Biden to visit areas affected by Helene ‘later this week’
Joe Biden said he expects to visit areas affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Helene “later this week”.
The US president is now taking some questions from the press gathered at the White House.
He called it a historic storm, “never seen anything like it before”. He said he expected to go down to the area “Wednesday or Thursday”, saying that, including with a press entourage, a presidential visit in the middle of an emergency can be disruptive if made too soon.
Biden said at least 10 states had been affected. Despite saying he would only talk about the storm, he did take a question about the Middle East and said “we should have a ceasefire now” in the conflict in Lebanon that has suddenly intensified since Israel has launched fierce airborne attacks in the last almost two weeks on the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia based in Lebanon, labelled as a counteroffensive to Hezbollah’s attacks on its neighbor Israel since last October, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
Asked about reports that Israel plans a ground invasion of Lebanon and if he was comfortable with that, Biden said: “I’m comfortable with them stopping.”
Our Middle East live blog is here.
Key events
Donald Trump has been taunting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for not rushing to the areas affected by Hurricane Helene and the storm’s aftermath.
Harris has returning early to Washington DC from election campaigning out west, as the Democratic party’s nominee for president since Biden, the sitting president, quit his race for re-election in July.
Trump, the Republican nominee for president, plans to go to Valdosta, Georgia, this afternoon to see storm damage. He’s blasted the US president and vice president, saying Biden was “sleeping” on the beach at the weekend instead of marshaling recovery efforts in the devastated areas, while Harris, instead of campaigning in the western US “ought to be down in the area”.
It wasn’t possible from the live audio to make out what Biden’s response was to a question about Trump’s remarks. We’ll bring it to you as soon as possible. Biden said he had spoken to all the affected state governors, has promised help to all those affected for “as long as it takes” and had explained how a White House visit to an emergency area too soon can be counterproductive, because it is such a complicated operation.
Biden has signed disaster declarations that free up more federal resources for affected areas – and Politico also said he spoke to the mayor of Valdosta at the weekend, as well as state governors.
Harris said in Las Vegas, Nevada: “We will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild.” She also plans to visit affected areas in due course.
Biden to visit areas affected by Helene ‘later this week’
Joe Biden said he expects to visit areas affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Helene “later this week”.
The US president is now taking some questions from the press gathered at the White House.
He called it a historic storm, “never seen anything like it before”. He said he expected to go down to the area “Wednesday or Thursday”, saying that, including with a press entourage, a presidential visit in the middle of an emergency can be disruptive if made too soon.
Biden said at least 10 states had been affected. Despite saying he would only talk about the storm, he did take a question about the Middle East and said “we should have a ceasefire now” in the conflict in Lebanon that has suddenly intensified since Israel has launched fierce airborne attacks in the last almost two weeks on the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia based in Lebanon, labelled as a counteroffensive to Hezbollah’s attacks on its neighbor Israel since last October, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
Asked about reports that Israel plans a ground invasion of Lebanon and if he was comfortable with that, Biden said: “I’m comfortable with them stopping.”
Our Middle East live blog is here.
Here is Joe Biden, talking about “the broad and devastating” impacts of the storm that made landfall as Hurricane Helene.
“Communities are devastated, loved ones waiting to hear if [folks] are OK, many unsure if they can return to their homes, when or ever. There is nothing like wondering, is my husband, wife, son, daughter, mother, father alive, many more who remain without electricity, water, food and communications,” the US president said.
He acknowledged that the death toll from the storm was over 100 and more than 600 were unaccounted for.
He is speaking from the White House and explained that he had not gone to the areas of destruction and emergency yet because, in line with normal presidential practice, he does not want to get in the way of the local authorities’ recovery efforts just now.
We’re still awaiting Joe Biden’s remarks from the White House about the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the impact of as it roared across Georgia and North and South Carolina and its effects spread across 10 states even as it was downgraded from hurricane status last week.
The US president is behind schedule, as he was due to begin speaking half an hour ago, but we’ll keep you abreast of developments.
Biden is due to talk to US Olympic athletes at 11.30am and then the White House daily media briefing with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is due at 2pm, so we’ll keep an eye on whether those times are pushed back.
CNN just said the death toll from the storm has now reached 115 in the US, and rising, as more deaths are discovered, with whole towns devastated and some blocked off and parts of western North Carolina, in particular, just flattened. Flooding has been the worst lingering effect after the initial 140mph winds began slowing once the hurricane came ashore in north-western Florida late last Thursday as a category 4.
The federal government said yesterday that the “historic flooding” was made worse because of global heating as the major part of the climate crisis.
Biden to give update on Hurricane Helene response
Joe Biden is scheduled to imminently begin speaking from the White House about the response to Hurricane Helene’s devastation in North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere in the southeast.
We’ll let you know what the president has to say.
Republican former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake endorses Harris
Jeff Flake, a Republican who represented swing state Arizona in the Senate and House of Representatives, endorsed Kamala Harris for president yesterday:
Flake clashed with Donald Trump during his presidency, and opted not to run for re-election in 2018, paving the way for then-Democrat Kyrsten Sinema to take his place. The former senator has made his peace with the Democrats, and until earlier this month served as Joe Biden’s ambassador to Turkey.
Donald Trump may dismiss it as a “scam”, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency believes the climate crisis made Hurricane Helene more severe, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:
The head of the US disaster relief agency has called Hurricane Helene, which has killed nearly 100 people, a “true multi-state event” that caused “significant infrastructure damage” and had been made worse because of global heating.
The storm killed at least 91 people, according to state and local officials in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Officials feared more bodies would be discovered.
“This is going to be a really complicated recovery in each of the five states” of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator, Deanne Criswell.
She noted that a 15ft storm surge hit Florida’s Taylor county, where Helene came ashore as a category 4 hurricane late Thursday with winds of 140mph (225km/h), and pointed out that areas of western North Carolina, where search and rescue operations are continuing, recorded 29in (74cm) of rain when the storm stalled over the region.
“This is historic flooding up in North Carolina,” Criswell told the CBS show Face the Nation on Sunday. “I don’t know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides they are having right now.”
Harris intends to visits areas affected by Hurricane Helene ‘as soon as it is possible’
Despite Donald Trump’s insistence to the contrary, the White House says Kamala Harris was briefed on Hurricane Helene’s impacts as she was campaigning over the weekend on the west coast.
Harris has canceled campaign events in Las Vegas today so she can head to Fema headquarters in Washington DC for a briefing on the storm, a White House official said. She has also spoken to North Carolina’s governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and “contacted” Georgia and Florida’s Republican governors Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis.
“The vice-president intends to visit impacted communities as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations,” the official added.
Trump attacks Biden and Harris over Helene response at lengthy Pennsylvania rally
Donald Trump’s rally in Erie, Pennsylvania yesterday stretched for nearly two hours, and began with the former president accusing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris of failing to respond as Hurricane Helene struck the southeastern United States.
“Biden is in Delaware sleeping right now in one of his many estates,” Trump said, before alleging Harris was “at fundraising events with her radical left lunatic donors, when big parts of our country have been devastated by that massive hurricane and are underwater, with many, many people dead”.
Here’s the moment:
Western North Carolina is currently under water.
Kamala is at a fundraiser in San Francisco.
Biden is once again sleeping at the beach.
America’s “leaders” are absent. pic.twitter.com/pV63bl7ENs
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 29, 2024
Harris’s campaign has thus far held back on making similar statements about Trump, but did seize on his comments downplaying the link between worsening natural disasters and climate change:
Biden to address Hurricane Helene damage as Trump seeks to turn storm into campaign issue
Good morning, US politics blog readers. After churning across the southern US and causing massive destruction and dozens of deaths in North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere, Hurricane Helene appears set to collide with the presidential campaign. Donald Trump will speak this afternoon in Valdosta, Georgia about the storm, undoubtedly with an eye on turning the swing state’s voters away from Kamala Harris. The former president has already made the hurricane’s destruction into an attack line on the Democrats, reportedly accusing Joe Biden of “sleeping” as the storm raged. Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania yesterday he also accused Harris of turning a blind eye to the destruction.
Biden plans to speak from the White House at 10.30am ET about his administration’s response to the storm, while Harris has announced the cancellation of campaign events in Las Vegas today so she can return to Washington DC and be briefed on the storm’s impact at Fema headquarters. She’ll arrive just after 5pm.
Here’s what else is happening today:
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Harris’s economic policies are more popular with voters than Trump’s, new polling commissioned by the Guardian finds. The vice-president laid out her plans in a major speech last week.
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The vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz is set for tomorrow evening, with both candidates preparing for what is currently the last scheduled debate before the election.
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Israel may or may not be on the verge of launching a ground invasion of Lebanon. We have a live blog covering the crisis, and you can read it here.