Texas flood puts spotlight on Trump nominee to lead agency that includes weather service
WASHINGTON — Last week’s devastating Hill Country flooding is likely to feature heavily in a Wednesday hearing on President Donald Trump’s nomination of Neil Jacobs to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That agency includes the National Weather Service, which is responsible for providing critical warnings of tornadoes, flash floods and other sudden natural disasters.
Jacobs is an atmospheric scientist who has worked in the weather monitoring industry and served as NOAA’s acting leader during part of the first Trump administration, according to NPR.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which is responsible for reviewing Jacobs’ nomination.
Cruz said he’s confident staffing will come up during the hearing.
Key weather service positions in Texas were unfilled when the flooding struck, although meteorologists say that didn’t prevent forecasters from issuing warnings and giving local officials time to evacuate.
Some Democrats have called for investigations into whether Trump administration job cuts hampered the response to the flooding, which has left at least 109 dead and more than 160 missing.
Cruz said some critics are blaming Trump cuts for the tragedy out of partisanship. He highlighted the warnings issued by the service ahead of the flooding and cited statements by the weather service union that staffing levels were adequate.
Once recovery efforts are completed, Cruz said, there will be time to explore what happened.
“At every level of government, federal, state and local, we will have an assessment of how we can make the emergency response more effective,” Cruz told reporters Tuesday. “But I think that should be done calmly based on the facts and not an exercise in political rock throwing.”
The federal government should always have enough staffing in areas of public safety, Cruz said, whether that involves weather forecasters or air traffic controllers.
“We can and should have a reasonable discussion about what level of staffing is appropriate, what more can be done,” Cruz said.
Other Texas Republicans also have pushed back on suggestions Trump administration cuts to the weather service hampered the flooding response.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the problem was not a failure of the weather service, but rather an extraordinary 100-year flood.
“Nobody dreamed that you’d get that sort of downpour in a short period of time and it would happen in the middle of the night when people were sleeping,” Cornyn said.
He said there will be time to review measures that could prevent such tragedies in the future.
“But people shouldn’t politicize it by trying to claim that it was a result of DOGE cuts or anything like that,” Cornyn said. “That’s a bunch of bull.”
U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, a Texas Republican, is chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee that has jurisdiction over the weather service.
Babin said in a statement that neither staffing levels nor funding cuts were responsible for the tragedy.
“We know the National Weather Service had five forecasters on duty at the local office — well above normal staffing — and issued warnings well ahead of the storm,” Babin said. “Forecasting continues to improve, but in the face of such loss, we must ask what more can be done.”
He said the panel intends to review the event and examine how legislation could strengthen communication systems and deploy new technologies to save lives.
A postponed hearing on new technologies for weather forecasting will be rescheduled soon and provide an opportunity to examine the flooding, Babin said.