While words fly in D.C., Texas flooding speaks louder
Second story: Veto-mad AZ Dem governor beats her own record with 178 nixes in 2025
To provide some other news and events, here are two articles I wrote that went to press on July 10, 2025, in the other publication I’m with, the national weekly Catholic paper The Wanderer (the issue dated for July 17).
I’ll be posting my regular Substack.com article for the week here later.
_____
White House Feud; Texas Tragedy — Humans Argue Politics While Nature Deals A Blow
By DEXTER C. DUGGAN
It may have been inevitable that two of the most powerful men in the world couldn’t stay on the same page. They didn’t get where they were by deferring to others. But President Donald Trump and super-rich Elon Musk had better opportunities to advance when they had worked together.
Musk had been brought aboard by Trump to cut some astronomical federal spending through the newly created DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). But the starry-eyed space explorer split from the president with claims that Trump’s beloved “Big, Beautiful Bill” that he signed into law on July 4, Independence Day, would lead to larger deficits in a debt-burdened nation.
The bill narrowly passed the Senate and the House.
Having stopped being best buddies in Oval Office photo-ops, Trump and Musk took to denouncing each other in some strong terms.
The UK Telegraph headlined on July 7: "Tesla investors 'exhausted' as Trump attacks 'train wreck' Musk — Electric car maker’s shares sink as the president claims his former ally has gone 'off the rails’."
Well, we certainly live in highly interesting times. It’s sort of hard to believe that just a half-year ago, the establishment puppet named Joe Biden was still stumbling and bumbling around the White House, as if he had any notion of who or where he was, or what his criminal family was up to.
Well, he knew bagman Hunter's job was to bring Daddy the big bucks.
Meanwhile, the usual critics tried to blame the terrible July Fourth flooding and deaths in central Texas on President Trump — as they try to blame everything bad on him.
The critics left themselves looking like ghouls as they tried to put even this horror on Trump’s doorstep.
Blaming Trump “a depraved lie”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a July 7 White House briefing: "Unfortunately, in the wake of this once-in-a-generation natural disaster, we have seen many falsehoods pushed by Democrats such as Sen. Chuck Schumer and some members of the media. Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning.”
Leavitt said the National Weather Service “did its job” in forecasting.
Fox News posted on July 7 that Leavitt said, “Despite unprecedented rainfall, the NWS executed timely and precise forecasts and warnings,” and she also highlighted a flood watch and press briefings conducted by the NWS in the region on July 3rd.
Leavitt said, "Flash-flood warnings were also issued on the night of July 3rd and the morning of July 4th, giving preliminary lead time of more than three hours before flash flood conditions occurred,” Fox News reported.
The tragedy was complicated by more people apparently being out for rest and recreation over the July 4th holiday, and it beginning while they slept.
One of the strangest-sounding criticisms reportedly came from a Houston doctor.
The London-based Daily Mail posted on July 7: "A Texas pediatrician has been fired after claiming that Trump supporters got what they voted for following the tragic floods in the state. Dr. Christina Propst sparked massive backlash after she took to Facebook to share a now-deleted message where she appeared to take glee in the floods that have left 82 dead, including at least 28 children.”
That death figure later was increased.
Propst's post at X reportedly said: “May all visitors, children, non-MAGA voters and pets be safe and dry. Kerr County MAGA voted to gut FEMA. They deny climate change. May they get what they voted for. Bless their hearts.”
“Bless your heart” is recognized as a cutting Southern usage that can mean exactly the opposite of what it sounds like.
The Daily Mail said, “The backlash forced Propst’s former workplace, Blue Fish Pediatrics in Houston, to issue a statement on Saturday night [July 5] disavowing her comments.”
Embarrassed-sounding statement
The medical firm issued a deeply embarrassed sounding statement rejecting her views. The Daily Mail said the firm later said she no longer was employed there.
As for the rupture between Musk and Trump, the Fiscal Times said on July 7: "Musk and his defenders on X, his social-media platform, tended to focus their comments more on the larger deficits that the new law is projected to create and the $5 trillion increase in the debt limit that it included. 'When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,’ Musk wrote in announcing his new party.”
That party would be the America Party, which Musk cast as appealing to a potential great moderate middle.
The Fiscal Times added that Musk later posted: "What the heck was the point of @DOGE if [Trump]’s just going to increase the debt by $5 trillion??”
Wikipedia describes DOGE as "an initiative by the second Trump administration within the federal government of the United States. Its stated objective is to modernize information technology, maximize productivity, and cut excess regulations and spending. It emerged from discussions between Donald Trump and Elon Musk in 2024, and was officially established by executive order on Jan. 20, 2025.”
Musk had earned considerable respect for his enterprises’ innovation and achievements. When Musk talked in terms of flying human explorers off to Mars before too long, people didn’t mock him but gave him deference.
Working mobile cameras on the Martian surface already were reality.
However, it remained to be seen how effective a political strategist and activist Musk could be for his America Party. And while he focused on the idea of a presidential campaign for this party, what of all the other party members and officeholders that would be needed?
Or did Musk envision a national party with only one elected official, the president, while every other political spot was filled by the established parties? Would that be like putting a Tesla hood on a Ford and calling it a Tesla automobile?
Meanwhile, Tesla shareholders started demanding that Musk get back to his businesses in pursuit of profit instead of scattering his attention here and there.
Commenting on Musk-Trump split
On July 7, The Wanderer asked three sources to comment on the Musk-Trump split, and also Trump being blamed for the Texas disaster. The three promptly replied.
National conservative commentator Quin Hillyer said that the Musk-Trump dispute “might as well be a mud-wrestling match among baboons. The less attention paid to it, the better.”
As for the flooding, Hillyer said: "Trump's cuts to the National Weather Service, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and FEMA are all far too severe and, indeed, irresponsible. But from all available information, it seems as if the NWS was operating actually above normal capacity in central Texas before the storm and that it did what it was supposed to do.
“The horrid tragedy can’t in any way be blamed on the Trump administration’s decisions,” he said. “Sometimes, politics just isn’t at the heart of events, especially of acts of nature.”
Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard said: “You have the leader of the free world and a visionary who is also the world’s richest man (depending on where the stock market is on any given day), so it isn’t a surprise that everything they do is super-sized.
“They likely know that they’re more effective together, but given the heights each has achieved in their lives, they also have every reason to believe that they don’t need each other and can succeed without or even in spite of the other,” Querard said. “It is certainly in America’s best interests that they patch things up and move forward together.”
As for the Texas tragedy, Querard said: "The left actually hates Trump so much that some are skipping their chance to blame climate change so they can blame Donald Trump instead. That is how powerful TDS is. NWS did their job, but even if everyone does everything they can, it won’t overcome rivers rising 25 feet in an hour, at 4 a.m. while everyone is asleep, on the July 4th holiday weekend when the riverside camps and RV grounds are packed.
“Sometimes a tragedy is just a tragedy, and attention needs to be paid to rescue, to prayer, and if we can learn something to help next time, great,” Querard said. “But interrupting things to try to take shots at the president is pretty soulless.”
Mary Ann Kreitzer, who runs the Virginia-based Catholic blog Les Femmes — The Truth, said: "The Trump/Musk feud makes them look like a couple of little kids fighting over a toy. I have no patience for it. They both need to put a sock in it. As for starting a new political party, good luck with that. I remember talking to a retired army general, very active in the Republican Party, who said it is much easier to take over a political party than to start a new one.
"How much influence have we seen from the Reform Party (Ross Perot), the Green Party (Ralph Nader), etc. If you did a man-in-the-street interview, would anyone even know what they were? I suppose they can have some influence as spoilers; most collapse," Kreitzer said.
“The Republican Party is the sole exception that I know of formed after the collapse of the Whig party and influenced by Whig policies in the early day,” she said. “Musk is a brilliant man, but he’d be more effective working in the background with all his in- fluence and staying off the front page." Regarding Texas, Kreitzer said: "The flood deaths in Texas are a terrible tragedy. We should be praying for all the families suffering the loss of loved ones. I’m not surprised Trump is being blamed. Isn’t he responsible for every disaster on the planet?
“From what I’ve read, the National Weather Service was not understaffed and issued the flood watch early on July 3rd,” she said. “The fact that the river rose so quickly (26 feet in 45 minutes) in the middle of the night was certainly a factor in magnifying the loss of life. What caused the flood? There is serious talk about the danger of geoengineering and cloud seeding.
"Did weather-modification efforts play a role in causing the disaster? It’s certainly possible. When man plays God bad things happen," Kreitzer said. “On the other hand, once-in-a-century catastrophic flooding is not unknown. Was it an act of God? Or did man's actions contribute? It’s time to take a serious look at all the companies involved in geoengineering.”
A commentary at The Scroll, which recently migrated from Substack.com to The Tablet website, posted on July 7: "From what we know now, the floods were a perfect storm of unexpectedly severe weather, inadequate warning systems, and unlucky timing. According to reporting in The Texas Tribune, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch on Thursday afternoon [July3], warning of as much as seven inches of rain on the early morning of July 4 due to the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry.
“In reality, 12 inches of rain fell on the hardest-hit areas,” The Scroll said. "The NWS did issue subsequent warnings as the situation worsened, including a flash-flood warning at 1:14 a.m. on Friday and an even more serious flash-flood emergency warning at 4:03 a.m., telling locals to evacuate immediately to higher ground. But these came early in the morning at the start of a holiday weekend, when most people were asleep and the area was full of vacationers from out of town.”
_____
In Some Arizona News — Dem Gov. Beats Veto Record; High Temps Get Another Look
By DEXTER C. DUGGAN
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a left-wing, pro-abortion radical Democrat, broke her own remarkable record for vetoes cast in a single year.
An analysis by The Center Square conservative site posted July 3 said Hobbs cast 178 vetoes in 2025, breaking her 2023 record of 143 vetoes.
The article, by Center Square contributor Zachery Schmidt, said that in 2025, Hobbs signed 264 bills into law.
Such is Hobbs’ pathetic record that in 2025 she signed fewer than 100 more bills into law than she killed.
During the 2022 general election for governor for a four-year term that this radical Democrat supposedly narrowly won, key officials supervising the vote count had a position opposing the unpopular Hobbs’ major foe, conservative Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake.
Lake was declared the loser, to wide surprise.
The Center Square article, “Legislative recap: Gov. Hobbs sets new record for vetoed bills,” said, “In May, Hobbs vetoed three bills that sought to safeguard Arizona’s elections: HB 2017, HB 2046 and HB 2050...
“Another bill Hobbs said no to was HB 2703,” the article added. “This bill aimed to expedite the processing of Arizona’s election results. HB 2703 attempted to prevent early-ballot voters from returning their ballots to polling places on Election Day.”
The article gave a summary of many of the pieces of legislation that Hobbs killed or signed.
In the 2022 November general election, surprising chaos descended on election-day voting in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county by far.
GOP official despairs at MAGA victories
After the state’s primary election in August 2022, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Republican Bill Gates, openly expressed his despair that key MAGA Republicans, including the GOP’s Lake, had won their primaries. Gates voiced his fear that Democrats wouldn’t be able to win against them in November.
Republican Gates bemoaned the GOP’s August 2022 victories in interviews including to Politico and the Phoenix area’s radio news station KTAR 92.3 FM.
In addition, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, created a PAC called the Pro-Democracy Republicans of Arizona in 2021. Richer created this anti-MAGA PAC while in office as county recorder, and continued as its head during the 2022 elections — considered an unacceptably partisan move by his foes.
After the 2022 general election, Gates, who didn’t face voters that year, said he would not run for another supervisory term in 2024, and indeed he stepped aside.
Meanwhile, Recorder Richer did run in the Republican primary in 2024 — and lost. Even though there were three GOP candidates in the recorder race, including Richer as the incumbent, Richer came in second.
Split races like this three-man one often give a winning edge to incumbents, but Richer still went down to defeat. Shortly thereafter, in November 2024, GOP primary victor Justin Heap was elected Maricopa County Recorder.
The July Center Square article also said, “Hobbs did not veto every single election- integrity bill. In May, she signed into law HB 2129, which tightens the rules for active early-voting lists and enlarges the number of hand-count audits to include county and uncontested races.”
Among her other nixes, the article said: “During the session, Hobbs vetoed numerous bills related to national security, particularly those related to border enforcement. In April, the governor vetoed SB 1164, which was also known as the Arizona ICE Act.
“This bill would have mandated state and local governments work with federal law enforcement on immigration matters,” the article said. “In her veto letter, Hobbs said Arizonans, rather than Washington, D.C., politicians, should decide what is best for the state.
“A month after she vetoed SB 1164, she axed House Bill 2099,” the article added, “which was designed to have the governor, attorney general and local governments work with federal immigration authorities to administer federal immigration laws.”
Also, “Regarding transgender health care, Hobbs vetoed SB 1586, which would have let people who received gender-transition treatments as minors sue the health-care provider who performed their treatments if they suffered harm from it,” the article said.
“Moreover, this bill would have required health-care providers to cover the cost of someone’s detransition procedures,” it said. “In her veto letter, Hobbs said medical malpractice laws exist ‘to give patients a private right of action related to matters of informed consent’.”
In the 2024 elections, Hobbs tried to flip the Arizona legislature to majority-Democrat control, but Republicans actually slightly increased their majority margin.
Like recording temperature from jet engines
Meanwhile, an article on a different topic noted that if you think the Phoenix area’s summer temperatures are recorded from the exhaust of a jet airliner’s engines, you wouldn’t be far wrong.
In an article posted July 7 at The Arizona Sun Times site, Arizona-based reporter Rachel Alexander noted that Phoenix's official weather-reporting station is at busy Sky Harbor International Airport, which “has higher temperatures due to all the concrete and airplane exhaust. Some of the other weather stations around Phoenix consistently report lower temperatures, but the media never pulls the weather from them.”
Her article was headlined, “Watchdog Slams Mainstream Media for Selective ‘Hottest Day’ Climate Change Claims.”
Bearing in mind that lower-humidity desert temperatures still will be higher than, say, in humidity-laden New York City, Alexander wrote that “according to the National Weather Service (NWS), Phoenix has also experienced some very low temperatures this summer. The NWS reported that on June 1, at the airport, the highest temperature was 90. The historic average for June 1 there was far higher, 100.4.
“On June 22, the highest temperature there was 98, while the historic high average was 105.8,” she wrote. “On June 25, the highest temperature was 102, while the historic high average was 106.2. On July 3, the highest temperature was 101, while the historic high average was 106.8...
“The record temperatures in history on those days were far higher. For example, on July 3, the record high was 117 — 16 degrees higher than this year. The media selectively omitted reporting the lower-temperature days,” Alexander wrote.
Alexander noted several days during Phoenix recent winters when the temperature was 32 degrees or below, “in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2019. Both 2022 and 2023 experienced lower winter temperatures than normal, dipping to the mid-30s.”
She began her article by noting the propaganda campaign to portray global temperatures as an increasing crisis: “New analysis by an environmental watchdog finds that mainstream media selectively report high temperatures from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to bolster climate-change claims, while overlooking lower readings from other local weather stations and historical data showing significant temperature variability.
“Steven Milloy, an environmental and public-health consultant, challenged the narrative of unprecedented heat on his platform JunkScience.com, highlighting discrepancies in temperature reporting and the influence of urban heat-island effects,” she wrote.
She went on to report: “Milloy said in a 2023 article for The Wall Street Journal that it was inaccurate to claim that July 3 and 4 that year were the hottest two days in 125,000 years. Milloy, who is also a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, said there was no satellite data from 125,000 years ago. The temperature was reportedly an average of 62.6 degrees worldwide those two days, but Milloy said it was probably closer to 57.5 degrees.
“The higher temperature ‘was derived from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, which relies on a mix of satellite temperature data and computer-model guesstimation to calculate estimates of temperature.’ Instead, ‘actual surface temperature measurements taken around the world revealed the lower temperature, which showed no spike in July, he said,” Alexander reported.
(Both of the articles mentioned here were called to readers’ attention on the email list of Kelli Ward, M.D., a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party.)