President Joe Biden will announce more than half a billion dollars in projects for electric grid resilience

President Joe Biden looks out the window as Air Force One flights over Maryland on October 3, 2024. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images In a Sunday visit to Florida, President Joe Biden will announce more than half a billion dollars in projects for electric grid resilience after making yet another trip this week to yet another community devastated by a hurricane. The president’s visit to St. Petersburg to see the damage wrought by Hurricane Milton follows trips to that state earlier this month, as well as Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, to survey damage from Hurricane Helene. The president and other leaders have already called on Congress to try to get more funding passed for disaster relief and small business programs as the hurricanes join other extreme weather events this year quickly emptying the aid funds in the government's bank. Biden is set to announce $612 million in funding, which nearly 1.5 million customers are suffering from power outages, a White House official said, including $94 million in Florida projects and $47 million to Gainesville Regional Utilities and $47 million for Switched Source to work with Florida Power and Light. The official said Saturday that these investments are part of the President’s commitment to making long-term investments that protect, enhance, and upgrade our nation’s electric grid, particularly during extreme weather events. The funds will be disbursed through the Department of Energy’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program.

Presidential visits to disaster sites tend to be almost always nonpartisan affairs to illustrate federal and state governments rising above the fray to join together in the numbers but Biden's not a candidate for president in 2024 means that effect is even greater. He has regularly spoken with Republican leadership, the governors of Florida and Georgia, and also conservative lawmakers in the Southeast where the hurricanes have struck, often praising the state and local levels in kind. The president has particularly praised state and local officials for their efforts to discourage their constituents from spouting falsehoods and misinformation – and saying it has led to threats against ground relief workers and kept some helping them from seeking the aid they require. But ‘conservative, hardcore’ Republicans in impacted areas are standing up and saying ‘It’s got to stop’,” he said on Friday. The veneer of bipartisanship has taken longer to transfer to Vice President Kamala Harris, who too has been touring disaster sites and reaching out to state and local officials. After reports that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris called on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to talk as she lobbied him to aid the nation's coronavirus vaccination campaign, Harris and DeSantis squared off against each other accusing each other of politics. DeSantis replied that he's spoken to Biden and that as vice president, Harris has no say in the federal government’s response. On his previous trip to Florida, the president parted ways with politics to tour the storm-ravaged area of Keaton Beach with Sen. Rick Scott, a staunch conservative and Trump ally, who has long been a political foil for Biden. The governor, however, met with Biden during Biden's trip to his home state, five hours south of where the president toured, to hold a news conference. Asked on Friday whether he planned to visit DeSantis during his latest trip, Biden replied: He called the governor ‘very cooperative,’ adding: ‘If he’s available.’ Biden went on to say we got on very, very well.