Did Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee refuse to ask President Joe Biden and the federal government for help after Hurricane Helene? No, that's not true: The governor requested an emergency declaration on September 27, 2024. It was approved the next day, which opened up federal aid.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 28, 2024. It read:
The governor of Tennessee refused to ask President Biden for help, unlike all the other red states in Helene's path.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Sep 29 10:38:34 2024 UTC)
Lee asked for Biden's help, specifically the help of the federal government, by requesting an emergency declaration (archived here) from the president on September 27, 2024. Biden approved the declaration (archived here) one day later, on September 28, 2024.
The approval opened up federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the wake of Helene, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Florida's Big Bend and unleashed torrential rains, flooding and winds across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.
Additional fact checks of claims about Hurricane Helene can be found here.
