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 because of the extreme results of a devastating winter storm and an influence grid failure that left residents freezing of their houses — lots of whom died in consequence — Cruz would make rattling positive he by no means did that once more.
However no — usual Ted, totally 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, people. The senator representing Texas is residence now, and, in response to his workplace, as quickly as he heard the information of the flooding, he rushed residence from his European trip “as quick as humanly attainable.”
However did he, although? In accordance with the Every day Beast, the senator may have hopped on an earlier flight to get residence.
From the Every day Beast:
The Every day Beast’s publication 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 revealed, Cruz’s director of communications issued the declare about his pace 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 may have gotten him again prior to his Sunday return.
Flight information exhibits 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 recognized what number of seats had been out there on every flight, attainable choices included flights leaving Athens on Saturday morning and touchdown in San Antonio that night by way of Chicago, Atlanta, or Washington, D.C.
Earlier flights had been additionally out there on Friday as soon as the seriousness of the floods was changing into obvious.
On account of 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 actual fact, that’s in all probability the least of it.
Cruz reportedly arrived in Athens on Thursday, simply after he helped Senate Republicans go President Donald Trump’s “large lovely invoice,” which just about everybody outdoors of the GOP lawmakers who voted for it has panned as a large, burdensome blunder of a bigly unhealthy invoice that may lower meals help and healthcare from thousands and thousands of People whereas giving a tax lower 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 Climate 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 about the deaths and round $20bn in estimated financial damages. Late-night alerts concerning the harmful floods had been issued by the service however the timeliness of the response, and coordination with native emergency companies, will probably 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 might be being worsened by the human-caused local weather disaster.
Cruz inserted language into the Republicans’ “large lovely” reconciliation invoice, previous to its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150m fund to “speed up advances and enhancements in analysis, commentary techniques, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of knowledge to the general public” round climate forecasting.
An additional $50m in Noaa grants to review climate-related impacts on oceans, climate techniques and coastal ecosystems was additionally eliminated.
However, once more, don’t fear, people, as a result of Cruz is properly 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 severe retrospective as you do after any catastrophe and say ‘OK what could possibly be finished in another way to stop this catastrophe?’” Cruz instructed Fox Information. “The actual fact you’ve gotten ladies asleep of their cabins when flood waters are rising, one thing went fallacious there. We’ve received to repair that and have a greater system of warnings to get youngsters out of hurt’s method.”
Yeah — “we” may think about not slicing funding for such techniques.
In fact, Cruz and different Republicans are at the moment 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 fully neglect how they responded to the wildfires in California — however is it not a political situation when the insurance policies of politicians might 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.