| | | |  | | By Zack Stanton | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine and Ali Bianco Good Sunday morning. This is Zack Stanton at the keyboard. Get in touch. MY INBOX RUNNETH OVER: On July 4, I asked who you’d put on an imaginary “new” Mount Rushmore. I heard from a few hundred Playbook readers (apologies if I’ve not responded to you personally), and wanted to share the results with you. Among the figures you suggested: Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Elliot Richardson, Louis Armstrong, Rachel Carson, Frederick Douglass, Bill Clinton, Harriet Tubman, Donald Trump, Helen Keller, Cesar Chavez, Jackie Robinson, John McCain, Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Muhammad Ali, Mark Twain, Rosa Parks, Richard Nixon, Frances Perkins, Harry Truman, Ken Burns, John F. Kennedy, Harvey Milk, Will Rogers and Bob Dylan. The top four: By far, the four most popular suggestions were Barack Obama (fourth place), Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan (tied for second) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the runaway frontrunner). Thank you to everyone who wrote in.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
Boerne Search and Rescue teams navigate upstream in an inflatable boat on the flooded Guadalupe River on July 4, 2025 in Comfort, Texas. | Eric Vryn/Getty Images | THE STORM AFTER THE STORM: At least 51 people in Texas are dead and dozens more are unaccounted for after flash floods swept through the Hill Country on Friday. “The Guadalupe River rose from three feet to 34 feet in about 90 minutes, according to data from a river gauge near the town of Comfort, Texas,” per the NYT. “The volume of water exploded from 95 cubic feet per second to 166,000 cubic feet per second.” Today, the ongoing search and rescue mission grows steadily more grim. Per the AP, among those still missing are 27 girls who were staying at Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River. (Among the surviving campers who were rescued are the daughters of Texas Republican Rep. August Pfluger.) And the conversation is turning to who or what is to blame. Texas officials fault the National Weather Service: “Texas Department of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd told reporters Friday original forecasts from the National Weather Service predicted 4 to 8 inches of rain in that area, ‘but the amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts,’” KXAN’s Josh Hinkle and David Barer report. So does DHS Secretary Kristi Noem: In Texas yesterday, Noem “vowed help from the Trump administration,” per the Dallas Morning News, and said that the president is working to “upgrade the [NWS] technologies that have been neglected for far too long to make sure that families have as much advanced notice as possible.” (The Morning News notes that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” “will make cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and could close weather research labs.”) Trump critics fault his administration: Over the last 24 hours, many anti-Trump X users have shared a Texas Tribune article from June 9 about cutbacks at the NWS in Texas ahead of hurricane season — just a small sampling of the federal cuts in the age of DOGE. But the reality of this specific situation is nuanced. Yes, there were NWS staffing shortages. “Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose,” NYT’s Christopher Flavelle reports. The vacancy rate is “roughly double what it was when Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January,” the NYT notes, citing Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization. Yes, the Trump administration has made major cuts to the NWS. “By this spring, through layoffs and retirements, the Weather Service had lost nearly 600 people from a work force that until recently was as large as 4,000,” per the Times. “Some forecasting offices began to close down at night, and others launched fewer weather balloons, which send back crucial data to feed forecasts. The Weather Service said it was preparing for ‘degraded operations,’ with fewer meteorologists available to fine-tune forecasts.”
| | | | A message from bp: bp supports ~300,000 US jobs. Like the construction, engineering and technology jobs that built our new centralized processing facilities in Texas. These help us produce more natural gas while also reducing our operational emissions. See all the ways bp is investing in America. | | | | But those cuts and shortages may not have been a factor here. From the Texas Tribune’s Paul Cobler: “The NWS forecasting offices were operating normally at the time of the disaster, said Greg Waller, service coordination hydrologist with the NWS West Gulf River Forecast Center in Fort Worth. ‘We had adequate staffing. We had adequate technology,’ Waller said. ‘This was us doing our job to the best of our abilities.’” Fahy tells the Tribune that the current staffing levels were “adequate to issue timely forecasts and warnings before and during the emergency.” Adds The Eyewall’s Matt Lanza, a critic of the NWS/NOAA cuts: “In this particular case, we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within NOAA and the NWS played any role at all in this event. Anyone using this event to claim that is being dishonest. … In fact, weather balloon launches played a vital role in forecast messaging on Thursday night as the event was beginning to unfold. If you want to go that route, use this event as a symbol of the value NOAA and NWS bring to society, understanding that as horrific as this is, yes, it could always have been even worse.” Indeed, the NWS did send out warn officials and residents, including “a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying of imminent danger,” AP’s Sean Murphy and Jim Vertuno report. At 1:18 p.m. on Thursday, the NWS issued an initial flood watch predicting 5-7 inches of rain, kicking off a series of bulletins that “grew increasingly ominous in the early morning hours of Friday,” culminating in an urgent message at 4:03 a.m. warning of “the potential of catastrophic damage and a severe threat to human life.” But aside from cellphone messages, there wasn’t much of a warning system in place for an urgent middle-of-the-night scenario. Rob Kelly, the top elected official in Texas’ Kerr County, told the AP that six or seven years ago the county considered creating a flood warning system along the Guadalupe River that would have functioned like a tornado warning siren. “The public reeled at the cost,” he said. Today, the human cost is unimaginable. If you read one thing, make it this: WaPo’s Arelis Hernández has a snapshot of Michael McCown, a father desperately searching for his little girl, Linnie, who was “among the youngest group of girls” at Camp Mystic. “She’s out there somewhere with all her friends,” he tells Hernández. “She was the sweetest little thing,” his verb subtly, tragically, shifting into the past tense. And more tragedies like the one in Texas likely lie ahead. “Colossal bursts of rain like the ones that caused the deadly flooding in Texas are becoming more frequent and intense around the globe as the burning of fossil fuels heats the planet, scientists say,” writes NYT’s Raymond Zhong. “Warm air holds more moisture than cool air, and as temperatures rise, storms can produce bigger downpours. When met on the ground with outdated infrastructure or inadequate warning systems, the results can be catastrophic.”
| | | SUNDAY BEST … — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the administration’s trade negotiations ahead of this week’s tariff deadline, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “I'm not going to give away the playbook, because we're going to be very busy over the next 72 hours. President Trump’s going to be sending letters to some of our trading partners, saying that: ‘If you don’t move things along, then, on Aug. 1, you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level.’ So I think we’re going to see a lot of deals very quickly.” — Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran on whether Trump might extend the tariff deadline, on ABC’s “This Week”: “My expectation would be that countries that are negotiating in good faith and making the concessions that they need to to get to a deal, but the deal is just not there yet because it needs more time, my expectation will be that those countries get a roll, you know, sort of get the date rolled.” — Larry Summers on the “big, beautiful bill,” on “This Week”: “In my 70 years, I've never been as embarrassed for my country on July Fourth.” — Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on the Texas flooding, on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures”: “Well, it's a very sad time, but it’s also a time when 850-plus campers were accounted for and recovered. … But, tragically, as you point out, there are 27 campers, these young girls, still missing. … But thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, the federal disaster relief has been provided at the request of Governor Abbott. … [W]e are a family. Texans are tough, but we also understand that people are grieving and it's a very sad time.” TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
- “Is This Really How We’re Legislating Now?” by Brendan Buck for the NYT
- “The Liberal Misinformation Bubble About Youth Gender Medicine,” by The Atlantic’s Helen Lewis
- “The Conservative Attack on Empathy,” by The Atlantic’s Elizabeth Bruenig
- “One of the Worst Industries in the World Gets Its Comeuppance,” by the NYT’s David French
- “War With Iran Exposes the Emptiness of the ‘Axis of Autocracy,’” by Daniel DePetris for POLITICO Magazine
- “Trump’s True Colors, Revealed,” by NYT’s Thomas Edsall
- “I Was Hacked Because I Work on Russia,” by Keir Giles for Foreign Policy
- “Trump’s Lawfare Against the Free Press,” by the WSJ editorial board
- “The last breath of small-government conservatism,” by WaPo’s Dana Milbank
- “Conservatives Are Prisoners of Their Own Tax Cuts,” by NYT’s Ross Douthat
- “How Bad Is This Bill? The Answer in 10 Charts,” by Steven Rattner in the NYT
| | | | Did you know Playbook goes beyond the newsletter—with powerhouse new co-hosts at the mic? Tune in to The Playbook Podcast every weekday for exclusive intel and sharp analysis on Trump’s Washington, straight from Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns. Start listening now. | | | | | 9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. MUSK READ: Making good on his pledge, Elon Musk officially announced that he was forming a new America Party the day after Trump signed into law the huge GOP legislation Musk had opposed, per USA Today. Musk has indicated he may focus on just a handful of key swing House and Senate races. But CBS’ Joe Walsh cautions that the logistical hurdles will be plentiful, expensive and lengthy in a 50-state system designed to favor the two main parties — to say nothing of the political difficulty of building support. 2. DIGGING INTO THE NEW LAW: Beneath the headline extension of tax cuts for many Americans, the GOP’s signature mega-law contains a number of tax breaks that have economists concerned, POLITICO’s Victoria Guida reports. A far cry from Republicans’ longtime calls for tax reform, some of these new complications and special exemptions left experts “worried it is the worst of all combinations: increasing the debt to pay for tax breaks that lead to neither growth nor other economically useful outcomes.” But the administration argues that many of them will help grow the economy. The cuts: The major cuts to Medicaid and food aid have food banks fearing that they won’t be able to meet increased demand in the years to come, POLITICO’s Marcia Brown reports. Many food banks have already been strained since the pandemic, and though they’re looking to states and private foundations to help plug the forthcoming gap, some could be forced to close. Longer lines resulting from the law could begin as soon as this year. Republicans argue that the changes are necessary to save money and clean up improper payments. Climate files: The law’s sweeping rollback of clean-energy tax incentives also stands to imperil much of the country’s transition to green energy sources, stranding projects and erasing roughly half a trillion dollars in investments over the next decade by one estimate, WSJ’s David Uberti reports. 3. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: “Israel to send delegation to Qatar for Gaza talks despite ‘unacceptable’ Hamas demands,” Reuters: “[I]n a sign of the potential challenges still facing the two sides, a Palestinian official from a militant group allied with Hamas said concerns remained over humanitarian aid, passage through the Rafah crossing in southern Israel to Egypt and clarity over a timetable for Israeli troop withdrawals. ‘The changes that Hamas seeks to make to the Qatari proposal were conveyed to us last night and are not acceptable to Israel,’ [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s office said in a statement late on Saturday. The prime minister’s office added that the delegation will still fly to Qatar for talks [today] over a possible deal.” 4. IMMIGRATION FILES: There may be warning signs for the labor market from Trump’s hard-line immigration crackdown, POLITICO’s Sam Sutton reports. Even as the jobs market continues holding up so far, the foreign-born workforce is shrinking month after month — and the new GOP law will turbocharge immigration enforcement. Economists fear economic growth will start to suffer, but the administration insists it won’t. Meanwhile, NYT’s Campbell Robertson examines why mass deportations have escalated so much in Virginia, disproportionately to many states — especially in Fairfax County, the rest of Northern Virginia and the Richmond area. Two possible answers: Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s support and proximity to the White House. But but but: At shelters in northern Mexico, an expected surge of deportees hasn’t materialized, WaPo’s Mary Beth Sheridan reports from Tijuana. That’s because the relatively easy pickings for the U.S. to target — newer arrivals — have been targeted first. Countries like Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia, which are home to many longer-tenured undocumented immigrants in the U.S., are mostly still waiting to feel the effects. But there are some signals that it has started to arrive in recent weeks, and the new tax/immigration law could accelerate things. Meanwhile at Alligator Alcatraz: “The hastily constructed detention camp in the Everglades that began processing immigrant detainees late this week has already flooded once, may not meet hurricane codes and is not officially approved or funded by the federal government,” WaPo’s Lori Rozsa and Rachel Hatzipanagos report. Mosquito-borne diseases and storms are bigger threats than alligators.5. REMAKING AMERICA: “How Trump’s Anti-DEI Push Is Unraveling College Scholarships,” by WSJ’s Tali Arbel: “Under threat from the Trump administration and activist groups over diversity programs, some are scrapping scholarships entirely. Others are broadening the programs to focus on low-income students in general or tweaking applications to try to keep their original missions. … Education experts said the changes could make it harder for minority students to graduate from college.”
| | | 5. REMAKING AMERICA: “How Trump’s Anti-DEI Push Is Unraveling College Scholarships,” by WSJ’s Tali Arbel: “Under threat from the Trump administration and activist groups over diversity programs, some are scrapping scholarships entirely. Others are broadening the programs to focus on low-income students in general or tweaking applications to try to keep their original missions. … Education experts said the changes could make it harder for minority students to graduate from college.” 6. VACCINE VARIANCE: Measles cases have now hit their highest annual number in the U.S. since the country eradicated the disease in 2000 — and the year’s only half over, CNN’s Deidre McPhillips reports. It’s a stunning trend that threatens a signal public health achievement at the start of the century. And if the outbreaks (largely in Texas) continue into next year, the disease may be declared to be no longer eliminated in the U.S. The cases have almost all been in unvaccinated people. On the flip side: Even as the Trump administration has taken a number of steps to undermine vaccines, Democratic-led states are increasingly cracking down on religious exemptions to school vaccination requirements, NBC’s Erika Edwards reports. In states that have limited those opt-outs, vaccination rates are up. 7. TALES FROM THE CRYPTO: “Secret Service in US Expands a Global Push Against Crypto Scams,” by Bloomberg’s Myles Miller: “Patience and digital tools have helped the [Global Investigative Operations Center] seize nearly $400 million in digital assets over the last decade, a figure not previously reported … Much of that trove sits in a single cold-storage wallet that now ranks among the most valuable anywhere. … [T]he agency best known for protecting US presidents has become one of the world’s biggest crypto custodians. At the center of the operation is Kali Smith, a lawyer who directs the Secret Service’s cryptocurrency strategy.” 8. NOTABLE QUOTABLE: NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s lovefest for Trump continues in a new, extended interview with NYT’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “When somebody deserves praise, that praise should be given,” Rutte says. “And President Trump deserves all the praise, because without his leadership, without him being re-elected president of the United States, the 2 percent this year and the 5 percent in 2035 — we would never, ever, ever have been able to achieve agreement on this.” 9. AUDIENCE OF ONE: “The Advertisers Spending Big in West Palm Beach Just to Reach Trump,” by WSJ’s Maggie Severns and Anthony DeBarros: “Since the inauguration, more than a dozen national issues-oriented groups bought broadcast and cable ads solely in Washington, D.C., and West Palm Beach, according to data from ad-tracking firm AdImpact. And others with large national campaigns have set aside money to air ads there. The activity since Trump took office has ranked West Palm Beach third among markets for national-focused issues spending on broadcast and cable TV, ahead of much-larger markets such as Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago, according to AdImpact.”
| | | | Policy moves fast—stay ahead with POLITICO’s Policy Intelligence Assistant. Effortlessly search POLITICO's archive of 1M+ news articles, analysis documents, and legislative text. Track legislation, showcase your impact, and generate custom reports in seconds. Designed for POLITICO Pro subscribers, this tool helps you make faster, smarter decisions. Start exploring now. | | | | | | | TALK OF THE TOWN | | OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at CJ Pearson’s “Cruel Kids Party” yesterday at Pierce School in D.C., where Soulja Boy was the special guest: Hogan Gidley, Janiyah Thomas, Xaviaer DuRousseau, Jeff Freeland, Jordan Cox and Alexis Wilkins. WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Megan Hannigan, deputy chief of staff to Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), and Coulter Minix, deputy chief of staff to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, welcomed Scotty Sullivan Minix late Friday night. Pic … Another pic HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Former President George W. Bush … Storm Horncastle … POLITICO’s Anita Kumar, Benjamin Guggenheim and Julia John … Apple’s Nick Ammann … Caleb Orr … CBS’ John Dickerson … WaPo’s Glenn Kessler … NYT’s Tyler Pager … Targeted Victory’s Sarah Morgan … Christyn Lansing … Gabriela Meléndez-Olivera … Kimberly Dozier … Danny Sepulveda … Mark Tomb … Jill Zuckman of SKDK … Zachary Karabell … CNBC’s Dan Colarusso … Jennifer Duffy … Chris Paulitz (5-0) … Athena Jones Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Zack Stanton, deputy Garrett Ross and Playbook Podcast producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.
| | | | A message from bp: bp added $190+ billion to the US economy over the last three years. From people working to produce oil and gas in the Gulf of America and Permian Basin, to investments in refining and bioenergy projects nationwide, and so much more, see all the ways bp is investing in America. | | | | | | | | Follow us on X | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Canada Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | |
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