Defunded: How Trump’s War on Public Agencies Endangers Us
The Deadly Consequences of Dismantling America's Weather, Health, and Safety Systems
“You can’t crowdsource hurricane forecasting. You can’t privatize tornado warnings. And you can’t expect parents to rescue their children from a raging flood with an app and a prayer!”
When the water rose 26 feet in 45 minutes on the Guadalupe River in Texas, there was no time to evacuate. In the early hours of a summer morning, families woke to sirens, if they were lucky. Some heard nothing at all. Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ camp nestled along the river, was swept into chaos. By nightfall, at least 24 people were confirmed dead and dozens still missing.
Texas Division of Emergency Management chief W. Nim Kidd at the Friday night news conference said:
“One National Weather Service forecast earlier in the week had called for up to six inches of rain… It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.”
But the truth is much uglier: this is what happens when you gut government agencies in the name of “efficiency.”
This was not an isolated weather event. It was the consequence of years of deliberate defunding and political sabotage aimed at NOAA, the National Weather Service, FEMA, the CDC, the FDA, and every public-facing agency that exists to safeguard life. What happened in Texas is a microcosm of the disaster already underway across the country. And unless reversed, it is only a preview of worse to come.
A Forecast of Failure
In recent years, the National Weather Service has endured budget cuts so deep they have crippled its ability to function. Just weeks before the Texas flood, the NWS had laid off nearly 600 employees. That is as many staff as it lost in the previous 15 years combined. Offices across the country are closing or reducing around-the-clock forecasting. Balloon launches used to gather real-time atmospheric data are increasingly canceled or eliminated altogether.
In Texas, officials were quick to blame federal forecasters. But it is hard to forecast without staff, satellites, equipment, or funding. The technology that could have saved lives, including high-resolution radar, predictive AI models, and regional storm tracking, now sits underfunded, understaffed, or shelved entirely. What do we expect when we replace meteorologists with political appointees and “cost-cutters”?
And it is not just the NWS. NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which provides essential data for understanding climate trends and extreme weather, is targeted for elimination under the latest Trump administration budget proposals. That includes slashing weather modeling labs and climate monitoring programs, the very tools that could have warned communities like Kerrville of what was coming.
Gutting the Guardians
This is not just about weather. Across the board, America’s public agencies are under siege. The Trump administration, through its so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” has led a ruthless campaign to dismantle decades of institutional knowledge. Career scientists and administrators are being forced out. Staff at the CDC, FDA, EPA, NIH, FEMA, and USDA have all seen hiring freezes, mass layoffs, and entire programs scrapped.
What binds these agencies together is their mission to protect the public good. The FDA inspects our food. The CDC tracks pandemics. FEMA responds to disasters. The USDA safeguards our crops and livestock. NOAA and the NWS monitor our skies and seas. These are the unseen hands that keep civilization functioning.
Defunding them does not make America leaner. It makes America blind, deaf, and dangerously unprepared.
The Cost of Ideology
The people pushing these cuts claim they are saving money and fighting bureaucracy. What they are really doing is pushing a dangerous libertarian fantasy that the market, churches, or individuals can fill the vacuum left by government. They cannot. You cannot crowdsource hurricane forecasting. You cannot privatize tornado warnings. And you cannot expect parents to rescue their children from a raging flood with nothing but an app and a prayer.
The real motivation here is not efficiency. It is power. A government that cannot govern is easier to control. That is the long game. Sabotage agencies, watch them fail, then point to their failure as proof that they never worked in the first place. The end goal is a hollowed-out state run by private contractors, political cronies, and billionaire ideologues.
When the Trump administration cut pandemic preparedness programs at the CDC and dismissed infectious disease specialists, it was not about budgets. It was about control. When they stopped funding the National Climate Assessment, it was not because the data was flawed. It was because the truth was inconvenient. They are not just defunding science. They are silencing it.
Flooded Camps, Empty Promises
Back in Texas, the parents of the missing girls at Camp Mystic are left with questions no official can answer. Why was there no adequate warning? Why did FEMA arrive so late? Why were their daughters left in the path of a flood? These are the same questions that will echo across the country as climate chaos accelerates and public systems fail to respond.
Texas, ironically, is one of the states that has championed the hollowing out of federal services. State leaders often rail against “big government,” but when disaster strikes, they plead for FEMA assistance and federal rescue resources. The contradiction is glaring. You cannot curse Washington in a campaign ad and then blame it for not saving your constituents from floods you did nothing to prevent.
This is not limited to Texas. From wildfires in California to hurricanes in Florida, from opioid overdoses in Appalachia to foodborne illness outbreaks in the Midwest, the consequences of an absent government are growing. And those who suffer most are not the elites who call for cuts. They are the working-class Americans who depend on public systems to keep them safe.
What Happens When the FDA Fails?
While the weather dominates headlines, another slow disaster is unfolding at the FDA. As food supply chains grow more complex and climate change increases contamination risks, the FDA is losing both staff and inspection capacity. Already, some imported foods go uninspected. Drug approvals are rushed. Clinical trials are politicized.
If you think the COVID pandemic strained systems, imagine the next one, with a defunded CDC and an FDA too weak to regulate vaccine safety. Imagine another year like 2020, except this time, there is no infrastructure left to respond.
This Is Not Inevitable
Some will say we cannot afford big government. But what we cannot afford is more funerals for children swept away by preventable floods. We cannot afford to lose decades of scientific progress just to appease anti-government extremists. And we absolutely cannot afford to wait until another hurricane, pandemic, or firestorm exposes just how vulnerable we have made ourselves.
Government is not the enemy. It is the infrastructure of our shared safety. When it fails, we fail. When it is weakened, we suffer. And when it is gone, we are truly on our own.
A Moral Reckoning
The people who died in Texas were not victims of nature alone. They were victims of a political ideology that treats science as a threat, government as an enemy, and public institutions as disposable.
If we let this continue, if we continue to defund, deregulate, and disempower every agency that protects us, then we should expect more mass casualties. And we will deserve them.
What We Must Do Now
Restore full funding to NOAA, NWS, CDC, and FEMA. These agencies are essential public safety tools, not luxuries. Without them, we are flying blind into storms.
Reverse the political purges. Rehire scientists, forecasters, and experts forced out by ideological warfare. Government should be run by professionals, not political zealots.
Reinvest in climate preparedness. Floods like the one in Texas will become more common. Now is the time to build early warning systems, not dismantle them.
Hold leaders accountable. Demand that governors, legislators, and presidents answer for defunding life-saving systems. Every death from preventable disasters is on their hands.
Reject anti-government extremism. The idea that smaller government is always better has reached its moral limit. We need competent, compassionate, fully funded public institutions now more than ever.
The floodwaters will recede in Texas. But the damage will remain. And unless we change course, the next disaster will come, bigger, deadlier, and just as predictable.
We can no longer afford to pretend that dismantling the government makes us freer. It does not. It makes us more vulnerable, more divided, and more disposable.
Enough is enough. Bring back the forecasters. Bring back the scientists. Bring back the civil servants who dedicate their lives to protecting ours.
Because when the next warning siren fails to sound, and another child is swept away, it will not be nature’s fault.
It will be ours.
Sources and Further Reading
Associated Press (2025). “27 Dead in Texas Flood.”
PBS NewsHour (2025). “NWS Staffing Cuts Left Forecast Offices Understaffed.”
The Guardian (2025). “Key US Weather Monitoring Offices Understaffed as Hurricane Season Starts.”
Axios (2025). “New NOAA Document Spells Out Further Deep Trump Cuts.”
Washington Post (2025). “How the Trump Administration Is Already Cutting Off Climate Research.”
American Meteorological Society. “Stand Up for NOAA Research: The Time to Act Is Now.”
FDA Congressional Testimony (2025)