Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Saturday, July 5, 2025
·
54 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.

About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
Per Axios, anti-Trump organizers were set to host “Free America” rallies on Independence Day in the next round of mass protest across the country. Anyone here go, or see any reports on whether they occurred, what the turnout was, etc?
Trump signed the One Big Beautiful (sic) Bill yesterday. I’ll be watching to see if Musk starts his third party today as promised. As someone here noted when he made that promise, if his problem is the bill, he seems to have failed to notice every D voted against it.
And the Guardian has a good story about crashing Teslas catching fire with the doors inoperable.
Horrible situation in central Texas with the flooding. 24 confirmed dead and at least 20 girls who were at a summer camp are still missing. There’s video of camp cabins floating away.
Local officials are blaming the National Weather Service for an inaccurate forecast.
This is 100% on Trump and Musk. There’s a broad, bright line between “DOGE” and the deaths and devastation. And this is just the beginning.
@Mikey: I think I have to disagree. This was a very local weather event. There might have been a forecast of rain with locally heavy precipitation but the type of rain (10 inches or more in a very small area) is not a forecastable event.
I know this area pretty well. My kids have been campers at those many sites along the Guadalupe. Some are right on the river; some are uphill. Some camps have access by crossing where you drive through an inch or two of the river. The River Road that follows the river has parts that are on high embankments and parts that are low water crossings.
This is a tragedy and the local officials are wrong to blame anyone. Not even themselves.
@Scott: Local officials depend on accurate weather forecasts to ensure the safety of everyone in that area. NOAA and the NWS have been gutted by Trump and Musk, and were therefore unable to provide the level of accuracy they have provided in the past. Because of this, people have died. I don’t see how you can cut Trump and Musk any slack at all. This is entirely their fault and it needs to hang around their necks like an albatross.
When a severe unexpected weather event happens, I am always reminded that the GOP denies climate science and its effects and fights all efforts to mitigate the damage being done.
Whether or not the tragedy unfolding on the Guadalupe river was directly caused by climate change, it was certainly exacerbated by it.
And the entire GOP can credibly be blamed for that.
@Scott:
@Mikey:
It’s not just NOAA forecasting, it’s climate change and FEMA as well.
Where are all the MAGAts thumping their chest and saying “I voted for this!!!”
Per NBC, at least 27 are dead and 23 or 24 are missing from the camp in the Texas flooding.
This is awful beyond description.
@Winecoff46:
This is the first I’ve heard of them. It’s unfortunate that they weren’t more widely publicized.
NBC now states 27 are missing from the camp.
@Mikey: You know, I just wonder where those people thumping their chests about “protecting our girls from being knocked about by those evil boys who think they are girls” are. You say you want to protect girls, but you cut their Medicaid, and you cut weather forecasting, you deny climate change, you are vaccine skeptical and so on. I’m not seeing a lot of protection going on here.
Why not try protecting people for a change? All people.
There’s a clip going about where Lisa Murkowski is asked about the BBB that she just changed her vote from “No” to “Yes”. She really, really doesn’t look happy about it. Which is curious as hell. Why should Lisa Murkowski worry about a primary? Was there some other threat? I have no idea, I’m just wondering about that.
@Jay L Gischer: There’s a difference between supporting a certain level of Medicaid funding and standing back while a male beats a female.
@Jay L Gischer: Here is some explanation to the supple-spined GOP…
https://www.vox.com/23899688/2024-election-republican-primary-death-threats-trump.
When disasters happen it is valuable to carefully and thoroughly analyze the situation. We have in place a system for aviation mishaps and agencies that have assigned roles in the process. The process takes time, we often see premature media reports that sensationalize the situation in the never ending quest for eyeballs. In an ideal world, we would have a very comprehensive approach to this Guadalupe flooding disaster. There are a thousand questions to answer. Is the river prone to sudden floods? What are the conditions that make these floods likely? Whose job is it to monitor the conditions? I’m sure each of you can generate more questions. I fear that today’s politicalization of everything will squelch getting the answers.
I went to primary school in the Midwest, and we had tornado drills. Will the DOGE cuts to NOAA weaken the effectiveness of these efforts?
How much government spending was saved per dead kid in Texas?
@Winecoff46: Nothing like that in Portland, OR, but the Waterfront Blues
Festival is tough competition for largely the same target audience.
@becca: I mean, yeah, violent threats from constituents is a problem. But in the time between Murkowski saying “no” to Murkowski saying “yes”, she didn’t get in front of any constituents. Was she getting death threats in calls, in email, on social media? Or maybe something else? Someone paying her a visit?
@Mikey: “NOAA and the NWS have been gutted by people who voted for Trump and Musk to get smaller government,”
FTFY. Frankly, I’m fatigued with blaming Trump with what was essentially a self-inflicted wound.
ETA: “This is entirely their fault and it needs to hang around
their“We the people”‘s necks like an albatross.”FTFY, too
I think that this would be an excellent time to take note of the fact that I learned my jujitsu (in which I hold a black belt) from a woman (and her husband) and that I have worked out with many women in my martial-arts journey, and I have thrown and been thrown countless times by women, and been punched by and punched women a fair bit.
Nobody got all “we must have a law against this” about it. At least once, I tagged my jujistu “sister” pretty hard, but she wasn’t mad at me, since she had just missed the block that we were practicing. Yes, I pulled my punch, like I would for a man in the same situation, but going hard is how we get better, and in general the senior women in my ryu are pleased when I don’t coddle the women students, and also when I encourage them to go hard with me.
If you happen to be a father who wants to protect your daughter from aggressive men, it’s probably best to expose them to possible issues in a controlled environment such as a martial art or a “sport” and not treat them like delicate flowers. Women, by and large are not any worse at taking punishment than men are. They have a lot of social training that being hit is not something that is supposed to happen. I agree with that. In the best of all worlds, nobody should be hit. And yet, we need to be prepared for something else.
If you aren’t prepared for violence, you will most likely freeze when you experience, which allows the assailant to do whatever they want. I want something better than that for my daughters. Which is why I put them both in martial arts. With boys.
@Fortune:
Yes, one causes millions to lose health insurance and will cause many to die prematurely. The other is a largely made-up culture-war talking point.
And even if one thinks that certain rules should be applied to women’s sports, cutting Medicaid doesn’t do that.
If one cares about human beings, then supporting Medicaid cuts while pretending like one’s position on trans female athletes is a moral one that is all about “protecting girls” demonstrates a weird and immoral inability to understand scope and scale.
It is as if @Jay L Gischer‘s point was spot on.
@Fortune: I’m not sure there is. If people are going to belong to a movement that says “we support the weak,” those people have to support the weak. Every. Time.
But I get that’s not what you’re advocating for, too.
@DK:
(The subhead from your link) Tragedies like this one are a cost of smaller government. “Some of you may die, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
@just nutha: It’s Chip Roy’s district. Now, granted, there are lots of Democratic voters everywhere, and even there, it’s over 35% blue.
Camp Mystic is apparently very well known, and pretty expensive, and Texas Monthly describes it with “The camp has always served as a near-flawless training ground for archetypal Texas women.”
What I’m saying is that for anyone who believes that a hurricane will hit New Orleans because of gays, sodomy, etc. and an angry and vengeful god… this looks like a precision strike at the daughters of wealthy Republicans.
I suggest they repent.
I do feel sorry for anyone who might be collateral damage. As much as I feel sorry for random people I never met.
ETA: with the number missing and dead, it’s statistically likely that at least one of the girls was queer. I feel bad for her, but otherwise I will follow the example of the Republicans running this country and say “not my people, not my concern”
@Jay L Gischer:
Somewhat relatedly, one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about BJJ gyms* is how open they are to visitors.
Eg, I visited a gym during my recent travels, and I was welcome with nothing but openness and good cheer.
Of course, I play a big part in this dynamic by how I behave. On and off the mat.
It’s nevertheless striking and a good reminder that we can rub shoulders — and limbs and backs and bellies — with all kinds of people if we allow ourselves to.
*Not all of them, of course, but for the most part. At least, in my experience, which is no doubt less than yours.
@Gustopher:
Allow me to concur with you on that advice. I’m not gonna say this is the hand of God; on the other hand, if it looks like a duck…
In addition to NOAA and NWS being less effective than before due to mindless cuts, and storms being warmer and producing more rain due to climate change, it looks like local officials and camp managers may have failed to respond competently to the information available to them.
Everyone should have been on notice when a flood watch was issued at 1:18 pm on Thursday:
That was followed by a series of warnings, including this one at 2:03 am Friday, per USA Today:
That was the panic button, by which time officials should have been evacuating the camps by the river. It wasn’t until several hours later that local officials, using social media, directed people to move to higher ground. From reporting by KXAN:
This is by no means a complete picture, but it’s a damning sequence of events. And the inclusion of Uvalde in the flood watch area reminds us of the failures of Texas local and state authorities to respond competently to an emergency.
@becca:
This a good article, and a scary one. Thanks for posting. I mentioned it in the comments for Prof. JJ’s piece today on Congressional Republicans.
There is plenty of evidence that there has been zero – zero – increase in number or intensity of natural disasters. Hurricanes. Tornados. Wild fires. Floods. I’m not here to educate. You can clean up your ignorance through your own work.
As for Medicaid. Obama and Biden created an untenable situation. Easy entry. Illegals. A 50% increase in expense in just a few years. Simply untenable.
And if we really believed in a safety net we wouldn’t be advocating for such a system. Look at how many people are on Medicaid (and those who shouldn’t). That’s not a safety net. It’s just a give away. Better to preserve a real safety net. Limited in scope, and financially viable.
But stupidity is all around.
Elon Musk called Steve Bannon a “fat, drunken slob” who will go to prison “to pay for a lifetime of crime.”
Our current public discourse is so refined and elevated.
@Jay L Gischer:
A female friend of mine was a rather slender and rather pretty person.
She was also a taekwondo student.
I sparred with her once, on the basis of “it’ll be a laugh”, and I know some basic boxing.
I was not actually aware that she was a something-or-other-colour belt.
Total humiliation ensued, lol.
Also, bruises.
She was just so fast and co-ordinated.
I got a punch or two in, but then she pummelled me, and took my legs out.
Lord help any man who tried to mess with Carina.
(I also had to buy the beer on the bet afterwards. Sneaky minx! lol)
@just nutha: By this reasoning, you being online means you’re spending some of your money on something other than caring for the weak, so you’re failing to care for the weak. every. time.
In reality, in a democracy, we have to convince people how much of our national wealth and effort we should spend on medical care for the poor, on food for the hungry, on protection for women, etc. The majority thinks we should keep young women from being assaulted by men in high school and college sports.
@Jay L Gischer:
What a concept! Are you some sort of pinko socialist or something?
Governance for the common good?
How can that be possibly be compatible with billionaire dreams of neo-feudalism, and populist fantasies of rugged individualism and ethno-religous purification?
*sobs*
@Jay L Gischer:
In a half-assed defense: Alaska is perhaps the most dependent state in the union for Fed $$. Her state is uniquely vulnerable to retaliation. There is more than her political career at stake. If her one vote could’ve been the difference it would be different, but I would not expect her to screw her own state with a meaningless protest vote.
@Connor:
I do a LOT of work with the property insurance industry, and this statement is just flat-out false. The number, scale, severity, intensity–all of it–of natural disasters has increased since the 1980s, and not just in the US, but globally. Part of this can be attributable to better reporting of smaller, more localized disasters. And part of the problem is that the numbers of people affected are increasing, because population centers continue to grow, thus making a disaster that hits, say, the greater Miami area in 1989 (~3.8 million) different than one that hits in 2025 (~6.4 million).
So, once again, please show your sources if you are going to drop a statement that is significantly counter to virtually all commonly accepted data.
@Connor:
This is false. I’m not here to educate. You can clean up your ignorance through your own work. You might want to start with heat waves.
Undocumented immigrants do not qualify for Medicaid at a federal level. A small number of states will let them into the state implementation with state money.
Regarding any dramatic increase, it is worth remembering that there was a pandemic. And an opioid epidemic.
I’m not here to educate. You can clean up your ignorance through your own work.
Given that the rest of the industrialized world has universal health care and better outcomes, I tend to agree that we shouldn’t be advocating for this system.
Profit incentives in health insurance run counter to patient interest, and a largely employer based system leads to disabled and poor people being pushed onto the public plans, while the healthier populations are covered by private insurance. It’s a spot where capitalism doesn’t work. We gave it a good try. And then another.
We do risk walking backwards into government run health insurance via Medicaid, and that would be bad, because we should be looking at our peer nations, picking any of the systems that work well, and transitioning towards it with intent.
Also, if there are people who are currently getting Medicaid who shouldn’t, why are there no prosecutions? If fraud is rampant, it should be easy to find prosecutable cases.
Musk claims he’s just started the America First party.
@Gustopher: If someone says a small number of states, there’s no need to look it up. It’s a small number. Probably not many people covered by it.
@Steven L. Taylor: I might add, the ability to understand scale, interconnectivity, and cause/effect across scale being a leading indicator of intelligence and reason our resident chat bot can’t be upgraded to possess.
@Connor:
So basically Trump slaves just say the exact opposite of whatever is true now? This kind of bold faced pathological lying is adjacent to mental disorder. There actually is a DSM code for it. You really need to seek help. This is not normal.
Yes, from you stupidly claiming Kilmar Garcia had visited Mexico 100 times to you stupidly thinking you could sell deranged lies about climate change to this group, knowing your fact-free, anti-scientific bs would be summarily smacked down.
Why Are Natural Disasters Intensifying? (UC Davis Magazine)
Intensifying Pace and Severity of Extreme Events Increases Risks of Compounding Disasters and Demands Rethinking of U.S. Emergency Management, Says New Report (National Academics)
Unnaturally Destructive Natural Disasters: How Climate Events Have Intensified In Recent Years (University of Chicago)
There is something wrong with you, homie. Like…you might actually be a clinically-defined idiot.
@Jim X 32: Oh good our Jim Brown fanboy wants to talk about protecting girls.
@Gustopher: In terms of frequency, The God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob most often punished for idolatry.
I wonder who the false god is the righteous red states have turned to that hath brought this disaster.
Although a ridiculous assertion amongst intelligent people, even intelligent believers–there is a not insignificant amount of Evangelical and Non-denominational Christians who view natural disasters through this very lens.
@Fortune: If someone says illegals have created an untenable situation with easy access to Medicaid, there’s no need to back it up. It’s a gigantic number. Probably billions or something. Proof, data, numbers, evidence, actual facts? Why bother.
@Fortune: Is protecting girls what Trump and Epstein were talking about all those years, in between admiring each other for their affinity for women “on the younger side” and waxing poetic on Trump’s sexual attraction to his daughter?
Or maybe protecting girls is what perverted pedo Trump was trying to do when he was walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants and bragging about it.
@Eusebio:
Indeed! That was my first thought: Uvalde, great. 🙁 Just what they need.
@Connor:
The record of European weather in recent decades is quite plain.
We are getting far more frequent extremely hot summers, and related massive storm systems, at the end of the heatwaves.
This is as to be expected from consensus climatic models of increased CO2.
The frequent respose is “So what? Average temperatures were higher in previous inter-Glacials?”
Except, we did not then have a population of billions of humans ultimately dependant on massive grain production in a few key regions.
And the (rather inadequate) climatic mapping of the last thermal maximum indicates that the central North American grain production zone may be somewhat screwed.
And also, to add to the fun, Australia and Argentina.
Oopsie.
@Fortune: As I noted:
Go in peace.
@Fortune: The subject was comprehension, intelligence, and reason Bot. You are hallucinating again. Keep up.
@CSK:
I had two instant reactions to this:
1) Doubleplusunungood.
2) Maybe we’ll finally get the GQP civil war that was prophesized in 2016.
@Jim X 32:
Then:
So the subject was about protecting girls. But you skipped ahead to the insults and thought it was about comprehension. Showing you have no reading comprehension. While using abuser Jim Brown’s name and number.
@Connor: If you have evidence to provide, provide it.
Speaking of evidence, if you think I am going to let this go, you are mistaken.
@Kathy:
My first reaction was mild nausea, but this article from The Hill has some quotes that transformed that into a grin.
“The way we’re going to crack the uniparty system is by using a variant of how Epaminondas shattered the myth of Spartan invincibility at Leuctra: Extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield,” Musk, a major Republican donor, wrote on Saturday.
From Steve Bannon:
“The foul, the buffoon. Elmo the Mook, formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the Mook. He’s today, in another smear, and this — only a foreigner could do this — think about it, he’s got up on, he’s got up on Twitter right now, a poll about starting an America Party, a non-American starting an America Party,” Bannon said on his “War Room” podcast.
“No, brother, you’re not an American. You’re a South African and if we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it’s a crime of what you did — among many,” Bannon added.
Let the games begin!
@Connor: You are the biggest coward alive, besides Trump. “Believe the completely false thing I said without evidence.” Sure, Connor. Or maybe I should say Conman. You didn’t produce the evidence because you CAN’T, period.