House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to call lawmakers back from recess early to vote on emergency hurricane relief — and instead is spreading Donald Trump's lies about recovery efforts, a columnist wrote Monday.
The Louisiana Republican will visit western North Carolina this week to survey damage from Hurricane Helene, but The New Republic's Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling questioned his commitment to helping to clean up after the natural disaster.
"While executive branch figureheads float around the American South in the wake of Hurricane Helene promising relief, one Washington politico’s actions could actually make all the difference for thousands of victims — but he doesn’t seem to be doing a thing about it," Houghtaling wrote.
At least 231 people have been reported dead in six states hit by the Category Four storm, which is one of the deadliest in U.S. history. Another 300,000 remained without power Sunday evening in Georgia and the Carolinas.
"So far, President Joe Biden has deployed 1,500 troops to help with recovery efforts, alongside more than 6,100 National Guardsmen and 7,000 federal personnel," Houghtaling wrote.
She added that the Biden-Harris administration claims to have distributed $137 million in federal assistance.
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Johnson, on the other hand, appeared on Fox News Sunday to elevate Trump's false claim that the Biden administration had diverted emergency relief funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to "resettling illegal aliens who have come across the border."
That prompted FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell to push back, calling the Trump-Johnson claim “frankly ridiculous and just plain false.”
“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” Criswell said on Sunday. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people.”
