Editor:
July 4, 2025 will live on in our national consciousness for two reasons. For one, it was the day President Trump signed his big tax and domestic policy bill into law. And it was also the day of the tragic flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas.
There is shock as we are face to face again with the destructive force of nature and with the fragility of human life. So many precious lives lost here, so many left to grieve. And no one is to blame. But in hindsight, we are bound to ask how the tragedy might have been lessened.
An earlier warning system had stopped working and not been replaced. In an interview this past week, Texas state Representative Joe Moody spoke about legislation introduced earlier this year that would coordinate and leverage resources to empower local community preparedness. “This is what the power of government can do … and we need to harness that power in circumstances like this.”
The emergency response by Texas personnel and by volunteers has been great. But the fact remains that having infrastructure and systems in place is critical. And that is why this tragedy is shedding new light on the cuts to the National Weather Service, to NOAA and to FEMA.
On July 5, the day after the floods hit, FEMA received 3,027 calls from survivors and answered 3,018 of them. But that same day, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem chose not to renew contracts for four call centers and when 16,419 calls came in two days later, only 2,613 were answered.
One reason funding for FEMA has been tight is because there’s been so much focus on immigration enforcement. Apparently, this is also accounts for some of the rush to get the big bill signed. It was strangely fitting then that news of the US House passage of the Senate version came while President Trump was touring a new detention center in the Florida Everglades.
Designed to hold 5,000 undocumented immigrants, the facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” tents with cages inside, will cost $450 million a year.
The president said: “that’s not a place I want to go hiking. But very soon this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.”
The latest statistics by ICE indicate that 71% of the 57,861 people detained have no criminal record.
While Medicaid and food stamps funding is cut, while critical research and investments in education and public health are canceled, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act provides for a $170 billion investment in border security. A windfall for private prison corporations and promise of a lot of ugliness ahead.
This vision of our country, as just so many winners and losers, and where the losers are just so many anonymous and deportable commodities, is not worthy of us. And the cynical version of democratic governance we are witnessing is a sad caricature of the ideal, the custom and laws, that we have obtained in our best moments.
Thankfully, closer to home, in our communities, in our schools, in our families, we are still living a kinder version of America. Now and then, we look up, in the classroom or in the grocery store, and see and sense again the beauty and promise of our wonderful diversity.
Steve Bullington
Adrian, Ga.