Headline Roundup • July 10th, 2025
Was the National Weather Service Prepared for the Deadly Texas Flooding?
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Floods in Texas have killed over 100 people and over 100 remain missing, sparking questions about the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and whether they could have affected response efforts.
From The Left: Some outlets from the left have suggested federal cuts could have negatively impacted responses. The New York Times (Lean Left bias) reported that “crucial positions” at Texas’ arm of the NWS were vacant as the floods happened. The Guardian (Left) published a similar article. CNN (Lean Left), in television coverage, said, “What’s… unclear is whether cuts to the National Weather Service impacted how warnings were disseminated.” WIRED (Left), on the other hand, reported speaking to experts who said that despite the hundreds of jobs cut, the NWS “accurately predicted the state's weekend flood risk.” Associated Press (Left) highlighted scrutiny faced by officials, but at the end of its coverage reported that the NWS called in extra staff during the storms.
From The Center: Newsweek (Center) reported speaking to White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, who said, “False claims about the NWS have been repeatedly debunked by meteorologists, experts, and other public reporting.”
From The Right: The Center Square (Lean Right) highlighted that despite national and state warnings issued days in advance, many of those killed did not evacuate. The New York Post (Lean Right) highlighted reports that Texas officials in Kerr County, where 27 people at a Christian summer camp were killed, chose not to install a flash flood warning system because it was too expensive. The National Review's Editorial Board (Right) penned a headline, "Don’t Blame DOGE for Texas Flood Tragedy."
Coverage Note: Several outlets across the spectrum included several of these details in their respective pieces of coverage but chose to highlight certain aspects of the story in their headlines.
Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Support our mission.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Eric Vryn/Getty Images
At least 27 people, including nine children, are dead in central Texas after flash floods struck suddenly on the morning of the Fourth of July holiday. After a storm in which a month’s worth of rain fell in some regions in just a few hours, officials say they rescued more than 850 people from the floods over Friday and Saturday. A number of people were still missing as of Saturday afternoon, including 27 young campers from a Christian girls’ camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River.
Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.
As the death count in the Independence Day flooding in central Texas has now surpassed that of Hurricane Harvey, with dozens of children reported dead and missing who were camping at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texans are asking why a warning system wasn't in place and why the camp didn’t evacuate when others did.
On Wednesday and Thursday, a series of emergency weather alerts were issued by the National Weather Service and Texas Division of Emergency Management. Despite a decades-long history of flash floods in the Texas Hill Country,...
AllSides Picks
Blog
We’re Bringing Ads Back — But You Can Turn Them Off For Free
John Gable, AllSides Co-founder
June 1st, 2026
