🌊 DROWNING IN NEGLECT

How Trump's DOGE Cuts, a Broken Safety Net, and Taxpayer Apathy Left the Texas Hill Country Underwater

When disaster strikes, most of us look to the sky — and to the experts — to tell us what’s coming.

In the case of the devastating floods that swept across the Texas Hill Country this past week, it turns out the skies did give warning. The forecasts were accurate. Flood alerts were issued in advance. But in spite of all of that, at least 95 people (at the latest count) are dead, and dozens more are still missing. Most of the deaths were in Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in just 45 minutes.

So what went wrong?

The short answer: no one was home at the Weather Service. Literally.

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🚨 The Alarming Vacancy Rate

According to a bombshell New York Times report, the National Weather Service (NWS) offices responsible for the region most impacted by the flooding were critically understaffed. Not just entry-level roles — we’re talking about senior, decision-making positions that exist specifically to help local governments plan for and respond to emergencies.

Let’s break it down:

• The San Antonio NWS field office, which covers a large portion of the flood-affected region, has been without a Warning Coordination Meteorologist since April 30.

• The person who held that job? They took Donald Trump’s early retirement buyout, part of his “drain the swamp” initiative.

• That position is not optional. It exists to coordinate with local emergency managers to plan flood responses, issue timely warnings, and assist in evacuating residents.

• The San Angelo office, which covers Kerr County (ground zero for much of the flooding), is even worse off. It currently lacks:

  • A Senior Hydrologist

  • A Staff Forecaster

  • And the Meteorologist in Charge

The job vacancy rate in these two offices is now double what it was when Trump took office.

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🪓 Slashing Safety in the Name of “Efficiency”

This staffing crisis didn’t just happen — it was engineered. Meet the Department of Government Efficiency, another Orwellian-titled weapon in Trump’s war on federal agencies. This department cut more than 600 staffers from the NWS.

The aftermath?

“Severe shortages of meteorologists would harm weather forecasting,” the NWS warned.

And they weren’t the only ones raising red flags. In May 2025, all five living former directors of the National Weather Service issued a dire warning:

“These cuts [leave] the nation’s official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit… just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes…. Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”

That “worst nightmare”? It just happened in the Texas Hill Country.

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🧨 Enter: Project 2025

The cuts weren’t a glitch in the system — they were part of a broader extremist agenda. Trump’s allies in the Heritage Foundation have launched Project 2025, a comprehensive plan to dismantle the federal government as we know it.

One of its top targets? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — the agency that oversees the NWS. Cause, meet effect.

Project 2025 explicitly calls for breaking up NOAA, claiming its six branches — including the NWS — “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”

Translation: They’re standing in the way of the fossil fuel industry. Because that’s the game: protect corporate profits, even if it means letting Americans drown.

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📢 Warnings Only Work if Someone Sounds the Alarm

Let’s be crystal clear: The science worked. The models worked. The forecasts were accurate. Warnings were issued — but they went out in the middle of the night, and no coordinated evacuation plan followed.

Why?

Because the people who should have been making those calls — the hydrologists, forecasters, and warning coordinators — were no longer there.

Imagine your smoke alarm goes off at 3:00 a.m., but no one shakes you awake. That’s what happened in Kerr County.

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The MAGA Fantasy Collides with Reality

What we’re witnessing is the inevitable result of a dangerous delusion peddled by Trump and his MAGA loyalists: the idea that government is always the problem, that you can “drain the swamp” without draining institutional knowledge and critical expertise, and that Trump can do EVERYTHING faster, better, and cheaper than the experts in their field.

That fantasy has a price. In this case, it’s measured in rising floodwaters and ruined lives.

We all want an efficient government. But slashing budgets, gutting agencies, and offering mass buyouts to seasoned professionals does not make government leaner or smarter. It makes it brittle. And when that brittle system is stress-tested — by, say, a climate-driven deluge in the middle of the night — it shatters.

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💰The Real Cost of a Broken System

This is about more than a vacant office or an unanswered phone call. It’s about the erosion of public trust. It’s about the sobering reality that no matter how smart our tech gets or how accurate our forecasts become, we still need people — qualified, trained professionals — to turn that information into action.

And if those people are no longer there?

Then we’re not just at the mercy of the storm. We’re at the mercy of bad policy, bad priorities, and bad leadership.

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🏛️ “Taxpayers Won’t Pay for It”: What Happens When We Abandon the Common Good

In the aftermath, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly gave a shockingly candid explanation for why the county didn’t have its own warning system:

“Taxpayers won’t pay for it.”

Let that sink in.

Not we tried to fund it, not we’re applying for federal aid, not we couldn’t afford it — but just, people didn’t want to pay for it.

This moment underscores two deeper truths:

1. We Need a Strong Federal Government

Local communities often lack the financial resources and infrastructure necessary to prepare for and respond to large-scale natural disasters. They need federal support, both in dollars and expertise. The kind of support and expertise that comes from agencies like the National Weather Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and FEMA. It’s what the federal government is for.

But when that federal safety net is frayed — or in this case, deliberately unraveled by ideologues who think “government is the problem” — this is what happens.

2. We’ve Forgotten What Taxes Are For

However, Judge Kelly’s remark reveals a deeper, more profound, and potentially dangerous shift in American civic culture. A growing number of citizens — spurred on by decades of anti-tax rhetoric — now view any public investment as wasteful, any shared sacrifice as tyranny, and any government spending as suspect.

Until, of course, the floodwaters rise. Until the wildfire approaches. Until the bridge collapses, the power goes out, or the emergency system fails. Suddenly, it’s why didn’t someone fix this? Well, someone tried — but too many voters shouted them down in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

People don’t want to pay taxes for roads — until it’s the road to their own house that’s impassable. They don’t want to fund public schools — until their kid’s classroom has 42 students and no textbooks. And they certainly don’t want to pay for early-warning sirens — until they’re the ones sleeping through a rising river.

What’s unfolding in Kerr County is not just a breakdown of infrastructure, but also a breakdown of shared responsibility. When a community’s first reaction to a life-saving public safety system is “we don’t want to pay for it,” the social contract has been breached.

We forget, in our era of rugged individualism and libertarian posturing, that government isn't some abstract villain — it’s us, pooling our resources to protect all of us.

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🧠 The Blue Dot Dispatch Verdict

America deserves better than a government that treats disaster response like a spreadsheet. The people of Kerr County and the Texas Hill Country deserve better than silence in the dark when the rivers rise.

We deserve leaders who understand that government is not the enemy. It’s the infrastructure of survival. And before you come at me with hypocritical cries of politicizing a tragic disaster, save your breath and alligator [alcatraz] tears and think back to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina last September.

This is about cause and effect. Action and reaction.

This isn’t about red vs. blue. It’s about rain vs. rescue.

But if you do want to talk politics? Let’s talk about this: 75 million Americans fell for the con. And now, the rest of us are drowning in the consequences.