Senator on vacation abroad while Texas was hit by deadly floods, a disaster worsened by forecasting cuts, critics say
Ted Cruz has had quite a week. On Tuesday, the Texas senator ensured the Republican spending bill slashed funding for weather forecasting, only to then go on vacation to Greece while his state was hit by deadly flooding, a disaster critics say was worsened by cuts to forecasting.
Cruz, who infamously fled Texas for Cancún when a crippling winter storm ravaged his state in 2021, was seen visiting the Parthenon in Athens with his wife, Heidi, on Saturday, a day after a flash flood along the Guadalupe River in central Texas killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children and counselors at a camp.
The Greece trip, first reported by the Daily Beast, ended in time for Cruz to appear at the site of the disaster on Monday morning to decry the tragedy and promise a response from lawmakers.
“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?’” Cruz told Fox News. “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.”
The National Weather Service has faced scrutiny in the wake of the disaster after underestimating the amount of rainfall that was dumped upon central Texas, triggering floods that caused the deaths and about $20bn in estimated economic damages. Late-night alerts about the dangerous floods were issued by the service but the timeliness of the response, and coordination with local emergency services, will be reviewed by officials.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/07/ted-cruz-trump-weather-forecasting-cuts
But before his Grecian holiday, Cruz ensured a reduction in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (Noaa) efforts to improve future weather forecasting of events that cause the sort of extreme floods that are being worsened by the human-caused climate crisis.
Cruz inserted language into the Republicans’ “big beautiful” reconciliation bill, before its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150m fund to “accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public” around weather forecasting.
A further $50m in Noaa grants to study climate-related impacts on oceans, weather systems and coastal ecosystems was also removed. Cruz was contacted by the Guardian with questions about these cuts and his trip to Greece.
Environmental groups said the slashed funding was just the latest blow to federal agencies tasked with predicting and responding to disasters such as the Texas flood. More than 600 employees have exited the National Weather Service amid a Trump administration push to shrink the government workforce, leaving many offices short-staffed of meteorologists and other support workers.
About a fifth of all full-time workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), meanwhile, are also set to depart.
“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,’ said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Fossil Free Media.
“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, who has previously cast doubt over the scientific reality of the climate crisis, said that complaints about cuts to the National Weather Service are “partisan finger pointing”, although he conceded that people should have been evacuated earlier.
“Some are eager to point at the National Weather Service and saying that cuts there led to a lack of warning,” the Republican senator told reporters on Monday. “I think that’s contradicted by the facts and if you look at the facts in particular number one and these warnings went out hours before the flood became a true emergency.”
The Trump administration, too, has rejected claims that the service was short-staffed, pointing out that extra forecasters were assigned to the San Antonio and San Angelo field offices. The service’s employees union has said the offices were staffed adequately but were missing some key positions, such as a meteorologist role designed to coordinate with local emergency managers.
“People were sleeping in the middle of the night when the flood came,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. “That was an act of God; it’s not the administration’s fault the floods hit when it did.” Leavitt said any blame placed upon Trump for flood forecasting is a “depraved lie”.
Resources for weather forecasting, as well as broader work to understand the unfolding climate crisis, could be set for further cuts, however. The Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal seeks to dismantle all of Noaa’s weather and climate research labs, along with Noaa’s entire research division. This would halt research and development of new weather forecasting technologies and methods.
This planned budget, which would need to be passed by the Republican-held Congress to become law, comes as the threats from extreme weather events continue to mount due to rising global temperatures.
“We have added a lot of carbon to the atmosphere, and that extra carbon traps energy in the climate system,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.
“Because of this extra energy, every weather event we see now carries some influence from climate change. The only question is how big that influence is.
“Measuring the exact size takes careful attribution studies, but basic physics already tells us the direction – climate change very likely made this event stronger.”
In a statement sent after initial publication of this story, a spokesperson for Cruz claimed that the cut funding “had nothing to do” with weather forecasting and added, without providing further evidence, that Noaa’s funding could be spent more efficiently.
“Only a shameless and soulless partisan hack would tie the one, big, beautiful bill to the Texas floods,” she said. “There’s simply more productive ways to be faithful stewards of public money and improve weather forecasts than continuing to overfund every possible Noaa account.”
Texass gets hit by a lot of natural disasters due to global warming caused by Cruz's ilk and Cruz takes a lot of vacations. Very simple reason why this should happen when he's on vacation
>>1419465I'll amplify my statement: these capitalist ghouls pay Paradise and put up a parking lot. They then take the money that they made from paving the paradise over and use it to escape the horrendous situation that they've created and take a vacation in a paradise and leave the rest of us to die
>>1419484Pave paradise and put up a parking lot
>>1419444 (OP)I don't give a shit about weather forecasting, you retarded AIDS faggot.
>>1419465Congress is like a paid vacation. I'd imagine all congressmen were on vacation at the time.
https://www.congress.gov/days-in-session/119th-congress
But don't let that stop you from shadily electioneering. Fooling retards into voting for them is all Democrats have left.
>>1419444 (OP)Only in Trump's America is the weather service a political point. What's next, the postal service? Oh wait...
Alerts were issued 12 hours before the flooding started. Extra staff were called in to monitor the situation. There is only so much to be done when water levels rise 20+ feet in less than an hour at 4 in the morning when everyone is asleep.
But by all means contine to use dead children to dunk on politicians you don't like, I'm sure sane people think that's a good look.
>>1419547Alerts were issued but they didn't actually go out. The actual people on the ground there weren't informed until the rain was on them.
>>1419567The guy responsible for getting those alerts out was cut by DOGE.
>>1419519>complains about Republicunt led congress never holding session>blames Democratstypical shilling
>>1419571maga literally blamed black people for the floods in texas, what do you expect
>>1419574Sweaty black skin causes climate change.
>>1419580are you making fun of yourself for us now? you really do have a degradation fetish
>>1419570Nah. The bill doesn't go into effect until October.
>>1419527it's a federal agency so of course it's compromised beyond belief. what's so hard to believe about that?
>>1419587I don't know since I don't have the same irrational hatred of the 'deep state' as you do.
>>1419586>The BillDoge, anon, not the Bill.
Is there any point in sensationalising this event? I fully expect to hear at some point in the near future about people complaining how the deadly ball of fire in the sky is killing babies and the government should put a giant umbrella to block the UVs from hitting anyone's skin. To get to the point, flash floods are natural phenomena, even when global climate is "stable". Getting mad at clueless politicians and harping on about who's "at fault" for such things is pointless and counterproductive.
>>1419567>>1419570The sirens that could have saved them would have been installed in 2016 from a democrat administration, so the county officials returned all of the money they had been given to implement it rather than spend it. Their justification was that they didn't want filthy democrat money and the locals would warn each other anyway. The transcript of those meetings and the names of everyone in them and exactly what they said are public.
>>1419590Doge only preformed audits and made recommendations based on it's findings; it had no power to make policy changes or budget cuts on it's own. Some of it's recommendations made their way into the budget bill, which goes into effect in October.
>>1419650elon, you're drunk
>>1419518Good to know you're the only person who lives in the world, fucktard.
>>1419650>it had no power to make policy changes or budget cuts on it's ownlol
lmao
>>1419606>The sirens that could have saved them would have been installed in 2016 from a democrat administrationActually your article literally say "It's not clear if".
>>1419716That's not my article. The direct transcript of the meeting where they confirm that they already have the federal money in their bank account has very clear motives spoken for why they chose to give all that money back rather than spend it.
NWS radio and cellphone alerts are more than sufficient. Nobody wants random ass speakers placed everywhere and the annual repair servicing and contracts to each one.
>>1419796>Nobody wantsI do.
>>1419796That's what they said in 2016. At least 129 people are dead now. Cell signal near rivers is still shit and was even shittier at the time.
>>1419797Then pay for it yourself.
>>1419805Texas is flat as fuck and has great cell service.
