Harris pledges ongoing federal support as she visits North Carolina to survey Helene’s aftermath
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris pledged ongoing federal support and praised strangers helping strangers as she visited North Carolina on Saturday in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, her second trip in four days to the disaster zone.
The vice president was in Charlotte one day after a visit to the state by Republican Donald Trump, who is spreading false claims about the federal response to the disaster.
Harris opened her visit by attending a briefing with state and local officials, where she thanked “those who are in the room and those who are out there right now working around the clock.”
She promised that federal assistance would continue to flow and added praise for the “strangers who are helping each other out, giving people shelter and food and friendship and fellowship.”
Despite Trump’s claims that the federal response in North Carolina has been “lousy,” Gov. Roy Cooper said the state was “deeply grateful for the federal resources that we have.”
“FEMA has been on the ground with us since the very beginning,” the Democrat said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Many residents of the Carolinas still lack running water, cellphone service and electricity as rescuers continue their search for missing people.
Earlier in the week, Harris was in Georgia, where she helped distribute meals, toured the damage and consoled families hard-hit by the storm. President Biden, too, visited the disaster zone. During stops over two days in the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia, Biden surveyed the damage and met with farmers whose crops have been destroyed.
The two have been vocal and visible about the government’s willingness to help, and the administration’s efforts so far include covering costs for all of the rescue and recovery efforts across the Southeast for several months as states struggle under the weight of the mass damage.
In a letter late Friday to congressional leaders, Biden wrote that while FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund “has the resources it requires right now to meet immediate needs, the fund does face a shortfall at the end of the year.” The agency’s funding for disaster aid is stretched because of the many parts of the country dealing with the effects of hurricanes, wildfires and other calamities. Biden also called on lawmakers to act quickly to restore funding to the Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program.
False and misleading claims about Hurricane Helene are spreading about the storm and recovery efforts.
Biden has suggested that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is withholding money for disaster relief needs.
More than 200 people have died in Helene. It’s the worst storm to hit the U.S. mainland since Katrina in 2005, and scientists have warned such storms will only worsen in the face of climate change.
But in this overheated election year, even natural disasters have become deeply politicized as the candidates crisscross the disaster area and in some cases visit the same venues to win over voters in battleground states.
Trump has falsely claimed the Biden administration isn’t doing enough to help impacted people in Republican areas. He has, in Helene’s aftermath, espoused falsehoods about climate change, calling it “one of the great scams of all time.”
Cooper said this week that more than 50,000 people have registered for FEMA assistance and about $6 million has been paid out.
Harris’ visits present an additional political test in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. She’s trying to step into a role for which Biden is well known — showing the empathy that Americans expect in times of tragedy — in the closing stretch of her White House campaign.
Until this week, she had not visited the scene of a humanitarian crisis as vice president. That duty was reserved for Biden, who has frequently been called on to survey damage and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires, tropical storms and more.
Harris said this week that she wanted to “personally take a look at the devastation, which is extraordinary.” She expressed admiration for how “people are coming together. People are helping perfect strangers.”
She said that shows ”the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us,” an echo of a line she frequently uses on the campaign trail.
“We are here for the long haul,” she said.
Long and Alexander write for the Associated Press. Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Boone, N.C., and Meg Kinnard in Fayetteville, N.C., contributed to this report.
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