Missile strikes and deadly storms: How cascading crises engulfed Biden's final months as president

This story was updated with new information.

WASHINGTON – As Iran fired one ballistic missile after another at Israel, President Joe Biden anxiously monitored the developing crisis in real time from a dark-paneled room on the White House ground floor.

A video screen on the wall enabled the president and his national security team to track the missiles as they streaked across the sky and headed toward Tel Aviv. Biden and his team could tell from the monitor how many missiles were in the air. What they could not know right away was how many, if any, were striking their target.

Tension built inside the Situation Room as Biden and his aides waited for an update. At one point, the president got up from his leather chair at the head of the conference table and paced nervously around the room.

The conflict threatening to inflame the Middle East that afternoon wasn’t the only emerging crisis on Biden’s mind. Earlier that day, Oct. 1, tens of thousands of U.S. dockworkers had walked off the job, closing ports along the East and Gulf coasts and shutting down ocean shipping from Maine to Texas.

The labor dispute threatened to leave shelves empty, raise prices and potentially disrupt recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene, which just six days earlier had devastated parts of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. Making matters worse, in a few days another powerful storm would develop in the western Caribbean and hurl toward Florida’s West Coast.

Managing the response to three unfolding events would be a test for Biden, who had five decades of experience in government but just a little more than three months left in office. Biden had reluctantly ended his bid for re-election in late July amid questions about whether he could win a second term.

Biden’s shaky performance during a presidential debate with his nemesis, Donald Trump, had raised doubts about whether he was up to the rigors of the presidency. But behind the scenes, aides described him as fully engaged as he deals with the job's daily pressures and unforeseen challenges, even as Trump won a convincing victory over Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday.

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On Thursday, Biden departs for Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, followed by Brazil, where he will attend and meet for the final time as president with leaders of the Group of 20, or G20, nations. Hanging over the global gatherings will be the uncertainty surrounding Biden’s departure from office in January and Trump’s stunning return to the presidency.

With time running short, Biden still has an extensive to-do list before walking out of the Oval Office for the final time as president.

“We feel time is slipping through the hourglass, and we want to complete so much of what we’ve started,” said Liz Sherwood-Randall, who serves as Biden’s homeland security adviser and has worked for him off and on for the past four decades.

But unexpected events – at home and across the world – often intrude on a president’s plans. Which is why, for several days in late September and October, Biden toggled between a cascade of converging crises that posed an end-game challenge to his one-term presidency.

A 'productive' final act

Six months earlier, Jeff Zients was in his office in the West Wing when he got the call. It was Sunday afternoon, July 21.

Biden, phoning from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, wanted his chief of staff to know he was ending his campaign for a second term. A disastrous debate with Trump had brought calls from Democratic leaders for Biden to step aside and allow Harris to become the party’s nominee. Biden instructed Zients to tell the senior White House team that he had decided to heed those calls.

Biden then steered the conversation to his remaining time in office. “I want to have a six-month period of time that's as or more productive than any other six-month period of time since I've been in office,” Zients recalled him saying.

White House aides map out Biden’s schedule in 100-day increments. Biden said he understood that a plan was already in place for the next 100 days. But he wanted a new plan, and he wanted it ASAP. Biden sketched out for his chief of staff the things he wanted to emphasize during what was left of his time in office.

“We talked a lot about lowering costs,” Zients said. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but there are too many areas where costs are still too high. What more can we do on junk fees? What more can we do on housing? What more can we do on food?”

Biden’s team quickly assembled another plan for his final months in office.

Then the first disaster hit.

Hurricane Helene and a 'president for all Americans'

Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida on Sept. 26 with a catastrophic vengeance and then cut a path of destruction across the southeastern United States from Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas before reaching as far north as Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

At least 227 people were killed. Entire towns were swallowed by flooding. Hundreds of roads were washed out and bridges damaged. Residents in isolated communities were stranded with no power or phone service. Thousands had no drinkable water. Damage from the hurricane, one of the deadliest to make landfall in the United States, is projected to surpass $30 billion.

Biden had dealt with major flooding in California, a devastating tornado in Kentucky and multiple other natural disasters during his presidency, but Helene was harder in some aspects because many of the affected areas were remote and the victims were difficult to reach because of impassable roads and disrupted communications systems.

Biden mobilized the federal government’s resources. Some 1,500 active-duty troops from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and Fort Liberty, North Carolina, delivered food, water, medicine and other supplies and helped clear roads and remove debris.

All told, 4,800 personnel from across the federal workforce were deployed to assist state-led response efforts. Biden’s instructions: Reach those people who may not be able to reach out for help. Find out what they need. Make sure they get it. Cut through red tape.

Biden had demonstrated his approach to disaster relief early in his presidency. Just weeks after he took office, a powerful winter storm pummeled Texas with snow and ice, overpowering the state’s power grid and causing widespread blackouts.

“In that moment, the president talked with me directly about how he thought about the importance of demonstrating so early in his presidency that he was the president for all Americans,” Sherwood-Randall said.

Emergency response efforts under his administration “would not be about where there were red states or blue states,” she said, “but where there were Americans who needed help that the federal government could provide.”

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Since then, “in every single disaster, there's a certain pattern we now follow,” she said, “because I know how intensely interested he is in knowing whether we are cutting through bureaucratic red tape and getting out to help the people who need it the most.”

It was an approach that would be tested again in just a matter of days.

'Very well prepared' for Iran strike on Israel

The time it takes a missile to reach Israel after it is fired from Iran is a period of angst and uncertainty for those watching the attack unfold.

And so it was for Biden and members of his team as they waited nervously on Oct. 1 to see how many, if any, of the nearly 200 ballistic missiles heading to Israel from Iran had hit their target.

Inside the Situation Room, “there are some very, very tense periods of silence as it’s unfolding,” said Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East.

For some, thoughts turned to colleagues in Israel, American citizens living there, and all of the other civilians potentially in harm’s way, McGurk recalled.

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Biden would spend more than three hours in the Situation Room that day monitoring the events. Harris and other members of his team were by his side. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin dialed into the meeting. Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, who heads the U.S. Central Command, sent regular updates on the number of missiles in the air.

Several times that day, Biden would be pulled from the room by his aides to deal with other crises unfolding at home.

The federal government was still working with the states hit by Hurricane Helene. Dockworkers, still in a contract dispute with shipping company executives, had gone on strike earlier that morning, potentially slowing the hurricane recovery. Biden had instructed his staff to get the two sides to come to an agreement as soon as possible.

Biden’s half a century of government experience and leadership positions equipped him with the ability to segue smoothly from one crisis to another, Zients said. “It really matters and was very evident during this period of time,” he said.

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In the Middle East, tensions had been building for months between Israel and Iran.

In April, Iran had fired 300 missiles and drones into Israel as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waged war in the Gaza Strip against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which had attacked the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas had killed 1,200 people in the attack and taken more than 200 others hostage. More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing war, according to the Gaza health ministry, and U.S.-led efforts to reach a cease-fire would come up short.

Hostilities escalated further when Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, in an airstrike in Beirut last month. Iran struck back with waves of missiles.

Biden had anticipated this moment. He had directed the U.S. military to help Israel shoot down the Iranian rockets. Biden knew the number of ships and interceptors available “because we have been doing this for a long time,” McGurk said. “We were very well prepared for this.”

Israel, with the help of the U.S., would shoot down most of the Iranian missiles before they ever reached their target. Confident the barrage had failed, Biden pressed his staff to find out if Israel intended to respond to the Iranian attack – and, if so, how.

'Get a deal done'

Two days later, on Oct. 3, Zients initiated a Zoom call with global shipping company executives. It was 5:30 a.m. The sun had yet to rise over Washington, but Zients wanted to send a message about the urgency of settling the strike by 45,000 dockworkers, which was entering its third day and threatened to impede hurricane relief.

Biden understood how crippling the strike could be to the economy. Just nine months into his presidency, a breakdown in the nation’s system for transporting goods had caused cargo to pile up at ports on the West Coast. Consumer demand surged as Americans emerged from months of COVID lockdowns. Supply chains broke down as factories, ports and freight yards struggled to keep pace with growing demand.

Biden was determined not to let that happen again, said Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council. At the same time, he felt that dockworkers, who were demanding a raise, had been asked to sacrifice time and again and deserved a fair share of the record profits that transport carriers were reaping.

Biden, who often boasts of being the most pro-union president in history, wanted to reassure the leader of the International Longshoremen's Association, Harold Daggett, that he supported the workers’ desire for a strong contract. But he also wanted to engage with the shipping company executives to drive home the urgency of the situation and make it clear to them that allowing the strike to drag on was unacceptable.

So Zients arranged the predawn Zoom meeting with members of the U.S. Maritime Alliance. With him on the call were Brainard, Labor Secretary Julie Su and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The shipping companies had moved closer to some of the dockworkers’ demands. But it wasn’t enough. Zients bluntly gave them a directive: Reopen negotiations and settle the strike. Now.

“We were basically saying, you tell us you are committed to the American market, you tell us you're patriotic,” Brainard recalled. “It is vital to get to a resolution now. Because you are going to impede hurricane recovery efforts if we don't get the ports back open.”

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Later that day, Biden pulled Brainard aside in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room as he was about to board Marine One for a trip to Florida and Georgia to survey the hurricane damage.

“We really need to get a deal done today,” he said. “It’s time.”

Before the end of the day, an agreement was in place. Dockworkers would get a 62% wage increase over six years – the union had sought 77% – and ports would reopen until January 2025, allowing negotiations to continue on other unresolved issues.

One crisis was over. Another was about to begin.

'A matter of life and death'

The president was worried.

A tropical storm, this one potentially even more powerful than Helene, was developing in the western Caribbean and, if projections were accurate, heading toward Florida. Many communities still recovering from the destruction wrought by Helene would be in the path of the new storm, known as Milton.

In a briefing with Sherwood-Randall on Sunday, Oct. 6, Biden raised concerns that scrap left behind by Helene, when tossed about in hurricane-force winds, could become dangerous projectiles.

Start removing as much debris as possible, he ordered. Mobilize resources and personnel, he instructed, including search and rescue crews, management teams and other federal workers, without detracting from the ongoing response to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.

The next day, Sherwood-Randall gave Biden another update in the private dining room just off the Oval Office. Afterward, Biden called the National Weather Service to learn the latest on the storm’s size, where it was tracking and its expected impact. He then phoned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Tampa Mayor Jane Castor to relay the most up-to-date storm information and to see if they had the resources to deal with any damage.

“We were bracing for something that could be on a scale that was absolutely unprecedented,” Sherwood-Randall said. “That's what the weather experts were telling us. It's what the National Hurricane Center was projecting. It's what the National Weather Service was projecting.”

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The next morning, Oct. 8, Biden announced he was postponing a trip to Germany and Angola to stay in Washington and monitor the storm. In a meeting with his cabinet secretaries and senior officials, he warned that Milton, gathering strength, could be the worst storm to hit Florida in a century. Floridians under an evacuation order should leave “now, now, now,” he advised.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” he said.

Members of his staff went on local TV news outlets and radio and turned to digital platforms and other media to spread the same message.

“I think that was clearly lifesaving,” Sherwood-Randall said. “What happened as a result, at the direction of the president, was we used every possible messaging platform, including his voice, to tell people to follow the mandatory evacuation orders and to go into shelters, not just wait out the storm. It was, as we would say in our generation, like hearing things in stereo. Every possible way you could hear it, you were hearing it.”

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Later that night, just before 10 p.m., as the storm was starting to make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, Biden called Sherwood-Randall at home with a list of detailed questions. “He wanted to know the size of the eye of the storm,” she recalled. “And he wanted to know how far the bands extend on either side of the eye because those bands will indicate how broad the effects of the storm will be.”

Milton would kill at least 17 people, spawn tornadoes and cause severe flooding, but its impact wasn't as destructive as forecast. Biden and his team had prepared for the worst but were relieved it hadn’t happened.

“He always says he’d rather be criticized for being too prepared than under-prepared,” Zients said.

Taking advantage of every day left

A Marine Guard opened the door to the Oval Office, and Biden stepped out into the autumn morning air. Scattered clouds hung over the Rose Garden as Biden, removing his trademark aviator sunglasses, approached the podium adorned with the presidential seal.

“For over 200 years, America has carried on the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world,” he began.

Two days earlier, Trump had won a resounding victory over Harris. The man whom Biden defeated just four years ago, and whom he repeatedly described as a threat to democracy, will return to the White House next year as his successor. In his remarks Thursday morning, Biden wanted to reassure Americans that he respected their decision and let them know that his administration would see to a peaceful transfer of power in January.

“It’s been a historic presidency,” he said, summing up his four years in office, “not because I’m president – because what we’ve done, what you’ve done. A presidency for all Americans.”

Biden is now in the final stretch of his presidency. Others may be starting to think about his legacy. But not him.

“It’s not a terrain he wants to spend time on,” Zients said.

Even so, Biden is keenly aware that his time in the White House is running out. His focus for now is getting as much done as possible in the time he has left, Zients said.

“He thinks that we’ve got to spend every minute we have getting stuff done, and when we do that, we will impact people’s lives and make the world a better place,” Zients said.

“Right now,” he said, “is the time to take advantage of every single day.”

Even if, in his final days in office, another crisis comes along.

Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.