Over the weekend, Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper put a notification in a red banner across the top of the governor.nc.gov website linking to North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund for Hurricane Helene relief. The storm has so far claimed 30 North Carolina lives, but that number is expected to climb. Helene is being called Western North Carolina’s Katrina, which killed 1,600 people and was one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United States.

Not one to let a crisis go to waste, rather than taking down his “Public School Emergency” notification banner, over the weekend the governor put his Helene announcement on equal footing with it.

Cooper declared his “Education State of Emergency” with a televised address in May 2023, targeting Opportunity Scholarship funding, which gives parents a choice on where to send their children to school through private school vouchers.

“It’s clear that the Republican legislature is aiming to choke the life out of public education,” Cooper said at the time.

Also using the Helene headlines to make a political point, retired North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr commented on X Sunday, “I’m just going to put this out there: Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on private school vouchers is a horrible fiscal decision in light of the massive state needs to help WNC recover from this disaster.”

Cooper recently vetoed H.B. 10, the multifaceted bill that fully funds Opportunity Scholarships, and also requires sheriffs to cooperate with ICE, and includes adjustments to the budget proposal.

With a thousand people or more still missing, rescue and recovery units are trying to get to areas of Western North Carolina that had been cut off by collapsed roads and mudslides. Video on social media shows people being swept away in their cars as they tried to escape mudslides from the storm’s 29 inches of rain on the region.

Cooper held a press conference from Raleigh Sunday saying he’d activated 500 soldiers and airmen from the North Carolina National Guard to assist, along with 200 vehicles and aircraft. Rescue crews from Connecticut, Maryland, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania are helping in the effort.

In prepared comments from the White House on Monday, Biden said the federal government will be with victims “for as long as it takes” and that he expects to go to Congress for supplemental emergency aid. Biden also said Monday that he told Governor Cooper he plans to be in North Carolina on Wednesday or Thursday this week.

WATCH HERE: Biden comments on Hurricane Helene damage

At the end of the press conference, as Biden exited the Rosevelt Room, a reporter asked, “On the hurricane Mr. President, why weren’t you and Vice President Harris here in Washington, commanding this this weekend?”

Biden stopped and responded, “I was commanding it, I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday, and the day before as well. I commanded it. Its called a telephone.”