Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that progressives and government leaders must counter “rampant” misinformation about communities qualifying for federal aid after natural disasters such as the southern California wildfires and hurricane-related damage in the southeastern U.S.
Speaking at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in Washington, Ms. Harris said there is a pattern in recent extreme weather events of people spreading “mis- and disinformation” about who qualifies for disaster relief from FEMA and other government agencies.
“People are being told, ’Oh, there will be no FEMA response, Oh, you are not entitled to this or that’ or leading them astray with information that is misinformation about what they will be entitled to,” Ms. Harris said. “And then they feel disappointed, and they turn the whole system off.”
FEMA has confronted rumors about its relief efforts, including false claims that victims are only entitled to an initial payment of $750.
The GOP-led House will soon consider disaster relief for California as some Republicans are calling for conditions on the aid. Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, and others have accused state officials of mismanaging water resources, although any stipulations on an aid package would not target individual homeowners.
The vice president said the fires in California and last year’s floods in North Carolina and Georgia “are highlighting … the rampant amount of mis- and disinformation that is transiting throughout communities, and the work that we then must do to not only recognize that it’s happening, but figure out how we [are] going to jump into that.”
She said leaders must counter with “the facts that we know to be true in terms of what’s happening on the ground.”
At least 25 people have died in the wildfires, and more than 80,000 people remain under evacuation orders.
Ms. Harris, who will leave office on Monday, also criticized “what the insurance companies are not doing” in California and other states prone to extreme weather disasters.
“They are canceling coverage, making it more difficult for young homeowners who are just first time buying their home, not even insuring them,” she said. “Climate change is real. We have long known that some of the communities that will be most devastated by them are communities of color, hard-working communities, black folks we know when we talk about the Gulf states.”
The vice president, who lost the November election to President-elect Donald Trump in an electoral landslide, was introduced at the event by the Rev. Al Sharpton. It was one of her few public appearances since the loss in which many Democrats criticized the Harris campaign for blowing its huge war chest.
Mr. Sharpton said of Ms. Harris, “She never shamed us. She never let us down.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.