President Trump is flaunting his bond with deep-red Texas ahead of a Friday trip to the state, where he will assess deadly flooding that took the lives of more than 120 people.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has heaped praise on the administration this week for the federal response to the disaster, even as the Trump administration has made cuts to the nation’s climate and weather agencies and officials continue to push axing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The camaraderie stands in stark contrast to the the California wildfires in January, during which Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) played a blame game for weeks over water access, the loss of thousands of structures and a dozen deaths.

Critics argue that Trump’s handling of both deadly disasters showcases how he tends to politicize such events.

Jeremy Edwards, a former Biden White House and FEMA spokesperson, said he suspects if the Texas flooding had occurred in a state run by a Democrat, Trump’s sentiments would be very different.

“I find it very hard to imagine that if this exact situation were to happen in a blue state with a Democratic governor, he would not immediately lambast them for steps that they did or didn’t take with regards to emergency alerts,” Edwards said

Other critics noted how Trump’s predecessors went to great lengths to support communities, no matter how they tended to lean politically. 

“What I’d seen during the Obama administration and the Biden administration is presidents working with governors, regardless of party, to support the impacted community, whether it was in Florida with Biden and Gov. [Ron] DeSantis working side by side following the Surfside building collapse, Hurricane Ian, Hurricane Milton … putting politics aside,” said Michael Coen, a former FEMA chief of staff in the Obama and Biden administrations.

“Until this administration, I really haven’t seen emergency management being politicized the way it is,” Coen added.

Abbott is expected to join Trump in Texas, where he will meet with first responders, receive a briefing from local elected officials and meet with family members of those affected, according to a White House official.

For his part, Newsom also greeted Trump on the tarmac in California when he visited the state shortly after he retook office, but before the trip, the president threatened to withhold federal wildfire aid because of concerns about the state’s water management.

In Texas, some other particulars are at play.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service (NWS), cut hundreds of staffers during a government overhaul earlier this year.

And the warning coordination meteorologist for the NWS’s Austin-San Antonio office, who organizes the deployment of alerts about agency forecasts, took a Trump administration buyout in April.

That has put in the spotlight some of the cuts the Trump administration has implemented, and continues to threaten.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is also expected to join Trump on the ground in Texas, this week said FEMA should be “remade” even as the agency responded to the floods and both Noem and Trump have insisted such disaster response should be managed by states.

“We as a federal government don’t manage these disasters. The state does. We come in and support them, and that’s exactly what we did here in this situation,” she said.

FEMA has especially been in the GOP’s crosshairs since Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina last year, a state Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris had been vying for during the 2024 election. 

The North Carolina disaster was plagued by rumors that FEMA was avoiding red-leaning areas and not helping Republican households, at times hampering the response under former President Biden.

A former Bush administration Homeland Security official said Trump’s response to the Texas floods comes amid a cascade of changes in federal government operations this year.

“Disaster politics are always tricky, but this tragedy is amid the backdrop of DOGE and the administration’s broader efforts to reduce the federal role in disaster response,” the former Bush official said, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“The president and the governor get along well and are very simpatico on immigration, but these situations normally receive a level of empathy that this president does not like to display,” the former official added.

The president, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to think so. He has praised his alliance with Abbott, citing it as a factor in the unified response to the floods at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

“The relationship with Texas and the governor has been obviously very good for years, with me,” Trump said. “The response has been incredible, and the fact that we got along so well, I don’t even think that’s a political thing, but we got along so well, and it was so unified. I think a lot of lives have been saved.”

But, if the administration faces negative reviews over the response in Texas, some critics are bracing for a similar blame game Trump has leaned on in the past.

“I think this is going to be the same thing he does with the economy. When the economy is bad, it’s Biden’s economy. When the economy is good, it’s Trump’s economy,” said Edwards, a senior communications adviser at the Century Foundation. “And I think, if the response and recovery goes well and I hope it does it’s Trump’s FEMA, but if the response goes badly, it’s Biden’s FEMA.”