President praises flood response while state department begins issuing first of more than 1,350 termination notices – key US politics stories from Friday 11 July
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Thursday, July 3, 2025, en route Des Moines International Airport in Des Moines, Iowa. (Official White House photo by Daniel Torok)
President Donald Trump said his administration will take “historic action” to prevent another devastation like the Texas flash flooding, which has claimed more than 120 lives, including dozens of children.
Scores of other victims remain missing and unaccounted for, local officials say.
“We’re going to look and see how something can happen like this,” Trump said at roundtable Friday. “They could say it’s 100-year; somebody said it’s a 500-year event. We’re not going to let a thing like this happen again where it can wreak this kind of devastation.”
Trump traveled to Kerr County, Texas, to survey the damage, meet with first responders and local officials, and visit with families who lost children.
Trump honored the young girls who lost their lives at Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ camp on the Guadeloupe River.
“As we grieve this unthinkable tragedy, we take comfort, and God has welcomed those little, beautiful girls into his comforting arms in heaven,” the president said. “We believe that. Have to believe that, and we do. And we lost some wonderful people beyond the little girls, who lost some very brave men and women that tried to save the girls as our nation, we mourn for every single life that was swept away in the flood, and we pray for the families that are left behind.”
Trump praised a Coast Guard rescue crew that saved 169 children at Camp Mystic.
“The camp staff was also incredibly courageous,” he said.
First lady Melania Trump also extended her condolences to the families who lost children.
“We just met with the wonderful families. We pray with them. We hug, we hold hands,” she said. “They share the stories. And I met beautiful young ladies. They gave me this special bracelet from the camp in honor of all of the little girls that they lost their lives.”
“So, we are here to honor them and also to give the support help, and I will be back,” she promised. “I promise to them, and I just pray for them and giving them my strength and love.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal
.]
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Recently, Attorney General Pam Bondi
and the Trump Department of Justice
have said they are running an investigation into James Comey’s and John Brennan’s careers as the respective FBI director and the CIA head during the Obama administration and, in the case of Comey, the first year of the Trump administration.
They are very angry about this, but let’s just review why there might be some culpability.
Take John Brennan. He was a big proponent of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation under President George W. Bush’s administration and the things that went on in Guantanamo. I’m not gonna comment on whether they were right or wrong. But he flipped to condition himself to go into the Obama administration, and then he attacked the very president that he had served, George Bush.
Then he began sounding off about Islam—“Religion of Peace”; “Jihadism is not a violent act”—to condition himself further to be appointed by President Barack Obama, which he was, eventually, a CIA director. But then he started lying. I mean, he always probably lied, but I mean, flagrantly so.
He said before Congress and the media there wasn’t one civilian killed by Obama’s targeted assassination program via Predators on the Afghan or Pakistan border. Actually, there were 50 or 75 innocent people we killed. He was caught in that lie.
Three years later, he went before the Congress and there was information that he had been tapping, his CIA, the staffers for the Senate to get into their computers. He not only lied about it, he did so emphatically—“Oh, we would never do that. That’s horrible.” Then he was forced to say, “Yes, I lied.” In both cases, there were no perjury charges, nothing.
The pièce de résistance for John Brennan was in October 2020, on the eve of the second and critical presidential debate, Joe Biden
was in trouble. People were furious about this laptop. There was pornography on it. There was drug use. There were references to Joe Biden as “Mr. Big Guy.” Ten percent that he’d been giving money. He was crooked. People wanted to hear, he had no excuse.
So, what happened? Antony Blinken, his future secretary of state, campaign aid, called Michael Morell, interim CIA director at one point, said, “Round them up.”
So, 51 “intelligence authorities” swore the laptop had all the hallmarks of Russian information. Notice the words: All the hallmarks, escape clause, of Russian information. Not disinformation, but that’s what they meant.
So, what happened in the debate? Donald Trump went right after Biden and said, “That laptop is real. It shows that you’re a crook. It shows your son is a miscreant.”
And Joe Biden’s, “How dare you? Fifty-one Intelligence authorities swear that it’s a product of Russian espionage. Only you and Rudy Giuliani believe that.” And it was effective.
Later a poll showed, the TechnoMetrica poll showed that if people had known that it had been authenticated—and by the way, that laptop was sitting in the hands of the FBI and adjudicated to be authentic and not released to the public at a time when Christopher Wray’s FBI was partnering with Twitter and Facebook to suppress any news story that was accurately reporting that the laptop was authentic.
John Brennan finally accused Donald Trump
of being a Russian traitor. He said that after Donald Trump spoke in Helsinki about Russian-American relationships, he said that he is treasonous.
When he said that, I think we all thought: Well, wait a minute. Donald Trump killed the Wagner Group in Syria. He upped the sanctions on the oligarchs. He approved offensive weapons to Ukraine that Obama had canceled. Russia didn’t go into Ukraine under the Trump administration. It had invaded Ossetia under Bush. It went under Ukraine under both Biden and Obama, but not under Trump. He told the Germans, “Don’t cut a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin
on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.” He got out of an asymmetrical missile deal. He was the hardest president that we’ve had against Russia.
So, what was John Brennan doing? Here’s what he was doing—and two or three of the most significant scandals of the last 50 years, he was at the center.
You could make the argument that the Russian collusion hoax almost swung the election to Hillary Clinton. You could argue that.
You could argue that the Mueller investigation, based on that stupid dossier, cost Donald Trump 22 months of his first two years in office. Forty million dollars to find nothing.
You could make the argument that if the FBI had just released its investigation of the laptop, told the people it was authentic, John Brennan would not, and his cohorts, been able to lie to the American people that it was cooked up in Russia and that Donald Trump was complicit in that.
That disclosure, that failure to disclose the true nature of that laptop, thanks to John Brennan and 51 intelligence authorities, and the debate by Joe Biden, and the false charges, may have affected the election. As I said, one polling company found that it did.
And finally, we wouldn’t be in this big trouble about the Ukraine war and Russia had John Brennan and people like him not floated the spurious narrative that Donald Trump was working hand in glove with Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin. Russia, Russia, Russia. That colored and poisoned the whole relationship we had with Russia. It affected the Russian-Ukrainian war. And it was all a lie.
And so, here we are with John Brennan mad that he lost his security clearance for being a well-paid MSNBC analyst. He should be better worried, not that he lost his security clearance, that he might be indicted and go to jail. He’s got a lot of culpability, both in not telling the truth and spinning lies and being at the heart of a number of scandals that affected the history of the United States.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
A staffer with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has now taken on a key role at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which President Trump has sought to reduce and reform despite its independent status.
David Wright, whom Trump has renominated for a spot on the commission, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that “there is currently one staff member detailed to the NRC from [the Department of Energy].”
Wright, in written responses to questions from the Senate panel viewed by The Hill this week, said that the staffer is detailed to the Office of the Executive Director for Operations and is in charge of implementing Trump’s executive order
to reform the commission.
A source familiar told The Hill the DOGE lead at NRC is named Adam Blake and that he is in charge of implementing Trump’s orders, adding that part of this responsibility includes handling reductions in force at the agency.
The source said in a Signal message this appointment is “not normal.”
The NRC is an independent agency that regulates the safety of nuclear energy reactors. Presidents can nominate commissioners to the panel, but it does not answer directly to the president the way other administrative agencies do.
Energy Department spokesperson Andrea Woods noted that Trump’s executive order
“directs the NRC to work with DOGE to reform the organization’s structure and accelerate permitting.”
The order states that the NRC “shall, in consultation with the NRC’s DOGE Team … reorganize the NRC to promote the expeditious processing of license applications and the adoption of innovative technology.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) blasted what he described as “a Department of Energy hostile takeover of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission” during a meeting this week when Wright’s nomination was advanced to the full Senate.
Welcome to The Hill’s Energy & Environment newsletter, I’m Rachel Frazin — keeping you up to speed on the policies impacting everything from oil and gas to new supply chains.
Programming note: I’m off on Monday, so there will be no newsletter. The Energy & Environment newsletter will be back in your inboxes Tuesday!
Rhetoric from Trump administration officials appears to be shifting more toward reforming the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), rather than axing it entirely.
The village of Hoosick Falls is nearing a final victory against the companies that were accused of contaminating its water supply: DuPont has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit for $27 million.
A union for employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is demanding the agency reinstate workers who were placed on leave for signing a letter critical of the Trump administration’s environmental and personnel policies.
News we’ve flagged from other outlets touching on energy issues, the environment and other topics:
How a new coal credit snuck into the GOP megabill (E&E News
)
Ted Cruz ensured Trump spending bill slashed weather forecasting funding (The Guardian)
On Our Radar
Upcoming news themes and events we’re watching:
Monday
The House Appropriations Committee will hold a subcommittee markup
of an energy and water funding bill
Tuesday
The House Appropriations Committee will mark up
a Commerce Department funding bill
The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing
titled “Breaking China’s Chokehold on Critical Mineral Supply Chains.” Former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va) is slated to appear.
The House Natural Resources Committee will mark up
a range of conservation-related bills
Wednesday
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on weather forecasting technology
The Senate Commerce and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing
on President Trump’s picks to lead the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety and National Highway Traffic Safety administrations
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing
on the surface transportation reauthorization bill
Thursday
The House Appropriations committee will do a full committee markup
of the energy and water funding bill
The Democratic Party’s credibility with voters has plummeted even further since the 2024 election, raising alarm bells as the party looks to rebuild ahead of the midterms and the next presidential election, according to a poll obtained by The Hill. Read more
Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino is at the center of internal fighting in the Trump administration about the handling of files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, leading to questions about Bongino’s future in his role. Read more