Democrats are already seeking to turn those cuts into immediate fodder for political attacks.
It’s too early to say with certainty whether the Trump Administration or its predecessors shaped the disaster response in Texas.
What we have right now are a lot of questions. Getting answers will be crucial as storms like the one in Texas get stronger and more frequent because of climate change.
My colleague Christopher Flavelle has deep experience covering climate and disaster management, and over the weekend he reported that when the floods hit, key roles were vacant at the National Weather Service’s offices in Texas. Here are the three questions we discussed.
1 Did staffing cuts at the National Weather Service affect the forecast?
The weather service has been targeted for the staffing cuts pushed across the government by the Department of Government Efficiency. By this northern spring, a workforce that had recently been as large as 4000 people had lost nearly 600 of those workers.
Flavelle reported that the weather service’s office in San Angelo, Texas, which is responsible for some of the areas hit hardest by the flooding, was missing a senior hydrologist, a staff forecaster, and a meteorologist in charge.
Its nearby San Antonio office, which forecasts the weather in other areas hit by the floods, was missing a science officer as well as a warning co-ordination meteorologist, who retired on April 30 after taking an early retirement package that the Trump Administration used to reduce the number of federal employees.
Right now, we don’t know if those vacancies contributed to difficulties in forecasting a storm that escalated abruptly overnight. But that’s something Flavelle and our other colleagues want to find out, he said.
Did it affect perhaps the ability or the bandwidth of the weather service to predict and communicate these warnings?
Did it affect its ability to coordinate with local officials?
Would the outcome have been different if those positions had been filled?
2 What is Fema’s role?
Trump has suggested “phasing out” the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and handing its authority to states.
He has also warned states to expect less money for disaster recovery. The storm in Texas could put a spotlight on the agency at a moment of great uncertainty about its future.
We need to understand what role Fema has played, and will play, on the ground.
We’ve got to find out more about what Fema is doing. How does it compare to what Fema did when you compare it to similarly severe floods in places like Tennessee and Kentucky?
This is the kind of large-scale event where, in the past, Fema has played a role, because you want as much help as you can get.
We’ll also watch how Texas’ emergency management operation — among the strongest at the state level — handles its part of the response.
3 Have other parts of America’s disaster response machinery been impaired by cuts?
The US doesn’t have just one agency to plan for and respond to natural disasters.
That responsibility is split among a bevy of agencies, from the US Geological Survey, which helps maintain stream gauges that monitor changes in water flow, to the Small Business Administration, which puts up loans for rebuilding after storm damage, to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which pays out billions for rebuilding and repairs.
And many of those agencies are reeling from cuts of their own, Flavelle explained.
In a moment like this, where almost every agency has fewer staff members than it did six months ago, it raises the question: To what degree does that impede the response capability?
We don’t yet know what we’ll find as we seek to understand these questions.
We do know that a storm like this — or even more powerful storms, like hurricanes — will happen again, and soon.
Written by: Jess Bidgood
Photographs by: Jordan Vonderhaar
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
