Hurricane Milton

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    The hurricanes shaking the US election – podcast

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    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

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      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 Milton has left two worlds in its wake. Elon Musk lives in one of them. The other is called reality | Marina Hyde

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      I increasingly wonder why Elon Musk is bothering trying to establish himself on Mars, and not just because it looks like a complete dump up there. (Seriously, if you think that’s beautiful, I have around a hundred thousand disused quarries I’d love to show you right here on Earth.) Watching Hurricane Milton play out on Musk’s platform and elsewhere cemented the notion that the goal of being on another planet along with millions of people had already occurred. The only problem is that this whole other planet is here, sharing meatspace with what we used to call “reality”.Once upon a time, relatively recently in the scheme of things, a looming natural disaster would have felt like a fairly ineluctable fact. You couldn’t “debate” a natural disaster any more than you could disagree with gravity. There is a point, we used to say, where you really can’t argue with reality. There is a point where shit gets real. But is there, any more? Certainly that point has receded much further over a still-darkening horizon than we might even have imagined back in, say, 2016, when people were warning of attempts to destroy the very notion of shared reality. In fact, it was already receding back in 2004, when a Bush administration official (widely believed to be Karl Rove) spoke disparagingly of what they called “the reality-based community”.In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene last month, and in the days leading up to Hurricane Milton’s landfall, it was possible to see the truly grim extent of the slippage in recent years. It wasn’t just in senior politicians using phrases such as “politicising the storm”, a way of talking about a terrifyingly destructive natural phenomenon that would once have seemed like a quote from a satire, but now seems a long-unremarkable part of daily discourse. Nor was it in the widespread questioning that the storm was even a natural phenomenon at all, with huge numbers out there on the platforms declaring it to have been literally “created” and “engineered” by the other side. It was the sense that whatever happened, people had a version of reality they would be sticking to. Their views are battened down and not even a hurricane is going to shift them.“Yes they can control the weather,” explained the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (on X, of course). “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” One customary reaction to Marjorie is to remark that it’s as if she’s on another planet. I so wish she was. The problem is that she and her fellow settlers are here, walking among all the agency officials and disaster experts and emergency workers who have to deal with reality as it presents itself – and not reality as whatever rubbish advances your cause that day.But on she sails, because the civilisation of Another Planet is considerably advanced. You no longer ask if life is sustainable on this planet. It is not just sustainable – it is sustained. Not only does it have well-established communications systems, but also a rapidly spawning language where words can mean their opposites. Another Planet has a thriving media, and a social media presence actively boosted and financially incentivised by the likes of Musk – which arguably had its coming-of-age party over these past weeks. Musk himself shared what he said was a note from a SpaceX engineer falsely claiming that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping … ” Don’t worry, only 41m people have viewed the post.In addition to oligarchs such as Musk, Another Planet has its own politicians who advance its interests, most notably Donald Trump, who has had what the polls suggest was a good storm. And don’t forget the foot soldiers. On TikTok, you could scroll through miles of fake videos of flooded Florida cities before Milton had even hit the areas purporting to be shown. After Helene last month, Fema launched a dedicated “rumour response” page. Barely two weeks on, the scale of the task has already overwhelmed defences. Rumour response pages were instantly rebranded as government cover-ups (the Jews were behind this one too, would you believe). According to an urgent dispatch from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, just 33 posts containing claims debunked by Fema, the White House and the US government had already been viewed more than 160m times before Helene hit.Meanwhile, Another Planet has harnessed sophisticated technology in the form of AI. When told an AI image she’d shared of a sobbing child in a canoe with a puppy was entirely fake, RNC committee member Amy Kremer said she didn’t care and was leaving it up because it was “emblematic”. We’re now in an era when Another Planet feels confident enough to let you behind the curtain, because you’ll still believe it anyway. Kremer butching it out is just the latest version of JD Vance’s insouciant declaration last month that, of course, he creates false stories such as pets being eaten by Haitian immigrants. He does it, he says, so that the media “actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.Maybe most worryingly, Another Planet constantly suggests it will defend itself by force if necessary. One way to fight a “weather weapon” is by making a death threat against a meteorologist. Or, indeed, multiple death threats against multiple meteorologists. Another way is call for militias to attack Fema for “withholding aid”. Another way is to threaten to shoot first responders. Again, honestly the only problem with this community is that it’s right here on Earth. I’m sure they’d say that we in the world’s reality-based community are occupying them – but it’s pretty finely balanced. Ask me again in a month, by which time it might feel as if they are occupying us.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

      A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More

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      Hurricane misinformation signals how US election lies could intensify

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      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

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      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

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Trump and his allies are whipping up a whirlwind of lies about the hurricanes | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Whipping up hurricanes to merge with great replacement theory took hardly a week, about the time it takes for hurricanes themselves to form. The overheated atmosphere warmed the waters that were drawn up into the winds to churn them into a menacing storm.After Hurricane Helene hit, Donald Trump unleashed a whirlwind of humid lies: the federal government was deliberately preventing aid and even water from reaching areas that held Republican voters, “not getting anything”; Kamala Harris “spent all her Fema money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants”; and Fema was offering only $750 in disaster relief – all false, all debunked by the Republican governors in the affected states. The Republican congressman Chuck Edwards of North Carolina felt compelled to issue a statement to his constituents not to listen to “untrustworthy sources trying to spark chaos by sharing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and hearsay about hurricane response efforts” and the “outrageous rumors spread online”.Undoubtedly, he had in mind Elon Musk, who accelerated the circulation of the lies on his platform X: Fema “actively blocked” aid and “used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.” The Fema administrator, Deanne Criswell, called the calculated spread of disinformation “absolutely the worst I have ever seen”, and announced that Fema for the first time had established a webpage for “Hurricane Rumor Response”.“No money is being diverted from disaster response needs,” Fema stated. “Fema’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.”“Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you!” Musk tweeted.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right representative from Georgia, leaped in to tweet: “Yes they can control the weather.” She added: “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”In 2018, she infamously blamed a California wildfire on “space lasers” controlled by “Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm”, a classic antisemitic trope. Now, on 5 October, following up on how “they can control the weather”, she tweeted: “CBS, 9 years ago, talked about lasers controlling the weather.”Republican leaders instantly fell into line in a demonstration of Trump fealty. The congressman Steve Scalise, of Louisiana, the number two in the Republican leadership of the House, campaigning for Trump on 8 October, repeated his lie: “They use that money helping illegals here that they brought into America.”By now, Trump’s lies were a typhoon. JD Vance, his running mate, was sent out to stir it up further with an op-ed planted in the Wall Street Journal on 9 October – Rupert Murdoch again predictably handing over his paper to Trump – to echo that Fema funds were being diverted to help illegal immigrants. Vance added a new wrinkle to the conspiracy theory, suggesting that Fema was giving “special treatment” to gay and trans people over ordinary Americans because it held a seminar in 2023 on how those communities can prepare for disasters.As Hurricane Milton barreled down on Florida, Joe Biden, in a TV briefing on Wednesday afternoon, felt compelled to condemn Trump’s “onslaught of lies” that is “undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been undertaken and will continue to be undertaken”.View image in fullscreenThe political effect of the hurricanes on Trumpism has been to congeal free-floating elements into the racist replacement theory and Hitlerian rhetoric. Trump’s lies set in motion an antisemitic wave in North Carolina blaming Jewish local officials there and Fema administrators for taking the money for illegal immigrants. Of the falsehoods after Hurricane Helene, “30% of the posts on X contained overt antisemitic hate, including abuse directed at public officials such as the mayor of Asheville, North Carolina; the Fema director of public affairs; and the secretary of the department of homeland security. These collectively garnered 17.1m views as of October 7,” reported the non-profit Institute for Strategic Dialogue.Vance’s inclusion of gay and trans people into the overarching replacement theory fits the intensive Trump negative advertising campaign. Trump has spent more than $15.5m on TV commercials linking Harris to support for trans prison inmates – his most aired ad. In fact, in 2019 she stated she supported gender-affirming care for state prison inmates, according to the law, and responded similarly to an ACLU questionnaire about federal inmates. The Senate Republican political action committee has also invested tens of millions into anti-trans ads against Democratic candidates. Trump’s tagline: “Kamala’s for they/them, President Trump is for you.”Now, Vance implies, “they/them”, presumably in league with Greene’s “they”, are stealing the funds from the rest of us folks as a nefarious subplot of the great replacement. Adherence to every aspect of the theory proves loyalty to Trump. Vance and Scalise showed how to bend the knee.Trump’s transition chief on 7 October insisted on this unquestioning fealty to the leader. The self-described adults in the room, or “normies”, of the first term, who saw their mission to be curbing Trump’s lunatic or criminal impulses, will not be tolerated in the second. “Those people were not pure to his vision,” Howard Lutnick, the head of the Cantor Fitzgerald investment firm and the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, recently told the Financial Times. He explained that the “establishment” did not understand Trump’s “objectives” or “intuition” and “thought they knew better”. In the second term, “loyalty” and “fealty” would be the first qualification for consideration.Both Trump and Vance have stated that the senior federal civil service will be fired for their disloyalty. Consistent with Trump’s “vision”, his appointees would be required to swear an oath of loyalty to the leader above the constitution and laws of the United States. This oath was known as the “Führereid” in Nazi Germany, where public servants had to pledge: “I swear: I will be faithful and obedient to the leader of the German reich and people, Adolf Hitler, to observe the law, and to conscientiously fulfill my official duties, so help me God!” All soldiers had to take a similar oath. Some of those who failed to swear the Hitler oath were executed.Trump’s Hitlerian rhetoric and threats have ramped up with each passing day closer to the election that will decide whether he will be the president or perhaps a prisoner. When Harris appeared on The View, a daytime TV talkshow with an all-female panel, he demeaned her as a “dummy” and the other women as “dumb” and “degenerates”. Women should be subordinate and submissive. According to his running mate, Vance, women who do not have natural children are essentially worthless, not truly women, unqualified to be teachers, and women over 50 years old have value principally for childcare. “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” – children, kitchen, church – was the policy slogan for the proper place of women in the Third Reich.The concept of “degenerate” – “entartete” – was a central category in Nazism. Modern art and music were deemed “Entartete Kunst”, or degenerate art, and banned. “Degenerates” constituted a broad swath of people, some of whom were infected with “poison in the blood”, as Hitler classified Jews and Trump counts certain types of immigrants, which is the basis of the replacement theory embraced by both Hitler and Trump. The degenerate also included disabled people, gay people (who wore pink triangles in concentration camps), Gypsies, psychiatric patients and the mentally ill (“behinderte”). Under the program beginning in 1939 of “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (“destruction of unworthy lives”), Aktion T4, the mass murder of “degenerates” was launched, officially called “Gnadentod”, or “mercy death”.Trump openly entertains fantasies of violence and vengeance. He called on 29 September for “one really violent day … One rough hour. And I mean real rough.” He was speaking about shoplifters. He promises the roundup of 11 million undocumented people and camps. In late August, he reposted under a headline “How To Really Fix The System” an image of his perceived enemies in orange prison jumpsuits – Harris, Biden, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, Hunter Biden and Jack Smith. He called for the indictment of the congressional members of the January 6 select committee and military tribunals for Barack Obama and others.View image in fullscreenOn 5 June, the Fox News host Sean Hannity gave Trump an opportunity to soften his threat of retribution. “People believe that you want retribution and will use the system of justice to go after your political enemies,” said Hannity. Trump doubled down, saying: “I have every right to go after them.” On 7 October, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham tried again. “A lot of people will say: ‘Well, he’s just going to do to them what he – they did to him back at them.’” Trump replied: “A lot of people say that’s what should happen, right?” Or as Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “We had declared one of our principles thus: ‘We shall meet violence with violence in our own defense.’”Trump’s rhetoric eerily continues to paraphrase Hitler’s, which eludes American audiences. His first wife, Ivana, claimed that a book of Hitler’s speeches was on his bedstand. Trump’s language just happens to be extraordinarily resonant.Campaigning on the debunked myth that Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs … eating the cats … eating the pets”, Trump used unusual language for him to make his bogus point on 16 September. “Allowing millions of people, from places unknown, to INVADE and take over our Country, is an unpardonable sin,” he tweeted. His reference to “sin” in the context of his racist replacement theory, was, knowingly or not, an echo of Hitler, to convey exactly the same meaning. “The sin against blood and race is the hereditary sin in this world and it brings disaster on every nation that commits it,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf.Lately, Trump has used over and over in speech after speech the same metaphor conflating personal and national humiliation. On 12 August, Trump tweeted: “Kamala has no ideas, and would be an absolutely horrible, RADICAL LEFT, President, laughed at all over the World. We’ve had enough of that!”On 22 August, Trump continued the “laughed at” meme: “She stands for Incompetence and Weakness – Our Country is being laughed at all over the World!” On 16 September, he tweeted: “THE WORLD IS LAUGHING AT US AS FOOLS, THEY ARE STEALING OUR JOBS AND OUR WEALTH. WE CANNOT LET THEM LAUGH ANY LONGER.” Trump has used variations of this “laugh” meme to highlight national dishonor dozens of time on his Truth Social account.On 30 September, at two rallies, one in New York City and the other in Walker, Michigan, Trump said: “Boy, what a group of people we have. It’s a joke. We’re laughed at all over the world for our leadership. Because this country has never been laughed at [like] a bunch of dopes. It’s never been laughed at like it is right now.”On 1 October, in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump said: “What a miserable few years. It’s just been horrible. And people all over the world, especially the leaders, are laughing at how stupidly our country is run.”On 30 January 1939, Hitler delivered his notorious “prophecy” speech calling for “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”. The most memorable image he evoked was of Jews laughing at him and at Germany. “During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance the Jewish race which only received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the state, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among many other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face.”After Hitler ordered the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, he returned to the imagery of Jews laughing in a speech that referenced his “prophecy”. “In Germany too the Jews once laughed at my prophecies,” he said on 30 September 1942. “I don’t know whether they are still laughing, or whether they have already lost the inclination to laugh, but I can assure you that everywhere they will stop laughing.”The Nazis underscored Hitler’s speech by producing a propaganda poster depicting caricatures of laughing Jews surrounding Franklin D Roosevelt, with the slogan: “Das Lachen wird ihnen vergehen!!!” – “Their laughter will disappear!!!”On 7 October, Trump returned for a rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, to revisit the site of his near assassination. “And we want to get respect like we had it four years ago, the entire world respected us, they respected us,” he said. “They respected us more than they’ve ever respected us, and now they laugh at us. We can’t have them laugh at us, can we?”

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Hurricane Milton live updates: storm still producing hurricane-force winds as it moves off Florida’s east coast

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      The US National Hurricane Center reports that Hurricane Milton has completed its transit of Florida, and has moved off the state’s east coast. However, the center warns that it is still producing “hurricane force winds and heavy rainfall in east-central Florida”.In an earlier update the center said Milton still had a consistent wind speed of 85 mph (140 kph). About 3 million customers in Florida have been left without power, and there are reports of fatalities as rescue and recovery operations get under way.Milton earlier made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, swerving south and missing a direct hit on Tampa in Hillsborough County.The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office has said “post-storm recovery efforts have begun”. Danny Alvarez, the public information officer for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, earlier said it had been difficult for crews receiving 911 calls but unable to deploy while winds were consistently about 40 mph.St Petersburg residents could no longer get water from their household taps because a water main break led the city to shut down service, and a construction crane collapsed, falling into a building in the city. Streets in downtown Gulfport were under water.About 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane even made landfall, many of them mobile homes in communities for senior citizens, Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management said, while authorities in St Lucie County said there had been more than one fatality.Fatalities have been reported on Florida’s east coast, after a tornado ripped through a retirement community in St Lucie county.One eyewitness, Doug Anderson, told local newspaper TCPalm that “I saw a truck knocked sideways. I followed the wreckage into Spanish Lakes. It looked like someone had dropped a weight from the sky and flattened a bunch of houses. One of the last houses I went to looked like it had been ripped in half. The people were out front crying. It was very heartbreaking to watch.”Anderson, a Lakewood Park resident, told the paper he spent about five hours on the scene trying to help, and witnessed numerous people with injuries.St Lucie county sheriff Keith Peterson earlier said of the location “Our deputies are out here. The Fire District is out here. We’re going through the rubble. We’re trying to recover anybody that we can, provide whatever help that we can.”Speaking to ABC News, meteorologist Kevin Musso has described the impact of Hurricane Milton compared to the forecast as a “mixed bag”. He said forecasts about the strength of the hurricane when it made landfall, and the location of the landfall, were “pretty good”, but that there is more that needs to be assessed.He told viewers “the question about the storm surge will really have to wait to be verified once we get to sunrise, get past these evening hours, and get into daylight.”Musso also said that the number of tornadoes associated with the hurricane had “exceeded expectations”. “Tornadoes happen,” he said, “but these were exceptional.”Here is some CCTV footage of CCTV showing Hurricane Milton flooding in a Fort Myers restaurant.The US National Hurricane Center reports that Hurricane Milton has completed its transit of Florida, and has moved off the state’s east coast. However, the center warns that it is still producing “hurricane force winds and heavy rainfall in east-central Florida”.In an earlier update the center said Milton still had a consistent wind speed of 85 mph (140 kph). About 3 million customers in Florida have been left without power, and there are reports of fatalities as rescue and recovery operations get under way.Milton earlier made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, swerving south and missing a direct hit on Tampa in Hillsborough County.The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office has said “post-storm recovery efforts have begun”. Danny Alvarez, the public information officer for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, earlier said it had been difficult for crews receiving 911 calls but unable to deploy while winds were consistently about 40 mph.St Petersburg residents could no longer get water from their household taps because a water main break led the city to shut down service, and a construction crane collapsed, falling into a building in the city. Streets in downtown Gulfport were under water.About 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane even made landfall, many of them mobile homes in communities for senior citizens, Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management said, while authorities in St Lucie County said there had been more than one fatality.The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office has posted to Facebook that it is beginning recovery efforts. It said:
      Post-storm recovery efforts have begun in some parts of our county. Please stay home, as we have received reports of downed trees and flooded streets. Your safety is our priority.
      The number of customers without power in Florida has passed 3 million.It has just gone 4am in Florida, and the latest update from the National Hurricane Center reports that Hurricane Milton is moving north-east at 18mph with sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph).Here is a video clip of a crane collapse in Florida caused by Hurricane Milton.Bill Litton, the emergency management director for Osceola County, south of Orlando, has said over 1,400 people were in shelters in the county as of early Thursday morning, the New York Times reports.Max Chesnes, reporting for the Tampa Bay Times from downtown Gulfport in Florida, states that “There are a few flooded streets in the city under less than a foot of water,” noting that is “far from what the worst case forecasts called for.”However, in a sign of how Florida has been hit by two hurricanes in the space of a few days, he posted a picture of debris that had not been cleared from the impact of Hurricane Helene now being soaked in the floodwaters from Hurricane Milton.The NWS National Hurricane Center in Miami has issued an update on Hurricane Milton, which it says now has maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph), and is 30 miles (45 km) off Orlando and 20 miles (30 km) off Cape Canaveral.WINK News meteorologist Matt Devitt has described one of the effects of Hurricane Milton being the “worst tornado outbreak I’ve seen in Southwest Florida in a long time,” adding “there was “horrible damage and devastation from outer bands ahead of Milton.”Witnesses have told CNN that a crane collapsing in St Petersburg due to Hurricane Milton sounded like “a mix of thunder booming, and the metal screeching sound of a train wreck.”Resident Makenna Caskey told the news network it came down and hit a building opposite her apartment, and she said it felt like “a massive rumbling tremor that shook our whole building.”The Tampa Bay Times reported that the crane collapsed near its own office in St Petersburg and that there was “a strong smell of gasoline in the air and the faint sound of alarms ring out.” More

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      Our dystopian climate isn’t just about fires and floods. It’s about society fracturing | Bill McKibben

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      Even as the good people of Florida’s west coast pulled the soggy mattresses from Helene out to the curb, Milton appeared on the horizon this week – a double blast of destruction from the Gulf of Mexico that’s a reminder that physics takes no time off, not even in the weeks before a crucial election. My sense is that those storms will help turn the voting on 5 November into a climate election of sorts, even if – as is likely – neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump spend much time in the next 25 days talking about CO2 or solar power.That’s because these storms show not only the power of global heating (Helene’s record rains, and Milton’s almost unprecedented intensification, were reminders of what it means to have extremely hot ocean temperatures). More, they show what we’re going to need to survive the now inevitable train of such disasters. Which is solidarity. Which is something only one ticket offers.I confess that I’ve been all in to beat Trump for any number of reasons – Third Act, the group I founded to organize Americans over age 60 for action on climate and democracy, has been flooding the swing states with hundreds of thousands of postcards, and our silver wave door-knocking tour hits Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada in the days ahead But if there was one way to sum up what this election means to me, it would be: solidarity. In the 40 years since Ronald Reagan’s election, we’ve gone a long way down the path of hyper-individual, everyone for themselves. Joe Biden has tried to wrench the wheel back towards the FDR America-as-group-project model with tools like the spending in the Inflation Reduction Act, but it’s a work in progress. The climate crisis, above all, requires the return of that solidarity.That’s because there’s no way to keep it from getting worse without joint public action: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us we have five years left to cut emissions in half, which means it will not be accomplished one Tesla at a time; it requires aggressive public action of the kind the current White House is coordinating, as it sets up battery factories and shepherds new transmission lines through various regulatory fences.But there’s also no way to survive it, even in its current form, without intense cooperation. To give one example: Florida’s insurance system is clearly breaking down, as one storm after another drives private insurers out of the state.As the Tampa newspaper put it in June: “As the crisis escalates, state leaders are desperately trying to convince insurance companies to stick around. States are offering them more flexibility to raise premiums or drop certain homes from coverage, fast-tracking rate revisions and making it harder for residents to sue their insurance company.” But as that seawall begins to fail, “a flood of new policyholders are joining state-backed insurance ‘plans of last resort’, leaving states to assume more of the risk on behalf of residents who can’t find coverage in the private sector.”Indeed, so many people are swamping the “state-backed insurance plans” they’re becoming overloaded with risk. Ten months ago, the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse and his budget committee colleagues wrote to the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, to ask for proof that Florida’s public Citizens Insurance could survive disasters like the one now bearing down on Tampa. DeSantis may have given his most eloquent response in May, when he signed a bill essentially outlawing the phrase “climate change” in Florida statutes. “I’m not a global warming person,” he explained.Meanwhile, across the upland terrain drenched by Helene, rightwing forces have been relentlessly spreading rumors: most prominently, that the Federal Emergency Management Administration (Fema) spent all its money on migrants and has none left for Americans. This is not true. (Indeed, its closest approach to truth came during the Trump years when Fema did divert relief funds to “tighten the border”.) But it’s one more way to divide people, to use their very real trauma for political gain.The dystopian future is not just about the endless fires and floods; it’s also about a society that pulls apart in their face, where people can’t work together because they’ve been so divided by disinformation and hate. It feels like Harris and Tim Walz are offering, above all, one last chance at an America where people actually work together on things, a United States. They even imagine a world where the world keeps working together, imagine that – one where we have, say, effective climate negotiations. That these things seem farfetched to us now is probably the strongest proof of how much they’re needed.

      Bill McKibben is the Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College. He is the founder of Third Act, organizing people over 60 for progressive change More

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      Hurricane Milton strengthens into category 5 storm again as Biden warns storm could be worst in over 100 years – live updates

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      The National Hurricane Center is reporting that Milton has strengthened back into a category 5 hurricane.Milton’s maximum sustained winds were up to 165mph, the agency said Tuesday afternoon. It will likely fluctuate in intensity, but will continue to be a “dangerous major hurricane” when it makes landfall in Florida Wednesday evening.“This is a very serious situation and residents in Florida should closely follow orders from their local emergency management officials,” the National Hurricane Center said. “Evacuations and other preparations should be completed today. Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida.”A team of “hurricane hunters” from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) flew through Milton as the category 5 hurricane barrelled towards Florida’s coast.The team shared footage of their bumpy ride into the storm to gather data that will provide information for forecasting and hurricane research.Milton is expected to be one of the worst hurricanes to hit the US in decades. Joe Biden warned that evacuation orders for those in the storm’s path were a matter of “life and death” while the Tampa mayor told residents: “If you choose to stay … you are going to die.”The National Hurricane Center is reporting that Milton has strengthened back into a category 5 hurricane.Milton’s maximum sustained winds were up to 165mph, the agency said Tuesday afternoon. It will likely fluctuate in intensity, but will continue to be a “dangerous major hurricane” when it makes landfall in Florida Wednesday evening.“This is a very serious situation and residents in Florida should closely follow orders from their local emergency management officials,” the National Hurricane Center said. “Evacuations and other preparations should be completed today. Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida.”Fema has stationed major resources in Florida to support the state before Hurricane Milton makes landfall, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday.The agency has dispatched dozens of teams overseeing incident management, search and rescue, swift water rescue, disaster medical assistance and temporary power along with 300 ambulances and 30 “high water vehicles” from the defense department. More than 20m meals and 40m liters of water are available as needed, Fema said.“The National Hurricane Center forecasts Hurricane Milton will be a large and extremely dangerous hurricane when it approaches the west coast of Florida tomorrow, bringing devastating hurricane-force winds and life-threatening [storm] surge,” the statement read. The agency also warned “time is running out to prepare for the hurricane’s potentially deadly impacts”.The announcement comes as the Biden administration grapples with the effects of back-to-back hurricanes as well as misinformation spread by Donald Trump and his supporters and others about the federal response to recent storms and false claims that Fema is preventing people from evacuating in Florida.As Florida residents prepare to flee Hurricane Milton, which is expected to be one of the state’s strongest storms in a century, gas stations are running out of fuel.About 1,300 of the state’s 7,500 gas stations, or 17.4%, were out of gas on Tuesday afternoon, CNN reported, citing data from GasBuddy. In areas under evacuation orders, the shortages were even more dire: on Monday night, 70% of stations in Fort Myers were without gas.“These numbers will continue to rise very fast,” Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy, told Reuters.The state’s governor said that officials are working with fuel companies to continue bringing in gasoline before Milton makes landfall on Wednesday.“We have been dispatching fuel over the past 24 hours as gas stations have run out,” the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said. “So we currently have 268,000 gallons of diesel, 110,000 gallons of gasoline. Those numbers are less than what they were 24 hours ago because we’ve put a lot in, but we have an additional 1.2m gallons of both diesel and gasoline that is currently en route to the state of Florida.”Meanwhile, the supreme court’s latest term is under way, and the nine justices heard oral arguments today in a case challenging the Biden administration’s regulation of “ghost guns”. As the Guardian’s Cecilia Nowell reports, the conservative-dominated body seemed ready to take the government’s side. Here’s more:The US supreme court signalled a willingness to uphold the regulation of “ghost guns” – firearms without serial numbers that are built from kits that people can order online and assemble at home.The manufacturers and gun rights groups challenging the rule argued the Biden administration overstepped by trying to regulate kits.Justice Samuel Alito compared gun parts to meal ingredients, saying a lineup including eggs and peppers isn’t necessarily a western omelet. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, though, questioned whether gun kits are more like ready-to-eat meal kits that contain everything needed to make a dinner like turkey chili.Chief Justice John Roberts seemed skeptical of the challengers’ position that the kits are mostly popular with hobbyists who enjoy making their own weapons, like auto enthusiasts might rebuild a car on the weekend.Many ghost gun kits require only the drilling of a few holes and removal of plastic tabs.“My understanding is that it’s not terribly difficult to do this,” Roberts said. “He really wouldn’t think he has built that gun, would he?”A ruling is expected in the coming months.Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, says he expects Hurricane Milton to reach the state’s west coast by tomorrow night or early on Thursday morning.He also says his administration has taken steps to help people flee areas under evacuation warnings, including negotiating lower hotel prices and arranging free rides with Uber:From his perch on the International Space Station, Nasa astronaut Matthew Dominick got a view of Hurricane Milton as it churned across the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida’s west coast:Speaking in Milwaukee at an event to promote his efforts to rid the US of lead pipes, Joe Biden repeated that his administration was prepared for Hurricane Milton, and that Floridians should heed the warnings of authorities.“We’re prepared for another horrible hurricane to hit Florida. I directed my team to do everything they can to save lives and help communities, before, during and after this hurricane. The most important message today for all those who may be listening to this and the impacted areas: listen to the local authorities. Follow safety instruction, including evacuation orders,” Biden said.The rest of Kamala Harris’s interview with Howard Stern was mostly free of heavy topics, with the vice-president answering, and occasionally parrying, questions on an array of subjects.Such as what she eats for breakfast every morning: “I don’t eat Raisin Bran every morning,” Harris replied. She said she was a fan of Special K, and that her mother used to make Special K cookies.Stern wondered whether Liz Cheney, the former Republican representative who lost her primary after breaking with Donald Trump and co-chairing the January 6 commission, might be someone she would appoint to her cabinet.“I gotta win, Howard,” Harris replied.Stern pondered the pressures of being both vice-president and also a candidate for the presidency, and asked Harris whether she might consider going to therapy. “This is my form of therapy right now, Howard,” the vice-president replied.Her interviewer then brought up people who might not vote for Harris because is a woman. She responded: “Listen, I’ve been the first woman in almost every position I’ve had. I believe that men and women support women in leadership. And that’s been my life experience and that’s why I’m running for president.”Kamala Harris continued her media blitz in New York City, making the second of three stops scheduled today at the studios of Howard Stern, the one-time shock jock who has lately become known for conducting in-depth interviews.Stern asked the vice-president for her reaction to the revelation – from a forthcoming book by investigative journalist Bob Woodward – that Donald Trump sent Vladimir Putin Covid-19 testing machines during the period when the virus was at its worst.Harris replied:
      That is just the most recent stark example of who Trump is, that he secretly sent Covid test kits for the personal use of Putin of Russia, an adversary to the United States, when he was talking about Americans should be putting bleach in their blood. Think about what this is. …
      This election is about strength versus weakness. The weakness of someone who puts himself before the American people, who does not have the strength to stand for their needs and make sure we’re a secure nation.
      The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aircraft Operations Center posted a video on social media on Tuesday, showing one of their aircraft flying through the hurricane to collect data to improve forecasts and to support hurricane research.Aircraft data and satellite images of Hurricane Milton indicate that Milton’s maximum sustained winds have increased to near 155 mph with higher gusts, according to the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center.“While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida” reads the 2pm advisory.It adds: “Today is the last full day for Florida residents to get their families ready and evacuate if told to do so.”The Florida Department of Corrections announced on Tuesday that over 4,636 inmates have been evacuated ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall on Wednesday.“Additional evacuations are under way” the department added.The Department also announced the cancelation of visitation statewide through Sunday, in response to anticipated inclement weather.As of 1pm ET, at least 13 counties in Florida have issued mandatory evacuation warnings, and more than 50 counties are under a state of emergency as the state prepares Hurricane Milton’s arrival.Milton became a category 4 hurricane on Tuesday morning, and forecasters predict that the hurricane’s center will likely make landfall along the west-central coast of Florida sometime on Wednesday night.Joe Biden is warning people who live in the path of Hurricane Milton to heed evacuation orders, saying it could be the “worst storm to hit Florida in over a century”. The president postponed his travel to Angola and Germany as the storm churns eastward, and the White House is stepping up its outreach efforts ahead of what could be the next major disaster to befall the southeast, after Hurricane Helene swept through the region not two weeks ago. Kamala Harris gave a similar warning in an live interview on popular talk show the View, while also outlining her plans to relieve the burden on families who support both children and aging relatives.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      On the View, Harris was asked what she would do different from Biden. The vice-president initially said nothing, then amended her answer, saying she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet.

      The FBI never acted on tips received about Brett Kavanaugh during his supreme court nomination process, a Democratic senator opposed to the Trump appointee revealed in a report.

      Trump secretly sent Covid-19 testing machines to Vladimir Putin in 2020, and has called the Russian leader as many as seven times since leaving the White House, investigative journalist Bob Woodward has reportedly written in a forthcoming book.
      The Guardian’s community team is hoping to hear from undecided voters in the seven swing states this election about their thoughts on the contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.If you vote in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona or Nevada and still haven’t picked a candidate, we have some questions for you, and you can find them below:The Trump campaign has seized on Kamala Harris’s comment on the View that she wouldn’t do anything different from Joe Biden to (no surprise) cast her as unfit for the presidency.“If you’re a voter who wants to turn the page from Joe Biden’s failed economy, open border, and global chaos then Kamala Harris is NOT the candidate for you,” an email from the campaign’s rapid response team reads.While Harris initially said in the morning interview that she could not think of anything she would do differently than Biden, she later said he would appoint a Republican to her cabinet – something the president has not done.Joe Biden issued a dire warning about the severity of Hurricane Milton, saying it could pose a historic threat to Florida.“The current path is terminated … in the Tampa Bay area and cuts directly across the state, east to west, all the way across the state, with the potential for this storm to both enter Florida as a hurricane and leave Florida as a hurricane on the Atlantic coast,” Biden said at the White House.“This could be the worst storm to hit Florida in over a century, and God willing, it won’t be but that’s what it’s looking like right now.”He also added that he had spoken to Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida who yesterday refused a call from Kamala Harris.“The governor of Florida has been cooperative. He said he’s gotten all that he needs. I talked to him again yesterday, and … I said, ‘No, you’re doing a great job. It’s being all being done,’” Biden said, adding he gave DeSantis his personal phone number.The president also said he would find another time to travel to Germany and Angola, two trips he postponed as the storm approached. More