President Donald Trump and his acolytes need to learn that the days of falsely blaming the deep state, government inefficiency or DEI hires for their own bungling are over. They, not Joe Biden and his team, are now running the country.

Three days before the deadly July 4 flood in Texas, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz inserted language in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that eliminated $150 million aimed at improving weather forecasting, modeling and warnings. Twenty-four hours after the Guadalupe River crested at record levels, reporters found the Texas senator on vacation touring the Parthenon in Athens. Not a good look.

It’s not clear how much the Trump administration’s cut of over 600 National Weather Service employees contributed to the disaster, but Trump signed the bill even as young campers and others were perishing in the flood. Since then, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response has been feeble at best. That’s no surprise; just last month Trump declared his intention to begin “phasing out” FEMA, and the number of FEMA personnel ready to deploy to disaster sites had already been cut by two-thirds.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared that the flood was an “act of God” and that blaming Trump “serves no purpose during this time of national mourning.” Leavitt needs to stop defending the administration’s acts with empty rhetoric. Cruz, too. About all he could offer was an accusation of “partisan finger pointing.”

The flood in Texas will prove the first of many natural disasters in the next four years. As meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters wrote in Yale Climate Connections, “We’re pushing our luck if we think the cuts to NOAA, which oversees the weather service, won’t cause a breakdown in our ability to get people out of harm’s way in the future.” The gutting of FEMA won’t help in the aftermath of the disasters either.

The Trump administration shows few signs of getting its act together as it deals with crises and challenges whether natural or manmade.

Trump crowed that his decision to drop “bunker buster” bombs on Iranian nuclear sites obliterated them. And yet, a preliminary report from the Defense Department suggested Iranian development of nuclear weapons would be delayed only by a few months. Leavitt responded by saying, “The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump.” Maybe, but if wrong, who will be blamed when Iran joins the nuclear club? God? Genies?

Trump’s sporadic military support of Ukraine and his loosening of sanctions directed against Russia have made a victory of the latter over the former more likely. If President Vladimir Putin should fulfill his war aims and turn Ukraine into a satellite state, what will Trump say? Any attempt to blame NATO, Biden or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will ring flat, indeed.

The Trump administration has dismantled teams in the FBI and Department of Homeland Security that protected against foreign interference in American elections. Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, warned in a letter to the president, “This decision undermines Arizona’s election security at a time when our enemies around the world are using online tools to push their agendas and ideologies into our very homes.” What excuse might the Trump team come up with for unfettered interference by China, Russia, North Korea and Iran in the 2026 and 2028 elections?

The tariffs imposed by Trump raise the prices on foreign imports. The dollar has lost about 10% of its value since Trump took office in January, which will also increase the price of imports to American consumers. Who will there be but Trump for Americans to hold responsible for the increased costs of purchasing cars, cellphones and coffee?

As of Tuesday, 1,288 confirmed measles cases were reported by 39 states. That’s four times more than in all of 2024 and about 20 times more than in 2023. A measles epidemic looms, aggravated by the anti-vaccination policies of Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Children will die unnecessarily in 1 to 3 of every 1,000 cases. What will Trump and RFK Jr. have to say to their parents?

A recent study in the highly regarded medical journal Lancet estimates American aid to less-developed countries, especially in Africa, has saved over 90 million lives over the past two decades. The article goes on to estimate that the Trump administration’s cuts in these programs will cost 14 million lives in the next five years. Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied in congressional testimony that the cuts had cost lives. In response, reporter Nicholas Kristoff wrote about 5-year-old Evan Anzoo from South Sudan who was kept alive by American-supplied medicine costing less than 12 cents a day. Evan died after the administration froze most humanitarian aid. I wonder how Trump or Rubio will argue that makes America great again.

According to a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll released on July 1, 54% of Americans describe the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in enforcing immigration laws as having gone too far — that’s triple the number who believe ICE has not gone far enough. Nevertheless, the OBBBA allocated about $75 billion to build detention centers and expand ICE staff. How will Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defend mass roundups and building what appear to be concentration camps in the United States?

I do have a word of advice to the Trump team. Yes, Americans were willing to elect a candidate who’d been found by the courts to be a felon, insurrectionist and sexual assaulter. And yet, I suspect they will show far less tolerance for a president who cannot protect them from Mother Nature, Vladimir Putin, pathogenetic viruses, inflation and the deaths of innocent children. You’re going to have to do a better job defending your policies than mere denials, irreligious appeals to the Almighty and empty attempts to shift blame onto political opponents.

As the owner of a china shop told a clumsy customer, “You break it, you own it.”

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company and written five novels, which you can check out at keithraffel.com. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. To find out more about Keith and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 KEITH RAFFEL DIST. BY CREATORS