Weather News

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's top 5 excuses to blame for the power outage

It's the windmills' fault.

Texas is still in a deep freeze and isn't forecast to get out of it until Friday, February 19. With millions still huddled, without power, finding someone to blame is the only sport left.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is doing his best to make sure he isn't the one.

Criticism was initially aimed at ERCOT, aka The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state organization in charge of the power grid. But as ERCOT has made its operations more transparent, the blame is shifting upwards, to The Texas Railroad Commission, the body that regulates oil and gas, and even Governor Greg Abbott.

Abbott bounced the ball back to ERCOT, calling for an investigation, then jumped on Fox News to blame whoever was closest. On Fox News, that means Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the state representative from New York, who has been a proponent of the U.S. adopting a "Green New Deal" renewable energy policy.

Abbott blamed the outages on wind turbine failures, despite ERCOT's data that the outages were due to Texas' reliance on natural gas, and the state's failure to winterize pipelines that transport fossil fuel. (Renewable energy contributed to only 13 percent of the power outages.)

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough said that Abbott was "lying through his teeth" about the power failure. His co-host Willie Geist called it a "strange, strange instinct" for Abbott to "rush onto Hannity and blame a congresswoman from New York for the Green New Deal, which doesn’t exist" while Texans suffer in the cold.

Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez batted right back, tweeting that "The infrastructure failures in Texas are quite literally what happens when you don't pursue a Green New Deal."

Abbott has earned an avalanche of embarrassing coverage, including a story in the Washington Post with the headline: "Texas Gov. Greg Abbott blames wind turbines, Green New Deal policies for outages. Critics call that 'a lie.'"

It was sufficient for Abbott to call a press conference on February 17, where he "clarified" by saying that "if we did rely on green power, that would be a challenge."

It's human nature to try and find someone else to blame. AOC may be a great target for the Fox News crowd, but no one's watching Fox these days, and especially this week, what with not being able to turn on the TV due to a lack of power.

Abbott needs other boogeymen, and we're here to help with some suggestions, including some of the most classic favorite excuses.

Here are 5 excuses Gov. Abbott can devise for why this winter weather power outage nightmare is totally, definitely not his fault:

1. He forgot to unplug the iron before he went to bed.

2. He thought Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was taking care of this.

3. Witches. They don't exist, just like the Green New Deal he blamed, legislation that is for now still just an idea and has yet to be put in place.

4. His dog ate it.

5. Really, please, anybody else, just not him.

weather politics

population report

Booming Dallas suburb was the fastest-growing city in the U.S. in 2024

City of Dallas - City Hall/Facebook

Dallas' population has grown to nealry 1.33 million residents.

The Dallas suburb of Princeton grew faster than any other city in the United States in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The new population report said Princeton's population has more than doubled in the last five years. The city saw a dramatic growth rate of 30.6 percent from July 2023 to July 2024, now boasting a population of just over 37,000 residents. The suburb is located 42 miles northeast from downtown Dallas.

The report also revealed Dallas retained its No. 9 spot on the list of the 15 most populous cities in the U.S. Dallas gained more than 23,000 residents during the one-year period, bringing the city's population to 1,326,087 people in 2024.

Elsewhere across North Texas, Fort Worth surpassed 1 million residents and eclipsed Austin as the 11th largest city in the nation. Fort Worth had the fifth-highest numeric increase in population last year, 23,442 residents, to bring the city's total population to 1,008,106 residents.

Houston and San Antonio were the only Texas cities to have higher numerical growth rates than Fort Worth. Houston gained 43,217 residents – the second-highest increase nationwide – while San Antonio ranked No. 4 in growth with an additional 23,945 residents.

Austin has yet to surpass the 1 million population threshold and has a population of 993,588 residents, the report says. The city now ranks 13th on the list of most populous U.S. cities after ranking 11th in 2024.

Sandwiched between No. 11-Fort Worth and No. 13-Austin is San Jose, California, whose population of 997,368 puts it in the 12-largest spot.

Fastest growing U.S. cities
Six additional Texas cities made the list of fastest-growing U.S. cities, with several in the DFW Metroplex:

Fulshear, near Houston (No. 2) with 26.7 percent growth (54,629 total population)
Celina (No. 4) with 18.2 percent growth (51,661 total population)
Anna (No. 5) with 14.6 percent growth (31,986 total population)
Fate (No. 8) with 11.4 percent growth (27,467 total population)
Melissa (No. 11) with 10 percent growth (26,194 total population)
Hutto, near Austin (No. 13) with 9.4 percent growth (42,661 total population)

The Austin suburb of Georgetown's growth has continued to slow since 2023, and it no longer appears in the list of fastest-growing cities. However, it did surpass 100,000 residents in 2024.

San Angelo, a small city in West Texas, also surpassed the 100,000-population threshold.

Most populous U.S. cities in 2024
New York City maintained its stronghold as the biggest in America in 2024, boasting a population of nearly 8.5 million residents. Los Angeles and Chicago also retained second and third place, with respective populations of nearly 3.88 million and more than 2.7 million residents.

"Cities in the Northeast that had experienced population declines in 2023 are now experiencing significant population growth, on average," said Crystal Delbé, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division. "In fact, cities of all sizes, in all regions, showed faster growth and larger gains than in 2023, except for small cities in the South, whose average population growth rate remained the same."

The 15 populous U.S. cities as of July 1, 2024 were:

No. 1 – New York, New York (8.48 million)
No. 2 – Los Angeles, California (3.88 million)
No. 3 – Chicago, Illinois (2.72 million)
No. 4 – Houston, Texas (2.39 million)
No. 5 – Phoenix, Arizona (1.67 million)
No. 6 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1.57 million)
No. 7 – San Antonio, Texas (1.53 million)
No. 8 – San Diego, California (1.4 million)
No. 9 – Dallas, Texas (1.33 million)
No. 10 – Jacksonville, Florida (1 million)
No. 11 – Fort Worth, Texas (1 million)
No. 12 – San Jose, California (997,368)
No. 13 – Austin, Texas (993,588)
No. 14 – Charlotte, North Carolina (943,476)
No. 15 – Columbus, Ohio (933,263)

dallas dallas suburb dfw metroplex fastest growing cities population growth princeton us census bureau