The Dictatorship

Trump tours Texas flood sites and defends officials amid mounting questions about response

Published

12 months ago

July 13, 2025

Trump tours Texas flood sites and defends officials amid mounting questions about response

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday toured the devastation from catastrophic flooding in Texas and lauded state and local officials, even amid mounting criticism that they may have failed to warn residents quickly enough that a deadly wall of water was coming their way.

Trump has repeatedly promised to do away with the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of his larger pledges to dramatically shrink the size of governmentand he’s fond of decrying officials in Democrat-run states hit by past natural disasters and tragedy.

But the president struck a far more somber and sympathetic tone while visiting America’s most populous Republican state — highlighting the heartbreak of what happened while effusively praising elected officials and first responders alike.

“The search for the missing continues. The people that are doing it are unbelievable,” Trump, seated with officials around a table with emblazoned with a black-and-white “Texas Strong” banner, said at a makeshift emergency operations center inside an expo hall in Kerrville.

He later added, “You couldn’t get better people, and they’re doing the job like I don’t think anybody else could, frankly.”

Since the July 4 disasterwhich killed at least 129 people and left more than 170 missingthe president has been conspicuously silent on his past promises to shutter FEMA and return disaster response to the states. Instead, he’s focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred in central Texas’ Hill Country and its human toll.

“We just visited with incredible families. They’ve been devastated,” the president said of a closed-door meeting he and first lady Melania Trump had with the relatives of some of those killed or missing.

Honoring the victims

Trump’s shift in focus underscores how tragedy can complicate political calculations, even though he has made slashing the federal workforce a centerpiece of his administration’s opening months. He spent a lot of time Friday discussing the victims from Camp Mysticthe century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 people were killed.

“They were there because they loved God. And, as we grieve this unthinkable tragedy, we take comfort in the knowledge that God has welcomed those little beautiful girls into his comforting arms in heaven,” Trump said.

The first lady described meeting “beautiful young ladies” from the area who she said gave her a “special bracelet from the camp in honor of all the little girls that lost their lives.” She promised to return to support the camp in the future.

Trump approved Texas’ request to extend the major disaster declaration beyond Kerr County to eight additional counties, making them eligible for direct financial assistance to recover and rebuild.

President Donald Trump, center, greets first responders as he observes flood damage in Kerrville, Texas, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Nancy Epperson, right, and Brooklyn Pucek, 6, visit a memorial for flood victims along the Guadalupe River on Thursday, July 10, 2025, in Kerrville, Texas. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

“All across the country Americans’ hearts are shattered,” he said. “I had to be here as president.”

Despite saying that he didn’t want to talk politics, Trump couldn’t help himself. During the roundtable, he bragged briefly about his administration reducing the cost of eggs around the country and, in a response to a question about Democratic criticisms of the flood response, said, “All they want to do is criticize.”

“They’re getting just absolutely clobbered ‘cause everyone sees what an incredible job the governor did,” Trump said of Democrats. “Everybody in this room, everybody at this table in particular.”

In praise of FEMA

He also still insisted “we’ve got some good people” running FEMA. That is nonetheless a far cry from his call mere weeks ago to begin “phasing out” FEMA.

At the White House, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, similarly dodged questions Friday about FEMA’s future. He said that the agency has billions of dollars in reserves “to continue to pay for necessary expenses.”

“We also want FEMA to be reformed,” Vought said. “The president is going to continue to be asking tough questions of all of us agencies, no different than any other opportunity to have better government.”

First lady Melania Trump, from left, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump are briefed on flood damage in Kerrville, Texas, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

On the ground in devastated communities, meanwhile, some state and local officials have faced questions about how well they were prepared and how quickly they acted — including if warning systems might have given more people time to evacuate.

Asked about such concerns during his appearance at the operations center in Kerrville, Trump called a reporter “evil” and said he thought “everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances.”

People watch as President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump pass in a motorcade in Kerrville, Texas, to monitor flood damage, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

“I admire you, and I consider you heroes,” Trump said of the officials around him.

He also praised a long list of Texas Republicans and had especially kind words for Rep. Chip Roy, who represents some of the hardest-hit areas. A staunch conservative, Roy initially opposed Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending package but ultimately supported it.

“He’s not easy, but he’s good,” Trump said of Roy. The congressman, for his part, bristled at questions about authorities’ flood response, calling the queries about inadequate flood warnings “ridiculous.”

Seeing the damage close-up

Prior to the roundtable, Air Force One landed in San Antonio and Trump deplaned in a suit while the first lady wore more casual clothing — though both wore ball caps against the heat. The Trumps then boarded a helicopter to Kerrville and saw the flooding aftermath from the air. They later walked close to the Guadalupe River to receive a briefing from officials near an overturned tractor trailer, numerous downed trees and other debris.

Roads in the center of town were shut down, and people lined the streets, some wearing Trump hats and T-shirts and waving American flags. Green ribbons recognizing the lives lost at Camp Mystic were tied around trees, poles and along bridges, and marquees featured slogans such as “Hill Country Strong” and “Thank you first responders.”

Harris Currie, a rancher from Utopia, Texas, near Kerrville, said the flood devastation can be fully understood only by seeing it firsthand.

“Pictures do not do it justice,” Currie said.

Asked what officials on the ground needed most urgently from federal sources, Kerr County Commissioner Jeff Holt, who also is a volunteer firefighter, stressed the need for repairs to nonworking phone towers and “maybe a little better early warning system.”

Trump himself has suggested that a major warning system should be established, though few details have been offered on what that might eventually entail.

Friday’s visit was far different from the other times the first couple visited natural disaster sites, during Trump’s first weekend back in the White House in January. They toured North Carolina to scope out damage from Hurricane Helene and saw the aftermath of wildfires in Los Angeles, and the president sharply criticized the administration of his predecessor, President Joe Biden, and officials from deep-blue California.

“The state of Texas, No. 1 they do it right and they’ve done it right for a long time,” Trump said. “And it’s a very special place to me.”

___

Weissert reported from Washington.

The Dictatorship

8 convicted in Texas immigration center shooting sentenced to decades in prison

Published

1 hour ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

8 convicted in Texas immigration center shooting sentenced to decades in prison

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifawere sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer. Prosecutors have called the shooting an act of terrorism.

One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.

The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Songreceived the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”

“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.

The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.

Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a targetof the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.

The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.

Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.

“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”

Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.

“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”

Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.

Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.

“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”

Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.

Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”

Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.

“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.

Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.

Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.

Critics warn the case could have a wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.

Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 peoplewith impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdownin Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.

The Dictatorship

Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’

Published

1 hour ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’

About a month into Donald Trump’s second term, Senate Republicans weighed whether to confirm one of the president’s worst nominees. Indeed, the list of reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was not short.

The former congresswoman lacked the requisite experience in intelligence matters. She had an indefensible habit of echoing Russian propaganda. She struggled to explain her record of defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Senators heard from former national security officials who issued unsubtle warnings about elevating Gabbard to an important and influential position.

But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.

Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.

But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.

After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler.

The memos, starting in 2013, when the Hawaiian first arrived on Capitol Hill, reflect a dynamic in which Gabbard didn’t just take direction from the materials, but essentially took dictation from the alleged cult leader: Memos told Gabbard what she should do as a member of Congress, and she often did exactly that, sometimes word for word.

The Post’s Jon Swaine spent months trying to get Gabbard to respond to questions, but to no avail. Her spokeswoman reportedly encouraged Swaine to drop the story, saying, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”

On May 20, Swaine nevertheless alerted the DNI and top members of her staff to the fact that the Post was prepared to publish his reporting anyway on her association with Butler.

On May 22, Fox News reported that Gabbard was leaving the administration, ostensibly because of a health issue involving her husband.

This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:

There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.

The New York Democrat’s comments made sense, though it’s worth considering who, exactly, “we need answers” from.

It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.

In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

Trump ignored warnings before launching Iran war, reporters tell MS NOW

Published

1 hour ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump ignored warnings before launching Iran war, reporters tell MS NOW

Jun. 23, 2026, 2:30 PM EDT

In the lead-up to the Iran war, President Donald Trump dismissed the possibility that Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz despite warnings from his top military adviser, authors of a new book told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday.

In their first televised interview about “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said Trump also disregarded warnings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the potential effects on American weaponry and about casualties.

The initial closure of the strait, a narrow passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, led to a spike in gas and oil prices. According to Swan, Trump thought Iran would have limited time to take action because the war would be over quickly — a claim he has made repeatedly during the nearly four-month-long war.

“He felt that this regime was a paper tiger, that this was going to be a fast war,” Swan said on “The Last Word.” “He just said he felt that that was going to be the case, that they were going to collapse very quickly.”

“It’s a form of magical thinking, actually, is what it all boils down to,” he added.

The revelation is just one of several in the book — which is based on more than 1,000 interviews — that illustrate how Trump repeatedly bases geopolitical decisions on his own whims rather than experts’ assessments.

Another example of such thinking was when Trump floated a plan to expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so he could turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Haberman and Swan wrote in the book that one senior aide characterized the idea as “legitimately nutso … but very on-brand.”

Haberman also spoke about “how scared” people were inside the White House ahead of last year’s so-called Liberation Daywhen Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs. (The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February.)

“They were scared at how close the bond markets came to just completely melting down seven days later, which was finally what got him [Trump] off of it, but again, it was the willingness to just go straight to the brink” that was jarring, Haberman said.

Despite such fear among Trump’s staff, Haberman added, the White House makes up “a group of people who genuinely want to see him succeed.”

Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.