Whoopi Goldberg denounces people politicizing Texas floods: ‘Nothing to do with Washington'
'Agencies are finding that they're not getting the money, because people are blaming the people who died in the floods, and they're saying, 'why should I – you voted for this.' Let me tell you, let's be really clear,' Goldberg began. 'You know, you can't blame anybody for these floods. It's nobody's fault. I didn't do it. You didn't do it. Has nothing to do with Washington.
'This was what happened. This was a natural disaster, and if you are riding on people's socials where you should be giving, if you're saying these kinds of things, damn you. Damn you.'
The flooding on July 4 killed at least 129 people in central Texas. The toll is expected to rise as authorities believe more than 160 people may still be missing in Kerr County.
'People are trying to get their lives together. These floods are no joke. This is not light humor. This is not – this is not how we do in America. We show up for whoever is in trouble,' Goldberg continued.
Goldberg declared that who a person voted for should not matter in the case of a disaster.
'We don't say, 'who did you vote for?' We don't say, 'who did you vote with?' We show up. We show up for children,' she said. 'We show up for older folks. We show up for middle-aged folks, and we show up for the young because that's what we do as Americans when we find out horrible things are happening in the world.'
A former appointee to a Houston city board recently came under fire for claiming that the Texas summer camp devastated in the flooding was 'White-only, conservative [and] Christian.'
5 The flooding on July 4 killed at least 129 people in central Texas.
ABC
5 Furnitures lie scattered inside a cabin at Camp Mystic after deadly flooding in Kerr County, Texas, July 5, 2025.
REUTERS
5 A search and rescue team looks for people along the Guadalupe River near a damaged building at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, on July 7, 2025, following severe flash flooding that occurred during the July 4 holiday weekend.
AFP via Getty Images
'But Camp Mystic is a Whites-only girls Christian camp,' said Slade Perkins, a former member of the Houston Food Insecurity Board, in a TikTok video over the weekend. 'They don't even have a token Asian, they don't have a Token Black person, it is a all White, White-only conservative Christian camp.'
Perkins' term expired in January.
Several other commentators have shared viral responses blasting the victims of the disaster.
5 The toll is expected to rise as authorities believe more than 160 people may still be missing in Kerr County.
Falon Wriede / NY Post Design
5 An officer prays with a family as they pick up items at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas on Wednesday, July 9, 2025.
AP
'The people in Texas voted for government services controlled by Donald Trump and Greg Abbott,' added left-wing social media personality Ron Filipkowski. 'That is exactly what they (sic) getting.'
Texas pediatrician Christina Propst shared a social media post wishing that 'MAGA' people affected by the flooding should reap the effects of what they voted for, while expressing hope that 'non-MAGA voters and pets be safe and dry.'
'Kerr County MAGA voted to gut FEMA. They deny climate change. May they get what they voted for,' she said, adding, 'Bless their hearts.'
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Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
In their own words: Trump, Patel, Bongino and Bondi on the Epstein scandal
PHOENIX (AP) — When Jeffrey Epstein died in prison, then-President Donald Trump speculated that authorities might be wrong in ruling it a suicide. Many of his allies in the pro-Trump media went further, casting Epstein's death as a murder meant to continue a decades-long coverup of pedophilia by elites. Now back in the White House, Donald Trump has elevated prominent proponents of Epstein conspiracies to senior law enforcement roles, and they're struggling to contain a fire that they spent years stoking. Much of Trump's base is choosing to believe the president's earlier claims about Epstein over his latest contention that there's nothing of substance in government files. Here's a look at how Trump and his aides, including the attorney general and FBI leadership, fanned the flames of the Epstein conspiracy theories over the years, and how they're now trying to extinguish them. In their own words: Trump and Epstein were friends Before Epstein's sexual predation was well-known, he and Trump were friends. Both were New Yorkers with homes in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump knew something about Epstein's 'social life' and interest in women 'on the younger side,' though there's no evidence Trump was aware Epstein was involved in sex trafficking of minors, as prosecutors allege. 'I've known Jeff for 15 years,' Trump told New York Magazine for a 2002 profile of Epstein. 'Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' The friendship later fell apart, according to Trump. He has since distanced himself from Epstein and more recently describes their relationship as far more distant than he portrayed in 2002. 'Well, I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,' Trump said on July 9, 2019, after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. 'I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach. I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don't think I've spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn't a fan." Three days later, Trump was asked what led to his falling out with Epstein and whether the financier had been banned from Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach home. 'Yes. And I did have a falling out a long time ago. The reason doesn't make any difference, frankly,' Trump said. He said he had 'no idea' Epstein was molesting women. A month later, on Aug. 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead in his New York City jail cell. His death was ruled a suicide. Trump nods toward conspiracy theories The day Epstein was found in his cell, Trump shared a social media post that linked his death to former President Bill Clinton. 'I want a full investigation, and that's what I absolutely am demanding,' Trump told reporters on Aug. 13, 2019. Pressed on whether he really believed Clinton was involved in Epstein's death, Trump responded at length about Clinton traveling on Epstein's private plane. 'Because Epstein had an island that was not a good place, as I understand it,' Trump said. 'And I was never there. So you have to ask: Did Bill Clinton go to the island?' In a 2020 interview with Axios, Trump cast doubt on the New York medical examiner's ruling that Epstein's death was a suicide. He was asked about Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime companion. Maxwell had been charged a month earlier with luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, and Trump had controversially responded: 'I wish her well.' 'Well, her boyfriend died in jail and people are still trying to figure out how did it happen? Was it suicide? Was he killed? And I do wish her well. I'm not looking for anything bad for her. I'm not looking bad for anybody,' Trump told Axios on Aug. 3, 2020. After Trump left office, Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. In the years since, Trump has said he's unsure whether Epstein killed himself. In a Fox News interview during his 2024 campaign, Trump hedged when asked whether he'd release the Epstein files. His noncommittal answer came right after he'd agreed without hesitation to declassify files related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the John F. Kennedy assassination. "I guess I would. I think that, less so, because you don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there because it's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would," Trump said on June 2, 2024. Trump allies lean in Trump's unconventional picks to lead the FBI — Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — were commentators in Trump's Make America Great Again movement before joining federal law enforcement. In their prior roles, both aggressively promoted theories that Epstein was killed to keep him quiet. In a 2023 appearance on Benny Johnson's podcast, Patel was incensed that House Republicans weren't trying harder to force the release of an alleged list of high-powered Epstein associates — a document the Patel-led FBI now says doesn't exist. 'What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority. You can't get the list? ... Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are," Patel said in the interview, which Johnson posted to social media on Dec. 19, 2023. As a podcaster, Bongino called the Epstein story 'one of the biggest political scandals of our time' and portrayed it as a wide-ranging conspiracy involving global elites. 'What the hell are they hiding with Jeffrey Epstein?' Bongino asked on his show on May 4, 2023. 'What do Clinton, Obama officials, big money leftists, a former Prime Minister of Israel — why do they want to make this Jeffrey Epstein story go away so bad?' Attorney General Pam Bondi stoked the conspiracy even after taking the helm at the Justice Department. The alleged Epstein client list is "sitting on my desk right now to review,' Bondi said in a February interview on Fox News. She later told reporters, 'There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn.' Trump and his team try to put the genie back in the bottle Patel, Bongino and Bondi now contradict their earlier selves. The Justice Department this month said Epstein did not maintain a 'client list" of powerful men for whom he trafficked underage girls and said no more files would be released. Patel and Bongino offered assurances that they'd reviewed the evidence and there was no reason to doubt Epstein killed himself. 'I believe he hung himself in a cell in the Metropolitan Detention Center,' Patel testified in a Senate hearing on May 8. Trump himself has been the most aggressive. In a lengthy post Wednesday on Truth Social, he lashed out at his 'PAST supporters' who have believed in Epstein conspiracy theories, calling them 'weaklings' and saying he doesn't 'want their support anymore!' He claimed, without offering evidence, that Democrats concocted the Epstein stories that have animated his base. 'Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,' Trump wrote. In another lengthy post on Saturday, he vouched for Bondi and pressed his supporters to move on. 'What's going on with my 'boys' and, in some cases, 'gals'? They're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!' Trump wrote. Solve the daily Crossword
Boston Globe
14 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
1.4m of the nation's poorest renters risk losing their homes with Trump's proposed HUD time limit
Still, the 33-year-old single mother is grateful she has stable housing — experts estimate just 1 in 4 low-income households eligible for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rental assistance get the benefits. And now Hopkins is at risk of losing her home, as federal officials move to restrict HUD policy. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Amid a worsening national affordable housing and homelessness crisis, President Donald Trump's administration is determined to reshape HUD's expansive role providing stable housing for low-income people, which has been at the heart of its mission for generations. The proposed changes include a two-year limit on the federal government's signature rental assistance programs. Advertisement At a June congressional budget hearing, HUD Secretary Scott Turner argued policies like time limits will fix waste and fraud in public housing and Section 8 voucher programs. 'It's broken and deviated from its original purpose, which is to temporarily help Americans in need,' Turner said. 'HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent.' Advertisement But the move to restrict such key subsidies would mark a significant retreat from the scope of HUD's work. Millions of tenants moved in with the promise of subsidized housing for as long as they were poor enough to remain qualified, so time limits would be a seismic shift that could destabilize the most vulnerable households, many unlikely to ever afford today's record-high rents. New research from New York University, obtained exclusively by The Associated Press, found that if families were cut off after two years, 1.4 million households could lose their vouchers and public housing subsidies — largely working families with children. This would lead housing authorities to evict many families, the report said. A broad time limit would cause 'substantial disruption and dislocation,' the it said, noting the policy is largely untested and most of the few housing authorities to voluntarily try it eventually abandoned the pilots. A break from HUD's long-held purpose of helping house the poor could also jeopardize its contracts with private landlords, who say they're already feeling the uncertainty as public housing authorities from Seattle to Atlanta announce they're scaling back in anticipation of federal funding cuts. Critics fear the restriction could derail those working towards self-sufficiency — defeating the goal time-limit supporters hope to achieve. HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett pushed back on the NYU study. 'There is plenty of data that strongly supports time limits and shows that long-term government assistance without any incentive disincentivizes able-bodied Americans to work,' Lovett said in a statement. She primarily cited statistics suggesting low employment among HUD-subsidized tenants. Hopkins said the policy would likely leave her and her son homeless in an economy that often feels indifferent to working poor people like her. Advertisement 'A two-year time limit is ridiculous,' she said. 'It's so disrespectful. I think it's dehumanizing — the whole system.' Working families are most at risk Researchers from the Housing Solutions Lab at New York University's Furman Center analyzed HUD's data over a 10-year period and found about 70% of households who could be affected by a two-year limit had already been living on those subsidies for two or more years. That's based on 2024 estimates and doesn't include elderly and disabled people who wouldn't be subject to time limits. Exempted households make up about half of the roughly 4.9 million households getting rental assistance. In the first study to examine the proposed policy's possible impacts, the NYU researchers found time limits would largely punish families who are working but earning far below their area's median income, which would ultimately shift federal rental assistance away from households with kids. 'Housing assistance is especially impactful for children,' said Claudia Aiken, the study co-author and director of new research partnerships for the Housing Solutions Lab. Their health, education, employment and earnings potential can 'change in really meaningful ways if they have stable housing,' she said. It would affect people like Hopkins, whose family was on a years-long waitlist in the expensive region where she grew up. In July 2022, she and her son moved into a two-bedroom public housing unit in Woodinville, Washington. She pays $450 a month in rent — 30% of her household income. A market-rate apartment in the area costs at least $2,000 more, according to the King County Housing Authority, which in June announced it would pause issuing some new vouchers. Hopkins knows she could never afford to live in her home state without rental assistance. It was a relief they could stay as long as they needed. She had been struggling to scrape together hundreds of dollars more a month for her previous trailer home. Advertisement 'There's no words to put on feeling like your housing is secure,' Hopkins said. 'I feel like I was gasping for air and I'm finally able to breathe.' She credits the housing subsidy for her ability to finally leave an abusive marriage, and still dreams of more — perhaps her own catering business or working as a party decorator. 'We all can't be lawyers and doctors — and two years isn't enough to even become that,' Hopkins said. Since learning of Trump's proposal, Hopkins said she's been haunted by thoughts of shoving her possessions into a van with her son, upending the stability she built for him. 'Difficult to do well' The average household in HUD-subsidized housing stays about six years, studies show. HUD funds local public housing projects where nearly 1 million households live and the Section 8 vouchers that about 4 million households use to offset their private rentals. There's been little guidance from HUD on how time-limited housing assistance would be implemented — how it would be enforced, when the clock starts and how the exemptions would be defined. Both Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged the potential for time limits to help curb HUD's notorious waitlists. Hard-liners contend the threat of housing loss will push people to reach self-sufficiency; others see limits, when coupled with support and workforce incentives, as a means to motivate tenants to improve their lives. Yet there are strikingly few successful examples. NYU researchers identified just 17 public housing authorities that have tested time limits. None of the programs were designed for only two years and 11 abandoned the restriction — despite being able to use federal dollars for services to help people achieve self-sufficiency. Several agencies that dropped the limits said tenants still struggled to afford housing after their time was up. Advertisement 'These policies are complex and difficult to monitor, enforce, and do well,' NYU's Aiken said. The city of Keene, New Hampshire, tried five-year time limits starting in 2001, but terminated the policy before fully enforcing it to avoid kicking out households that would still be 'rent burdened, or potentially homeless,' said Josh Meehan, executive director of Keene Housing. In California, Shawnté Spears of the Housing Authority of San Mateo County said the agency has kept its five-year time limit in tandem with educational programs she says have 'given folks motivation' to meet their goals. It also gives more people the chance to use vouchers, she said. NYU's Aiken acknowledged HUD's long waitlists make the current system 'a bit of a lottery,' adding: 'You could say that time limits are a way of increasing people's odds in that lottery.' The landlord's dilemma HUD's Section 8 programs have long depended on hundreds of thousands of for-profit and nonprofit small business owners and property managers to accept tenant vouchers. Now, landlords fear a two-year limit could put their contracts for HUD-subsidized housing in limbo. Amid the uncertainty, Denise Muha, executive director of the National Leased Housing Association, said multiple landlord groups have voiced their concerns about HUD's next budget in a letter to congressional leaders. She said landlords generally agree two years is simply not enough time for most low-income tenants to change their fortunes. Advertisement 'As a practical matter, you're going to increase your turnover, which is a cost,' Muha said. 'Nobody wants to throw out their tenants without cause.' It's always been a significant lift for private landlords to work with HUD subsidies, which involve burdensome paperwork, heavy oversight and maintenance inspections. But the trade-off is a near guarantee of dependable longer-term renters and rental income. If that's compromised, some landlords say they'd pull back from the federal subsidy programs. Brad Suster, who owns 86 Chicago-area units funded by HUD, said accepting subsidies could become risky. 'Would we have the same reliability that we know has traditionally come for countless years from the federal government?' Suster said. 'That's something landlords and owners want to know is there.' The diminishing housing stock available to low-income tenants has been a brewing problem for HUD. Between 2010 and 2020, some 50,000 housing providers left the voucher program, the agency has reported. Chaos and trade-offs, critics say It's up for debate whether lawmakers will buy into Trump's vision for HUD. This week the U.S. House appropriations committee is taking up HUD's 2026 budget, which so far makes no mention of time limits. HUD's Lovett noted the Senate's budget plans for the agency have not yet been released, and said the administration remains focused on future implementation of time limits. 'HUD will continue to engage with colleagues on the hill to ensure a seamless transition and enforcement of any new time limit,' Lovett said in a statement. Noëlle Porter, the director of government affairs at the National Housing Law Project, said Trump's fight for time limits is far from over, noting that legislative and rule changes could make them a reality. 'It is clearly a stated goal of the administration to impose work requirements and time limits on rental assistance, even though it would be wildly unpopular,' Porter said. Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina says there's no evidence time limits would save HUD money. 'This doesn't help families who already are working multiple jobs to become self-sufficient,' Clyburn said at a June hearing. 'Instead, it creates chaos, financial uncertainty and pushes these families into more severe trade-offs.' Time limits could imperil Aaliyah Barnes' longtime dream of graduating college and becoming a nurse, finding a job and a home she can afford. The 28-year-old single mom in Louisville, Kentucky, this year joined Family Scholar House, which provides counseling and support for people pursuing an education — and, to Barnes' relief, housing. Her apartment is paid for by a Section 8 voucher. In March, Barnes moved in and her 3-year-old son, Aarmoni, finally got his own room, where she set up a learning wall. Previously, she had struggled to afford housing on her wages at a call center — and living with her mom, two sisters and their kids in a cramped house was an environment ridden with arguments. The stable future she's building could disappear, though, if she's forced out in two years when her schooling is expected to take three years. 'I'd be so close, but so far away,' Barnes said. Kramon reported from Atlanta.
San Francisco Chronicle
14 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Inside the high-stakes battle to win a New York City casino license
NEW YORK (AP) — A Caesars Palace casino in the heart of Times Square. A sprawling gambling hall along Coney Island's iconic boardwalk. A Hard Rock casino complex next to the home stadium of baseball's New York Mets. Eight projects are bidding for a state license to operate a casino in the lucrative New York City market, each dangling the prospect of generational investment in America's largest metropolitan region. But one — a Bally's casino proposed on a Bronx golf course once run by President Donald Trump's company — may have already run out of luck, after city lawmakers denied it a key approval this week. All of the proposed casinos, in application materials submitted in recent days, promise to create thousands of new jobs, flashy new community amenities in the form of hotels, shops, restaurants and entertainment venues and billions of dollars a year in taxable gambling revenues for the state's coffers. How realistic those promises are, though, is an open question, given the proliferation of casinos in the northeast and the explosion of online gambling in recent years, casino experts say. Gambling industry spending big, but some locals aren't sold The arrival of full-fledged casino resorts in New York City has been years in the making. The gambling industry spent mightily to secure approval from New York voters in a referendum authorizing the licensing of up to seven full casinos with live table games back in 2013. But the state initially allowed upstate venues a head start. The state's Gaming Commission says it hopes to finally award up to three downstate licenses in December. But before then, community advisory committees appointed by lawmakers and local officials will weigh community opinions of each plan. Nearly all the casino proposals face some degree of local push back. On Monday, the New York City Council denied Bally's a needed rezoning change following local resident concerns about the environmental impact of its $4 billion proposal, which also calls for a 500-room hotel and a 2,000-seat event center. Bally's, which bought the former Trump Links course in 2023, had promised to pay Trump another $115 million if it were to secure a casino license, though that was not among the objections voiced by the Democratic majority on the council nor the Republican lawmaker representing the Bronx district. Spokespersons for Bally's declined to comment on the future of the project this week. Not surprisingly, the debate over the proposed Times Square casino has taken center stage, with supporters and opponents recently holding dueling rallies in the Crossroads of the World. Among the prominent groups opposed to the $5.4 billion plan is the Broadway League, a trade group representing America's performing arts theaters. It says a casino would draw patrons away from neighborhood businesses and threaten a theater industry still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. The project's backers have countered that the plan, which calls for renovating a skyscraper that currently houses the Minskoff Theatre, home of long-running 'The Lion King' musical, will actually boost demand for Broadway tickets. The developers, which have also enlisted Jay-Z's Roc Nation to curate their entertainment offerings, promise $250 million in community projects, including a public safety plan designed by former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and a multimillion-dollar civil rights museum that helped earn an endorsement from the Rev. Al Sharpton. The two other casinos proposed in Manhattan — one for its West Side and another on its East Side — could face similar headwinds, given their proximity to residential neighborhoods, according to casino experts. But the proposed West Side resort, near the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and the Lincoln Tunnel to New Jersey, could reel in business travelers and convention attendees, if it can win over locals, said Soojin Ha, a lecturer at Cornell University's business school. Meanwhile in Brooklyn, organizers of the quirky Mermaid Parade are among those leading the charge against a Coney Island casino, arguing the plan would remove large chunks of the boardwalk's iconic amusement rides and block access to the public beach. New York market could support 3 casinos, expert says Since the 2013 referendum, four full casinos have opened in New York, though all of them are located upstate, miles away from Manhattan. The state also has nine gambling halls offering slot machines and other electronic gambling machines but no live table games. Some three hours drive north of Manhattan are the Native American tribe-owned Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos in Connecticut. Two hours south are the New Jersey shore casinos of Atlantic City, and less than two hours due west in Pennsylvania is the tribe-owned Wind Creek Casino at the former site of Bethlehem Steel. Despite the competition from seemingly all corners, New York City's dense market could sustain three gambling halls, depending on where they're located, suggests John Holden, a business professor at Indiana University who specializes in gambling law. 'We typically see fairly rosy revenue projections put out by the gaming industry, but the New York City market is really without comparison,' he said. The state could hedge its bets by awarding two of the three licenses to proven winners: the racinos -- slot parlors built alongside horse racing tracks — that have been successfully operating for years in the New York City area, said Alan Woinski, a New Jersey-based gambling consultant. MGM Resorts is proposing a $2.3 billion expansion of the Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway. Resorts World, owned by Malaysian casino giant Genting, is proposing a $5.5 billion investment to its gaming facility at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Those expansions, Woinski noted, could be rolled out in a matter of months, meaning the state wouldn't have to wait years for the construction of a wholly new site to start reaping the financial windfall.
