The remnants of Hurricane Harvey continue to pound the Texas coast, with the Houston metropolitan area already recording up to 25 inches of rainfall with the possibility of another 15 to 25 inches throughout the rest of the week, according to the National Weather Service.
The human toll, by the numbers: The death toll rose to 8 on Monday, and is expected to rise further, and Houston police announced today that they'd rescued more than 2,000 people from the floodwaters so far. FEMA announced this morning that 30,000 evacuees had been placed in shelters with 450,000 expected to apply for federal disaster assistance. Expect those numbers to rise as the rain continues to fall.
President Trump is heading to Texas tomorrow, but he'll stay away from Houston to avoid interfering in rescue operations, according to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Marsha Blackburn, the Republican chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's tech subcommittee, has been critical of Silicon Valley's default position on net neutrality and its privacy practices.
But she says she found common ground during a recent visit to tech companies on the West Coast: ""I think with a broad brush that it is fair to say that when it comes to broadband expansion they are all incredibly interested about how we're going to do and what we're going to do," she told Axios on Friday.
