WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is taking a message to the grieving families of victims in the deadly New Year’s attack in New Orleans: “It takes time. You got to hang on.”

Biden on Monday will visit the city where an Army veteran drove a truck into revelers in the French Quarter, killing 14 and injuring 30 more. It’s likely to be the last time Biden travels to the scene of a horrific crime as president to console families of victims. He has less than two weeks left in office.

It’s a grim task that presidents perform, though not every leader has embraced the role with such intimacy as the 82-year-old Biden, who has experienced a lot of personal tragedy in his own life. His first wife and baby daughter died in a car accident in the early 1970s, and his eldest son, Beau, died of cancer in 2015.

“I’ve been there. There’s nothing you can really say to somebody that’s just had such a tragic loss,” Biden told reporters Sunday in a preview of his visit. “My message is going to be personal if I get to get them alone.”

Biden often takes the opportunity at such bleak occasions to speak behind closed doors with the families, offer up his personal phone number in case people want to talk later on and talk about grief in stark, personal terms.

The Democratic president will continue on to California following his stop in New Orleans. The White House was moving forward with plans for the trip even as a snowstorm was hitting the Washington region.

In New Orleans, the driver plowed into a crowd on the city’s famous Bourbon Street. Fourteen revelers were killed along with the driver. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who steered his speeding truck around a barricade and plowed into the crowd, later was fatally shot in a firefight with police.

Jabbar, an American citizen from Texas, had posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he proclaimed his support for the Islamic State militant group and previewed the violence that he would soon unleash in the French Quarter.

Biden on Sunday pushed back against conspiracy theories surrounding the attack, and he urged New Orleans residents to ignore them.

“I spent literally 17, 18 hours with the intelligence community from the time this happened to establish exactly what happened, to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that New Orleans was the act of a single man who acted alone,” he said. “All this talk about conspiracies with other people, there’s not evidence of that — zero.”

The youngest victim was 18 years old, and the oldest was 63. Most victims were in their 20s. They came from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, New Jersey and Great Britain.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican, was asked on Fox News Channel what the city was hoping for from Biden’s visit.

“How can we not feel for both the families of those who die but also those who’ve been injured in their families?” he asked.

“The best thing that the city, the state, and the federal government can do is do their best to make sure that this does not happen again. And what we can do as a people is to make sure that we don’t live our lives in fear or in terror — but live our lives bravely and with liberty, and then support those families however they need support.”

Associated Press writer Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Jan. 6, 2021 

Amanda Gorman was trying to finish her poem on national unity when scenes burst upon the television of insurrectionists attacking the U.S. Capitol. 

The 22-year-old stayed up late, writing new lines into the night. Two weeks later, she became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, joining a prestigious group that included Maya Angelou and Robert Frost. But few faced as difficult a task, searching for unity amid violence, a deadly pandemic and polarizing partisanship. 

She described herself as a “skinny Black girl, descended from slaves and raised by a single mother” who can dream of being president one day, “only to find herself reciting for one.” 

She shared the words she wrote in the wake of the nation’s first attack on the Capitol in more than two centuries:

“We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation

rather than share it

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy

And this effort very nearly succeeded

But while democracy can be periodically delayed

It can never be permanently defeated.”

In the wake of the attack that resulted in five deaths and injuries to 138 officers, she penned that the nation would endure:

Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed

a nation that isn’t broken

but simply unfinished

She reminded those present that “history has its eyes on us” and that this nation will indeed rise again:

“We will rebuild, reconcile and recover

And every known nook of our nation and

Every corner called our country,

Our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,

Battered and beautiful…

For there is always light,

If only we’re brave enough to see it

If only we’re brave enough to be it”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Mississippi Today politics team, including its two newest members, Simeon Gates and Michael Goldberg, outline the major issues lawmakers face as the 2025 legislative session begins this week.

READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.