We’re back live for today’s BradCast after our 4th of July break last week. I wish we were back with better news. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
It was bad enough when we presumed we’d be covering last week’s final passage and signing of the Trump/GOP Big Budget Boondoggle bill today. The law that will now strip health care and food assistance from tens of millions (including from the Obamacare exchange here in California; from rural hospitals already shutting down in Nebraska; and to MediCARE recipients across the country); super-size ICE into Trump’s virtual private army; and gut landmark climate change initiatives and clean energy tax credits for consumers and businesses that had previously resulted in a U.S. manufacturing boom. All in order to help pay fore more than $4 trillion dollars in tax cuts mostly to the wealthiest Americans, at a cost of spiking the national debt by $3 trillion.
All of that would have been bad enough today. But the heartbreaking and completely predictable tragedy still unfolding in Texas is simply soul crushing. We know it was predictable, because, despite lies from officials to the contrary, it was predicted. Making it all the more horrific, the deadly flash flooding took place on the very same day that Trump and Republicans were high-fiving each other at the White House for their tax cuts to rich people and the gutting of landmark climate initiatives to help keep us safe by moving away from the burning of fossil fuels that has intensified and increased weather disasters like the one we are watching unfold in Texas Hill country today.
With more than 100 now confirmed dead as of airtime — including dozens of little girls at a Christian summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River, where water rose 25 feet in less than an hour — the blame game is already underway with Texas officials (and the chief of Trump’s U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security), charging that the National Weather Service somehow failed to issue proper forecasts and warnings.
In fact, as we discuss in detail today, though the NWS is now dangerously under-staffed thanks to Trump’s layoffs, early retirement buyouts and hiring freezes, agency meteorologists did, in fact, predict and warn about the flash flooding emergency. Multiple times. But many of the NWS positions which, prior to the second Trump Administration, would have prepped with and communicated warnings to local officials are now vacant.
Of course, all of that can be added to the years of warnings from climate science experts about exactly the type of disaster that unfolded on Friday night in Texas, where Republican officials — like Trump in D.C. — continue to ignore the lessons of our climate crisis and refuse to take action in response. In fact, they are actively working to make it worse.
Our own Desi Doyen spent much of the holiday weekend digging into all of this with academics and meteorological experts. She joins us today to clarify what we knew, what we didn’t, and who is now lying about what in her old home state of Texas and beyond…
Re: Texas
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I hope we can get a real, empirical account and analysis of exactly WHO was fired/dismissed from their jobs, HOW MUCH $$$ was diverted from the weather services over the last 6 months, and from WHERE in the bureaus was it taken, etc etc.
Accusations and implications are fine, but we really need to nail this one down as analytically as possible, as if in full due process in court of law.
Straight lines must be drawn wherever possible.
It’s all about accountability and, ultimately, culpability.
If it can be done, this will be like a charge of MURDER.
Actually, MASS-MURDER, via institutional NEGLIGENCE.