At least 82 people, including 28 children, have died as floods rushed through central Texas through the July 4 weekend. The total continues to rise as local emergency officials across the state carry out search, rescue and recovery efforts.
Here’s a breakdown by county as of Sunday night:
- 68 deaths in Kerr County
- 6 deaths in Travis County
- 3 deaths in Burnet County
- 2 deaths in Kendall County
- 2 deaths in Williamson County
- 1 death in Tom Green County
Before the tragedy, there had been concerns over the Trump administration's budget cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - the government agency that operates the National Weather Service.
The Fiscal Year 2026 budget includes cuts and closures of some weather research laboratories, while the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) has slashed hundreds of employees at NOAA and the NWS.
Meteorologists in the US and elsewhere have expressed concerns over "reduced number of weather balloons" that observe wind, relative humidity and pressure above the ground.
They claim that budget cuts have resulted in 20% fewer weather balloons being released for such observations, impacting the accuracy of weather forecasting.
The New York Times reported that critical positions of the NWS were vacant on Friday morning, with some experts questioning whether staffing shortages had impeded the agency's efforts to coordinate with local emergency managers.
However, Tom Fahy, legislative director of the NWS Employees Organization, told NBC News: "The WFOs [weather forecasting offices] had adequate staffing and resources as they issued timely forecasts and warnings leading up to the storm".
And the Associated Press quoted Jason Runyen, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service office, as saying their office that delivers forecasts for that part of central Texas had extra staff on duty at the time of the storms - five, instead of the usual two.
“When
President Trump took office… he said he wanted to fix [that], and is
currently upgrading the technology. And the National Weather Service has
indicated that with that and NOAA, that we needed to renew this ancient
system that has been left in place with the federal government for
many, many years, and that is the reforms that are ongoing,” Noem
explained, seemingly shifting the blame onto previous administrations
who failed to upgrade the technology. Trump was previously president
from 2017 to 2021.
When asked about the impact of cuts and closures made to weather research labs as part of Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” Noem once again defended the current administration, telling reporters that she would relay their concerns to the president.
“I do carry your concerns back to the federal government, and to President Trump, and we will do all we can to fix those kind of things that that may have felt like a failure to you and to your community members,” Noem said. “We know that everybody wants more warning time, and that’s why we’re working to upgrade the technologies that been neglected [for] far too long.”
Those words are laughable. This is the time of the year for bad weather. If Chump wanted the systems upgraded, that should have taken place in January when he was sworn in. More to the point, he was president from January 2017 to January 2021. So he should have known the state of the systems before he was sworn back in at the start of this year.
Julia Ornedo (DAILY BEAST) covers Chump's refusal of accountaiblity:
President Donald Trump was hearing reporters just fine until one of them asked him about federal cuts in the aftermath of the devastating floods in Texas.
Trump spoke to reporters in New Jersey on Sunday after flash floods wreaked havoc in central Texas over the weekend, killing at least 80 people and sending over 40 others missing. Critics were quick to blame the calamitous toll on the administration’s overhaul of the federal government, which included staff cuts at the National Weather Service.
“Democrats are blaming your federal cuts for the deaths over in Texas,” one reporter, who could be heard audibly projecting their voice, asked Trump.
Though the president leaned in to hear better, he decided to wave off the question.
“I can’t hear you,” he said, as he moved on to another reporter.
Asked later on if he had plans to look into whether the cuts at the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency left key positions vacant, Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick shook their heads.
Organizers call it a “non-violent journey of resistance through Los Angeles” and said it is part of a 30-day “Summer of Resistance” campaign designed to push for an end to ICE raids and deportations they say have “tore families apart.”
Upwards of 2,000 people have registered to participate in the run, which will include a stop at downtown's Metropolitan Detention Center on Alameda Street, which has been the site of multiple clashes between people protesting immigration-related arrests and law enforcement officers.
Carly Gomez (ABC7's EYEWITNESS NEWS) spoke to participants. Claudia Bustillos told her, "I showed up to represent those of us who, our parents came as immigrants to give us the opportunity to have a better life in the United States." Brisa Aguilar explained, "Whatever is happening right now, it feels like the Holocaust all over again, and it's not fair on justice." And event organizer Fayia Ramage notes, "I was welcomed to the city by immigrants, and also by the running community, and it felt like the way to create space just for people to really come together and, yeah, the whole promise of the event is that it's rooted in love and unity, but also a really powerful display of the fact that we won't back down when it comes to supporting the people in the city."
Leah Craig (MICHIGAN ADVANCE) reports on an action in her state Friday:
Approximately 100 demonstrators gathered Friday in West Michigan to denounce the opening of the North Lake Correctional Facility, an immigrant detention center in Baldwin.
The detention center was opened on June 16, and, with a capacity of 1,800, the facility has been called the largest detention center in the Midwest, as well as the subject of several earlier protests this year.
The Independence Day event was organized by local immigrant advocacy groups, including No Detention Centers in Michigan, Cosecha Michigan, GR Rapid Response to ICE, and Lakeshore Rapid Response to ICE.
The date was an intentional choice: July 4, the media release noted, is a day for “reflecting on freedom as an ideal and spending time with family and loved ones.” As such, advocates gathered outside the facility to highlight the apparent disconnect between Independence Day and mass incarceration.
Speakers used the event to emphasize the controversies surrounding the GEO Group— the federally contracted private company that operates the North Lake facility.
As the nation’s primary prison operator, GEO has been scrutinized for influencing immigration and criminal justice policy in ways that expand incarceration for profit.
During the 2024 election cycle, GEO and its subsidiaries donated almost $1,000,000 to political candidates, with around 90% of funds going to GOP candidates.
In particular, the GEO Group has closely aligned itself with President Donald Trump. Trump’s first term saw 237 new contracts between GEO and the federal government. Furthermore, nearly 71% of the GEO Group’s funding is sourced from ICE. The Trump Administration’s emphasis on mass detention only serves to benefit the GEO Group.
Again, targeting immigrants is big business and a lot of people are getting rich off of it. Jesús Jank Curbelo (EL PAIS) reports, "More than 20,000 migrants have been arrested in Texas by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since Donald Trump returned to the U.S. presidency last January. This makes Texas the state with the most arrests in the last five months. The figure is double the number recorded in Florida (9,080) and triple the 5,860 registered in California, which rank second and third on the list." Liam Archacki (THE DAILY BEAST) notes Donald Chump is excited by his new budget bill which provides a lot of money to destroy lives across America and bragging about it on social media, "One of the most exciting parts of the 'ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL ACT' is that it includes ALL of the funding and resources that ICE needs to carry out the Largest Mass Deportation Operation in History." Again, this is big business. Don't forget that. People are getting rich by creating this misery. How much money are we talking? Josh Kovensky (TPM) explains, "All in all, the bill directs around $170 billion through 2029 to various forms of immigration enforcement, according to an analysis by the American Immigration Council and TPM’s own read of the legislation. ICE, responsible for enforcement, detentions, and removals, will oversee much of the spending." Hoping for strong judicial pushback? Pema Levy (MOTHER JONES) notes, "On the 249 anniversary of the country’s declaration of independence from tyranny, the Trump administration was in court asking a judge to let it send eight men to South Sudan, a war-torn country where they face a significant possibility of torture or death. The government wished to subject these men, and then untold thousands more, to such a fate without the guarantee of due process promised in the Constitution. And on America’s birthday, they got their wish. A federal judge in Massachusetts declined to halt the deportations. He lay the blame at the feet of seven Supreme Court justices who had allowed the removals to move forward the previous day."
Shifts in policy have already stripped hundreds of thousands of immigrants of their legal protections to remain in the country. But the wide-ranging sweeps ICE has launched in churches, at farms and in Home Deport parking lots still haven’t resulted in enough arrests to satisfy White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has spent weeks insisting that more dedicated resources are needed to meet his goal of 3,000 arrests per day.
Republicans gave Miller the tools he wants when they passed their budget reconciliation bill Thursday. The two largest buckets of funding in the act provide $45 billion each toward building Trump’s border wall and vastly expanding America’s immigration detention capacity. By comparison, that’s more than 13 times the current annual ICE budget for detention ($3.4 billion) and more than five times the entire annual budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons ($8.6 billion).
An estimate from the American Immigration Council determines that if the money allocated is spread out to roughly $14 billion per year, then it would be enough for ICE to maintain around 116,000 beds. At present, the agency’s budget supports it holding about 41,000 detainees. Notably, though, those capacity figures assume that every detainee is granted a bed. There are reports of inhumane conditions in existing detention centers, where there were 56,000 immigrants in custody as of June 15. In other words, we could easily see the number of detainees more than double to fill the expanded capacity in hastily built detention centers.
Once this new funding hits ICE’s accounts, it will likely be spent as quickly as possible — with little oversight for how it’s doled out. The New York Times reported in April that ICE has already asked contractors for “proposals to provide new detention facilities, transportation, security guards, medical support and other administrative services worth as much as $45 billion over the next two years.” Much of that money will go toward private companies contracted to build and run these facilities, some of which have been major political backers for Trump and the GOP.
Beyond the funding for detention, there’s more money still. An analysis from the Washington Office on Latin America notes that ICE will also be getting $15 billion devoted toward physically removing migrants from the country. (Whether that is to their country of origin or some random third state is apparently a matter for the administration to decide, according to a recent Supreme Court decision.) Another $16.2 billion will be for the Department of Homeland Security to hire new ICE, Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents. About $8 billion of that will be for ICE to hire 8,500 new officers with another $860 million for paying recruitment and retention bonuses and $600 million for expanding the agency’s hiring capacity.
Local and state officers are getting in on the gold rush, with $3.5 billion dedicated toward compensating states for detaining noncitizens and $10 billion to reimburse border states for hardening their borders. Given how eagerly sheriff’s offices and police departments compete for federal funding for other programs, it’s likely that many will leap at the chance to share in this bonanza.
Again, there is very big money being made in the targeting and kidnapping of human beings. Dharna Noor (GUARDIAN) reports:
Farm worker activist Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, 25, was driving his partner to her job on a tulip farm north of Seattle one March morning when they were pulled over by an unmarked car. A plainclothes agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) emerged and shattered Juarez Zeferino’s front window before handcuffing him, his partner said.
The officer drove Juarez Zeferino to a nondescript warehouse – the same one he and other activists had years ago discovered is an unmarked Ice holding facility. After his 25 March detention, dozens gathered outside to demand his release.
Instead, he was transferred to the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, where he has been held ever since.
Officially, Juarez Zeferino’s arrest was based on a deportation order. But the activist’s detention comes as the Trump administration has launched an aggressive crackdown against its perceived political enemies, including both immigrants and labor organizers.
“We believe, no question, that he was a target,” said Rosalinda Guillen, veteran farm worker organizer and founder of Community to Community Development, where Juarez Zeferino volunteered.
The young organizer has played an instrumental role in securing protections for Washington farm workers, including strengthened statewide heat protections for outdoor laborers mandating water breaks when temperatures top 80F, enshrined in 2023. In 2021, he and other activists also won a law guaranteeing farm workers overtime pay. And in 2019, advocacy from Juarez Zeferino and other campaigners about exploitation in the H-2A guest worker program prompted Washington to create the nation’s first-ever oversight committee for foreign workers.
KABC notes that a West Hollywood car wash was targeted by ICE on Friday an The West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce issued a statement in response:
On this day that marks the birth of our nation and its founding ideals of liberty, opportunity, and justice for all, we at the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce are deeply troubled by the news of the ICE raid that occurred in our community at one of our businesses. These enforcement actions-carried out on the Fourth of July-have sown fear, disrupted families, and shaken the trust that is vital to a thriving local economy. We are a city built on diversity, creativity, and the contributions of immigrants from all walks of life. Our businesses depend on a workforce that reflects this diversity, and many of our members-whether small business owners or employees-have close ties to immigrant communities. Regardless of political affiliation, we believe in treating every individual with dignity, compassion, and due process under the law.
There's no question that there is a need for plainclothes officers in certain law enforcement scenarios, but this is not that. These authoritarian thugs in masks and unmarked vans are causing dangerous panic and confusion, and the possibility of a misunderstanding puts both officers and civilians at needless risk. There is zero need for these hyper-aggressive tactics when we're talking about unarmed mothers taking their children to school, college students walking to class, or people just trying to do the right thing by showing up to court hearings and immigration check-ins.
These raids are destroying the economy. Norma Galeana, Harper Stephanopoulos and Rachel Clarke (CNN) report on how Los Angeles' Fashion Market region has been decimated and turned into a ghost town. Adrian Florido (NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED) reports:
Emma de Paz was selling breakfast to day laborers outside a Los Angeles Home Depot on June 19 when immigration agents showed up. Some of them chased workers through the parking lot. Others rounded up the food cart vendors. De Paz was handcuffed, forced onto her knees, and driven to a federal detention center downtown.
She called her brother, Carlos Barrera, from the facility.
"They didn't ask if she had papers or not. They just grabbed her and put her into one of the vans," Barrera said, recalling his conversation with his sister, who has since been transferred to a desert detention center 90 miles away. "They had no reason to arrest her. They didn't have a warrant."
Though his sister is undocumented, Barrera said the agents could not have known that before detaining her or many of the 29 other people they rounded up that morning.
"She has dark skin. They assumed she was Hispanic, and they took her," he said. "It's the racial factor."
You have to illegally profile to meet Chump's goals and we noted that back in July and August and September and October -- long before the election. That would be the outcome if Chump was put back into the White House. Let me note this from Ava and my "Media: Are they trying to elect Donald Trump?:"
Patricia Caro (EL PAIS) reports:
Andrea Vélez, a 32-year-old marketing designer, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on June 24 as she was going to work in downtown Los Angeles. On June 12, Brian Gavidia, 29, was working at a trailer yard in Montebello, California, when he was assaulted and restrained by ICE officers. Just over a week earlier, Elzon Lemus, a 23-year-old electrician, was stopped, pulled from his car, and handcuffed on his way to work in Nassau, New York. In addition to sharing the experience of being detained by immigration agents, the three have something in common that has raised the controversy over immigration raids to a new level: they are all U.S. citizens of Latino origin. ICE has no authority to detain them.
“Now that ICE is having to meet higher quotas for arbitrary arrests than ever before, we’ll see more and more cases like these,” Nareen Shah, director of Government Affairs for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told EL PAÍS. “The problem is that even when people claim to be U.S. citizens and can prove they are, we’ve still seen cases where they’re detained,” Shah said.
[. . .]
The law does not allow a person’s race, ethnicity, or occupation to be used as the sole basis for believing they have violated federal immigration law. Objective evidence, such as a criminal record, must be provided, but in none of the recent cases did the detainees have a criminal history.
“Because of the color of their skin, their accent, or their ethnicity, they become targets in what is reminiscent of what happened in the Third Reich,” denounced Fred Brewington, Elzon Lemus’s attorney, at a press conference in which his client denounced the treatment he received by ICE agents, despite having assured them he was a U.S. citizen. “I am a victim because of my race and ethnicity. Just because of my skin color and because I am Hispanic, they made me feel like I was a criminal,” Lemus said.
The Gaza Freaks are silent now. They certainly haven't apologized for their work sabotaging Kamala Harris' run and destroying our country in the process. It's a real shame that Latinos in this country -- citizens and immigrants -- are no longer safe. But the bigger shame is that the obsessed Gaza Freaks brought us to this point and they want to now act like they're not responsible. They told people not to vote for Kamala. By the way, where are they today? Palestinians are still being killed in Gaza. Chump didn't change that, did he? And, if you paid attention, Palestinians in Gaza knew he wouldn't. They repeatedly and regularly told outlets like ALJAZEERA just that. But over here in the US, Gaza Freaks didn't want to listen to the Palestinians. And now, as we see from their silence, Gaza Freaks don't really want to save them. Palestinians were apparently just a passing fad for a lot of pathetic people with pathetic lives to pretend their lives had some meaning which explains the death of protests on US campuses and all the high profile Gaza Freaks who were constantly on camera in the lead up to the 2024 election now becoming publicity shy.
It's as though they all just wanted to destroy their own lives and take the rest of the world down with them.
Kat's "Kat's Korner: Barbra's Secret is providing pure joy" went up Sunday, The following sites updated:
