Biden admin upended by chaotic weekend

The Biden administration is struggling to find its footing amid a series of unfortunate events that are testing the oft-vacationing president and his vice president, who is currently auditioning for the top spot in American politics.

Hurricane Helene decimated parts of North Carolina, leaving millions of Americans without power, at least thirty dead and many more missing. Entire towns are practically gone, and pictures of video of the storm’s aftermath show flooding enveloping homes and washing out highways. Local officials are begging for assistance and resources; state Representative Neal Collins, for example, tweeted, “I currently have two people on oxygen needing generators & 1 person on dialysis needing one. Anyone with power willing to loan their generators? I’ll organize delivery & return.” Across the southeast, the storm has claimed at least 116 lives, according to reporting from NBC News, a third of which occurred in North Carolina. 

Helene was upgraded to a Category 4 storm on Thursday evening as it threatened to make landfall in Florida, but President Joe Biden traveled to his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on Friday evening and did not return to the White House until late Sunday night. Biden denied there were any more federal resources that could be given to the area, arguing that they had already approved a “significant amount” that they “hadn’t asked for yet.” When asked by a reporter why he wasn’t in Washington commanding the response to the storm, Biden claimed, “I was commanding. I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well … It’s called a telephone.”

Harris addressed Helene’s damage during a campaign event in Las Vegas, Nevada late Sunday, but similarly did not return to her work schedule at the White House until Monday. She posted a photo after her rally that showed her sitting on an airplane, purportedly taking notes while on a call with the administrator of FEMA, Deanne Criswell. Some critics alleged the photo was staged, noting there did not appear to be any writing on the paper in front of Harris and that her headphones didn’t seem to be plugged into her phone.

Biden said he will not visit North Carolina until local officials tell him he can make the trip without impacting recovery efforts, while former president Donald Trump is planning to visit Valdosta, Georgia today.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration also has to contend with another looming catastrophe: a strike by east coast port workers appears imminent as pay and benefit negotiations have stalled between the International Longshoremen’s Association union and businesses. The strike is expected to take place at three dozen ports from Maine to Texas and will result in 100,000 shipping containers being stuck in transit. JPMorgan analysts estimate the strike could cost the economy up to $5 billion a day and for each day the ports are shuttered, it will take six days to clear the shipping backlog, the New York Times reports.

The disruption to the supply chain calls to mind similar issues in the fall of 2021, when ports had too many containers to clear and ships were left sitting offshore waiting to unload their hauls. Biden claimed to have solved that crisis a few days before Christmas, while his press secretary, Jen Psaki, diminished consumer concerns as the “tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed.” The pending longshoremen strike this time around is clearly on Biden’s mind. A reporter asked Biden about a different kind of strike (the explosive kind): “Any comment on the strikes in Yemen?” Biden replied, “I’ve spoken to both sides. They gotta settle the strike. ’supporting the collective bargaining effort. I think they’ll settle the strike.”

-Amber Duke

On our radar

OFF THE RECORDS Staff members at the Department of Veterans Affairs improperly accessed the medical records of vice presidential nominees J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, two sources told CNN. The department is currently investigating the incident, and both parties have reportedly been notified about the breach. 

CLINTON CHATTER Former secretary of state and Trump opponent Hillary Clinton warned in an interview Sunday that there would be an “October surprise” meant to “distort” and “pervert” the Harris campaign. She likened such a scenario to the 2016 Pizzagate rumors that Clinton and members of her staff were part of an underground child-trafficking ring. 

ROUTH ENTERS PLEA Ryan Routh, in federal court on Monday, pleaded not guilty to attempting to assassinate former president Donald Trump. Routh was caught after a Secret Service agent spotted him with a rifle through a chain link fence at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach. Routh also allegedly gave a box containing a letter to an associate before the assassination attempt; the letter promised $150,000 to someone who could “finish the job” in killing Trump. 

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? Hundreds of thousands of Verizon customers reported nationwide outages on Monday morning, with users describing cellphones being locked in “SOS” mode. Verizon confirmed that it is working to restore service to its customers but did not give a timeline on when network problems would be resolved. 

Trump targets Kamala’s trans policy

Former president Donald Trump has been running a new ad attacking Vice President Kamala Harris for her stated support for giving free gender-transition-related health care to illegal aliens in US detention facilities. Trump brought the claim up during the presidential debate, was accused of lying by many political commentators, but was vindicated by fact checkers, who pointed to a 2019 video of Harris stating, “Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access,” and an ACLU questionnaire in which Harris answered in the affirmative for the policy. The Trump campaign is using both pieces of evidence in its ad, which the Bulwark notes is the first ever general election ad on trans issues. 

It cost the campaign $2.5 million to air the ads in the seven swing states, and Trump’s team made sure they ran during college and professional football games. Campaign manager Chris LaCivita said, “This has been a defining issue for the new left for the last ten years. So now we’re going to make sure Harris has to run on it.”  A Harris campaign spokesperson claims Harris is not “proposing” or “running on” free sex changes for migrants. 

–Cockburn

Dem lawmaker laments strike that killed Hezbollah leader

Representative Rashida Tlaib parlayed political sympathy from the left following a mocking political cartoon showing the congresswoman with an exploding pager into bashing America and Israel following an airstrike that eliminated one of the world’s most notorious terrorists.

“Our country is funding this bloodbath,” Tlaib tweeted following Israel’s targeted assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. “Sending more of our troops and bombs to the region is not advancing peace. The US government are conspirators to the war criminal Netanyahu’s genocidal plan.”

Tlaib’s remarks stand out in part because she put herself on an island by condemning the assassination. Despite some glowing press coverage of Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader was a brutal terrorist responsible for the deaths of numerous American, Israelis and Arabs.

Nasrallah’s death followed a wave of targeted strikes against other lower-ranking Hezbollah members. Since the October 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, the Nasrallah-led Hezbollah has fired almost 10,000 missiles into Israel, displacing around 70,000 people. 

Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, has a long history of using her massive social media platform to promulgate disinformation — perhaps most notoriously when she “falsely claim[ed]” that Israel bombed Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital.

What comes next in the region remains fluid. Recent reports suggest that Israel is poised to launch a ground offensive into Lebanon, or that the ground offensive has already commenced. 

–Matthew Foldi