Anti-Trump NWS union official agrees with Trump that NWS staffers 'did their job' ahead of deadly Texas flash floods

By 
 July 8, 2025

Democrats, media pundits, and partisan haters wasted no time in politicizing a deadly disaster to blame President Donald Trump and his cuts to the budget and staffing of the National Weather Service for the tragic loss of dozens of lives in catastrophic flash flooding in south-central Texas on Friday.

Yet, a top official with the NWS workers' union, a self-proclaimed enemy of the Republican president, found himself agreeing with Trump and defending him against false accusations that NWS cuts had prevented the agency from adequately warning the public of the imminent flood danger, Breitbart reported.

The union official's surprising about-face on the president comes as several meteorologists and media outlets, all of whom have been highly critical of the NWS funding and staffing reductions, have boldly pushed back against the left's fraudulent narrative that Trump's cuts are directly responsible for the horrific death and destruction.

Union official agrees with Trump that NWS workers "did their job"

During an interview on Monday on "CBS Mornings," National Weather Service Employees Organization Legislative Director Tim Fahy shared his thoughts on the emerging criticism over the weekend against President Trump's insistence that NWS workers did their jobs ahead of the disastrous flash flooding with timely warnings and sufficient forecasts of heavy localized rainfall.

"The forecasters did their job," Fahy said. "There [are] very few times when I’ll be in a position that I have to agree with the President of the United States. When he spoke last night that the forecasters at the National Weather Service offices at San Angelo and San Antonio got the forecast right, the President said they did their job, and they did."

The union official went on to note that the timeline of forecasts and early warnings issued hours ahead of the devastating flash floods proved that "the forecasters immediately saw what they had to do and issued a catastrophic alert, which triggered, of course, the flood emergency warning," which in turn triggered other subsequent emergency alert systems to promptly get the word out to the general public.

Fahy later acknowledged that, yes, there were a few "management vacancies" at the relevant regional NWS offices in Texas, "But we had an all-hands-on-deck situation where we had a full complement, full staff of meteorologists working in those shifts," who were "working on overdrive" and delivering "maximum effort" to keep the public adequately informed ahead of the dangerous developing situation.

Extra staffers were on hand, ample warnings were issued

Despite the accusations from partisan critics that President Trump's cuts to the NWS budget and staffing prevented the federal agency from effectively forecasting, monitoring, and warning of the excessive rainfall and flash flooding in south-central Texas, the Associated Press reported that the NWS office in New Braunfels, which provides coverage for the impacted area, "had extra staff on duty during the storms."

Indeed, per NWS meteorologist Jason Runyen, who works in the New Braunfels office, while there are typically only two meteorologists on duty on a normal day, there were five staffers in the office that night, and he further explained, "There were extra people in here that night, and that’s typical in every weather service office — you staff up for an event and bring people in on overtime and hold people over."

The AP further noted that the NWS began issuing flash flood watches more than 12 hours before the torrential downpour began and continuously updated the public with "increasingly ominous" warnings and emergency alerts over the ensuing hours as conditions worsened and before the flood waters swiftly rose around 30 feet in less than two hours Friday morning.

NWS cuts had "absolutely nothing" to do with the flash flood tragedy

According to a Substack blog post from Houston-based meteorologist Matt Lanza, the historic and fatal flash floods that swept the floodplain of the Guadalupe River were the result of the remnants of a tropical storm from the Gulf combining with a separate storm system that was moving slowly northward from Mexico and stalled out over the affected area in south-central Texas for multiple days.

Lanza, who has been sharply critical of President Trump's cuts to the NWS, addressed the current narrative of Trump's purported culpability and wrote, "In this particular case, we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within NOAA and the NWS played any role at all in this event. Anyone using this event to claim that is being dishonest."

"There are many places you can go with expressing thoughts on the current and proposed cuts," he continued. "We've been very vocal about them here. But this is not the right event for those takes."

"In fact, weather balloon launches played a vital role in forecast messaging on Thursday night as the event was beginning to unfold," the meteorologist added. "If you want to go that route, use this event as a symbol of the value NOAA and NWS bring to society, understanding that as horrific as this is, yes, it could always have been even worse."

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