The Agonizing Search in Texas, and a Looming Trade Deadline

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From the New York Times, it's the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Monday, July 7th.

Here's what we're covering.

The scene was just out of a war zone.

The river was swollen.

They had taken entire neighborhoods.

Entire houses were gone.

There were smashed trees everywhere.

And it was difficult to navigate.

My colleague Edgar Sandoval has has been in Kerr County, Texas all weekend, where torrential rains on the 4th of July triggered one of the deadliest floods in the U.S.

in the past century.

The Guadalupe River, lined in part with RV parks and summer camps, burst its banks Friday, rising as much as 20 feet in two hours, while many were still sleeping.

As of this morning, at least 81 people are dead, and at least 40 remain missing.

Rains are pretty common here.

Residents tell me that this is the first time they've seen the water reach the houses, and this is just something that no one has experienced before, and they weren't ready for.

By Sunday, people from around the region had poured into the county northwest of San Antonio, trying to find their loved ones.

Edgar spoke with a woman who was waiting to hear about five of her family members who were swept away from their campsite.

One of the group, her cousin, was found alive, desperately clinging to a tree after being carried more than 15 miles in the floodwaters.

But the rest are still missing.

We're at Camp Nystic looking for our kids, and then we're looking for places that they're gonna potentially be alive.

Among the hardest-hit places was Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp where several kids were killed and where at least 10 campers are still unaccounted for.

One camper told Fox News about what it was like to watch the water rise higher and higher.

I put on my name tag because I was scared that our cabin might be next.

In my head, I was saying, if something does happen and I do get swept away, at least I'll have my name on my body.

It's been a tough three days for Texans and I can assure you here at this table today that everything that can be done is being done.

Meanwhile, officials say search and rescue efforts are ongoing even as the window for finding survivors is closing.

They say they're also reviewing the county's emergency notification system amid growing criticism.

Authorities urged people to seek higher ground at about 4 a.m.

Friday, but at that point, many people say they were already trapped.

The county considered installing a flood warning system back in 2017.

It was rejected at the time as too expensive.

There have also been questions about whether the National Weather Service was sufficiently staffed ahead of the storms.

Some of the Central Texas offices had job vacancies for crucial positions, with twice as many openings in the offices as there were in January when President Trump started cutting the federal workforce.

In Washington this holiday weekend, Republicans gathered at the White House for a 4th of July celebration centered on watching President Trump sign his sweeping domestic policy bill into law.

Mr.

President, this is the gavel we use to enact the Big Beautiful Bill, and I want you to have that for your debt.

Even before Trump officially signed the bill, the Social Security Administration sent out a celebratory email to people across the country, highlighting some of the tax cuts in the legislation.

But the Times found that the email was misleading.

It claimed that the new law eliminates federal income tax on most retirees' benefits.

In fact, it does not include a specific tax cut on Social Security payments, only on overall income.

And the savings for people receiving Social Security will be limited, since more than half of them have income that's already too low to be taxed anyway.

The email also claimed that the legislation will protect Social Security, though experts say the tax cuts will actually weaken the program's finances, which could lead to millions of Americans facing reductions to their benefits by the year 2033.

Meanwhile, the Times has been looking into other provisions of the new law and when Americans will begin to feel the effects.

The Republicans seem to have made a key political calculation on the timing.

They front-loaded popular moves like new generous tax cuts that people could see as soon as next year.

At the same time, they put off some of the most unpopular provisions like steep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps.

Those cuts won't kick in until after the 2026 midterm elections.

Now, three other updates on the Trump administration.

The group of migrants that U.S.

officials have been trying to deport to South Sudan was finally flown there late Friday after weeks of legal limbo.

Most of the eight men have no connection to the country, and their lawyers had tried to stop the deportations, arguing that they hadn't received adequate due process and were at risk of being tortured there.

As their case worked its way through the courts, the men had been held in a converted shipping container at a U.S.

Army base in nearby Djibouti.

The Supreme Court ultimately gave the administration the green light to move forward with the deportations.

It's not clear if the men were taken into custody by South Sudanese authorities once they landed.

Also, let's talk about tariffs.

What happens on Wednesday?

We'll see.

I'm not going to give away the playbook because we're going to be very busy over the next 72 hours.

Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said he's confident the U.S.

will be able to reach agreements with more of its trading partners before President Trump's aggressive tariffs are scheduled to kick back in.

The tariffs have been abruptly paused for 90 days after Trump's plans set off a global financial panic.

Since then, the administration has only reached two preliminary trade deals with Vietnam and the UK, far short of the 90 deals it promised it would make during the pause.

It's not clear how seriously the administration will take its own Wednesday deadline.

Bessant and Trump have recently said the tariffs may not actually kick back in until August 1st.

And today at the White House, President Trump will welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his third visit since Trump returned to office.

Leading up to the meeting, President Trump has doubled down on his calls for Israel to reach a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, writing on social media, quote, make the deal in Gaza, get the hostages back.

Negotiators from both sides are currently considering a proposal that would pause fighting in Gaza for 60 days.

But hardliners in Netanyahu's government have opposed an end to the war and want Israel to remain in control of the territory.

And finally.

It is not a conspiracy theory.

If you've ever wondered if your devices, your smart devices all around your home are paying attention to what you do all day.

Yeah, it's true.

John Chase and our colleagues at Wirecutter, the Times product review site, have been taking a new look at all those smart internet-connected devices in our homes.

The same qualities that make them super useful, like how they know where you are, who you are, what you like, have also also raised concerns about data privacy.

John says that of all the devices they looked at, speakers and cameras and doorbells, they were most surprised by what smart TVs are up to with a system called ACR, automatic content recognition.

These devices are collecting data on anything that appears on your screen.

It could be Love Island reruns.

It could be home photos that you've beamed to your TV, anything.

Your TV takes screenshots of that stuff, sends it up to the internet where the data is harvested from it and a profile is made of you.

And then the TV maker has the ability to sell that profile to anyone.

It could be to advertisers, it could be to insurance agents.

There's an entire data brokering industry that loves to collect data on people and sell it to the highest bidder.

Understandably, most people probably don't like that idea.

The good news is there are a few steps you can take to protect yourself.

If a TV has ACR built in, by regulation, they have to allow device owners to turn it off.

So buried somewhere in your TV's settings, there will be an opt-out option.

The hard part may be finding exactly where it is.

The best step is to go right into your TV settings and look for privacy.

But sometimes it may be located somewhere else.

If you aren't able to find it easily, you can go to the TV maker's website and ask for directions.

This is a good reminder in general that you should take precautions when you're using smart devices.

You might want to consider whether you want to share your location or or what kind of settings and what kind of data the devices are asking for, and not just click yes blindly on every little checkbox.

You can find the rest of Wirecutter's Guide to Privacy and Data Security at nytimes.com.

Those are the headlines today on the daily: Inside Paramount's multi-million dollar settlement with President Trump.

That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

We'll be back tomorrow.

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