President Joe Biden surveys damage from Hurricane Milton in Florida, and former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris storm Pennsylvania as election day nears.
Biden surveys Florida's damage
President Joe Biden visited Florida for the second time this month to survey storm damage.
Biden was surveying hurricane damage on a helicopter flight between Tampa and St. Pete Beach on the Gulf Coast. From the air, he saw the torn-up roof of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. On the ground, the president saw waterlogged household furnishings piled up outside flooded homes. Some had collapsed.
The president said he was thankful that Milton was not as bad as officials had anticipated, but that it still was a “cataclysmic” event for those in the storm's path, including many who lost irreplaceable personal items. He praised the first responders, some of whom had come from Canada.
"It's in moments like this we come together to take care of each other, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans," Biden said after he was briefed by federal, state and local officials, and met with residents and responders. "We are one United States, one United States.
The president announced $612 million for six Department of Energy projects in hurricane-affected areas to bolster the region’s electric grid. The money includes $47 million for Gainesville Regional Utilities and $47 million for Switched Source to partner with Florida Power & Light.
With a little more than three weeks before the election, the hurricanes have added another dimension to the closely contested presidential race.
Trump has said the Biden administration’s storm response was lacking, particularly in western North Carolina after Helene. Biden and Harris have criticized Trump for promoting falsehoods about the federal response.
Biden said Trump was “not singularly" to blame for the spread of misinformation but that he has the "biggest mouth.”
“They blame me for everything. It's OK,” Trump told Fox.
Biden has pressed for Congress to act quickly to make sure the Small Business Administration and FEMA have the money they need to get through hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30 in the Atlantic. He said Friday that Milton had caused an estimated $50 billion in damage.
FEMA is part of the Homeland Security Department, and Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the hurricane season is far from over and there are other natural disasters for which the agency must ready.
“We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, whether it’s another hurricane, a tornado, a fire, an earthquake," Mayorkas said on CBS’ “Face the Nation." "We have to be ready. And it is not good government to be dependent on a day-to-day existence as opposed to appropriate planning."
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said there was plenty of time and that lawmakers would address funding when Congress comes back into session after the Nov. 5 election.
“We’ll provide the additional resources,” Johnson told CBS.
Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. At least 10 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of customers remain without power.
Officials say the toll could have been worse if not for widespread evacuations. The still-fresh devastation from Helene just two weeks earlier probably helped convince many people to flee.
Trump, Harris both campaigning in Pennsylvania Monday
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump took their fight for Pennsylvania to opposite ends of the state on Monday, with Harris speaking in the northwest corner of Erie and Trump in the southeastern suburbs of Philadelphia.
Harris and Trump have been making regular appearances in what is the country's largest battleground state — it will be Harris' 10th visit to Pennsylvania this campaign season, and just last week Trump made stops in both Scranton and Reading.
Pennsylvania's energy industry and natural gas fracking are likely topics as they compete for the fraction of the state's voters who have not made up their minds. Mail-in voting is well underway in the state where some 7 million people are likely to cast votes in the presidential race.
Trump beat Hillary Clinton by more than 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania on his way to winning the presidency in 2016, but native Scrantonian Joe Biden edged Trump by about 80,000 votes in the state four years ago.
Harris held a rally in Erie, a Democratic majority city of about 94,000 people bordered by suburbs and rural areas with significant numbers of Republicans. Erie County is often cited as one of the state's reliable bellwether regions, where the electorate has a decidedly moderate voting record. Trump visited Erie on Sept. 29.
Trump's town hall Monday is at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center and Fairgrounds in suburban Oaks, hoping to drive up turnout among his supporters.
Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes, the most of any swing state, have long made it a center of presidential electioneering. Democrats have won three straight elections for governor and both current U.S. senators are Democrats, but its legislature is closely divided and both parties have had recent success in statewide contests.