YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US:  As the search for bodies continues in the Texas flood zone, local, state, and federal officials are deflecting questions about warnings ahead of the catastrophic flood and the response afterwards.

  Two days after the floods that killed at least 122 people and left 160 missing, the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, because contracts with the call centers had expired, The NY Times reports.

  Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who oversees FEMA,  has required that she must personally approve expenses over $100,000 and did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired and six days after the Texas disaster.

  An anonymous DHS spokesperson told the Times in an email, that, “FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.”

  CNN reports also the FEMA did not send response teams until three days after the floods hit, again because Noem did not give the green light.

  It’s been the position of President Trump and Noem that FEMA should be eliminated and state should provide their own disaster relief, but for now, FEMA is it. Now the administration is saying they have “fixed” FEMA.

  President Trump visited the disaster zone yesterday as local officials have also been under question for delayed warnings about the fatal floods. Asked by a local reporter about how “warnings didn’t go out in time,” Trump praised the work of first responders and said, “”Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you, I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.”

THE EPSTEIN FILES: Deputy FBI director Dan Bongino, who parlayed a conspiracy-minded podcast into one of the top federal law enforcement positions, threatened to quit after the Justice department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficker case.

  The Epstein case is huge in the MAGA crowd and Bongino said many times he will not let go of it.

  Bongino’s threat came after a face to face confrontation with Attorney general Pam Bondi in the presence of other senior officials, including Susie Wiles, the President’s Chief of Staff. Bondi said this week that contrary to the conspiracy theorists, Epstein was not murdered in jail but committed suicide. 

  Epstein was in jail facing charges of trafficking underage girls for sex with rich and famous men. More controversially, Bondi said there was no list of Epstein clients after repeatedly telling interviewers that she had it on her desk.

  Bongino was caught in a trap of his own making after years of claiming on his podcast that Epstein may have been murdered and there was a vast coverup. And of course, one of the primary theories is that there is in fact a client list and Donald Trump is on it,.

YOU’RE FIRED: Only days after the Supreme Court cleared the way for mass firings of federal employees, The State Department announced that it is shedding 1,350 civil and foreign service employees in what they call a reorganization.

  Fired employees were sent a cold-hearted message that said, “Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices.” 

  By afternoon, State department employees were seen leaving their building, many in tears and some hugging each other.

  The American Foreign Service Association said in a statement, “Losing more diplomatic expertise at this critical global moment is a catastrophic blow to our national interests.”

LA MIGRA: A federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the Trump administration to stop immigration sweeps in which she said federal agents have been indiscriminately arresting people across southern California without reasonable suspicion that they’re in the country illegally.

   Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpongsaid there is “a mountain of evidence” to support the claim that agents are arresting people based only on their race. 

THE OBIT PAGE: David Gergen, an advisor to presidents both Republican and Democrat and a longtime political analyst on cable news, died in Lexington, Massachusetts at age 83 of Lewy body dementia.

  After a stint as a magazine editor, Gergen moved into politics, ultimately serving presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. It was Gergen who suggested the famous Reagan rhetorical question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

  “It’s one of those things that you sometimes strike gold,” he later said about that question.

  Gergen was a young man when he loyally worked for Richard Nixon and told the Washington Post that he was late waking up to the President’s guilt. “I was young, and I was too naïve. It hardened me up a lot.”

  Gergen was a centrist, not a diehard right winger. “Centrism doesn’t mean splitting the difference,” he told The Boston Globe in 2020. “It’s about seeking solutions, and you bring people along. I’m happily in that role.”

THE SPIN RACK:  Moments after takeoff, fuel was cut off to the engines of the Air India jet that crashed last month, according to an initial investigation. “In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off” the fuel, according to the report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so.”  —  Amanda Anisimova, 23-year-old plays in the Wimbledon women’s singles final. Today. She will be the first American woman to reach the final since Serena Williams in 2016.

BELOW THE FOLD: Digging into the conspiracy theories about chem trails and atmospheric engineering, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that, “I tasked my team @EPA to compile everything we know about contrails and geoengineering to release to you now publicly. I want you to know EVERYTHING I know about these topics, and without ANY exception!”

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