Ted Cruz Caught on Vacation as Texas Suffered Deadly Floods

According to a report from The Daily Beast, Senator Ted Cruz was vacationing in Greece as tragedy struck his state. Over the July 4 weekend, flash flooding took the lives of at least 95 people in Texas, including 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls camp along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

Cruz was sightseeing in Athens as first responders began launching search and rescue operations, The Daily Beast reports. The senator reportedly landed in Greece on Thursday, July 3; was spotted at the Parthenon on Saturday, July 5; and is believed to have not caught a plane to San Antonio, Texas, until Sunday.

Cruz was accompanied at the Parthenon by his family and a security guard, according to a reported eyewitness, who told The Daily Beast: “As he walked past us, I simply said, ‘20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?’” The senator is said to have “sort of grunted and walked on,” while his wife, Heidi Cruz, “shot [the source] a dirty look,” before “they continued on with their tour guide.”

During Cruz’s reported vacation, the senator posted about the flooding a number of times on social media.

He wrote on Friday, from his personal X account, “Please pray right now for everyone in the Hill Country, especially Camp Mystic,” adding that he’d spoken with Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, as well as with President Trump.

On Monday, Cruz reiterated that he had spoken on the phone with the Texas officials “in the first few hours of this flood” and had told Trump, “early in what was transpiring,” that “this appears to be bad, really bad. There may be a very significant loss of life unfolding right now in Texas.”

On Friday and Saturday, Cruz shared messages on his official congressional X account, saying that he and his wife were “lifting up the victims of the central Texas floods in our prayers.”

The Daily Beast’s report recalls the infamous February 2021 incident in which the senator took a trip to Cancun, Mexico, during a historic winter storm that killed an estimated 246 Texans and left millions more freezing without power and drinking water.

During that 2021 scandal, which Cruz admitted was “obviously a mistake,” the senator shipped out to the tropics with his family, who wanted to escape the “FREEZING” weather, per texts from Heidi Cruz unearthed by The New York Times. Senator Cruz said he had planned to stay in Cancun for the weekend but returned to Texas early on “the first available flight,” as “leaving when so many Texans were hurting didn’t feel right.”

The MAGA influencers who victoriously walked out of the White House in February holding white binders titled “THE EPSTEIN FILES: PHASE 1” are now enraged at the Trump administration’s announcement that there is no damning client list, and that disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein did indeed commit suicide in 2019. 

Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler, who received one of those binders from Attorney General Pam Bondi in February, is now calling for her head, as the MAGA right is scapegoating Bondi for whatever actions Trump has yet to take on their white whale of a case. 

“Going back to that day at the White House in February … Pam Bondi bragged to us about making that cover sheet on the binder, the one that read ‘the most transparent administration in history.’ She said she had made it, she had printed it, she was proud of it.… To call that a severe lack of judgment would be the understatement of the year,” Wheeler said on the Glenn Beck Show on Monday. Wheeler then insisted that Bondi told her in February that the binder didn’t contain all of the juicy, incriminating details MAGA wanted because someone from the “deep state” had infiltrated the FBI to block the notorious client list from being released.

“Contextualizing all of this, this seems like unforgivable behavior. How could she give the American people those ‘phase 1” binders that contained nothing? While at the same time bragging about the cover sheet that she made … and tell us that the SDNY had the real goods, that the binders were just proof of a deep state cover-up, only now to say, ‘Sorry, there’s actually nothing,’” Wheeler continued. “I think the administration is probably just now coming to the realization of how much goodwill this whole debacle has cost them with their voters, and Pam Bondi is not worth it.” Wheeler later called for Bondi’s outright firing. 

Wheeler does unfortunately have a point. Bondi went on Fox News two separate times to promote the release of the Epstein files, saying  in February that “they’re on my desk right now” and claiming the next month that she had a “truckload of documents” about Epstein coming to her. People like Rogan O’Handley (DC_Draino) and Chaya Raichik (LibsofTikTok) celebrated these announcements at the time but are now publicly seething, feeling betrayed and confused. 

“2 truths: Epstein didn’t kill himself & Epstein didn’t sex traffick to himself,” Handley wrote on Monday. “I understand the rage people have for demanding the Epstein client list and arrests. Every influencer there that day feels the same anger watching pedo elites get away with the most heinous crimes. We want justice and almost all of us have called for the client list and arrests for years,” he continued. 

“I want answers on Epstein. As many as possible. Not press releases. Answers,” said Jack Posobiec, another binder receiver. “We were all told more was coming. That answers were out there and would be provided. Incredible how utterly mismanaged this Epstein mess has been. And it didn’t have to be,” he opined.

The most hardcore of the MAGA conspiracy theorists seem to be taking this pretty hard. Not only are they unable to acquit their president, who has his own Epstein connections, but they have also been shown yet again that the Trump administration will only deliver lip service to their most important fantasies. Whether it’s releasing the client list or ending endless wars, Trump has skewed more neocon than MAGA, and this time angered his base once again. 

A federal judge torched Department of Justice lawyers Monday for providing slippery answers on their case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was returned to the United States after being deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”

During the hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis said that attempting to get a straight answer from the DOJ was like “nailing jello to a wall,” according to Politico.

It’s not just that the Trump administration has openly refused to fully comply with Xinis’s requests for information. They’ve also provided wildly contradictory answers to the court’s questions—and continued to do so on Monday.

During a hearing last month, one Department of Homeland Security agent revealed that he was only asked to look into Abrego Garcia’s case on April 28 of this year. But during Monday’s hearing, a DOJ attorney claimed that the investigation into Abrego Garcia’s alleged criminal activity had begun before then.

“Now I have real concerns, as if I haven’t for the last three months,” Xinis said.

Last month’s revelation was considered an especially damning admission, because April 28 was more than a month after Abrego Garcia was sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process. It was also a full week after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed, seemingly out of nowhere and without providing any evidence, that Abrego Garcia had “engaged in human trafficking.” Clearly, the Trump administration was attempting to dig up dirt to retroactively justify Abrego Garcia’s unlawful removal.

The Trump administration had also repeatedly claimed that Abrego Garcia could not be returned to the United States under any circumstances—but last month, he arrived in Tennessee to face two charges related to illegally transporting undocumented immigrants for cash.

“For three months, your clients told the world they weren’t going to do anything to bring him back. The president said it in two interviews,” Xinis said Monday. “Am I really supposed to ignore all that?

“How is that not relevant to this inquiry?” she pressed.

Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General Bridget O’Hickey said the situation was “unique.”

“We have acknowledged this was an administrative error,” O’Hickey said, breaking from the White House’s official line about Abrego Garcia being a hardened gang leader who was intentionally deported, opting for the truth as it was stated months ago.

Despite a judge ordering Abrego Garcia’s release, he still remains in custody after claiming that he feared he’d be deported by immigration authorities. Xinis ordered that the DOJ produce a witness from the Department of Homeland Security Thursday to testify about the agency’s plans for Abrego Garcia.

Fox News pushed back Monday on the Department of Justice’s claim that Jeffrey Epstein did not keep a list of clients, citing the head of that very agency, who’d claimed she’d seen the list.

During a press briefing, Fox News’s senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy questioned press secretary Karoline Leavitt about the DOJ’s memo declaring that the alleged sex trafficker kept no “incriminating ‘client list.’”

“So, what happened to the Epstein client list that the attorney general said she had on her desk?” Doocy asked.

“Well, I think if you go back and look at what the attorney general said in that interview which was on your network, on Fox News—” Leavitt began.

“I’ve got the quote,” Doocy said.

Doocy recounted that when Pam Bondi had been asked in February whether the DOJ was planning on releasing a list of Epstein’s clients, she’d replied, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

“Yes, she was saying the entirety of all the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. That’s what the attorney general was referring to, and I’ll let her speak for that,” Leavitt stammered in reply.

Leavitt insisted that the Trump administration had never promised to release names but had committed to conduct “an exhaustive investigation.”

“That’s what they did, and they provided the results of that. That’s transparency,” she said.

The shocking conclusion of the Trump administration’s investigation into Epstein has already produced stark schisms within the MAGA world. Laura Loomer, a prominent MAGA influencer with the president’s ear, has singled out Bondi, suggesting that she be fired.

In response to MAGA supporters seeking accountability for Epstein’s collaborators, Leavitt had this to say: “This administration wants anyone who has ever committed a crime to be held accountable.”

Well, clearly not everyone: Her boss happens to be a convicted felon and sex criminal. Not to mention the 1,500 recipients of Trump’s sweeping Inauguration Day pardon for violently opposing his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

On Monday, Donald Trump announced new tariffs on five countries in letters shared to Truth Social that were identical in all but their addressees and rates.  

Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Kazakhstan will all face 25 percent tariffs; South Africa will face 30 percent tariffs; and Laos will face 40 percent tariffs.

“Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal,” the letters state. Beginning on August 1, the will be placed on “any and all [of the countries’] products sent into the United States,” which will be separate from sectoral tariffs, or those specifically applied to products from certain industries.

The copy-paste letters state that the U.S. trade deficit with all countries “is a major threat to our Economy and, indeed, our National Security!”

The letters also warn, “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the [tariffs] that we charge,” and the tariffs “may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country.”

Trump in early April paused planned tariffs for 90 days, promising to secure 90 trade deals in that time—and falling 88 short as of Monday morning, with two days to go. Since then, Trump has extended the deadline and said, in lieu of trade deals, he would send unilateral “tariff letters” to hundreds of countries to establish rates; on Fox News last week, he said such letters might say: “Dear Mr. Japan, here’s the story. You’re going to pay a 25 percent tariff on your cars.”

This story has been updated.

The deadly flooding in Texas that took at least 80 people, including children, may have been avoided if the state legislature hadn’t killed a bill for an emergency siren alert system because it was too expensive.

House Bill 13, which would have established a state council to implement an emergency response plan and run a first-responder grant program, was struck down in the state Senate earlier this year. H.B. 13 would have helped create “the use of outdoor warning sirens,” like “emergency alert systems.” Some Texas lawmakers have since expressed deep regret for voting against the legislation, while others lamented that the effects of the bill, particularly the warning sirens, would not have kicked in in time to save lives given how fast the floodwaters rose.

“All the focus right now is let’s save all the lives we can,” Republican state Representative Wes Virdell told The Texas Tribune. “I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now.… I think even if you had a warning system there, this came in so fast and early in the morning it’s very unlikely the warning system would have had much effect.”

Republican Governor Greg Abbott refused to officially place improved emergency warning legislation on the state assembly agenda, even though he agreed that the issue was “something that will be looked at.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accidentally admitted that the White House was lying about countries begging Donald Trump for trade deals.

Bessent made the startling admission Sunday as he tied himself in knots trying to answer CNN host Dana Bash’s questions about the Trump administration’s long-forgotten promise of 90 trade deals during the president’s 90-day pause on his sweeping reciprocal tariffs.

“We’ve seen three, and they’re not concrete deals the way that we’re used to seeing trade deals, they’re frameworks,” Bash said. Given Trump’s reputation as a dealmaker, she asked: “Why haven’t we seen the kind of deals he promised in the last 90 days?”

“Again, he didn’t promise this,” Bessent said. “And when we send out the hundred letters to these countries that will set their tariff rates … so we’re gonna have a hundred done in the next few days.” Bessent was referring to Trump’s Sunday night Truth Social post announcing he would notify multiple countries the following day of their new tariff rates.

“But that’s not a deal, that’s a threat,” Bash pressed.

“No, that’s the level. That’s the deal. If you wanna trade with the United States, this is—” Bessent tried to explain.

“But that’s not a negotiation, that’s just a declaration,” Bash said.

“Well, many of these countries never even contacted us,” Bessent replied.

But just months ago, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that the phones at the White House were “ringing off the hook” with countries calling to make deals with the United States.

Bessent is right about one thing: Trump didn’t promise 90 deals in 90 days; his top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, did. Trump, on the other hand, claimed to have already made 200 trade deals in April. Three months later, and barely three deals have materialized. But in the Trump administration, clearly a deal isn’t a deal, it’s a letter. And a talk isn’t a talk, it’s a threat shouted across the ocean.

Bessent continued to explain that even though dozens of countries had not, in fact, come knocking at the president’s door, the United States was able to set tariff rates because they still had all the “leverage.” But wasn’t that the same line the administration used to launch talks after Trump’s initial round of sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs in April?

Bessent’s arms must have gotten tired from moving the goalposts on Trump’s so-called tariff talks, having just last week said he hoped to wrap trade up by Labor Day. On Sunday evening, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick extended the deadline for tariffs to August 1 as Trump stammered beside him.

Per government notices published Monday, the Trump administration plans to end temporary protected status, or TPS, for Honduras and Nicaragua. The move, set to take effect in early September, would strip lawful status from about 72,000 people from Honduras and 4,000 people from Nicaragua, according to the administration’s estimates.

Considering these two TPS designations were first issued in 1999, the decision will affect tens of thousands who have been living, working, paying taxes, and undergoing regular security screenings for over two and a half decades in the United States.

This includes Brajan Funes of North Carolina, who was featured in a WFDD report in May. Funes came to the country when he was 4, as his parents fled Honduras in the wake of Hurricane Mitch. Funes, whose arm bears a tattoo of a bald eagle with an American flag backdrop, says “his roots” are in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, according to WFDD. “I wasn’t born on this land, but I want to be buried on it,” he told the station. “This is home.”

Jackey Baiza of Massachusetts, who came to the U.S. from Honduras at 3 years old in similar circumstances, told WGBH last week that, if the Trump administration cancels TPS for Honduras, “I immediately—and everyone with Honduran TPS—immediately becomes illegal in this country. And we lose our work authorizations. We lose our ability to support ourselves, support our families.”

Funes, Baiza, and roughly 76,000 others, are only the latest affected by Trump’s crackdown on TPS. Trump also attempted to terminate TPS for countries including Honduras and Nicaragua during his first term, but was halted by the courts. This time around, things look different, and during his second term, Trump has sought to “de-document” over a million people with lawful status, with more terminations expected to come.

President Trump has been expanding his detainment center network for months, and now has the congressional funding to fill it.

Bloomberg reports that since the inauguration, the Trump administration has significantly expanded its network of detention centers to accompany the aggressive, 3,000-arrests-per-day marching orders the agency received from Stephen Miller in May. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, 60 local, state, and federal prisons—public and private—have been detaining immigrants for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security. This includes Florida’s hastily constructed “Alligator Alcatraz” facility that has become a fan favorite of Trump and his supporters who have genuine hate in their hearts for immigrants.

The administration is currently using these extra facilities to hold more people (59,000 as of late June) than beds Congress has funding for (41,500). In May, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said they plan to up the capacity to 100,000—a goal that seems more achievable with the new influx of cash for immigration enforcement in Republicans’ budget. This will mean more intimidation, more masked ICE officers raiding places of work, more racial profiling, and more innocent people in ICE custody.

Donald Trump is seriously crashing out over Elon Musk’s new political party.

“I think it’s ridiculous to start a third party,” Trump told reporters Sunday evening. “We have a tremendous success with the Republican Party. The Democrats have lost their way, but it’s always been a two-party system, and I think starting a third party just adds to confusion. It really seems to have been developed for two parties—third parties have never worked, so he can have fun with it but I think it’s ridiculous!”

He doubled down on social media later that night.

“I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social.

“He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States—The System seems not designed for them. The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats, who have lost their confidence and their minds!”

Trump lauded Republicans as a “smooth running ‘machine,’” after they came together last week to pass the president’s behemoth budget bill that will add trillions to the national deficit and cut essential social services.

Prior to the congressional votes, Musk had threatened to start the “America Party” if Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” was approved by the House. It’s not clear that Musk has taken any official steps to launch the party, but the X owner spent Sunday morning responding to users about the idea, and indicated he’d use the party to get involved in the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump continued to claim that Musk’s issue with the bill wasn’t related to the price tag but that it guts the electric vehicle mandate that is crucial to Musk’s company. He also took a shot at Jacob Isaacman, Musk’s pick to lead NASA, as a “blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.”

“I also thought it inappropriate that a very close friend of Elon, who was in the Space Business, run NASA, when NASA is such a big part of Elon’s corporate life,” Trump wrote, though the president has positioned many of his own allies to profit off his government—including Musk himself.

Musk shrugged off his former ally’s theatrics. “What’s Truth Social?” he replied. “Never heard of it.”

Early Monday morning, Musk was still rattling on about his nascent political movement.

“The America Party is the solution,” he wrote in a post on X.