The devastating flash floods that struck Kerr County, Texas, on July 4 left a trail of destruction, claiming over 50 lives and leaving dozens of girls missing. As rescue efforts continue and communities grapple with the aftermath, the political discourse surrounding the disaster has taken an all-too-predictable turn. Democrats and left-leaning commentators have seized the opportunity to pin the blame on former President Donald Trump, weaving a narrative that ties the flooding to his administration’s policies on climate change and FEMA funding. The rhetoric is more akin to religious doctrine than legitimate criticism or reporting.
The most viral comment came from Dr. Christina Propst, a Houston-based pediatrician. In a now-deleted Facebook post, Propst wrote, “May all visitors, children, non-MAGA voters and pets be safe and dry. Kerr County MAGA voted to gut FEMA. They deny climate change. May they get what they voted for. Bless their hearts.” Aside from wondering what a MAGA pet looks like, this post is indicative of a broader narrative that has overtaken the secular Left – that supernatural forces are directly connected to politics.
Speaking in a post from her hideaway in Dublin, Ireland, Rosie O’Donnell echoed the sentiment. “When the President guts all of the early warning systems and the weather forecast abilities of the government, these are the results that we’re going to start to see on a daily basis.” She then blamed the One Big Beautiful Bill that Trump signed on Friday for the disaster, and said, “Shame on him. Shame on every GOP sycophant.”
CNN’s Dana Bash, interviewing Texas Democrat Congressman Joaquin Castro, linked the disaster to Trump’s environmental record and climate change. “How much do you think the changing climate is part of what we are seeing go on here?” Bash asked. “I think climate change is obviously a part of it,” Castro replied.
This blame game extends to social media, where figures like Senator Chris Murphy (D–CT) have amplified the narrative, suggesting that the Trump administration’s actions left Texas vulnerable. “Accurate weather forecasting helps avoid fatal disasters. There are consequences to Trump’s brainless attacks on public workers, like meteorologists,” Murphy posted, relying on a post from X’s AI service Grok to formulate his statement.
The underlying message is that a vote for Trump – or against progressive climate policies – invited divine retribution in the form of floodwaters, a rhetoric that gained traction among secular leftists who typically mock and deride religious adherence.
However, the facts tell a different story. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for Kerr County at 1 a.m. on July 4, followed by a severe flood emergency warning at 4 a.m. and another for Kerrville at 5:30 a.m. These timely alerts demonstrate that the weather service, despite claims of understaffing or neglect, was operational and proactive. As Austin-based CBS meteorologist Avery Tomasco put it, “[The National Weather Service] did their job and they did it well.”
The claim that the area was understaffed was also quickly debunked. As reported by the Associated Press (hardly a right-wing source), the office actually had extra staff. “Where the office would typically have two forecasters on duty during clear weather, they had up to five on staff. ‘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,’ [NWS meteorologist Jason] Runyen said.”
Furthermore, the claims of slow reactions by the state or federal government were also false. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, with support from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, declared a state of emergency on July 5, mobilizing resources to address the crisis – a move consistent with the Trump administration’s response protocols when he was in office.
Despite what the critics say about DOGE, the Trump administration maintained robust emergency management systems, debunking the notion that FEMA was gutted. Historical data supports this: while Trump did terminate some climate research grants, as reported by MIT Technology Review in 2025, FEMA’s operational capacity remained intact, and no evidence suggests that these cuts directly impacted the Texas response.
What is most fascinating are the parallels between this leftist rhetoric and the faith-driven language of religious communities. Dr. Propst’s post, with its invocation of “may they get what they voted for” and the sanctimonious “bless their hearts,” mirrors the Old Testament-style pronouncements of divine judgment often heard from evangelical preachers. There is no difference between claiming that lightning strikes sinners and flooding hits Trump voters.
The Left has been doing this with climate change for years. Political leaders who show no level of religious adherence sound like pagan shamans when discussing climate change. “We must honor the Earth as our ancestors did, treating it as a living system that sustains us,” said former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2022. In 2025 she said, “The Earth is speaking to us through floods and fires – will we answer her call?”
Nancy Pelosi spoke similarly in 2024 after Hurricane Helene: “The Earth is sending us warnings – we must listen and act as its caretakers.” In 2020, Bernie Sanders claimed, “The Earth is crying out for justice, and we must rise to protect her.” Joe Biden, in a 2023 Earth Day address, said, “We must heal the wounds of our Mother Earth and lift up those most harmed,” and in 2025 claimed, “The Earth is our home, and we’ve neglected her too long – now she’s fighting back with floods and heat.” In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the planet as “our shared mother,” urging humanity to “listen to her cries” through rising temperatures and extreme weather.
It’s not just worship of a deity that makes Democrats sound like religious fanatics regarding climate change – they also blame a demonic bogeyman for natural disasters. Following Hurricane Ida in 2021, Biden claimed without evidence that, “The extreme weather we’re seeing – floods, hurricanes – is a direct result of climate change, which the previous administration ignored for four years.” During the 2020 California wildfires, then–Senator Kamala Harris remarked at a September campaign event, “For years, Republican leadership in Washington denied the science of climate change, and now Californians are paying the price with flames and smoke,” linking the disaster to GOP policies instead of Democrat forest mitigation policies.
After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Pelosi declared, “The flooding in Texas is a wake-up call, and it’s on the Republicans in Congress who’ve blocked climate legislation for years while they were in control,” and Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor, “The Trump administration’s … denial of climate science left Puerto Rico vulnerable to this catastrophe.”
Even the phrase “believe in climate change” is a religious adherence test. Climate change doesn’t require “belief” any more than gravity does. The question is never whether or not the climate is changing – it always has changed and always will. The questions surrounding government policy have always been: what are the effects of carbon emissions, and what, if any, mitigating efforts should be done to limit said emissions. That’s it. But the secularist Left knows – like the religious Right has for millennia – that religious fanaticism trumps scientific reasoning every single time. When you recognize their language for what it truly is, it’s easy to see that secularist climate fanatics have absolutely no problem using the tragic deaths of dozens, or hundreds, of people in their endless quest for power.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.