The federal government has been dismantling weather systems left and right. Those systems could have given valuable minutes of warning. Flash floods do happen, but even 10 minutes of warning can pretty much save everyone.

All this is true

The reason they did not have this warning is because of Donald Trump. And then after him every single republican politician.

This is not clear. What does a warning from the NWS look like? Because they issued them:

At 4:06 a.m. the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio posted on X: “A very dangerous flash flooding event is ongoing.” It ended: “Turn Around, Don’t Drown!”

Then, at 5:15 a.m. the National Weather Service San Angelo posted on X that there was a flash flood emergency. The Austin/San Antonio office posted on its X account about the emergency at 5:23 a.m. This type of alert is “exceedingly rare” and used when there is a “severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage,” according to the National Weather Service.

But how does this message get to people who are asleep? The best answer is the Wireless Emergency Alert system. I haven’t seen any information one way or the other indicating whether this system was activated in a timely manner. If it wasn’t, that was a serious mistake that costed lives.

Let me be clear that cuts to the NWS are going to end up costing lives. There is no doubt about that. But I think it’s important to understand the reality of a situation rather than reflexively blaming Trump