Biden is surveying hurricane’s toll from the sky and ground in Florida.

President Joe Biden arrived in Florida for an aerial tour of Hurricane Idalia’s destruction and a firsthand look at a city recovering from the storm, but will not be seeing Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican president candidate who suggested a meeting could hinder disaster response efforts.
“Our teams worked collectively to find this area. This was a mutually agreed upon area because of the limited impact,” Deanne Criswell, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told reporters as the president flew down from Washington. She said her teams “have heard no concerns over any impact to the communities that we’re going to visit today.’’
Air Force One landed at the airport in Gainesville, where the president and first lady Jill Biden boarded Marine One for a helicopter flight en route to Live Oak, where he was to receive a briefing on response and recovery efforts and meet with federal and local officials and first responders. He later planned to walk the city streets and make remarks.
On Friday, hours after Biden said he would be meeting with DeSantis, the governor’s office issued a statement saying there were no plans for such a get-together. “In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts,” DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern said in a statement.