As more than a hundred fatalities have been confirmed in Texas flash floods and some 170 remain missing, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has both denied that DOGE cuts to the National Weather Service played a role in the tragedy and also focused on the importance of timely and effective communications about extreme weather events, which she says wasn’t up to par. Coverage of the Texas flash flood calamity has made clear that it’s not just the work of forecasters that is critical. You can have a timely and accurate forecast but it does little good if it isn’t effectively communicated to local authorities in the effected areas. That “last mile” communication is critical and it seems like there were breakdowns on that front both with county officials and possibly on the National Weather Service side, where a senior position in charge of liaising with local officials was vacant at the time of the floods. But even as the rescue workers were searching for bodies in Texas on Tuesday, DHS canceled a $3 million grant aimed at ensuring precisely those kinds of “last mile” communications.

I wanted to give you just a quick heads up. Next week we’re kicking off this year’s annual drive for the TPM Journalism Fund. This is always a critical effort for us every year. This is our sixth annual drive. This is, as you of course know, a bonkers years and a terrible one for the American Republic. But it’s focused us on our unique role in the news ecosystem, one that is even more critical in many ways since independence from any corporate overlord has become central to how an American news organization works in 2025. No news organization owned by a big, diversified corporation can be truly independent today because a big corporation is prey to the kind of regulatory harassment that is a central feature of Trumpism. In any case, more on that when we officially kick things off. But I just wanted you to keep an eye out for it next week.

Neil Jacobs, the nominee to run National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which includes the National Weather Service), pledged to work to undo the DOGE Weather Service staffing cuts in testimony today before the Senate. To quote Government Executive magazine: “Nominee says he would work to undo the workforce cuts from the last few months, though the process could take time.”

Here’s the piece.

As you have probably seen, Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced that there’s no there there with the whole Jeff Epstein saga: no list, no hidden group of the world’s most powerful men having sex with minors, no prostitution ring, etc. etc. etc. Of course MAGA has gone into paroxysms with claims that Bondi, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino may be part of the Deep State themselves. I confess to as much schadenfreude as the next red blooded American seeing MAGA eat itself alive over this latest turn of the conspiracy theory. But is it possible that none of this stuff was ever true in the first place or that it’s perhaps been wildly exaggerated?

This is my official new favorite story ever. It’s from the Journal News, which covers three suburban counties just north of New York City, and it’s about local congressman Mike Lawler (R) and a raucous town hall which I actually covered back in May. It turns out that at that town hall, his deputy district director, Erin Crowley, was simultaneously patrolling the boisterous constituents who had showed up to express their opposition while also apparently egging the anti-Lawler crowd on to disrupt the town hall using a fake identity known as “Jake Thomas.”

The Journal News is careful to note that it is impossible to prove definitively that “Jake Thomas” is Erin Crowley — who is also a county legislator in addition to being Lawler’s staffer. But they’ve got hard proof that “Jake Thomas” used Crowley’s cell phone when “he” joined an anti-Lawler Facebook group and the Signal group it uses and used during the May town hall.

I wanted to elaborate on some points Theda Skocpol addressed in her reader email this weekend about ICE and the supercharged ICE the new Trump budget law envisions. Some of this may be obvious just seeing what we’ve all seen in recent months. But I wanted to describe some of the exact modalities we’re talking about.

First, a general point about ICE. Long before the current moment and even the controversies of the first Trump term, ICE was generally known as a place made up of people who couldn’t get jobs at the more established and reputable federal policing agencies — so, FBI, U.S. Marshals, DEA, ATF, etc. Because of this, it has a high proportion of people who are there because they want to wear a uniform, knock people around and act tough. That’s an aspect of every policing organization. But more professional organizations do their best to weed those people out on the front end and instill discipline that keeps those impulses in check. There’s much less of that at ICE. So it’s never had a good reputation within federal law enforcement.

TPM Reader TS (Harvard sociologist/political scientist Theda Skocpol) and I often compared notes on the news of the day and I am always particularly attentive to her thoughts on state structure and power. So I asked her to write out her comments in response to Josh Kovensky’s piece on the vast expansion of ICE funded in the new budget bill. I really strongly recommend you read this, especially in you’re a government worker or elected official in state or local government.

The Trump monster bill’s huge upward rewarding tax cuts and punitive shrinking of health and food benefits are crucial, but you are right Josh that massive militarization of ICE is the real heart of this law – didn’t J. D. Vance say just that a little while ago?

Late this afternoon, the Social Security Administration sent out an email, seemingly to all recipients, cheering the passage of the President’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

AdImpact is the canonical source that many journalists use to track political ad spending, where ads are running, the ability to see the actual ads and so forth. A few times I’ve considering subscribing for TPM during the peak of the big election cycles. (These are very high-dollar price points.) So I’m on their mailing list for the data overviews that are basically teasers for subscribing. I got one of those today and something immediately jumped out at me. The top political advertiser by spend this cycle is the Department of Homeland Security.

I continue to get requests for updates about the DOJ-in-Exile project. The update is that while I got a lot of inquiries from people who were interested in being involved and a number of people who were interested in making large (5- or 6-figure contributions), I was not able to find someone or some entity to run it. Or I haven’t yet. And here I mean someone to organize and run it as opposed to do the actual work, which needs to be done at least mostly by people with experience as prosecutors. To be fair, it’s not like I’ve spent all my time on this. I have TPM; I have what I write each day; I have a book project. But a lot of people are scared. Possibly more so than I realized. And leerier as you go forward. But as things have developed over the last couple months I think the whole thing is more important now than I did at the outset. So I will continue to look and consider other possibilities including possibly launching and running it myself, at least at the outset. That’s the update. Remain very open to suggestions. This really needs to happen.