Texas House Speaker Drops Hammer On Runaway Dems

'Those checks must now be picked up in person'

Austin Fire Chief Who Refused To Deploy Rescue Boats For Flood Victims Was A DEI Hire

Not only will DEI gradually destroy a critical institution of public safety, but at some point it will also destroy the lives that the institution is charged to protect.

Why We Can Trust God When Tragedy Strikes, Whether He ‘Allows’ It Or Not

To give a Christian response to the problem of evil means it is possible that God permits evil and suffering because He can bring about a greater good from it.

Investigating deadly Texas floods: Is DEI to blame?



Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk is in hot water after suggesting that the Austin fire chief was a DEI hire whose decisions may have led to more deaths during the incident — but after investigating his claims, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales believes he might be right.

“The Democrats are not lifting a finger to remember the well over 100 people that have died in Texas Hill Country. What you are not being told by the media anywhere is that the death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn’t for DEI,” Kirk said on “The Charlie Kirk Show.”

“This Texas tragedy is just the latest example. It's not just incompetence. This is DEI working to undermine meritocratic institutions, and more people likely died than otherwise would have because of DEI,” he added.

“Anytime Charlie is in trouble, usually you can pretty much know that something that he has said has been taken out of context,” Gonzales says on “Come and Take It,” noting that it was “obviously a very bold statement.”

While Kirk is being called “racist” by the left-wing media, Gonzales says it's because they’re taking what he said at face value rather than investigating it.

“This particular fire chief has gone on record saying that he has diversity goals. Not like put-fires-out-in-record-time goals. Diversity goals. Are you kidding me?” Gonzales says.



Not only does the Austin fire chief have “diversity goals,” but he was himself celebrated as a diversity hire when a news outlet reported in 2020, “The City of Austin made history when it hired its first African American fire chief a little over a year ago.”

“I don’t try to dwell on me being the first African American fire chief, because that’s not important. What’s important is that I’m not the last African American fire chief,” Chief Joel Baker was reported saying in the same article.

“I don’t know sir, I think what’s important is that you guys save as many lives as possible and put out as many fires as possible. That’s a good start. I think what’s important is emergency response time. I think what’s important is making sure that you guys have the supplies that you need to put fires out and help people,” Gonzales says.

The article also reported that Baker boasted that one of his goals “is really to increase the diversity at Austin Fire Department,” including African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and people in the LGBTQ community in order to inspire the youth to become firefighters, as well.

“Those are his goals. And I do think that that is relevant to the conversation about what happened in the Texas Hill Country, especially in light of what just happened with the Austin Firefighters Association,” she adds.

The Austin Fire Department had deployment orders on July 2, and the Austin Firefighters Association president Bob Nicks claims they had boat crews ready to go help — before the flooding even began.

However, they were told by the Austin chief to stand down.

“It is absolutely outrageous that the Austin Fire Chief, Joel G. Baker, would not allow highly trained firefighters from Austin to respond to Kerrville. Because of this egregious dereliction of duty, LIVES WERE VERY LIKELY LOST BECAUSE OF CHIEF BAKER’S DECISION,” the Austin Firefighter’s Association wrote in a Facebook post.

“That is not something that this firefighter’s association just decides to just flippantly make the decision to go write something like that on Facebook,” Gonzales says, adding, “These are men who are trained to save people, and these men are pissed that they weren’t allowed to do that.”

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Texas flood UPDATE: We have NEVER SEEN this before



A little over a week after the devastating flooding in the Texas Hill Country, over 120 residents have been confirmed dead, and over 100 are still missing.

Mercury One executive director J.P. Decker was on the ground in Texas, and while the circumstances couldn’t have been worse, what he saw was incredible.

“Walking through this area, there’s just regular locals and probably people from all around Texas just searching. I mean, they brought their own shovels, they brought their own pickaxes, and they’re just trying to, you know, help,” Decker tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck.

“There’s search and rescue teams from all over the country,” he continues, noting that it was much like the response in North Carolina.


“And you know, it’s interesting,” he says, “just talking with some of the locals about what they’re going through, and almost everyone said, ‘We’re Texans. We’re gonna get through it.’”

“We talked to all of our partners, and they said, ‘This is unlike any disaster we’ve ever seen.’ And some of them have been doing it for 15, 20 years. And they said the response from the administration helped us to be able to help them long-term,” he explains.

The National Guard was deployed as well as the Coast Guard, who Decker tells Glenn “got there within no time.”

“It’s cool to see when administrations do the job,” he says.

And it's not just the locals and state and federal government that’s helping out. Mercury One challenged their donors to raise $1 million — none of which would go to administrative costs — and they raised it within 48 hours.

“And usually with that, we do have to pay credit card fees. But the donors chose to pay $25,000 of fees to go help these people. And I think that alone tells you, one, how amazing our donors are, but how amazing your listeners are because they believe and they trust what we’re doing with the funds,” Decker says.

“You’re the first in, the last out every time,” Glenn responds, adding, “And it’s just so good.”

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CLOUD SEEDING: A futile attempt to add to God’s recipe



The flooding in West Texas has devastated the state, with over 100 reported dead and even more still missing.

As the devastation has swept across America, many skeptics have pointed the finger at cloud seeding, which creates rainfall by spraying small particles into clouds, usually made of silver iodide.

Rainmaker was operating in the area a few days before the floods, but CEO Augustus Doricko denies that cloud seeding could have had anything to do with it — and told Will Cain on “The Will Cain Show” that he’s simply stewarding creation.

“My intention is to serve God. I think that in Genesis 1:26-28 and then throughout the Psalms and the rest of the Bible, God tells us to take dominion over and steward creation both for our sake, creation's itself, and then to honor Him,” Doricko told Cain.


“And so if there are droughts, and we have the tools to mitigate the damage done by them for our sake and for nature itself, then we should deploy those for the sake of tending to and stewarding the world. And if we weren’t to do that, if we were to ban cloud seeding wholesale despite knowing that it's safe, despite knowing it could help alleviate these problems, we’d be abdicating our God-given responsibility to be stewards of the world,” he added.

BlazeTV host Steve Deace is unimpressed with Doricko’s beliefs.

“What was expressed in that clip in my view is that we can add to God’s recipe. All right? What things like dams and irrigation systems do is work within the confines of that recipe,” Deace says. “In this case, he is saying we can add to it. We can maybe even do it better than what is currently the way it is currently being done.”

“And that’s what I’m concerned about. It’s not necessarily the technology itself. It’s the people and the rationale for doing it,” he continues.

“What I heard there was hubris. ‘We can change the environment. We can do it better.’”

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Did cloud seeding cause the Texas floods? Glenn Beck speaks with the man with the most fingers pointed at him



Over Fourth of July weekend, Kerrville, Texas, was devastated by catastrophic flooding along the Guadalupe River, which rose 26 feet in just 45 minutes. The floods have claimed more than 100 lives, many of whom were children, but that number is expected to rise, as there are still several missing people.

While Central Texas is known for flooding — sometimes severe flooding — what happened last week is unprecedented in its severity. Many aren’t convinced that this was just a freak act of nature. There are growing theories that the floods were caused by human tampering with weather patterns — specifically cloud seeding, a technique where chemicals are released into clouds to encourage them to produce precipitation.

One person in the crosshairs of this theory is Augustus Doricko, founder and CEO of Rainmaker, a U.S.-based climate technology company specializing in cloud seeding. He’s been directly blamed for the Texas floods after it was discovered that his company seeded clouds in Texas just two days before the torrential rain began.

Yesterday, Glenn Beck invited Doricko on “The Glenn Beck Program” to plead his case.

“So explain what cloud seeding does and how you know you didn't have anything to do with [the floods],” Glenn says.

While weather modification sounds like a modern practice, Doricko says it’s been going on since the 1940s when it was developed “to increase water supply for farms, for ecosystem conservation, for reservoirs, for residences, and also our industries.”

Cloud seeding “relies on identifying liquid in clouds and then releasing particulates, specifically silver iodide, into those clouds that the water freezes onto into big snowflakes and then become heavy enough to fall as rain,” Doricko explains, noting that the practice is “paid for by farmers and utilities and government entities that want more water for their constituents.”

While cloud seeding is a highly effective practice — it “can produce tens of millions of gallons of precipitation distributed over hundreds of square miles over the course of about an hour or two,” Doricko says — it could not produce the amount of precipitation that fell in Central Texas last weekend. “The remnants of tropical storm Barry that blew in and caused the flooding, that storm dumped trillions of gallons,” he differentiates.

One of the reasons Doricko has been specifically blamed for the deadly Texas floods is because Rainmaker seeded clouds in Texas on July 2 — two days before the rain began.

“We seeded two clouds, two small clouds, with about 70 grams’ worth of silver iodide,” he says, noting that while there was rainfall as a result, the clouds “dissipated about two hours after” and “could not have stayed suspended in the atmosphere by the time that the flooding started happening.”

Further, in accordance with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation’s suspension criteria, Rainmaker stopped its cloud-seeding operations even before the National Weather Service issued flood warnings.

“We at Rainmaker earnestly believe that this is God’s kingdom to steward, and it is our job to do no harm and do as much good as we can,” Doricko tells Glenn, noting that he became a Christian at age 20 and was actually “baptized in Dallas.”

While he stressed the need to “be cautious” to “mitigate any potential for any damage,” he also warned against banning the technology outright. Not only would it “prevent farmers from having water,” but it would also put even greater distance between the United States and China, which has an enormous weather modification program.

“The United States a year ago spent $2.4 million on cloud-seeding research,” while “China has an annual budget of $1.4 billion for cloud seeding and weather modification,” says Doricko. “They have 35,000 employees in their weather modification office,” and “they have two universities that offer bachelor's degrees in weather engineering.”

“If the United States bans this technology wholesale ... not only will we be behind China, but we won't have regulatory statutes or the capability to monitor who is modifying the weather in the United States and otherwise,” he warns.

While Doricko agrees that weather modification sounds scary, cloud seeding is distinct from other more extreme weather modification practices. Cloud seeding encourages precipitation using “existing puffy clouds,” but “geoengineering is a global climatic intervention designed to either cool the planet down or create reflective high-altitude clouds,” he tells Glenn.

But Glenn still has questions. He points to speculation that the devastating double hurricanes — Helene and Milton — that impacted Florida and North Carolina last year were a result of cloud seeding.

“I never believed any of that stuff, but can it be done?” he asks.

“No. It, at this point in time, cannot be done,” Doricko replies.

However, he is a proponent of exploring how we might “mitigate severe weather,” like hurricanes, in the future. “I think that it would be abdicating our responsibility to try to tend to the world that God gave us if we didn't at least think about it,” he says.

To hear Glenn’s response, watch the clip above.

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Jasmine Crockett somehow makes the Texas flood tragedy all about herself



Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas could not resist another opportunity to shine the spotlight on herself.

In the midst of the Texas floods that have claimed the lives of at least 120 loved ones, the Democratic rising star posted a video pointing the finger at President Donald Trump and talking about how the tragedy will most affect her. Notably, Crockett's district is roughly 300 miles away from where the floods raged through Kerr County, which is about the same distance between Boston and Philadelphia.

Despite her long history of tone deaf remarks, Crockett has emerged as one of the most popular Democrats in her party.

Crockett starts the video by saying her "heart is truly heavy for all these families," before immediately making it about herself and how Trump is working around the clock to "hurt us."

"The sad part is I think that my heart is going to carry a level of weight that will continue to weigh me down as we have to continue to do our best to survive an administration that literally is against us," Crockett said in a post on Instagram. "An administration that is doing everything, in my mind, to hurt us and not help us, and it feels like we're fending for ourselves."

RELATED: Here are the top 3 LEAST patriotic members of Congress

Rep. Jasmine Crockett somehow manages to make the Texas flooding disaster about her: “The sad part is, I think that my heart is going to carry a level of weight that will continue to weigh me down as we have to continue to do our best to survive.” pic.twitter.com/J3TAQhmJ5T
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 9, 2025

In the same post about the Texas flooding, Crockett made sure to give a shoutout to her hairstylist.

"My staff said y’all are commenting about my BOB!" Crockett wrote in the post. She thanked her stylist for "orchestrating the look" followed by a kissy face emoji.

RELATED: Jasmine Crockett says Trump impeachment inquiry 'absolutely' on the table

Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Court Accountability

Despite her long history of tone deaf remarks, Crockett has emerged as one of the most popular Democrats in her party.

In a hypothetical Senate primary, Crockett is leading with 35% support among Democratic voters, followed by former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), who polled at 20% support, according to a poll conducted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Failed presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) were also tied for 13% in the poll.

Although Crockett has secured a healthy lead in the primary, she has not formally announced or publicly signaled her interest in running to unseat Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

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Dana Bash and Bill Nye 'the Science Guy' ignore history to pin Texas tragedy on Trump and oil



The catastrophic floods in Central Texas have claimed the lives of at least 120 people, including 46 children. As officials and volunteers continue their search for the 173 still believed missing, liberals continue to spin the tragedy, exploiting Texans' loss and grief for political ends.

This was especially clear Wednesday on CNN, where talking head Dana Bash and Bill Nye "the Science Guy" suggested that the Trump administration and American energy were somehow culpable for the flooding in Texas and North Carolina as well as the rains in Chicago.

At the outset of the interview, Bash insinuated both that floods are becoming more frequent and that they are the result of climate change — even though in the case of Texas, they took place in a region that earned the nickname "flash flood alley" with a pattern of heavy flooding that apparently predates the combustion engine by many centuries.

Political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. recently directed the attention of USA Today to a 1940 historical text on American floods that indicates "the same region of Texas that experienced this week’s floods has long been known to be a bull's-eye for flash flooding."

A century before that text was published, German immigrants in New Braunfels, Texas, reportedly had to contend with the same problem — and faced a Guadalupe River that would consistently rise 15 feet above its normal stand following heavy rains.

"The documented record of extreme flooding in 'flash flood alley' goes back several centuries, with paleoclimatology records extending that record thousands of years into the past," said Pielke.

RELATED: Liberal women quickly learn what happens when you say vile things about little girls killed in the floods

Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images

"It's terrible," said Bash, referring to footage of flooding. "You keep hearing 'once in a lifetime,' 'once in a hundred years,' 'once in a thousand years.' At this point, it's not any more. It's just where we are with the climate and the environment."

After suggesting that "warm weather events are actually easier to tie to climate change," Nye — who for all his honorary doctorates has not earned a doctorate in any scientific field — said, "'What are we going to do about it?' is the ancient question. And [the answer] would be to stop burning fossil fuels."

"When you're in a hole, stop digging, and so on," continued Nye. "But the fossil fuel industry has been very successful in getting organizations like the U.S. Congress to think that it's really not happening."

After Nye smeared a critical source of American energy, Bash proved eager to tie its survival to President Donald Trump, stating, "And the first six months of the Trump administration, we've seen an end to some of the federal efforts on not just fossil fuel but other efforts that had been in place government-wide to promote alternative energy."

'If we harness our outrage and come together to fight like hell for our collective future, we will win.'

Failed presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg noted in a Tuesday op-ed that elected officials owe the Texas families who lost love ones "a sincere commitment to righting their deadly wrong, by tackling the problem they’ve turned their backs on for too long: climate change."

RELATED: NY newspaper nailed with backlash over cartoon mocking MAGA victims of Texas floods: 'Twisted, vile, and shameful'

Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

"The latest episode of horrific flooding isn't just about a natural disaster in one state," continued Bloomberg, who has poured cash into various climate alarmist initiatives. "It's also about a political failure that's been happening in states across the country, and most of all in Washington. The refusal to recognize that climate change carries a death penalty is sending innocent people, including far too many children, to early graves."

Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club and former CEO of the NAACP, claimed in a Chicago Sun-Times piece that the Texas disaster "was a crisis written by the climate crisis and made far worse by the types of policies being pushed by this administration everyday [sic]."

Jealous, like Bloomberg and Nye, appears to think the flood a good enough excuse for Americans to join their war on fossil fuels, stating, "If we harness our outrage and come together to fight like hell for our collective future, we will win."

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Want to help Texas flood victims? Here’s what you can do



Over the July Fourth weekend, torrential rains unleashed catastrophic flooding along the Guadalupe River in Central Texas. The death toll has climbed past 100 statewide, with 87 confirmed deaths in Kerr County, and is expected to rise as rescue teams search for the missing. Among the victims are 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian summer camp for girls near Hunt, Texas.

This tragedy hit home for Sara Gonzales, a Texas native.

“My heart has been heavy all weekend thinking about people in my own state, here in the state of Texas, who have died in this tragic flood,” she says.

In times like these, people are eager to support the victims, their families, and the rescue teams, but they often struggle to find reliable ways to help.

To get guidance on how we can best help, Sara invited Texas Rep. Chip Roy (R) to “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“Can you tell the audience what they can do if they want to help?” Sara asks.

“First of all, pray,” is Roy’s initial response.

“Second of all, go online and donate. Dollars will always be able to help and be able to be used where they're best needed,” he adds, adding that his social media pages as well as his website have information about how you can help.

— (@)

Roy reminds us that help will be needed not just now, but for many months to come.

“We’re going to need help in a week. We're going to need help in two weeks, and everybody forgets and they go back to life, but that's when we're going to really need the help,” he says. “Right now, we're trying to … find bodies, clear out the disaster area, open up roads, and then we're going to need a lot of help over the next six months to a year.”

“We’ll rebuild,” he promised. “We’re Texas. … We're filled with a lot of God-fearing, awesome people, and we'll rebuild.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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