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      Monday briefing: The ‘toxic cocktail’ of climate denial, federal cuts and the Texas floods

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      Good morning. The death toll from the catastrophic floods in Texas has climbed to 129, including at least 27 children and counsellors at Camp Mystic in Kerr County.With more than 160 people still missing, authorities warn that the number of casualties is likely to rise. On Sunday morning, some search operations were cancelled as heavy rain and strong winds battered the state once again.The flash floods, which swept through large parts of central Texas, are being described as one of the worst natural disasters in the state’s history. At Camp Mystic, rain gauges recorded 6.5in (16.5cm) of rainfall in just 180 minutes.In addition to the human cost, the floods have caused widespread destruction. According to a preliminary estimate by private forecaster AccuWeather, the economic toll could range from $18bn to $22bn (£13.2bn to £16.2bn).The floods struck as the climate crisis worsens, and as the Trump administration’s hollowing out of federal agencies has left critical services such as the National Weather Service under severe strain. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is also facing continued threats of defunding.Yet, despite the scale of devastation, there has been little public reckoning over climate breakdown or the erosion of essential public services. Instead, conspiracy theories have abounded.To understand how this catastrophe unfolded and the political response to it, I spoke to Oliver Milman, the Guardian US environment reporter. That’s after the headlines.Five big stories

      Israel-Gaza | An Israeli airstrike has killed at least 10 people, including six children, who were waiting to collect water in Gaza, Palestinian health officials have said. Dozens of others were killed in Gaza over the weekend in a separate strike near a food aid distribution site. Meanwhile, former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has said that a proposed “humanitarian city” would be a concentration camp for Palestinians.

      Health | Health officials have urged people to come forward for the measles vaccine if they are not up to date with their shots after a child at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool died from the disease.

      UK news | Charlotte Church, veteran peace campaigners, Trade unionists, activists and politicians, are among hundreds who have signed a letter describing the move to ban the group Palestine Action as “a major assault on our freedoms”.

      Spain | Several people were hurt in a second night of anti-migrant unrest in the town of Torre Pacheco in south-east Spain after a pensioner was beaten up, authorities said.

      NHS | Health secretory Wes Streeting will meet representatives from the British Medical Association this week as he looks to avert five days of strikes by resident doctors.
      In depth: What we know so farView image in fullscreenThe devastating floods began in the early hours of 4 July, Independence Day in the US. Oliver Milman told me that what started out as a seemingly small storm stalled in an area where two rivers in central Texas meet, and dumped an enormous amount of rain.“It caused the river to burst its banks, swept away homes, cars, flooded rivers and, most tragically, caught up on Camp Mystic,” Oliver said. “There’s still hope that some people could be rescued, but it’s certainly going to be one of the biggest, deadliest natural disasters in recent US history.”Oliver said there are several factors that could explain why this flood was so devastating. We also get into the responses from elected officials and other players.How much of this is down to the climate crisis?As the planet gets hotter, mostly because of humans burning fossil fuels, the atmosphere is able to hold more moisture. One meteorologist told Oliver that the Earth’s atmosphere is now like a giant sponge.“You’ve got more moisture in the atmosphere, and more energy because it’s getting hotter, and therefore you’re getting more of these extreme precipitation events happening in several places around the world, including parts of the eastern US. But the western half of the US seems to be getting more drought,” Oliver said. “So, very crudely speaking, half the country’s not getting enough rain, and the other half is getting too much in these intense downpours.”He pointed to some interesting statistics from the Environment Protection Agency: of the 10 heaviest precipitation single-day events in US history going back to 1910, nine have happened since 1995. “We’re clearly getting more and more of these events. There’s been research done showing they’re becoming more common in Texas and will continue to as the world heats up,” Oliver added.The geography of central Texas also made the floods more catastrophic. “It’s hilly and has these canyons, lots of rivers, and not much topsoil. So when rain hits, it flies off the ground very quickly. It’s known as “Flash Flood Alley” in some places, so that was a factor. The rain hit, and the devastation followed.”What impact have Donald Trump’s cuts had?The other factor, which Oliver likened to a toxic cocktail, is the political situation in the US.“The Trump administration has essentially tried to gut the federal workforce: firing scientists, firing weather forecasters, trying to eliminate large sections of the scientific agencies that deal with climate change. So you had a situation where a lot of National Weather Service offices, which track storms and issue warnings, were critically understaffed,” Oliver explained.Democrats have called for an investigation into whether the sweeping cuts introduced by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), once led by Elon Musk, played any role in the disaster. The Trump administration has dismissed any suggestion that its policies had an impact.“The Trump administration has pushed back quite hard and said this was an act of God, there were adequate resources, and so on,” Oliver said. Yet, understaffing was an issue and there was a disconnect between the meteorologists issuing warnings and the emergency services, he said.“The National Weather Service issued a warning about dangerous flood conditions at 1.14am [on 4 July], but there wasn’t – and it’s still unclear why – coordination with emergency services to evacuate people, to mobilise resources in enough time. A lot of people are pointing fingers at the cuts Trump has made to the coordination services usually handled by the federal government.”And it’s not just Trump that people are focusing on. The week before the floods, Texas senator Ted Cruz, ensured that the “big, beautiful bill”, a Republican spending bill pushed through and signed by Trump on Independence Day, would include particular cuts.“It does a lot of things: cuts the social safety net, people lose health care, gives tax breaks to the wealthy, removes food assistance, guts support for clean energy,” Oliver said. “But one thing it also did was remove a $150m fund to improve weather forecasting at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Cruz personally inserted the language to cut that and then, tragically, just days later this storm hit his home state and killed many people. So there are a lot of questions being asked about his role and whether those cuts played a significant role.”Republicans have largely fallen into line on the Texas floods, lavishing praise on Trump, while avoiding questions around the effect of Doge.Has this moved the dial on the climate emergency?In Texas, the reaction on the ground has been one of disbelief and devastation, Oliver said. “There’s a lot of ‘thoughts and prayers’ rhetoric in Texas right now, a sense of rallying to help those in need. People are mainly stunned rather than immediately pointing fingers, although local officials are raising questions about how much warning they got from the National Weather Service. There are also concerns about the local government’s actions. There had been a plan to install an early-warning flood system along the river, but the idea was ditched because it was considered too expensive. So you’ve got this local angle, too.”Far-right players have descended on central Texas in a stunt they claim is part of a “disaster relief” effort. In a video posted by one group, they say their so-called “activists” are distributing supplies to survivors, but make clear that they are prioritising “their people” and “European peoples” in those operations.As is now common when disaster strikes, conspiracy theories are being spread, Oliver said, by rightwing influencers and elected representatives such as Marjorie Taylor Greene. “They have questioned the cause [of the flood], whether it’s weather modification, cloud seeding, some nefarious machine. There’s this irony: we are modifying the weather – it’s called climate change. But it’s not the kind of weather modification they’re talking about.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOliver isn’t surprised by this reaction. “People are now able to live in their own realities, sealed off from facts,” he said. “Whatever people believed before the storm, the storm just reinforced it. That’s become a recurring theme, not just in disasters but in politics more broadly. People are very entrenched here. I know that’s also an issue in the UK and Europe, but in the US things feel paralysed. I don’t know if this will move anyone’s opinion.”What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      Two museums in Ukraine, writes Charlotte Higgins, have found new ways to propagate the history and culture the Russian invasion had hoped to erase. It’s a haunting tribute to resourcefulness under fire. Alex Needham, acting head of newsletters

      In a devastating New Yorker interview (£), Unicef’s James Elder speaks of seeing children in Gaza with fourth-degree burns and shrapnel wounds, screaming in agony due to a lack of painkillers, all amid a deadly crisis of hunger and thirst. Aamna

      We’re told that Britain is an angry nation, hostile to refugees, climate activists and people on benefits. But in fact, John Harris argues, the population’s views are broadly in line with those of the audience at Glastonbury – so why aren’t we represented by the mainstream political parties? Alex

      The Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh reports from northern France on the enduring human drive to reach the UK – a spirit that continues to defy 20 years of political and security efforts to stop irregular migration. Aamna

      Are you reading this after a terrible night’s sleep? In that case, click on this piece by Joel Snape, which is full of tips on how to make it through today without resorting to sugar, carbs and excessive amounts of coffee. Alex
      SportView image in fullscreenTennis | Jannik Sinner beat Carlos Alcaraz 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 in the Wimbledon men’s singles final, a month after losing to the Spaniard at the French Open. Sinner is the first Italian player to win a Wimbledon title.Cricket | India finished on 58 for 4 in the third test, needing another 135 runs to beat England on the final day after a sensational day’s play at Lord’s.Football | England surged into the last eight after Georgia Stanway sparked an emphatic 6-1 win against Wales. France trailed 2-1 at half-time but hit back to beat the Netherlands 5-2 – with two goals from Delphine Cascarino – to top Group D.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian splashes on “Warning over Israeli ‘ethnic cleansing’ plan for Gaza,” an interview with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. The Times leads on “Bank could cut rates if jobs market slows down,” while the Telegraph goes with “Tax raid looms for middle classes.” The Metro splashes on “Politicians? We don’t trust any of you,” for the Express, it’s “Toothless’ new sex abuse laws won’t protect children,” the Mirror has “King backs Harry peace talks” on their family feud, and the Mail goes with “Labour’s doctors strike hypocrisy.” The FT leads on “Germany urges weapons suppliers to speed up European rearmament,” and for the i Paper, it’s “Measles surge fears for summer holidays after child dies amid low jab uptake.”Today in FocusView image in fullscreenSyria’s treasure hunting feverAfter the fall of Assad, a new business is booming in Syria: metal detectors. The items were banned by the regime but their return to shops means treasure hunters are searching for millenia-old burial sites, leaving the ancient city of Palmyra covered in holes. Reporter William Christou and Syrian archaeologist Amr Al-Azm speak with Michael Safi.Cartoon of the day | Ella BaronView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenSocial media can be brutal, but Brenda Allen is doing her bit to make it more benign. The 95-year-old, who lives in Cheshire, has proved a huge hit on TikTok. Her videos, in which she talks through her collection of Jellycat soft toys, have garnered more than 2m views, along with a flood of requests in the comments from people asking to adopt her as their gran.Brenda is now planning to auction her collection of Jellycats in aid of a children’s hospice. Her daughter Julie said that the family had been “blown away” by her moment of internet fame.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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      Democrats and climate groups ‘too polite’ in fight against ‘malevolent’ fossil fuel giants, says key senator

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      The Democratic party and the climate movement have been “too cautious and polite” and should instead be denouncing the fossil fuel industry’s “huge denial operation”, the US senator Sheldon Whitehouse said.“The fossil fuel industry has run the biggest and most malevolent propaganda operation the country has ever seen,” the Rhode Island Democrat said in an interview Monday with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “It is defending a $700-plus billion [annual] subsidy” of not being charged for the health and environmental damages caused by burning fossil fuels. “I think the more people understand that, the more they’ll be irate [that] they’ve been lied to.” But, he added, “Democrats have not done a good job of calling that out.”Whitehouse is among the most outspoken climate champions on Capitol Hill, and on Wednesday evening, he delivered his 300th Time to Wake Up climate speech on the floor of the Senate.He began giving these speeches in 2012, when Barack Obama was in his first term, and has consistently criticized both political parties for their lackluster response to the climate emergency. The Obama White House, he complained, for years would not even “use the word ‘climate’ and ‘change’ in the same paragraph”.While Whitehouse slams his fellow Democrats for timidity, he blasts Republicans for being in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, an entity whose behavior “has been downright evil”, he said. “To deliberately ignore [the laws of physics] for short-term profits that set up people for huge, really bad impacts – if that’s not a good definition of evil, I don’t know what is.”The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s trade association, says on its website that “API and its members commit to delivering solutions that reduce the risks of climate change while meeting society’s growing energy needs”.Long before Donald Trump reportedly told oil company CEOs he would repeal Joe Biden’s climate policies if they contributed $1bn to his 2024 presidential campaign, Republicans went silent on climate change in return for oil industry money, Whitehouse asserted. The key shift came after the supreme court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which struck down limits on campaign spending. Before that, some GOP senators had sponsored climate bills, and John McCain urged climate action during his 2008 presidential campaign.But Citizens United, Whitehouse said, “told the fossil fuel industry: ‘The door’s wide open – spend any money you want in our elections’”. The industry, he said, promised the Republican party “unlimited amounts of money” in return for stepping away from bipartisan climate action: “And since 2010, there has not been a single serious bipartisan measure in the Senate.”Whitehouse said that after delivering 300 climate speeches on the Senate floor, he has learned to shift from talking about the “facts of climate science and the effects on human beings to calling out the fossil fuels’ massive climate denial operation”.He said: “Turns out, none of [the science] really matters while the operation is controlling things in Congress. I could take facts from colleagues’ home states right to them, and it would make no difference because of this enormous, multibillion-dollar political club that can [punish] anyone who crosses them.”Most Republicans even stay silent despite climate change’s threat to property values and other traditional GOP priorities, Whitehouse said. He noted that even the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell – who is not known for climate bona fides, he said – testified before the Senate in February that in 10-15 years there will be whole regions of the country where nobody can get a mortgage because extreme weather will make it impossible to afford or even obtain insurance.Democrats can turn all this to their advantage if they get “more vocal and aggressive”, Whitehouse argued. “The good news is that the American people hate dark money with a passion, and they hate it just as much, if not more, in districts that went for Trump as in districts that went for Biden.”Democrats also need to recognize “how much [public] support there is for climate action”, he said. “How do you have an issue that you win 74 [percent] to 12 [percent] and you don’t ride that horse as hard as you can?”Whitehouse said he was only estimating that 74% figure, but that’s exactly the percentage of Americans who want their government to take stronger climate action, according to the scientific studies informing the 89 Percent Project, the Guardian and other Covering Climate Now partner news outlets began reporting in April. Globally, the percentage ranges from 80% to 89%. Yet this overwhelming climate majority does not realize it is the majority, partly because that fact has been absent from most news coverage, social media and politicians’ statements.Democrats keep “getting caught in this stupid doom loop in which our pollsters say: ‘Well, climate’s not one of the top issues that voters care about, so then we don’t talk about it’,” said Whitehouse. “So it never becomes one of the top issues that voters care about. [But] if you actually go ask [voters] and engage on the issue, it explodes in enthusiasm. It has huge numbers when you bother to engage, and we just haven’t.”Nevertheless, Whitehouse is optimistic that climate denial won’t prevail forever. “Once this comes home to roost in people’s homes, in their family finances, in really harmful ways, that [will be] motivating in a way that we haven’t seen before around this issue,” he said. “And if we’re effective at communicating what a massive fraud has been pulled on the American public by the fossil fuel industry denial groups, then I think that’s a powerful combination.”This story is part of the 89% Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now More

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      Did National Weather Service cuts lead to the Texas flood disaster? We don’t know | Rebecca Solnit

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      Why exactly so many people drowned in the terrible Independence Day floods that swept through Texas’s Hill Country will probably have multiple explanations that take a while to obtain. But it’s 2025, and people want answers immediately, and lots of people seized on stories blaming the National Weather Service (NWS).There were two opposing reasons to blame this vital government service. For local and state authorities, blaming a branch of the federal government was a way of avoiding culpability themselves. And for a whole lot of people who deplore the Trump/Doge cuts to federal services, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, the idea that the NWS failed served to underscore how destructive those cuts are.Many of them found confirmation in a New York Times story that ran with the sub-headline: “Some experts say staff shortages might have complicated forecasters’ ability to coordinate responses with local emergency management officials.” Might have is not did. Complicated is not failed. It’s a speculative piece easily mistaken for a report, and its opening sentence is: “Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.”A casual reader could come away thinking that staffing shortages had had consequences. But if you give the airily innuendo-packed sentence more attention, you might want to ask who exactly the anonymous experts were and whether there’s an answer to their questions. Did it actually make it harder, and did they actually manage to do this thing even though it was harder, or not? Did they coordinate with local emergency managers?The piece continues: “The staffing shortages suggested a separate problem, those former officials said,” and “suggested” sounds like we’re getting an interpretation of what these anonymous sources think might have happened or been likely to happen, rather than what actually did. Suggestions are not facts. Likelihoods are not actualities. Eventually we get to a named source: “A spokeswoman for the National Weather Service, Erica Grow Cei, did not answer questions from The New York Times about the Texas vacancies, including how long those positions had been open and whether those vacancies had contributed to the damage caused by the flooding.”In other words, there’s no answer to the suggestions and questions and intimations. Nevertheless, a lot of readers gathered the impression that this was not speculation aired by unnamed experts but confirmation that the NWS had failed. One prominent public figure with three quarters of a million BlueSky followers shared the New York Times piece with this note: “The United States government is no longer able to protect us from real hazards, such as flash floods, because it’s shifting funds to fake hazards, such as a non-existent immigrant crime wave.”If you read down a couple of dozen paragraphs in this New York Times piece, you get to the former NWS director of Congressional Affairs saying “that the local Weather Service offices appeared to have sent out the correct warnings. He said the challenge was getting people to receive those warnings, and then take action.” Nevertheless, the idea the NWS failed became so widespread that Wired magazine published a report specifically to counter it: “Some local and state officials have said that insufficient forecasts from the National Weather Service caught the region off guard. That claim has been amplified by pundits across social media, who say that cuts to the NWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, its parent organization, inevitably led to the failure in Texas.”They link to the pundit with almost a million followers, who had posted on Twitter: “Now TX officials are blaming a faulty forecast by NWS for the deadly impact of a storm.” Those officials are, but why would we believe them? Wired continues: “But meteorologists who spoke to Wired say that the NWS accurately predicted the risk of flooding in Texas and could not have foreseen the extreme severity of the storm.” With that, we’re onto another piece of the picture: the difference between accurately predicting a risk and knowing exactly how severe it will be.Climate change, which some reports mentioned and others did not, is both a contributing factor for specific weather disasters and a reason why the future will not necessarily look like the past. For both fires and floods, the old rules about how fast they’ll move and how big they’ll get have expired. Hotter air holds more moisture, and that can and does lead to more torrential downpours and worse flooding. On the other hand, as local newspaper the Kerrville Daily Times reported, Kerr county has a history of extremely heavy rainfall leading to rapid river rise and devastating floods.The Washington Post had a better assessment of what went right and what went wrong: “But even as weather forecasts began to hint at the potential for heavy rain on Thursday, the response exposed a disconnect: few, including local authorities, prepared for anything but their normal Fourth of July. When the precipitation intensified in the early morning hours Friday, many people failed to receive or respond to flood warnings at riverside campsites and cabins that were known to be in the floodplain.” The county, in this report, did not send its first cell-phone alert until Sunday, while “most cellphone alerts were coming from the National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio station. But some alerts about life-threatening flooding didn’t come until the predawn hours, and to areas where cellular reception may have been spotty.”It seems like the National Weather Service did its duty despite the cuts, but more are coming. Fossil Free Memo reports: “Just days before the flood, Texas Senator Ted Cruz helped pass the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, a sweeping fossil fuel giveaway that also slashed $200 million from Noaa’s weather forecasting and public alert programs. The money was meant to improve early warnings for exactly the kind of fast-moving, deadly flooding that just hit his own state. The cuts weren’t in the House version. Cruz added them in the Senate, behind closed doors, as chair of the committee that oversees Noaa.” The impact of cuts to vital services is going to degrade everyday life and add to the dangers we face, and as far as politicians like Ted Cruz are concerned, that’s the plan. It will be important to connect cause and effect, when there is a connection.The desire to have an explanation, and the desire for that explanation to be tidy and aligned with one’s politics, easily becomes a willingness to accept what fits. But knowing we don’t know, knowing the answers are not yet in, or there are multiple causes, being careful even with the sources that tell us what we want to hear: all this equipment to survive the information onslaughts of this moment. We all need to be careful about how we get information and reach conclusions – both the practical information about climate catastrophes and weather disasters and the journalism that reports on it. Both the weather and the news require vigilance.

      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Deadly floods could be new normal as Trump guts federal agencies, experts warn

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      The deadly Texas floods could signal a new norm in the US, as Donald Trump and his allies dismantle crucial federal agencies that help states prepare and respond to extreme weather and other hazards, experts warn.More than 100 are dead and dozens more remain missing after flash floods in the parched area known as Texas Hill Country swept away entire holiday camps and homes on Friday night – in what appears to have been another unremarkable storm that stalled before dumping huge quantities of rain over a short period of time, a phenomena that has becoming increasingly common as the planet warms.It remains unclear why the early warning system failed to result in the timely evacuation of Camp Mystic, where 700 girls were camped on a known flood plain on the Guadalupe River, but there is mounting concern that the chaos and cuts instigated by Trump and his billionaire donor Elon Musk at the National Weather Service (NWS) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) may have contributed to the death toll.“This is the exact kind of storm that meteorologists, climate scientists, emergency management experts have been talking about and warning about for decades at this point, and there’s absolutely no reason that this won’t happen in other parts of the country. This is what happens when you let climate change run unabated and break apart the emergency management system – without investing in that system at the local and state level,” said Samantha Montano, professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.“It takes a lot of money, expertise and time to eliminate risk and make sure that agencies are prepared to respond when a flood situation like in Texas happens. And if you eliminate those preparedness efforts, if you fire the people who do that work, then the response will not be effective.”Fema was created in 1979 by Jimmy Carter – precisely because states were struggling to cope with major disasters – and works closely with state and local government agencies to provide resources, coordination, technical expertise, leadership and communication with the public when they cannot cope alone.Upon returning to the White House, Trump immediately began threatening to disband Fema, belittling the agency amid its ongoing efforts to help communities devastated by the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene, the category 4 storm that left at least 230 people dead in southern Appalachia.The threats were followed by a pledge to dismantle Fema at the end of the 2025 hurricane season, without offering any clear plan about what would come next. The cuts are part of the administration’s unsubstantiated claims that the states and private enterprises are capable and best positioned to provide most federal services including weather forecasting, scientific research and emergency management.Reports suggest that more than a third of Fema’s permanent full-time workforce has been fired or accepted buyouts, including some of its most experienced and knowledgeable leaders who coordinate disaster responses – which can involve multiple federal agencies for months or years.Emergency management and the weather service work hand in hand. At the NWS, more than 600 people have already been laid off or taken early retirement, leading to offices across storm and flood-prone areas of the US to be short of meteorologists and round-the-clock staffing cover. The agency has also had to scale back routine weather monitoring.Two senior meteorologists at the San Antonio NWS office, which is responsible for forecasting in the Hill Country region, were among the casualties of Musk’s buyouts and layoffs. This included the warning coordination meteorologist, who is usually responsible for liaising with local emergency managers to help translate NWS forecasts into likely impacts that inform local actions such as warnings and evacuation orders.But Trump said it was unlikely the staff cuts to the NWS will be reversed, even in the wake of the Texas floods. “I would think not,” the president said on Sunday about a possible reversal. “This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it. Very talented people are there, they didn’t see it.”Accuweather, the popular commercial weather forecasting services, relies on the NWS for much of its foundational meteorological data and forecasts. Fema often steps in to cover emergency accommodation and reconstruction costs for Americans without adequate insurance and/or the means to rebuild.Reports suggest NWS weather balloons, which assess storm risk by measuring wind speed, humidity, temperature and other conditions that satellites may not detect, have been canceled in recent weeks from Nebraska to Florida due to staff shortages. At the busiest time for storm predictions, deadly heatwaves and wildfires, weather service staffing is down by more than 10% and, for the first time in almost half a century, some forecasting offices no longer have 24/7 cover.In May, the NWS office in eastern Kentucky scrambled to cover the overnight forecast as severe storms moved through the region, triggering multiple tornadoes that eventually killed 28 people.Despite such threats, the Republican budget bill signed by Trump last week cuts $150m in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) to help improve future weather forecasts and also shrinks the amount of money to the National Science Foundation, the premier federal agency supporting basic science and engineering research, by 56% next year.The 2026 budget makes significant cuts to Noaa including terminating the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which in essence could be the end of the efforts to improve warnings for events like the Texas floods, warned Alan Gerard, former head of the Warning Research and Development Division of the Noaa National Severe Storms Laboratory, speaking on DemocracyNow! on Monday.NSF funded research has played a pivotal role in developing early warning systems for all sorts of hazards, but more work is urgently needed to improve local accuracy and community acceptability amid the growing threats due to global heating. There is no other funding source capable of filling this gap.“The Hill Country is a desert area with big rivers which have had historic major floods and that are prone to flash flooding – but like most of rural America do not have gauge systems. Without gauges, the warnings don’t come early enough, and with flash floods every 15 minutes can save lives. This is something we can do better,” said Ryan Thigpen, a flood scientist trying to improve early warning systems in Appalachia .Texas senator Ted Cruz has called for “a better system of warnings to get kids out of harm’s way” in the wake of the disaster, even though he inserted language into the “big beautiful” bill to slash Noaa’s weather forecasting upgrades. Local officials, too, have sought to distract attention away from Trump’s cuts – and their support for his plans – but the lack of leadership at Fema is impossible to ignore especially as Trump plans to visit the area with the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, on Friday.David Richardson, the acting administrator of Fema, has not traveled to Texas. Richardson, a former US marine with no emergency management experience prior to his appointment in May, is most notable for his warning to agency staff to not oppose Trump’s plan for Fema or “I will run right over you.”“A lot of key people at Fema who worked there for years, decades in many cases, and hold the expertise that is needed to be able to actually move the resources of the agency, are gone. Fema is so depleted, it’s unclear if they are even capable of launching a huge response right now,” said Montano, author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis.“It’s not the same level as during [hurricane] Helene but there’s already a lot of inaccurate information out there, and Fema is no longer a trusted voice – we haven’t heard from the administrator, only secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem, which is very unusual. We’re almost at the point where we can say no one’s home at Fema… there is no trusted voice,” Montano added. The turmoil at the federal agencies tasked with predicting and responding to disaster comes as the threat from extreme weather grows due to the human-caused climate crisis. The Texas floods occurred in a warmer, more moisture-laden atmosphere than in the past, with one analysis finding that climate change has made conditions 7% wetter and 1.5C hotter than they would’ve been otherwise.“We have added a lot of carbon to the atmosphere, and that extra carbon traps energy in the climate system,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “Because of this extra energy, every weather event we see now carries some influence from climate change. The only question is how big that influence is.”Meanwhile on Monday the White House described the deadly Texas floods as “an act of God”. More

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      Floods are swallowing their village. Trump’s EPA cut a major lifeline for them and others

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      This story was originally published by FloodlightAcre by acre, the village of Kipnuk is falling into the river.The small Alaska tribal village sits on permafrost, which is thawing fast as global temperatures rise. That’s left the banks of the Kugkaktlik River unstable – and more likely to collapse when floods hit, as they often do. Buildings, boardwalks, wind turbines and other critical infrastructure are at risk, according to Rayna Paul, the village’s environmental director.So when the village learned late last year that it had been awarded a $20m federal grant to protect the riverbank, tribal members breathed a sigh of relief.But that relief was short-lived. On 2 May, the US Environmental Protection Agency canceled the grant. Without that help, Paul says, residents may be forced to relocate their village.“In the future, so much land will be in the river,” Paul says.Kipnuk’s grant was one of more than 600 that the EPA has canceled since Donald Trump took office, according to data obtained by Floodlight through a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request. Through 15 May, the cuts totalled more than $2.7bn.View image in fullscreenFloodlight’s analysis of the data shows:

      Environmental justice grants took by far the biggest hit, with more than $2.4bn in funding wiped out.

      The EPA has also canceled more than $120m in grants aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of cement, concrete and other construction materials. Floodlight reported in April that the cement industry’s carbon emissions rival those of some major countries – and that efforts to decarbonize the industry have lost momentum under the Trump administration.

      Blue states bore the brunt. Those states lost nearly $1.6bn in grant money – or about 57% of the funding cuts.

      The single largest grant canceled: A $95m award to the Research Triangle Institute, a North Carolina-based scientific research organization that had planned to distribute the money to underserved communities. RTI also lost five other EPA grants, totaling more than $36m.
      The EPA plans to cut even more grants, with the Washington Post reporting in late April on a court filing that showed it had targeted 781 grants issued under Biden.The Foia shows that the majority of these have now been canceled; more cuts could follow.Lawsuit challenges grant cancellationsLast month, a coalition of non-profits, tribes and local governments sued the EPA, alleging the Trump administration broke the law by canceling environmental and climate justice grants that Congress had already funded.“Terminating these grant programs caused widespread harm and disruption to on-the-ground projects that reduce pollution, increase community climate resilience and build community capacity to tackle environmental harms,” said Hana Vizcarra, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, one of the non-profits that filed the lawsuit. “We won’t let this stand.”The EPA declined to comment on the lawsuit. But in a written response to Floodlight, the agency said this about the grant cancellations: “The Biden-Harris Administration shouldn’t have forced their radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission. The Trump EPA will continue to work with states, tribes, and communities to support projects that advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”Congress created the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant program in 2022 when it enacted the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Joe Biden’s landmark climate bill. The program was designed to help the disadvantaged communities that are often hit hardest by pollution and climate change.But on 20 January, Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order halting funding under the IRA, including money for environmental justice. Trump also cancelled Biden-era executive orders that federal agencies prioritize tackling environmental racism, and separately in his orders on diversity, equity and inclusion called for the closures of all environmental justice offices and positions in the federal government​.Underserved communities are often the most vulnerable to climate impacts such as heatwaves and flooding because they have fewer resources to prepare or recover, according to a 2021 analysis by the EPA.Inside the agency, not everyone agrees with the new direction. In a “declaration of dissent”, more than 200 current and former EPA employees spoke out against Trump administration policies, including the decision to dismantle the agency’s environmental justice program.“Canceling environmental justice programs is not cutting waste; it is failing to serve the American people,” they wrote.On Thursday, the EPA put 139 of the employees who signed the petition on administrative leave, Inside Climate News reported.From hope to heartbreak in TexasThe people at Downwinders at Risk, a small Texas non-profit that helps communities harmed by air pollution, thought they were finally getting a break.Last year, they learned that the EPA had awarded them a $500,000 grant – enough to install nine new air quality monitors in working-class neighborhoods near asphalt shingle plants, a gas well and a fracking operation in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The data would have helped residents avoid the worst air and plan their days around pollution spikes.View image in fullscreenBut on 1 May, the group’s three employees received the news they had been dreading: Their grant had been canceled.“It was a very bitter pill to swallow,” said Caleb Roberts, the group’s executive director.He and his team had devoted more than 100 hours to the application and compliance process.The non-profit’s annual budget is just over $250,000, and the federal funding would have allowed the group to expand its reach after years of scraping by. They had even paused fundraising for six months, confident the federal money was on the way.“We feel like we’re at ground zero again,” Roberts said. “And that’s just very unfortunate.”Floodlight is a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action More

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      The Bezos wedding was a study in disingenuous billionaire behavior | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      If last week was the best of times for Zohran Mamdani and the working people of New York City, it was the worst of times for the billionaires who spent a small fortune trying to stop him from securing the city’s Democratic mayoral nomination. The media mogul Barry Diller, to name just one, donated a cool $250,000 to Andrew Cuomo’s campaign, only to see the disgraced former governor lose by a decisive margin.But Diller would soon be able to drown his disappointment in Great Gatsby-themed cocktails as he joined Tom Brady, Ivanka Trump and at least three Kardashians for the cheeriest event on this season’s oligarchic social calendar: the Venetian wedding of the former TV journalist Lauren Sánchez and the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.It was a juxtaposition that even CNN questioned, as the network cut from an interview with Mamdani to coverage of the gilded spectacle. The reportedly $50m affair booked all nine of Venice’s yacht ports, closed parts of the city to the public and forced the relocation of hotel guests to make room for the happy couple. It all served as a stark if sumptuous reminder that there is no expense the megarich won’t pay to secure their own comfort – except, of course, the toll their extravagance takes on the communities from whom they extract their wealth.The lovebirds’ choice of Venice alone demonstrates their carelessness. Because the city comprises more than 100 islands in the Adriatic Sea, it’s uniquely vulnerable to rising sea levels driven by warming global temperatures. Though Sánchez claims to be “dedicated to fighting climate change”, and Bezos has called the issue “the biggest threat to our planet”, their guests arrived in the City of Bridges via 96 private jets, the most carbon-intensive mode of transportation. Bezos has made splashy commitments to fighting climate change, like pledging $10bn to his Bezos Earth Fund, while Amazon has promised to become carbon neutral by 2040. But emissions from Amazon’s delivery fleet soared from 2019 to 2023, and its newest data center will guzzle millions of gallons of water and the energy equivalent of one million homes every year.This disingenuousness is as much a business strategy for Bezos as Prime’s two-day delivery, enabling him to launder his reputation without hurting his bottom line. The pattern played out last year with his ownership of the Washington Post – where, as soon as he felt threatened by an ascendant Donald Trump, journalistic integrity fell overboard more quickly than an inebriated wedding guest on a luxury gondola.As I covered in a column earlier this year, Bezos killed the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, directed the editorial board to publish op-eds that only support “personal liberties and free markets” and oversaw the exodus of more than 20 reporters and editors. Pamela Weymouth, granddaughter of trailblazing Post publisher Katharine Graham, described this capitulation in a recent piece for the Nation as endangering “the very thing that makes America a democracy”.In fairness to Bezos, though, charity-washing is an occupational hazard for billionaires. Mark Zuckerberg initially donated to organizations fighting the California housing crisis that he helped exacerbate, before quietly ending his funding this year. The Gates Foundation gives 90% of its funding to non-profits in wealthy countries rather than the impoverished ones whose GDPs are smaller than its namesake’s net worth. The magnanimity of the uber-wealthy tends to produce what the journalist Anand Giridharadas has called “fake change”, or efforts that stop short of systemic change because those systems underpin the benefactors’ vast wealth.That’s why any vision of progressive change cannot rely on Bezos or his celebrity wedding guests to operate against their self-interest. (No, not even Oprah.) A Green New Deal will not come from oligarchical guilt, but from mass movements. Like the one that deployed almost 30,000 door knockers and pooled funds from 27,000 donors to share Mamdani’s message of genuine economic empowerment.Mamdani’s victory on Tuesday added to a growing body of proof that even billionaires don’t always get what they want. Last year, Elon Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars electing Republicans, but no amount of money could save him from Donald Trump’s mercurial temper. Nor did his wealth sway the voters of Wisconsin, where he contributed $21m to a state supreme court candidate who ended up losing by 10 points.Voters’ growing skepticism of the 1% is no doubt being stoked by grassroots activism. Like in Venice, where local protesters threatened to fill canals with inflatable crocodiles, forcing the wedding of the century to relocate to the city’s outskirts. Back stateside, progressives Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continue to draw record crowds across the country on their Fighting Oligarchy tour. At a recent stop in Oklahoma – a state Trump won by 33 points – Sanders spoke to a standing-room only crowd.Might a billionaire backlash be building, just in time for next year’s midterms? More

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      Key climate change reports removed from US government websites

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      Legally mandated US national climate assessments seem to have disappeared from the federal websites built to display them, making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their back yards from a warming world.Scientists said the peer-reviewed authoritative reports save money and lives. Websites for the national assessments and the US Global Change Research Program were down Monday and Tuesday with no links, notes or referrals elsewhere. The White House, which was responsible for the assessments, said the information will be housed within Nasa to comply with the law, but gave no further details.Searches for the assessments on Nasa websites did not turn them up. Nasa did not respond to requests for information. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which coordinated the information in the assessments, did not respond to repeated inquiries.“It’s critical for decision-makers across the country to know what the science in the National Climate Assessment is. That is the most reliable and well-reviewed source of information about climate that exists for the United States,” said Kathy Jacobs, a University of Arizona climate scientist, who coordinated the 2014 version of the report.“It’s a sad day for the United States if it is true that the National Climate Assessment is no longer available,” Jacobs added. “This is evidence of serious tampering with the facts and with people’s access to information, and it actually may increase the risk of people being harmed by climate-related impacts.”Harvard climate scientist John Holdren, who was Barack Obama’s science adviser and whose office directed the assessments, said that after the 2014 edition, he visited governors, mayors and other local officials who told him how useful the 841-page report had been. It helped them decide whether to raise roads, build seawalls and even move hospital generators from basements to roofs, he said.“This is a government resource paid for by the taxpayer to provide the information that really is the primary source of information for any city, state or federal agency who’s trying to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate,” said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who has been a volunteer author for several editions of the report.Copies of past reports are still squirreled away in Noaa’s library. Nasa’s open science data repository includes dead links to the assessment site.The most recent report, issued in 2023, includes an interactive atlas that zooms down to the county level. It found that climate change is affecting people’s security, health and livelihoods in every corner of the country in different ways, with minority and Native American communities often disproportionately at risk.The 1990 Global Change Research Act requires a national climate assessment every four years and directs the president to establish an interagency United States Global Change Research Program. In the spring, the Trump administration told the volunteer authors of the next climate assessment that their services weren’t needed and ended the contract with the private firm that helps coordinate the website and report.Additionally, Noaa’s main climate.gov website was recently forwarded to a different Noaa website. Social media and blogs at Noaa and Nasa about climate impacts for the general public were cut or eliminated.“It’s part of a horrifying big picture,” Holdren said. “It’s just an appalling whole demolition of science infrastructure.”The national assessments are more useful than international climate reports put out by the UN every seven or so years because they are more localized and more detailed, Hayhoe and Jacobs said.The national reports are not only peer-reviewed by other scientists, but examined for accuracy by the National Academy of Sciences, federal agencies, the staff and the public.Hiding the reports would be censoring science, Jacobs said.It’s also dangerous for the country, Hayhoe said, comparing it to steering a car on a curving road by only looking through the rearview mirror: “And now, more than ever, we need to be looking ahead to do everything it takes to make it around that curve safely. It’s like our windshield’s being painted over.” More

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      Trump’s tax bill seeks to prevent AI regulations. Experts fear a heavy toll on the planet

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      US Republicans are pushing to pass a major spending bill that includes provisions to prevent states from enacting regulations on artificial intelligence. Such untamed growth in AI will take a heavy toll upon the world’s dangerously overheating climate, experts have warned.About 1bn tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide are set to be emitted in the US just from AI over the next decade if no restraints are placed on the industry’s enormous electricity consumption, according to estimates by researchers at Harvard University and provided to the Guardian.This 10-year timeframe, a period of time in which Republicans want a “pause” of state-level regulations upon AI, will see so much electricity use in data centers for AI purposes that the US will add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than Japan does annually, or three times the yearly total from the UK.The exact amount of emissions will depend on power plant efficiency and how much clean energy will be used in the coming years, but the blocking of regulations will also be a factor, said Gianluca Guidi, visiting scholar at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.“By limiting oversight, it could slow the transition away from fossil fuels and reduce incentives for more energy-efficient AI energy reliance,” Guidi said.“We talk a lot about what AI can do for us, but not nearly enough about what it’s doing to the planet. If we’re serious about using AI to improve human wellbeing, we can’t ignore the growing toll it’s taking on climate stability and public health.”Donald Trump has vowed that the US will become “the world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto” and has set about sweeping aside guardrails around AI development and demolishing rules limiting greenhouse gas pollution.The “big beautiful” reconciliation bill passed by Republicans in the House of Representatives would bar states from adding their own regulations upon AI and the GOP-controlled Senate is poised to pass its own version doing likewise.Unrestricted AI use is set to deal a sizable blow to efforts to tackle the climate crisis, though, by causing surging electricity use from a US grid still heavily reliant upon fossil fuels such as gas and coal. AI is particularly energy-hungry – one ChatGPT query needs about 10 times as much electricity as a Google search query.Carbon emissions from data centers in the US have tripled since 2018, with an upcoming Harvard research paper finding that the largest “hyperscale” centers now account for 2% of all US electricity use.“AI is going to change our world,” Manu Asthana, chief executive of the PJM Interconnection, the US largest grid, has predicted. Asthana estimated that almost all future increase in electricity demand will come from data centers, adding the equivalent of 20m new homes to the grid in the next five years.The explosive growth of AI has, meanwhile, worsened the recent erosion in climate commitments made by big tech companies. Last year, Google admitted that its greenhouse gas emissions have grown by 48% since 2019 due to its own foray into AI, meaning that “reducing emissions may be challenging” as AI further takes hold.Proponents of AI, and some researchers, have argued that advances in AI will aid the climate fight by increasing efficiencies in grid management and other improvements. Others are more skeptical. “That is just a greenwashing maneuver, quite transparently,” said Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. “There have been some absolutely nonsense things said about this. Big tech is mortgaging the present for a future that will never come.”While no state has yet placed specific green rules upon AI, they may look to do so given cuts to federal environmental regulations, with state lawmakers urging Congress to rethink the ban. “If we were expecting any rule-making at the federal level around data centers it’s surely off the table now,” said Hanna. “It’s all been quite alarming to see.”Republican lawmakers are undeterred, however. The proposed moratorium cleared a major hurdle over the weekend when the Senate parliamentarian decided that the proposed ban on state and local regulation of AI can remain in Trump’s tax and spending mega-bill. The Texas senator Ted Cruz, the Republican who chairs the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, changed the language to comply with the Byrd Rule, which prohibits “extraneous matters” from being included in such spending bills.The provision now refers to a “temporary pause” on regulation instead of a moratorium. It also includes a $500m addition to a grant program to expand access to broadband internet across the country, preventing states from receiving those funds if they attempt to regulate AI.The proposed AI regulation pause has provoked widespread concern from Democrats. The Massachusetts senator Ed Markey, a climate hawk, says he has prepared an amendment to strip the “dangerous” provision from the bill.“The rapid development of artificial intelligence is already impacting our environment, raising energy prices for consumers, straining our grid’s ability to keep the lights on, draining local water supplies, spewing toxic pollution in communities, and increasing climate emissions,” Markey told the Guardian.“However, instead of allowing states to protect the public and our planet, Republicans want to ban them from regulating AI for 10 years. It is shortsighted and irresponsible.”The Massachusetts congressman Jake Auchincloss has also called the proposal “a terrible idea and an unpopular idea”.“I think we have to realize that AI is going to suffuse in rapid order many dimensions of healthcare, media, entertainment, education, and to just proscribe any regulation of AI in any use case for the next decade is unbelievably reckless,” he said.Some Republicans have also come out against the provision, including the Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn and the Missouri senator Josh Hawley. An amendment to remove the pause from the bill would require the support of at least four Republican senators to pass.Hawley is said to be willing to introduce an amendment to remove the provision later this week if it is not eliminated beforehand.Earlier this month, the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene admitted she had missed the provision in the House version of the bill, and that she would not have backed the legislation if she had seen it. The far-right House Freedom caucus, of which Greene is a member, has also come out against the AI regulation pause. More