Passport Purist Ted Cruz Was In Greece When Texas Flash Floods Began, Critics Claim He Slashed Funds For Weather Service
Right here’s a query: Is there anybody on Beyoncé’s inexperienced Earth who’s as unhealthy at planning an appropriately timed trip as Sen. Ted Cruz?
One would suppose that, after getting dragged to hell and again for flying to Cancún, Mexico, together with his household in 2021, after it grew to become obvious that his state of Texas was in disaster mode as a result of extreme results of a devastating winter storm and an influence grid failure that left residents freezing of their properties — lots of whom died consequently — Cruz would make rattling certain he by no means did that once more.
However no — usual Ted, completely different continent.
Over the weekend, Texas was hit with lethal and devastating flash floods, which have reportedly killed greater than 100 individuals within the state. And the place was Cruz when all of this started? Greece. Cruz was in Athens, Greece, vacationing whereas his state was (and nonetheless is) in a state of disaster as soon as once more.
However don’t fear, of us. The senator representing Texas is residence now, and, in keeping with his workplace, as quickly as he heard the information of the flooding, he rushed residence from his European trip “as quick as humanly potential.”
However did he, although? In line with the Every day Beast, the senator may have hopped on an earlier flight to get residence.
From the Daily Beast:
The Every day Beast’s newsletter The Swamp revealed Monday how Cruz was caught touring the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, 24 hours after the Guadalupe River burst its banks, sweeping away dozens of lives in an unspeakable horror whose full results are nonetheless unfolding.
After we printed, Cruz’s director of communications issued the declare about his velocity of return, including that the article was “a bull—-piece” that confirmed “no regard for the tragedy in Texas.” However the Every day Beast has reviewed flight choices for Cruz from Athens to San Antonio and found a number of that will have gotten him again before his Sunday return.
Flight knowledge reveals a number of flights from Athens to San Antonio, Texas, on Friday, July 4 and Saturday, July 5, after the floods hit.
Whereas it’s not identified what number of seats have been out there on every flight, potential choices included flights leaving Athens on Saturday morning and touchdown in San Antonio that night through Chicago, Atlanta, or Washington, D.C.
Earlier flights have been additionally out there on Friday as soon as the seriousness of the floods was turning into obvious.
Resulting from excessive demand, a number of airways additionally introduced this yr that Greece would have extra direct air connections with the U.S. than it has ever had.
The criticism of Cruz’s response to the catastrophe in Texas doesn’t finish at his ill-timed trip. In reality, that’s in all probability the least of it.
Cruz reportedly arrived in Athens on Thursday, simply after he helped Senate Republicans cross President Donald Trump’s “large stunning invoice,” which nearly everybody outdoors of the GOP lawmakers who voted for it has panned as a large, burdensome blunder of a bigly unhealthy invoice that may reduce meals help and healthcare from hundreds of thousands of Individuals whereas giving a tax reduce to the rich.
Apparently, the invoice additionally slashed funding for climate forecasting, and that seems to be Cruz’s thought.
From The Guardian:
The Nationwide Weather Service has confronted scrutiny within the wake of the catastrophe after underestimating the quantity of rainfall that was dumped upon central Texas, triggering floods that brought on the deaths and round $20bn in estimated financial damages. Late-night alerts concerning the harmful floods have been issued by the service however the timeliness of the response, and coordination with native emergency companies, can be reviewed by officers.
However earlier than his Grecian vacation, Cruz ensured a discount in funding to the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (Noaa) efforts to enhance future climate forecasting of occasions that trigger the type of excessive floods which can be being worsened by the human-caused local weather disaster.
Cruz inserted language into the Republicans’ “large stunning” reconciliation invoice, previous to its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150m fund to “speed up advances and enhancements in analysis, remark programs, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of knowledge to the general public” round climate forecasting.
An extra $50m in Noaa grants to check climate-related impacts on oceans, climate programs and coastal ecosystems was additionally eliminated.
However, once more, don’t fear, of us, as a result of Cruz is nicely conscious that disasters like these require consideration, preparation, and intense scrutiny of protocol — after the actual fact.
“There’s little doubt afterwards we’re going to have a critical retrospective as you do after any catastrophe and say ‘OK what could possibly be executed in a different way to forestall this catastrophe?’” Cruz advised Fox News. “The very fact you may have ladies asleep of their cabins when flood waters are rising, one thing went incorrect there. We’ve acquired to repair that and have a greater system of warnings to get children out of hurt’s means.”
Yeah — “we” would possibly take into account not slicing funding for such programs.
In fact, Cruz and different Republicans are at present wagging their fingers at Democrats and “the left” for politicizing a devastating catastrophe — as if it solely took all of them of six months to utterly neglect how they responded to the wildfires in California — however is it not a political challenge when the insurance policies of politicians may need exacerbated what was already unhealthy scenario?
Maybe that’s what Texas residents and MAGA constituents throughout the nation needs to be asking themselves.
Don’t ask Ted Cruz, although. He’s in all probability ready for a hurricane warning to plan his subsequent journey.
