Deadly Tornado Rips Through Midwest Days After Trump Gutted Key Agency

A violent tornado outbreak over the weekend sent millions bracing in the Midwest and South and killed at least 40 people, just days after Donald Trump’s administration ordered another round of massive layoffs at the country’s severe weather tracking agency.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency announced last week that it would terminate 10 percent of its workforce, which will equate to roughly 1,000 of the agency’s 10,000 employees.

NOAA plays an essential role in weather forecasting and warning Americans about natural disasters, including avalanches, electrical events, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, and of course, tornadoes. Reporting from 122 local offices, NOAA officials provide guidance on how to avoid danger.

The agency had already been subject to an earlier round of workforce cuts at the beginning of the month. By the time the latest cuts are complete, one in four jobs at the agency will have been terminated.

Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist who is a conservative and NOAA chief scientist under Trump, warned against the cuts, calling NOAA’s work an “amazing undertaking.”

“You can’t count on TV meteorologists to fill this gap and you can’t count on private meteorology,” Maue told the Associated Press. “You can’t count on your weather app to call you up and alert you’’ to tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and floods in your area.

NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said that the cuts proposed by the Trump administration posed a serious threat to the work of his agency.

“This is not government efficiency,” Spinrad told the AP. “It is the first steps toward eradication. There is no way to make these kinds of cuts without removing or strongly compromising mission capabilities.”

The powerful storm system was exiting the U.S. on Monday, leaving behind a trail of destruction and fatalities concentrated mostly in Missouri.

Trump posted a statement on social media Sunday saying that his administration was tracking the severe weather event.

“We are actively monitoring the severe tornadoes and storms that have impacted many States across the South and Midwest—36 innocent lives have been lost, and many more devastated,” he wrote.

“The National Guard have been deployed to Arkansas, and my Administration is ready to assist State and Local Officials, as they help their communities to try and recover from the damage. Please join Melania and me in praying for everyone impacted by these terrible storms!”

But before that, he was bragging about having won a golf award at his own club.

The Trump administration is working tirelessly to undo the accomplishments of President Joe Biden—including the ex-president’s pardons.

“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” Donald Trump posted on Truth Social within the first hour of Monday.

Trump has accused Biden of not physically signing several of his orders as the basis for undoing them. The allegation was originally hocked by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. On Friday, the New York Post reported that a former Biden staffer had corroborated the detail, though the conservative publication refused to publish the staffer’s name due to a “lack of concrete evidence and refutations by other colleagues.”

“In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!” Trump continued. “The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime.”

“Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level,” the president wrote. “The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!”

The Constitution offers the president the unique and irrefutable power to issue pardons. In one of his final acts in office, Biden issued a slew of controversial preemptive pardons in January for individuals who had not committed crimes but had investigated, criticized, or worked to prosecute Trump for criminal wrongdoing.

The Senate advanced the House GOP spending bill Friday with some help from across the aisle. Nine Democrats, plus an independent who caucuses with Democrats, joined Republicans in passing the continuing resolution, which will extend government funding until September 30. Those senators were Dick Durbin (Illinois), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), Gary Peters (Michigan), Angus King (Maine), Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York).

The upper chamber needed 60 votes to pass the measure, requiring the assistance of at least seven Democratic lawmakers to join the Republican effort. The looming alternative was a government shutdown that a coalition of Democrats believed could pressure Republicans to further negotiate down the bill. The shutdown would have begun as soon as Saturday morning, and would have reduced federal services, furloughed thousands of “nonessential” government workers, and potentially paused pay for thousands of “essential” federal employees until the budget was resolved.

Deep divides in the Democratic Party emerged Thursday and Friday as lawmakers debated whether to maintain adamant opposition against the House GOP’s continuing resolution. At a private lunch with the Democratic caucus, Gillibrand was heard screaming about the impacts of a government shutdown through the room’s “thick wood doors,” according to Fox News’s Aishah Hasnie.

How the caucus would vote still wasn’t clear by Friday late afternoon, when Schumer again implored Democrats to vote in favor of the Trump-endorsed budget, arguing that a shutdown would give Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to destroy vital government services even faster.

House Democrats voted nearly unanimously against the bill earlier this week. After Schumer’s remarks, top House Democrats issued a joint statement reiterating their opposition to the measure, pushing for a four-week spending bill and more time to negotiate the details of a continuing resolution.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries gave a nonanswer when asked whether Senator Chuck Schumer needed to be replaced as Senate minority leader.

Jeffries was speaking to the press Friday regarding the impending government funding deadline, which will come down to a vote in the Senate for the continuing resolution passed by House Republicans. A reporter point-blank asked the New York congressman, “Is it time for new leadership in the Senate?”

“Next question,” Jeffries said, refusing to answer.

When asked if he has lost confidence in Schumer, Jeffries again replied, “Next question.”

“You have dodged multiple times questions about whether you have confidence right now in Schumer, and … none of you are willing to say you have confidence in Chuck Schumer?” a reporter finally asked.

“You keep engaging in parlor games because you want to take the focus off of the American people,” Jeffries said, still refusing to answer the question.

The fact that Jeffries could have easily said “no” but tried to quickly move past the question is telling. Schumer’s decision to support the GOP’s continuing resolution angered many Democrats on Capitol Hill, especially since all but one House Democrat voted against the bill. Some Democrats, including centrists, have reportedly even urged Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a primary challenge to Schumer in 2028.

Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t addressed the question, but former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed the idea of Senate Democrats supporting the Republican bill in a statement on Friday, calling it “unacceptable.”

“I salute Leader Hakeem Jeffries for his courageous rejection of this false choice, and I am proud of my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus for their overwhelming vote against this bill,” Pelosi said in her statement.

Pelosi, one mustn’t forget, was a major driving force behind Joe Biden stepping down as the Democratic nominee for president in the 2024 election, and her experience and words carry a lot of weight for Democrats in Congress. If Jeffries isn’t publicly supporting Schumer, and Pelosi is publicly criticizing his decision to support the GOP’s continuing resolution, that could mean that Schumer’s days leading Senate Democrats are numbered.

The Trump administration practically declared war on the nation’s judicial system Friday, asserting that the executive branch would aggressively fight court orders requiring them to rehire thousands of federal employees.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the system of checks and balances as “unconstitutional,” telling reporters that the administration would fight back by appealing the decisions with the “full weight” of the White House legal counsel.

“You cannot have a low-level district court judge filing an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said. “That is absurd.”

Leavitt then said it was within the president’s authority to “fire or hire” judges, while highlighting that federal courts had placed more injunctions on the administration’s “agenda” in the last month than the Biden administration faced during a four-year term. Somehow, Leavitt interpreted that as a personal attack on the president and his policies rather than an indication that the administration’s strategies have been legally dubious.

“It’s very clear that there are judicial activists throughout our judicial branch who are trying to block this president’s executive authority. We are going to fight back,” Leavitt continued, underscoring the fact that Donald Trump has survived “nearly 200” legal challenges and has still ascended to the Oval Office.

But Leavitt’s argument that judicial pushback on Trump’s executive orders is somehow illegitimate ignores the fact that the three branches of government are designed to counterbalance one another. Judges are not supposed to bend to the will of a president’s agenda, but rather determine its legality based on legal precedent and the Constitution. Congress is also supposed to check the executive branch, but the Republican majorities in the House and Senate have effectively ceded that power to Trump, to curry favor with their constituents.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered several agencies to “immediately” reinstate all fired probationary employees on Thursday, slamming the mass firing of federal employees as an “unlawful” directive by the Office of Personnel Management.

Those agencies included the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as the departments of Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Agriculture. The order would also restore numbers at the IRS, which falls under the helm of the Treasury Department and has been hit hard by job cuts in recent weeks.

In a hearing leading up to the decision, Alsup torched the Trump administration’s decision not to submit OPM director Chad Ezell for questioning as a “sham,” and called the White House’s effort to cast the firings as performance failures as “a gimmick.”

Alsup’s order was delivered as federal agencies were due to submit “reduction memos” to the White House that could affect as many as 250,000 additional probationary federal employees.