Obviously this is horrifying, and I will try to be as delicate as possible while also asking why in the year 2025 we are building campgrounds in flood plains (I mean native americans didn’t fucking build there for a reason), but regardless the whole thing is awful and I am sure we will find out that precautions were avoided and codes were either ignored or nonexistent, such is the way in land of the free and the home of the brave. At any rate, I am not 100% certain that gutting the NOAA and weather service contributed to this disaster, but I think any reasonable person would expect it to have had an impact. And a whole lot of Texans and other Americans are on social media right now asking “why the fuck were the warnings only posted on twitter,” which means some of the American public is catching up to what DOGE was doing in January and February. No time like the present, I suppose.
Having said all that, any Democrat who, when near a microphone, doesn’t mention that Trump and the Republicans gutted these warning systems and it is going to get worse, is committing political malpractice. That is the current battlespace, and you need to meet the Republicans, who will spend the next few months discrediting and attacking weather forecasters and public servants while deflecting queries into their own negligence by saying “thoughts and prayers” and getting all jesusy to distract you from their own culpability.
This administration has enacted a broad swath of policies whose outcomes will be the death of Americans. These kids are just the vanguard. A lot more pain and death is on the way.