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CV NEWS FEED // Critics have lambasted the Biden-Harris administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for its response to Hurricane Helene, which has wreaked havoc in many communities in North Carolina and throughout the rest of the Southeast.
The cover of the New York Post’s Monday print issue featured Bat Cave, North Carolina, a small community in the western part of the state which the late September storm ravaged.
“Abandoned by FEMA, NC town residents devastated by Helene left to fend for selves,” the newspaper’s headline read.
As the Post reported, FEMA told citizens living in Bat Cave “that a ‘Road Closed’ sign is an insurmountable obstacle for the agency to navigate.”
Resident Chelsea Atkins noted to the Post: “FEMA called me and told me they wanted to inspect my house, then called me back to say they couldn’t drive around the ‘Road Closed’ sign. They weren’t allowed.”
The Post’s report added:
While the sick and elderly residents of Bat Cave were airlifted to safety a week ago, those left behind have seen virtually no sign of government agencies, save for a handful of Louisiana state troopers “keeping an eye on everything,” who locals say haven’t done much of anything.
The intermittent whir of military Chinook helicopters buzzing over the town serves as a reminder that people in the devastated west of the state are getting help — just not in Bat Cave.
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Last week, CatholicVote reported that FEMA “doled out over one billion dollars of taxpayer money to programs directly benefiting foreign nationals over the past two years.”
The day before, Biden-Harris Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters that “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the [hurricane] season.”
Mayorkas’ department oversees FEMA.
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-OH, told FOX News on Monday, “the Biden-Harris administration has turned FEMA effectively into an agency that helps to resettle and helps to deal with illegal immigration.”
“That is just fundamentally going to distract focus from their core job of helping American citizens in their time of need,” Vance said. “I think the fundamental mistake that Kamala Harris’ administration has made is that from the get-go, you should have imposed military-style command and control.”
“You’ve got eight different bureaucratic organizations, you’ve got a lot of different bureaucratic fiefdoms that sometimes delay the provision of necessary resources,” Vance argued. “You need to empower a military commander on the ground to get helicopters to where they need to go, to get supplies to where they need to go.”
“What Donald Trump would do if he is president is impose real leadership,” Vance added. On the other hand, the senator called the Biden-Harris response “the DMV at industrial scale” and “incompetence of the highest order.”
“And because of it, a lot of folks in North Carolina are suffering unnecessarily,” he indicated.
Former Democratic Rep. and 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, I-HI, also criticized the administration’s response during a Sunday morning interview with FOX News.
“When you go out into these rural communities, they have yet to see anyone with a FEMA jacket on knocking on their door saying, ‘How can we help you?’” she told hostess Maria Bartiromo.
Gabbard called it a “slap in the face to these Americans” that the Biden-Harris DHS is “providing hundreds of millions of dollars to illegal immigrants” while also claiming to be running out of money.
“Meanwhile these people have lost their homes,” Gabbard said, referring to Helene victims across the American Southeast. “They’ve lost their vehicles, they’ve lost their businesses, and they’re wondering how they’re going to get by to tomorrow.”
“So many of these communities are still without power,” added Gabbard, who is a member of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s transition team:
They are wondering where is FEMA, where are the Army Corps of Engineers, why haven’t people come out there and started to do the necessary work that the volunteer firefighters are unable to do?
They are doing all that they possibly can and they are wondering, ‘Where is our government? Why are they not here for us?’
“This is just another example, unfortunately, of Vice President Harris and Joe Biden’s American-people-come-last policies, and we’re feeling it firsthand,” the former Democrat said.
Gabbard represented Hawaii’s Second District in Congress from 2013 to 2021 as a Democrat. She left the Democratic Party in 2022 to register as an independent, and has since endorsed Trump in this year’s White House race.
