WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is giving $13 billion dollars in aid to help Puerto Rico rebuild nearly three years after the island was devastated by Hurricane Maria, the president announced in a press conference on Friday. 

What You Need To Know

  • President Trump announced that his administration is giving $13 billion in aid to Puerto Rico

  • The aid comes nearly three years after the island was devastated by Hurricane Maria

  • The money will be used to rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid, improve infrastructure and invest in education

  • Trump has previously been unwilling to release aid to Puerto Rico

“Today my administration is making the largest emergency relief award in history to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electrical grid and educational system,” Trump said, adding that he is “the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico.” 

The White House said $9.6 billion of the new funding is intended to help the Puerto Rico Electrical Power Authority repair and replace thousands of miles of transmission and distribution lines, electrical substations, power generation systems, office buildings, and make other grid improvements.

It said $2 billion would be for the Puerto Rico Department of Education to repair schools across the island.

Puerto Rico’s Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced thanked both the president and FEMA in a statement, saying she was grateful for the work.

Others were not quite as welcoming of Trump’s announcement, with some politicians—like New York’s Puerto Rico-born representative Nydia Velázquez—accusing the president of playing politics with critical aid. 

“The Trump Administration delayed, dragged its feet and resisted allocating these badly needed funds. Now, forty-six days before the election, the Administration has finally seen fit to release these funds,” Velázquez wrote in a statement. “While I certainly hope to see this money put to good use making Puerto Rico’s electrical system more resilient, these delays are unacceptable, and it is insulting to Puerto Ricans everywhere that the Administration is so blatantly playing politics with this aid.”

When asked about the timing of the announcement, the president said it simply took a long time to prepare.

Trump in the past has opposed providing additional aid to Puerto Rico, arguing it received too much already and expressing concern that the money would be wasted or misspent.

In the aftermath of the storm, he publicly feuded with the mayor of San Juan over her criticism of his administration's response to the storm. Trump irritated many by tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd during a visit to an island church. Democrats earlier this year posted an image of the scene on a billboard in Kissimmee, a heavily Puerto Rican city in central Florida.

Hurricane Maria slammed into the island in September 2017 with winds of 155 mph, causing an estimated $100 billion in damage and killing nearly 3,000 people, according to the official death toll that Trump said was exaggerated to make him look bad.

Even now, thousands of homes are still damaged.

Power wasn’t restored island-wide until nearly 11 months after the storm. The system remains vulnerable, with outages affecting tens of thousands of people on a regular basis.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.