Senator Ted Cruz was once again caught vacationing as a crisis struck Texas . Deadly floods struck the Texas Hill Country over the weekend, taking countless lives including dozens of girls at summer camp. Cruz meanwhile was seen vacationing in Athens, Greece over the weekend after casting his vote on Trump’s budget bill last week.

Photos of the vacationing Senator and his wife Heidi were first published by the Daily Beast. ‘A [expletive] piece published by a [expletive] rag outlet with no credibility, and with no regard for the tragedy in Texas,’ Cruz’s spokeswoman Macarena Martinez wrote on X, sharing the Daily Beast’s story about Cruz.

‘The Senator is on the ground in Texas and arrived as fast as humanly possible. I explained all of this to their two-faced reporter,’ Martinez also added in her reply. After learning of the tragedy striking his home state and making his way back to America, Cruz participated in a briefing with other Texas officials Monday.

In a Monday interview with Fox News, Cruz “something went wrong” when Camp Mystic staff wasn’t warned of rising floodwaters on the Guadalupe River, which 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.

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.

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. Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday asked a government watchdog to investigate whether any cuts at the NWS affected the forecasting agency’s response to catastrophic flooding in Central Texas.