Two unwelcome and disruptive guests named helen and Milton We are heading into this year’s presidential election.
Hurricanes have disrupted the schedules of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, and both spent part of Thursday addressing questions about storm recovery efforts.
The two hurricanes pose fundamental questions about who best responds to deadly natural disasters as president, a once-overlooked issue that is increasingly becoming a routine part of the job. It has become. And a few weeks ago, November 5th electionthe storm disrupted voting mechanisms in several key counties.
Vice President Harris has sought to use this as an opportunity to show leadership, appearing alongside President Joe Biden at a news conference and calling for bipartisan cooperation. former president playing cards is using this opportunity to attack the administration’s ability to question whether it is withholding aid from Republican areas despite no evidence of such action.
Adding to the pressure is the need to provide more funding to the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will require House Republicans to work with Democratic administrations. Biden said Thursday that lawmakers should address the situation immediately.
“Dealing with one crisis after another will put FEMA under even greater scrutiny,” said Timothy Kneeland, a professor at Nazarene University in Rochester, New Jersey. It will be placed in the York is researching this issue.
“Vice President Harris must continue to maintain her campaign schedule and empathize with victims and provide a consistent message about the widespread devastation that is making FEMA’s job even more difficult than usual,” Neeland said. added.
Trump and Harris have already done so separately. georgia Harris visited North Carolina to assess the damage from the hurricane and pledge support, urging candidates to suspend campaigning elsewhere and dedicate valuable resources in the final weeks before the election. Asked to spend a certain amount of time. Georgia and North Carolina are both political battlegrounds, and the stakes are heightened.
The impact of the hurricane is also evident in candidates’ campaign activities.
The first question Harris took at Univision City Hall in Las Vegas on Thursday came from an unvoted construction worker from Tampa, Florida. Ramiro Gonzalez asked about the administration not doing enough to help those in Herren’s and beyond, and whether people in Milton’s path will be able to receive aid. This is a sign that Trump’s message is getting through to some potential voters.
While Harris criticized the level of misinformation being disseminated by Republicans, her more detailed answers revealed the dynamics at play just weeks before the election.
“I have to stress that this is not the time for people to play politics,” she said.
On the same day, President Trump began his speech at the Detroit Economic Club by praising the Republican governors of the affected states and slamming the Biden-Harris administration.
“They have caused people to suffer unjustly,” he said of Helen’s victims in North Carolina.
The storm disrupted the voting process in places. north carolina The State Board of Elections passed a resolution to help people vote in affected counties across the state. florida This would give some counties more flexibility in distributing mail-in ballots and changing polling places for in-person voting. However, a federal judge georgia The state said Thursday that despite Helen’s obstruction, the state does not need to reopen voter registration.
Tensions have begun to outweigh the disaster response, with Biden saying on Wednesday and Thursday that President Trump had spread “un-American” falsehoods.
As the Democratic nominee, Harris suddenly assumed a key role in the hurricane response, a role traditionally not held by vice presidents in previous administrations.
On Thursday, she virtually participated in a Situation Room briefing on Milton while in Nevada campaigning. She gathered for a response planning meeting and spoke live to CNN on Wednesday to discuss the administration’s efforts.
When she appeared with Biden on Wednesday to discuss Milton Island before landing on the island, Harris subtly linked the issue to her campaign policies to stop price gouging on food and other products. .
“We will continue to work hard against businesses and individuals who may use this crisis to exploit people in need through illegal fraud and price gouging, including at gas stations, airports and hotel counters. “Please know that we are monitoring the issue. The actions and the situation on the ground are very intertwined and those who take advantage of consumers will be held accountable,” she said.
Mr Harris warned that Mr Milton “posed an extreme danger”. It made landfall in Florida late Wednesday, leaving more than 3 million people without power. However, the storm surge never reached Helen-like levels, killed about 230 people, and left North Carolina’s mountainous region without electricity, cell phone service, and road access for extended periods.
President Trump and his allies took advantage of the aftermath of the Helen incident to spread misinformation about the administration’s response. Their debunked claims include statements that victims will receive only $750 in aid and false accusations that emergency response funds were diverted to immigrants.
The former president said the administration’s response to Helen was worse than that of the widely criticized George W. Bush administration. Hurricane Katrina in 2005resulting in nearly 1,400 deaths.
“This hurricane was bad, and they’re stuck because of Kamala Harris,” President Trump said at a recent rally in Juneau, Wisconsin. “This is the worst response to a storm, a catastrophe, a hurricane, that we’ve ever seen. Probably worse than Katrina, and hard to beat, right?”
When asked about the Trump campaign’s strategic thinking on hurricane response, campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said this was a “failure of leadership” by the Biden-Harris administration, including on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and security in the southern United States. It is said that this reflects the pattern of border.
“Mr. Kamala has left Americans behind and has proven that he is not equipped to resolve crises at the highest levels,” Levitt said.
John Gasper, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies government responses to natural disasters, said storm victims generally want to make sure they get the help they need.
“These disasters are essentially a test of leadership for local, state and federal officials in how they respond,” he said.
But Gasper said U.S. politics is so polarized, with other issues such as the economy swaying elections, that the current very heated debate between President Trump and the Biden-Harris administration is about voting. He pointed out that it may not be that important in the day.
“At the last minute, it’s going to be important,” he said. “Will that decide the election? Probably not. There’s a lot of other things going on.”
