After devastating floods rampaged through Texas, The New York Times ran a story headlined, “Trump Is Gutting Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Response.”“In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say,” the Times reported.

“We are not witnessing a reimagining of federal disaster response — we are watching its demolition,” Mary Ann Tierney, formerly a top official at the Department of Homeland Security, told the Times. “With each policy rollback and staffing cut, the federal disaster management function is being hollowed out, leaving states and survivors to face storms, fires and floods with less.”

No one questions the courage and heroism of first responders who saved countless lives in Texas, and anyone who has ever grappled with the federal bureaucracy knows its inefficiency can be infuriating. But as the Texas tragedy demonstrates, Trump’s wholesale, ham-handed assaults on federal agencies and employees can have deeply damaging side effects. “The Trump administration is leaving communities naked, without the necessary tools that could help them assess risks or reduce those risks,” Alice C. Hill, who worked on climate resilience and security issues for the Obama administration, said in the Times.

There is nothing new about Trump’s attack on Washington as a fetid “swamp” of parasites. Conservatives denounced Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as a cataclysmic concentration of socialistic state power. Ronald Reagan derided D.C. as the “puzzle palace on the Potomac.” But Trump — bolstered by Republican majorities in Congress and a sympathetic Supreme Court — is poised to inflict lasting damage that could take years to repair.

Only Washington has the ability to hire and train the experts who can predict and monitor major disasters, many of which sweep across state lines. And only Washington has the taxing power to finance the billions of dollars it will take to restore the damage caused by floods in Texas, or hurricanes in Florida, or wildfires in California. And by the way, even the most conservative governors and legislators are eager for that federal aid when their states are hit.

The damage already done by Trump was clearly visible in Texas. Two days after the floods, according to the Times, two-thirds of the calls to a disaster assistance hotline maintained by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, went unanswered. The reason: The agency had fired hundreds of contractors at the centers assigned to answer those calls.

In another cost-cutting move, Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem insisted on personally approving any expenditure over $100,000. Therefore, reported CNN, “FEMA officials were unable to pre-position urban search-and-rescue crews, which specialize in searching for victims during catastrophic weather incidents. Noem failed to authorize the crews’ deployment until … 72 hours after flooding began.”

Trump’s war on the federal workforce has left 600 positions out of 4,000 unfilled at the National Weather Service, including many of the most experienced forecasters. That prompted “some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose,” wrote the Times.

Trump’s assault on weather forecasting and disaster relief agencies — he has often suggested eliminating FEMA entirely — is only one of many examples that illustrate a stark and simple fact: In the name of greater efficiency and lower costs, he is making Americans less safe and less secure.