In the wake of the tragic Guadeloupe River flood in Texas, which has taken over 100 lives with more than 160 still reported missing, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviews retired National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist Alan Gerard, now the CEO of Balanced Weather, which provides critical weather and climate alerts. Some excerpts from Gerard’s responses: “The National Weather Service, you know, like a lot of federal agencies, went through significant loss of staff back in the spring with federal buyouts under the plans of DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management, and a number of experienced staff were lost. The office in Austin/San Antonio, which is the office that was responsible the flash flood warnings in this case, have lost two of their most senior staff as part of that: their warning coordination meteorologist, who’s responsible for the outreach to emergency management, and the science and operations officer, who oversees the operations and training of the meteorology staff…I will say that it does appear like, overall, for the actual event, when it occurred, the warnings went out as they should have, that the office was staffed appropriately. But it is definitely a concern overall, you know, how well the staff, overall, would have been prepared, given those losses, and how well they’ll be prepared going forward, as we still have all of hurricane season to deal with…And then, kind of from a longer-term perspective, as you mentioned, the 2026 presidential budget proposal would make significant cuts to NOAA, including completely eliminating NOAA’s research line office, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. And obviously, if that were to happen, all of this research that’s being done to try to improve warnings for events like this would be terminated…The system that the National Weather Service uses to, in real time, estimate the probability of flash flooding and help issue their warnings was developed here in our division at the National Severe Storms Lab. And under the current presidential budget, it would be closed along with all of the other NOAA weather and climate labs…I’m extremely concerned about the threat of climate change and having more increased flash floods, wildfires, heat waves. And regardless of the politics of it, we need to be prepared…I strongly believe that having a robust NOAA and a robust National Weather Service, a robust research program from NOAA, is an important part of all of that, of keeping us as safe as we can be as the climate continues to change.”

New York Times Opinion essayist Thomas B. Edsall points out that “Democrats Have ‘a Massive Blind Spot When It Comes to Male Issues,” and writes: “Much of the analysis of the 2024 election focused on Democratic losses among working-class minorities, especially Hispanic and Black voters. But the dominant theme of the contest was, in fact, the broader shift of men of all races and ethnicities to the Republican Party…If men had supported Kamala Harris at the same level as women did, Harris would have won the popular vote and possibly the Electoral College. Donald Trump beat her by 2.28 million votes, in an election that saw the male vote for the Democratic presidential nominee fall by 3.54 million from 2020 to 2024 and the female vote fall by just over 844,000…The Democratic Party lost ground in the 2024 election among almost all demographic groups — white people, Black people, Latinos, the young, rural and exurban voters — but all the defections had one thing in common: Democratic losses were significantly greater among men than among women…These developments are well documented in two extensive election analyses by organizations that offer some of the best demographic studies of voting patterns: “What Happened in 2024” by Catalist, a liberal voter-study firm, and “Behind Trump’s 2024 Victory, a More Racially and Ethnically Diverse Voter Coalition” by Pew Research…Catalist found that in 2024 Harris, the second woman to run for president as the Democratic nominee, received just 1 percent less support than Joe Biden did in 2020 from white women, while Harris’s backing from white men fell by four percentage points. Among Black voters, Harris saw a one-point drop among women and an eight-point decline among Black men; among Latinos, Harris lost seven points among women, 12 points among men.”

Edsall adds, “The most severe declines in Democratic voting, according to Catalist, “were concentrated among the younger cohorts of voters, particularly young men. For instance, support for Democrats from 2020 to 2024 among young Black men dropped from 85 percent to 75 percent and support among young Latino men dropped from 63 percent to 47 percent.”…Unless the trends described in the two reports are reversed, the Democratic Party’s future looks, well, bleak…In a Jan. 29 Quinnipiac poll, early in Trump’s second term, voters were asked whether they viewed the Democratic Party favorably or unfavorably. Men were unfavorable by 67 to 22. Five months later, the Marquette Law School poll conducted June 13 to 19 asked the same question and the share of men with unfavorable views of the Democrats rose one point to 68 percent, while the favorable share rose modestly to 29 percent…Polling by PRRI (formerly the Public Religion Research Institute) found that the percentage of men who believe “society has become too soft and feminine” rose slightly to 52 percent in 2024 from 50 percent in 2016 among men and to 38 percent from 34 percent among women. Republican men and women drove the shift…Public Opinion Strategies, which conducts polling for NBC, provided The Times with data showing that from 2016 to 2024, party identification among men aged 18 to 49 shifted from plus three points Democratic, 39-36, to plus 10 points Republican, 44-34. Party identification among men 50 and older shifted from plus 10 points Republican (46-36) in 2016 to plus 22 points Republican (53-31) in 2024.”

In his Washington Monthly article “Diversity Without Racial Preference,” Lloyd Green plugs Richard Kahlenberg’s latest book, Class Matters, subtitled The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges…Kahlenberg is a “liberal maverick.” He idealizes Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, and William O. Douglas, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice and New Dealer, still loathed on the right. A graduate of Harvard College and law school, Kahlenberg directs the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank… “His book is a compelling and provocative examination of the places of race, privilege, and money in college admissions—an issue with stark political implications, for both parties, but Democrats in particular. Kahlenberg prizes racial diversity on campus but is alarmed by racially conscious means to attain that goal. He is mindful of slavery and its legacy, but is aware of the growing divide within the U.S. between the economic “haves” and “have-nots”. The resulting read is nuanced, sober, and granular…Toting statistics, Kahlenberg persuasively argues here, as he has throughout his career, that class poses a greater barrier to the American Dream than race. (See “Racial Diversity Without Racial Preferences,” Washington Monthly, April/May 2016, one of many he’s written for this magazine on the topic.)”