1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

I hold the entire Republican establishment accountable for the deaths from the devastating floods in central Texas. I 100% agree with the following AI analysis. There is substantial evidence and widespread expert concern that the recent cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and its parent agency NOAA, ordered under the Trump administration, contributed to the inaccurate rain forecasts and lack of adequate flood warnings in Texas during the catastrophic flooding on July 4, 2025. Key points supported by the search results: • Hundreds of experienced meteorologists and staff were cut from NOAA and the NWS in early 2025, with some local offices (such as Houston) losing up to 44% of their staff, including senior leadership. This exodus was described as “unprecedented” and resulted in a significant loss of institutional knowledge and forecasting expertise. • Internal NWS documents and public statements from experts warned that these staffing shortages would lead to “degraded” forecasting services and “greater risk for the American people,” especially during severe weather events. • Texas officials have directly blamed the NWS for the faulty forecast that failed to predict the actual rainfall totals. The NWS forecast for the affected areas was 3-6 inches in the Concho Valley and 4-8 inches in the Hill Country, but more than 10 inches fell in some locations, causing catastrophic flooding. • Emergency managers and local leaders stated that evacuation and warning decisions were based on NWS forecasts, which did not anticipate the scale of the rainfall or the resulting floods. • Former NOAA and NWS leaders, as well as independent meteorologists, have repeatedly warned that the Trump-era cuts would lead to less accurate forecasts, fewer weather balloon launches (critical for storm modeling), and a higher risk of missed warnings. • Every living former director of the NWS signed an open letter in May 2025 warning that continued cuts would create “needless loss of life,” a prediction that many now say was realized in the Texas floods. No search result provides definitive, peer-reviewed forensic analysis directly linking the staff cuts to this specific forecasting failure, but the overwhelming consensus among experts, officials, and even internal government documents is that the degraded capacity and loss of expertise at the NWS were major contributing factors to the inaccurate forecast and the lack of timely flood warnings in Texas. In summary, the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the Trump administration’s cuts to the national meteorological staff contributed to the failures in forecasting and warning that exacerbated the impact of the Texas floods. This is the view held by Texas officials, former agency leaders, and independent experts alike.