Vance slams Biden-Harris administration for Hurricane Helene response

GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Tuesday slammed the Biden-Harris administration in an opinion piece for mismanaging Hurricane Helene. 

"In disaster response, every second counts. A week went by while the citizens of North Carolina suffered without the equipment and soldiers needed to save lives and begin recovery," Vance wrote in a story published in The Wall Street Journal.

"This is the sort of bureaucratic hiccup that engaged political leaders solve," the piece continued. "A competent leader would have ordered those men and women into motion earlier, bureaucracy be damned. Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden treated the situation like a public-relations disaster instead of a real one."

Hurricane Helene hit Florida last week as a Category Four storm, and caused disastrous damage in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

FEMA previously spent approximately $650 million on grants to nonprofits and local authorities that resettle and aid illegal immigrants, and has sent employees down to the border to help address the increase in unaccompanied minors that began in 2021, Fox News reported. 

Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters last week that FEMA does not have adequate funds to manage the disaster relief. 

"But this wasn’t the response that the people of Western North Carolina deserved," Vance wrote. "As Hurricane Milton barrels toward the Florida coast and Secretary Mayorkas claims FEMA is running out of disaster funds, it’s time the Biden-Harris administration got its act together."