On September 8, 2005 — ten days after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans and flattened the Mississippi coast — the House of Representatives voted on $51.8 billion in emergency relief for the survivors.

It passed 410 to 11.

Virginia Foxx was one of the 11.

You can read the roll call yourself. Roll Call 460 lists every name. All eleven "no" votes were Republicans. Foxx, then eight months into her first term, is on that list.

Twenty-one years later, a storm hit her own district. Her position changed.

The record, in order

This is not a single bad vote. It is a pattern with one exception, and the exception is the interesting part.

Hurricane Katrina, September 8, 2005. The House passes $51.8 billion in emergency aid, 410-11. Foxx votes no.

Hurricane Sandy, January 4, 2013. The House votes on H.R. 41, which raised the borrowing authority of the federal flood insurance program so it could actually pay Sandy claims. Foxx votes no.

Hurricane Sandy, January 15, 2013. The House votes on H.R. 152, the main Sandy supplemental appropriations bill. Foxx votes no.

Hurricane Helene, December 19 and 20, 2024. Helene has torn through western North Carolina — her district. Congress takes up the American Relief Act, carrying roughly $100 billion in disaster money for North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and other states hit since 2022. Foxx votes yes. When a second version comes to the floor the next day and passes 366-34, she votes yes again.

Louisiana's survivors got a no. Mississippi's got a no. New Jersey's got a no, twice. Watauga County got a yes.

What she said when it was her turn

Foxx wasn't quiet about needing help. She was, by her own account, working the phones.

Danielle Battaglia of McClatchy reached her on September 30, 2024, days after the storm. Two feet of rain had fallen over Foxx's home in Banner Elk. Her own driveway had washed out.

"My own husband is trapped because our driveway washed away."

"We don't have enough National Guard. Last night, they had sent out 400 National Guard for 25 counties."

She spent three days contacting the White House, the National Guard and the governor's office. She pushed for more troops, for Starlink satellite internet to reach cut-off counties, and for leftover federal COVID relief money to be redirected to storm recovery.

Every one of those requests is reasonable. People in her district were cut off and desperate, and calling Washington on their behalf is exactly the job.

It was also exactly the job in 2005, when the people cut off and desperate lived in Louisiana.

Fourteen months later, she was still asking

The advocacy didn't stop. On January 14, 2026, after the Department of Homeland Security announced nearly $40 million in FEMA Public Assistance grants for counties in her district, Foxx put out a statement:

"For over a year, I've advocated relentlessly for western North Carolina with DHS as well as FEMA to allocate additional funding to help our area rebuild and recover — today's announcement by DHS is welcome news indeed."

"I am grateful to Secretary Noem and her team at DHS for working with me to get these funds out to Western North Carolina."

Relentlessly. For over a year. To get federal disaster dollars into her district.

That is the same federal machinery she voted to deny to Gulf Coast families ten days after Katrina, and to New Jersey and New York families after Sandy.

Why this matters beyond the hypocrisy

There's a version of this story that's just a gotcha. This is worse than a gotcha, because the money isn't abstract.

FEMA is a shared pool. It works because states that aren't having a catastrophe this year pay in for states that are — with the understanding that next year it might be reversed. That's the whole design. A member who votes no when it's someone else's district and yes when it's hers isn't applying a principle about federal spending. She's applying a principle about geography.

And the machine she now depends on is being taken apart around her. Michael Whatley, whom Trump made the White House recovery czar for western North Carolina, was recorded telling a Brunswick County audience that he had suggested the president get rid of FEMA — while he held that job. Foxx has thanked DHS leadership for the Helene money. She has not, that we can find, said anything about whether the agency writing those checks should continue to exist.

Foxx also chairs the House Rules Committee, the panel that decides which bills reach the floor and on what terms. If she wanted a debate about how this country funds disaster recovery — the debate her 2005 and 2013 votes implied she wanted — she is now, uniquely, in a position to schedule one.

You can't ask her about it

Foxx has not held an in-person town hall since 2010. She has not held even a telephone town hall since June 2015. Asked about it on Fox News in March 2025 — while her district was still digging out from Helene — she said town halls are "just an opportunity for people to yell at their member of Congress."

Her constituents in Boone have organized their own and left a chair for her. She hasn't come.

So nobody in North Carolina's 5th District has had the chance to ask her the obvious question in a room: When the water was in someone else's living room, why was the answer no?

We deserve better.

Source

Roll call votes from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House — RC 460 (2005), RC 7 and RC 23 (2013), RC 516 and RC 517 (2024). Helene quotes from Danielle Battaglia, "Cut off by Helene in Western NC, Rep. Foxx calls for more aid for her district," McClatchy/Durham Herald-Sun, September 30, 2024. Photo: McClatchy, via AOL.