Texas Senator Ted Cruz gave an emotional speech Wednesday about the deadly floods that struck the Texas Hill Country over the weekend.
Cruz himself was on vacation as the devastating Texas floods unfolded over the weekend and was forced to cut his trip short.
The death toll from the floods has reached 119 Wednesday morning as authorities continue their search for at least 173 people still unaccounted for.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha announced that 95 deaths have been reported in the county, including 36 children.
Cruz made his statements on Wednesday during a U.S. Senate session. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Technology was initiating a confirmation hearing for nominees to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
‘Now, when tragedy strikes, we ask ourselves, what could have been done differently? And that’s a question that we need to ask’ Cruz stated.
‘Texas will rebuild. We are resilient,’ Cruz stated. ‘However, it’s crucial that we also reflect on what happened, scrutinize the timeline, and identify how we can improve. Each of us should consider the flooding in Texas and learn from it.’
‘If we could turn back time to the early hours of July 4, we would have acted differently,’ Cruz remarked. ‘We would have rushed to rescue those young girls from their cabins.’
Cruz was seen vacationing in Athens, Greece, over the weekend after casting his vote on Trump’s budget bill last week as deadly floods struck the Texas Hill Country over the weekend, taking countless lives including dozens of girls at summer camp.
Cruz – who infamously had to defend a trip to Cancun during a crisis in 2021 – released the timeline of his weekend to explain that this had been the plan all along.
‘The Senator was already in the middle of preplanned family vacation travel overseas when the flooding occurred on July 4,’ Cruz’s office said in a statement.
They added that Cruz immediately got in touch with state officials, as well as President Donald Trump, and within hours ‘promptly booked a flight back home.’
‘Given the time difference, he left Athens on Sunday morning and was back in Texas that night. And he was in Kerrville on the ground early Monday morning,’ his office added.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz speaks about the deadly Texas floods during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology on the confirmation of nominees to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Campists’ belongings lie on the ground following flooding on the Guadalupe River, at Camp Mystic, Hunt, Texas, U.S. July 7, 2025
Damaged items lie inside of a cabin at Camp Mystic, in the aftermath of deadly flooding in Kerr County, Texas, U.S., July 7, 2025
Texas Senator Ted Cruz addresses the media on Monday, June 7th, 2025 after the weekend’s deadly Texas floods
They added that Cruz immediately got in touch with state officials, as well as President Donald Trump, and within hours ‘promptly booked a flight back home.’
‘Given the time difference, he left Athens on Sunday morning and was back in Texas that night. And he was in Kerrville on the ground early Monday morning,’ his office added.
Cruz also answered a bizarre question regarding ‘weather modification’ potentially causing the tragedy in a press conference Monday.
‘To the best of my knowledge, there is zero evidence of anything related to anything like weather modification. Look, the internet can be a strange place. People can come up with all sorts of crazy theories,’ he said.
Cruz was spotted touring the Parthenon on Saturday evening – a full 24 hours after floodwaters swept through Camp Mystic in Texas leaving more than 20 young girls and their counselors tragically missing.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been spotted on holiday in Greece amid deadly flooding in his state. Senator Cruz was visiting the Parthenon, Athens, Greece, on July 5, 2025, when the deadly floods flowed through his home state, killing at least 95 people – including children. A passerby who captured the Senator said she was “shocked” to see him there enjoying himself when there was devastation back home
A person sifts through children’s belongings at Camp Mystic on July 07, 2025 in Hunt, Texas. Heavy rainfall caused severe flash flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas, leaving over 100 people reported dead, including children attending the camp.
Photos of the vacationing senator and his wife Heidi were first published by the Daily Beast.
In a Monday interview with Fox News, Cruz said that ‘something went wrong’ when Camp Mystic staff weren’t warned of rising floodwaters on the Guadalupe River.
The floods killed at least 27 campers and counselors at the all-girls Christian summer camp in Kerr County.
‘The fact that you have girls asleep in their cabins when the flood waters are rising — something went wrong there. We’ve got to fix that and have a better system of warning to get kids out of harm’s way,’ Cruz told Fox.
After this weekend’s deadly floods, some Democrats quickly blamed President Donald Trump for crippling a critical agency tasked with alerting Americans to impending natural disasters because of his recent government slashing efforts.
DOGE, the Trump administration’s cost-cutting effort previously headed by Elon Musk, had been pushing the federal National Weather Service (NWS) to cut jobs.
The agency was part of the government-wide Trump administration effort to allow employees the option to retire early with a ‘buyout’ rather than face potential dismissal.
However, it’s unclear how many NWS employees took the buyout and it doesn’t appear that it would have impacted the alert system in particular.
Democrat Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro noted during an appearance on CNN Sunday that he was unsure if NWS employees taking the buyout had a direct impact on the flood preparation and response.
‘No, I can’t say that conclusively,’ Rep. Castro first responded when asked by anchor Dana Bash if local NWS personnel taking buyouts from the Trump administration played a role in the devastation of the floods in Texas.
However, then Castro added that he didn’t ‘think it’s helpful to have missing key personnel from the National Weather Service not in place to help prevent these tragedies.’
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was tasked by Trump to assess the damage in Texas over the weekend, fired back at criticisms from Democrats.
‘When I got there on Saturday [the] number one question we got asked was, ‘We were notified, but we only had a couple hours of notice before this flash flood came. Was the National Weather Service proactive? What was the process that was followed?” Noem said on Fox and Friends.
She fiercely defended the agency saying it sent notifications and ‘gave as much time as they could with the tools that they have.’
‘We actually had staff on the ground – that was more than would have been in the past because of the holiday vacation,’ Noem added.
She went on to say that the NWS under Trump is getting a major overhaul after being ‘neglected’ for years.
The agency is operating on an ‘ancient system that needed to be upgraded’ and the ‘new technology’ will be installed soon, she promised.
‘That installation is not complete and that technology is not fully installed. But, the alerts went out,’ Noem concluded.
During Wednesday’s Capitol Hill hearing, one of nominees supported Noem’s claims that the NWS did its job in Texas over the weekend.
