What’s going on with Donald Trump and the extended delay on the requested disaster declaration for Southwest Virginia?
Trump took what his PR flunkies called “decisive action” on Feb. 25 to approve a disaster declaration for neighboring Kentucky, in the face of widespread flooding that affected the Kentucky-Southwest Virginia-West Virginia region.
Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Ninth District Congressman Morgan Griffith have been leading a bipartisan push to get the Trump folks moving on the Virginia part of the disaster.
They made their first request way back on Feb. 17.
Maybe Trump is playing political games with Virginia because the Commonwealth didn’t vote for him any of the three times he ran for president.
He shouldn’t be punishing Southwest Virginia for that. Southwest is about as MAGA as you can get.
Highlights from the latest letter from Kaine, Warner and Griffith to Trump 2.0:
“Unfortunately, this storm has resulted in at least four fatalities, caused significant damage to regional infrastructure, left over 203,000 customers without power at its peak, caused over 270 road closures including low water bridges and road washouts, resulted in multiple 9-1-1 center outages,” said the lawmakers. “The towns of Grundy and Hurley (Buchanan County) experienced catastrophic flooding, with the river gauges in these towns spiking historical flood levels. Over 150 swift water rescues, including evacuations, were made. The ability to perform thorough damage assessments has been hampered by access to areas, the safety of damage assessment teams, and stretched local capacity due to ongoing recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene.”
“Since the initial request for an expedited Major Disaster Declaration, additional impacts have been revealed now that post-storm assessments are taking place,” they continued. “This amended expedited Major Disaster Declaration would ensure the availability of key federal resources to support the Commonwealth’s efforts to guarantee public safety and rapid recovery from the direct and indirect effects of this destructive storm event.”
He’s making us beg, isn’t he?
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Chris Graham
