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Biden heads to the Carolinas to survey catastrophic damage from Hurricane Helene
President Biden is heading to the Carolinas on Wednesday for an aerial tour of the widespread damage caused by Hurricane Helene, as well as a briefing on the ground on recovery efforts. Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Georgia to get updates on the emergency response to the storm’s devastation there.
The president first heads to Greenville, South Carolina, where the city says utility crews and city public work teams are trying to clear roadways and return power. He’ll go on an aerial tour of the affected region, a way for a president to get a sense of the seismic devastation without interfering with recovery efforts. Greenville is about 60 miles south of Asheville, North Carolina, where some of the worst of the damage is.
Before Mr. Biden arrived, the White House announced he had authorized the deployment of 1,000 active-duty U.S. soldiers “to support the delivery of food, water, and other critical commodities to communities impacted by Hurricane Helene.” The White House said the troops will add to the more than 4,800 federal personnel who have been deployed to help states in the region respond to the storm.
On Monday, the president said 600 people remained unaccounted for, as the search for survivors in the Southeast continues. There were at least 175 storm-related deaths as of Wednesday.
The president will then head to Raleigh, North Carolina, for an operational briefing at an emergency operations center. Raleigh, further east, was spared the worst of the damage from Helene. Western North Carolina, where Asheville is, endured the brunt of the damage. Parts of highways were wiped out, and many residents are still without running water, a steady supply of food and other basic needs. Eastern Tennessee also saw severe damage from the storm.
The president has said he doesn’t want to get in the way of first responders or interrupt recovery efforts, explaining why he didn’t visit sooner after last week’s storms and why he isn’t visiting more places on the ground.
On Wednesday afternoon, Harris heads to Augusta, Georgia, where she will receive updates on the federal government’s response to the crisis. Former President Donald Trump was in Valdosta, Georgia, earlier in the week to survey damage.
Mr. Biden has said Congress may need to return to Washington to pass supplemental emergency funding for the federal response to the disaster. House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News on Wednesday morning that he, too, believes Congress will need to pass additional funding to respond to Helene, but that may not happen until after Election Day. All members of the House are up for reelection this year, and they’re in their districts campaigning.
A doctor criminally charged in connection with the death of Matthew Perry pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal charge of conspiracy to distribute ketamine, which carries a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in prison.
Mark Chavez agreed to surrender his medical license after being charged in connection with the actor’s death in August, along with four other defendants including another doctor who federal prosecutors say conspired with him to deal an illegal, unethical and dangerous amount of ketamine to Perry in the last month of his life.
Chavez previously agreed to plead guilty. On Wednesday, he entered a guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
KCAL News
The other people charged in Perry’s death include the L.A.-area physician accused of conspiring with Chavez, Salvador Plasencia, Jasveen Sangha — an alleged North Hollywood drug dealer who prosecutors have said is known as the “Ketamine Queen” — Perry’s former live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, and Erik Fleming, a Hawthorne man federal authorities have described as a street dealer who acted as a middleman.
In a plea agreement, Chavez admitted to taking ketamine and other prescription drugs from a ketamine infusion clinic in San Diego where he used to work. He also confessed to falsifying a prescription to provide Perry with the drug; using a patient’s name to have the prescription filled without that person’s consent or knowledge and making false statements to a wholesale ketamine distributer so he could supply more of it to Perry.
Nine days before Perry died, on Oct. 19, 2023, Chavez was interviewed by investigators with the Medical Board of California and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, according to federal prosecutors. When he spoke with them, he concealed the fact that he had distributed ketamine to Plasencia who then allegedly provided the drug to Perry, prosecutors said.
KCAL News
The plea agreement states that Chavez is aware that the federal charge he is agreeing to plead guilty to, conspiracy to distribute ketamine, carries a maximum possible sentence of 10 years imprisonment, 3 years of supervised release and a fine of $500,000 — or twice the gross gain or gross loss due to offense depending on which is greater — as well as a mandatory assessment of $100.
On Aug. 30, Chavez appeared in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles but did not enter a plea at the time. He had previously agreed to plead guilty to his role in Perry’s death.
While he avoided questions from reporters as he entered the court in August, his attorney, Matthew Binninger, spoke outside the courthouse afterwards.
“He’s incredibly remorseful for what happened — not just because it happened to Matthew Perry but because it happened to a patient,” Binninger said. “He’s trying to do everything in his power to right the wrong that happened here.”
Just days before Chavez appeared in court, his physician’s license had been suspended and he was not permitted to practice, according to records from the Medical Board of California.
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