First responders brief Trump in Kerr county
Donald Trump was greeted in Kerrville, Texas, by Governor Greg Abbott. The president is there to observe recovery efforts after deadly flooding in the area. It has been friendly territory to Republican presidents.
Kerr county is in Texas hill country, about 65 miles – an hour’s drive – north-west of San Antonio, in Republican congressman Chip Roy’s district. About 54,000 people live in the county, with a bit less than half living in the county seat of Kerrville. Republican voters outnumber Democrats about three to one in the county.
About a quarter of Kerr county residents are Latino. The median household income in the county was about $68,000 in 2023, according to US census figures.
The Kerrville Visitor’s Bureau has promoted the Guadalupe River as a tourist destination for hikers, kayakers and canoeists, with gallery space and restaurants along the riverbank. Kerrville has hosted a folk festival for more than 50 years as a major visitor draw.
Key events
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that the federal government’s emergency declaration of a major disaster was the fastest he was aware of, addressing a round table of local officials about flooding in Kerrville, Tex.
“Whenever there’s a disaster or catastrophe, the first thing we focus on is saving lives, prioritizing those lives every minute,” Abbott said, “Every hour counts.”
Trump took fire at the previous administration’s response to Hurricane Helene in his remarks while praising FEMA’s current leadership. Notably, requests for federal assistance in western North Carolina has been denied under the Trump Administration.
Abbott cited the response by the Coast Guard in Texas, “literally saving lives right and left.” Abbott said he was committed to long-term recovery for the community. “We’re here for the long run, to maintain our operations to search and find everybody that we can, as well as ensure that we’re going to rebuild this community … not just to rebuild, but to rebuild in a better way.
He noted that the Texas legislature would reconvene in 10 days.
In rare public comments, First Lady Melania Trump expressed her sympathy with flood victims at a round table in Kerrville, Texas.
“All parents lost beautiful young souls. Sympathy from all of us to the community, to everybody who lost a loved one. We are grieving with you. Our nation is grieving with you. We just met with the wonderful families. We pray with them. We hug. We hold hands. They share the stories.”
Melania Trump said she was there to honor lost lives.
“And I will be back. I promise to them. I just pray for them and am giving them my strength and love.”
Trump likens flooding to ‘giant wave … best surfers in the world would be afraid to surf’
Donald Trump praised law enforcement officers and first responders to deadly flooding in Texas while holding a roundtable discussion in Kerrville with administration leaders and local officials.
“Every American should be inspired by what has taken place,” Trump said. The president said he had spent time speaking with people in the community who have been affected by the flooding.
“All across the country, Americans hearts are shattered,” Trump said. “We’re filled with grief and devastation, the loss of life, and unfortunately, they’re still looking. They’re still looking. There’s a lot of missing children, possibly, mostly, we don’t know, but they’re still looking, and they’ll find everybody. But it’s not an easy thing.”
Trump likened the flooding to “a giant, giant wave in the Pacific Ocean that the best surfers in the world would be afraid to surf”.
Trump says he and first lady are in Texas to ‘express love and support’
“Well, this is a tough one … It’s hard to believe the devastation,” said Donald Trump said as a roundtable discussion about flooding began in Kerrville, Texas.
“Trees that are 100 years old just ripped out of the ground,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen a lot of bad ones. I’ve gone to a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes. I’ve never seen anything like this. This is a bad one.”
Trump is meeting with local officials and first responders, observing the damage which he said had “claimed at least 135, 140 lives,” so far.
“We just visited with incredible families that – I mean, look – they’ve been devastated. They lost their child or two children, and just hard to believe. I’ve never seen anything like a little narrow river that becomes a monster, and that’s what happened. But the first lady and I are here in Texas to express the love and support and the anguish of our entire nation in the aftermath of this horrific and deadly flood. Nobody has any idea how and why a thing like this could happen.”
Donald Trump is about to sit down for a round table discussing flood relief and recovery with first responders and local officials at the Happy State Bank Expo Hall in Kerrville.
Questions have arisen about the alert system employed by local safety officials and a slow federal response to the flooding. Fema records obtained by NBC News in Dallas investigative reporters show that Kerr county officials in Texas did not use Fema’s Integrated Public Alert & Warning System to send warnings with safety instructions to all mobile phones in the affected area during critical hours on 4 July.
And bureaucratic hurdles created by a focus on cost-cutting appear to have kept some federal emergency responders from immediately deploying assets in the wake of the flood, CNN reported.
The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins and Texas senators Tex Cruz and John Cornyn spoke with officials in the hall while waiting for Trump and the first lady to arrive for the roundtable.
Before arriving at the hall, the presidential motorcade stopped at an area near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville near an overturned tractor trailer and downed trees. Damage appeared to be more extensive near the riverbank. Trump, his wife and Texas governor Greg Abbott took a briefing about flooding there from local officials.
Border czar: Ice don’t need probable cause to grab someone
White House border czar Tom Homan told Fox News on Friday morning that Ice agents can ignore probable cause and profile people suspected of illegal migration based on their physical appearance.
A federal judge is expected to issue a ruling on Friday on a restraining order aimed at curbing immigration enforcement operations in southern California. Asked about constraints on the crackdown, Homan replied, “People need to understand, Ice officers and border patrol, they don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them and question them. Get our typical facts based on the location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions …”
Homan has made a string of statements showing contempt for legal norms in immigration enforcement, at one point claiming that a judge’s order to prevent a deportation was invalid because planes were already in the air.
“Agents are trained what they need to detain somebody temporarily and question them is not probable cause, it’s reasonable suspicion,” he said. “We’re trained on that. Every agent gets fourth amendment training over and over again.”
First responders brief Trump in Kerr county
Donald Trump was greeted in Kerrville, Texas, by Governor Greg Abbott. The president is there to observe recovery efforts after deadly flooding in the area. It has been friendly territory to Republican presidents.
Kerr county is in Texas hill country, about 65 miles – an hour’s drive – north-west of San Antonio, in Republican congressman Chip Roy’s district. About 54,000 people live in the county, with a bit less than half living in the county seat of Kerrville. Republican voters outnumber Democrats about three to one in the county.
About a quarter of Kerr county residents are Latino. The median household income in the county was about $68,000 in 2023, according to US census figures.
The Kerrville Visitor’s Bureau has promoted the Guadalupe River as a tourist destination for hikers, kayakers and canoeists, with gallery space and restaurants along the riverbank. Kerrville has hosted a folk festival for more than 50 years as a major visitor draw.
Jeffrey Epstein case blowback from the right roils FBI, justice department leadership
A circular firing squad has reportedly formed inside the White House as administration officials react to fallout from rightwing supporters of conspiracy theories about the death of Jeffrey Epstein and officials’ handling of the investigation.
Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer, said on X that FBI deputy director Dan Bongino is clashing with Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel. Loomer is calling for Trump to fire Bondi over her handling of the case.
Follow-up reporting by Axios said Bondi and Patel confronted Bongino with a NewsNation article that said he and Patel would have released information about Epstein earlier, but were held back by the DoJ. Bongino denied leaking that idea and didn’t show up for work on Friday, leading some insiders to believe Bongino had quit. Administration officials say he remains at the FBI.
The dispute is over a surveillance video released in conjunction with a joint FBI-DoJ report that determined Epstein had not been keeping a client list for blackmail and had committed suicide as previous investigations had concluded. The 10-hour video from outside of Epstein’s cell was strongly touted by Bongino as proof no one had entered the room before he killed himself.
But the video was found to have a minute of missing footage. Administration officials attribute the missing minute to the recording system changing over to a new tape at midnight.
Trump has landed in Texas
Donald Trump and first lady Melania have arrived in Texas. Air Force One landed at Kelly Field air base in San Antonio, Texas, just before noon local time, according to a press pool report. Trump will now head to Kerrville to survey flood damage.
Zelenskyy hails ‘good signals’ from US and EU on weapons shipments
Update: Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenkiy said on Friday that he had received “good signals” from the US and the European Union on weapons shipments.
In a video on X, he said: “We have received political signals at the highest level – good signals – including from the United States, from our European friends. According to all reports, aid shipments have been restored.”
Reuters earlier reported Zelenskiy had that the US has resumed military supplies. Zelenskiy also said his army leaders would work next week with US special envoy Keith Kellogg. Ukrainian media reported that Kellogg will arrive in Kyiv on Monday for a week-long visit.
‘A galaxy far, far away’… coming soon to a protest near you
Members and leaders of the progressive activist group Indivisible saw fans of the Disney+ series “Andor” at the massive No Kings protests in June. They carried posters referencing the show, and the group saw discussions about attending the protests on different fan sites.
Now, Indivisible is trying to explicitly reach fans of the show, an origin story of the Rebel Alliance that fights against the Empire, finding analogies between the show and the rising Trump resistance.
The group is running ads on Facebook, targeting Star Wars fans with a graphic of a protester carrying a “We have friends everywhere” sign, a line from the show. They’re also running podcast ads on a fan podcast. The ads invite people in the fandom to training sessions or to their local Indivisible group and are designed to boost name recognition of Indivisible among people who could be politically aligned but in places that aren’t explicitly political.
“Andor might be taking place in a galaxy far far away, but the connections to what’s happening in this country are inescapable,” an ad running on the podcast “Storm of Spoilers” says. “We’re seeing a steady march by a tyrannical regime against our communities and our rights.”
The overall money spent is not big – but it’s an experiment in reaching out to new demographics, a common theme on the left after the 2024 losses. In the past, the group has targeted Taylor Swift fans and people who read romance novels.
Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible and an Andor fan, said fans of the show are finding inspiration from it in this “moment of creeping authoritarianism”.
“Just like on the show, we want to help people move from personal frustration and occasional protest, to more sustained and inter-connected defiance – though unlike the show, obviously, our ‘rebellion’ isn’t one that involves violence,” Levin said. “At Indivisible, we’re experts on helping new people get involved in activism – and we literally have ‘friends everywhere,’ since there are 2,600+ local Indivisible groups around the country. So this feels like a natural fit.”
Missouri’s governor Mike Kehoe has signed the repeal of a law that guaranteed paid sick leave – just eight months after voters approved it.
Kehoe signed the repeal of a law on Thursday that had guaranteed paid sick leave to workers and inflationary adjustments to the minimum wage.
The move marked a major victory for the state’s largest business group and a frustrating defeat for workers’ rights advocates, who had spent years – and millions of dollars – building support for the successful ballot measure, which also granted inflationary adjustments to the minimum wage. The repeal will take effect on 28 August.
Kehoe, who also signed a package of tax breaks on Thursday, described the paid sick leave law as an onerous mandate that imposed burdensome record-keeping.
“Today, we are protecting the people who make Missouri work – families, job creators, and small business owners – by cutting taxes, rolling back overreach, and eliminating costly mandates,” Kehoe, a Republican, said in a statement carried by AP.
United Airlines tie-up with JetBlue raises anti-competition concerns
Senator Richard Blumenthal described a proposed partnership between United Airlines and JetBlue Airways as anti-competitive, questioning the CEOs of both companies about their records and plans in a letter seen on Friday by Reuters.
United is the second-largest airline by revenue and the fourth by passengers carried in 2024 in the United States. JetBlue is a low-cost competitor with about a quarter of United’s capacity. Shares of both firms were lower on the news of Blumenthal’s concerns.
JetBlue has been seeking partnerships for years and has been thwarted twice by competition rulings. JetBlue’s partnership with American Airlines ended in 2023 after a federal judge blocked it. JetBlue and Spirit broke off a planned $3.8bn merger last year after a US judge blocked the deal on anti-competition grounds.
In the letter to United CEO Scott Kirby and JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty, the Democratic senator asked about their “Blue Sky” agreement to share bookings across websites and points in each airline’s frequent flyer programs. Blumenthal expressed concern about any deal “that may harm full and fair airline competition and lead to fewer and more expensive options for travelers, particularly in the New York City area”.
