Analysis: Natural-disaster blame games obscure the steps needed to keep Americans safe

CNN

12 hours ago

America's endless natural-disaster blame game is thwarting answers to life-and-death questions over worsening extreme weather crises.
Every time a hurricane, flood or wildfire strikes, political enemies heap knee-jerk blame on their foes – usually long before all the victims are accounted for.
This pattern was back on display after a horrific tragedy in Texas, where floods killed more than 100 people after raging through summer camps and July Fourth celebrations.
Some liberals whipped up viral social media posts claiming that Elon Musk's DOGE budget cuts were directly to blame for extreme weather alerts not reaching those in the torrent's way.
President Donald Trump on Sunday seemed about to pin the disaster on President Joe Biden before backing away. But his Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is dismembering the Federal Emergency Management Agency, went on Fox to criticize the last administration. And her department, now an arm of the MAGA movement, accused the media of lying about what really happened.
The ugly partisan wars that broke out as parents face unfathomable loss are typical of a political culture that has severed itself from basic humanity. And they underscore that social media remains a Wild West of misinformation and spite that worsens malign political instincts.
Natural disasters are always perilous for those in power. But recriminations intensified after Hurricane Katrina. The 2005 monster storm hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and, along with Iraq, destroyed President George W. Bush's second term. Beltway pundits now react to every act of God by predicting the current president's 'Katrina' is nigh.
Questioning what happened in the wake of a natural disaster and whether political failings at the local, state or national levels contributed to deaths and devastation is perfectly appropriate. Victims deserve accountability untainted by politics. It's important to understand what went wrong in order to save lives in the future. But it's increasingly rare in an age of partisan media on the right and left for activists to wait for the facts, or to accept outcomes that don't fit their political goals.
It's too early to say for sure whether Trump's budget cuts to agencies like FEMA and the National Weather Service made the Texas disaster worse. Investigations will probe communications of the federal government and Texas authorities and the actions of local officials. There will be a focus on whether weather warnings were sufficiently specific or clear and whether infrastructure in Kerr County is up to the job of extreme weather situations. Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr., for instance, told CNN's Pamela Brown that he didn't receive an emergency alert in the predawn hours of Friday when floodwaters arrived. There will also surely be questions over why children's summer camps were sited in such a vulnerable area.
Sometimes political choices do end up leading to disastrous outcomes. But not always.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Monday that NWS offices in Texas made 'timely and accurate forecasts and warnings.' She said that the relevant NWS offices in New Braunfels had extra staff on duty for the storms despite claims to the contrary.
Leavitt slammed what she said were 'depraved and despicable' efforts by some on the left to exploit the disaster politically 'especially when so many Americans are mourning the loss of their children.'
It's hard to disagree.
But there's a difference between social media users jumping to premature or outright false conclusions and politicians questioning whether Trump's efforts to stifle government research and to gut the federal government will make it harder to forecast disasters like the one in Texas in the future.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded an immediate investigation by the Commerce Department's inspector general into whether administration staff cuts made the tragic loss of life worth. He focused on vacancies at the San Angelo and San Antonio NWS offices.
Leavitt accused Schumer of pushing 'falsehoods.'
There's a whiff of hypocrisy in the White House's outrage, considering that Trump has politicized natural disasters for his own gain more than any modern president.
Trump slammed Democrats including Biden and local leaders over fatal wildfires that charred swaths of residential areas in Los Angeles just before he took office in January; he made false claims about water supplies and FEMA aid.
Trump also misrepresented federal relief efforts after storms hit North Carolina and Georgia last year. And he claimed that a collision between a civilian jetliner and military helicopter close to Washington's National Airport that killed everyone on both aircraft was due to diversity and inclusion policies at the Federal Aviation Administration.
His track record raises the question of whether the White House would have been as keen to rush aid and to praise local officials if the holiday weekend's flooding had occurred in a Democratic-run state rather than Republican Texas under Gov. Greg Abbott, an outspoken Trump supporter.
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There are lessons and warnings that the Trump White House might heed in the aftermath of the Texas floods – even if its statements about appropriate pre-disaster staffing and funding are ultimately validated.
The disaster is a reminder that jobs like those of forecasters at agencies like NWS and experts contracted by FEMA may seem superfluous 364 days a year – but on one crucial day, they can save scores of people. Putting money into basic infrastructure like early flood warning signs might annoy taxpayers and be targeted by conservatives as examples of bloated public spending, but it can be critical.
Benjamin Franklin is often quoted as having said that those who fail to prepare are preparing to fail. If the Trump administration continues to slash expertise, institutional experience and what it sees as redundancies in vital government agencies, it will lay the groundwork for botched disaster responses in future. CNN reported earlier this year that the administration had failed to staff a White House Office for Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy – an odd decision considering Trump's mismanagement of the Covid-19 emergency in his first term.
The White House on Monday refused to say whether the president would push ahead with a plan to eliminate FEMA entirely by the end of the year.
'The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need,' Leavitt said. The White House is pushing to put far more of a burden on states to respond to disasters rather than relying on the federal government to step in. Relief and rebuilding after storms, wildfires and other natural disasters are likely to still require billion-dollar emergency appropriations from Congress. But wiping out FEMA's standing reserve of relief funds and its capacity, expertise and personnel could weaken rescue workers' capacity to prepare and position before forecastable natural disasters. And it could drain the store of accumulated knowledge that states can't match.
'We need to improve FEMA, not destroy it,' retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led National Guard troops into New Orleans after Katrina, told CNN. 'We need FEMA and we need them to do what they're doing and do it better, but not destroy FEMA. That's a bad idea.'
More broadly, the Texas flooding catastrophe is the latest in a string of disasters – more intense storms, more ravenous wildfires, and sudden unusual rainfall – that promise to become more frequent as the global climate warms.
Yet it's impossible to have a mature national debate about what America needs to do to protect its citizens from such extreme weather events. Trump denies the science that says climate change exists, bemoans the Democrats' 'Green New Scam' and has eviscerated the government's capacity to act against man-made climate change. He has even made it hard to conduct research on climate change with his attacks on science in his budgets, his new 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' law and through Musk at DOGE before his spectacular break-up with the Tesla electric vehicle pioneer.
It's an indictment of a fractious public square that something as basic as weather – a naturally occurring force that affects all humanity – has become a bitter political issue on which a fractured nation can't find common ground.
'This was a once-in-a-century flash flood, a tragic natural disaster,' Leavitt said of the Texas floods on Monday.
That may be true. But it's no basis for real policy that keeps Americans safe in years to come.