- As Kerr County receives support from around the state and the world, Texas lawmakers meet to consider flood protection policy.

What you need to know from the special session, "Austin InSight" starts right now.

- [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from Sally and James Gavin, and also from Suerte, Este and Bar Toti restaurants, bringing Austin together around culinary excellence to celebrate creativity, conservation, and culture in Central Texas.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - Hi there, and thanks for joining us, I'm Laura Laughead.

How can I help?

That's what most people who've called the city of Kerrville since the July 4th flood have asked.

Three weeks later, the Guadalupe River communities are still surrounded by support.

(water whooshing) (engine rumbling) That includes the search and rescue teams working to find those lost, along with volunteers and other first responders, and a Kerrville pharmacist is doing his part.

- When tragedy strikes, especially a natural disaster, you know, you run outta home and you leave home and you're not thinking about grabbing your medication, that's probably the last thing that you're thinking about.

But nonetheless, you know, your medication is so crucially important to your health.

We've done about maybe 30 to 40 vaccines.

We've helped two fire departments recover supplies, EpiPens, and we've probably replaced medications for about 10 or 12 patients.

- You know, we're all we got, you know, we gotta lean on each other and, you know, if you're from Texas, whether you're born and raised here, or you came here and you spent a year, you know, you're addicted to the place.

I'd take being homeless in Texas over being rich in another state 'cause, I mean, you're not gonna find people like this nowhere else.

- We've now seen criticism of government activities at all levels before and since the storm and praise for the heroic efforts in the aftermath.

But the massive cleanup and rebuilding effort in the Kerrville area has just begun.

This as the number of missing people from the floods has dropped to just two.

Kerr County officials report that they've accounted for all but two of the more than 160 people initially reported missing from the floods.

Many of them have been verified as safe.

Statewide, at least 135 people lost their lives in the flood.

As survivors and others consider the enormity of this catastrophe, the question remains, how could this happen?

The flood followed more than 12 inches of rain in the Kerr County area, that's more than 100 billion gallons of rainwater.

With more common and more dangerous extreme weather events, we're returning to the experts for insight.

Joining us now is Hunter Williams, chief meteorologist at KVUE, the ABC Network affiliate here in Austin.

Hunter, thank you so much for being with us.

- Yeah, pleasure to be here, thank you for having me.

- So, Hunter, we're seeing reports that more than twice the average amount of flooding has taken place in the US so far this year.

Why do you think that is?

- It certainly has been incredible, just in the past three to four weeks to think about the high profile, high impact flooding events.

We obviously know about what's happened here in Central Texas, in the Austin area.

Then, in parts of New Mexico, very bad flooding, flash flood emergencies in Chicago and DC, it really has been all over the place.

Now, in each of those instances, there's been each spot had its own unique weather set up.

For example, here in Central Texas, we actually had tropical moisture from a weak tropical storm Barry, which made landfall in Mexico, and a lot of that moisture pulled up here into Central Texas, and that was a big factor in the flooding that we saw.

Now, to speak to the broader picture though, why does it seem like we have so much moisture in the air?

Well, now you have to start talking about a warming climate, and we can get more into the details of this, but at its most simplistic level, the warmer the temperature, the more water vapor and the more moisture the air can hold.

So with a warming climate, we have more water vapor in the air.

So if we have these setups where these storm systems develop, there's more moisture to wring out of the atmosphere and that it appears it's a contributing factor to the flooding that we've seen all across the country in the past couple of weeks.

- Hmm, and it makes sense.

And if you can believe this though, this particular area was in a severe drought before the floods.

It's this grim irony.

How have the floods impacted that?

And will we always be seeing this pendulum swinging from like far too little rain to then far too much?

- Well, I think folks who've lived in Texas for a long time will tell you that's kind of the nature of how the weather is here in Texas, and that will probably continue to be the case.

But that has been one of the remarkable things to watch.

So let's backtrack, you go to July 1st, before any of this flooding had happened.

In Austin, there was severe drought, that went west into the Hill Country.

Then you get to Fredericksburg and Gillespie County, there was extreme drought, then Southern Gillespie County down into Kerr County, so Fredericksburg down to Kerrville where a lot of the flooding happened, there was top level exceptional drought, that is the very top of the scale.

Fast forward to today, now there basically has been a complete eradication of drought over much of the Hill Country, at least the Central Texas Hill Country that we cover at KVUE.

Basically, completely gone.

In Austin, now just abnormally dry conditions, which is technically not even a drought, it's just a precursor to drought.

Then as you go Southern Travis County, down the I-35 corridor, just moderate drought.

So basically, we went from having pockets of top level exceptional drought to now we just have pockets of moderate drought.

So a huge improvement there.

And that's not even to talk about the lake level, so we have two main lakes that are the storage reservoirs here in Central Texas, Lake Buchanan for the first time, since about 2019 at full pool, it rose more than 16 feet, even to the point where they had to do floodgate operations to pass water down to Lake Travis.

Lake Travis, not completely full, but it's at about 90% full now.

And it has risen amazingly over 36 feet as a result of the flooding that we've seen the past couple weeks.

- It's hard to believe some of those stats, and without getting into the specific warnings issued in this flood, that is a conversation for another day.

How difficult is it to forecast with precision these increasingly extreme weather events?

- I mean, it's difficult.

And I think the reality in my experience of forecasting the weather here in Central Texas is sometimes we don't have days heads up for some of these systems.

Now there's forecasts where it's clear cut and it's easy.

I will tell you the July 4th setup was not one of those.

Again, it was complicated, we had this tropical system, we had an upper level storm coming in from West Texas, it was a tricky forecast.

To answer the question though, we knew, not days ahead of time, but the setup, we generally knew a day ahead of time, hours ahead of time, which is why flash flood watches were issued for much of the area, and then that takes us into the warnings, which were also in effect.

But essentially, in the hours leading up to this event, we were able to say, "Hey, somewhere in this zone, somewhere over Central Texas, there could be heavy rain."

And that's about where the skill level lies.

Is it possible, at this point, given our ability in the science of meteorology to say, "Hey, this is exactly where 20 inches of rain is gonna fall, and this is the exact creek, stream or river that water is going to flow into?"

That's just not really where the science is at right now.

Again, we have really good high res modeling that gives us a good idea, hey, these are spots to watch, but we're able to pinpoint a zone.

But the precision of saying, "Hey Kerrville, this is exactly where the worst rain's gonna be."

"Hey, northwest Travis, this is exactly where the worst rain's gonna be."

We're not really able to get to that point until the rain starts to fall and we see the trends happen in real time.

- And this greater discussion of climate change, though, based on scientific research, it's controversial and often politicized.

Experts say that climate change intensified this flooding and they fear weather conditions will just get worse.

How concerned are you about this?

- I mean, you know, I don't wanna sit here and preach to anybody, but what I can do is tell you the data that I look at, and, you know, we talked about the flooding impacts here, right?

The warmer the atmosphere, the more moisture the atmosphere can hold, that tilts the odds over time to more extreme flood events.

And that's not even to address the oceans, right?

If the Gulf or the Atlantic is warmer than normal, which has certainly been the case, that also feeds into the likelihood of these extreme flood events.

But it's not just flooding, right?

It's extremes of all kinds.

If you look at the top 10 hottest summers ever recorded in Austin, seven of the top 10 have happened over the past 10 years, and I think all but one have happened since 2000.

So to me, that's a pretty clear trend.

So I think, as we move forward, as a community, as a city, as a state, you know, it is in our best interest to be aware of this changing climate and to do what we can to help to protect people as the odds tilt towards more extreme weather events.

- Indeed, it is so important to be aware, especially since severe weather season is not over yet.

Hunter Williams with KVUE, thank you so much for taking the time to help us better understand the role of climate in the recent floods.

- Of course.

(lively music) (lively music continues) - In accordance with the proclamation of the honorable Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, I call the House of Representatives of the 89th legislature first called session to order, members.

- A special session of the Texas legislature is underway this week.

In the aftermath of the July 4th flood, the governor added flood and disaster protection to the agenda, but a big focus is also on redistricting.

That's after a request from the president for Texas to redraw its congressional districts to give Republicans five more of the state's 38 seats in Congress.

Currently, Democrats hold just 12 of the seats.

The proposed change would give Republicans 30 seats with Democrats in theory holding on to just eight.

That would create an 80% Republican delegation far above the 56% Republican vote share in the 2024 presidential election.

Democrats are crying foul.

- There is no doubt there were failures at every level of government, the county, the state of Texas, the federal government.

And what this special session should be about is doing something to correct those failures.

Redistricting, this scheme, is an act of desperation.

A desperate president is doing whatever it takes to cling the power.

- Texas has always been found to be intentionally discriminatory.

And so, I want y'all to understand the makeup of my state.

This state is a majority minority state.

And what this legislature historically has done is what they plan to do, again, is to dilute the voices of people of color in order to make sure that they can get to where they're trying to go.

- The Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has threatened a counter move to create more democratic seats in his very blue state.

More on that from San Francisco Chronicle politics reporter Sophia Bollag, who joins us now.

Thank you so much for being with us, Sophia.

- Thanks for having me.

- Based on your reporting, how serious is Governor Newsom's redistricting threat?

- So at this point, it's just rhetoric, but it hasn't been that long.

He first started talking about this I think a little less than two weeks ago.

So there hasn't been that much time that has passed between when he started threatening this and now, but he has not taken any moves to call a special election, which is one way that he's suggested they could start this process.

And to my knowledge, there hasn't been any legislation introduced by his allies in the legislature to enact this.

I reached out to both of the democratic legislative leaders this morning, and while they haven't said they oppose this proposal from Newsom, they also haven't explicitly endorsed what he's doing.

So I think, at this point, it still remains to be seen if there's actually gonna be any action taken.

But Newsom has said that he's serious and it sounds like he really is seriously considering this and discussing it with staff, how he might take an action to sort of counter Texas's redistricting moves.

- California has made this type of political gerrymandering, one party rigging the map against the other, very difficult to do historically.

So how practically possible though, is this?

- So it would be difficult.

So unlike in Texas, where the legislature draws the maps, California voters in 2010 passed a ballot measure that essentially took that power from the legislature and handed it over to an independent redistricting commission.

So as you mentioned, California is a pretty liberal place, Democrats dominate the legislature, but they don't dominate this commission.

There have to be by law equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, and then also a number of commissioners who are not affiliated with either party.

And that's who draws our congressional maps here in California.

And so, in order to carry out this threat that Gavin Newsom the governor is making, he would need to either go back to voters and have them change the law, which would require a special election.

Or he's also suggested that the legislature could choose to interpret the existing state law that was passed back in 2010 as, essentially, you know, being silent on what happens in between the official sort of redistricting periods, which happen right after the census is taken every decade, and interpret the law to mean that the legislature can draw new districts in the middle.

That it's not clear whether that would hold up in court.

And that's certainly a potentially legally very risky strategy because it could be overturned.

But those are the two avenues that he's talked about.

- And you brought up the concept of voters.

What is your sense of the political desire in California to do this either in the legislature or among voters?

- Democrats in California overwhelmingly don't approve of the job that President Trump is doing.

They wanna see their elected leaders pushing back more forcefully on Trump and Republicans' policies and, you know, political maneuvers.

And so, the governor has argued that he thinks if they put this on the ballot, that it would pass.

Too soon to say unfortunately, but there's definitely a lot of anger at the Trump administration and at Republicans among Democrats in California right now.

And right now, they're the ones really who call the shots here.

- No doubt, an interesting power struggle taking shape all around.

Sophia Bollag from The San Francisco Chronicle, thank you so much for these insights into the California political landscape.

- Happy to be here.

(bright music) - With the Texas legislature poised to implement a new map of congressional districts, where does that leave the flood response on the priority list at the special session?

More on that now from Scott Braddock, editor at The Quorum Report.

Scott, so good to be with you again.

- Good to see you.

- So, Scott, this session was supposed to be mostly about regulating THC after the governor vetoed the THC ban bill that passed in the regular session, clearly, there's so much more.

Now, let's talk about redistricting first.

Do you see any chance that Democrats will leave the state to prevent a quorum to block this like they did back in 2003?

- Well, it's the nuclear option.

And of course, if you go back to 2003 and look at the history of that, they were ultimately not successful, and every time Democrats have left the state to try to block something that Republicans were trying to do, that thing always happened anyway.

But sometimes it was changed slightly to sort of allay the concerns of the Democrats.

That was not the case with the elections law back in 2021.

And in 2003, the Republicans did end up redistricting in a way that moved the ball forward for Republicans in a big way.

Democrats now are saying that they're not taking that off the table, that, you know, that is something that they still might do, but if they do it, they're going to need a lot of help from national Democrats and they might get it because, look, this is an existential threat to President Trump, and it's a real national power struggle that we're looking at here.

You have President Trump demanding more Republican seats in Congress at a base level because, one, he doesn't wanna get impeached again, he and his team do believe that that's gonna happen if Democrats take the gavels in the US house, and also, for the last two years of his presidency, after the next midterm, those folks in his administration are concerned that they're gonna be under constant investigation by the US House of Representatives when the Democrats run the committees there, if that's what happens, after the 2026 elections, and this is maybe just the start of what may happen around the entire country.

Back in 2003, something that wasn't the case then that is the case now, is you have Democratic states like California looking at trying to cancel out whatever happens here.

So you have the governor in California, you have Gavin Newsom saying, "Yeah, if Texas redistricts, we'll just do the same thing in California and send more Democrats to Washington."

- So then, what leverage, other than walkout, do Democrats have, if any?

- They don't have much.

In a special session, you have a narrowed agenda compared to the regular session, and you don't have as much on the table.

So there isn't as much leverage for the minority party other than just leaving if that's what they choose to do.

If they were to leave and have a sustained effort, that would take the next three months or so, because, of course, the governor could call more special sessions if the redistricting doesn't happen over the next 29, 28 days, whatever it is now at this point.

But if you look at the way this has played out in the past, Democrats eventually would relent and the Republicans would get what they want.

They would need something like 4.5 to $5 million from national Democratic donors to support an effort over the next three months to stay out of the state to prevent this redistricting.

- Can Republicans get five more seats from a new map?

Is that possible?

Is it risky?

- It's very risky, I don't think they can get five.

I think the President starts with a negotiating position of five.

I think that it's more realistic to say that Republicans could maybe draw one or two new Republican seats, maybe one in the valley, maybe one in the Houston area.

But once they start to move more lines than that, especially in those big urban areas, like Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, I'm told by solid Republican sources that they're concerned that as many as nine incumbent Republicans in Congress from Texas could see their seats endangered, and they'd have to spend a lot of money in that next election to defend those seats.

- And, Scott, this kind of extreme gerrymandering got so bad in North Carolina, the experts declared the state quote, "No longer a functioning democracy."

How do you think this plays out here in Texas?

- I think the Republicans here are gonna be perhaps a little more measured because legislative leaders and the governor understand that the way populations are distributed throughout the state, it's just not possible to draw that many more Republican seats.

You saw in the last regular redistricting in 2021 that they didn't really try to expand the number of Republicans who they're sending to the halls of power in Austin and Washington.

Instead, they drew a map that essentially kept things the same, that they shored up their Republican support and they shored up their Republican power, such as it is.

And overreaching is exactly what they were trying to not do.

And so, this time around, even though President Trump's demanding it, I would expect that they might take a little bit more measured approach.

And if they do that, it might prevent those Democrats from walking out.

- Well, this will be something we will be following this special session, Scott Braddock, editor at The Quorum Report.

Thank you so much for being back with us to share your insight.

- It's my pleasure, thank you.

(bright music) - Public radio and television stations across America, including Austin PBS, are weighing next steps after Congress voted last week to take back previously approved funding.

Republicans have criticized news coverage that they say is biased and left-leaning, while journalists and First Amendment advocates say that defunding is a form of censorship.

The CEO of Austin PBS Luis Patino joins us now.

Luis, thanks so much for being with us.

- Thanks for having me.

- I know you've had a busy, busy few weeks.

So, Luis, what's your reaction to the vote on the rescission bill?

Certainly not a surprise.

- Yeah, not a surprise.

I think we've all been waiting in anticipation sort of for the shoe to drop.

Doesn't lessen the blow.

Our executive producer of "Austin City Limits" recently did a interview with Billboard Magazine, I think he said it best, "It feels like a gut punch."

So not a huge surprise to many, to most, but, again, nonetheless, it's concerning, worrisome, it hurts those of us that work in public media, but we must move on.

- How will this impact Austin PBS?

Do you anticipate any cutbacks here?

- Yeah, I think really that, you know, the way that you have to look at it is any business that has a deficit of their revenue, of their funding, you really have to look at it in a couple of different ways.

First and foremost, you can never cut yourself to prosperity, right?

Meaning that, whatever we decide to do, it will be a combination of a number of things.

One of which is trying to figure out how we can also really lean on our community to continue to support us, which they have.

Since Thursday, we've had a number of people reach out to either renew their membership to Austin PBS to increase what they already provide on a monthly basis to Austin PBS.

And then, we've also had some large donors reach out and wanna support what we do.

So when you look at a potential funding deficit, in our case of close to $2.7 million, it's only gonna happen through these combination of increasing revenues through the philanthropic side, leveraging the fact that not only are we a nonprofit that benefits from the support of our community, but we're also a media organization that has the additional benefit of also being able to reach out to corporate sponsors that support things like "Austin City Limits," that support some of the events that we produce.

So our revenue portfolio and the ways that we can actually try and close that gap are really beneficial to the model of a public media organization.

- Undoubtedly, this is a tenuous time, and we may not have a lot of the answers yet, but like you brought up, it has been so heartening to see the amazing outpouring of support.

- Oh yeah.

- And speaking of that, lastly, Luis, what's your message to the Austin PBS community, our Austin PBS supporters right now, who may be concerned and what should they do to support?

- Yeah.

Well, so far, the best post I've seen says, "Defunded but not defeated."

- Yeah.

- Right?

I really love that one because I think that really elaborates on the spirit of how we need to think about this, right?

So, okay, so this action happened, it wasn't a big surprise, it still hurts, but we really need to figure out, what does the future of public media look like here, right?

And I think that we need to really make sure that we are on solid footing in Austin at this PBS station because there's gonna be others that might need our help down the line.

When you start thinking about the state of Texas, I've spoken to some of my colleagues, most recently, my colleague in Midland-Odessa and Corpus Christi.

Later today, I have a call with the teams from Lubbock and El Paso all in an effort to try and see how we can help each other during this time.

There might be opportunities for stations that are really privileged, like ourselves, that are on strong financial footing to be able to step in and help where we can, some of these other markets that really rely even more so, a disproportionate amount of their funding came from federal funding in the range of 50% for some of them.

So we need to be ready and prepared to step in and help some of these organizations that are in communities that would really otherwise not have news and information the way we have it here, - The work they do is so important and we here at Austin PBS, we're gonna try to support them in any way we can.

Luis, thank you so much for providing some insight into the future here at Austin PBS.

- Thank you, thank you for having me.

(bright music) - Before we go, we wanna let you know that the "Austin InSight" team went to the Kerrville area last Friday to report on the aftermath of the flood.

In coming weeks, we'll bring you that coverage that includes inspiring stories about people impacted, people helping, and those working on future solutions.

For Austin PBS, being a good neighbor means listening, and we wanna hear from you about your experiences related to this disaster.

We wanna help you tell your flood story on your terms.

Scan this QR code for instructions on how to record your story or message, and where to send video and photos.

Whether it's a story of loss or hope or gratitude to someone who's helped you, or maybe a favorite memory before the river changed everything, we'll share your responses on television and online as our special coverage of the flood aftermath continues.

As you heard from our CEO, Austin PBS is here to stay and we're here for you.

Our thoughts continue to be with everyone struggling with loss and the difficulties of rebuilding and recovering from the July 4th flood.

Thanks for watching.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from Sally and James Gavin, and also from Suerte, Este, and Bar Toti restaurants, bringing Austin together around culinary excellence to celebrate creativity, conservation, and culture in Central Texas.

(pleasant music)