Biden-Harris Mismanaged Hurricane Helene

 During times of crisis and war, presidential leadership is critical to cut through competing bureaucratic fiefs and protect Americans from death and devastation. The Biden-Harris response to Hurricane Helene, the deadliest storm since Katrina, has the people of the Southeast and especially Appalachia paying an extraordinary price for the administration’s incompetence.

Shortly after Helene made landfall in the U.S. on Sept. 26, Joe Biden was at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Del. Vice President Kamala Harris was flying between ritzy California fundraisers, hobnobbing with celebrities. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was in Los Angeles, presiding over an awards ceremony. Before the storm, Ms. Harris had blown off her disaster-response briefings, which were a staple of the Trump administration’s disaster-response planning. The lack of prioritization had real-world ramifications.

While Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden flouted their duties, a bureaucratic bottleneck was delaying the deployment of active-duty military personnel to the western mountains of North Carolina. On Oct. 2, six days after the storm made landfall, the Defense Department announced that 1,000 troops had been authorized to deploy to the hurricane-response zone, including elements of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Liberty, N.C. These troops bring with them debris-clearing and water-purification equipment—critical resources for communities with blocked roads and orders to boil drinking water. As evening fell on Friday, Oct. 4, fewer than half of the 1,000 troops were conducting operations and deployed to Western North Carolina.

Deployment delays became severe enough that North Carolina Sens. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis issued a joint statement on Oct. 4 calling for “an active-duty military leader who has extensive experience with operations of this magnitude to lead moving forward.” The statement seemed to have an effect: The rest of the active-duty forces were deployed by the evening of Oct. 6, and the Pentagon authorized an additional 500, including advanced command-and-control resources.

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. This is the sort of bureaucratic hiccup that engaged political leaders solve. 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.

Even the Obama administration was better at deploying assets in disaster zones. When an earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, it took just two days to deploy troops, including the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Liberty (then known as Fort Bragg) to help with disaster recovery. Large numbers of active-duty troops were deployed more rapidly during the Katrina response, which was sharply criticized at the time for being insufficient.

Federal Emergency Management Agency staff are working hard. The agency’s response to Helene has been praised in some quarters and criticized elsewhere. But it too has been the victim of misplaced Biden-Harris political priorities. Under Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden, FEMA has funneled millions of dollars to nongovernmental organizations whose stated goal is facilitating mass migration into the U.S. The effort stems from a White House directive to reorient FEMA’s institutional focus away from U.S. citizens and toward aliens who either have no legal right to be here or whose legal status depends on the say-so of the Biden-Harris administration.

Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have been sending that message since the beginning of their tenure. In 2021 Mr. Mayorkas directed FEMA to participate in a “government-wide effort” to receive and shelter migrants. By 2023 FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell was testifying that although FEMA is not an immigration agency, it would “continue to focus on supporting jurisdictions that are managing the care of immigrants through our Shelter and Services program.” While some have claimed the funding going to these programs is distinct from disaster-relief funding, the same can’t be said for the attention and focus of Biden-Harris officials—that all comes from the same limited supply.

FEMA even seems to be picking winners and losers among the American people. In March 2023, FEMA hosted a panel titled “Helping the LGBTQI+ Community Before Disasters: Preparedness and Mitigation Considerations.” Ordinary Americans of all backgrounds know that especially when it comes to disaster relief, federal agencies exist to serve all Americans, not to give some groups special treatment.

President Trump and I are realists. We know there’s no perfect disaster recovery and that a storm like Helene will bring hardship to American towns no matter how well the government responds. But this wasn’t the response that the people of Western North Carolina deserved. 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.

JD Vance is a U.S. senator from Ohio and the Republican nominee for vice president.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/biden-harris-mismanaged-hurricane-helene-disaster-response-7b831494/