Texas suffered a tragic disaster over the weekend when a flash flood his the Guadalupe River. Over a hundred people died, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ camp located on the river’s path.
So, where was Texas Senator Ted Cruz as the frantic rescue efforts were underway to find survivors? Well, he was sunning himself in Greece and checking out the Parthenon. As reported by an eyewitness via The Daily Beast:
“He was with his family and a lone security guard. As he walked past us, I simply said, ‘20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?’ He sort of grunted and walked on. His wife shot me a dirty look. Then they continued on with their tour guide.”
That’s our Ted! Nobody can say the man doesn’t have form for vacationing as his state suffers, famously ditching his state in the middle of 2021’s brutal winter storm to put his feet up in Cancun, Mexico.
Another natural disaster hits Texas and where is @tedcruz ?
— Captain Obvious
He went to Greece on vacation.
This is not a joke. pic.twitter.com/eqmrDUCQxd(@TheFungi669) July 7, 2025
Anyhows, the red-faced Senator was soon back on a flight to Texas to deliver a somber news briefing at the site of the disaster, vowing that lawmakers would learn lessons from this flood and respond accordingly. As he told Fox News:
“There’s no doubt afterwards we are going to have a serious retrospective as you do after any disaster and say ‘OK what could be done differently to prevent this disaster? The fact you have girls asleep in their cabins when flood waters are rising, something went wrong there. We’ve got to fix that and have a better system of warnings to get kids out of harm’s way.”
There’s only one teeny, awkward little caveat to that…Washington lawmakers spent last week debating Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill. During the process, Cruz pushed hard to eliminate $150 million in funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather forecasting research designed to “accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public”, all things that could have saved those young lives on Saturday!
Who even needs weather forecasting anyway?
Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Fossil Free Media, was excoriating. In comments to The Guardian, she said:
“Ted Cruz has spent years doing big oil’s bidding, gutting climate research, defunding Noaa, and weakening the very systems meant to warn and protect the public. That’s made disasters like this weekend’s flood in Texas even more deadly. Now he’s doubling down, pushing through even more cuts in the so-called big beautiful bill. Texans are dead and grieving, and Cruz is protecting big oil instead of the people he’s supposed to represent. It’s disgraceful.”
Cruz has attempted to handwave away any criticism of himself as “partisan finger pointing” and, to be fair, it’s not like the cuts he rammed through earlier this week could have prevented the tragic events of the weekend.
Even so, slashing away at weather research like this at a time when climate change means extreme weather events are becoming increasingly severe and frequent is foolishness. Sure, you can argue that he’s “saved” $150 million from the federal budget, but how much will it cost to rebuild the flood-damaged areas, how much will the response cost, and how much are individual Texans’ lives worth?
Nobody can say for sure, but I’m guessing the combined total of all the above is a darn sight higher than $150 million – roughly the cost of one of those fighter jets the Navy accidentally dropped in the ocean.
