediately with the first press briefing held by officials in Texas. Local authorities blamed the National Weather Service for wrongly predicting the amount of rain that would fall in the area. Texas Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd told reporters, "Everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service, right? ... It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw." While Kidd presented a somewhat misleading account of the NWS's performance and was clearly engaged in blame-shifting, his narrative supported earlier predictions by Democrats that government cutbacks led by cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump and the U.S. DOGE Service would result in Americans losing their lives. A narrative took off — and almost immediately showed up in DCUM discussions — that the cuts to the government's weather organizations had left the agencies unable to perform their duties. Blame for the deaths in Texas, therefore, was laid squarely at the feet of Trump and former Shadow President and de facto DOGE leader Elon Musk.

In fact, the NWS had performed about as well as could be expected. NWS officials had started warning as early as Tuesday of flood possibilities. At 1:18 p.m. Thursday, the NWS issued a warning for an expectation for as much as 7 inches of rain in an area that included Kerr County, where the worst destruction took place. At 6:10 p.m. that evening, a special weather warning was issued that included concerns of flash flooding and the prediction that rain could fall at a rate that exceeded three inches per hour. Beginning just after 1 a.m., the NWS began a series of increasingly urgent warnings that flash floods were expected. The Guadalupe River reached its major flood stage around 4:20 a.m. Friday. According to local media, the first warnings by local government entities to evacuate did not arrive until after that point.

It is true that the NWS prediction was not entirely accurate. While the service predicted four to eight inches of rain, much of the affected area received 10 inches and as much as 18 inches in some places. But what seems to have been a bigger issue is communication. Many of the most important warnings came in the middle of the night while those in danger were sleeping. While an alert to mobile phones was sent at one point, many of the threatened areas lacked cell phone coverage. Warnings from local officials simply came too late and didn't reach all of those in danger. The officials also tended to rely on social media, something that potential flood victims were unlikely to be checking in such early morning hours. One of the most problematic developments is that two months ago, the head of local weather warnings for the NWS office in Austin/San Antonio, someone with over 22 years of experience, took early retirement due to the DOGE incentives to get government employees to leave their jobs. His position has not yet been filled. It is entirely possible that someone with more experience and who was likely well-known by those in the affected areas would have been more successful in communicating warnings.

Eight years ago, a less severe but still damaging flood hit the same area. Officials realized at that time that the means of communications for reaching the inhabitants along the Guadalupe River, including a string of summer camps along the river's banks, was not adequate. However, installation of a more advanced warning system was rejected as too expensive. Without a means to communicate warnings, data collection or weather predictions are of limited use. As a former Kerr County commissioner is quoted as saying, "We can do all the water-level monitoring we want, but if we don’t get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it".

There is some irony that Texas officials, almost to a person Republicans, immediately blamed the federal government for the tragedy impacting their state. Both the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been hard hit by funding and personnel cuts undertaken by the Trump administration and fully supported by Republicans. So this appeared to be a case of Republicans blaming Republicans. While it is likely that DOGE's activities contributed to the disasters, this does not appear to be a clear-cut case of Trump and Musk causing a catastrophe. It seems that a much more fundamental Republican approach to governing is at fault: a simple refusal to spend money on government services. Local officials knew that the area was prone to flash floods. They knew that there were large numbers of people — including a number of camps filled with children — with whom it would be hard to communicate during an emergency. They knew about potential remedies — many of which are being used in neighboring counties. They just didn't want to spend the money on them.

Former President Joe Biden's administration recognized that flooding is an increasingly serious problem and took steps to help communities address the risk. In September 2023, NOAA announced an $80 million project to "transform water prediction by enabling rapid deployment of advanced water models to provide coupled, continental-scale, operational coastal and inland flood forecasting and inundation mapping services." In October 2024, NOAA announced "the award of $7.6 million in funding for cooperative institutes to transform satellite observations and other data into information communities can use to prepare for and recover from floods and heavy precipitation." A number of other flood-related projects were similarly funded during the Biden administration. It would be interesting to know how many of those projects survived the DOGE cuts.

Kerr Country, the site of the worst of the flooding, is undeniably Republican. In last November's election, the country voted 77% in favor of Trump and 74% in favor of Senator Ted Cruz. The county is represented in the House of Representatives by Republican Chip Roy, who also received 77% of the vote. Democrats didn't even bother to run for most of the local offices.

Normally, in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy, there are calls not to politicize the event because the "time is not right". Yet later, after the national attention has turned elsewhere, most people forget what happened, and the problem remains unaddressed. That happened eight years ago in Kerr County and may well happen again after this flood. But it does nobody any good to ignore the distinct governing philosophies of the two major American political parties. One party believes that the role of government should be as limited as possible. That party does not want to tax citizens to pay for government spending. Moreover, that party is loath to regulate businesses or require important life-saving measures. The other party sees government as having an important role in funding infrastructure that supports the public good. That party understands the need to collect revenue to pay for such projects and also supports regulating in a manner that protects public safety. This is not to say that Democrats would necessarily have done a better job of protecting the residents on the banks of the Guadalupe River than Republicans did; Democrats fail to live up to their values often enough. But on the basis of governing philosophy, Democrats would have been more prone to proactively address the dangerous situation existing in Kerr County.