There’s Always Going to be a Conspiracy Theory
This is your TPM evening briefing.
There are plenty of legitimate questions swirling around the devastating flooding in Texas last weekend that left at least 100 people dead. They include questions about emergency alert funding decisions made by Texas’ Republican state legislature and about cuts to federal agencies implemented by the Trump administration that may have affected how the emergency response was handled. They also include questions raised in recent reporting from the Texas Tribune, which found the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio office announced in April that he would retire early as a result of federal funding cuts.
But we live in the MAGA era. And despite all these honest questions — about county, state, and federal disaster preparedness, about the increasingly disastrous impacts of climate change — Trump’s allies are coming up with their own conspiracy theories to explain the tragedy.
They involve anti-DEI vitriol, because of course they do.
Charlie Kirk, the far-right online provocateur and conspiracy theorist who co-founded the extremist Turning Point USA group for right-wing youths, is spreading a bizarre claim about the Austin Fire Department — which serves the residents of the city of Austin, located more than 100 miles east of where the worst of the flooding occurred. In today’s episode of his podcast, the Charlie Kirk Show that streams on Rumble, Kirk claimed that the “DEI” supposedly festering at the heart of the Austin Fire Department was actually to blame for deficiencies in the emergency response to the fatal flooding.
Here’s Kirk’s remarks, initially flagged by Media Matters for America:
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. 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. Let me prove it to you.
Kirk goes on a whole screed explaining his inaccurate version of events surrounding a 2013 Obama administration Justice Department decision to investigate the Austin Fire Department for racial discrimination in its hiring practices. The complaint brought by the Obama DOJ was settled in 2014, according to the Justice Department. Here are some additional details from the Austin-American Statesman‘s 2018 coverage of the expiration of the consent decree:
In 2013, Department of Justice officials found evidence that Hispanics and African-Americans were discriminated against during the hiring process, and that they were less likely to be hired than white applicants because of how the Fire Department ranked eligible applicants.
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In 2014, the Austin City Council approved a settlement with the Justice Department, agreeing to pay up to $780,000 to unsuccessful firefighter applicants for back pay and to set aside 30 new hire positions for African-American and Hispanic candidates.
Kirk went on to claim that Austin’s decision to hire the city’s first Black fire chief somehow prevented the department from properly preparing for floods.
Standard — up until the beginning of Trump II — workplace diversity initiatives have become the new “deep state.” They are the villain behind any and all natural disasters and tragedies during Trump’s second term, an amorphous, intangible, sinister presence at the heart of all matters that might prompt bad press for Trump’s agenda.
Republicans Don’t Read Legislative Text
Similar to how some House Republicans claimed ignorance about an AI provision that was tucked into their initial version of Trump’s massive reconciliation package, Senate Republicans are now questioning how a mysterious piece of text that will limit tax deductions on gambling losses wormed its way into the final version of the bill. (Senate Republicans ultimately removed the AI provision from their version of the legislation, which would’ve blocked states from regulating AI for the next decade.)
The provision surprised many in the industry as well as numerous Republican senators involved in drafting the legislation, who told HuffPost they didn’t know how or why it was inserted into the bill. GOP lawmakers were under pressure to pass the bill by Trump’s self-imposed July 4 deadline.
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Under the new law, gamblers will be allowed to deduct just 90% of their losses from their income taxes starting in 2026. Previously, they could deduct 100% of their losses. Now, for example, gamblers who win $100,000 but lose $100,000 – coming out even — would still be required to pay taxes on $10,000.
Van Orden Does What Republicans do Best: Take Credit for Dems’ Work
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) has been on social media claiming that he helped secure $1 billion to help hospitals in Wisconsin survive the deep Medicaid cuts that will soon hit them due to President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ “big beautiful” bill.
Except, of course, Van Orden was one of the House Republicans who supported and voted for the Medicaid-gutting bill and he was not involved in securing the money that would help the Badger State’s hospitals.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) and state legislators quickly passed a new state budget that increased the state’s Medicaid provider taxes, in order to avoid their provider tax rates getting frozen at the very low rate it was at, due to Trump’s reconciliation bill. The increase in the tax rates will get the state an extra $1 billion in federal dollars, helping it offset some of the Medicaid cuts on the horizon.
Van Orden, whose seat is considered a “toss-up,” really wants people to think he was crucial in securing that money. He has claimed repeatedly on social media that he was the reason the state legislature and the governor acted as fast as they did.
But an Evers spokesperson quickly shut down Van Orden’s claims, telling Huffpost that Van Orden played no role in the negotiations between the governor and state legislators on the state budget or on their efforts to move quickly to secure the money needed to offset the Medicaid cuts.
“If Congressman Van Orden wanted to take credit for supporting Medicaid and protecting Wisconsinites’ access to healthcare, perhaps he shouldn’t have voted to gut Medicaid and kick 250,000 Wisconsinites off their healthcare,” Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback said in a statement.
— Emine Yücel
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