More Texas Republicans, including Ken Paxton, fled during historic crisis
Last week, as millions of Texans suffered through freezing temperatures with no power and water, Ted Cruz took an infamous vacation to Cancún, Mexico (and initially blamed his daughter for the trip). It turns out, Cruz wasn’t the only Texas Republican who abandoned...
Congress demands answers from Abbott over grid failure
Democrats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, including Reps. Marc Veasey of Dallas and Lizzie Fletcher of Houston, are conducting a probe into Gov. Greg Abbott and why Texas’ electrical grid was unprepared to handle last week’s snowstorm. In a recent...
Sunrise Movement mobilizes across Texas to address climate change
After a cataclysmic winter storm left millions of Texans without power and water, the Sunrise Movement is mobilizing across the state and demanding answers from leaders at every level of Texas government. The Sunrise Movement is a grassroots collection of young people...
Greg Abbott’s spin on wind turbines isn’t insulating him from conservative criticism
I always tip my hat to Republicans for their ability to tie their brand so closely to the identity of Texas but it's also why they couldn’t escape the blame when the Lone Star State went dark. “I’m taking responsibility for the current state of ERCOT,” Gov. Greg...
Musings: Greg Abbott and the Failed State
When I first moved to Texas and was learning about the political systems and power structures of the Lone Star State, people repeatedly reminded me that the most powerful chair in the state was the one the lieutenant governor sat in on the Senate floor. Endowed with...
Texas Republicans are blaming everything on ERCOT and windmills
On Friday, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas finally announced an end to the power outages that left millions of Texas in the cold during this week’s winter snowstorm. The rolling blackouts, ERCOT said, were necessary to prevent Texas’ energy grid from...
Texas Democrats blast Abbott and Republicans who failed the state in a crisis
While the power in Texas is mostly restored, millions of Texans are facing water boil advisories, untold property damage, food insecurity, and other major concerns. As the state begins a daunting cleanup process, Democrats are also demanding answers. At a virtual...
We should have seen this coming
The word “unprecedented” gets thrown around a lot these days and it’s tempting to apply it to the winter storm that left millions of Texans without power. However, this disaster wasn’t entirely unprecedented and previous cold snaps and outages should have given Texas...
Beto O’Rourke, AOC step up while Abbott, Cruz fail Texas
Shortly after returning from an overnight trip abroad during a pandemic and deadly weather emergency, Ted Cruz spent his evening doing roughly what you would expect: going on television to try to massage the truth of his embarrassing blunder. Within hours of touching...
Ted Cruz says he fled Texas at the request of his daughters
After receiving sharp criticism Wednesday for leaving a chaos-ridden Texas to go on vacation in Cancun, Mexico, Sen. Ted Cruz says the poor optics were just an act of fatherly love. "With school canceled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with...
Musings: Ted Cruz Takes Cancun
In this space on Tuesday, I said Governor Greg Abbott has exhibited a depraved indifference for the lives of Texans as millions remained without power or answers as Y’allmageddon 2021 continued to stretch on with no end in sight. On Wednesday evening, Senator Ted Cruz...
Greg Abbott’s Fox News Lie
As millions of Texans remained powerless in sub-zero temperatures, Gov. Greg Abbott took to the airwaves to spout lies about the power outage crisis gripping his state to Fox News host Sean Hannity. Though Abbott had told local reporters that the power outages were...
What Texas Republicans said about California’s blackouts
A winter storm has left millions of Texans cold and without power. At the time of this writing, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about how and why this happened. That this could happen in the energy capital of America is embarrassing, to say the least....
Unhelpful commentary from Cruz, Cornyn as Texas suffers catastrophic power outages
As millions remain without power in Texas, the state’s two U.S. Senators are facing pushback for social media posts, and for reacting too late about the dire conditions for so many Texans. John Cornyn, who often presents himself as a compassionate conservative, was...
Musings: Greg Abbott Fails Texas
I’m sure many of you spent some time wondering and researching the latest GOP policy failure to wreak havoc on Texans yesterday as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, badly blundered what were supposed to be rolling or rotating blackouts designed to...