Natural disasters have a tendency to ignite clashes in Congress over federal response efforts and relief funding. This latest disaster is different.
The catastrophic flooding that ravaged central Texas and killed more than 100 people in recent days represents the first major, nation-gripping disaster to take place against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s sweeping transformation of the federal government.
Instead of sparking the usual debates over whether to refill the disaster relief fund, the floods have aggravated deeper, more contentious disagreements over President Donald Trump’s slash-and-burn politics and added new weight to questions about whether the GOP agenda is undermining disaster prevention and recovery.
While Republicans in Congress often criticized the Biden administration’s response after major disasters, Democrats now are openly questioning whether Trump policies may have contributed to the devastating scope of the disaster itself.
“The President threatening to eliminate FEMA, firing scientists, and muzzling experts helps no one and puts us all in danger,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“This is not playing politics, this is determining what went wrong and preventing it from happening again,” Thompson said in a statement.
The deluge in the Texas Hill Country has created a fresh opening for Democrats to bash Republicans for targeting agencies dedicated to weather forecasting and disaster response. That’s on top of their usual critique that GOP policies could exacerbate climate change and make future disasters more deadly.
They say that while they do not want to politicize the disaster, they feel compelled to call out the administration’s actions and look for other ways to respond.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats are calling for investigations or hearings on the impacts that the administration’s cuts and layoffs at climate-focused agencies such as NOAA and the National Weather Service may have had on the floods. Multiple members are working on new disaster-related proposals.
On social media Monday, the White House said Democrats’ suggestions that the administration’s cuts may have played a role in the devastation are “depraved, disgusting lies.”
Congressional Republicans are seeking to focus the national attention on recovery efforts. Texas GOP Rep. Roger Williams said Tuesday on Fox Business that people should not be trying to cast blame for a natural disaster “that no one could control” while people are still being rescued.
“We’re dealing with Mother Nature here,” Williams said. “I’m disappointed in some of the people that I serve with that want to blame somebody, blame President Trump, and this and that. There’s time for that later.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem traveled to the flooded area over the weekend; Trump plans to go Friday. He has already approved a major disaster declaration for Kerr County, Texas, opening up federal resources for recovery.
Blame game in full gear
Experts say the NWS did what it was supposed to do as the floodwaters rose — issue accurate forecasts and timely alerts — despite the administration’s recent funding cuts and layoffs.
Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said in a statement Tuesday that “as we continue to learn new details on this devastating event, staffing levels or funding cuts did not cause this tragedy.” He and the White House have said NWS offices had more staff on duty than normal.
But Democrats say the administration’s moves to slim down the NWS and FEMA — and the consequences those cuts and vacancies could have in the future — cannot be ignored.
Schumer sent a letter to the Commerce Department’s internal watchdog Monday calling for an immediate investigation into reported staffing vacancies at two Texas-based NWS forecast offices. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), ranking member on the House Science Committee, said she is “committed to getting answers.”
Los Angeles Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez similarly questioned the NWS cuts and called for a hearing.
“If it had nothing to do with that, so be it, that’s fine,” Gomez said in a video he posted online. “But let’s make sure we have those hard conversations because we can’t fix things if we don’t ask those hard questions, and this administration just doesn’t like to ask the hard questions if it goes against their narrative.”
Former NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad told POLITICO’s E&E News that “lives are going to be lost, property is going to be damaged,” as a result of Trump administration cuts.
Trump has said he wants to “eliminate” FEMA, a threat that the White House has since softened somewhat. Nearly six months into his second term, Trump has not nominated a permanent FEMA administrator after firing his interim administrator earlier this year. And Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), chair of the House committee with jurisdiction over FEMA, resigned last week.
In a floor speech Tuesday, Schumer said that Trump “doesn’t know anything about what FEMA does.” He said “it’s unthinkable that Donald Trump would do something like put FEMA’s future in doubt.”
Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request proposes a $1.3 billion reduction to NOAA operations, research and grant programs, alleging that they are “‘Green New Deal’ initiatives.”
The Republican reconciliation bill that Trump signed into law last week clawed back more than $150 million in unobligated funds that were supposed to improve weather forecasting.
On Thursday, Senate appropriators are set to unveil and mark up their fiscal 2026 Commerce-Justice-Science bill, which will propose funding for NOAA.
Next week, the upper chamber could vote on a $9.4 billion rescissions package proposed by the White House that would claw back nearly half a billion dollars in funding that Congress already appropriated for international disaster and humanitarian aid.
Separately, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Wednesday will question Neil Jacobs, Trump’s pick to lead NOAA, as well as Taylor Jordan, the nominee for assistant secretary of Commerce for environmental observation and prediction.
New disaster reform efforts
Lawmakers are racing to introduce legislation to reform disaster recovery. Some others have already been working across the aisle this Congress to advance disaster-related bills.
Sen. Peter Welch will introduce his “Disaster Assistance Improvement and Decentralization (AID) Act” on Thursday, the first and second anniversary of devastating floods in Vermont in 2023 and 2024.
The legislation would make changes to FEMA, creating new programs and authorizations for hazard mitigation, expand training opportunities for vulnerable communities, and simplifying certain disaster-response procedures, among other reforms.
Democrats and Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee have also been crafting FEMA legislation. One provision would make it a Cabinet-level agendy.
Separately, a group of 27 House Democrats sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission this week urging the regulator to work to make hurricane-related alerts available in more languages.
On the far end of the spectrum, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said over the weekend that she plans to introduce a bill with Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) that would prohibit geoengineering or any other effort to artificially alter the weather, making it a felony. Greene has previously peddled in conspiracy theories about the weather and other subjects.
Indeed, some Republican-led states have recently passed bills banning “chemtrails” and cloud seeding.
“This is not normal,” Greene said on X. “I want clean air, clean skies, clean rain water, clean ground water, and sun shine just like God created it!!”
