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    North Carolina GOP lawmakers override veto to strip power from Democratic officials

    On the brink of losing their supermajority in the state legislature, North Carolina Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto on Wednesday to enact a new law that gives them control over elections in the state and strips the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of some of their powers.Currently, North Carolina’s governor appoints the five members of the state board of elections, allowing him to select a three-person majority from his party. The new law transfers that appointment power to the state auditor. A Republican won control of the state auditor race this fall for the first time in more than a decade.The bill also changes how local election boards in each of North Carolina’s 100 counties would be appointed. Currently the state board appoints members and the governor appoints the chair. Under the new law, the auditor-appointed state board would still pick the local boards, but the auditor would pick the chair. Taken together, the new law would give Republicans control over both the state and local boards of elections.Lawsuits are expected challenging the changes, which were tucked into a bill that allocates more than $200m in relief money for Hurricane Helene. The money will not be immediately availableand the funds cannot be spent until the legislature acts again, according to the Associated Press.The outgoing governor, Roy Cooper, and the incoming governor, Josh Stein, both Democrats, have criticized the measure as a power grab. Republicans are poised to lose their supermajority in the state legislature next year.“Western North Carolina small businesses and communities still wait for support from the legislature while Republicans make political power grabs the priority. Shameful,” Cooper said in a statement.The measure also makes significant changes to election procedures. Voters currently have more than a week to provide ID or proof of residence when they vote. The new law shortens that window to just two and a half days and requires local election officials to count provisional ballots more quickly.That change seems directly in response to a state supreme court election in which the Democrat Allison Riggs trailed her opponent by 10,000 votes on election night but then pulled ahead as more votes were counted. She appears to have won the election by a little over 700 votes.It also limits Jeff Jackson, the incoming Democratic attorney general, from taking positions contrary to the general assembly and dilutes the governor’s power to fill judicial vacancies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Unfortunately, Western North Carolina had to watch as every Republican in the general assembly shamelessly put their desire to strip political power away from recently elected Democrats ahead of the aid and relief their communities need,” Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party, said in a statement. “Using the guise of Hurricane Helene relief is a new low, even for general assembly Republicans.” More

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    After a hurricane, Democrats try to snatch rare victory in swing state North Carolina

    Eric “Rocky” Farmer is stoking a bonfire of what’s left of his life. Billows of smoke rise from a mound of debris burning in front of what he once called his home – a large two-storied house that is now a contorted mass of twisted metal and broken beams.When Hurricane Helene struck western North Carolina last month, the North Fork New River that runs beside his property broke its banks, rising more than 20ft. The raging waters lifted up a mobile home from upstream as effortlessly as if it were a rag doll, slamming it into the corner of his house and causing the structure to crumple.Farmer, 55, will have to dismantle the mess and rebuild it, largely with his own hands. “It’s a bad scene, but we’ll get back up,” he said, sounding remarkably serene.Farmer’s struggle has now become entangled in the painfully close and hyper-tense election in North Carolina. The state is one of seven battlegrounds that will decide the outcome of the presidential race on 5 November.Several tracker polls, including the Guardian’s, show the contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to be neck-and-neck in the state.With polls so tight, the impact of Hurricane Helene has made a complicated election look as mangled as Farmer’s house. What the disaster does to turnout, and with that to the candidates’ chances, could tip the race.Amid the wreckage of his home, Farmer is taking a philosophical approach. “Politics is like mother nature,” he said. “You just watch what it does from the sidelines, then deal with the consequences.”Though he plans to vote on 5 November, he is still not sure whether that will be for Trump or Harris. “Guess I’ll go with the lesser of the two evils – they’re both evil as far as I’m concerned,” he said.View image in fullscreenThe hurricane that struck on 26 September hit the Appalachian mountain region of western North Carolina hard, killing at least 96 people. Many roads are still closed and thousands of people have been displaced or remain without power and running water.More than 1.2 million voters live in the stricken region – about one in six of the state’s total electorate. The obvious fear is that turnout will be depressed.“Nobody’s talking about politics here, because it doesn’t matter,” said Shane Bare, 45, a local volunteer handing out donated coats. “If you can’t flush your toilet or get to your mailbox, you could care less about the election.”Bare expects he will vote in the end, probably for Trump, whom he doesn’t much like but thinks has the edge on economic policy.Other voters are more upbeat about the election. Kim Blevins shared her passion for Trump as she was picking up free tinned food and bottled water from a relief station in Creston.“If Trump doesn’t get in, it’s going to be worse than the hurricane,” she said. “It’ll be world war three. Kamala Harris wants to make us a communist country.”Harold Davis, 68, a Harris supporter salvaging lumber from the side of the river, told the Guardian that he also cares more than ever about the election. “It’s so important. Maga is really Mawa – Make America White Again – and the sooner we can get back to treating everyone as equals the better,” he said.For Trump, the stakes in North Carolina could not be greater. For decades, the state has veered Republican, only backing Democrats twice in almost half a century (Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008).If Trump can take the state, as he did four years ago by a razor-thin 75,000 votes, along with Georgia and Pennsylvania, he will return to the White House. Without it, his path is uncertain.“It’s very hard for us to win unless we’re able to get North Carolina,” Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has said.Trump descended on North Carolina for two days this week, scrambling between Asheville in the storm zone to Greenville and Concord, and then Greensboro. He has been busily spreading lies about the hurricane response, accusing the Biden administration of refusing aid to Republican voters and falsely claiming that federal money has been redirected to house undocumented immigrants.His frenetic schedule and lies are perhaps indications of Trump’s anxieties about the impact of the hurricane on his electoral chances. Of the 25 counties hit by the disaster, 23 voted for Trump in 2020.“Outside the cities of Asheville and Boone, which are pretty Democratic, most of the hurricane area went strongly for Trump in 2020. So if turnout is down because of the disaster, it is likely to hit Trump most,” said David McLennan, a political scientist at Meredith College who runs the Meredith opinion poll.Republicans in the state have drawn comfort from the record-breaking early voting. In the first week of in-person early voting, almost 1.6 million people cast their ballots, surpassing the total crop of early votes in 2020.Four years ago, Republican early voting slumped in the wake of Trump’s false claims about rampant fraud. But this year’s record-smashing turnout suggests that the party has now put that behind it – Republicans and Democrats are virtually tied in their early voting numbers.“Despite all the challenges, people have shown they are determined to come and vote, a lot of them specifically against Kamala Harris,” said Matt Mercer, communications director for the North Carolina Republican party. “So we are feeling optimistic.”In the tranquil tree-lined suburbs on the north side of Charlotte, the effort to squeeze out every vote for Kamala Harris is entering its final heave. Here, sandwiched between the solidly Democratic city and the heavily Trumpian countryside, the suburban voters, women especially, could hold the key.Fern Cooper, 83, standing at the door of her detached suburban house, said she was powerfully motivated to vote because of her disdain for Trump. As a former New Yorker from the Bronx, she’s observed his flaws up close.She recalled how he was gifted huge sums of money from his real estate father; how he called for Black young men known as the Central Park Five to be executed for a rape they did not commit and for which they were later exonerated; how he treated his first wife, Ivana Trump, badly.“I know everything about Trump,” she said. “He’s not getting my vote.”Hannah Waleh, 66, is also all-in for Harris, for more positive reasons: “She will bring change, she is real, not a liar. She is for the poor and working-class people.”Waleh, a medical technician, has been urging her colleagues at her hospital and church to get out and vote early for the Democratic candidate: “I’m begging them. If everybody votes, I’m sure she will win.”View image in fullscreenShe might be right. The Meredith poll has tracked the extraordinary transformation in the race after Harris took over the Democratic nomination from Joe Biden.“Biden was losing North Carolina,” McLennan said. “Harris’s entry into the race returned the state to being 50-50 again – it’s back to being purple.”It is one thing bringing North Carolina back into contention and quite another to win. Part of the challenge is that, according to the poll, 2% of voters are still undecided, a tiny slice of the electorate that both campaigns are now frantically chasing.“I’ve never seen undecideds that low so close to the election,” McLennan said.They include Faith and Elizabeth, both 27, who have erected a 15ft Halloween skeleton on the lawn outside their house in the Charlotte suburbs. They told the Guardian that the most important issue, in their view, is abortion and the rights that women have already had taken away from them under Trump.And yet they still haven’t committed to voting for Harris. “We want to be certain,” Faith said.The Democrats are prioritising such suburban women, including those who formed part of the 23% of Republicans who backed Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary. They are doing so by focusing on abortion rights, with the Harris-Walz campaign warning that the state’s current restrictive 12-week abortion ban would be tightened under a Trump administration to a total nationwide abortion ban.They have also sought to tie Trump to extreme Republicans further down the ballot. The main target is the Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, who has described himself as a “Black Nazi” and has been revealed to have made extreme racist remarks.During the past 18 months, Democrats have invested in the state, opening 28 offices with more than 340 staffers. They have even pushed into rural counties that previously had been assumed to be beyond the party’s reach.“The Democrats have prioritized getting the party’s message out in more rural parts – on the grounds that a vote from rural areas is just as useful as from the city,” said Jason Roberts, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Bolstering the party’s ground game is a vast alliance of non-profit progressive organizations such as the Black-led group Advance Carolina and Red Wine & Blue, which works with suburban women. The alliance, which playfully calls itself Operation We Save Ourselves, has a goal of knocking on 4m doors to promote candidates with progressive values – the largest independent program of its sort in North Carolina’s history.If hard work were all it took to win presidential elections, Harris would already have one foot inside the Oval Office. But anxieties continue to swirl around the Democratic ticket, led by concerns that early turnout from African American voters, who in past cycles have swung overwhelmingly Democratic, is lower this year than at the same stage four years ago (37% in 2020, compared with 20% today).As the months remaining until election day turn into days, and days into hours, the Harris-Walz campaign will be making last-ditch efforts to persuade Black voters to get out and vote – voters like Christian Swims, 21, a student at community college, who would be voting in his first presidential election.If he votes at all, that is.“I don’t follow the election much,” he said. “My friends don’t talk about it. People round here aren’t very political.”Or Joseph Rich, a Fedex worker, 28. “I don’t know too much about Trump and Kamala Harris,” he said. “I’ll read up on them, but now I’m not sure.”Time is running out for Democrats to connect with voters like Swims and Rich. Whether or not they succeed could make all the difference. More

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    Trump uses North Carolina visit to reiterate hurricane relief conspiracies

    Donald Trump on Monday used a trip to a hurricane-ravaged part of North Carolina to double down on false claims about the federal government’s recovery effort and promote baseless conspiracy theories about immigration.Trump claimed the Biden administration had not done enough work for recovery and aid in North Carolina, saying instead the federal government spent its resources on “illegal migrants”, three weeks after a hurricane devasted the state.Trump and some other Republicans have earned widespread condemnation for boosting false claims around the recovery effort in the state. They have ranged from claims that the US government can influence the weather to theories that crucial aid was being withheld, prompting some government officials to warn of threats to federal emergency workers.But Trump did not hold back in his attacks. After surveying damage in western North Carolina, Trump gave a press conference in the city of Asheville, saying that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) had been gutted by the Biden administration and was doing a “poor” job in helping residents of the state affected by the hurricane.“The power of nature, nothing you can do about it. But you got to get a little bit better crew in to do a better job than has been done by the White House, because it’s not good, not good,” the Republican presidential candidate said.Hurricane Helene, which struck the US eastern coast on 27 September has led to the deaths of 95 people in North Carolina and widespread damage. Nearly 5,000 roads remained closed as of Sunday, with more than 8,000 people approved to receive individual assistance from Fema.During his press conference, Trump encouraged voters in North Carolina to get out and vote, despite the destruction in the state.He also pointed to the Biden administration, saying the White House has limited Fema’s recovery efforts, deciding to instead spend money on “illegal migrants”, implying it may have been done to possibly influence the 2024 elections.“They were not supposed to be spending the money on taking in illegal migrants, maybe so they could vote in the election, because that’s a lot of people are saying that’s why they’re doing it – I don’t know, I hope that’s not why they’re doing it,” Trump said.Fema is under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which also oversees the major federal immigration agencies: Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.“They’ve spent it on illegal migrants,” Trump said, in reference to federal government money. “Many of them are murderers, many of them are drug dealers, many of them come out of mental institutions and insane asylums, and many of them are terrorists.”Immigration has been a major campaign issue for both political parties. As Republicans accuse Democrats of being “soft” on immigration enforcement policies, the Democratic party has shifted to the right, pushing for tougher immigration policies. This year, the Biden administration put in place significant changes to asylum policy, restricting access to asylum at the US ports of entry.

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    Trump, in similar fashion to his 2016 presidential campaign, has continued to demonize immigrants and asylum seekers, claiming they are bringing more crime to the USand placing Americans at risk and using racist language and imagery.Last month, the Trump-Vance campaign circulated false rumors that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Ohio. The campaign also promoted false and sensational rumors that a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex in Colorado.“They spent money to bring these people into our country, and they don’t have the money to take care of the people from North Carolina and other states,” Trump said on Monday about the Biden administration.Trump also said that, if he is elected, he would help reconstruction efforts in North Carolina by slashing “every bureaucratic barrier” and would recruit businesses to operate in the state “through the proper use of taxation incentives and tariffs – one of the most beautiful words that nobody understands, or very few people understand”. More

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    North Carolina grapples with holding election in hurricane disaster zone

    In a normal life Jon Council would be holding his last campaign fundraiser of the 2024 cycle, exhorting local small business owners in Watauga county to back his bid to become a county commissioner over a plate of spaghetti and garlic bread.But in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, which left western North Carolina reeling from massive floods that swept away buildings, downed power lines, and left thousands of people stranded in their homes, life is anything but normal in this part of the Appalachians. Instead of wooing donors, the candidate is seeking winter feed for sheep.“We’re talking hay bales, so we really need a truck,” he pleads down the phone.With just over two weeks to go to election day, Council is wrestling with a problem that is common to anyone running for office in this rugged mountainous stretch of western North Carolina, from local candidates like him all the way up to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. How do you hold an election in a disaster zone?Can you meaningfully talk to people about their electoral choices at a time when they are fighting for daily survival? How do you reach them, let alone engage them, when the internet is down, there is scant cellphone coverage, the roads are broken, power is still out, and mail boxes swept away?“The voting landscape has totally changed,” Council said. “Polling places have been destroyed, people have been unable to leave their homes, absentee ballots and IDs are lost – given all that, talking to folk about why they should vote for me just feels wrong.”Council, who is unaffiliated with any political party, was gearing up his campaign for the final stretch when Helene struck on 26 September. The flooding and landslides killed at least 115 people in North Carolina, with almost 100 still missing.View image in fullscreenBefore Helene, Council and his team of volunteers were canvassing the 10,000 voters in his heavily rural – and largely Trump-supporting – district. They planned to step up advocacy for more affordable housing and, presciently, increased environmental protections to clean up local rivers and prevent flooding.“We were just ramping up the push to November when the storm happened,” he said.After Helene, campaigning was put on hold. The team immediately segued to disaster relief, helping rescue families trapped in their homes and hiking into remote areas to deliver food, water and critical medical supplies.And now, as winter sets in with early snows already falling, he is scouring for sources of fresh hay to donate to farmers in danger of losing their animals after bale supplies of vital winter feed were destroyed in the floods.“Since the storm, I really haven’t campaigned at all,” Council said. The result is visible in his office, which is now stacked with generators, canned vegetables and cat food where hand-made election placards and fliers were once stored.But the election will still happen on 5 November, so that agonising question – how to communicate with voters in the midst of a disaster – is becoming more pressing.“It’s a very difficult balance,” he said. “I’ve built a trust with people, including many Trump supporters who have told me I’ve got their support, and I don’t want to call that into question by being disingenuous.”So he remains painstakingly careful to avoid any impression that his relief work is tied to people’s votes, while at the same time gradually segueing back to campaigning. In the daytime he continues disaster efforts, then after dark he and his campaign manager turn to the election until midnight.View image in fullscreenThey are cranking their social media election posts back up, working out ways to encourage people to vote early or through absentee ballots, and debating whether to send out a mailer. They still feel odd about that.“It doesn’t feel appropriate to the way we’ve wanted to run this campaign, sending election mail to people when they still don’t have a driveway,” he said.The election board for Avery county, one of 25 North Carolina counties badly hit by Helene, sits inside the courthouse in Newland. Visitors to the building have to pass through a metal detector guarded by a uniformed officer who greets you with the refrain: “Are you for Trump? You better be, cause if he loses you’re gonna be speaking Chinese.”In her office, the director of the board of elections, Sheila Ollis, is doing all she can to mitigate the fallout of the hurricane. Of the 19 designated polling stations in the county, 14 were seriously damaged.Ollis is hoping that the 13,000 or so registered voters will not be discouraged from casting their ballots. She is proud of the county’s record of high voter turnout – in 2020, despite the pandemic, it was an impressive 76% – and wants to keep it that way.New emergency voting arrangements have been put in place by the state board of elections covering the 13 most devastated counties. The new rules balance access to the polls with the safety of poll workers and voters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEarly voting days, which began on Thursdaywith all but four of the 80 sites open in the hurricane stricken area, have been boosted. In Avery county a second early polling station has been added in the heart of the worst impacted area.But voting hours have been shortened, ending at 4.30pm to avoid people driving in the dark.The state’s normally strict voter ID restrictions have been eased to allow those who have lost their identification documents in the storm to still cast a ballot, and they can do so in a precinct other than their own should they have been forced to move. Voters are also now allowed to come into the election board office to request or file an absentee ballot.View image in fullscreen“One man brought in an absentee ballot yesterday and it looked like it had been floating in the river,” Ollis said. “So we spoiled it and issued him another.”Election and disaster relief workers have had to deal with the swirl of misinformation, much of it targeted against the federal government and inspired by Trump and Elon Musk. Ollis has had to deal with a spate of calls from registered voters who have received printed notices telling them that they were not eligible to vote in Avery county – she has no idea where the fake declarations came from.“Any little seeds of doubt get folks worried they may not be registered,” she said.For the most part, she tries to block the noise out. Despite the extraordinary collision of arguably the most consequential presidential election in modern times and the worst natural disaster the area has ever seen, Ollis is determined to remain calm and do her job.“You just can’t think about it. The same rules apply for any election, whether town mayor or US president. We just eat the elephant one bite at a time, following the protocol.”With election day fast approaching, Jon Council can feel the energy around his county commissioner race building. “It’s warming back up,” he said.He imagines that within a week he will return to direct canvassing, though he will take each day as it comes. “The landscape shifts daily, so our focus has to shift daily.”Whatever happens on 5 November, he’s feeling philosophical about it. He’s hoping that the work he has done helping his community will speak for itself, without the need for political embellishment.“Honestly, I think it’s a stronger form of canvassing for someone to say, ‘Oh, that’s the guy that brought that generator, and we didn’t even realize he was running for county commissioner.’”But if they still don’t vote for him, that’s OK too.“If I were to lose this election because I’m doing disaster relief, helping people get the things they need, I would wear that like a badge,” he said. More

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    The hurricanes shaking the US election – podcast

    In the last few weeks, the United States has been hit by two hurricanes, Helene and Milton. Oliver Milman, an environment reporter for Guardian US, tells Michael Safi: “The rapid analysis found that global heating had caused the rains to be heavier, the winds to be stronger, and in both the cases of Helene and Milton. Storms of this size were made about twice as likely because of the climate crisis.” Why have these storms not put the climate crisis front and centre in the presidential campaign? Oliver tells Michael that the environment is a complicated issue for Democrats, because oil and gas production in the US has hit a record high under Joe Biden’s premiership. Oliver also discusses the disinformation and conspiracy theories that have been spread – in part by Donald Trump – in the aftermath of the hurricanes. Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod More

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    Harris accuses Trump of ‘playing politics’ with hurricane disaster relief

    Kamala Harris has accused Donald Trump of “playing politics” with disaster relief amid growing criticisms that the former president has tried to exploit Hurricanes Helene and Milton with a flurry of lies and disinformation as he bids to gain the edge in the race for the White House.The US vice-president’s comments came amid increasing evidence that the two storms, which have left a trail of death and destruction in several southern states, are threatening to upset the calculus for next month’s presidential election.Asked at a town hall meeting in Las Vegas organized by Univision, the US Spanish-language TV network, to address complaints about the federal government’s response, Harris aimed pointed comments at Trump, although without naming him.“In this crisis – like in so many issues that affect the people of our country – I think it so important that leadership recognises the dignity [of those affected],” she said.“I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” she added, as she campaigned in the swing state of Nevada on Thursday.Harris’s comments followed a full-frontal attack on Trump – who has falsely accused the White House and Harris of, among other things, deliberately withholding aid from Republican areas and diverting funds to illegal immigrants – from Joe Biden.The US president accused Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, of spreading “outright lies”.“They’re being so damn un-American with the way they’re talking about this stuff,” Biden told journalists at the White House on Thursday. Addressing Trump specifically, he said: “Get a life, man. Help these people.”Trump and his running mate, the US senator for Ohio JD Vance, have maintained a drumbeat of criticism of Biden and Harris accusing them of deliberately engineering an inadequate response to Hurricane Helene in Republican voting areas, after the storm ripped through Georgia and North Carolina – two swing states vital to the outcome of the 5 November election – even while fellow Republican politicians have praised the recovery effort.The former president has called the rescue operation worse than the response to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005 – killing 1,400 – and left an indelible stain on the presidency of George W Bush.“This hurricane has been a bad one, Kamala Harris has left them stranded,” he told a rally in Juneau, Wisconsin. “This is the worst response to a storm or a catastrophe or a hurricane that we’ve ever seen ever. Probably worse than Katrina, and that’s hard to beat, right?”Harris has taken some time away from the campaign trail this month to participate in White House situation room conferences and meet staff from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which has led the response to the hurricanes. Helene was the deadliest since Katrina.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome Democratic strategists have voiced fears that the need to respond to the twin storms is depriving Harris of vital time in her quest to defeat Trump as the campaign enters its final weeks.Deanne Criswell, Fema’s director, has called the onslaught of disinformation and conspiracy theories “absolutely the worst I have ever seen” and warned that it is hindering relief efforts.With polls showing the election race tighter than ever, Trump has focused particular attention on Harris. “She didn’t send anything or anyone at all. Days passed. No help as men, women and children drowned,” he told a rally in Pennsylvania.He has put special emphasis on North Carolina, where polls show the two candidates neck-and-neck and which has a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Some Republican politicians have condemned the spread of misinformation but generally without naming Trump.Harris also told CNN on Wednesday. “It is dangerous – it is unconscionable, frankly, that anyone who would consider themselves a leader would mislead desperate people to the point that those desperate people would not receive the aid to which they are entitled,” she said. More

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    Hurricane misinformation signals how US election lies could intensify

    Alex Jones, the longtime conspiracy theorist liable for millions for defaming school shooting victims, started a broadcast this week with one of his favorite topics: weather manipulation.“All right, I did a lot of research and a lot of preparation the last 30 years for what I’m going to be covering today,” he said. “Coming up, I’m going to do a big presentation for everybody on what’s really going on with weather weapons.”Amid two hurricanes – one of which hit two swing states – formerly fringe characters like Jones contributed to a swirl of conspiracy theories, many becoming uncomfortably mainstream. The weather was being controlled, some of the theories went, to prevent Republicans from voting and fend off a Trump victory.The misinformation since Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina and Georgia and Milton hit Florida offers a test run for how election day could go – and it’s not looking good.Social media sites like X, Facebook and TikTok all gave a platform to hurricane truthers and politicians who saw an opening to spread doubt and distrust of government. That distrust in some cases then led to threats and harassment against aid workers, meteorologists and government officials.The hurricanes hit at a crucial time in the US election calendar – about a month out from November’s presidential contest. Because Helene hit two swing states, turnout could be affected by the storm’s devastation and affected states are considering rule changes to accommodate people who may not have transportation or identification. Those changes will become fodder for allegations that the election will be rigged.“This is the singularity of rumoring: procedure change, powerful people, aid money, location changes, swing states,” said Danielle Lee Tomson, the election rumor research manager at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. “My bingo card is filled up.”Already, many on the right, encouraged by Donald Trump, have claimed Democrats are trying to steal the election through a variety of means, none of which are proven.“Add a hurricane to that, and you have a compounded and highly opportunistic situation to jump in and create rumors or narratives or frame certain events for political gain,” Tomson said.Voters in hurricane zones are likely uncertain after losing their documents, being displaced from their homes, and losing access to reliable transportation. That uncertainty creates a vacuum where rumors can grow, and people with incentives to capitalize on the uncertainty can step in and advance their political goals.They can – as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has – double down on the weather manipulation claims. They can – as Donald Trump has – falsely claim federal disaster funds have run out because it instead went toward migrants.“There are a lot of good reasons to critique aspects of Fema from an emergency management perspective,” said Sarah DeYoung, a professor at the University of Delaware who studies disaster response. “But critiquing the way the system unfolds according to the National Response Framework is a little bit different than blatantly false information about funding being diverted to support illegal immigrants instead of hurricane victims.”In North Carolina, the board of elections made changes to increase accessibility for people affected by the hurricane, allowing increased use of absentee ballots and dropoff options. The Trump campaign had requested improvements for access in Hurricane-ravaged areas, many of which disproportionately hold Republican voters. Still, the move immediately drew skepticism from the right.“I don’t know if I love or hate these late changes in the election law,” Fox host Jesse Watters said in a broadcast. “But I know Marc Elias, the Democrat election lawyer who specializes in shenanigans, loves it, so that makes me a little suspicious.”The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website, contributed to the doubt cast on the rule changes, headlining its story: “Here We Go: North Carolina Officials Change Election Rules in Hurricane-Devastated Counties that Mostly Voted for Trump, Fueling Republican Election Integrity Concerns.”The conspiracies about the hurricanes racked up massive views on social media. In one video shared on X of clouds, a woman claims “they’re chemtrailing the fricking crap out of us”. It got nearly 8m impressions. Another post encouraged people in Florida to ignore evacuation orders, claiming a plot was afoot to prevent Floridians from returning to their homes after the storm. “This looks a lot like a J6-style trap to invoke an insurrection and declare martial law to cancel the election,” wrote the account @healthranger, which has 245,000 followers on X.Chuck Edwards, a Republican representative from North Carolina, put out a lengthy release debunking a series of rumors about Fema, search-and-rescue efforts and weather manipulation. Fema’s response has had “shortfalls”, he said, but “nobody can control the weather”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I encourage you to remember that everything you see on Facebook, X, or any other social media platform is not always fact,” he wrote. “Please make sure you are fact-checking what you read online with a reputable source.”DeYoung, who is originally from western North Carolina, is in a lot of local disaster recovery groups on Facebook as part of her research. One of the groups, which has more than 7,000 members, was sharing information about supplies and relief areas. After a few days, it changed its cover page to say Fema was funneling money to illegal immigrants.“That’s just an example of some of the challenges we’re facing, because it’s become hyper-partisan, which actually gets in the way of people receiving accurate information about relief, supplies, response,” she said.Abbie Richards, a video producer at Media Matters for America who studied climate change conspiracies on TikTok for her master’s thesis, found a host of videos on the platform that alleged Fema was confiscating resources, blocking roads or stealing donations – all false claims the agency has confronted in Helene’s aftermath.“They’re seeing this misinformation, they’re believing it, and they feel like Fema is against them,” she said. “I’ve seen people call for civil war, and then I’ve seen explicit calls to unalive Fema personnel, or saying that Fema personnel can be arrested or shot or hanged on the spot.”Election conspiracies are baked into a lot of these videos, such as the idea that Democrats are controlling the weather or the government isn’t responding at the level it should because the areas affected are Republican-led, she said.The spread of misinformation and ties to the election don’t bode well for how lies or rumors will unfold on election day and afterward, she said.“The infrastructure for communication via social media has grown more complicated in the last four years,” Richards said. “More people are online. More people know how to make videos. More have their phones out, recording every moment. But that just adds to the sheer volume of it, and it’s quite clear that the social media platforms are not prepared.”Rightwing figures are using these storms not only to sow doubt, but to rally the troops against the people they allege are trying to prevent them from voting for Trump.Mike Flynn, the short-lived national security adviser under Trump who is now a far-right figure with 1.7 million followers on X, laid out the crises facing the nation: hurricanes, fires, overseas wars, censorship, “fake and real declared pandemics”, “stolen elections”.“The globalists are pulling out all the stops,” he wrote on X. “Don’t worry, we have them right where we want them, and oh yeah, the real storm is coming. @realDonaldTrump and the tens of millions of Americans who will #MAGA.” More

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    Hurricanes, the Middle East, and Covid-19 tests to Putin – podcast

    It’s less than a month before the US presidential election. Donald Trump is pushing conspiracy theories over the federal response to hurricanes battering several states, and denying he gave Covid-19 test machines to Vladimir Putin during the pandemic. Joe Biden is in talks with Benjamin Netanyahu over growing tension in the Middle East. Kamala Harris rattled through a media blitz, with some criticising her campaign strategy. And Melania Trump has written about being pro-abortion and pro-immigration in her new memoir.
    Jonathan Freedland and the veteran political strategist David Axelrod discuss what all of this means for the election

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