Trump Visits Kerr County, Trump And Putin, DOGE And Farmers' Data

Summary

Up First from NPR - July 11, 2025

Hosts: Leila Fadel, Steve Inskeep, Michelle Martin, and A. Martinez
Duration: 10 Minutes

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1. President Trump Visits Kerr County Amid Devastating Floods

Overview of the Central Texas Flooding

On July 11, 2025, President Donald Trump traveled to Kerr County, Texas, to assess the aftermath of severe flooding that has ravaged the region. The disaster has resulted in at least 120 fatalities, with over 170 individuals still reported missing.

President Trump's Visit

President Trump's visit aims to demonstrate federal support and oversee the ongoing relief efforts firsthand. Upon arrival, he is scheduled to engage with first responders, local officials, and families directly impacted by the floods.

Notable Activities During the Visit:

• Meeting First Responders: Highlighting their relentless efforts over the past week.
• Briefing with Local Officials: Understanding the scope of the disaster and coordinating further aid.
• Roundtable Discussion: Addressing the community's needs and strategizing additional support measures.
• Engagement with Affected Families: Offering personal support and reassurance to those grieving and displaced.

Local Response and Relief Efforts

The response to the flooding has been robust, primarily driven by volunteers. Hundreds have mobilized to provide essential services, including food distribution, search and rescue operations, debris removal, and the operation of heavy machinery to clear affected areas.

Frank Morris [02:43]: "He's going to have a pretty busy afternoon here. He'll be meeting with first responders who've been working nonstop for a week also get a briefing from local elected officials, then hold a roundtable discussion."

Community Reactions

While many residents express gratitude for the support, there are mixed feelings regarding the overall response. Some appreciate the federal presence and assistance, while others feel that the aid has been inconsistent.

Adi Fell, Local Resident [03:42]: "You know, we're grateful. We're grateful for the support he's given us, you know, along with other organizations, the governor, I feel like from what I've seen just being here, they've done an excellent job with response and help."

However, frustration is evident among those who feel overlooked or inadequately assisted, a common sentiment in the wake of large-scale disasters.

Psychological Impact on Victims

The emotional toll on the community is profound. Volunteers and residents alike are grappling with loss and trauma, exacerbated by the relentless efforts to recover and rebuild.

Alicia Strader [05:54]: "We've been having a really hard week, you know, kind of coming to terms with hearing the little girls' names and then trying to be excited, too, about, you know, having a baby next month."

Conclusion of the Segment

The President's visit underscores the severity of the situation in Central Texas and the federal government's commitment to addressing the crisis. However, the path to recovery remains arduous, with significant challenges ahead for the affected communities.

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2. The Cooling Relationship Between President Trump and Vladimir Putin

Historical Context

Since the beginning of his political career, President Trump has maintained a notably close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This rapport has been characterized by cooperation and mutual respect, which has often been a subject of public and political discourse.

Shift in Tone

Recently, this relationship appears to be deteriorating. President Trump has become increasingly critical of Putin, especially concerning Russia's actions in Ukraine and its broader geopolitical maneuvers.

Michelle Martin [00:14]: "The cozy relationship between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin may be coming to an end."

Analysis by Greg Myhrey

NPR National Security Correspondent Greg Myhrey delves into the nuances of this shifting dynamic, attributing the change to escalating tensions surrounding the war in Ukraine.

Greg Myhrey [06:46]: "Trump went from complimenting Putin to pleading with him on social media about the airstrikes. He wrote at one point, 'Vladimir, stop.' And now Trump has moved on to harsh criticism."

Implications for US Foreign Policy

Despite the change in rhetoric, concrete actions from President Trump against Russia remain uncertain. Discussions around potential sanctions are ongoing, with figures like Senator Lindsey Graham advocating for measures such as sanctioning Russian oil sales.

Greg Myhrey [07:30]: "Trump hasn't committed to substantive actions, and he's always prone to changing his mind. He says he's considering sanctions."

The uncertainty surrounding the US weapons pipeline to Ukraine adds another layer of complexity to the evolving relationship.

Historical Underpinnings

The roots of Trump-Putin relations trace back to the late 1990s, highlighting a long-standing interest in fostering high-profile deals with Russia, including the proposed but unrealized Trump Tower Moscow project.

Greg Myhrey [08:27]: "Many people... recall the controversy surrounding the 2016 presidential election and Trump's largely friendly relations with Putin during his first term."

Current State with Ukraine's Leader

Trump's relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stabilized somewhat, moving away from previous tensions marked by controversies such as the 2019 impeachment over military aid to Ukraine.

Greg Myhrey [09:41]: "That relationship has stabilized, at least for now, over the course of recent meetings and phone calls."

Conclusion of the Segment

The evolving relationship between Presidents Trump and Putin signifies a pivotal moment in US-Russia relations, with potential repercussions for international diplomacy and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The administration's next steps will be critical in defining this bilateral relationship.

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3. Investigation into DOGE's Control Over Farmer Loans and Payments

Introduction to DOGE and Department of Agriculture

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), despite recent leadership changes, continues to exert significant influence within US Federal agencies. A recent investigation by NPR reveals concerns about DOGE's control over substantial financial resources directed at American farmers and ranchers.

Jordan Wick's Role and Access

Jordan Wick, a software engineer with a background in autonomous vehicle technology from Waymo, now holds a pivotal position within DOGE. His access to the Farm Service Agency (FSA) enables him to oversee and potentially alter billions of dollars in government subsidies and loans.

Alicia Strader [11:22]: "He can see all the sensitive personal and financial data, but he can also write onto the system. He can change information. He can basically cancel loans if he wants."

Potential Risks and Implications

Wick's unprecedented access raises significant concerns about the security and integrity of the financial systems governing agricultural support. The lack of adequate safeguards or oversight mechanisms could lead to misuse or unintended disruptions in crucial funding streams.

Alicia Strader [12:34]: "It's a really powerful level of access. My source says no other individual at USDA has it. It goes against access control policies for employees."

The absence of comprehensive monitoring makes it challenging to ascertain whether DOGE is actively interfering with the database or if safeguards will prevent potential abuses.

Reactions from Farmers and Experts

The agricultural community voices apprehension over the stability and reliability of financial support, exacerbated by DOGE's actions. Experts highlight that such uncertainties could jeopardize entire farming operations, especially small-scale and family-owned enterprises.

Zach Duchennau, Former FSA Head [13:37]: "The challenge that our producers are facing is uncertainty."

This unease is further compounded by existing challenges such as tariffs, climate-related disasters, and cuts to government programs, making the role of DOGE a contentious issue.

Conclusion of the Segment

The investigation into DOGE underscores the critical need for transparent and secure management of agricultural finances. Ensuring that farmers and ranchers receive the necessary support without undue interference is paramount for the stability of the agricultural sector.

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Closing Remarks

Today's episode of Up First from NPR provided in-depth coverage of significant national issues, including the federal response to natural disasters, shifting international relations, and critical oversight within governmental agencies. These stories highlight the complexities and challenges facing the United States, emphasizing the importance of informed and vigilant journalism.

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Transcript

[Michelle Martin]

President Trump is headed to Texas today to meet with families affected by the floods.

[Local Resident]

We're grateful for the support he's given us. Along with other organizations, hundreds of volunteers.

[NPR Host]

Have also shown up to help with.

[NPR Sponsor]

The relief effort there.

[Michelle Martin]

I'm Michelle Martin. That's a Martinez. And this is up first from NPR News. The cozy relationship between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin may be coming to an end. Trump's been increasingly critical of Putin. Recently, he publicly criticized Russia's conduct in the war with Ukraine, Ukraine and social media, and lobbed some personal attacks at Putin. So what changed?

[NPR Host]

And an NPR investigation discovered that a single Doge staffer at the Department of Agriculture has the power to control government loans and payments to American farmers. Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day.

[NPR Sponsor]

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[NPR Host]

It was just about this time, exactly one week ago, that the magnitude of the flooding in Central Texas began to come into focus.

[Michelle Martin]

At least 120 people have D and more than 170 others are listed as missing. President Trump is heading to Kerr County, Texas, today to see some of the worst damage firsthand.

[NPR Host]

NPR's Frank Morris has been in Kerr County. Frank, what will the president be seeing and doing during his visit today?

[Frank Morris]

He's going to have a pretty busy afternoon here. He'll be meeting with first responders who've been working nonstop for a week also get a briefing from local elected officials, then hold a roundtable discussion. And President Trump's also planning to meet with family members who are directly affected by this terrible flood.

[NPR Host]

What do the people who live around there think about the president's visit?

[Frank Morris]

You know, I think most people directly affected by the flood have been too busy to really think about it. In Hunt, where some of the worst damage is, lots of people don't have Internet. They do have a ton of immediate, pressing problems. The government response has been forceful. FEMA's in town, though the agency's acting director, David Richardson, has been absent. The Secretary of Homeland Security has been here with other federal responders. The main road along the Guadalupe river is just chock a block with police and fire personnel, Texas game wardens and other. Adi Fell, who lives in Hunt, says she's delighted that Trump is coming.

[Local Resident]

You know, we're grateful. We're grateful for the support he's given us, you know, along with other organizations, the governor, I feel like from what I've seen just being here, they've done an excellent job with response and help.

[Frank Morris]

Of course, there have been some complaints from residents who feel the response has been spotty. That's pretty common after these disasters. It's easy for a victim to feel ignored if they don't personally see a first responder.

[NPR Host]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Still, though, is a major relief effort happening there? So people whose homes are damaged, how are they faring?

[Frank Morris]

Well, you know, they're getting by with lots and lots of volunteers. I'm talking about hundreds of people making food, teams of volunteers searching for victims. Still volunteers cutting trees, volunteers operating shovels, and volunteers running heavy equipment. Bryce Flowers from Kerrville has been out here in the heat, running his skid steer loader for 10 hours a day since the flooding, scooping up debris from people's homes. He says that hundreds of people from all over Texas and several other states are working just as hard.

[Community Member]

We've got groups that have made contact with us that we don't even know who they are. They've been down here for three or four days. We still haven't even seen their faces. We've just communic and directed them to the spot that needs the most help, and they've just jumped right in and gone. So it's a huge, huge thing for people to come together, not just from our community, but from those around us.

[Frank Morris]

And of course, it's a huge, huge job ahead of them, too. That destruction along Miles and miles of the Guadalupe river is just breathtaking.

[NPR Host]

And for a lot of those people, I mean, they're right there on the front lines trying to clean things up and doing their best to search for bodies. I mean, the psychological toll for them also has to be pretty enorm.

[Frank Morris]

Oh, absolutely. A volunteers are out there looking for bodies. Sometimes they find one and they're not in good shape. I saw a community leader yesterday break down just looking at the river. You see people shoveling out houses with tears in their eyes. And all the deaths, at least 36 children, primarily little girls, washed away from Camp Mystic. That hits people. Alicia Strader is eight months pregnant with a girl, and Strater says she and her husband have been in a kind of limbo.

[Alicia Strader]

We've been having a really hard week, you know, kind of coming to terms with hearing the little girls names and then trying to be excited, too, about, you know, having a baby next month.

[Frank Morris]

Yeah. She says it's been really heavy for them. And of course, the psychological damage from a catastrophe like this can just linger on for years.

[NPR Host]

NPR's Frank Morris in Central Texas. Frank, thanks.

[Frank Morris]

You better.

[NPR Host]

From his first presidential campaign until today, President Trump has been more closely tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin than any other foreign leader.

[Michelle Martin]

But Trump has been sharply critical of Putin in recent days. Has the relationship of the two leaders? Some people have called it a bromance now turned cold.

[NPR Host]

For more, we're joined by NPR national security correspondent Greg Myhrey. So, Greg, what do you make of the president's shift in tone toward Vladimir Putin?

[Greg Myhrey]

Trump's relationship with Putin has clearly gone downhill since Trump came into office six months ago and has tried to do business with the Russian leader. Trump proposed a ceasefire in Ukraine. Ukraine agreed, but Putin keeps setting all sorts of conditions and has ratcheted up airstrikes on Ukraine to the highest level ever. Trump went from complimenting Putin to pleading with him on social media about the airstrikes. He wrote at one point, vladimir, stop. And now Trump has moved on to harsh criticism. This using some salty language about Putin and saying he's very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

[NPR Host]

Yeah, but what does that mean, then? I mean, is Trump gonna start taking some concrete steps against Russia in support of Ukraine?

[Greg Myhrey]

Well, Trump hasn't committed to substantive actions, and he's always prone to changing his mind. He says he's considering sanctions. And in the Senate, Republican Lindsey Graham says he has more than 80 co sponsors to sanction Russian oil sales. But what's more Critical is the US Weapons pipeline, Ukraine, which is running low. The Pentagon appeared to be pausing weapons shipments to Ukraine last week, but then Trump said there was no pause. Here's what he said earlier this week about Ukraine.

[Frank Morris]

They have to be able to defend themselves.

[Community Member]

They're getting hit very hard now.

[Frank Morris]

They're getting hit very hard.

[Community Member]

We're going to have to send more.

[Frank Morris]

Weapons, your defensive weapons primarily.

[Greg Myhrey]

So Trump hasn't provided specifics, though NBC News says it spoke with the president by phone on Thursday and that he plans to sell U.S. weapons to NATO countries, which would then give them to Ukraine.

[NPR Host]

This Trump Putin relationship goes back a number of years. Can you take us through the history a little bit?

[Alicia Strader]

Yeah.

[Greg Myhrey]

Many people, of course, recall the controversy surrounding the 2016 presidential election and Trump's largely friendly relations with Putin during his first term. I actually go back to the late 1990s when I was based in Moscow and thinking about both of these men. There was periodic talk of Trump building a Trump Tower in Moscow, though that never happened. And Putin, meanwhile, became the Russian prime minister in 1999 and very shortly afterward launched a war in Chechnya. So Putin and Trump weren't linked to each other then, but those developments a quarter century ago do seem relevant today.

[NPR Host]

Oh, how so?

[Greg Myhrey]

Well, Trump then and now was looking to make a high profile deal with leaders in Russia, and he's seen Putin as a leader that will eventually come around and accept his offer, in this case, a ceasefire deal. And Putin, meanwhile, remains fully committed to a military objective, taking Chechnya then and taking Ukraine now. There's a strong perception that Putin has been stringing Trump along, pushing him as hard as he can in Ukraine and waiting to see if Trump will push back.

[NPR Host]

So, Greg, if the Trump Putin relationship has indeed soured, then what can we say about Trump's relationship with Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy?

[Greg Myhrey]

Well, that relationship has stabilized, at least for now, over the course of recent meetings and phone calls. In his first term, Trump didn't get along with Zelensky. Trump's first impeachment was linked to withholding military aid to Ukraine. And of course, Trump basically kicked Zelensky out of the White House back in February after an argument over how to handle the war in Ukraine. Now, Trump's criticism, at least this week, is directed at Putin, not Zelensky. I want to stress this is a change in tone. For now, we'll have to see if it plays out as a change in policy.

[NPR Host]

That is NPR's Greg Myri.

[Greg Myhrey]

Greg, thank you sure thing, eh?

[NPR Host]

The Department of Government Efficiency, or doge, is still hard at work burrowing into US Federal agencies, despite the departure of.

[Michelle Martin]

Elon Musk at the Department of Agriculture. One Doge staffer recently got a lot of power. He can now review and cancel tens of billions of dollars in government payments and loans for American farmers and ranchers. That's a group that makes up a big chunk of President Trump's political base.

[NPR Host]

NPR's Jenna McLaughlin has the exclusive reporting. So Jenna, tell us a little bit more about what you found about what Doge is up.

[Alicia Strader]

Sure. A so NPR has a team covering government restructuring and we've been tracking Doge since February. After seeing some of our other reporting, a Source at the U.S. department of Agriculture reached out to me. They told me that Jordan Wick, who's a young software engineer, he used to work for the self driving car company Waymo, he got high level access to this government system that controls billions of dollars in subsidies and loans for millions of US Farmers and ranchers.

[NPR Host]

Where does that government system live?

[Alicia Strader]

So it's at a part of the USDA called the Farm Service Agency. Think of it kind of like the agency's bank. They do loans, but they also dole out money for disaster relief, like if there's a big storm or during the COVID 19 pandemic. Basically, it's a lot of sensitive data. And that's part of why the source asked to be anonymous.

[NPR Host]

Okay, now you found out that Jordan Wick is in that system, so what can he do with all that access?

[Alicia Strader]

Turns out a lot. He can see all the sensitive personal and financial data, but he can also write onto the system. That means he can change information. He can basically cancel loans if he wants. That's in line with a memo that went out to USDA staffers announcing that DOGE would be reviewing a big chunk of loans to farmers. Basically, it's a really powerful level of access. My source says no other individual at USDA has it. It goes against access control policies for employees. That same level of access for DoGE at agencies like Social Security and the Treasury Department. It's been challenged in the courts a couple times. A USDA spokesperson confirmed to us that WIC and others on the so called efficiency team are now full time USDA employees. The spokesperson continued to say that they're working to fulfill President Trump's executive order.

[NPR Host]

To find fraud canceling loans. Is DOGE really doing that or messing with this database?

[Alicia Strader]

It's a really hard question to answer, but not yet. I spoke to Scott Marlow. He used to run FDA FSA programs under President Biden. He said that unless the farmers are keeping a very close eye on their files with usda, it might actually be really hard to figure out what went wrong or why they aren't being paid. Actually, some payments are seasonal, so they aren't even issued very often. Meanwhile, the source says there aren't really any safeguards or controls that would keep track of what WIC and DOGE are up to in the system.

[NPR Host]

Wow, that could sound problematic. Jenna, do we know how farmers and ranchers are feeling about all this?

[Alicia Strader]

Honestly, it's a tough time to be a farmer in general. There's tariffs, cuts to government programs, ongoing climate related disasters, and so much more. But specifically related to some of this news, I spoke to Zach Duchennau. He's the former head of the FSA under President Biden. He's also a rancher from South Dakota. His family has had a ranch on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation for decades. He summed it up pretty succinctly.

[Frank Morris]

The challenge that our producers are facing is uncertainty.

[Alicia Strader]

He tells me that having inexperienced people come in and hold up or threaten farmers loans, that only adds to the uncertainty and could disrupt entire growing seasons or wipe out Small Farms.

[NPR Host]

That's NPR's Jenna McLaughlin. Jenna, thank you.

[Alicia Strader]

Thanks, Dave.

[NPR Host]

And that's a first for Friday, July 11th, Emmy Martinez.

[Michelle Martin]

And I'm Michelle Martin. The Trump administration is pushing to bring manufacturing back to America, but what happened when one multinational company actually tries to set up shop in small town usa?

[Community Member]

Nobody in their right mind ever thought that it would get this bad.

[NPR Host]

This week in an up first, how a battery factory ignited a political firestorm. And what happens when the global economy meets small town democracy?

[Michelle Martin]

Tune in to the Sunday story right here in the Up First Podcast.

[NPR Host]

Today's episode of up first was edited by Russell Lewis, Andrew Sussman, Janaya Williams and Adriana Gallardo. It was produced by Ziad Buch, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. Our technical director is Zach Coleman, and our executive producer is Jay Shaylor. Have a great weekend.

[NPR Sponsor]

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