EXCLUSIVE: Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is criticizing the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene while warning the price tag for its recovery could be “one of the most expensive” the U.S. has seen.

“There were some pretty ominous projections, and so Congress acted appropriately,” Johnson told Fox News Digital Friday evening, noting lawmakers freed up roughly $20 billion in immediate funding for FEMA in last month’s short-term federal funding bill. “But, so far, [President Biden, Vice President Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas] have failed in that response.”

Johnson said he was “alarmed and disappointed” by Biden officials’ comments immediately after the storm suggesting FEMA was too low on funds to deal with Helene’s wrath. 

Mayorkas said “we are meeting the immediate needs” of the hurricane earlier this week but said “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”

NORTH CAROLINA REELING FROM DEVASTATING HELENE AS DEATH TOLL CLIMBS: ‘NEVER SEEN ANYTHING QUITE LIKE THIS’

Biden suggested earlier this week he may want Congress to return for an emergency session to pass a supplemental disaster aid bill.

“They are scrambling to cover their egregious errors and mistakes. And there’s an effort to blame others or blame circumstances when this is just purely a lack of leadership and response,” the speaker said. He noted Mayorkas said in July that FEMA was “tremendously prepared” for weather crises this year. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and DHS for comment.

Johnson also argued lawmakers could not act until an assessment by state and local authorities produced projections of how much needs to be allocated.

“I don’t think those estimates could conceivably be completed until at least 30 days — until after the election, and that’s when Congress will be back in session again,” he said.

HURRICANE HELENE: NORTH CAROLINA RESIDENTS FIGHT FOR THEIR SURVIVAL AS BASIC GOODS BECOME SCARCE

The Republican leader is no stranger to hurricanes. He noted his native Louisiana is still dealing with the damage from Hurricane Katrina today, but his prediction was dire when asked about the cost of recovery after Helene ravaged the Southeast, killing more than 200 people.

He said it could be “one of the most expensive storms that the country has ever encountered.”

“It affects at least six states — a broad swath of destruction across many, many areas — and I think that’s why it’s going to take a while to assess,” Johnson said.

Johnson criticized President Biden’s response to the storm. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

“As soon as those numbers are ready, Congress will be prepared to act,” Johnson vowed at another point.

“I certainly hope the administration is working overtime right now to … help get them prepared.”

As part of immediate response efforts, Johnson has toured areas in Georgia and Florida pummeled by the storm and is poised to visit hard-hit North Carolina in the coming days, he said.

Criticism over FEMA’s response has prompted some conservatives to accuse the Biden administration of diverting disaster aid funds toward supporting illegal immigrants at the border through the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which was allocated roughly $650 million in the last fiscal year.

TRUMP TARGETS BIDEN, HARRIS OVER FEDERAL RESPONSE TO HURRICANE: ‘INCOMPETENTLY MANAGED’

Both the White House and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have vigorously denied any link between disaster aid and SSP beyond both being administered by FEMA and have said claims of any disaster relief dollars being used to support migrant housing services are false.

“No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrants’ housing and services. None. At. All,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in a memo on Friday. “In fact, the funding for communities to support migrants is directly appropriated by Congress to CBP, and is merely administered by FEMA. The funding is in no way related to FEMA’s response and recovery efforts.”

Johnson did not give a definitive answer when asked about the concerns echoed on the right, but he accused Mayorkas of mismanaging DHS.

Homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

“There is a lot of controversy about the nonsense that the Mayorkas Department of Homeland Security has engaged in. With their … dangerous open-borders policy and then the relocation efforts of taking illegal aliens and transporting them around the country,” Johnson said. “We have been working every day, House Republicans, to stop the madness.

“And, so, what happened is that FEMA, because it’s a division of DHS, it’s very clear that they should be focused on helping Americans recover from disasters and not straining resources that go to other programs that are catering to illegals.”

When pressed on whether DHS was able to divert congressionally appropriated funding for disaster aid into SSP, Johnson said, “There are different programs that have different funding.”

He pointed out that House Republicans are seeking to defund the SSP program in the current federal funding discussions for fiscal year 2025.

“We are doing everything within our power to prevent these abuses of the law and abuses of taxpayer dollars from the White House and the Democratic Party,” Johnson said.

Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report

It’s been nearly two years since a secretly recorded conversation featuring Los Angeles political heavyweights rocked City Hall — and really, what has changed?

Sure, then-City Council president Nury Martinez — who disparaged Oaxacans and described a young Black boy as a monkey — resigned and has stayed away from politics. But Gil Cedillo — who claimed on the recording that the three City Council districts held by Black representatives were actually “Latino seats” — served out the rest of his council term and now traipses from one Latino cultural event to another like a Chicano “Emily in Paris.”

Meanwhile, Councilmember Kevin de León — who said during the hour-long conversation that Black political power was as fake as the Wizard of Oz — is running for reelection. Ron Herrera — who quit as head of the L.A. County Federation of Labor after The Times broke the story — has returned to public life, donating money to De León’s campaign and showing up to his debates.

And now, one recurring theme in their vulgar, racist chat — that Latinos do not have sufficient voting power in Los Angeles — seemingly has a powerful champion in California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.

As first reported by my colleagues David Zahniser and Dakota Smith, Bonta is pushing city officials to redraw council district boundaries before the 2026 primary election. California’s top lawman has voiced concerns that the map approved by the City Council three years ago doesn’t provide Latinos in some districts with “the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice,” according to sources.

A spokesperson for Bonta’s office said he was “unable” to comment for this column. At a news conference Friday at the Central Library in downtown L.A. to discuss voting rights, Bonta would say only that an investigation was ongoing and that he looked “forward to that time” when he could say more.

Latinos are nearly half of L.A.’s population but occupy just a third of the council’s 15 seats. The lack of Latino representation has been a civic embarrassment since Ed Roybal became the first Latino on the City Council in modern times, way back in 1949.

Get-out-the-vote campaigns, political machines, voting rights lawsuits, protests — activists and politicians have tried to achieve equity at City Hall and just can’t seem to get there.

They have offered all sorts of reasons why. The one that’s getting the most play in this campaign season was repeated as a mantra on the leaked audio: that gentrification is messing with the voting rights of working-class Latinos.

The state attorney general has flagged Eastside districts 1 and 14 — traditionally Latino strongholds — as “areas of concern,” according to the sources who spoke to Zahniser and Smith. District 1, formerly held by Cedillo, and District 14, represented by De León, have seen an influx of white people and upwardly mobile Latinos over the past generation.

On the recording — which captured a conversation held in 2021 but leaked in the fall of 2022 — Cedillo basically begged Martinez to keep hipsters away from his district.

“Elysian Valley is a headache,” Cedillo said. “Eagle Rock’s a headache. Highland Park’s a headache. And Lincoln Heights. I don’t need those headaches. I have poor people. La Raza.”

“It’s not [for] us,” De León later added. “It’s for Latino strength for the foreseeable future.”

Indeed, Cedillo lost his seat to Eunisses Hernandez, a young Latina who got next to no support from the Eastside Latino political establishment and instead relied on a multicultural progressive coalition.

In his reelection campaign, De León is facing off against Ysabel Jurado, a Filipina American political novice who placed first in the March primary ahead of De León and two Latino Assembly members. Jurado is relying on the same coalition as Hernandez did, while picking up more Latino political support, including Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis, L.A. Unified School District trustee Rocio Rivas and Hernandez herself.

Ethnic communities in this country have voted for representatives that look like them since the 19th century. Latino politicians in L.A. have ridden this political horse since the Roybal days, and that’s what De León is banking on to take him to the proverbial finish line. But anyone who thinks that Latinos vote only for Latinos in today’s city is seriously mistaken — or a Chicanosaurus.

The council district with the highest percentage of eligible Latino voters is District 9 in South L.A., at nearly 65%. That’s more than double the percentage of eligible Black voters, which is just 24%. Yet incumbent Curren Price has won all three of his elections against Latino opponents, increasing his margin of victory each time.

District 15, which covers harbor communities and Watts, also has a voting-eligible population that is majority Latino. On the leaked audio, Cedillo said that homegrown “young Chicano union members, longshoremen” should represent the area.

Voters had a chance to make that happen in 2021, when Danielle Sandoval, a former International Longshore & Warehouse Union district delegate and member of the San Pedro and Harbor City neighborhood councils, made it to the general election against Tim McOsker.

McOsker easily won, after The Times revealed that a restaurant that Sandoval was associated with owed tens of thousands of dollars in back wages to former employees. What really hampered Sandoval, however, was a lack of endorsements from prominent Latino politicians, who dropped their usual cant of Latino power to back the white guy over the Latina.

That’s the realpolitik that Bonta shouldn’t ignore, because it’s long happened in L.A. and is playing out this November in the San Fernando Valley.

According to Zahniser and Smith’s reporting, Bonta’s team has discussed the possibility of creating a third “Latino” district in the San Fernando Valley — one with a significant concentration of Latino voters. That’s something Latino residents have long pined for, to join the seats held by Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez.

The easiest fix would be redrawing District 2, which covers the southeast portion of the Valley, borders Padilla and Rodriguez’s districts, has a 33% voter-eligible Latino population and is represented by termed-out Paul Krekorian.

Voters there have a chance to elect a Latina in November: Jillian Burgos, who’s running against former Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian.

Yet the only prominent Latino elected official to endorse Burgos is L.A. Unified trustee Kelly Gonez, who’s not part of the Latino political machine that has run the northeast Valley for the past quarter-century.

Instead, Latino politicians across the city are standing behind Nazarian, who once served as Krekorian’s chief of staff.

On the leaked audio that brought down her career, Martinez — long the field general for that Valley Latino machine — dismissed calls by Cedillo, De León and Herrera to redraw Krekorian’s district to favor a future Latino candidate.

“Don’t mess up the Valley, ’cause we’re cool in the Valley,” she told them. “Nobody wants a little Armenian love? I mean, they haven’t done anything to us.”

Hey, Rob Bonta: Maybe you should investigate Latino politicians who don’t support Latinos running against non-Latinos? On second thought, no: that would be like trying to count every pine needle in Yosemite.

Former President Trump on Friday said that Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities while mocking President Biden’s answer earlier this week on the subject.  

While speaking at a campaign event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, he said when Biden was asked about Israel attacking Iran, the president answered, “’As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you wanna hit, right? I said, ‘I think he’s got that one wrong. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit?’” 

Trump went on to say that nuclear proliferation is the “biggest risk we have.” 

TRUMP SLAMS THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE TO HURRICANE HELENE

The former president said he rebuilt the “entire military, jets everything, I built it, including nuclear” while he was president. “I hated to build the nuclear, but I got to know firsthand the power of that stuff, and I’ll tell you what: we have to be totally prepared. We have to be absolutely prepared.”

He said when Biden was asked about Israel and Iran: “His answer should have been “‘Hit the nuclear first, worry about the rest later.’”

Trump made similar comments in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, telling correspondent Bill Melugin Biden’s response on Israel attacking Iran was the “craziest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s the biggest risk we have. The biggest risk we have is nuclear.” 

TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISORS MOCK BIDEN’S WARNINGS TO ISRAEL TO STICK TO ‘PROPORTIONAL’ IRAN RESPONSE

Many rockets, fired from Iran, are seen over Jerusalem from Hebron, West Bank, Tuesday. The Israeli army announced that missiles were fired from Iran towards Israel and sirens were heard across the country, especially in Tel Aviv.  (Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

He continued, “I mean, to make the statement, ‘Please leave their nuclear alone.’ I would tell you that that’s not the right answer. That was the craziest answer because, you know what? Soon, they’re going to have nuclear weapons. And then you’re going to have problems.” 

Former deputy director of national intelligence Kash Patel, who served under Trump, said this week: “Iran launched a war into Israel, so to say that the Israelis who are defending themselves and our hostages shouldn’t attack sites in Iran that could kill them – especially when you’re the one who gave Iran $7 billion as a commander in chief and then allowed them to acquire nuclear materials – is wildly political.”

Biden told reporters this week that he and the other members of the G-7 were in agreement that Israel should have a “measured” response to Iran.  (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Following Tuesday’s attack by Iran on Israel, Biden told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, “the answer is no,” of Israel potentially targeting the country’s nuclear program. 

He added that he and the other members of the G-7 all “agree that [Israel has] a right to respond, but they should respond proportionally,”