🐡“Something’s Fishy” Edition

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. And Texas

As wildfires ripped through Los Angeles in early 2025, President Trump emerged from his Truth Social bunker to diagnose the problem: fish. Specifically, a “worthless smelt” allegedly hoarded all the firefighting water while homes burned and skies turned apocalyptic orange. Trump blamed California Governor Gavin Newsom for prioritizing this slippery socialist over real Americans with garden hoses. Naturally, Trump signed an executive order titled “People Over Fish,” redirecting water flows as though he were Poseidon with a bad combover.

Experts, however, had a slightly less fishy explanation. The fires were supercharged by hurricane-force winds and record drought conditions that turned even the most fireproof prevention plans into charred kindling. California had actually been quite busy “raking” its forests in MAGA-approved fashion: thinning brush, lighting prescribed burns, even deploying tactical goat brigades to chew through undergrowth. Yet the infernos laughed in the face of these efforts and kept burning—because it turns out, you can’t rake 100 mph winds.

And about those dry hydrants? It wasn’t liberal water politics or fish court rulings. Local infrastructure simply couldn’t keep up with the demands of a city on fire. Some reservoirs were drained for maintenance, and gale-force winds grounded firefighting aircraft, forcing crews to fight megafires with garden hoses and wishful thinking. Newsom called for an investigation, but experts were united: no water policy could have stopped this kind of blaze.

Now contrast all that nuance with Texas, where local leaders in Kerr County spent the past decade playing flood roulette. Officials knew camps full of children sat on the flood-prone Guadalupe River. They discussed installing sirens, flood gauges, and even—brace yourself—modern communications tools. But after weighing the cost of human life against a few new taxes, they bravely chose nothing.

A $1 million grant request for a flood warning system failed in 2017, and a commissioner called sirens “extravagant.” Because if there’s one thing more terrifying than a flash flood, it’s spending public money responsibly. When the July 4 floodwaters came—rising 30 feet in a matter of hours—there were no sirens, no alerts in time, and tragically, no hope for many. Over 100 people died, including dozens of children.