Tragedy in Texas: how flash flooding devastated a county

Summary

Apple News Today: Episode Summary

Title: Tragedy in Texas: How Flash Flooding Devastated a County
Host: Shemitah Basu
Release Date: July 7, 2025

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1. Devastating Flash Flooding in Central Texas

The episode opens with a harrowing account of the flash flooding that struck central Texas over the weekend, resulting in over 80 confirmed deaths, many of them children. The tragedy began on Friday when unexpected clusters of thunderstorms caused the Guadalupe River to surge by 26 feet within just 45 minutes. This rapid escalation unleashed a formidable wall of water that swept through the region, obliterating infrastructure—submerging roads, overturning cars, and tearing houses from their foundations.

Ron Logue, a volunteer from Kerrville, shared his emotional experience with CNN at [01:29]:

"This is our everything and a lot of our everything has been taken. It is destroyed. It is something that we don't even recognize. This whole devastation goes 20 miles that way, another 60 miles that way. We'll be looking for bodies for I couldn't tell you to win."

A significant focus of the recovery efforts has been the search for missing children from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp located on the riverbank. Approximately 700 children were present when the flood struck, with hundreds successfully evacuating. Local Congressman Chip Roy recounted the rescue of a camp member who survived after floating on a mattress for three hours. Tragically, several children, including 9-year-old Janie Hunt from Dallas and 8-year-old Sarah Marsh from Alabama, have been confirmed dead, along with the camp's longtime director, Dick Eastland.

During a press conference on Sunday following his visit to the devastated camp, Ron Logue emphasized the ongoing rescue operations:

"It was nothing short of horrific to see what those young children went through. And we will remain 100% dedicated searching for every single one of the children who were at Camp Mystic as well as anybody else in the entire riverbed." [02:42]

Amidst the chaos, families like that of Ty Baden continue to search desperately for loved ones. Baden was spotted by CNN walking along the river, hoping to find signs of his missing daughter, 21-year-old Joyce Catherine Baden, who was celebrating the Fourth of July with friends near the affected area. Ty Baden expressed his anguish:

"She's a beautiful girl and just a wonderful girl. Couldn't ask for a better daughter. All through school is just easy, you know, no shenanigans or anything like that. I mean she was a normal girl. We would have fun, but yes, we loved her dearly." [03:21]

The severity of the flooding has raised questions about emergency preparedness and whether more could have been done to mitigate the disaster. Initial forecasts had only predicted minor flooding, but the actual event far exceeded expectations, leading to extensive damage and loss of life.

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2. Passage of President Trump's Massive Tax and Spending Bill

Transitioning to political developments, the episode delves into the passage of President Trump's significant tax and spending bill. The House approved the bill on Thursday, just before the July 4th deadline, followed by President Trump's swift signing into law.

Shemitah Basu introduces Sahil Kapoor, a senior national political reporter for NBC News, who analyzes the implications of the bill at [05:07]:

"At the end of the day, the revenue decreases from the tax cuts far outweigh the roughly $1.2 trillion in net spending cuts. So that's one real point of contention that conservative senators and conservative House members rebelled against, but when push came to shove, they simply folded and caved to President Trump and accepted this bill under pressure from him, even though it does precisely what they said they would never." [05:52]

Key features of the bill include the permanence of Trump-era tax cuts, increased spending on immigration and defense, a $1 trillion reduction in Medicaid, and decreased funding for SNAP (the nation's largest food assistance program). The Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill will escalate the national debt by approximately $3.3 trillion over the next decade.

Sahil Kapoor further explains the contentious aspects at [06:40]:

"Even if they're the types of people who everyone says should remain on Medicaid, some people are going to fall through the cracks because they won't meet all those paperwork requirements or won't do it in time."

The bill has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats, who argue it represents a severe rollback of the social safety net. Sahil Kapoor predicts persistent Democratic opposition leading into the 2026 midterms, highlighting:

"Republicans just passed a massive piece of legislation that cuts taxes for the rich and pays for it by cutting health care benefits and food aid benefits for the working class." [07:57]

While some Republicans publicly supported the bill alongside President Trump, others remained reticent. For instance, Congresswoman Jen Kiggins acknowledged the bill's imperfections but ultimately supported it, whereas Congressman Valadao did not respond to inquiries regarding his stance on Medicaid cuts.

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3. Nebraska’s Meatpacking Plant Faces Labor Challenges

Shifting to economic news, the episode examines the efforts of Sustainable Beef, a meatpacking plant in North Platte, Nebraska, to recruit domestic labor in a town grappling with economic decline. Scott Calvert, a Wall Street Journal reporter, discusses the plant's strategies to attract local workers at [09:17]:

"There is unquestionably some stigma associated with it. And it's not necessarily that this is like undignified work, it's just that it's not for me."

Ron Logue shares insights from Sustainable Beef's approach to make meatpacking appealing:

"They've really tried to present this as something that is appealing because you have just one single shift during the daytime, so you can go to work and come home and. And go to your kids baseball game and be home for dinner and all of that." [09:32]

Despite offering competitive starting pay of $22 per hour and prioritizing modern facilities and benefits, the plant struggles to attract local workers. The region has seen a 20% drop in employment since 2008, with the population declining by 22,500 since 1990. As traditional industries like Union Pacific diminish, Sustainable Beef aims to diversify the local economy. However, the company largely relies on experienced immigrant workers from Cuba, Mexico, and Central America, leading to community tensions over changing demographics.

A local hire, a forklift driver, highlighted the ongoing debates within the community:

"He has had a lot of heated arguments, as he puts it, with people around town, and he simply says, look, just, you know, get off your butt and come and do the work. Somebody has to do it. Why not let it be you?" [11:16]

Despite receiving over 2,000 applications for 850 jobs, Sustainable Beef faces stiff competition from established giants in the meatpacking industry, which dominate 85% of the beef market. Additionally, the Trump administration's crackdown on the migrant workforce threatens to reduce the availability of experienced labor, making the plant's efforts to hire locally even more crucial.

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4. Other Notable Stories

• Middle East Peace Efforts: Israel has dispatched negotiators to Qatar to bridge gaps in a potential ceasefire with Hamas, mediated by President Trump. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington to finalize the deal, which includes a complete ceasefire, a 60-day halt of hostilities, and the release of 10 living hostages. However, Israel has rejected some of Hamas's conditions, such as the withdrawal of Israeli troops.

• River Seine Reopens for Swimming: Paris celebrates the reopening of the River Seine for swimming after a 102-year ban due to pollution and heavy boat traffic. With environmental standards now met, designated swimming areas near iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower have been made available to the public.

• World's Largest Time Capsule Unveiled: Nebraska recently opened the world's largest time capsule, sealed in 1975. The capsule contained items like pet rocks, a teal suit, a yellow Chevy Vega, letters, and cassette tapes. The unveiling attracted visitors nationwide, some retrieving personal mementos and others collecting historical artifacts.

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For more detailed reporting and updates, download the Apple News app and follow Apple News Narrated for additional stories and in-depth analysis.

Transcript

[Shemitah Basu]

Good morning. It's Monday, July 7th. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, inside Trump's big bill that's finally passed into law. What a Nebraskan meatpacking plant says about the challenge to hire domestic labor. And the world's largest time capsule gets cracked open after 50 years. But first, to the devastating impact of the flooding that hit central Texas over the weekend. There are now more than 80 people confirmed dead, many of them children. But that number is expected to go up with dozens still unaccounted for. It began on Friday when clusters of thunderstorms hit far worse than had been anticipated. Within a 45 minute period, the Guadalupe river had risen 26ft, sending an overwhelming wal of water several miles downstream and destroying everything in its path. Roads were submerged, cars overturned and houses ripped from their foundations. Emergency teams and local residents have been working through the weekend. And on Sunday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott confirmed that President Trump had approved federal disaster assistance for the state and said more than 800 people had been rescued. Ron Logue from Kerrville was one of those volunteering and he spoke to cnn.

[Ron Logue]

This is our everything and a lot of our everything has been taken. It is destroyed. It is something that we don't even recognize. This whole devastation goes 20 miles that way, another 60 miles that way. We'll be looking for bodies for I couldn't tell you to win.

[Shemitah Basu]

A focus for recovery teams has been on the missing children staying at Camp mystic, an all girls Christian summer camp that was based on the riverbank and decimated by the water. About 700 children were at the campsite when the flood struck and hundreds managed to evacuate safely. Local congressman Chip Roy told FOX of one campgoer found alive after floating on top of a mattress for three hours. But many are still considered missing and some have been confirmed dead. Among those identified as dead include 9 year old Janie Hunt from Dallas and 8 year old Sarah Marsh from Alabama. And the camp's longtime director, Dick Eastland was also confirmed dead by family. One mother of campers told CNN that the counselors, many of them teenagers themselves, acted as heroes, braving the rapids to get kids to dry land. On Sunday, Governor Abbott gave a press conference a day after visiting what remained of Camp Mystic.

[Ron Logue]

It was nothing short of horrific to see what those young children went through. And we will remain 100% dedicated searching for every single one of the children who were at Camp mystic as well as anybody else in the entire riverbed.

[Shemitah Basu]

Meanwhile, many, many families are searching for lost loved ones On Saturday, CNN came across Ty Baden walking along the river hoping to see signs of his missing daughter, 21 year old Joyce Catherine Baden. She was in the area with friends to celebrate the fourth of July. They were staying at a house along the river that's been swep.

[Ron Logue]

She's a beautiful girl and just a wonderful girl. Couldn't ask for a better daughter. All through school is just easy, you know, no shenanigans or anything like that. I mean she was a normal girl. We would have fun, but yes, we loved her dearly.

[Shemitah Basu]

This part of Central Texas is prone to flooding, but the county has never experienced this scale of devastation. We know that the weather service for San Antonio and Austin held briefings on Thursday for local emergency managers and issued a flood watch, cautioning that a narrow band of 3 to 5 inches could cause some flooding. But it proved to be much worse. By the early hours of Friday morning, emergency warnings were issued on phones and through social media, calling it a life threatening situation. By that point, the river was beginning to surge. Questions are now being asked about whether more could have been done, if the weather could have been more accurately predicted, better managed, or stronger flood mitigations to hold back the worst of the damage. It's going to take some time for emergency services officials and the public to get answers now to Washington, which is recovering from an intense period with mammoth debates and record breaking speeches. Having now finally passed President Trump's massive tax and spending bill, Republicans successfully met his July 4 deadline with the House passing the bill on Thursday afternoon. After a narrow vote, mostly down party lines, and four months of back and forth in Congress, the President signed it the same day.

[Ron Logue]

Are we ready?

[Shemitah Basu]

Are we ready? We are ready. The act allowed the GOP to pass a big chunk of President Trump's domestic policy in one fell swoop. While unwinding some Biden era measures. The tax cuts Trump put into place in his first administration are now permanent. Spending on immigration and defense will rise to be offset by a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid and a reduction on spending for SNAP, the nation's biggest food assistance program. And over the next decade, the mega bill is estimated to increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion. Sahil Kapoor, a senior national political reporter for NBC News, followed the bill as it made its way to the president's desk.

[Sahil Kapoor]

At the end of the day, the revenue decreases from the tax cuts far outweigh the roughly $1.2 trillion in net spending cuts. So that's one real point of contention that conservative senators and conservative House members rebelled against, but when push came to shove, they simply folded and caved to President Trump and accepted this bill under pressure from him, even though it does precisely what they said they would never.

[Shemitah Basu]

Support, kapoor told us. Cuts to Medicaid were the stickiest point of contention for House Republicans. The Congressional Budget office predicts nearly 12 million Americans will lose their health insurance entirely, and those who still qualify will face heightened barriers to getting care, including strict work requirements and an eligibility check twice a year.

[Sahil Kapoor]

Even if they're the types of people who everyone says should remain on Medicaid, some people are going to fall through the cracks because they won't meet all those paperwork requirements or won't do it in time.

[Shemitah Basu]

The final version of the bill also gets rid of the child tax credit for immigrants without Social Security numbers, cuts half a trillion dollars in funding for clean energy, temporarily lowers the federal income tax on tips and overtime pay, and gives money to immigration enforcement somewhere around.

[Sahil Kapoor]

$150 billion to expand the military, which is unusual to do in a party line bill because the military is typically authorized by Congress once per year. On a very bipartisan basis, this is $150 billion in addition to that, which should bring the Pentagon's budget to a record trillion dollars just this year.

[Shemitah Basu]

Democrats in both the House and Senate have loudly criticized the final bill, saying it's the biggest setback the social safety net's seen in decades.

[Sahil Kapoor]

The message you're going to hear from Democrats over and over again for the next year and a half in the run up to the 2026 midterms is that Republicans just passed a massive piece of legislation that cuts taxes for the rich and pays for it by cutting health care benefits and food aid benefits for the working class.

[Shemitah Basu]

And while some of the GOP's most visible members stood at Trump's side outside the White House as he signed the package into law, Kapoor told us some Republicans haven't wanted to talk about it.

[Sahil Kapoor]

I reached out to Congressman Valadao's office to ask why he supported the bill with the Medicaid cuts after he insisted he wouldn't do that. I didn't get a respons. I asked them several times. They ignored it. Congresswoman Jen Kiggins her office sent over a statement saying she believes that no bill is perfect, but on balance she decided this bill would be worth supporting.

[Shemitah Basu]

And finally, turning to Nebraska and the story of one small meat plant's big pitch to local workers as it looks to transform the fortunes of a town in economic trouble, meatpacking is crucial to Quite literally putting food on the American table. But it's one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. An average of 27 workers a day suffer amputation or hospitalization, and it tends to come with minimal benefits and poor pay. It's an industry that employs a lot of migrant workers. So it's not an obvious contender to lead the recovery of North Plate Platte, Nebraska, an old railroad town with a declining population that's largely white.

[Ron Logue]

There is unquestionably some stigma associated with it. And it's not necessarily that this is like undignified work, it's just that it's not for me.

[Shemitah Basu]

That's Scott Calvert, reporter at the Wall Street Journal, who's been exploring how the company, Sustainable Beef, has tried to appeal to an American workforce.

[Ron Logue]

They've really tried to present this as something that is appealing because you have just one single shift during the daytime, so you can go to work and come home and. And go to your kids baseball game and be home for dinner and all of that.

[Shemitah Basu]

That makes it unusual for meatpacking, which often relies on night shifts. The starting pay is $22 per hour, which is on par with the average in town. And the company has prioritized modern facilities and employee benefits like 401ks. But the company has an uphill battle, and it's a struggle that exemplifies the challenges of revitalizing towns and businesses in rural states like Nebr. Employment in the North Platte area is down 20% since 2008, according to official statistics. And in that time, the city's population has dropped to 22,500 below 1990 levels. The town historically relied on employment from the freight company Union Pacific, but that's dwindling, and local officials urgently recognize the need to diversify to stave off further decline. But even as Sustainable Beef makes its pitch to the local population, Calvert reports that ultimately it appears the frontline work is still largely going to people from Cuba, Mexico and Central America.

[Ron Logue]

One of the reasons why that's turning out to be the case is that the company need people who have experience, who know how to do this work. And the people who tend to have experience in this field are Hispanics, immigrants.

[Shemitah Basu]

Calvert notes the local anxiety around changing demographics and strained resources, particularly as other cities saw their communities change following the introduction of meatpacking facilities. He spoke to one local hire, a forklift driver, who acknowledged some of those tensions.

[Ron Logue]

He has had a lot of heated arguments, as he puts it, with people around town, and he simply says, look, just, you know, get off your butt and come and do the work. Somebody has to do it. Why not let it be you? So I think it's there's really an interesting sort of debate happening within the city right now.

[Shemitah Basu]

Calvert says the company is optimistic, and so far they've received more than 2,000 applications for 850 jobs. But sustainable beef is entering a tough industry dominated by the big four companies, which control 85% of the beef market. And as the Trump administration's crackdown on migrant workforce continues, its pool of experienced talent may shrink and the company's hopes of attracting local workers may become all the more important, something Calvert says is on everyone's minds. Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Israel sent negotiators to Qatar yesterday in an attempt to close the remaining gaps in a potential Gaza ceasefire deal with Hamas. The last round of talks fell flat six weeks ago. This time, Hamas says it's responding positively to Israel's newest proposal. President Trump has been central to these talks, putting pressure on both Israel and Hamas to reach a deal that includes a complete ceasefire, 60 days and the release of 10 living hostages. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington today, meeting with the president, who told reporters on Air Force One that he's optimistic about the two finalizing a concrete deal this week, though he said some of Hamas's proposed changes he had seen were unacceptable. In the proposal currently on the table, Hamas is asking for a complete stop on all attacks and the withdrawal of Israeli troops, conditions that Israel has rejected before turning now to France and to a sound not heard in Paris for over a century, at least not legally. That is a man taking a dip in the River Seine, where Parisians can once again go swimming for the first time in 102 years. The nation banned swimming in the river that snakes through the city in the 1920s because of pollution and increasing boat traffic. Environmental advocates have been lobbying for cleanup of the sand for decades, but last year's Olympics was the push the city needed. France invested over a billion euros leading up to the Games to bring the bacteria to a low enough level for athletes to safely swim. And after a few more months of fine tuning, environmental specialists confirmed the waters consistently meet European safety standards. People dove in early Saturday morning at three of the authorized swimming sites, one of which is just up the river from the Eiffel Tower. And finally, the world's largest time capsule was opened in Nebraska over the holiday weekend, 50 years after it was sealed in 1975. The items inside included pet rocks, a groovy teal suit, an entire car, a yellow Chevy Vega, and lots of letters and cassette tapes. People traveled from around the US for the unveiling. Some were present for the burying of the capsule and had come to retrieve their old items. Some people received mementos or notes left for them by now deceased family members. And one man came to collect his 1975 wedding invite. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. Rolling Stone has the story of one writer as she tries to make sense of her best friend's murder two decades ago, how it became a tabloid sensation at the time, and what it's meant for the people who loved her. If you're listening in the podcasts app, follow Apple News Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.