Here’s what no one wants to say out loud: these deaths are a policy choice.

Trump, backed by the same climate-denying Republicans who now call these floods “unforeseeable,” slashed funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service – the agencies tasked with giving Texans a heads-up before extreme weather took their homes and, in some cases, their lives. In 2019, the Trump administration proposed a $75 million cut to the National Weather Service, including plans to eliminate hundreds of forecaster jobs. Trump’s budget cuts also threatened up to 17% of NOAA’s funding, gutting critical satellites and storm modeling programs.

Fewer meteorologists. Outdated radar. Slower warnings. All while climate change – a problem the GOP still refuses to call a crisis – is juicing storms into biblical-scale destruction. They are taking away the lifeboats, and then blaming the ocean:

Let’s be crystal clear: scientists have known for decades that climate change is making rainfall more extreme. Texas’s most intense rain events are now up to 20% stronger than they were just 50 years ago, thanks to warmer air holding more moisture. That’s not politics, it’s physics.

Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene is out here ranting about banning “weather-modification chemicals”, parroting conspiracy theories about secret government weather machines. She’s ready to fight a make-believe chemtrail war while ignoring real floods killing real children and while the GOP’s 2025 platform is doubling down on fossil fuels while attacking renewable energy.

We live in a country where children drown because billionaires fear solar panels, and politicians fear Fox News more than they fear deadly torrential downpours that will claim the lives of their own constituents. Where the same people who cut our weather warnings will call the next flood an “act of God” when, in reality, it’s simply an act of greed, ignorance, and denial.

Bottom Line

If that sounds dystopian, that’s because it is. The next time there’s an extreme weather emergency near you, remember who took away your forecast, who laughed at climate change, and who told you to pray while they cashed fossil fuel checks. Because as long as Republicans deny climate change, the floodwaters will keep rising.

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