Mike Johnson Shows His True Colors With Hurricane Victim Response

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.

House Speaker Mike Johnson will not be calling the House back early to vote on emergency hurricane relief, reported Politico’s Olivia Beavers.

The speaker said that the damages from the storm have to be “tabulated” before Congress can pass supplemental aid to help the victims, adding that he believes the situation is weeks away from that being achieved.

Johnson will visit western North Carolina on Wednesday, a region that was devastated by Helene and its subsequent floods. More than 100 people died in the storm’s aftermath. Across the six states that the Category Four storm hit, at least 231 people have been reported dead, making Helene one of the deadliest recorded storms in U.S. history. Overall, Helene has been described by weather forecast offices as “one of the most significant weather events” to hit the area “in the modern era.”

More than 300,000 people remained without power in Georgia and the Carolinas by Sunday evening, with nearly half of those customers in North Carolina, reported CNN.

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. The Biden-Harris administration has also distributed more than $137 million in federal assistance to support the beleaguered region, the White House announced in a press release Sunday.

Meanwhile, Johnson has continued to undermine one of the federal agencies tasked with responding to the storm surge. In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Johnson elevated a false claim launched by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, insisting that the Biden administration had diverted emergency relief funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to aid immigration efforts.

“The streams of funding are different, that is not an untrue statement, of course,” Johnson told the conservative network. “But the problem is with the American people, see, and what they’re frustrated by, is that FEMA should be involved. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, their mission is to help people in times like this of natural disaster. Not to be engaged in using any pool of funding from any account for resettling illegal aliens who have come across the border. That’s what the Biden administration, Kamala Harris, and Secretary Mayorkas have been engaged in.”

In response, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told ABC News that the charge was “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.”