Ted Cruz pictured sightseeing in Greece despite claim he returned to Texas floods 'as fast as humanly possible'
The 54-year-old lawmaker was pictured at the Parthenon in Athens on Saturday alongside his family after the deadly flooding ravaged Texas.
One fellow holidaymaker pulled him up on not being back in Texas, telling The Daily Beast they approached Cruz and his family.
The source said: 'He was with his family and a lone security guard. As he walked past us, I simply said, "20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?"'
Cruz ' grunted' in response to the questioning, while his wife Heidi shot the fellow tourist 'a dirty look', they told the outlet.
Cruz's office previously said in a statement that he had returned from Greece 'as fast as humanly possible' after the floods struck on Friday. He eventually departed on a flight on Sunday, but flight tracking data indicates that he could have potentially left sooner, with multiple flights departing Athens to major US hubs all of Saturday.
It is not known how busy those flights were. The senator could have potentially connected to Texas via Chicago, Atlanta, or Washington DC. Daily Mail reached out to Cruz's office for comment.
The death toll from the floods reached 119 on Wednesday morning as authorities continue their search for at least 173 people still unaccounted for.
Cruz infamously had to defend a trip to Cancun during a crisis in 2021.
Water rises from severe flooding along the Guadalupe River.in Kerr County, Texas on Friday, July 4, 2025
Cruz enraged citizens of his state by fleeing in the midst of the worst snow storms to hit in decades, with the power failing for millions and people left freezing in the subzero temperatures.
Cruz claimed at the time that his then 10 and 12-year-old daughters asked him if they could go on vacation to Mexico with their friends, so he and his wife boarded a plane hours later.
A spokesperson for Cruz said of his most recent trip: 'Within hours, he spoke by phone with Governor [Greg] Abbott, Lt. Governor [Dan] Patrick, Texas emergency management director Nim Kidd, and President Trump, working to ensure that the maximum federal assets were available for search and rescue.
'He and his team worked closely with local officials and with families of missing girls throughout that time. He 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.'
The Daily Mail has approached Cruz's office for comment over the earlier flights.
On Wednesday he gave an emotional speech saying he wishes he had a 'time machine' to save lives.
'Texas will rebuild. We're strong, but there's also a process of engaging in a retrospective and saying, what is the exact timeline of what transpired, and what could we have done better look every one of us looking at the flooding in Texas,' Cruz continued.
'If we could step into a time machine and go back to two or three in the morning on July 4, we would rush into those little girls' cabins and get them the hell out of there,' Cruz added.
In a Monday interview with Fox News Cruz said that 'something went wrong' when Camp Mystic staff were not 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 Democratsblamed 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 is not clear how staffing levels 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.
'I can't say that conclusively,' he said. He added '[I don'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 an 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.
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.
Schumer is looking into whether staffing vacancies at the NWS's San Antonio office in particular contributed to 'delays, gaps, or diminished accuracy' in forecasting the flooding.
He is specifically scrutinizing the local office's communications with Kerr County officials.
The NWS has defended its forecasting and emergency management as the floods ravaged the area.
Texas officials have also criticized the NWS after the catastrophic flood, arguing it failed to warn the public about impending danger.
A top three leadership role at the NWS's San Antonio office has been vacant since earlier this year after Paul Yura, the US forecasting agency's warning coordination meteorologist, accepted an offer from the Trump administration to retire.
Yura's role was to build relationships with local emergency managers and officials, with the goal of building trust in the community before disaster strikes.
The NWS's San Antonio office is responsible for forecasting the area's weather, collecting climate data and warning the public about dangerous conditions.
The office issued multiple alerts Thursday afternoon and Friday morning about flash flood risks, according to local meteorologists.
'Even though those messages were issued, it does not mean it got to the people who needed them,' said Erik Nielsen, who studies extreme rain at Texas A&M University.
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