Democrats representing Florida in Congress signed onto a letter urging the federal government to reconsider staffing cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) ahead of hurricane season.

This comes amid reports that hundreds of jobs were slated to be slashed at the agency, totaling up to 10% of its workforce.

The Biden administration released a new report Friday showing that homelessness in America increased by 18% in 2024, partially attributing the spike to the huge influx of immigrants settling in the country.

The nation’s homelessness problem worsened again this year.

A record estimate of 771,480 people were homeless in the U.S. in 2024, an 18% increase from a year earlier, fueled by factors including an influx of migrant families, a lack of affordable housing and natural disasters, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development....

More Americans were homeless this year compared with 2023 as families continued struggling to afford rent and other basic necessities, federal officials announced Friday.

Across the U.S., more than 771,800 people lived without housing in 2024, according to a count taken annually on a single night in January. The number for January 2024 is 18.1% higher than in 2023, when officials counted about 650,000 people living in homeless shelters or in parks and on streets. In 2022, the population of people experiencing homelessness was about 580,000.

Hundreds of thousands of people in southeastern Texas are still without power, one week after Hurricane Beryl caused devastation on its path through the state.

Some 288,000 energy customers were in the dark and Monday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, leaving many without air conditioning as a persistent heat wave brings temperature of up to 93 degrees.

Texas is receiving federal aid for Hurricane Beryl later than needed because state leaders were slow to request an official disaster declaration from the White House, President Joe Biden told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday.

With Gov. Greg Abbott out of the country on an economic development trip in Asia, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has served as acting governor amid the storm, making him responsible for putting in the state’s request for aid.

A series of videos posted online Monday and Tuesday reveal the brutal aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, the first major summer storm of 2024.

Hurricane Beryl made landfall in the early hours Monday morning along the Texas coast, bringing “life-threatening” conditions to millions of Americans. Footage shared online shows the aftermath of the storm, which is believed to have killed eight people, according to the BBC.

Restoring power to millions of Texans slammed by the deadly and destructive storm Beryl could take days or even weeks, posing a dangerous scenario for residents without air conditioning as triple-digit heat index temperatures hit the state.

Beryl slammed into southern Texas as a Category 1 hurricane Monday, knocking out power to more than 2.5 million homes and leaving at least eight people dead in Texas and Louisiana.

More than 2.1 million people throughout Texas were still without power Tuesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.