WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is heading to North Carolina on Saturday because the state recovers from Hurricane Helene, arriving there at some point after a go to by Republican Donald Trump, who’s spreading false claims concerning the federal response to the catastrophe.
Earlier within the week, Harris was in Georgia, the place she helped distribute meals, toured the injury and consoled households hard-hit by the storm. President Joe Biden, too, visited the catastrophe zone. During stops over two days within the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia, Biden surveyed the injury and met with farmers whose crops have been destroyed.
The two have been vocal and visual concerning the authorities’s willingness to assist, and the administration’s efforts to this point embrace protecting prices for the entire rescue and restoration efforts throughout the Southeast for a number of months as states wrestle underneath the load of the mass injury.
In a letter late Friday to congressional leaders, Biden wrote that whereas the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund “has the assets it requires proper now to satisfy fast wants, the fund does face a shortfall on the finish of the 12 months.” He additionally referred to as on lawmakers to behave shortly to revive funding to the Small Business Administration’s catastrophe mortgage program.
More than 200 folks have died. It’s the worst storm to hit the U.S. mainland since Katrina in 2005, and scientists have warned such storms will solely worsen within the face of local weather change.
But on this overheated election 12 months, even pure disasters have change into deeply politicized because the candidates crisscross the catastrophe space and in some instances go to the identical venues to win over voters in battleground states.
Trump has falsely claimed the Biden administration is not doing sufficient to assist impacted folks in Republican areas and has harshly criticized the response. He has, in Helene’s aftermath, espoused falsehoods about local weather change, calling it “one of many nice scams of all time.”
During a cease in Fayetteville, North Carolina on Thursday, Trump renewed his complaints concerning the federal response and cited “awful therapy to North Carolina specifically.” In reality, the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, stated this week the state has already seen greater than 50,000 folks be registered for FEMA help, and about $6 billion has been paid out.
Biden, in the meantime, has instructed the Republican House speaker is withholding essential catastrophe funding.
Harris’ visits, in the meantime, current an extra political take a look at within the midst of a humanitarian disaster. She’s attempting to step into a task for which Biden is well-known — displaying the empathy that Americans anticipate in occasions of tragedy — within the closing stretch of her White House marketing campaign.
Until this week, she had not visited the scene of a humanitarian disaster as vice chairman — that responsibility was reserved for Biden, who has steadily been referred to as on to survey injury and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires, tropical storms and extra.
Harris stated this week that she needed to “personally check out the devastation, which is extraordinary.” She expressed admiration for a way “individuals are coming collectively. People are serving to good strangers.”
She stated that reveals ”the overwhelming majority of us have a lot extra in widespread than what separates us,” an echo of a line she steadily makes use of on the marketing campaign path.
“We are right here for the lengthy haul,” she stated.
Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Boone, North Carolina, and Meg Kinnard in Fayetteville, North Carolina, contributed.
This article was generated from an automatic information company feed with out modifications to textual content.