July 8, 2025.

111 people are dead and more than 160 are still missing in Texas after Friday's tragic flood.

Who's to blame? Texas Governor Greg Abbott repeated back to a reporter. That's the word

choice of losers. Every football team makes mistakes, he continued, referring to Texas's popular

sport. The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who's to blame. The championship teams

are the ones that say, don't worry

about it, ma'am, we've got this. Abbott's defensive answer reveals the dilemma

Maga Republicans find themselves in after the cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration, or NOAA, and the National Weather Service Service that came before the Texas disaster.

Scott Calvert, John West, Jim Carleton, and Joe Barrett of the Wall Street Journal

reported that after a deadly flood in 1987, officials in Kerr County applied for a grant

to install a flood warning system, but their application was denied.

They considered installing one paid for by the county, but decided against it.

Then county commissioner, Thomas Moser, told the reporters,

it was probably just, I hate to say the word, priorities, trying not to raise taxes.

Since 1980, Republican politicians have won voters by promising to cut taxes they claimed funded wasteful programs for women and racial and ethnic minorities.

Cutting government programs would save money, they said, enabling hardworking Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money.

But leaders recognized that Republican voters actually depended on government programs,

so they continued to fund them, even as they passed tax cuts that moved more than $50 trillion

from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.

Now, in Trump's second term, MAGA Republicans are turning Republican rhetoric into reality,

forcing Americans to grapple with what those cuts really mean for their lives.

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