By Vice President Kamala Harris is facing renewed scrutiny after it was revealed that she skipped annual hurricane season preparedness briefings, a long-standing tradition.
The New York Post writes that Harris tried to fake her way through hurricane preparation as vice president.
“Harris hasn’t demonstrated the ability — or desire — to do the apolitical parts of the job that have a huge impact on our lives,” a former Pence aide told The Post as criticism of the flat-footed federal response to Helene became a campaign issue. “Why should Americans trust her to start in the Oval Office?”
Then-President Donald Trump and Pence held pre-hurricane season preparedness meetings with federal emergency officials in each of their four years in office. President Biden had similar meetings in 2021, 2022 and 2023 — though Harris doesn’t seem to have joined or held her own parallel events.
Former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told The Post that annual drop-ins from the president and vice president are important and that the omission calls to mind Harris’ role as Biden’s point person on illegal immigration.
“It doesn’t seem like she wants to roll up her sleeves and actually get into the governing of the country, which is hard to do. It’s not glamorous. It’s a lot of briefings.”
“My guess,” he added, “is she would act the very same way [as president], which is hands off — ‘I’m not going to run the country. I’m going to put a team together, and they’ll run it, and I’ll kind of talk about it,’ which is obviously a very different model than what President Trump did.”
The issue came into sharp focus as the death toll from Hurricane Helene, which devastated parts of the Southeast, surpassed 143. Harris, who was in Las Vegas for campaign events, cut her trip short and returned to Washington on Monday to attend a briefing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). She is also slated to visit storm-ravaged Augusta, Georgia, on Wednesday.
FEMA has struggled to address the devastation in the Southeast, particularly in the areas hardest hit by flooding, such as western North Carolina. Residents and local officials have expressed frustration with the slow response from federal agencies.
“The people in western North Carolina feel let down, deservedly so,” said Rep. Chuck Edwards, whose district includes some of the worst-affected areas. “The response has been disappointing. We’ve begun to see some resources brought in today, but the storm was over about 80 hours ago.”
Edwards emphasized that local officials were well aware of the storm’s trajectory, but federal resources did not arrive promptly. “We knew that the storm was coming, and only today are we beginning to see the first FEMA employees and trailers and helicopters come in.”
Harris’ office responded to the mounting criticism by highlighting her past involvement in disaster response efforts. Her spokesperson, Ernesto Apreza, pointed to several hurricane-related events Harris has attended, including her July visit to Houston following Hurricane Beryl and her April 2023 announcement of $562 million in federal funding for climate-resilient projects in coastal cities. Apreza also noted that Harris has regularly received briefings from federal agencies on natural disasters and emergency response efforts.
“Vice President Harris regularly receives briefings from relevant federal agencies and officials on emerging storms, other natural disasters, and the federal government’s response efforts,” Apreza told The Post. “It is a top priority for the Vice President to ensure communities impacted by natural disasters have the resources they need to respond.”
