News/Commentary

Ted Cruz gets last laugh over media fixation on his whereabouts ahead of winter storm

January 24, 2026 | | Print Article

As tens of millions were expected to be impacted by a winter storm, fixation on a Texas senator’s travels found him serving up snark over his implied power.

Those desperate to find scandal have deemed two occasions of flights away from the Lone Star State with a dire forecast on the horizon sufficient to consider Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) as a more reliable prognosticator of winter woes than Punxsutawney Phil. Friday, after making it back in time before icy precipitation began, the lawmaker mocked detractors over the notion he could bring forth “sunshine, rainbows & unicorns.”

“I’ve returned home from my work trip. It’s 66 degrees & beautiful. A storm is expected tomorrow night,” Cruz captioned a photo of himself standing beside a tree swing on a front lawn with his hand held out.

“But I am reliably informed by Twitter that if I simply raise up my hand on Texas soil, the storm will turn around & sunshine, rainbows & unicorns will emerge,” he added before concluding with emojis of the same and, “Let it be.”

Only five years earlier, a series of winter storms had swept across the United States, triggering what became known as The Great Texas Freeze when the state’s energy grid proved unprepared for such conditions. At the time, the senator had been seen venturing to Cancun, Mexico, with his family before the public pressure found him retreating to his home apologetically, only to still feel the heat for lending a helping hand.

Politicization of the storm had climbed to the highest levels with then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) chiding Texas’s independent grid, bringing the green agenda into the mix, “The bottom line is, Texas thought it could go it alone and built a system that ignored climate change.”

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Ahead of the impending storm bringing frigid temperatures, ice and snow across the country, likely impacting more than two-thirds of the population, Cruz had been spotted aboard a flight traveling to Laguna Beach, California. A spokesperson for the senator’s office had told media outlets in response to the candid image, “Senator Cruz is currently on pre-planned work travel that was scheduled weeks in advance. He will be back in Texas before the storm is projected to hit.”

The photo had quickly gone viral as silhouettes meant to be the congressman with a roller bag were used to denote the expected level of severity of a storm. A single traveler was considered a watch with conditions “favorable for Ted Cruz to leave,” while two were deemed a warning with sightings of Cruz at the airport. It was considered an emergency if pictures of the senator on vacation had surfaced.

Meanwhile, as the senator had made clear with the last devastating storm that there was limited action someone in his position could actually take, he went on to share an AI image that had been posted depicting him as a lineman that included the caption, “What some on Twitter expect you to do during [the] storm.”

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Kevin Haggerty
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