Crooked Media - What A Day: Keep calm and carry-on

For a widely reviled, hard-whining U.S. senator, there’s only one way to go on vacation in Mexico without getting yelled at for traveling during a pandemic: Taking that vacation during a historic natural disaster in the state you were elected to represent, also during a pandemic.  
 

• Travelers photographed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-“TX”) boarding a flight to Cancun with his family on Wednesday, as millions of his constituents were suffering without power or water. Many hours (and tweets) later, Cruz released a statement in which he threw his daughters under the bus and suggested he had planned to fly right back to Texas all along: “With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon.” Reports that Cruz rebooked his return flight, the size of his suitcase, and everything else Ted Cruz has ever said or done suggest otherwise. 
   
• Cruz joins the pantheon of Worse-Than-Useless Texas Republicans (Winter Storm Edition), along with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lying about green energy, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry insisting that Texans are honored to freeze to death in the name of freedom from regulation, and former Colorado City Mayor Tim Boyd, who resigned after telling residents that “No one owes you are [sic] your family anything” and “only the strong will survive” in an unhinged Facebook rant. It’s not like there’s nothing to do: Beto O’Rourke announced on Wednesday night that he and volunteers had made over 151,000 wellness calls to seniors and arranged rides to warming centers, and mutual-aid groups have mobilized across the state. 
   
• Cruz’s short-lived jaunt across the border two days after telling Texans to stay home wasn’t just hilariously bad optics, but a total abdication of leadership and an insane diversion of resources: While Houston police were busy responding to storm-related emergencies, Cruz’s staff asked them to come help Cruz glide through the airport instead. The Texas Democratic Party has called on Cruz to resign (for the 21st time, lol), which he should of course have done after trying to overturn a presidential election and helping incite a deadly insurrection in the U.S. Capitol, but now works, too. 

The power has begun to come back on in Texas, but conditions are still incredibly dangerous. 
 

• As of Thursday, nearly 500,000 Texans were stuck without electricity for a third straight day. Millions of people are still under boil-water notices, and hospitals throughout the state have now lost water and heat. Some hospitals have begun transferring patients to other facilities, if they can find any with capacity, discharging patients early, and rescheduling surgeries. Power outages and road conditions have also disrupted the food supply chain, and grocery stores have started to run out of food. 
   
• More federal help is on the way: President Biden has declared emergencies in Texas and Oklahoma, and authorized FEMA to provide 60 generators and fuel for hospitals, water facilities, and other key locations, in addition to supplies of water, meals, and blankets. As hard as it is to imagine, this all could have been worse—officials at ERCOT, Texas’s power grid, said that the grid was “seconds or minutes” away from catastrophic failure and a total blackout, if not for the controlled blackouts. A nice silver lining for all of the Texans suddenly facing astronomical power bills, thanks to the state’s deregulated energy market! Just a perfect system from top to tail. 

Preventing extreme weather crises like this week’s from becoming a regular occurrence will require implementing some costly preparation measures, an already difficult shift away from the usual American strategy of dealing with disasters after they happen. The behavior of Ted Cruz and other GOP leaders indicate they feel no responsibility to help on either end, a position that will look worse and worse, and grow more and more dangerous, as the climate crisis heats up. 

Representative Gwen Moore of Wisconsin joined the Hysteria crew this week to talk about GOP legislators’ attempts to suppress votes in Arizona and Georgia. Listen and subscribe to Hysteria to hear the interview wherever you listen to podcasts →

The average U.S. life expectancy dropped by a full year in the first half of 2020, according to a new CDC report. Declines were drastically worse among minority communities: Life expectancy for Black males dropped by three years, while Hispanic males faced a decline of 2.4 years. Coronavirus deaths were the main factor in the overall life expectancy drop between January and June, but a surge in drug overdose deaths also likely contributed. The life expectancy for the entire U.S. population fell to 77.8 years, similar to what it was in 2006, and while life-expectancy disparities between Black and white Americans had been shrinking in recent years, the pandemic has reversed some of that progress. 

• Congressional Democrats have introduced President Biden’s immigration overhaul, which would provide an eight-year path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrations. The broad legislation has a slim chance of passing as long as the filibuster remains un-nuked, and Democrats are thus considering breaking it up into smaller bills.
   
• Capitol police are investigating allegations that Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-ID) assaulted a female officer after he set off the new metal detectors outside the House chamber last month. Police have also opened an investigation of Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) after he attempted to bring a gun onto the House floor on January 21. 
   
• A federal judge has blocked the release of Zip Tie Guy from jail while his criminal case goes forward. (Of the two Zip Tie Guys, this is Eric Munchel, the Tennessee man who stormed the Capitol with his mom.)
   
• Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) announced that he has stage-four lung cancer.
   
• Ivanka Trump will not run for Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) seat in 2022, in knowing anticipation of how likely he is to just give it to her for free upon request.
   
• NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars this afternoon, then sheepishly explained that it was just dropping off its daughters and came right back. 
   
• Earth had its quietest period in decades during 2020 while humans were all under lockdown—urban ambient noise fell by up to 50% at some measuring stations. 
   
• Reply All host PJ Vogt and senior reporter Sruthi Pinnamaneni have stepped away from the pod, after a former Gimlet staffer accused them of undermining their colleagues’ efforts to unionize and diversify the company in response to Reply All’s miniseries about a similar dynamic at Bon Appetit. 
   
• Dolly Parton has asked Tennessee’s legislature to ditch a bill that would put a statue of her on the State Capitol grounds: “Given all that is going on in the world, I don’t think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time.” If Dolly wants people to stop putting her on a pedestal, she’s gonna need to stop saying cool, admirable shit like this.

Facebook has blocked Australians from sharing or viewing news on the platform, in a chaotic response to a proposed law that would force platforms like Facebook and Google to pay publishers if they host their content. All Facebook users are now blocked from sharing links to Australian news sources, and Australian users can’t share any news links at all. In rolling out what was meant to be a targeted news ban, Facebook also temporarily blocked dozens of government pages (including health departments), community pages, unions, and charities. Google has likewise vehemently opposed the law, which looks likely to pass, but has since given in and started working out payment deals with Australian publishers. It’s...tough to root for either side in a fight that’s devolved into a proxy battle between Mark Zuckerberg and Rupert Murdoch, but what happens in Australia could make other countries more (or less) willing to try to regulate Facebook—France, Canada, and even the EU have suggested they might follow Australia’s lead. 

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President Biden announced plans to send $2 billion to the WHO-backed global vaccine program COVAX, with another $2 billion over the next two years.

Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) has reintroduced the Equality Act, a set of sweeping discrimination protections for the LGBTQ community, and the House is expected to pass it next week. 

World Central Kitchen has partnered with Houston restaurants to deliver thousands of meals to people impacted by the power outages. 

Scientists have successfully cloned the first U.S. endangered species, a (very cute) black-footed ferret.