[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 122 (Wednesday, July 16, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H3321-H3322]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRAGIC STORMS IN TEXAS

  (Ms. Johnson of Texas was recognized to address the House for 5 
minutes.)
  Ms. JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart to 
mourn the loss of so many lives across Texas. We lost the hope of our 
future, so many children, so many beautiful girls, who just went to 
camp to have a good time, to bond with their friends, and to have that 
time that we all cherish from our memories of our own childhood.
  Too many lives have been lost. We have the responsibility as members 
of government to have a look at why, what happened, what could we do 
better, and how can we make sure that things like this never, ever, 
ever happen again.
  What we know, unfortunately, is that partisan politics had a role. 
Republicans have historically denied the ongoing effects of climate 
change and what is happening in our country.
  Over the last decade, we have had more and more intense storms, 
unexpected, throughout the entire country, but surely in Texas. We have 
had freezes that have killed hundreds of people, and now we had a 1-in-
100-year catastrophic rainstorm that produced horrific floods and 
tragic loss of life.
  What happened in this policy is that Republicans at every level of 
government in our State failed the people of Texas. At the local level, 
they refused to have support grants from the Biden administration that 
would have put in place critical sirens and warning equipment that 
would have warned these kids at this camp to get out, flee, and seek 
higher ground.
  What we know is that communities that accepted these resources, they 
all survived. The warnings worked. This community didn't want to accept 
help from a Democrat, and now we have hundreds of people who are dead.
  Requests were made from the State to help, ultimately, and our 
Governor denied requests three times for over a million dollars each 
time that they would have, again, tried to provide warning equipment, 
again failing.
  Now what we have in our Federal Government is FEMA. FEMA is designed 
to be there as a last resort for communities when these unimaginable 
tragedies strike. FEMA trains and provides our first responders, the 
first line of defense, the people that go in and risk their lives at a 
time when it is most dangerous. They can't do it alone, and FEMA 
provides critical training, resources, and supplementation.
  FEMA is designed to have an immediate response within a minimum of 15

[[Page H3322]]

hours. However, under President Trump and his canceling of FEMA, 
defunding FEMA, firing FEMA employees, terminating hundreds of FEMA 
employees, it was over 72 hours before critical resources were brought 
into Texas. Mr. Speaker, 72 hours is critical when you are floating in 
a river and you need help. In these situations, 72 hours make the 
difference between life and death, and Trump and our Federal Government 
failed.
  After Katrina, we saw how inadequate FEMA can be sometimes. We saw 
the disaster of government when it didn't work. Congress put in place 
some measures to repeal and increase FEMA. One of those was you have to 
hire an experienced administrator of FEMA, somebody who knows what they 
are doing, because this isn't a time to play around. This 
administration hired as the director of FEMA somebody who never even 
knew whether or not a hurricane season existed, somebody who has no 
experience in this area.
  Homeland Security Secretary Noem put in place measures, cost-cutting 
measures, that catastrophically impacted what the response was in this 
situation. Phone calls were never answered. The day after this flood 
happened, she canceled the contracts of the people who answer the phone 
when you call for help. That is not the response that this government 
needs, and we have to do better.

  I am calling upon my Republican colleagues, I am calling upon 
everyone in this Congress to have us come together because these 
tragedies don't just affect Texas. They can affect all of us. Weather 
is violent, fierce, and deadly, and it is indiscriminate about where it 
strikes, but we have the ability to fix it. I call on my colleagues to 
come together. Let's make it better and let's make sure that these 
tragedies don't happen again.

                          ____________________