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At Least 121 Dead, 160+ Missing After Catastrophic Texas Floods; Kerr County Officials Warned Of Need For Alarm System; Sources: Response To Texas Floods Slowed By FEMA Bureaucracy; White House Amps Up Criticism Of Fed Chair Powell; WH Official Criticizes Fed Chair Over HQ Renovations; Trump: Powell Doing A "Terrible Job" At Fed But Won't Fire Him; Wife Of TX A.G. Ken Paxton Files For Divorce On "Biblical Grounds". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 11, 2025 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, on the ground. The president and the first lady are on their way to a state ravaged by flooding. They'll arrive to pressing questions about vacancies inside the National Weather Service and about red tape slowing federal help.

Plus, Senate drama. A candidate's wife shakes up an important primary by dropping a bomb about filing for divorce. She did it on social media citing biblical grounds. And it's a bird, it's a plane, it's MAGA's latest culture war obsession, the Superman movie.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We begin this hour tracking Air Force One, making its way to Texas. As we speak today, the president will meet with families who have lost everything in the flooding. It's been one week since a wall of water tore through multiple communities, killing more than 120 people. Today crews are still searching for more than 160 people who are still missing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: It's a horrible thing, a horrible thing. Nobody can even believe it, such a thing that much water, that fast, without a dam break. You'd think a dam would have to break to have it so, a terrible thing. But we're going to be there with some of the great families and others, the governor, everybody is going to be there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I want to get straight to CNN's Ed Lavandera, who is in Kerrville, Texas, one of the hardest hit areas. Ed, you were one of the first people there a week ago, so you have been in and involved with the community for seven days now. What are you hearing from people there about what they want to hear from the president when he gets there?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it has been a painfully long week for thousands of residents here in Kerr County. And many of the people we've spoken with, Dana, are simply consumed with the task of either searching the Guadalupe River for the missing, others involved in cleanup and providing support to first responders. That has really been the focus of, you know, so many people that we've met over the last few days.

And now, with the president's visit coming here shortly. There is some concern among some people that we've talked to about the future of federal response and federal support in the recovery process. Here, we've talked to a number of people who are concerned that, you know, once this wave of volunteers, which can't stay here forever or for, you know, weeks and weeks at a time.

You know, they're concerned about where is the help going to come from at that point. So, some of them that we've spoken to say are urging the president and federal government officials to be cognizant of that. You know, this comes as there are still, Dana, many questions about the warning systems that were in place, that perhaps were not in place, that could have saved lives in this tragedy.

CNN has obtained audio from radio transmissions just after 4 am. This was obtained and provided to us by the former IT director in Kerr County, who helped establish this CodeRed alert. Listen to some of that here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is there any way we can send a CodeRed out to our hunt residents asking them to find higher ground or stay home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stand by, we have to get that approved with our supervisor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: And Dana, those calls came after 4 am, by then, you can tell from those radio transmissions it was simply too late. You know, the warning systems had -- should have gone out and had to have gone out between one and 4 am to really get people to safer places. So, you know, this question of these early alerts is really, you know, something that is getting a lot of attention.

In fact, the governor of Texas has called for a special session. One of the issues that will be -- the lawmakers will be debating and coming up with is early detection plans and warning systems in place throughout this part of this watershed to help protect people -- protect people in the future, Dana.

BASH: Yeah. I spoke to a state senator who said we can't just let the local communities do it. We just have to take over and make it happen. So, we'll see if that does happen. Ed, thank you to you and your team for terrific reporting all week and I know you will continue to do so.

[12:05:00]

I'm joined by other amazing reporters to talk about this and more, Maeve Reston of The Washington Post, CNN's Josh Campbell, as well as Phil Mattingly of CNN, and Nia-Malika Henderson of Bloomberg and CNN.

Josh Campbell, I want to start with you for a lot of reasons. First, you know this area very well. You grew up in and around the Hill Country of Texas, and you've also been doing reporting on some of what's going on there. And you pointed out something that I want to play about Governor Abbott of what he said back in 2021 when the electrical grid in Texas went bad versus what he is saying now. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): Who's to blame? Know this. That's the word choice of losers. My focus isn't on trying to say, oh, you did wrong, or you should have done better there. ERCOT failed on each of these measures. Texans deserve answers about why these shortfalls occurred.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Josh?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, I mean, those two distinctions there are very clear. Where, at this point, we're hearing from the governor as well as from other local officials, is that it's too soon to look into accountability. And that is something that, you know, we continue to hear from people on the ground.

Our colleague, Ed Lavandera, who's just been doing phenomenal reporting there with rigor and with compassion, as well as some of our other colleagues. They are hearing questions from locals. I'm hearing questions from locals. Family and friends there, who say that we just want to know, did alerts go out?

What were local officials actually doing? We know that the National Weather Service issued a very ominous warning at 1:14 am on Friday. We still don't know what officials did with that information. Now we're talking about a catastrophic flood. They couldn't have stopped it, but could they have issued those alerts? And again, that's a big question.

It's interesting, obviously, this is Inside Politics, and the politics of the region, I think are very important. We're talking about a very red area there. In fact, when I grew up in the Hill Country and then went to Austin for college at UT, you know, the Blue Island of Texas there.

BASH: Blue dot, yeah.

CAMPBELL: Yeah, the blue dot. I don't think I had met a Democrat at that point. And so, we're talking about a very red area. And so, these aren't people who are just reflexively trying to blame, you know, the Republican officials there. But they want answers to these basic questions, not only to determine could lives have been saved, but there will be more floods. They want to make sure the system works. BASH: That's such an important point. I mean, we cannot say this enough. This is not about politics. This is about government, politics aside and accountability. Phil Mattingly, I want you to react to something that President Trump told our friend Kristen Welker over at NBC about Kristi Noem, and questions about red tape at DHS.

He said, I don't know anything about it. We were right on time. We were there, in fact, she was the first one I saw on television. She was right there from the beginning, and she would not have needed anything. She had the right to do it, but she was literally the first person I saw on TV. It is true, she went so quickly. That is a separate question from whether or not she was able to release funds needed from FEMA to immediately help.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. There's a lot to unpack in that answer. When the president says, I don't really know anything about that. That's usually not a great sign for the person that the question is being asked about. Also, the president's reliance on whether or not somebody is on TV to tell him whether or not something is working. I think is longstanding.

What I would say, and I don't say any of that in a snarky way. I think it's just an important understanding of how this president, who's driving this administration and how it works. Where things get complicated, as it pertains to DHS and some of the reporting.

Our colleagues have been doing on this issue is the bureaucratic elements of a response from a federal agency in these moments is incredibly important and has long before this administration created problems in the past.

The issue that there's been reporting on from our colleagues at CNN is setting limits on how much people can spend without the secretary's explicit approval led to some holdups, led to some hang ups, at a time when those were the worst case scenarios of things that could happen as it pertains to the federal government's role. Now, we'll see how things continue to play out going forward.

Dana, I think what's interesting in this moment, and you know this better than anybody, this is the moment when the federal government is absolutely crucial. This is also the moment when the federal government, even if it's maligned on a political basis by members of one party or the other in prior iterations of their stances on things, often becomes their first call.

As they are all asking for money, willing to vote for money, willing to do anything they can to help their district or their state. And so, how FEMA performs and how DHS performs, and how the federal government writ large performs matters now more than ever.

BASH: Nia?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST & CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: No. I think that's right. And we saw in previous disasters, when Donald Trump was running for president in 2024, he was maligning FEMA, maligning the federal government for their failure to respond to incidents in North Carolina and natural disasters. There will be more natural disasters if you are in the south in particular, you are coming up on hurricane season soon, and so you need a robust federal government.

[12:10:00]

The problem, of course, is that this is an administration that has come in and wanted to gut some of these federal agencies, FEMA in particular, saying, listen, these states are on your own. Natural disasters that have already happened. You go to those states, and folks, they are sort of coordinating their own response because they are thinking that, you know, FEMA is not coming.

So, I think going forward, there's going to be some -- a lot of rethinking about what happens with FEMA, and some of the pullbacks and cutbacks likely have to be rolled back because again, we are in, you know, a season where we're going to have hurricanes and flooding. And so, we got to figure out as a government how they're going to respond.

BASH: Yeah. Which is not necessarily an oops when it comes to the philosophy of the Trump administration. From the beginning, they have said that we want to transfer these responding moments, these -- when natural disasters has happened. We want to give the money to the states and start to phase out FEMA and let the states do that. We'll see if their thought process changes with all of this.

Maeve, I want to turn to you, because you and your colleagues have some great reporting at the post. Before I tell our viewers what it is, I want to set it up with something that President Trump said on social media about the governor of the state where we are right now, California.

Governor Gavin Newsom refused to sign the water restoration declaration before him, and went on to say he didn't care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid. He is to blame for this. That was back in January, talking about the fires here.

Let's now look at some of your great reporting, which is talking about what we're seeing about the picking and choosing of who the federal government is helping under the Trump administration, depending on if it's a red state Texas, blue state California. For months, California Governor Gavin Newsom has pressed the GOP led Congress to free up $40 billion in federal relief for swaths of Los Angeles consumed by devastating wildfires.

President Trump and other Republicans have so far withheld the funds, while many arguing that Newsom and other Democrats in the deep blue state have mishandled the fires and should be forced to rescind liberal policies in exchange for aid.

MAEVE RESTON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: So, it's this fascinating contrast that we're seeing play out between the California wildfires and in Texas. President Trump did keep to President Biden's commitment to provide, you know, 100 percent immediate recovery funding for the first 180 days after the fires. But there are so many needs here in California for people that are trying to rebuild from the fires, and there has been no movement as far as we can tell on Governor Newsom's $40 billion request.

And so, it's just going to be really interesting to see whether there are any calls for strings to be attached to the aid to Texas in the same way as California. And Governor Newsom has been out making the case that, you know, that the federal government has always given aid to every state without those kinds of preconditions. And so, we don't know how the Trump administration is going to -- going to play this yet.

BASH: Last word.

CAMPBELL: No. I would just say that when we talk about accountability, one thing we've done here at CNN, we've looked at past incidents, right? And the questions we're asking are the same ones that the local residents are asking. If you go back and look at major recent disasters, we know, for example, the Los Angeles' wildfires. There was a National Weather Service warning that came out, warning that this windstorm was coming.

Local officials were faulted for not staging resources. The Maui wildfires, the National Weather Service did its job. Local officials faulting -- were faulted for not pre-positioning resources. All 80 warning sirens on Maui County were silent as that fire raged.

You go to the Texas storm that you talked about there as well, same thing, National Weather Service. And so, these questions are fair because we've seen in the past issues of government complacency, and we'll continue to ask them.

BASH: All right. Thank you so much. Don't go anywhere. Coming back -- coming up. President Trump is opening a new line of attack on the Federal Reserve, specifically its chairman. What he said this morning when asked whether he will try to fire Jerome Powell. We have new reporting, up next.

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[12:15:00]

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BASH: If you listen to the president at all recently, it won't come as a surprise to you that he's not very happy with the Federal Reserve chair. He attacked Jerome Powell again this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: I think he's doing a terrible job. I think we should be -- no, I think we should be three points lower interest rate. He's costing our country a lot of money. We should be number one, and we're not and that's because of Jerome Powell.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:20:00]

BASH: There is so much more to this story, and our Phil Mattingly just published a really fascinating new analysis of what the president's increasingly aggressive attacks on Powell are all about. You can find that on cnn.com, but guess what, Phil is still with us. Explain to us what more is there to this story and why he's so angry at Powell?

MATTINGLY: Yeah. The actual policy elements here, I think are important, because it's not just the president attacking Jay Powell because he doesn't like Jay Powell, which had been the case, I think in the first term at various points. And it's not a new thing. The president disdains the current Federal Reserve chair, who also happened to be the guy that he nominated.

What's different right now, particularly over the course of the last couple of weeks, is for markets that have kind of grown a little bit numb to the president's very overt willingness to attack the Fed chair. The new twist is that the president's advisors have really ramped up their criticism as well, both in public, but also in some of the moves they're making behind the scenes.

And I think that's where things are very different in this moment, which is, yesterday the budget Director Russ Vought sent a letter to Jay Powell, essentially alleging that he perhaps broke the law as it relates to a renovation project tied to the Fed's headquarters, and also, may have misled Congress in testimony related to that renovation project.

At the same time, the president decided to remove three members of a planning commission tied to the oversight of these types of renovation projects and replace them with three loyalists. Now in isolation, this is how the White House is framing things. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSSELL VOUGHT, OMB DIRECTOR: This is about the renovations that are occurring, the extent to which they are large S, the cost that we're talking about is now 2.5 billion. If you look at the actual Palace of Versailles, if you were to update those figures for where we in modern numbers, it would be $3 billion. The capital was about $2.5 billion.

We will be asking tough questions with regard to the Fed. But this is about the president being offended at cost overruns. He's a developer, and the size of this project is something that, you know, should never have gone forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Dana, what this is about in isolation is what you just heard from the budget Director Russell Vought. What this is about writ large is the fact that this is a very clear additional element to a very coordinated, based on the course of the last couple of weeks, effort to escalate that pressure. And the reason why this in particular matters, and you know Russ Vought for those who don't, he's probably one of the more talented bureaucratic players within this administration, really knows how to utilize the levers of power within the federal government. Is this could create a predicate, if the president decided to pursue the one way legally that officials believe he could potentially fire Jay Powell, which is for cause.

Now this is an important point here, because you play the president saying, he's not going to fire Powell. And for somebody the president dislikes as much as the president clearly does. Why would he not pursue that option? There's been two major roadblocks. The first is statutory, whether or not, he can do it without cause? Is very much an open question.

The second part, which is the most important here, markets would react terribly to this. And his advisors have made clear, we don't want to go down that path. The president doesn't either. But that doesn't mean the pressure is going to mitigate in any way, shape or form. In fact, it's going in the exact opposite direction, Dana, straight up.

BASH: He can fire him for cause. And so, they're perhaps creating or trying to expose what they are going to argue is that cause. Got it. Phil, thank you so much again. Everybody should read Phil's piece on cnn.com. Don't go anywhere, though, Phil, because coming up. Everything is bigger in Texas, including political drama, details of the high-profile divorce filing that could impact a major Senate race. And the MAGA versus the Man of Steel. Why the new Superman movie is at the center of the latest culture war.

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[12:25:00]

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BASH: What was once Ken Paxton's private life is now very much spilling out into the public after his wife announced their divorce to the world in a dramatic post on X, that went viral in an instant. Now Paxton is the Texas attorney general, a Trump ally and candidate for Senate. He's running in a Republican primary. His soon to be, now ex- wife Angela is also a politician. She's a state senator in Texas. They have been a power couple for years.

Now, it is very much a power struggle over a lot of things. Ken Paxton paints the divorce that is pending now as the byproduct of our politics, chalking it up to the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny. Angela Paxton hints at something different, explaining that she, quote, filed for divorce on biblical grounds. And that following, quote, recent discoveries, she does not believe that her marriage honors God.

Our reporters are back. And Nia, I'm going to start with you because there's so many things to unpack here, but let's just kind of table set with our -- four our viewers. Nia, on the fact that this is a couple who has stuck together through other political storms that Ken Paxton was involved with, including an attempt to impeach him. She was very much by his side.