Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton traveled to Utah during devastating winter storms

Paxton’s campaign spokesman Ian Prior did not tell CNN when the couple left or returned, but said the attorney general “did not leave Texas until after power returned to most of the state, including his Own house.”

“Attorney General Paxton attended a previously planned meeting with the Attorney General of Utah to discuss several issues,” said Prior, listing a simulator of law enforcement scenario and “strategies” in a Google process as some. reasons for the trip.

Paxton’s trip makes him the second prominent Republican to leave the state during the crisis, after Senator Ted Cruz was spotted on a plane bound for Cancún, Mexico, last week, while millions of Texans were left without power or Water. After returning to Houston on Thursday afternoon, Cruz told reporters outside his home that it was “obviously a mistake” and that “on second thought, I wouldn’t have made it”.

“I started having doubts almost the moment I sat on the plane, because on the one hand, all of us parents have a responsibility to take care of our children, to take care of our family. This is something that Texans have been doing all over the world. state, “said Cruz, who had said in a previous statement that he had flown to Mexico because his daughters asked to take a trip and he was trying to be a” good father “.

As an elected official for a federal post, Cruz has no local role in responding to the storm, but natural disasters are often a time when constituents seek out their elected representatives for help and access to resources.

As Texas Attorney General, Paxton is responsible for overseeing key aspects of the state’s response to the devastating winter storm.

As a result, he faced a rapid reaction from Democratic politicians in the state, including Texas Democratic Party President Gilberto Hinojosa, who said in a demonstration, “Texas Republicans don’t give a damn about the people they were elected to represent and continue to focus on issues that don’t affect the lives of ordinary Texans, leading them to think they are doing their job.”
Former Texas Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, likewise tweeted that Paxton and Cruz “couldn’t care less about the people they were supposed to represent”.

While state officials are working to turn the lights back on for Texas families still in the dark and to deal with widespread water outages, some residents are facing damage that could take weeks – or months – to recover.

About 8.6 million people – nearly a third of the state’s population – were still experiencing water supply disruptions on Monday night, according to Gary Rasp, a media expert at the Texas Environmental Quality Commission.

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