Biden pledges support to New Orleans during memorial service

Hadriana Lowenkron and Skylar Woodhouse, Bloomberg News on Jan 6, 2025

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President Joe Biden offered condolences and pledged federal support at a prayer service with family members of the victims of the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans.

During the service hosted by the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Biden said he was “here to stand with you, agree with you, pray with you, let you know you are not alone. The rest of the nation is looking at you as well.”

The president was accompanied by first lady Jill Biden, who spoke with loved ones of those killed as well as others affected by the assault that killed 14 people and injured more than 30 others in the heart of the French Quarter.

“If there’s one thing we know, New Orleans defines strength and resilience. You define it,” the president said.

The visit on Monday, which Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell also attended, came five days after Shamsud-Din Jabbar, according to the authorities, drove a truck through a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street.

The driver, a U.S. citizen from Texas and Army veteran, was killed in a shootout with police. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said he acted alone. Authorities said they discovered an ISIS flag with the vehicle and explosive devices in coolers near the scene of the attack.

U.S. officials said there’s no sign that Islamic State directed the New Orleans assault, but warned that the group will try to use the attack to spur more acts of violence, according to an assessment from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force obtained by Bloomberg News.

“I directed my team to make every resource available to federal, state and local law enforcement to complete this investigation quickly, and do whatever else we can,” Biden said during the service.

Biden earlier on Monday said the Mardi Gras parades and related events in New Orleans in February and March would receive additional federal security resources, upgrading them to a Special Event Assessment Rating of 1. The Super Bowl — slated to be held this year at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Feb. 9 — is also a SEAR 1 event.

Such events receive a federal coordination team and special assistance, which could entail explosive detection canine teams, cyber risk assessments, venue screening and field intelligence as well as air security and tactical operations, according to a White House fact sheet.

For Biden, Monday’s service showed him once again taking on one of his most challenging tasks of his office — comforting victims of mass violence or natural disasters. It’s a role the president has embraced during his tenure, using his own history of personal tragedy, to connect with grieving Americans and assure them that his administration will marshal resources to help communities recover.

Biden has made similar trips, including to the Hawaiian island of Maui after devastating wildfires in 2023 and to Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, where he sought to comfort families whose children were killed in a mass shooting at a school. Monday’s visit to New Orleans came with two weeks left until President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

“I’ve been there. There’s nothing you can really say to somebody that’s just had such a tragic loss,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Sunday. The president lost his first wife and a daughter in a 1972 car crash, and his eldest son Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015.

FBI officials have said they found no evidence linking the New Orleans attack to another incident in Las Vegas hours later in which a U.S. Army Green Beret, Matthew Livelsberger, shot himself and detonated explosives inside a rented Tesla Inc. Cybertruck.

The truck exploded outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas, injuring seven people. Livelsberger, who died by suicide, was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to law enforcement officials.

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