Opinion: GOP holds Americans' disaster relief hostage. They'd rather push conspiracies.

Let's start by acknowledging that almost any national event that dominates a news cycle during a presidential election now inevitably also becomes the subject of fierce – and all too often – dishonest political gamesmanship.

Back-to-back massive hurricanes in the six weeks before the country picks either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump? Let the games begin.

How the Democrats and Republicans approached all that tells you plenty about where they are as political parties right now.

Many Democrats in the U.S. House advocated for an immediate increase in funding for disaster relief. Many Republicans, from Trump on down, grasped instead for conspiracies, including lies about assistance being withheld in states hit by the hurricanes and the all-out bonkers claim that Democrats somehow manipulate the weather to aim storms at Republican strongholds.

For all that bluster, not much is expected to happen before the election. Some political points will be scored while the electorate gets flooded with disinformation. Governing? Please. There's an election to win.

Democrats have called for Congress to give FEMA more funding. Republicans haven't responded.

Sixty-three Democrats in the U.S. House wrote a letter Wednesday to Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, just before Hurricane Milton came ashore in Florida, calling on him to reconvene Congress from its election vacation to approve more funding for disaster agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). That came 13 days after Hurricane Helene brought death and destruction to southern states, especially western North Carolina.

U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat who organized the effort, wrote that the "unprecedented natural disasters" left parts of the country "in dire need of additional and comprehensive disaster relief funding." Nine representatives from North Carolina, Florida and Georgia signed on after Helene hit their states.

Kaptur warned Johnson that a recent continuing resolution to fund the federal government from Oct. 1 to Dec. 20, passed just a day before Helene made landfall, "provided initial relief funds, yet those provisions fall critically short" of what is needed.

Plenty of Republicans, who control the House, opposed that continuing resolution, which passed with overwhelming support from Democrats on Sept. 25. Sliced from that legislation was a $10 billion increase in funding for FEMA, which hard-right Republicans opposed.

Opinion: Helene's destruction left NC election officials scrambling. Trump isn't helping.

No Republican in the House signed on to Kaptur's letter last week. And only about 30% of the Democrats in the House joined the effort.

This means the letter was better at drawing attention to itself and the fight over FEMA than boosting disaster relief funding.

Speaker Johnson would rather campaign for Trump

Johnson, on a campaign tour trying to help Republicans win or keep seats in the House so his party can keep control and he can continue being speaker, shrugged off the idea of returning to session to govern in a time of national crisis.

He was in central Pennsylvania on Friday, trying to keep U.S. Rep. Scott Perry – an election denier who tried to help Trump overturn his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden – hold off a surging Democratic opponent.

Johnson's justification for not calling Congress back to work inadvertently debunks the lies Trump and other Republicans have been telling about FEMA funding under Harris and Biden.

Opinion: Trump and Vance seem very upset with being fact-checked. Maybe lie less?

While visiting Asheville, North Carolina, on Wednesday to survey the damage there, Johnson cited the continuing resolution, which included "$20 billion to go to FEMA so that they would have what was necessary for the emergent needs, the urgent needs that followed the hurricane."

In short, the House speaker was claiming that FEMA has all the money it needs to do the job right now. If true, Johnson essentially rejected claims from Trump and others that FEMA was somehow broken and not helping hurricane victims.

Trump is doing what we all know he does. He's lying.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that FEMA is out of money, a lie that was easily debunked. Because his entire reelection strategy hinges on blaming Biden and Harris for the impacts of illegal immigration, he has amplified false claims that the federal government blew all of FEMA's funding on programs to help and house migrants.

Congress controls the federal budget, allocating money for specific reasons. It has to be spent that way. There is funding this year for migrant programs, completely separate from disaster relief funds. That's nothing new. The same migrant programs were funded during Trump's lone term as president.

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Trump actually diverted money as president from disaster relief funds to instead pay for efforts to control illegal immigration at the border.

That's so Trump – falsely accusing Biden and Harris of what he did as president.

It appears that Americans needing more help will have to wait until after the election

Let's conclude with a quick look at just how enamored with lies the Republican Party has become. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia and known conspiracy theory enthusiast, has been insisting on social media since earlier this month that the government controls the weather.

Biden's response to Greene and other weather conspiracy theorists: "It's so stupid. It's got to stop."

He's right about the stupidity but unrealistic that Greene and her MAGA allies will return to a reality-based form of politics where actually governing takes precedence over attention-grabbing, fundraising-fueling spectacles of disinformation.

The election is 23 days from now. There are seven more weeks until the end of hurricane season. If that all seems like an eternity, blame disinformation and the embrace of scoring political points over governing.

All we can do is bunker down and wait out the sustained squall of nonsense that will clearly howl around now, on Election Day, and likely after that.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

(This column has been updated to correct a typo.)

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Americans need FEMA help now. Republicans would rather not