Texas Mayor Tells People They're on Their Own in Outage, Resigns

A Texas mayor has relinquished the reins of his post as a now-deleted Facebook post on the state's power outages continues to make its rounds via screenshots. Ex-Colorado City Mayor Tim Boyd was apparently upset after residents reached out to him about their electricity and water outages, and he made those frustrations known Tuesday in a rant that accused locals of not doing enough to help themselves during the extreme weather that has upended the Lone Star State. KTXS has the full post, grammatical errors intact, in which Boyd noted, "The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING!" He added that "lazy" families needed to "think outside of the box" and "come up with a game plan" to stay warm and get water, and that "God has given us the tools to support ourselves in times like this."

"Only the strong will survive and the week will parish," he wrote. "I'll be damned if I'm going to provide for anyone that is capable of doing it themselves! ... Bottom line quit crying and looking for a handout! Get off your ass and take care of your own family!" The Washington Post notes that things are so bad in Colorado City right now that, amid the freezing temperatures and lack of power and running water, many residents have been forced to lug in buckets of snow each time they need to flush the toilet. In a second Facebook post later Tuesday, Boyd wrote that his words had been taken "out of context," that his wife had been fired from her job as a result of them, that his family has been the target of harassment, and that he "would never want to hurt the elderly or anyone that is in true need of help." He also said, per the Dallas Morning News, that he'd resigned as mayor before he put up the first post. The Post says that timeline isn't clear. Read both posts in full here. (More Texas stories.)