President Donald Trump and first girl Melania Trump will journey to Texas on Friday to fulfill with first responders and grieving households within the aftermath of final week’s catastrophic flooding that has left greater than 100 folks lifeless.
Throughout his go to, Trump is predicted to obtain a briefing from native elected officers and meet with victims’ relations. He can be joined by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn instructed reporters this week that they deliberate to journey with Trump to tour the flood injury. It’s unclear whether or not state Lawyer Common Ken Paxton, a staunch ally of the administration who’s difficult Cornyn in subsequent yr’s GOP major, will be part of them.
Authorities proceed to look miles of the Guadalupe River for greater than 150 individuals who stay lacking as hopes of discovering extra survivors dwindle. Amongst these confirmed or feared lifeless are 27 youngsters and counselors at Camp Mystic, a Christian summer time camp in Hunt.
Trump on Sunday signed a significant catastrophe declaration for Texas to make federal funding accessible for hard-hit Kerr County, the place practically 77% of voters backed him within the 2024 election.
The journey to Texas can be Trump’s second to the location of a pure catastrophe since he was inaugurated for his second time period; he visited Los Angeles in January after a wildfire devastated massive swaths of Southern California. Throughout his first time period, he made a number of journeys to Texas in 2017 within the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and its lethal floods. The identical yr, he traveled to Puerto Rico to survey injury brought on by Hurricane Maria.
The Trump administration has confronted criticism from officers and lawmakers at varied ranges of presidency who’ve argued that current job cuts on the Nationwide Climate Service and the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, alongside plans to shutter the Federal Emergency Administration Company, prevented correct forecasting and worsened the results of the floods. Administration officers have repeatedly rejected these assertions.
Trump has pledged to “get rid” of FEMA, which is a part of the Division of Homeland Safety, and his administration has overseen a largely voluntary exodus of skilled personnel on the company, fueling considerations about its means to promptly reply to disasters. The considerations had been heightened by a brand new coverage from Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem mandating her approval for any company spending in extra of $100,000.
Requested by NBC Information on Thursday whether or not the brand new coverage delayed FEMA’s response to the tragedy in Texas, Trump defended Noem.
“We had been proper on time. We had been there — in actual fact, she was the primary one I noticed on tv,” Trump instructed “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in a telephone name. “She was there proper from the start.”
Criticism of the catastrophe response has additionally targeted on Kerr County’s emergency administration system after reviews indicated native officers didn’t use warnings from FEMA to ship textual content alerts when the severity and velocity of the flooding heightened, catching a whole lot of individuals in a area often known as “flash flood alley” unexpectedly. As well as, Kerr County, which has a inhabitants of greater than 50,000 folks, had no siren system to alert residents, partly as a result of some native officers felt it was too costly to put in.
Trump known as for extra flood alarms in Texas on Thursday, although he argued that the storm was unprecedented and that “no one ever noticed a factor like this coming.”
“After having seen this horrible occasion, I might think about you’d put alarms up in some kind, the place alarms would go up in the event that they see any massive quantities of water or no matter it’s,” he instructed NBC Information.
Joe Herring, the mayor of Kerrville, instructed MSNBC’s Katy Tur this week that the state rejected an effort to put in a siren system practically a decade in the past.
“The county authorities seemed into that in 2017, and from what I heard, their grant software was denied,” Herring mentioned. “I wasn’t in authorities at the moment, however it feels like we talked about it, we requested for assist, and we had been denied earlier than.”
