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Fact Checking Claims About Texas Floods
Heavy rainstorms caused widespread, deadly floods in Texas over the Fourth of July Weekend.
According to the latest estimates, 94 people have been confirmed dead due to the flooding of the Guadalupe River and elsewhere in Central Texas. This number includes 27 young girls and counselors from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp in Hunt, Texas.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who represents a district affected by the flooding, spoke about both the tragedies and acts of heroism in the wake of the flood.
Rep. Roy: “There's a there's a lot of pride and the people of Texas rising to the occasion.“ pic.twitter.com/SETsgDsyHT— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) July 7, 2025
Unfortunately, some media commentators took this tragic moment and wrongly twisted it to make it an indictment of President Donald Trump, the Trump administration, and conservatives in general. Many claimed that Department of Government Efficiency budget cuts are specifically to blame for the casualties.
This was CNN White House reporter Betsy Klein on Saturday in the 5pm Eastern hour, speculating about DOGE cuts having possibly played a role in the deadly Texas floods (with dozens still missing):“But there are two important notes here. Number one, the President has been deeply… pic.twitter.com/YzKBibYJle— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 7, 2025
“MAGA and [right-wing] media seem very upset today as a chorus of us experts discuss the impact of cuts to weather forecasting,” wrote CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem on X. “This is the world of disaster information wars. I say this: a total tragedy in Texas and we owe those young girls the willingness to learn from it.”
The following is a fact check of these claims.
National Weather Service
Critics of the Trump administration have directed most of their ire at the National Weather Service, saying that after funding “cuts” the organization failed to do its job in Texas.
When experts warned for months that the NWS “is being destroyed” by Trump’s personnel cuts, Howard Lutnick assured Congress that forecasting won’t be affected. Now TX officials are blaming a faulty forecast by NWS for the deadly impact of a storm. https://t.co/zQZmKq7553— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 5, 2025
A Huffington Post White House reporter said that Trump “imposed significant cuts to the National Weather Service, degrading its ability to do its job.”
He imposed significant cuts to the National Weather Service, degrading its ability to do its job. Also he has not visited the site of a single disaster that has occurred on his watch. However, he has managed close to 50 days of golf, including today, right now. pic.twitter.com/dJfbDKcThF— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) July 5, 2025
ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said on Sunday, “We’re also learning there were significant staffing shortfalls to the National Weather Services offices in the region.”
George Stephanopoulos on @ThisWeekABC: “We’re also learning there were significant staffing shortfalls to the National Weather Services offices in the region.” pic.twitter.com/1xwf7DkQuq— Brent Baker ???? ?? (@BrentHBaker) July 6, 2025
Even the Democratic National Committee got in on these accusations Monday.
INBOX: Democratic National Committee doubles down on blaming Texas flooding deaths on Trump admin staff cuts to the National Weather Service. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt just called such claims a "depraved lie that serves no purpose during this time of national… pic.twitter.com/YDLvNfBwif— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) July 7, 2025
However, not only have there been no cuts to NWS or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but it appears that those agencies were well and properly staffed on the eve of the floods.
The Associated Press reported that the NWS office in New Braunfels “had extra staff on duty during the storms.” Whereas during normal times two forecasters would be on duty, the office had five forecasters on duty ahead of the storms, according to AP.
But most evidence points to NWS fulfilling its duty and providing warnings well ahead of the floods.
The Department of Homeland Security posted its own accounting of events and said that the “mainstream media is deliberately lying about the events leading up to the catastrophic flooding in Texas.”
The mainstream media is deliberately lying about the events leading up to the catastrophic flooding in Texas. The National Weather Service executed timely, precise forecasting and warnings, despite unprecedented rainfall overwhelming the region. Here is the timeline of NWS’s…— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) July 6, 2025
After posting a timeline of the actions the NWS took, DHS concluded, “The National Weather Service provided over 12 hours of advance notice via the Flood Watch and over 3 hours of lead time for Flash Flood Warnings, with escalated alerts as the storm intensified.”
Some media outlets have also concluded that NWS was not to blame for what happened in Texas. A Wired article acknowledged that NWS “did its job in Texas” based on interviews with meteorologists.
Wired reported that NWS “did send out adequate warnings as it got updated information. By Thursday afternoon, it had issued a flood watch for the area, and a flash flood warning was in effect by 1 a.m. Friday. The agency had issued a flash flood emergency alert by 4:30 a.m.”
Some commentators on the Left didn’t buy the narrative that the Texas flood deaths were caused by budget cuts and the Trump administration.
Nina Turner, a former national co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, wrote on X that the “GOP’s budget cuts to NOAA are set to take effect at the start of fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025.”
The GOP’s budget cuts to NOAA are set to take effect at the start of fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025.Anyone making the deaths of the children in Texas about partisan politics is morally bankrupt. Please reflect.— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) July 6, 2025
Turner said that, while she disagrees with the budget cuts, “anyone making the deaths of the children in Texas about partisan politics is morally bankrupt. Please reflect.”
Climate Change
Another common narrative of the Texas flood deaths is that they were caused by climate change.
Rep. Joaquin Castro on the deadly Texas flooding: "I think climate change is obviously a part of it. These floods are happening more often."pic.twitter.com/iNFu8rx8MH— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 6, 2025
The Texas flood occurred in an area that suffers regular, extreme flooding. Some have called it “flash flood alley.”
But according to a meteorologist on X, citing numbers from the Environmental Protection Agency, the number of floods in the affected part of Texas has actually decreased since 1965.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger explained on X that flood deaths in the United States have declined sharply in the last century because better systems are now in place to save lives.
More Pielke: "The flooding was certainly extreme but it should not have been historically unexpected. The documented record of extreme flooding in “flash flood alley” goes back several centuries, with paleoclimatology records extending that record thousands of years into the… pic.twitter.com/QdwJXCqJ3k— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) July 7, 2025
The problem, according to Shellenberger and others, was not with the National Weather Service or with DOGE cuts. The problem is that there wasn’t a sufficient local flood warning system in place to ensure that people in the affected areas could escape harm.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a news conference that it is “reasonable over time” to look back at “what could have been done better” during the Texas floods, but “immediately trying to use it, for either side, to attack their political opponents—I think that’s cynical and not the right approach.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) denies that DOGE cuts to National Weather Service staffing led to delays in warnings about the deadly floods in Texas.He says it's "reasonable over time" to look back at "what could have been done better," but "immediately trying to use it, for either side,… pic.twitter.com/DQ8UY5CwcC— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 7, 2025
The post Fact Checking Claims About Texas Floods appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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