CNN
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President Donald Trump is traveling to central Texas on Friday to survey the aftermath of a catastrophic flood that has killed more than 100 people and put his administration on the sudden defensive over its emergency response efforts.
The flooding, which overwhelmed whole neighborhoods in a matter of minutes, has sparked mounting scrutiny of the government’s warning systems and rescue operations – including a fresh set of bureaucratic obstacles that slowed work by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the earliest phases of the response.
But Trump is expected to use the trip to tout the progress that search-and-rescue teams are making on the ground, in a show of solidarity aimed at quelling criticism and emphasizing the White House’s close coordination with Texas officials.
“It’s a no-brainer – you go out there and you let people know you care about them,” said one person close to the White House. “President Trump does not want to see things like this happen on his watch. And he views himself as a fixer.”
Trump, who will travel to Texas with first lady Melania Trump, is expected to meet with first responders in the area and receive a briefing from local elected officials, according to a White House official. The president is also planning to meet with some families who were affected by the flood, the official said. The trip has been designed, in part, to not interfere with ongoing search and rescue and recovery efforts.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz are among those expected to be on site with Trump as well. And Sen. John Cornyn, who is facing a bruising primary challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, is slated to travel aboard Air Force One with Trump, a Cornyn aide confirmed. The trip comes a day after Paxton’s wife filed for divorce, citing “biblical grounds” for ending their 38-year marriage. Trump has so far stayed neutral in the race.
The trip marks the White House’s latest show of support for Texas’ recovery effort, even as Trump officials continue to push for downsizing the government’s emergency preparedness operations – or even eliminating FEMA altogether.
And it represents a stark contrast with Trump’s attitude earlier this year toward California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he targeted with harsh criticism amid the blue state’s battle against devastating wildfires.
Trump ultimately visited California in his first domestic trip after taking office, greeting Newsom on the tarmac upon his arrival. But the two have since continued to tussle over a request for billions of dollars in recovery aid for California that remains in limbo.
“Would he do that with Texas? Probably not,” said one Republican operative close to the administration. “There is a difference in terms of how he approaches these things, depending on whether it’s a red state or a blue state.”
In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson rejected the suggestion that Trump has taken different approaches to certain states based on their politics.
“President Trump has led historic disaster recovery efforts in both California and North Carolina – he’s doing the same in Texas,” Jackson said, citing federal efforts to help quickly remove debris in southern California and support the cleanup process in western North Carolina. “Any claim that the President is giving certain states preferential treatment is not only wrong, it’s idiotic and misinformed.”
Trump has targeted political opponents for their handling of natural disasters in the past, criticizing then-President Joe Biden following deadly wildfires in Hawaii in 2023 and fanning conspiracy theories about the Biden administration’s response in North Carolina to Hurricane Helene last year.
Trump even briefly suggested Biden might be culpable in some way for the flooding in Texas, initially telling reporters that his predecessor was responsible for the water “setup.” It was unclear what he was referring to, and Trump quickly clarified he wasn’t blaming Biden. Since then, Trump and his top aides have avoided casting blame, while accusing critics of the administration’s response of trying to politicize a tragedy. The White House has maintained that the disaster was largely inescapable, while commending the efforts of Abbott – a close political ally – and other state and local officials.
In pictures: Deadly flooding in Texas
“There’s never been a wave like this, outside of the breaking of a dam,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “And this is the kind of thing that built up so fast, and it’s happened two or three times over the years, but not to this extent.”
The White House has pushed back hard on suggestions that its policies weakened the government’s defenses against such disaster threats. Some Democrats had publicly fretted that deep cuts to the federal bureaucracy would end up restricting the staffing and resources available in emergency situations.
After Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, raised questions over whether efforts to reduce staff at the National Weather Service hampered forecasting of the heavy rains that caused the flash floods, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it a “depraved lie.”
“Many Democrat elected officials are trying to turn this into a political game, and it is not,” she said earlier this week. “This is a national tragedy.”
Trump officials, in meantime, have doubled down on their vows to shrink FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster management to individual states – even as advocates for the agency pointed to the Texas flooding as a timely example of why vast federal resources are necessary.
FEMA officials trying to pre-position search-and-rescue crews following the disaster ran into new spending approval requirements imposed by the Trump administration that slowed its work, CNN first reported on Wednesday. Those teams weren’t authorized for deployment until more than 72 hours after the flooding began.
“This would be an unmitigated, unforced disaster, and it would certainly exacerbate the toll of extreme weather events,” a group of House Democrats wrote in a letter Wednesday to FEMA and the agency in charge of the National Weather Service. The letter decried the planned dismantling of FEMA and called for congressional hearings on the flood response.
The Homeland Security Department, which oversees FEMA, has defended the federal response and insisted it will forge ahead on plans to overhaul the agency. The federal response, one Texas official said, has been “as good as anyone could ask for,” given the circumstances, describing Noem as responsive.
On Wednesday, Noem argued that FEMA needs to be “eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency.”
“Federal emergency management should be state and locally led, rather than how it has operated for decades,” she said.
One state official viewed Texas’ response to the flooding as “a model for what other states could do to start building out a framework for how to be better in control of their own disaster response.”
For Trump, though, allies said the visit represents a more immediate calculation ingrained in him during his first term and on the campaign trail: It pays to show up for those who he believes showed up for him at the ballot box, especially in deep-red states like Texas.
“This is totally on brand,” the person close to the White House said. “He wants to be on the ground.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
