The disaster that unfolded in Kerr County, Texas shows how many communities will struggle to prepare for extreme weather as the federal government pulls back.
Many countries thought they were negotiating in good faith. The White House renewed its “reciprocal” tariff plan anyway, giving countries until Aug. 1 to make offers.
A small company in northern Mexico had faced steep competition from China in making straps, plugs, fasteners, grommets, zip ties and clamps. Now, U.S. tariffs have driven a spike in his business.
Search-and-rescue teams have been hoping against hope to find signs of life after the Texas floods. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, an investigative reporter at The New York Times, describes what he has seen in Texas.
The Eklundh’s olive-green cottage — surrounded by apple trees, gooseberry bushes, a vegetable garden, flowers and potted tomato plants — has become a refuge, particularly in recent months as Ms. Elkundh has been undergoing treatment for breast cancer.
The site of a nitrogen leak in Georgia that killed six workers in 2021. The federal investigative team that determined the cause could face Trump administration cuts.
Federal officials said it was an immigration enforcement operation, though it was unclear if anyone had been arrested. “It’s the way a city looks before a coup,” Mayor Karen Bass said as she condemned the action.
The American Federation of Teachers said it would use the $23 million, including $500,000 from the A.I. start-up Anthropic, to create a national training center.
The sweep of graphic lawsuits accusing Sean Combs of sex abuse led to a sense that his criminal case might examine celebrity debauchery in the music industry. It did not.
Some assumed that Sean Combs’s famed White Parties — the soirees he held from Beverly Hills to the Hamptons that have been whispered about as settings for V.I.P. bacchanalia — would be a part of his criminal trial.
A rare earth factory in La Rochelle, France, owned by the Belgium-based company Solvay. The plant produces crucial materials needed to produce modern cars, wind turbines and military equipment.
A steamfitter and former union leader, running as an independent but with Democratic support, will take on the Republican incumbent, a billionaire’s son.
Norman Tebbit, who served as a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government, has died aged 94.
Throughout the 1980s he worked as the chairman of the Conservative Party and led departments including trade and industry and employment.
A loyal ally of Thatcher, Lord Tebbit backed her agenda, bringing in laws designed to curb union power - including making them liable for damages if they did illegal acts.
In 1984, he and his wife were injured in the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Tory Party's annual conference.
He suffered a broken shoulder blade, fractured vertebrae and a cracked collarbone, while his wife, Margaret, was left permanently disabled by the bomb.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Lord Tebbit's son William said: "At 11.15pm on 7 July 2025 Lord Tebbit died peacefully at home aged 94.
"His family ask that their privacy is respected at this time and a further statement regarding funeral arrangements will be made in due course."
Lord Tebbit served as an MP from 1970 until 1992, representing Epping for the first four years and Chingford from 1974 to 1992.
In 1981, he made a famous speech to the Conservative Party conference in which he criticised riots over unemployment, telling the audience that in the 1930s his father had not rioted but had "got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it".
In 1990, he provoked anger when he posed a 'cricket test' to help determine whether a person was truly British.
"A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test," he said.
"Which side do they cheer for? It's an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?"
Few scenes convey British pomp and soft power more than the King and Queen in a carriage procession through the picturesque streets of Windsor. They are being joined on Tuesday by Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron for the first state visit by a French president since 2008, and the first by a European Union leader since Brexit.
The Prince and Princess of Wales will be there too — a Royal Salute will be fired and Macron will inspect a guard of honour. But at a time of jeopardy in Europe, this three-day visit to Windsor and London promises much more than ceremony.
There is a genuine hope that the coming days will make a difference to both countries.
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Macron and Starmer joined the German chancellor on a train ride to Kyiv recently, sending a powerful message of support for Ukraine at a time when US commitment appeared to be flagging
Macron will address MPs and peers at Westminster, and he and Brigitte will be treated to a state banquet back at Windsor. The trip will culminate with a UK-France summit, co-chaired by Sir Keir Starmer and Macron, during which the two governments hope to reach an agreement on the return of irregular migrants.
They will also host Ukraine's leader by video as they try to maintain arms supplies to his military.
But the wider question is how closely aligned they can really become, and whether they can put any lingering mistrust after Brexit behind them.
And, given that the trip will involve much pageantry — with the tour moving from the streets of Windsor, the quadrangle of the Castle and later to the Royal Gallery of the Palace of Westminster — how crucial is King Charles III's role in this diplomacy?
Resetting a 'unique partnership'
It was less than two months ago that the UK and EU agreed to "reset" relations in London. Ties with France in particular had warmed considerably, driven partly by personal understanding but also strategic necessity.
The two neighbours have much in common: they are both nuclear powers and members of the United Nations Security Council.
They are also both looking to update a 15-year-old defence pact known as the Lancaster House treaties, which established a 10,000-strong Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF), and they have recently been working on broadening it to include other Nato and European countries.
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Macron has seen much of Sir Keir lately at summits in London, Canada and The Hague — and Starmer has visited France five times since becoming PM
"It has always been a unique partnership," says former French ambassador to the UK Sylvie Bermann. "I think this partnership will be crucial in the future."
All of this is unlikely to escape the notice of US President Donald Trump, who is also promised a state visit, his second to the UK, probably in September.
King Charles is 'more than a figurehead'
King Charles, who is 76, has already navigated some complex royal diplomacy this year.
Macron was the first European leader to visit Trump in the White House in February, but it was Sir Keir who stole the show days later, handing him a personal invitation from the King.
Then, when Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky returned to Europe fresh from a bruising meeting with Trump at the White House in February, it was King Charles who welcomed him to Sandringham, and then met him again at Windsor in June.
He has spoken in the past of the heroism of Ukrainians in the face of "indescribable aggression".
Even before ascending the throne, King Charles amassed decades of experience in international affairs (he is also fluent in French). He was only 21 when he attended the funeral in 1970 of Charles de Gaulle, the wartime general who became the architect of France's current Fifth Republic.
He went on to become the longest-serving Prince of Wales in history, and now he is King he has weekly audiences with the prime minister. "The choreography is a strange dance, I suspect, between Number Ten and the Palace," says royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams.
"There's no doubt at all that Charles is considerably more than a figurehead."
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King Charles at 21, attending the Mass for Charles de Gaulle in Paris
Windsor Castle, which dates back to the first Norman king, William the Conqueror, has hosted French presidents before. But there is a quiet significance in the appearance of the Prince and Princess of Wales in welcoming Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, as Catherine recovers from treatment for cancer.
Between them, the King and Macron have played their part in resetting relations between the two neighbours, and by extension with the European Union too.
The King is a francophile, says Marc Roche, a columnist and royal commentator for French media: "He has always had a good relationship with France."
A year after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, it was France that King Charles and Queen Camilla chose for their first state visit in September 2023.
AFP via Getty Images
Queen Camilla played table tennis at a sports centre in Paris with Brigitte Macron
Macron had reminded the world in 2022 that the late Queen had "climbed the stairs of the Élysée Palace" six times — more than any other foreign sovereign. His words were warmly received in the UK.
The King received a standing ovation after an address in French to the Senate, and the Queen played table tennis at a sports centre with Brigitte Macron. France's first lady has since visited her in London for a cross-Channel book award.
Gentle touches they may have been, but it followed a very rough period in Franco-British relations.
Brexit negotiations soured relations
The mood had soured during negotiations over Brexit, which the French president said was based on a lie.
Then four years ago, Australia pulled out of a deal to buy 12 French submarines and signed a defence pact with the UK and US instead. The French foreign minister called it a "stab in the back".
Boris Johnson, who was prime minister at the time, told the French they should "prenez un grip" and "donnez-moi un break".
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French-British relations soured during negotiations over Brexit, which Macron (pictured with Johnson in 2020) said was based on a lie
It had been Macron's idea for a European Political Community (EPC) in 2022 that brought the UK into a broad group of countries all seeking to respond to Russia's full-scale invasion.
In 2023 the then-Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, sought to turn the page on several years of frosty relations at a Franco-British summit in Paris.
British and French prime ministers have come and gone: the UK had three in 2022, and last year France had four. It was Sunak's team that organised last year's EPC summit at Blenheim, but it was Starmer as new prime minister who chaired it.
Sébastien Maillard, who helped advise the French presidency in setting up the EPC, said he believed "on both sides there is still a lack of trust… The memory of these difficult times has not vanished".
"Trust needs time to build and perhaps the Russian threat, support for Ukraine and how to handle Trump are three compelling reasons to rebuild that trust," says Maillard, who is now at the Chatham House think tank.
Susi Dennison, of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris, agrees relations with France are not back to pre-Brexit levels, but suggests some things the UK and France are "bickering" about were being argued over even before the Brexit vote.
For Macron, this is a chance to not only improve the relationship but also to shine on the international stage when his popularity at home has sunk, Mr Roche believes. "It's a very important visit, especially the first day, because the French are fascinated by the Royal Family."
After eight years in power, Macron's second term still has almost two years to run, but he has paid the price politically for calling snap elections last year and losing his government's majority. His prime minister, François Bayrou, faces a monumental task in the coming months in steering next year's budget past France's left-wing and far-right parties.
As president, Macron's powers - his domaine réservé - cover foreign policy, defence and security, but traditionally France's prime minister does not travel with the head of state, so Macron comes to the UK with a team of ministers who will handle far more than international affairs.
The difficult question of migration
During the summit, the two teams will also work on nuclear energy, artificial intelligence and cultural ties. Differences still have to be sorted over "post-Brexit mobility" for students and other young people, and France is expected to push the Starmer government on that.
But most of the headlines on Thursday's UK-France summit will cover the two main issues: defence and migration.
Defending Ukraine will take pride of place. An Élysée Palace source said it would discuss "how to seriously maintain Ukraine's combat capability" and regenerate its military.
"On defence our relationship is closer than any other countries," says former ambassador Sylvie Bermann. "We have to prepare for the future… to strengthen the deterrence of Europe."
And if a ceasefire were agreed in Ukraine, the two countries could provide the backbone of the "reassurance force" being proposed by the "coalition of the willing". Sir Keir and Macron have played a prominent part in forming this coalition, but so too have the military chiefs of staff of both countries.
Migration is the stickiest problem the two countries face, however. How they deal with their differences on it — particularly on small boats — is crucial to their future relationship.
They are especially keen to sign an agreement on migrant returns and on French police stopping people boarding "taxi boats" to cross the Channel.
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Both countries want to sign an agreement on migrant returns. More than 20,000 people have arrived in the UK in small boats in the first six months of 2025
France has long argued that the UK has to address the "pull factors" that drive people to want to risk their lives on the boats — the UK, for its part, already pays for many of the 1,200 French gendarmes to patrol France's long northern coastline to stop the smugglers' boats.
The countries are believed to have been working on the terms of a "one-in, one-out" agreement, so that for every small-boat arrival in the UK that France takes back, the UK would allow in one asylum seeker from France seeking family reunification.
Several countries on the southern coasts of Europe are unimpressed because it could mean France sending those asylum seekers handed back by the UK on to their country of entry into the EU, bordering the Mediterranean.
In the UK, the opposition Conservatives have branded the idea "pathetic", accusing the government of a "national record - for failure" on curbing small-boat crossings.
And yet every country in Europe is looking for a way to cut illegal border crossings. Meghan Benton, of the Migration Policy Institute, believes a Franco-British deal could work as a possible pilot for the rest of Europe: "What works for the Channel could also work for the Mediterranean."
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King Charles previously called on France and the UK to find common ground "to reinvigorate our friendship"
Any agreement on this tricky issue could also signal a real, practical improvement in the countries' political relationship. France's right-wing Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, has already been working with Labour's Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to try to find a workable solution.
How far they get, and its wider impact on Europe, is still to be decided, but it does reflect a new willingness between the two neighbours to tackle the divisions between them.
Boris Johnson once accused France of wanting to punish the UK for Brexit. That difficult chapter appears to be over.
As Susi Dennison puts it: "There's a certain distance that will always be there, but things are operating quite well."
During King Charles' 2023 state visit to France he called on the two countries to find common ground, "to reinvigorate our friendship to ensure it is fit for the challenge of this, the 21st Century".
And so this visit will help show — both in the relationships between individuals and on concrete policy debates — whether his call has been answered.
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The UK's third heatwave of the summer is forecast to arrive later this week and it could be the most widespread and sustained one yet.
High pressure is set to build allowing for plenty of sunshine, with a feed of south or south-easterly winds bringing hot air from continental Europe.
Temperatures are expected to peak at 33C (91F) in England over the weekend but very warm or hot weather is also likely to affect Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
An area of high pressure is going to build from the middle of the week, cutting off the relatively cool north-westerly flow that has brought lower temperatures - and some much-needed rain - over the last few days.
Image source, BBC Weather Watchers / Ironsie
Image caption,
Parts of eastern England had more rain in 24 hours on Sunday than during the whole summer so far
Most of England and Wales will be sunny on Wednesday with temperatures reaching 25-28C (77-82F) in the Midlands and south-east England.
The warm sunshine will become more widespread on Thursday and Friday, extending into Northern Ireland and Scotland as high pressure shifts further north and east.
This will allow temperatures to climb with parts of northern Scotland expected to reach 29C (84F) by Saturday, and 26C (79F) likely in Northern Ireland.
Image caption,
Some places are likely to reach heatwave criteria by the weekend
By then many parts of England and Wales will exceed 30C (86F), with temperatures likely to peak at 33C (91F) in the hottest spots over the weekend.
This will be the UK's third heatwave of the summer so far and it could be much more extensive.
The first lifted temperatures at Charlwood, Surrey, to 33.2C (91.8F) on 21 June.
Just over a week later another brought a high of 35.8C (96.4F) at Faversham, Kent, on 1 July - the highest temperature of the year so far.
While those heatwaves were focused on England, especially in the south and east, this time the heat is going to be more widespread - extending into Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands.
Image source, BBC Weather Watchers / Ruby Tuesday
Image caption,
Scotland may see its hottest weather of the year so far
For some, this heatwave may also be particularly long-lasting.
High temperatures will persist throughout the weekend and into the start of next week.
Beyond that, cooler conditions are likely to develop in the north-west of the UK but there is a lot of uncertainty about how quickly temperatures will drop in the south and east.
Will the rest of the summer be hot?
So far our summer has brought a repeating pattern of warm weather and heatwaves interspersed by brief interludes of cooler - and more unsettled - conditions.
There are some signs from computer weather models that further warm or hot spells are likely during the rest of July, although long-range forecasting is always prone to uncertainty.
Some children are living in "Dickensian" levels of poverty, England's children's commissioner has said.
Dame Rachel de Souza said children have described living in homes with rats, seeing bacon as a luxury food and not having a place to wash.
She insisted the government should scrap the two-child benefit cap, which prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children born after April 2017.
A spokesperson for the government said it was "determined to bring down child poverty" and it had announced a £1bn package to improve crisis support, including funding to ensure poorest children do not go hungry outside term time.
The Labour government had been considering lifting the limit, but at the weekend the education secretary refused to commit to doing so.
Bridget Phillipson said ministers were "looking at every lever" to lift children out of poverty - but that spending decisions have now been made "harder" after the government axed other benefit changes which would have saved billions.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday, England's children's commissioner Dame Rachel said: "I have been doing this job for four years but I was shocked by how much worse things have got."
"It really is Dickensian and there are a huge number of children now who have dropped below what anyone of us would think is reasonable," she said.
"The children who have got no food to eat, the children who can't wash their clothes so they are going to school dirty and if they're lucky the school are washing their clothes for them.
"I had one child tell me about his shame because he couldn't have his friends round because in the night rats came and bit his face."
Dame Rachel said many people are going in and out of having to use universal credit "because of poor rates of pay in their work and because of sickness"
The government's child poverty taskforce is looking at the case for removing the cap, among other policy options.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank estimates that axing the two child benefit cap would cost the government about £3.4bn a year and would lift 500,000 children out of relative poverty.
About 1.6 million children live in households affected by the cap, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.
"I've always said the two child limit should be lifted", said Dame Rachel. "That's a big structural thing and the reason why is it would immediately lift half a million children out of poverty.
"Nobody is choosing to have children so they can get money from the state. That is absolutely not what's happening here."
A spokesperson for the government also said it has expanded free breakfast clubs, it is investing £39bn in social and affordable housing, increasing the national minimum wage and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a fair repayment rate on Universal Credit deductions.
"As part of our plan for change, the Child Poverty Taskforce will publish an ambitious strategy later this year to ensure we deliver fully-funded measures that tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty across the country," the statement added.
Reservoir levels are running low across Yorkshire, including at Lindley Wood Reservoir near Otley
A hopepipe ban affecting more than five million people in Yorkshire will come into effect from Friday.
Yorkshire Water said the region had experienced its driest and warmest spring on record with only 15cm of rainfall between February and June - less than half of what would be expected in an average year.
Yorkshire is the first part of the UK to face restrictions on water usage amid an extended spell of dry weather nationwide.
Dave Kaye, director of water at Yorkshire Water, said the restrictions "are intended to make sure we have enough supply for the essential needs of people across the region this year and next as well as making sure we are able to protect our local environment".
Baitings Reservoir, near Ripponden, has almost completely dried out
The ban applies to customers across much of Yorkshire, parts of North Lincolnshire and parts of Derbyshire.
It prohibits the use of a hosepipe for activities such as watering the garden, washing the car or filling a paddling pool.
Nationally, England recorded its warmest June on record after the driest spring for 132 years.
According to Yorkshire Water, reservoir levels currently stand at just over 50% - a record low for the time of the year and "significantly below" the average for early July, which is nearer 80%.
Reservoir levels across Yorkshire are at a record low, according to Yorkshire Water
Mr Kaye said water supplies would normally be topped up by rainfall in spring but reservoir stocks had been falling since the last week of January.
Recent downpours had "helped slightly", he added, but he said that "constant high temperatures and more dry weather" had only increased water usage.
"With more dry weather forecast in the coming weeks, it is likely our stocks will continue to fall.
"We need to act now to maintain clean water supplies and long-term river health."
Mr Kaye said the ban would be in place "until the region has seen significant rainfall to bring reservoirs and groundwater stocks back to where they need to be".
He said: "This may last into the winter months."
Paul Hudson/BBC
Dave Kaye, pictured, has warned the ban could last until the winter
Yorkshire Water said it had supplied an additional 4.3 billion litres of water between April and June compared with a typical year due to the sustained hot weather - enough to supply Leeds for five weeks.
The company said it had been "finding and fixing leaks 24/7 which has resulted in leakage being at its lowest ever level in Yorkshire".
Although hosepipe bans in Yorkshire are fairly rare - this is just the third in 30 years - they have become more common, with water use also restricted in 2022.
Analysis - Paul Hudson, Climate & Environment correspondent
Questions are likely to be asked about why the region is facing its second hosepipe ban in just three years and whether its water supply is robust enough.
It is striking that Yorkshire's reservoirs, which were full at the end of January, have lost half of their capacity in just five months.
There is no doubt that rainfall has been exceptionally low since February.
But at a time when the climate is changing – there have been three exceptionally dry springs in the past 14 years - the demand for water has increased sharply.
Yorkshire's population has grown by approximately 500,000 since 2000 but no new reservoirs have been built since Thruscross in the Washburn Valley in 1966.
In the short term, Yorkshire Water will be hoping the measures announced today will be enough to slow the fall in reservoir levels until the rain returns and replenishes supplies.
But, in the longer term, with the combined challenges of climate change and population growth, water restrictions may become much more common.
Employers will be banned from using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to silence victims of workplace sexual misconduct or discrimination, the government has said.
An amendment to the Employment Rights Bill, which is expected to become law later this year, will void any confidentiality agreements seeking to prevent workers from speaking about allegations of harassment or discrimination.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said it was "time we stamped this practice out".
The use of NDAs to cover up criminality has been in the headlines ever since Zelda Perkins, the former assistant to Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, broke her NDA in 2017 to accuse him of sexual abuse.
More recently, the now deceased Mohamed Al Fayed, who used to own Harrods, was accused of deploying confidentiality clauses to silence women who accused him of rape and abuse.
An NDA is a legally binding document that protects confidential information between two parties. They can be used to protect intellectual property or other commercially sensitive information but over the years their uses have spread.
Ms Perkins began campaigning for a change in the law more than seven years ago.
She now runs the campaign group Can't Buy My Silence UK and said the amendment marked a ''huge milestone'' and that it showed the government had ''listened and understood the abuse of power taking place".
But she said the victory ''belongs to the people who broke their NDAs, who risked everything to speak the truth when they were told they couldn't".
The change in the law would bring the UK in line with Ireland, the United States, and some provinces in Canada, which have banned such agreements from being used to prevent the disclosure of sexual harassment and discrimination.
Ms Perkins said that while the law was welcome, it was vital "to ensure the regulations are watertight and no one can be forced into silence again".
Employment rights minister Justin Madders said there was "misuse of NDAs to silence victims", which he called "an appalling practice".
"These amendments will give millions of workers confidence that inappropriate behaviour in the workplace will be dealt with, not hidden, allowing them to get on with building a prosperous and successful career," he added.
Peers will debate the amendments when the Employment Rights Bill returns to the House of Lords on 14 July and, if passed, will need to be approved by MPs as well.
In the aftermath of the fatal Texas floods, some Democrats have warned about the "consequences" of the Trump administration's cuts to the federal government workforce, including meteorologists, with Senator Chris Murphy saying that: "Accurate weather forecasting helps avoid fatal disasters."
The suggestion is that the cuts may have impeded the ability of the National Weather Service (NWS) - the government agency which provides weather forecasts in the US - to adequately predict the floods and raise the alarm.
But the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said on Monday: "These offices [of the NWS] were well staffed… so any claims to the contrary are completely false."
BBC Verify has examined the impact of cuts under President Trump in this area and while there has been a reduction in the workforce at the NWS, experts who we spoke to said the staffing on hand for the Texas floods appears to have been adequate.
What are the cuts?
The Trump administration has proposed a 25% cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) current annual budget of $6.1bn (£4.4bn). NOAA is the agency which oversees the NWS.
This would take effect in the 2026 financial year which begins in October this year - so these particular cuts would not have contributed to the Texas tragedy.
However, the staffing levels of the NWS have already been separately reduced by the Trump administration's efficiency drive since January.
The Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), previously run by Elon Musk, offered voluntary redundancies, known as buyouts, as well as early retirements to federal government workers. It also ended the contracts of most of those who were on probation.
As a result, about 200 people at the NWS took voluntary redundancy and 300 opted for early retirement, according to Tom Fahy, the director of the NWS union. A further 100 people were ultimately fired from the service, he said.
In total, the NWS lost 600 of its 4,200 staff, says Mr Fahy, causing several offices across the country to operate without the necessary staffing.
In April 2025, the Associated Press news agency said it had seen data compiled by NWS employees showing half of its offices had a vacancy rate of 20% - double the rate a decade earlier.
Despite this, climate experts told BBC Verify that the NWS forecasts and flood warnings last week in Texas were as adequate as could be expected.
"The forecasts and warnings all played out in a normal manner. The challenge with this event was that it is very difficult to forecast this type of extreme, localised rainfall," says Avantika Gori, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Texas.
And Andy Hazelton, a climate scientist who modelled hurricane paths for the NOAA until he was fired during the layoffs in February, says: "I don't think the staffing issues contributed directly to this event. They got the watches and the warnings out."
What about the impact on offices in Texas?
However, some experts have suggested that staffing cuts may have impeded the ability of local NWS offices in Texas to effectively co-ordinate with local emergency services.
"There is a real question as to whether the communication of weather information occurred in a way that was sub-optimal," says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at University of California Los Angeles.
"The impact might have been partially averted if some of the people at the weather service responsible for making those communications were still employed - which they were not in some of these local offices," he adds.
The San Angelo and San Antonio offices, which cover the areas affected by the flooding, reportedly had some existing vacancies.
Rescue efforts are ongoing along the Guadalupe River in central Texas
The NSW union director told BBC Verify that the San Angelo office was missing a senior hydrologist, a scientist who specialises in flooding events.
The San Antonio office also lacked a "warning coordinating meteorologist", who coordinates communications between local forecasting offices and emergency management services in communities, Mr Fahy said.
However, he noted that both offices had temporarily upped their staffing in anticipation of a dangerous weather event, which is typical in these circumstances.
"The NWS weather forecast offices in Austin/San Antonio and San Angelo, Texas had additional forecasters on duty during the catastrophic flooding event," NWS spokeswoman Erica Grow Cei said in a statement to BBC Verify. "All forecasts and warnings were issued in a timely manner," she added.
NWS meteorologist Jason Runyen, who covers the San Antonio area, also said in a statement that where the office would typically have two forecasters on duty during clear weather, they had "up to five on staff".
When asked on Sunday if government cuts had left key vacancies unfilled at the NWS, President Trump told reporters: "No, they didn't."
Were weather balloon launches reduced?
In a video shared thousands of times on social media, US meteorologist John Morales said: "There has been a 20% reduction in weather balloon releases, launches... What we're starting to see is that the quality of the forecasts is becoming degraded."
Some social media users have been pointing to Mr Morales' words as evidence that budget cuts have limited forecasters' ability to anticipate extreme weather events like the floods in Kerr County, Texas.
Weather balloons are an important tool used by meteorologists to collect weather data - from temperatures, to humidity, pressure, or wind speed - from the upper atmosphere.
In a series of public statements released since February, the NWS confirmed that it either suspended or reduced weather balloon launches in at least 11 locations across the country, which it attributed to a lack of staffing at the local weather forecast offices.
However, there is no evidence to suggest that any of those changes directly affected weather balloon launches in the areas impacted by the floods in Texas.
Publicly available data shows that, in the lead-up to the floods, weather balloon launches were carried out as planned at Del Rio, the launch station nearest to the flood epicentre, collecting data that informed weather forecasts which experts say were as adequate as they could be.
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