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Biden To Authorize Broader Disaster Relief For Texas

President Biden speaks to the press before departing the White House for Milwaukee on Tuesday.
Nicholas Kamm
/
AFP via Getty Images
President Biden speaks to the press before departing the White House for Milwaukee on Tuesday.

President Biden said Friday he will sign a major disaster declaration that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is requesting, which would open up broader federal aid for immediate and long-term recovery efforts in the state, including for both individual needs and public infrastructure.

Biden and Abbott spoke Thursday night regarding the response.

Texas has been at the mercy of an unprecedented winter storm that has left many of the state's residents without heat, power and potable water for several days. Several people, some homeless, have died in the freezing temperatures.

Departing the White House for a trip to Michigan, the president told reporters he's asked the Department of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense to identify resources that could help the recovery in Texas.

Biden said he wants to visit Texas but does not want his visit to be a "burden" on recovery efforts. The president said he may decide early next week whether to go.

Earlier, the White House put out a list of nearly two dozen local officials in the state it had been in contact with this week regarding relief efforts.

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Alana Wise joined WAMU in September 2018 as the 2018-2020 Audion Reporting Fellow for Guns & America. Selected as one of 10 recipients nationwide of the Audion Reporting Fellowship, Alana works in the WAMU newsroom as part of a national reporting project and is spending two years focusing on the impact of guns in the Washington region.
Alana Wise
Alana Wise is a politics reporter on the Washington desk at NPR.