Pearl River         Hello, contemporary climate would like to welcome the Trump administration to reality.  You thought we weren’t listening to all of this play pretend about climate change isn’t real, disasters won’t happen, and the states could handle everything without our help, didn’t you?  We thought we would put on a show about what a little rain might be able to do in Texas, for example.  President Trump, what do you have to say about FEMA closing now, while people are still unaccounted for in the flooding, and the death count is still rising?

If the climate could talk, maybe that’s the message it would be sending to the president now, but even without that ability, he’s getting the word.  As aggressive as the president is in going forward in one direction or another, he turns out to be lightning fast in the reverse gear as well.  After claiming he was going to shutter FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “after November,” when the threat of hurricanes eases, the latest word is the opposite.  Now, according to reports in the Washington Post, closing the agency is “off the table.”  Lamely, they try to spin the earlier folly of their position by now claiming they are just talking about some “rebranding” and clarifying the role of the states more clearly.

Yeah, right, we all believe that, don’t we?  The fact that post-flood reports indicate that the policy confusions within FEMA and the stranglehold on any expenditure approvals because of DOGE, meant delays by FEMA in opening up recovery and disaster centers didn’t have anything to do with this, right?  Hand it to Trump.  He may be a “blurter,” as the former field director for ACORN called the tendency of someone’s mouth moving before their mind was in enabled, but he’s not stupid or ashamed to turn his position around 180 degrees, when he realizes he messed up.  I’m not saying he will admit it or apologize.  Never.  I’m just saying he will go as fast in reverse, as he was moving in driving forward, and won’t stop for gas.

There was no way he wanted the blood on his hands in Texas that some local and county officials are feeling for having slow walked and denied implementation of better warning systems, including sirens, as we have argued. Where he had been “Johnny come lately” in North Carolina at times, and had flatly denied assistance in Arkansas for tornado damage, he got relief money from FEMA and the feds to Texas so fast their heads might have been spinning, if they hadn’t been so busy dealing with the flooding and covering their own asses.

Is this change of heart and policy permanent?  The president is so mercurial and impulsive that nothing is ever set in concrete.  Ask Ukraine?  Ask Putin?  Ask Syria?  Ask anybody.  The Arkansas Grassroots United letter that scores of groups have signed to deliver soon to their congressional delegation demanding FEMA be protected, now will more pointedly demand guarantees and increased funding, including for warning systems like sirens.  This terrible tragedy in Texas is a message to all of us, and it demands we turn this crisis into an opportunity to save lives in the future, that we didn’t protect in the past.