Senator Ted Cruz is under fire for vacationing in Greece while his home state of Texas was hit by one of its most devastating floods in over a century. Flash flood emergencies struck on the 4th of July. Up to 20 inches of rain descended in just a few hours and rose more than 25 feet.
In Kerr County at least 75 people died, including 27 campers and counselors at private Christian girls camp, Camp Mystic. Dozens more remain missing.
He and his wife visited the Parthenon on July 5 at around 6 p.m. local time—some 24 hours after the Guadalupe River surge began. One witness recalls shouting at them: “20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?”
- He was inflight when the storm hit. It was devastating because the flooding was unexpected. Cruz can’t reasonably be criticized for taking this vacation.
- It’s a story because in 2021, when Texas was hit with a hundred year snowstorm during which the state’s power grid buckled and many residents were without power for several days (and 246 people died), Cruz left and took his family to Cancun.
Re: the Ted Cruz/Cancun thing, this is the photo that unlocks the whole thing. He's in a United terminal. In the top left you can that it's 4:10 pm (or 4ish PM at least). To the left of that, you can see that he's near gate E11, with its destination being Ft. Lauderdale. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/hUuUqSNBze
— Nesler (@thatnesler) February 18, 2021
He claimed to have just been escorting his daughters there, intending to return right away, but an overstuffed carry-on bag and a leaked travel itinerary from United belied that explanation.
NEW: The Daily Beast reports Ted Cruz was seen vacationing in Athens, Greece on Saturday, one day after Camp Mystic announced campers had gone missing in the devastating Texas floodwaters pic.twitter.com/pU2UhAfAt7
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) July 7, 2025
Cruz landed in Athens July 3, just as Texas authorities activated emergency protocols. The Senator says he remained “on the phone” with Governor Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, the head of the Texas Department of Emergency Management, as well as President Trump. He did cut his trip short and return home Sunday evening, appearing in Kerrville on Monday morning, and appearing on Fox & Friends.
Governor Abbott was also traveling when flood warnings went up, but it’s fleeing the state for warmer climes in 2021 that makes this a story. He’ll weather this storm (!) despite the image of Cruz at the Parthenon – he was re-elected last fall despite becoming a meme three years earlier, and is only just beginning his third six-year term.
That’s not really the reason. He’s under fire for his ignorant, oppressive, repressive policies which set his constituents back from advancement. He’s giving in to the stupidest and most evil forces from his constituency while rejecting the modern viewpoints and ideologies that would give Texas a chance to even compete with coastal socioeconomic hotspots.
All Republicans suck.
New Yorkers haven’t forgotten his vote against Hurricane Sandy aide.
Disasters should not be partisan. All people should rise up to help those in need. And ideally prepare for and prevent such horrific outcomes in the future. Let’s actually invest in our country and its people.
Oh, and have fun in Greece y’all. It’s still better than Turkey…
Ugh, gonna need an ‘aide’ to stop autocorrect when I meant ‘aid.’
Seriously, those girls at the camp by the river. So sad. Should’ve known.
Welp, at least Houston will get the space shuttle for $85 million, per BBB.
“Disasters should not be partisan. All people should rise up to help those in need. And ideally prepare for and prevent such horrific outcomes in the future. Let’s actually invest in our country and its people.”
no better words have been spoken
this is not the time for this non-sense but our elected officials on both sides don’t know when to put a cork in it
lol, he sure does have great luck missing major weather events back home.
Definitely NOT ON PURPOSE, mind you. He’d never do that, ole Teddy Cruz the Canadian Wonder.
Stupid, provincial American idiot. Arrogant too.
“Cancun” Ted???? I thought it was “Lyin’ Ted”.
Natural disasters are really the purview of the state, not the US senator. If there is a bill about disaster aid, that is different, but “Lyin’ Ted” should just go on vacation as planned and leave the rescue to the state of Texas and Governor.
@Tim Dunn — Like many of us here, I like to travel, for work, for fun, for family, for all sorts of reasons. I doubt the Senator knew this was going to happen and literally fled the country. Now, should he return sooner if possible; maybe. Then again, if you lose a loved one in a tragedy like this, do you really want a politician to console you; probably not. The first responders are the ones who need support; and the community at-large to clean up, rebuild where appropriate, etc. It’s not even a Texas problem; it’s a human issue, and a global issue. We’re gonna keep seeing more things like this, perhaps increasingly so, and we best prepare for next time, not forget the hard lessons learned. There are agencies and professionals who study these incidents like the NTSB does for air accidents. The rules are written in blood, lest we forget.
Lying Ted.. Tucker did a great job exposing his neocon, more pro-israel than pro-America views.
Jon Oliver does have a running ‘bit’ on his show about Ted; it’s like poetry. See http://www.idonotlikethatmantedcruz.com
Flying Ted Cruz lol
1990
this has been a reminder of the power of intense storms in mountainous areas – just like what happened in E. TN and NC last year. The hills are beautiful but they become deadly when rain falls like this. Hopefully we learn how to better predict and evacuate.
and remember that the mayor of LA knew there were high winds and fire possibilities when she left for Africa.
To your earlier point, it is beyond childish to engage in mudslinging esp. in situations like this.
It’s not like there aren’t a million other opportunities that ARE justifiable
@derek you might want to brush upon how all this works.
1. State has disaster and needs out-of-state resources.
2. Senators support governor in clearing hurdles to said resources being mustered.
You can believe all “the states can handle it” dribble all you want, but it is the job of the federal government to keeps its citizens safe and protected. I mean, that is the argument being used to muster federal agencies to investigate political enemies, toss people in cages and tax the F out of Americans through more tariffs.
But, hey, I’m just a guy watching what I see around me.
@Parker
You may want to brush up on your understanding of the various roles of the federal branches.
No, two Senators from any state do not clear hurdles for funding for any State. They have no power whatsoever allocated to them like that in the Constitution aside from allocation of funds and oversight of the executive branches that use those funds.
Like any other senators, they allocate money for the Executive to use in emergencies like these and, if necessary, they can sponsor funding bills that allocate more funding.
I don’t particularly care for Senator Cruz, but it’s a bunch of hogwash the way people keep treating him like he’s in either the state or federal executive branch with power to do more than show up and be in the way. He is not and is nothing more than someone that needs extra security if he was in the Hill Country right now.
Texas has always had a lot of weather events. The river that flooded has done it before and killed multiple people in an event before. Nobody seems to pay much attention until it happens again. Despite the weather, the population of Texas continues to go up. People seem to like that state. The failure of the infrastructure during the cold weather a few years ago was surprising. Cruz won his election fairly easily.
@MaxPower they very much can facilitate and grease skids. While they have no official role, we all know they can speed thing up when they want to and can slow thing down when they want to.
I’m not saying Cruz should or should not have come back sooner. I’m just saying that he should stay because there’s nothing he’s responsible to do is not entirely correct. At least if I were a senator I would see that as part of my responsibilities to my constituents.
Having a gaggle (used informally to describe a disorderly and noisy group of people) of politicians show up is political theater. A few that can make differences are what is needed. The rest just add filler for the entertainment (news) and actually get in the way.
I’m no fan of Cancun Cruz. He’s a vile human being and a stunningly bad lawmaker. Nevertheless he was already on his way when this happened, unlike when he fled to Cancun while a huge portion of his constituency froze, so he didn’t just turn and run away this time.
“ Cruz can’t reasonably be criticized for taking this vacation”
And yet here we are talking about it
Aren’t all senators and congressmen, regardless of political party, entitled to a vacation? Does he or any other member of Congress have an ouija board to foretell a natural disaster? NO…not Cruz, Schumer, AOC, Graham, Kennedy, Winecoff, NONE OF THEM. Jeeze. This is a non-event and I stoop to answer it. My bad!
Oh absolutely! If only Cruz had been standing heroically on a rooftop, arms outstretched, commanding the storm to back off like some kind of Texas Thor. And forget about phones, satellites, or this little thing called the internet… clearly, disaster relief only works if he’s physically present, maybe scribbling notes with a wax pen on a waterproof clipboard like it’s a FEMA-themed episode of Little House on the Prairie. Because yeah, that’s the gold standard for any 2025 crisis management: boots on the ground, rotary dial in hand, saving the day one soggy handshake at a time. Makes perfect sense. There’s just no way Ted could’ve possibly grasped from anywhere else on Earth that 120 billion gallons of rain and a 26-foot river swell in 45 minutes and dozens of fatalities might just qualify as, oh I don’t know, a significant natural disaster. I mean, unless someone sent him a telegram or carved it into a stone tablet sent by sloop across the Atlantic, how could he have possibly known? /s
Gary Leff, how could Sen. Cruz have stopped the flood? The river rose 26 feet in just 45 minutes. BTW, 2025 LA Fire. The day before Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass left for Ghana, her aides received an email from the city’s Emergency Management Department warning of a “high confidence in damaging winds and elevated fire conditions occurring next week.”. L.A. Fires Death Toll Rises to 30. The January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, destroyed more than 16,000 homes and other structures. The fires also resulted in significant economic losses, with estimates exceeding $30 billion.
That’s not the role of a US senator. You just want politicians that grandstand and play pretend, distracting those doing the actual work, I guess.
How absurd. Was he supposed to know that a flood would devastate Texas? Besides, disaster relief is the responsibility of the president and the governor. I suspect these are simply Ted Cruz haters jumping on the bandwagon to criticize him for taking a vacation with his family.
“And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain?”