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Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, July 11th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show wishing Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy the best as he takes on also being the interim administrator of NASA. Of course, he’s no Marco Rubio, who is Secretary of State, supposed Acting Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Acting Archivist for the National Archives, Interim National Security Advisor, and also should really finish picking up my dry cleaning. [music break] On today’s show, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked President Donald Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship after a class action challenge. And retiring Republican North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis unloads during a CNN exclusive interview, but let’s start with the massive floods in central Texas that have so far killed at least 120 people. President Trump is scheduled to arrive today to offer thoughts and prayers and hopefully not reflexively sort of blame the flood damage on former president Joe Biden again, but I’m not counting on it. Because we’ve gotten to my least favorite part of any horrible disaster, the blame game. And honestly, with some good reason. From the National Weather Service to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, many of the institutions tasked with every step of disaster mitigation have faced massive staffing cuts under the Trump administration. So, sorry, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, but using a football metaphor isn’t really going to help you here. 

[clip of Texas Governor Greg Abbott] Who’s to blame? Know this. That’s the word choice of losers. Let me explain one thing about Texas. And that is Texas, every square inch of our state, cares about football. You could be in Hunt, Texas. Huntsville, Texas. Houston, Texas. Any size community that care about football, high school, Friday night lights, college football, or pro. And know this. Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. The championship teams are the ones to say, don’t worry about it, man, we got this. 

Jane Coaston: Don’t worry about it? More than 100 people don’t die after a football game. People’s kids, spouses, grandparents, and friends don’t die after a football game. And nearly 200 people are still missing in Kerr County alone, which experienced the brunt of the floods over the Fourth of July weekend. Texans care about them, too. The stories of those who died in the flooding are truly horrifying. At Camp Mystic, a camp for girls located alongside the Guadalupe River, the floodwaters rose 26 feet in just 40 minutes overnight. Sweeping away entire cabins, and killing more than two dozen children, camp staff, and the director of the camp. He died trying to rescue campers. So, what did happen? What role did massive staffing cuts play, or not play, in preventing folks in Texas from getting out of harm’s way? To find out, I spoke to Richard Spinrad. He’s the former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service. Administrator Spinrad, welcome to What a Day. 

Richard Spinrad: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Jane Coaston: There’s been a lot of finger pointing about what systems broke down to notify those in Texas about the devastating flash floods that hit over the 4th of July weekend. But to start off, what are the biggest challenges weather scientists face when it comes to predicting the potential danger of any given storm, given our climate is changing and then conveying that danger down the chain to people in the storm’s path? Like what are the challenges when everything’s working perfectly? 

Richard Spinrad: I would say the two challenges are resolution and probability. And what I mean by that is the resolution, you’re not gonna get a forecast that says, here’s what’s gonna happen in your backyard. It will tell you that you’re gonna have a flash flood in this river. The forecast will tell that you can expect line winds. The forecast for bigger events may tell you you’re going to get a hurricane and it’s expected to hit within 20 miles of this spot on the coast. So that resolution issue is a real challenge for forecasters, but we’re getting better and better and better. The probability issue is probably the tougher one from the standpoint of, if you will, social sciences and behavioral sciences. In the same way that we don’t say it’s gonna rain at 4:37, what we’ll say is there’s an 80% chance of rain. In at at 4:30 or so. How do you as the public or a safety officer or a traffic control person determine what to do based on a probabilistic forecast 80 chance of flooding and that’s where there’s a lot of coordination between the weather service and the emergency management community and in fact the weather forecast offices around the country have a position called warning coordination meteorologist, whose job it is to interpret, hey, what does 90% chance or 60% chance of a flash flood in an hour really mean for emergency management? 

Jane Coaston: So looking at the Texas Flood specifically, local officials in Texas are pointing fingers at the National Weather Service saying that the Weather Service didn’t accurately predict the severity of the storm. You ran the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which oversees the Weather Service. What’s your take on what happened here? 

Richard Spinrad: I’d start by saying a flash flood warning is a flash flood warning. And at 1:14 in the morning of Friday, July 4th, the Weather Service issued a flash flooding warning. And I would point out they used words like considerable and catastrophic impact. The fact that the earlier forecast predicted something like eight inches of rain and there was more like 12 indicates we still have work to do on the forecast. But nevertheless, the eight inches of rain forecast was enough to trigger a flash flood warning. So saying, well, gee, you know, you didn’t get the exact amount of rainfall right, I believe is not necessarily relevant since the warning did go out. And had people received and been able to act on the warning, perhaps we wouldn’t have seen the kind of death and devastation that we did in this case. 

Jane Coaston: Democrats are also pointing to staffing shortages brought by the Trump administration in the last few months. You have said that this also played a role. Why do you think that that’s the more likely culprit? And if you could draw a line between staffing shortages and a lack of preparedness. 

Richard Spinrad: It’s probably too soon to give a definitive analysis and there will be a lot of assessments done by the state, by the emergency managers. Weather service will guarantee do an assessment on this. But because of staffing cuts, the fellow who was serving as the warning coordination meteorologist in the San Antonio weather forecast office, which is the office that issued this flash flood warning at 1:14 in the morning, retired at the end of April. And that position was vacant on Friday, July 4th. The way that position works is that when the warning goes out, it’s not sufficient. If I send you an email, Jane, I can’t assume you got it. And that’s the problem. The warning goes out, how do you know they got it? And so the warning coordination meteorologist’s job is to make sure they got it. And to be on the line. Be there to receive the questions from emergency managers. I have heard in the media that some emergency managers got the warning at one o’clock, 1:14 in the morning. Some did not. We’re gonna have to find out why that happened. But it’s clear to me that staff cuts had to have been a contributing factor to the inability of the emergency managers to respond. 

Jane Coaston: Going to your point, the Washington Post reported that since January, around 2,000 NOAA scientists and meteorologists have left the agency, either through firings, buyouts, or to your point, retirements. And the Supreme Court just gave the Trump administration the green light to lay off tens of thousands more federal workers across the government. But we’re also about to head into hurricane season along the East Coast, fire season along the West Coast. We’ve seen multiple instances of flash flooding just in the last week in Texas, North Carolina, and New Mexico, so what risks do you see on the horizon? 

Richard Spinrad: This is the real confounding issue, and one that is keeping a lot of people up is that these hazards don’t happen one after the next. A lot of times they’re happening at the same time. So yeah, you’re right. And one of the interesting things is part of the reason the San Antonio and San Angelo weather forecast offices in Texas were able to do so well in getting a forecast out is that they surged staff to those offices to make up for some of the shortfalls in staffing in those offices. You can’t do that. You end up playing musical chairs with staffing if you’re trying to deal with hurricanes, floods, droughts, fires, heatwaves. Um. The answer, obviously, is to hire into those positions. Now, there has been some move afoot in the last couple of weeks to allow positions that are being identified as critical to be filled. And I think the Weather Service is going to be filling 100 or so of those jobs. But that doesn’t happen overnight either in the federal government. So we’re gonna see, I would say several months of continued short staffing. My concern is that what we saw in Texas is just the start and we’re going to see hazards throughout the year. Will we have the same consequences as we did in Texas? 

Jane Coaston: Speaking on that point, President Trump’s pick to lead NOAA, Neil Jacobs, had a Senate hearing Wednesday. He held the role during Trump’s first term in an acting capacity, and he told senators during his hearing that filling some of those empty staffing positions at the Weather Service would be a top priority for him. But he also defended the administration’s cuts to weather and climate research. What are the problems with that? 

Richard Spinrad: Hey, I don’t know how you do that. The president’s budget cuts NOAA, which is nominally a $7 billion agency, by a couple billion dollars. And Neil testified that he wanted to do a lot of things. He wanted to hire more people. He wanted to build more capacity for artificial intelligence, cloud computing. Okay, all of those are good. What are you gonna take off the table? What are you not gonna do in order to do those things? Now, I will point out, that the weather service components of the president’s budget does not suffer the same degree of reduction as the rest of the agency. Um. But it certainly isn’t showing the kind of growth that’s needed to build everything that I heard that he was talking about building. 

Jane Coaston: A buzzword that keeps coming up that makes me very anxious related to the Weather Service is privatization. We’ve seen reports that some of Trump’s appointees would benefit if government weather forecasting were privatized. And I’ve been hearing arguments about privatizing the weather service for a long time. What’s your read? How worried are you that this could happen? 

Richard Spinrad: So privatization, to a certain extent, is already happening. The weather service and the commercial weather enterprise. When I say commercial weather enterprise, I mean AccuWeather, the Weather Channel, Windy, all of those private weather services take advantage of the weather service products and then add additional services that you can buy, you can pay for. That works reasonably well. But now let’s talk about what seems to be on some people’s minds, and that is a much more expanded private weather service responsibility, perhaps even at the expense of the public national weather service. Well, the first thing is the weather service is a capitally intensive effort. At NOAA, we operated 16 satellites, 15 ships, nine aircraft. Think about the hurricane hunters. Those are assets that the government owns and operates that contribute to weather forecasts. Are we really saying the private sector is ready for that kind of capital expense? I have not heard them say that. The other is the liability. Are the private sector, is the private sector really ready to take on the liability of the consequences of a blown forecast? Or even a forecast that’s not quite right. That’s an expensive undertaking and private sector’s not gonna be indemnified for consequences and damages as a result of a bad forecast. The final issue, and probably the most insidious with respect to privatization, is that it’s highly regressive. So think right now about something like a streaming service. You may decide to subscribe for one. I may choose not to because I can’t afford it. That’s basically what a privatized weather service would be. It would be weather forecast for those who can afford it, and that’s just not the way it should be done. Weather forecasting, in my opinion is an inherently governmental function and should be provided by taxpayer dollars. 

Jane Coaston: Administrator Spinrad, thank you so much for joining me. 

Richard Spinrad: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Richard Spinrad, former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Mahmoud Khalil ] I’m initiating a process to seek accountability from the Trump administration for false imprisonment, for warrantless arrest, for emotional distress, all of these things that I had to go through for over 100 days. 

Jane Coaston: Weeks after his release from federal immigration detention in Louisiana, Mahmoud Khalil is filing a claim against the Trump administration for what he calls his abduction. Khalil was detained by immigration officials in March for his role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last year. He was not charged with a crime during his detention, which was for more than 100 days. His case is ongoing in immigration court. On Thursday, Khalil’s lawyers filed a claim for $20 million in damages. They allege false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and abusive process, among other things. The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the State Department are named in the filing. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, said in an emailed statement to the Associated Press that Khalil’s claim is, quote, “absurd.” In a recent interview with the AP, Khalil recounted missing the birth of his son, Dean, while in detention. 

[clip of Mahmoud Khalil ] I can’t describe the pain of that night when I was on the phone 1,400 miles away from my wife. Um. That the government had actually like used this to punish me, used this moment to punish not to allow me to be present with with with my wife during um this this moment, um and this is something I will never forgive. 

Jane Coaston: However, he did say that he would accept an apology and changes to the Trump administration’s deportation policies instead of the $20 million settlement, not only for what the administration did to him, but also for what it has done to others. Khalil says unless the administration is held accountable, its power will continue to go unchecked. Project Hope, a DC-based aid organization’s clinic in central Gaza, was struck by an Israeli missile Thursday morning. The strike killed more than a dozen people waiting for aid outside of the clinic, which was not yet open. According to Project HOPE, most of the victims were women and children. By mid-morning, an additional 30 people, 19 of those children, had been reported injured. Chessa Latifi works for the organization and spoke with What a Day newsletter writer Matt Berg on Thursday. 

[clip of Chessa Latifi] Those parents brought them in to see if they could get them some sort of support, right? And if they weren’t there because they were starving, they were probably there for an upper respiratory illness or um some kind of gastrointestinal problem or maybe a chronic issue. Um. So like, who were these people? They were parents just like anywhere across the world uh trying to get healthcare for their kids in a really terrible environment. 

Jane Coaston: The Israel Defense Forces claim that the intended target of their missile was a Hamas operative who was involved in the October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel. They said they regretted, quote, “any harm to uninvolved individuals.” The news from Gaza comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent days meeting with the Trump administration and members of Congress. So far, neither Israel nor Hamas have announced major progress towards a ceasefire in the Middle East. On Thursday, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship from going into effect nationwide. The decision stems from a class action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and other immigrants’ rights groups on behalf of three non-citizen parents and their children. The group filed its suit just hours after the United States Supreme Court issued a decision limiting the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions against executive orders last month. The justices said lawyers had to file class action suits to achieve the same effect. We’re confused too. But the justices did not address the constitutionality of ending birthright citizenship itself. Trump’s executive order sought to deny automatic citizenship to future children of undocumented immigrants and those with temporary legal status. Judge Joseph Laplante issued a seven day stay on the ruling to allow for appeals. 

[clip of Senator Thom Tillis] Now with the passing of time, I think it’s clear he’s out of his depth as a manager of a large complex organization. 

Jane Coaston: That’s retiring North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis talking about how Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth doesn’t have the management chops for his current gig. You know, the gig Tillis voted in favor of Hegseth getting back in January. The comment came during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that aired Wednesday. The senator also told Tapper that he would not support any future nominees of President Trump’s who do not condemn the January 6th, 2021 attacks on the U.S. Capitol. But the January 6th fanboys and girls appointed before you announced your retirement. Cool and fine. Tell us it was one of three Republicans in the Senate who voted against President Trump’s big, beautiful bill, in part because of its proposed cuts to Medicaid. Here he is on the Senate floor before the passage of the bill. 

[clip of Senator Thom Tillis] So what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid? 

Jane Coaston: Trump retaliated by threatening to support challengers to Tillis in the 2026 Senate primary. And just one day later, Tillis announced that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection after this term. Another day, another powerful demonstration in Washington that you should only wait to be brave until it is in your own self-interest. And that’s the news. [music break]. 

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, shout out to the 31 workers who narrowly escaped being trapped hundreds of feet underground in a tunnel under a Los Angeles neighborhood, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how I have a deep, deep fear of being trapped underground or deep underwater and these workers had to run for miles underground in order to reach the only exit and they did it, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and a spokesperson for the LA County Sanitation District said the workers were quote, “shaken up by what happened.” I’m shaken up sitting here telling you about it. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Tyler Hill, and Laura Newcomb. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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