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      Mark Robinson sues CNN over report he wrote racist posts on porn website

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      Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, announced a lawsuit Tuesday against CNN over its recent report alleging he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory.The lawsuit, filed in Wake county superior court, comes less than four weeks after a television report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. Robinson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh.CNN “chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that Robinson’s data – including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address supposedly associated with the NudeAfrica account – were previously compromised by multiple data breaches”, the lawsuit states.CNN declined to comment, spokesperson Emily Kuhn said in an email.Polls at the time of the CNN report already showed Democratic rival Josh Stein, the sitting attorney general, with a lead over Robinson. Early in-person voting begins Thursday statewide, and well over 50,000 completed absentee ballots have been received so far.The CNN report said Robinson left statements over a decade ago on the message board in which, in part, he referred to himself as a “black NAZI”, said he enjoyed transgender pornography, said that he preferred Hitler to Barack Obama, and slammed the Rev Martin Luther King Jr as “worse than a maggot”. More

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      Harris Campaign to Fly Ads Over N.F.L. Games in Swing States

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      As the Harris campaign continues to court male voters, it is dialing up a deep shot, targeting a venue where it thinks it will reach quite a few of them: professional football.The campaign is spending six figures on flyover advertisements knocking former President Donald J. Trump and promoting Vice President Kamala Harris at four N.F.L. games that are taking place on Sunday in swing states, with teams in those matchups collectively accounting for six of the seven main presidential battlegrounds.The four games are in Wisconsin, where the Green Bay Packers will host the Arizona Cardinals; Nevada, where the Las Vegas Raiders will host the Pittsburgh Steelers; North Carolina, where the Carolina Panthers will host the Atlanta Falcons; and Pennsylvania, where the Philadelphia Eagles will host the Cleveland Browns. (Michigan is the only swing state left out, with its Detroit Lions playing in Dallas on Sunday.)In Las Vegas, fans will see skytyping planes fly over the stadium to draw a simple message in white: “Vote Kamala.” In the other venues, a plane with a banner will deliver a slightly longer plea: “Sack Trump’s Project 2025! Vote Kamala!” In Philadelphia, that message will include a nod to the home team: “Go Birds!”The campaign is part of an effort to attract hard-to-reach voters, especially men, said Abhi Rahman, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.“Our goal is to meet people where they are, and there is only a sliver of the electorate that is still undecided,” Mr. Rahman said. “What we know about these undecided people — majority male — is they don’t like to read political publications. They aren’t in the 24-7 world of policy and politics, so what we are trying to do is reach them in a different way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Floods, Soaring Insurance Rates Become a Hot Election Issue

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      Few states elect their insurance commissioners. But in North Carolina, a proposed 42 percent rate hike and Hurricane Helene have raised the stakes in the upcoming election.When Marjorie Burnside moved to the North Carolina coast several years ago after retiring as a New York City police officer, she did not know much about the candidates running for the obscure statewide offices that oversee agriculture, labor and insurance. So Ms. Burnside, a lifelong Republican, voted along party lines.She now considers many of her area’s elected Republicans responsible for rubber-stamping too many development projects. And she is furious that they have failed to tame home insurance premiums, which have soared by 75 percent. That was why she accepted an invitation to a friend’s recent beach house party for State Senator Natasha Marcus, a Democrat who is challenging the state’s Republican insurance commissioner.“She just gave me lots to think about,” Ms. Burnside, 59, said after listening to Ms. Marcus’s warnings about loopholes that hurt policyholders and rates in coastal areas that are likely to see a significant rise. “More people, more claims, more raises — it’s all connected.”Eleven states elect their insurance commissioners, an obscure but powerful job that affects virtually every resident through regulations and the ability to challenge or reject rate hikes on home, car and other policies.The contest has typically been treated as a down-ballot afterthought involving little-known candidates, with hundreds of thousands of voters leaving their ballots blank. But as housing and insurance costs have skyrocketed, particularly in areas experiencing whiplash from climate change and extreme weather, these races are becoming proxies for public frustration over pocketbook anxieties.Natasha Marcus, a Democrat running for North Carolina insurance commissioner.Cornell Watson for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fema chief warns ‘dangerous’ Trump falsehoods hampering Helene response

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      A slew of falsehoods about Hurricane Helene, including claims of funds diverted from storm survivors to migrants and even that Democrats somehow directed the hurricane itself, have hampered the response to one of the deadliest hurricanes to ever hit the US, the nation’s top emergency official has warned.Misinformation spread by Donald Trump, his supporters and others about the hurricane has shrouded the recovery effort for communities shattered by Helene, which tore through five states causing at least 230 deaths and tens of billions of dollars of damage. Many places, such as in western North Carolina, are still without a water supply, electricity, navigable roads or vital supplies.“It’s frankly disappointing we are having to deal with this narrative, the fact there are a few leaders having a hard time telling the difference between fact and fiction is creating an impedance to our ability to actually get people the help they need,” Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), told MSNBC on Monday.Trump has accused Joe Biden’s administration of “abandoning” people to the crisis and, baselessly, of being short of disaster relief funds due to money spent on undocumented migrants. Such claims are “frankly ridiculous” and creating a “truly dangerous narrative that is creating this fear” among affected people, Criswell said.In multiple rallies in the past week, Trump has accused Biden and Kamala Harris of favoring migrants over disaster-hit areas. “They stole the Fema money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” Trump has said.“Kamala spent all her Fema money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal immigrants.” Trump added the places worst hit are “largely a Republican area so some people say they did it for that reason”.JD Vance, Trump’s Republican running mate, echoed this theme on Monday, telling Fox News that Fema’s focus on migrants is “going to distract focus from their core job of helping American citizens in their time of need”. Last week, Stephen Miller, a far-right Trump adviser, said that “Kamala Harris turned Fema into an illegal alien resettlement agency”.Fema does, in fact, have a housing program that offers shelter to migrants leaving detention but this is separate from its disaster relief program. “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. None,” the White House has stated.In remarks on Monday after speaking to Criswell by phone, Harris urged politicians to stop “playing games” with lives at stake. According to the White House pool, the vice-president said: “There’s a lot of misinformation being pushed out there by the former president about what is available, particularly for the survivors of Helene. First of all, it’s extraordinarily irresponsible. It’s about him, it’s not about you. The reality is Fema has so many resources that are available to those who desperately need them.”Congress recently provided an extra $20bn for disaster relief but Biden has warned that more funding will be needed to help the long-term recovery of places increasingly assailed by powerful storms fueled by global heating.Other conspiracy theories and erroneous claims have swirled online and in areas affected by Helene, such as the assertion that Fema will give only $750 to individuals as a loan (it is, in fact, a grant, and can be followed by further claims for more than $40,000) or that the agency is seizing people’s land.Fema has, unusually, put up a web page to counter these claims, with a spokesman saying the misinformation is “extremely damaging” to response efforts as it deters people from seeking assistance. “We are going to continue to message aggressively so everyone understands what the facts are,” he said regarding the looming Hurricane Milton, which is set to hit Florida.Some social media posts spreading misinformation about the hurricanes called for militias to be formed to confront Fema workers, while other posts contained antisemitic hatred aimed at figures such as Esther Manheimer, mayor of Asheville, North Carolina, a city badly affected by the storm.“It’s surprising to me how this is developing but unfortunately it seems antisemitic hate speech is becoming more common in the United States today,” Manheimer said.“I’ve tried to steer clear of X and other platforms but there is a lot of misinformation that people tend to believe. We’ve had people in the community reaching out to ask if false things are true because folks are intentionally misleading them.”Manheimer said that Asheville, including her own home, still lacks running water but is being “overwhelmed” with support by Fema to clear roads and get power back on.More than 130,000 customers in western North Carolina were still without electricity Monday, according to poweroutage.us.“People have lost everything here and the last thing we need is for people to spread false information,” she said. “There are talking points being distributed throughout the Republican party that just aren’t correct. They seem to think spreading misinformation will help win this election.”One of the more outlandish claims about the hurricane came from Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Republican congresswoman who previously claimed that Jewish lasers from space caused forest fires. “Yes they can control the weather,” Greene posted on X about the hurricane last week. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said: “There is no mechanism to control a hurricane and no evidence that anyone was trying to modify it. This is just a crazy conspiracy theory.”“While humans don’t ‘control’ the weather we are affecting the weather. Human activities, mainly the emission of greenhouse gases, did indeed make Helene more destructive.”He added: “If she wants humans to stop affecting the weather she should support phasing out fossil fuels.”So far, Biden has declared the federal government will pay for the entire cost of activities such as debris removal, search and rescue and food supplies for Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The president has also already approved disaster help for Florida ahead of Milton’s arrival.This approach has garnered some rare praise for Biden from Republican governors of affected states, with some Republican lawmakers calling for the conspiracy theories to abate.“Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods,” Kevin Corbin, a Republican state senator for western North Carolina, posted on Facebook last week. “Please don’t let these crazy stories consume you or have you continually contact your elected officials to see if they are true.” More

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      At North Carolina Churches After Helene, a Time to Grieve and a Time to Hope

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      Worshipers gathered on Sunday, many for the first time since the storm decimated their communities, “to cry and pray and process.” As people headed toward First Baptist Church Swannanoa on Sunday, it was impossible to forget what had happened to their small mountain community in western North Carolina. Scattered across the landscape were broken pieces of life before the remnants of Hurricane Helene barreled through: chunks of asphalt, shredded trees, fragments of home foundations. Nearby, a search-and-rescue team clambered over debris. Yet the 11 a.m. hourlong service offered a respite — a chance to worship, to step away from the grief and to soak in shared encouragement and resilience. The church had invited congregants from another nearby church, whose building was destroyed, and encouraged those who had lost their Bibles in the storm to take one from the church. Melody Dowdy, 46, who is married to the senior pastor of First Baptist, hugged congregants and held back tears. “We’ve tried to create a haven of hope,” she said. More than a week after the storm ravaged much of western North Carolina, many storm survivors trickled back to houses of faith — worshiping in parking lots and parks, next to mud-filled sanctuaries, and in churches with pews and Bibles but, in some cases, without power or water.“There is just so much desperation. Lives have been obliterated,” said Winston Parrish, senior pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Asheville, where dozens of emergency workers from across the country are staying. “We needed this moment on Sunday to cry and pray and process.”In a region steeped in religion, churches right now are more than just a place of worship. Faith leaders of many denominations have transformed their buildings and parking lots into command centers and shelters for emergency workers, and into distribution points for those in need. There, groups hand out water and food and organize deliveries of supplies to stranded communities.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Still reeling from Helene, Florida braces for Hurricane Milton as it gains strength

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      Florida has expanded its state of emergency as it braces for a major storm expect to pummel the state’s western peninsula by midweek, after Tropical Storm Milton gathered strength and was declared a category 1 hurricane on Sunday.The impending landfall of Milton comes days after Hurricane Helene caused devastation and destruction through large swaths of Florida and other parts of the south-east of the US including North Carolina. The death toll stands at 230 people, and is expected to rise.Forecasters expect Milton to continue to build, and could approach a category 3 hurricane or higher as it hits the Florida peninsula on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. The National Weather Service said there could be life-threatening storm surge and damaging winds, and urged local residents to follow any evacuation orders that are now likely.Residents in parts of Florida whose lives have been upended by Helene now worry that a second wave of catastrophe could be imminent as debris left by the first disaster is shifted in further overpowering rains.Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Sunday that while it remains to be seen just where Milton will strike, it’s clear that Florida is going to be hit hard – “I don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t have major impacts at this point.”As many as 4,000 National Guard troops are helping state crews to remove debris, DeSantis said, and he directed that Florida crews dispatched to North Carolina in Helene’s aftermath return to the state to prepare for Milton.“All available state assets … are being marshaled to help remove debris,” DeSantis said. “We’re going 24-7 … it’s all hands on deck.”Florida is the state mostly directly in the current expected path of Milton but the National Weather Service in Wilmington North Carolina warned that local impacts in north-east South Carolina and south-east North Carolina “are currently expected to be high surf & strong rip currents along with gusty winds along the coast”.Joe Biden on Sunday ordered an additional 500 US troops to be sent into the hurricane-stricken area of North Carolina, bringing the total of active-duty troops assisting with response and recovery to 1,500. That is on top of 6,000 national guards personnel and 7,000 federal workers.“My administration is sparing no resource to support families,” the president said.The new storm barreling towards the western coast of Florida presents the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Fema, with a whole new level of crises. The agency has already had to respond to swirling misinformation concerning Helene, amplified on the presidential campaign trail by Donald Trump and his surrogates.Helene made landfall on the Florida Gulf coast on 26 September. It then ripped through Georgia and North Carolina, both of which are battleground states that are being aggressively fought over by the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns.The Fema administrator, Deanne Criswell, told ABC News’s This Week on Sunday that claims put out by the Trump campaign that millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money had been diverted from disaster relief to house undocumented immigrants were “frankly ridiculous and just plain false”. Criswell condemned what she called a “truly dangerous narrative”.She added that “this kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people. It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people”.On Thursday, Trump told a rally in Saginaw, Michigan, that his Democratic opponent, the Vice-President Kamala Harris, had “spent all her Fema money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal immigrants”. Then on Sunday Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, told CNN’s State of the Union that “you have migrants being housed in luxury hotels in New York City”.She added: “We have paid so much money from our tax dollars into the crisis that didn’t need to happen.”The Trump line that federal funds are being redirected away from hurricane relief to housing immigrants is false. Fema does have an immigration housing fund known as the Shelter and Services Program which has been granted $650m by Congress this year, but it is separate from disaster response.Fema has indicated that it has enough resources to deal with Helene, but may need additional funds in the event of further calamities during the hurricane season.Trump’s falsehoods have received some pushback from Republican leaders. Thom Tillis, the US senator from North Carolina, disputed the claim that funds had been diverted to immigrants.“We could have a discussion about the failure of this administration’s border policies and the billions of dollars it’s costing. But right now, not yet is it affecting the flow of resources to western North Carolina,” he told CBS News’s Face the Nation. More

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      in Elections

      Hurricane Helene Aftermath: 6 Issues Across the Southeast

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      The worst fallout from the hurricane is in western North Carolina, but at least five other states are grappling with their own intractable problems. More than a week after Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm, state officials across the Southeast are scrambling to repair damaged electrical lines, roads and bridges affecting tens of thousands across the path of destruction.Helene wreaked havoc from Florida to the Appalachian states after making landfall on the Gulf Coast on Sept. 26. The worst fallout is still in western North Carolina, where, in addition to the mass wreckage of destroyed buildings, teams are searching for dozens of missing people, some areas have no potable water, cellphone communication remains spotty, more than 170,000 customers still don’t have power, and hundreds of roads are closed. But at least five other states are grappling with their own intractable problems from impassable highways to ruined farmland.President Biden, who surveyed the storm’s toll this week, said Helene most likely caused billions of dollars in damage, and he asked Congress on Friday to quickly replenish disaster relief funds to help. Here are some of the biggest current issues in the Southeast:In North Carolina, an untold number of people are still missing.The remains of a home in Swannanoa, N.C.Loren Elliott for The New York TimesIn the western part of the state, many families’ greatest concern is their unaccounted loved ones. But looking for them in mountain-ringed towns and rugged ravines has been a daunting task for search teams, and the effort has been hampered by poor cell service and widespread power losses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Troubling Quiet of North Carolina’s Cell Service Outages

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      Service has been restored in some areas after Hurricane Helene, but many people are still unable to communicate by phone, which has hampered relief efforts, worried loved ones and complicated daily life.John Tressler stood next to what was left of his storm-battered deli, part of which had collapsed in the torrents of a raging river, and waited to meet a relief crew bringing a much-needed supply of food into Swannanoa, N.C.He passed the time chatting with another business owner, and kept waiting. And waiting. He could use his phone to check the time, but, without cell service, it was of little use otherwise.The problem, Mr. Tressler soon realized, was that he had changed the meeting spot at the last minute. And that text had never gone through.More than a week after the remnants of Hurricane Helene unleashed catastrophic flooding in Swannanoa and much of western North Carolina, cell service remains spotty — or, in many cases, nonexistent.Not being able to text or call has complicated relief efforts, made previously straightforward daily tasks difficult and even kept people in the dark about whether or not their loved ones perished in the storm.The outage adds to the burden the region is now facing as the death toll from the storm has risen above 225 — more than half in North Carolina — and many population centers are facing a near future with no power or clean water. The loss of cell service has made solving those problems even harder. Officials have described not being able to reach family members of the people who died, delaying the identification of their bodies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More