White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the local and federal weather services provided sufficient warnings to the Kerr County community before the floods.
“That was an act of God. It’s not the administration’s fault that the flood hit when it did, but there were early and consistent warnings and, again, the National Weather Service did its job”
Leavitt said. She outlined that on July 3, the NWS office in Austin-San Antonio conducted briefings for local officials and issued a flood watch in the early afternoon. That was followed by numerous flood warnings on the night of July 3 and in the pre-dawn hours of July 4, giving a lead time of three hours before the flash flood. In response to a subsequent question about the warnings and why they were issued when people were likely asleep, Leavitt repeated that the offices were fully staffed.
It’s the cultural root of a lot of neoliberal ideology, that the world is full of victims without corresponding perpetrators. Everything bad in society (that can’t be blamed on foreigners, queers, communists, etc.) is like bad weather, it’s a shame that it happens but it’s no one’s fault. But even our response to the weather itself can and should be understood as part of the priorities of the powers that be, and there are real systems of perpetrators that need to be dealt with (DOGE being the relevant example here).
Neoliberalism
Passive Voice
a deity-involved flooding