US President Donald Trump has griped about emergency relief efforts in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, saying federal aid cannot continue “forever”.<\/p>\n
In tweets, he accused Puerto Rico of a “total lack of accountability”, adding that “electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes”.<\/p>\n
The island, whose 3.4 million residents are US citizens, is 90% without power, some three weeks after Hurricane Maria.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Congress approved a $36.5bn (\u00a328bn) disaster relief bill.<\/p>\n
The cross-party bill, which still requires Senate approval, provides emergency storm relief for Puerto Rico, Florida, Texas and the US Virgin Islands, as well as wildfire-ravaged California.<\/p>\n
In Thursday’s morning tweets, the US president noted it was up to “Congress to decide how much to spend”.<\/p>\n
But he added: “We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”<\/p>\n
The mayor of Puerto Rican capital San Juan said Mr Trump’s tweets highlight his “desperation” and the “inadequacy” of the hurricane response.<\/p>\n
“It is not that you do not get it,” Carmen Yulin Cruz added, “it is that you are incapable of empathy and frankly simply cannot get the job done.”<\/p>\n
White House chief of staff John Kelly said later the US would stand with Puerto Rico “until the job is done”.<\/p>\n
He also said the president was “exactly accurate” to assert that federal personnel are “not going to be there forever”.<\/p>\n
The storm killed at least 45 people in the US territory, while more than 100 others remain unaccounted for, say Puerto Rico officials.<\/p>\n
The island is saddled with about $72bn in pre-hurricane debt that is being overseen by a federally created oversight board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump has griped about emergency relief efforts in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, saying federal aid cannot continue “forever”. In tweets, he accused Puerto Rico of a “total lack of accountability”, adding that “electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes”. The island, whose 3.4 million residents are US citizens, is 90% without power, some three weeks after Hurricane… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":925,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions\/925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}