Biden declares major disaster in Texas as focus shifts to who is responsible for the winter weather crisis - The Washington Post
HOUSTON — President Biden signed a major disaster declaration that will allow much of Texas to tap vast reserves of federal aid, the White House said Saturday, offering a new lifeline to a state struggling to recover from a brutal winter storm that left more than 50 dead and millions without power across the South. Texas's deregulated electrical grid had triggered mass outages that left residents in the nation's second-largest state trapped without heat for days in freezing homes. Several died following desperate attempts to stay warm, including a 75-year-old woman and her three young grandchildren in a suburban Houston house fire sparked by a fireplace. Many other households faced jaw-dropping electrical bills from some of the state's increasingly popular variable-rate plans, which charged thousands of dollars for a few days of power as wholesale energy prices soared. The plans offer a potentially lower-cost alternative to traditional fixed-rate energy payments, but the o...