Senator on vacation abroad while Texas was hit by deadly floods, a disaster worsened by forecasting cuts, critics say
www.theguardian.com
Senator on vacation abroad while Texas was hit by deadly floods, a disaster worsened by forecasting cuts, critics say
Oliver Milman
Mon 7 Jul 2025 18.53 EDT
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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 Cancun 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.
...
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, prior to 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.
