Low voter turnout benefits Republicans.
It’s easier to prevent people from voting against you than it is to convert people to vote for you.
The game plan is to ensure chaos continues for the next few weeks until the election, in the hopes that people will be too busy trying to survive than to vote.
That’s exactly what I’m hinting at.
My hypothesis is that this is, in fact, the case.
Maybe the reps aren’t thinking this deliberately, but I suppose some in R strategy has realized this. They can tell the reps something simple like “FEMA response is likely to be bad for us in the election,” and the reps can be willfully ignorant, refusing to consider the consequences of their inaction.