Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has blamed his tween daughters for the family's international vacation to Mexico, but text messages obtained by The New York Times and Reform Austin News show that his wife, Heidi, was messaging friends and neighbors on Wednesday about heading south of the border amid a harsh winter storm that has left millions of Texans without power and water.

Cruz was spotted at George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Wednesday afternoon, leaving behind cold Houston for warm Cancun. He was swiftly criticized for fleeing the state as millions of his constituents suffered amid brutal conditions, and he returned to Texas on Thursday. During his first attempt to smooth things over, Cruz said his daughters — who are 10 and 12 — "asked to take a trip with friends" and "wanting to be a good dad," he agreed to take them to Cancun.

The text messages obtained by the Times show Heidi Cruz messaged friends and neighbors to say her house did not have electricity and was "FREEZING." The family was staying with friends, she added, before asking: "Anyone can or want to leave for the week? We may go to Cancun." Cruz said they could stay at the Ritz-Carlton, leaving that afternoon and coming back on Sunday. No one showed any interest in joining Ted Cruz on vacation, so Heidi Cruz offered up her home's gas stove in case anyone needed to heat water.

The Houston Police Department confirmed with the Times that someone from the senator's office called and asked for officers to provide "assistance upon arrival" Wednesday at the airport, and law enforcement was also spotted with Cruz when he returned to Houston on Thursday. Back in the U.S., Cruz offered a new statement, telling reporters it was "obviously a mistake" to go to Cancun and claiming he had "second thoughts" as soon as he got on the plane. His daughters, he said, had "a tough week," and "all of us who are parents have a responsibility to take care of our kids, take care of our families, but I also have a responsibility that I take very seriously of fighting for the state of Texas." Catherine Garcia

Former President Donald Trump may have been permanently booted from Twitter, but YouTube will let him have his account back — just not yet quite yet.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki at an event Thursday said the former president, who was suspended from YouTube in January, will be allowed to use his account again once there's no longer an "elevated risk of violence" in the United States.

"We will lift the suspension of the Donald Trump channel when we determine the risk of violence has decreased," Wojcicki said, Politico reports.

YouTube announced it would suspend Trump's account in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, saying he violated the platform's "policies for inciting violence." The suspension was initially said to be for at least a week, but it was later extended and has now lasted almost two months.

The video platform never said Trump's suspension would be permanent, though, which stands in contrast with Twitter, which booted Trump from the platform forever due to his actions surrounding the riot. Trump was also suspended from Facebook, a decision that's currently being reviewed by the platform's independent oversight board and could potentially be overturned.

Wojcicki didn't offer a specific timeline for when Trump's account could come back online but she said that, after Capitol Police warned of a potential plot to breach the Capitol building on Thursday, it's "pretty clear" that the "elevated violence risk still remains." Brendan Morrow

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) takes President Biden's insults as a compliment, actually.

On Wednesday, Biden criticized lawmakers in Texas and Mississippi who opted to fully reopen all state businesses and end mask mandates even as the pandemic rages on, calling the move a "mistake" and deeming it a result of "Neanderthal thinking." The last thing the country needs as the vaccine rollout ramps up, Biden added, is "Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime, everything's fine, take off your mask, forget it. It still matters."

Though Biden didn't mention Tennessee or Blackburn specifically, Fox Business host Stuart Varney asked her to react to his comments on Thursday. She said the comments should be viewed as complimentary, somehow.

"Stuart, we were called 'Neanderthals' when I led the fight against the imposition of a state income tax in Tennessee,” Blackburn said. "Do you know what I did? I started the Neanderthal Caucus!"

"Neanderthals are hunter-gatherers, they're protectors of their family," she continued. "They are resilient. They are resourceful. They tend to their own. So, I think Joe Biden needs to rethink what he is saying."

As The Daily Beast and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) noted, the comments were oddly in the present tense, though Neanderthals are extinct, and Blackburn, ironically, has said she does not believe in evolution. Watch the clip below. Summer Meza

Former President Donald Trump has released a new post-presidency statement, and Democrats might just be glad he did.

The former president, who remains permanently banned from Twitter, released a statement Thursday once again raging against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), blasting him as the "most unpopular politician in the country" while blaming him for Republicans' Senate losses in Georgia — losses for which Trump himself has been blamed by other Republicans.

One of the reasons Republicans lost the two Georgia Senate runoffs in January, Trump argues, was "Mitch McConnell's refusal to go above $600 per person on the stimulus check payments when the two Democrat opponents were touting $2,000 per person in ad after ad."

The statement offered "quite the pre-stimulus political gift to Democrats," wrote National Journal's Josh Kraushaar, while The Washington Post's Dave Weigel noted that Trump "remarkably" used this opportunity to "validate Biden's messaging on the $1,400 checks instead of whacking him and Democrats for curtailing them."

Indeed, Trump writes that "the $2,000 will be approved anyway by the Democrats," while offering no comment on the fact that the new checks are actually for $1,400, nor on Biden's recent compromise that narrows the eligibility. Politico's Gabby Orr observed that Trump "could have put out a statement saying the income phase-outs in the Biden stimulus bill are going to mean he gave checks to more Americans," but "instead he's still targeting his own party with stuff like this."

This was just Trump's latest statement in this vein after he released another one last month describing McConnell as an "unsmiling political hack." He also mentioned McConnell in a recent Conservative Political Action Conference speech, in which he took credit for McConnell's recent re-election. McConnell told Fox News he "didn't watch" the speech and that "we're dealing with the present and the future, not looking back to the past." Brendan Morrow

As if we needed more evidence that the pandemic has been rough on everyone, experts say sinking U.S. birth rates point to widespread societal challenges, and could cause further complications later on.

Data from 29 states showed a 7.3 percent drop in births in December 2020, nine months after the pandemic began in the U.S., CBS News reports. Birth rates have been declining for years, and its not surprising major economic disruption would cause a dip, but preliminary numbers suggest the pandemic has led to an especially notable drop — in the wake of the Great Recession, birth rates fell by 3 percent, CBS notes.

University of Maryland sociologist Phil Cohen told CBS the "scale of this is really large," and argued the decline "means things are not going well for a lot of people."

A column by two Brookings Institution economists in The New York Times outlines some of the struggles that have people postponing or avoiding expanding their families: a weak labor market, job and income loss, school closures, and fewer social activities, to name some. The economists similarly predicted last year that "tremendous economic loss, uncertainty, and insecurity" would lead to a major baby bust. But in addition to the challenges that have caused the bust, the decline could cause issues well into the future.

With 300,000 fewer babies born this year than would otherwise be expected, the Times column says "we can expect consequential changes to our economy and society in the years to come." Notably, a smaller work force will mean "lower economic productivity and fewer workers to contribute to the tax base. It also means a lower ratio of workers to retirees, which stresses Social Security." It could also contribute to the "loneliness epidemic," and as demography professor Dowell Myers told CBS, the birth rate can be seen as a "barometer of despair."

Read more about the drop and what economists suggest should be done at The New York Times. Summer Meza

Who's been trolling Marvel fans? It's been Paul Bettany all along.

The WandaVision star on Thursday admitted he was joking when he repeatedly hyped up a major cameo in the hit Disney+ show, as he was apparently just talking about himself.

During numerous interviews promoting the series, the Vision actor teased that he got to work with "an actor that I really admire and that I've always wanted to work with," adding that "we have these explosive scenes" together. Fans spent weeks trying to figure out who he meant and getting excited for a massive surprise cameo, with one popular guess being X-Men star Patrick Stewart.

But then the penultimate WandaVision episode last week revealed another Vision also played by Bettany, leading fans to ask if they just got pranked because the actor he was talking about was actually, well, Paul Bettany. While appearing on Good Morning America on Thursday, Bettany said that's, indeed, what happened.

"You know when you think something's gonna be funny, and you say it, and then you absolutely panic about it?" Bettany said. "Which is what I did, because fans started guessing who it might be, and they were guessing people like Benedict Cumberbatch or Patrick Stewart, and I was thinking, 'God, that's a good idea!' And they're gonna be so disappointed when they find out it's me."

Then again, could it be that it's actually this interview that's a fake-out? Michael Strahan wondered whether "you could be trolling us right now" with the admission, and when he asked Bettany if the finale truly does have a surprise cameo, he wouldn't say. But fans perhaps shouldn't get their hopes up, and when asked recently whether Bettany was joking, WandaVision director Matt Shakman told HuffPost, "I'm gonna let Paul Bettany answer that question. He dug himself this hole. He can get out of it." Brendan Morrow

Don't bet on former President Donald Trump traveling to campaign against Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — and not because of any sudden change of heart.

A new report from The Washington Post discusses the Alaska Republican's influence during President Biden's administration, as well as the fact that Trump is "vowing publicly and privately to work to oust her" as she seeks a fourth Senate term in 2022. Murkowski was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, and she's reportedly "higher on his list of enemies" than other lawmakers, coming in just under Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.)

At the same time, the Post reports that while Trump "does want to spend money against" Murkowski, some "people in his circle doubt, though, that he will be as much of a potent force in the race because traveling to campaign against her would require such a long flight, which Trump generally avoids."

There's also the fact that, the Post says, Trump's advisers "recognize the complexity of winning in Alaska," which uses ranked-choice voting, though the report adds that it's likely Murkowski will face pro-Trump opposition in the race in some form.

Trump recently went after Murkowski during his first speech since leaving office at the Conservative Political Action Conference, naming her while he slammed a series of Republican "grandstanders" and called on supporters to "get rid of them all." Murkowski has defended her vote to impeach Trump, saying she couldn't "be afraid of" the political repercussions and that if Alaska voters decide that "because I did not support my party that I can no longer serve them in the United States Senate, then so be it." Brendan Morrow