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      US election live: Harris says Puerto Ricans ‘deserve better’ as outcry grows over ‘hateful’ Trump rally remarks

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      The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has released a statement condemning the “shameful rhetoric” displayed at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Monday, where speakers made racist remarks about immigrants, and one speaker described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage”.In the statement, the caucus called the language and rhetoric at the rally as “not only divisive but dangerous”.
      Hateful rhetoric has real-world consequences. When political leaders, influencers, and those with a large social platform choose language that dehumanizes communities, families get hurt, and hate crimes rise.
      The statement continues:
      This type of language emboldens prejudice, encourages violence, and undermines the values of unity and respect that our country is built on. It’s deeply troubling to see Republican leaders celebrate this rhetoric instead of promoting unity and truth.
      Donald Trump faced mounting suspicion of hatching a plot to steal next week’s presidential election as Democrats and commentators focused on his references to a “little secret” at Sunday night’s tumultuous Madison Square Garden rally.The allusions initially attracted little notice amid the angry backlash provoked by racist jokes and incendiary rhetoric from a succession of warm-up speakers, including an offensive comment about Puerto Ricans that even Trump’s own campaign felt obliged to disavow.However, some observers and Democratic politicians believed the most telling remark of the night came from the Republican nominee himself after he introduced Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, on stage and alluded to a shared secret.“We gotta get the congressmen elected and we gotta get the senators elected,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the congressional elections at stake next week.“We can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House. Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret – we will tell you what it is when the race is over.”Read more:Kamala Harris’s campaign has seized on the racist remarks about Puerto Rico at Donald Trump’s New York rally on Sunday in a new campaign ad in which the vice-president argues “Puerto Ricans deserve better.”In the ad released on Monday, Harris also criticized Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island and killed thousands of people in 2017. “He abandoned the island and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults,” she said.A report from 2021 found that the Trump administration delayed $20bn in aid to Puerto Rico after the hurricane.Donald Trump has pledged to gut the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature climate law, even though some of his closest allies have benefitted from it.At least seven of Trump’s associates and fundraisers – or the companies they run – have obtained incentives thanks to the climate law, Reuters first reported.The IRA increased consumer interest in clean energy loans from California-based financial technology company Mosaic, which counts Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior advisor Jared Kushner’s private equity fund Affinity Partners as an investor. Another IRA beneficiary was carbon capture and sequestration project Summit Carbon Solutions, in which Trump ally Harold Hamm’s fossil fuel company Continental Resources invested $250m in 2022.Though its founder Elon Musk has attacked the IRA, Tesla has also received gargantuan subsidies from the IRA. Musk is one of Trump’s most consequential boosters.Vicki Hollub, the Occidental Petroleum CEO and a major Trump donor and fundraiser, has also benefited from the IRA’s carbon capture tax credit and other subsidies. And pipeline company Energy Transfer – headed by longtime Trump supporter Kelcy Warren – participates in carbon capture and hydrogen projects boosted by IRA tax credits.The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act represented the biggest green downpayment in American history. Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for the law.Kamala Harris took another swipe at her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, during her visit to a semiconductor plant in Michigan.She attacked the former president again for the tone and content of his Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, and defended the Chips and Science Act she said he wanted to abandon:
      We are eight days out from an election, so I’ve got to also talk about the contrast, because my opponent spends full time talking about, just kind of diminishing who we are as America, and talking down at people, talking about that we’re the garbage can of the world. We’re not.
      He just recently did a radio talk show and talked about how he’d get rid of the Chips act. That was billions of dollars investing in just the kind of work that’s happening here. And you know how we did it? We created tax credits to create the incentive for the private sector to do this work. That’s good work.
      When he was president, he sold advanced chips to China that helped them with their agenda to modernize their military. That’s not about what’s in the best interest of America’s security and prosperity, which should be two of the highest priorities for president of the US.
      There is a very serious choice presented in the next eight days. And as much as anything it is a question about what is the direction of the future that we want for our country.
      As Donald Trump’s campaign faces intense criticism over racist remarks from a speaker at the Republican candidate’s New York rally on Sunday, JD Vance has responded by saying that Americans need to “stop getting offended”.Tony Hinchcliffe, a podcaster and comedian who spoke ahead of Trump at Madison Square Garden, described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”. His comments have drawn widespread condemnation and outrage.Trump’s running mate said he had “heard about” the joke, and argued that Kamala Harris is painting the former president’s supporters as “Nazis”.“I think that it’s telling that Kamala Harris’s closing message is essentially that all of Donald Trump’s voters are Nazis and you should get really pissed off about a comedian telling a joke. That is not the message of a winning campaign.“I’m not going to comment on the specifics of the joke, but I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America. I’m so over it.”The Puerto Rican singer Marc Anthony has just posted a stinging attack on Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, reminding voters how the then president “blocked billions in relief while thousands died” on the island after 2017’s Hurricane Maria.“I’m here to tell you that even though some have forgotten … I remember. I remember what it was like when Trump was president. I remember what he did and said, about Puerto Rico … About our people,” he posted on X to his 11m followers:
      I remember after Hurricane Maria devastated our island… Trump blocked billions in relief … while thousands died. I remember that when our families lacked clean water and electricity, Trump threw paper towels and called Puerto Rico ‘dirty’ and ‘poor.’

      But I was not surprised … because I ALSO remember … he launched his campaign by calling Latinos criminals and rapists. He’s told us what he’ll do. He’ll separate children from their families and threatened to use the ARMY to do it.
      This election goes way beyond political parties. Now let’s remember what the United States represents and stands for. It’s our name – United. Regardless of where we’re from. I’m Marc Anthony … I remember.
      Police say they have identified “a suspect vehicle” connected to incendiary devices that set fire to separate ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington state early on Monday, the Associated Press reports.Surveillance images captured a Volvo stopping at a drop box in Portland, Oregon, just before security personnel nearby discovered a fire inside the box, officials said.That fire damaged three ballots inside. Around the same time, a fire was set at a drop box in nearby Vancouver, Washington, on early Monday, and hundreds of ballots were destroyed.Authorities said at a news conference in Portland that enough material from the incendiary devices was recovered to show that the two fires Monday were connected, and were also linked to an incident on 8 October when an incendiary device was placed at a different ballot drop box in Vancouver.Read more:The Nevada supreme court on Monday upheld the state’s post-election deadline for mail ballots lacking a postmark, CNN reported. The ruling is a rejection of a lawsuit brought by Republicans and the Trump campaign.The lawsuit challenged Nevada’s acceptance of mail ballots that are missing postmarks up to three days after an election. The supreme court, however, said the plaintiffs had failed to make a convincing case.“Notably, the RNC [Republican national committee] presented no evidence or allegations that counting mail ballots without postmarks … would be subject to voter fraud, or that the election security measures currently in place are inadequate to address its concerns regarding these ballots,” the ruling said.According to CNN, a similar case was filed by Republicans in federal court, but the US ninth circuit court of appeals is unlikely to resolve that case before next Tuesday’s election.Kamala Harris has been touring a semiconductor plant in Saginaw county, Michigan, on Monday afternoon, and talking up the Chips and Science Act.The Democratic presidential nominee said that if she wins next week’s election she will be reassessing “on day one” which federal jobs require a college degree and which ones do not.The comment, at the Hemlock Semiconductor facility in Hemlock, is both a policy proposal and a political bridge, the Associated Press news agency said, reporting her visit.One of the clearest political divides in the nation over the past few presidential cycles has been between college-educated and non-college-educated voters, with Democrats acknowledging they need to cut into Donald Trump’s support among the latter group, it said.“One of the things immediately is to reassess federal jobs, and I have already started looking at it, to look at which ones don’t require a college degree,” Harris said. “Because here is the thing: that’s not the only qualification for a qualified worker.”Earlier in her speech, Harris said: “We need to get in front of this idea that only high-skilled jobs require college degrees.”Moms for Liberty, a rightwing activist group focusing on education, launched a video ad in four battleground states on Monday targeting a Biden administration rule protecting LGBTQ+ students from gender bias.The ad, titled That’s Not Fair, features a father comforting his athlete daughter after she lost a race. “Dad, it’s not fair! I had to run against a boy! It’s not right,” the girl tells her father, who replies: “I know.”The ad will air in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.In June, a federal judge in Louisiana appointed by Donald Trump blocked the Biden administration from enforcing an education department rule extending sex discrimination protections under Title IX to LGBTQ+ students in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho. More

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      This race could affect Pennsylvanians more than the presidential election. Can Democrats win?

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      In a Pennsylvania suburb whose voters are coveted by both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Nicole Ruscitto walked from house to house on a gloomy Tuesday afternoon, informing residents that there is another important race in November.“I’m Nicole, I’m running for state senate in your district,” she told voters on the doorsteps of their red brick houses in Bethel Park, a town about 30 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, which, if yard signs and election results are any gauge, is about evenly divided between Trump and Harris supporters. “I want to go to Harrisburg to help our families.”In a swing state that’s considered by both Trump and Harris as perhaps the most important to deciding the presidential election, Ruscitto is running for an office that receives less attention than the occupant of White House or members of Congress, yet may have far more impact on the day-to-day life of Pennsylvanians.For three decades, Democrats have been locked out of power in the state’s general assembly. On 5 November, the party is hoping the elections of Ruscitto, a school teacher and former town councilmember, and three other candidates to the state senate will change that.Should they wind up with control of the senate and the house of representatives – the party’s majority in the latter is just one seat – Democrats will finally be able to send Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, a host of legislation that Republicans are currently blocking, ranging from increasing the minimum wage to abortion rights.“If we could have that trifecta, Governor Shapiro would be able to do so many great things for the people here in Pennsylvania, and I plan on doing that 100%,” Ruscitto said in an interview at her campaign office.While many Americans are fixated on the presidential election, there are 5,808 legislative seats in 44 states up for grabs in November, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and voters’ choices may be more impactful than ever before. State governments across the United States have in recent years picked up the policymaking slack from Washington DC, where partisan gridlock and uncooperative Congresses have meant successive presidents have failed to enact many of their campaign promises.The results can be seen in the stark differences between laws in red and blue states.Where Democrats rule, governors have enacted laws to protect abortion access, cut down on emissions tied to climate change, curb gun violence and streamline the process to cast ballots. Republican-led states, meanwhile, have banned abortion to varying degrees, targeted gender-affirming care for transgender youths, restricted cities from passing gun control measures and expanded the role of religion in public education.Many states have legislatures and governor’s mansions controlled by the same party. A smaller group of states, including Wisconsin, Kansas and North Carolina, have governors of one party and legislatures controlled by the other. Pennsylvania is the only state in the union where the two houses of the general assembly are held by different parties.Considered a part of Democrats’ “blue wall” along the Great Lakes, the Keystone state has supported the party’s presidential candidates in most recent elections, though this year’s polls show Trump and Harris essentially tied. Democrats have also seen victories at the state level with the election of Shapiro and the US senator John Fetterman in 2022.But control of the general assembly has eluded them since 1994. John J Kennedy, a political science professor at West Chester University and an expert on the state legislature, credited that to a push by Republicans to draw district maps in their favor, as well as Democratic voters’ tendency to be clustered in states’ urban areas.“Democrats are at a natural disadvantage when it comes to the geography of a state like Pennsylvania, because they waste more votes,” he said. “Democrats are so concentrated, they’re at a sort of a natural disadvantage when it comes to accumulating a majority of seats.”The tide began to turn two years ago, when Democrats barely took control of the house in midterm elections that saw the party perform far better than expected nationwide, fueled by voters’ outrage at the US supreme court for overturning Roe v Wade. But Republican control of the state senate has meant many of their legislative ambitions – including a bill intended to protect abortion seekers in the state, where the procedure is legal up until about 24 weeks of pregnancy – have gone nowhere.Vincent Hughes, a Democratic senator who is the campaign chair of the Pennsylvania senate Democratic campaign committee, said he believes more voters are aware of the importance of legislative races, citing Trump’s attempts to get Republicans in Pennsylvania and other swing states to go along with his plan to block Joe Biden from taking office in 2020.“What has happened is that the importance of state legislators nationally has become much clearer in the last four or five years, and I think that will lead to more folks getting more engaged in down-ballot races at the state legislative level,” he said in an interview.Democrats’ hopes for a majority hinge on winning purple districts around the city of Erie, the state capital Harrisburg, and two in Pittsburgh’s suburbs – including the one in its western outskirts where Ruscitto is running against incumbent Devlin Robinson. A Marine Corps veteran and businessman, Robinson unseated a Democratic officeholder four years ago and promptly signed a letter, along with many of his colleagues, encouraging the top Republicans in Congress to delay certifying Pennsylvania’s election results as part of Trump’s disproven campaign of election denialism.

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      Ruscitto hopes her emphasis on cost-of-living issues and personal experience as a teacher, as well as attacks on Robinson for voting for a state constitutional amendment that could be used to curb abortion access, will give her an edge.“We have the lowest minimum wage, and it sits in our state senate, and it’s not getting passed. And, to me, that’s absurd,” she said.Residents of the district say Robinson has been stepping up his outreach to constituents as election day approaches. Joyce Reinoso, a retired teacher and campaigner for candidates who backs organized labor and public education, said he also has the power of incumbency.“I don’t care what party, it’s always harder to beat the incumbent because the name recognition, if nothing else,” she said.The Ruscitto campaign’s internal polling has found her leading Robinson by a mere two percentage points, within their survey’s margin of error. This week, the University of Virginia’s center for politics rated Pennsylvania’s house as a toss-up, but said the GOP has the edge in keeping the senate.In Bethel Park, which was briefly thrust into the national spotlight in July when a man from the town tried to kill the former president, houses with Trump yards signs and flags sit across the street from those backing Harris, and the two candidates’ ads are ubiquitous online and on television. But signs for Ruscitto and Robinson are relatively scarce – as are strong opinions.As she sat down for an early dinner at Ma and Pop’s Country Kitchen, Sandy Messiner, a retired bookkeeper, expressed no doubts about voting for Trump again.“If Trump gets in, my investments will go up. We need a businessman to run this country,” the 70-year-old said. And though she knew less about them, she planned to vote for all the other Republicans on the ballot.“I don’t care who gets in as long as they’re Republican.”Sitting at the other end of the counter was Pam Cirucci, an 83-year-old retired nurse who was sure she would not be voting for Trump, because “he doesn’t respect females”.A former Republican, Cirucci was less concerned with who controlled the legislature – or what the lawmakers in Harrisburg were up to at all.“There are so many things that are more important,” she said. More

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      Can ex-governor’s anti-Trump stance swing key Senate seat for Republicans?

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      At a conservative thinktank on 14th Street in Washington DC, awaiting Larry Hogan, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Maryland, one staffer turned to another. “It’s nice having something to vote for, for a change,” the staffer wryly said. Shortly after, the former governor arrived for his speech at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (Jinsa), part of his campaign to win in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1980.When he left the executive mansion in Annapolis last year, Hogan told his friendly audience, he had governed for eight years as a popular moderate but had not been looking for another job – “And frankly, I didn’t yearn to be a part of the divisiveness and dysfunction in Washington,” he said.“But when I saw a bipartisan package to secure our border and to support Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan and other American allies fail because people were told [by Donald Trump] to vote against a critical [immigration] bill that they claimed to be for, it made me frustrated enough that I knew I had to step up and try to do something about the mess in Washington.”Washington is not Maryland but the Old Line State is just a few miles up 14th from Jinsa. There, Hogan faces the Prince George’s county executive, Angela Alsobrooks, for an open seat in November – a race in which the Democrat, who if she wins will be only the third Black woman ever elected to the US Senate, enjoys significant polling leads.The race has become potentially decisive in determining Senate control, and a test of anti-Trump sentiment on the right. Significant spending and endorsements are pouring in. Highly regarded as a local leader and “tough on crime” Democrat, Alsobrooks defeated a DC establishment candidate, the congressman David Trone, in her primary and is now piling on praise from party grandees. She recently released an ad featuring Barack Obama and secured support from the Washington Post.On Thursday night, the two candidates will meet for a high-stakes debate.In practical terms, it takes 51 votes – or 50 if your party holds the presidency – to control the Senate. Democrats currently hold it 51-49 but face tough contests to hold seats in Republican-leaning states such as Montana and Ohio. It means Maryland counts this year, and Hogan’s toughest challenge may lie in persuading enough Democratic voters they can trust him should Republicans retake the chamber with him as the 51st vote. In turn, Democrats know that if they cannot hold so deep blue a state as Maryland, they will in all likelihood lose control of the Senate.Hogan is therefore seeking to depict himself as an antidote to Trump – and his rival as too far left. At Jinsa, talking foreign policy, he criticized Trump but he also knocked Alsobrooks, including for “repeatedly demand[ing] that Israel enact an immediate and unilateral ceasefire, and [for calling] for cutting off critical military aid”.As popular as Hogan is – he stepped down as governor with a 77% approval rating – polling suggests that message is not landing. According to 538, since one tied poll in August, Alsobrooks’s lead has ranged from five to 17 points.Hogan begged to differ. “I think it’s a very close race,” he said. “I’ve always been an underdog in every one of my races.“There are people out there that we’ve still got to convince,” he added, “and we’ve got [then] 34 more days to do it, and I feel confident we’re going to win the race. It’s tough, though. I mean, we’re a very blue state, and we’re overcoming a huge deficit at the top of the ticket.”Trump has been called many things, but “huge deficit” may be a new one. Hogan has said he won’t vote for Trump (or Kamala Harris), but must nonetheless fend off persistent questions about the man who rules his party. One recent ad from Hogan’s campaign deplored the “horror” of January 6. And yet, as Republicans from Trump and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, on down know, sometimes a candidate must be allowed away from the party line.In Maryland, Hogan is free to be Hogan. That’s to his advantage. To his disadvantage, Democrats from the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to Alsobrooks on down know Hogan has a bigger problem.View image in fullscreenIn June 2022, in the case Dobbs v Jackson, the US supreme court to which Trump appointed three hardliners removed the federal right to abortion. Two years on, Hogan insists he will not let his party go further.“[Alsobrooks’s campaign] want[s] to focus on making it a cookie-cutter Democratic talking points race but it’s not, because I have a different position than most Republicans,” he said at the Jinsa event. “And so, you know, I’ve promised to be a sponsor to codify Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that previously safeguarded abortion rights, so that nobody comes between a woman and her doctor in any state in America, and to sponsor a bill to protect IVF.”He also insisted that “most people are concerned about the economy. They’re concerned about affordability, inflation, they’re concerned about crime in their communities, and they’re concerned about securing the border and fixing [the] broken immigration system.”Among Democratic rejoinders: while a member of the executive committee of the Republican Governors Association, Hogan worked to elect allies in states that now have stringent abortion bans. In his own state, in 2022, he vetoed a bill to expand abortion access. The same year, he said Trump “nominated incredible justices to the supreme court”, a comment Democrats have brought back to haunt him. Hogan says he was not referring to Dobbs but Alsobrooks is happy to keep the spotlight on the issue. As she recently said: “I think my opponent’s record is very clear where abortion care is concerned.”Many Americans fear a national abortion ban, should Trump be president again. Hogan said he had been against that for decades “and I’ll be the one of the ones standing up, regardless of who the president is or who’s in control of Senate”. But he also said he would not support reform to the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes for most legislation, in order to codify Roe.“I think it’s a terrible idea, because it’s actually something that … my opponent and Donald Trump both agree on. They want to be able to jam things through on a 51-vote [majority]. ”Right now, [the Senate is] a deliberative body where we actually have to find bipartisan cooperation and common sense and kind of common ground for the common good. That’s what I did in Maryland with a 70% Democratic legislature. We got things done.”A few days after Hogan’s event at Jinsa, about 40 miles (65km) north-east in Baltimore, Democrats gathered at a canvassing hub. Once a wedding venue, the Majestic Hall of Events was surrounded by less-than-majestic auto shops and down-at-heel churches. Inside, Alsobrooks addressed a crowd organized by D4 Women in Action, linked to Delta Sigma Theta, one of the Divine Nine Black women’s sororities, to which Alsobrooks belongs.View image in fullscreenIn her speech, Alsobrooks spoke about her links to Baltimore and “the number one issue across our state, and the thing that people most desire to have: economic opportunity”. She also took shots at her opponent. “What did he do [as governor] when he had the opportunity to stand up for all of our families in Baltimore? He sent back $900m to the federal government.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat was a reference to a 2015 decision to scrap a light rail project, a call that attracted lawsuits. But Alsobrooks also looked to the national stage, and the issue she wants foremost in voters’ minds.“This race is bigger than both of us,” Alsobrooks told the Guardian. “Bigger than Larry Hogan the person. It’s bigger than Angela the person. It’s about issues and about the future. It is about reproductive freedom.”Alsobrooks listed other policy priorities – “sensible gun legislation … economic opportunity” – as part of a platform “that really does favor hard-working people, middle-class families, and that is about preserving freedoms and democracy”. But protecting abortion rights was a theme to which she returned.At Jinsa, Hogan said Democrats were trying to turn a state race into a national contest. Alsobrooks embraced the charge: “The former governor thinks he’s running to go back to Annapolis. We’re actually running to go to Washington DC, and we would represent Marylanders there.”She added: “This [Republican Senate] caucus is led by people like Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rick Scott, Mitch McConnell, and they … have really proclaimed war on the reproductive freedoms of women. They have very clear records, and [Hogan has] aligned himself with the party whose policies do not align with the average Marylander.”Much has been made of the warm relationship Hogan and Alsobrooks enjoyed when Hogan was governor. Asked about an unearthed Hogan comment – that Alsobrooks was a better Prince George’s county executive than his own father, the late congressman Lawrence Hogan – Alsobrooks said: “He has become, in a lot of ways, the kind of politician he says he despises, one who’s very disingenuous.“But I think that people see through it. Marylanders are very savvy and they have seen how he has changed … and I think they will see through the disingenuous nature of his campaign, and will again vote to keep Maryland Democratic.”Keeping Maryland Democratic will require turning out the vote. At the canvassing hub, one phone-banker wearily said: “Put in two shifts this morning.” A friend smiled back: “Only a hundred more to go.”The same Jinsa staffer who earlier had said it was “nice to have something to vote for” with Hogan also said that he hadn’t felt so good about a Senate race since 2006 – which was still a defeat – in which “getting more than 40% felt like a moral victory”.Back then, Ben Cardin, the Democrat retiring this year, beat Michael Steele, a Hogan-esque GOP moderate. Steele went on to chair the Republican National Committee, then became an MSNBC host and Never Trumper. Asked for his view of the current Maryland race, Steele was not as convinced of an Alsobrooks win as many other observers.“This race was not a competitive race until Larry got into it,” Steele said. “He is a popular two-term governor who left, I think, an important mark on how politics play out in Maryland for Republicans and made this very competitive out of the gate, largely because people had come to trust his style of governance.“It’s open, it’s compassionate, it’s concerned … I think a lot of people remember that.”Steele said Hogan had a good chance of attracting split-ticket voters – rare beasts, precious to any campaign, in this case prepared to back Harris for president but Hogan for Senate.It all added up to a warning for anyone expecting a comfortable Democratic win.“I think the latest polling has Alsobrooks up by 11,” Steele said. “I don’t believe that, largely because when I’m out in neighborhoods talking to people, and from everything I can piece together, this race is a lot tighter than the traditionalists who look at Maryland think it to be.”

      This article was amended on 11 October 2024. It originally stated that Larry Hogan chaired the Republican Governors Association. He was actually a member of its executive committee. More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene condemned over Helene weather conspiracy theory

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      Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is facing condemnation following several conspiratorial comments amid the devastation of Hurricane Helene that seemed to suggest she believed the US government can control the weather.In a post last week shared with her 1.2 million X followers, the US House representative from Georgia wrote: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”Greene does not specify to whom “they” is referring, but she has a history of promoting conspiracy theories around the federal government and other groups.She appeared to double down on these comments with a post on Saturday, sharing a clip from a 2013 CBS News broadcast about experimental efforts to induce rain and lightning using lasers. “CBS, nine years ago, talked about lasers controlling the weather,” Greene wrote, apparently mistaking the year of the broadcast.Greene, who is no stranger to misinformation including once raising the idea of Jewish space lasers being behind wildfire outbreaks, was met with a wave of criticism for her blatantly false statements.The US government’s top disaster relief official condemned on Sunday false claims made about Helene and its relief efforts, stating that such conspiracy theories, including those made by Donald Trump as he seeks a second presidency, are causing fear in people who need assistance and “demoralizing” the workers who are providing assistance.“It’s frankly ridiculous, and just plain false. This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” said Deanne Criswell, who leads the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people, and that’s what we’re here to do.”Shawn Harris, who is running for Greene’s congressional seat, condemned the incumbent’s comments.“Marjorie Taylor Greene’s conspiracy theories are sickening, but she does it to distract from her failed effort to block crucial funding for Fema as Hurricane Helene was making landfall,” Harris wrote in a post on X.Ryan Maue, a meteorologist and popular internet personality, seemed to poke fun at Greene’s comments while also factchecking her false claims.He suggested on X that some conspiracy theories turn out to be true – but added: “I can assure you that the Hurricane Helene weather modification theory is not one of them.“I would know, too.”In an email to his supporters, the Republican US senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina also seemed to condemn conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene, though he did not specify the rightwing source of the theories.“The destruction caused by Helene is incomprehensible and has left many communities in western North Carolina absolutely devastated. The last thing that the victims of Helene need right now is political posturing, finger-pointing, or conspiracy theories that only hurt the response effort,” the email stated.In an opinion piece on Saturday by its editorial board, North Carolina’s Charlotte Observer criticized Trump because of his falsehoods over the government response to Helene, saying the state’s affected parts were “not a political football” and “not a campaign opportunity”.Criticism of Greene’s conspiracy theories even made it to the sports world, with the tennis legend Martina Navratilova using her platform to call out not only Greene as well as Trump’s running mate in November’s election, JD Vance. Vance had praised Greene at a rally just hours after she posted her conspiracies.“Marj is even more stupid than we thought possible,” Navratilova wrote on X. “And Vance is not stupid – he is just a cowardly sycophant. Which is actually worse.”Greene is also facing criticism for her hypocrisy of peddling conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene while she was photographed in attendance at the University of Alabama’s home football game against the University of Georgia with Trump on 28 September. She reportedly left her state of Georgia to attend the game in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, while Helene devastated communities across the state she was elected to represent. More

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      Biden urges Congress to pass disaster-relief package as Helene costs soar

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      Joe Biden is urging lawmakers to refill the coffers of disaster relief programs as the projected recovery and rebuilding costs related to Hurricane Helene are estimated to be as much as $200bn over 10 years.In a letter sent to congressional leaders, the president said while the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the Department of Defense is able to meet “critical life-saving and life-sustaining missions and will continue to do so within present funding levels”, they will need additional funding.“My administration has provided robust and well-coordinated federal support for the ongoing response and recovery efforts,” Biden wrote.“As with other catastrophic disasters, it will take some time to assess the full requirements for response and recovery efforts, and I fully expect that the Congress will do its part to provide the funding needed.”Biden said that a comprehensive disaster relief package would be necessary when Congress returns on 12 November – but said action on individual programs could be needed before then. But there are currently no plans for Congress to reconvene before the election.The request comes as Kamala Harris cut short a campaign swing through the western states to visit western North Carolina in the southern Appalachian mountains where entire towns were washed away.Biden viewed the damage and cleanup efforts in the Carolinas by air on Wednesday, and again in Florida and Georgia on Thursday. He said the work to rebuild will cost “billions of dollars” and additional disaster relief funding “can’t wait … people need help now”.At least 225 people have been confirmed dead from Helene, and officials say they expect the death toll to continue to rise as recovery efforts continue. A police department spokesperson in Asheville, North Carolina, told CBS News in an email late on Friday that it is “actively working 75 cases of missing persons”. Nearly 1 million people remain without power.In his letter to lawmakers, Biden said that funding through the Small Business Administration (SBA) “will run out of funding in a matter of weeks and well before the Congress is planning to reconvene”.The SBA is designed to help small business owners and homeowners recoup property and equipment through the disaster relief loan program. Administration officials told CNN that the program needs $1.6bn in additional funding to meet about 3,000 Hurricane Helene-related applications it is receiving daily.Last month, before Helene hit, the White House warned that the low funding levels could lead to the SBA “effectively ceasing operations” after paying out for weather-related costs and accidents, including the Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore, the continued recovery after Maui’s wildfires and tornado damage in the midwest.The damage caused by Helene could cost upwards of $34bn, according to early estimates from Moody’s Analytics. The private forecaster AccuWeather put the cost of damages at $225bn to $250bn, with very little covered by private insurance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe issue of Helene costs is already deeply political. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, has said lawmakers would assess the post-Helene needs in full after the election.Former president Trump has accused Democrats of spending over $640m in Fema funds on housing migrants, a claim the White House calls “bold-faced lies”.On Friday, in Georgia, Trump said: “A lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia and supposed to go to North Carolina and all of the others is going and has gone already.“It’s been gone for people that came into the country illegally, and nobody has ever seen anything like that. That’s a shame.”Officials say those funds, authorized by Congress, was part of an entirely different program run by Fema unconnected to disaster relief but to provide housing to immigrants applying for US citizenship.The disaster agency responded to Trump’s claim with a fact-check page. “This is false,” Fema said in a statement. “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs.” A week after the hurricane hit, more than $45m has been dispersed to communities affected by the storm. More

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      Trump falsely claims Helene victims had no federal help despite Biden-Harris sending $20m in aid – live

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      As Joe Biden visits the wreckage of Hurricane Helene, Donald Trump has been baselessly suggesting that the administration has ignored Republican victims and that federal aid is scarce because funds are being given to immigrants.“They’re dying, and they’re getting no help from our federal government because their money has been spent on people that should not be in our country,” Trump told his supporters.The Biden-Harris administration said that the government has provided $20m in “flexible, upfront funding” and deployed 5,000 federal personnel to aid in recovery.Donald Trump repeated lies about the Biden administration’s hurricane response, going so far as to claim that the president and vice-president were “stealing” Fema funds to give to immigrants.“They stole the Fema money 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,” he said.Trump and his allies have been repeatedly claiming that Fema is out of money because it allocated funds to help communities receiving an influx of immigrants at the border.Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, did warn that Fema is underfunded for the remainder of hurricane season. That’s in part because the stop-gap government funding bill did not contain enough funding for Fema, which is facing a $2bn deficit.Fema’s Shelter and Services Program allocated $300m during the 2024 fiscal year to help communities “offset the costs of providing food, shelter and other supportive services after receiving an influx of migrants”. That’s a small fraction of the agency’s overall budget. For 2025, it has requested a total of $33.1bn.At his rally, Trump also claimed he “had the best four years with hurricanes”.During his tenure …

      Trump imposed a hiring freeze at the National Weather Service, resulting in more than 200 of vacancies within the agency that predicts and oversees extreme weather warnings. The Washington Post reported in 2017: “Some of those Weather Service vacancies listed in the document, obtained by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act and shared with The Washington Post, were in locations that would be hit by the major hurricanes that barreled through the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.”

      Trump falsely claimed that Hurricane Maria’s death toll was being inflated by his Democratic rivals. In fact, studies suggest that far more people died than the official death toll suggested at the time. A report by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health estimates up to 4,600 people were killed.

      In 2021, a report by the housing department’s office of the inspector general found that Trump administration delayed more than $20bn in hurricane relief aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

      An internal report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency also found that it failed to properly prepare for hurricane season.
      In a review of Trump’s record responding to natural disasters, E&E also found a discrepency in aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, which primarily affected Florida; and Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
      On March 9, 2019, Trump signed an order directing FEMA to pay 100 percent of most disaster costs in Florida. As a result, FEMA paid roughly $350 million more than it would have without Trump’s intervention, according to an E&E News analysis.
      But less than two months earlier, Trump threatened to veto a disaster-aid measure in Congress that would have FEMA pay 100 percent of all disaster costs in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands after Hurricane Maria killed more than 3,000 people.
      According to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s book, Trump said: “They love me in the Panhandle … I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?”The voting habits of residents did play into Donald Trump’s decision-making about disaster relief when he was president, reports E&E News.The outlet interviewed Mark Harvey, Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council, who revealed that the former president refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018.From E&E:
      But Harvey said Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.
      ‘We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,’ said Harvey, who recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris alongside more than 100 other Republican former national security officials.
      California’s governor Gavin Newsom, reacted to the report on Twitter/X, calling it a “glimpse into the future” if Trump is re-elected.Joe Biden, meanwhile, wrote: “You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you. It’s the most basic part of being president, and this guy knows nothing about it.”As Joe Biden visits the wreckage of Hurricane Helene, Donald Trump has been baselessly suggesting that the administration has ignored Republican victims and that federal aid is scarce because funds are being given to immigrants.“They’re dying, and they’re getting no help from our federal government because their money has been spent on people that should not be in our country,” Trump told his supporters.The Biden-Harris administration said that the government has provided $20m in “flexible, upfront funding” and deployed 5,000 federal personnel to aid in recovery.“His competition that night? He cannot be president. He cannot be president of the United States,” Donald Trump said of JD Vance’s vice-presidential opponent, Tim Walz.“How good did JD Vance do the other night?” Trump added, praising his running mate as the crowd descended into a cheers of “JD! JD!”“I drafted the best athlete,” Trump continued.Donald Trump pledged to bring back drilling in the Alaska arctic wildlife refuge if he becomes president.Trump said:
      We would have supplied the entire Asian continent. We would have supplied Asia. We would have supplied everybody. But we’ll have it redone very quickly … I actually got it approved in Congress as part of …the biggest tax cuts in history for this country. I got that approved in Congress. We got ANWR [Alaska National Wildlife Refuge] so they didn’t kill it in Congress, and I don’t think they ever could. So we’ll get it back very quickly. It’s going to be back very fast.
      Trump added:
      And it would have been great for Alaska but it would have also … been great for our country but we’ll have it approved very quickly.
      In 2021, Trump’s administration auctioned off portions of ANWR to oil drillers but failed to attract much bidders.Donald Trump has switched his attacks on Joe Biden, calling him “the worst foreign policy president”.The former president then went on to say: “We have to be too big to rig” before going on to repeat the falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.The crowd, highly energized, descended into a chant of “Trump! Trump! Trump!”Donald Trump has walked on stage to Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.“We’re going to make America great again,” Trump said in his opening remarks before launching into a tirade against Kamala Harris, calling her a slew of names including “Lying Kamala”.Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a rally shortly in Saginaw, Michigan.Stay tuned as we bring you the latest updates.Here are some images coming through the news wires of Hurricane Helene and its aftermath across the country:The Biden administration has provided nearly $4m directly to individuals and families in need of critical financial assistance, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said onboard an Air Force One gaggle as the president was en route to Tallahassee, Florida.She went on to add:
      Yesterday, we announced that the president approved 100% federal cost share for emergency response activities in Florida and Georgia, as well as Tallahassee [Tennessee] and North Carolina. This means that the federal government will cover 100% of the costs associated with things like debris removal, first responders, search and rescue, shelters, and mass feeding.
      This latest announcement builds the president’s previously approved requests for major disaster declarations from the governors of Florida and Georgia, which unlocked additional assistance for residents on their road to recovery. More

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      Walz asks America to ‘stand up’ for democracy – as it happened

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      Here are some of the key lines from the debate between the Democratic and Republican vice-presidential candidates, Tim Walz and JD Vance:On the Middle East:

      Both candidates were asked whether they would support a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran. Walz said: “Israel’s ability to defend itself is absolutely fundamental” after the Hamas attacks on 7 October. He said Trump’s own national security advisers have said it’s dangerous for Trump to be in charge. “When our allies see Donald Trump turn towards Vladimir Putin, turn towards North Korea, when we start to see that type of fickleness about holding the coalitions together – we will stay committed,” Walz said.

      Vance said it was up to Israel to decide what it needs to do. He said Trump “consistently made the world more secure”.
      On the climate crisis:

      Vance said he and Trump “support clean air, clean water” when asked what responsibility the Trump administration would have to reduce the impact of climate change. “If we actually care about getting cleaner air and cleaner water, the best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers and the American people,” he said. He did not answer when asked whether he agreed with Trump that climate change is a hoax.

      Walz praised the Biden administration for the Inflation Reduction Act, and criticized Trump for calling climate change a “hoax”. “My farmers know climate change is real,” he said.
      On immigration:

      Walz criticized Trump for derailing a legislative package that he described as “the fairest and the toughest bill on immigration that this nation’s seen”.

      Walz accused Vance of having “vilified a large number of people who worked legally in the community of Springfield”, adding that those immigrants had been “dehumanized”. “This is what happens when you don’t want to solve it,” he said. “You demonize it.”

      Vance said the people he was most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, “are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’s open border”.

      At one point, CBS News muted the microphones for both candidates as the moderators tried to turn the debate to the economy.
      On the economy:

      Walz said presidents should seek advice from advisers around them. “If you’re going to be president, you don’t have all the answers. Donald Trump believes he does,” he said. “My pro-tip is this: if you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, not Donald Trump.”
      On abortion:

      Vance said he “never supported a national ban”. He said that Ohio had passed an amendment protecting the right to an abortion, and that it taught him that his Republican party “have got to do a better job of winning back people’s trust”.

      Walz rejected Trump’s claim that he supports abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy, saying the accusation “wasn’t true”. He said that under Project 2025, there would a “registry of pregnancies” and that it would “get more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate access, to infertility treatments”.
      On mass shootings:

      Walz said his 17-year-old son had witnessed a shooting at a community center. He referred to his record in Minnesota, where there are enhanced background checks and red-flag laws in place. “We understand that the second amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids to figure this out,” he said.

      Vance said that the country needs to buckle down on border security, and strengthen safety in schools. “We have to make the doors lock better, we have to make the doors stronger,” he said.
      On the candidates’ previous comments:

      Walz stumbled when asked about his misleading claims that he made about being in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen protests. “I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times,” he initially said. When pushed for an answer, he conceded that he “misspoke”.

      Vance said he was “wrong about Donald Trump” when asked about his previous criticisms of his running mate. He accused the media of spreading false stories about Trump that he believed, and said he supports Trump because he “delivered for the American people”.
      On healthcare:

      Vance, when asked how a Trump administration would protect Americans with pre-existing conditions who were able to secure health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, said there were laws and regulations on the books that should be kept in place. He said the functionality of the health insurance marketplace also needed to be improved.
      On paid family leave:

      Walz did not give a definitive answer when asked how long employers should be required to pay workers for parental leave. He said paid family leave is beneficial for families because it “gets the child off to a better start”.

      Vance said the nation should “have a family care model that makes choice possible”. He said the issue was important to him because he is married to a “beautiful woman” and “incredible mother” who is also a “very brilliant corporate litigator”.
      On the January 6 attack on the Capitol:

      Walz said democracy is “bigger than winning an election”, and that a “president’s words matter”. He said the January 6 attack “was a threat to our democracy in a way that we have not seen” and that it manifested itself because of Trump’s inability to accept that he had lost the 2020 election.

      Vance claimed that Trump wanted protesters to remain peaceful on January 6. He said he believes the biggest threat to democracy is “the threat of censorship”.

      Walz directly asked Vance whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance declined to answer, instead saying that he was “focused on the future”. “That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.
      Closing remarks:

      Walz said he was as “surprised as anybody” at the broad coalition of support that Harris had built, including progressives like Bernie Sanders and Republicans like Dick Cheney. He said Vance had made it clear that he would stand with Trump’s agenda, adding that Harris is “bringing us a politics of joy”.

      Vance said that Harris’s polices were to blame for key needs like heat, housing and food being harder to afford. Harris has proposed a lot of things that she wants to accomplish on day one, Vance said, but he noted that Harris has been vice-president for three-and-a-half years and that “day one was 1,400 days ago”.
      With that, this blog is closing. Thank you for following along. Here is our full story on the vice-presidential debate:As the Middle East spiraled towards full-scale war, the US vice presidential debate focused largely on domestic issues, like school shootings and the cost of housing, healthcare, and childcare.The CBS News debate moderators largely declined to fact-check JD Vance or Tim Walz, asking them instead to respond to each other.Here are some key takeaways from the debate between the Republican senator from Ohio who wrote a bestselling memoir about poverty in Appalachia and the Democratic football-coach-turned-governor of Minnesota:The topics of abortion and the likelihood of Trump accepting this year’s result if he loses led to the most interesting moments during the debate.Walz demanded that Vance agree to abide by the results of the election and commit to a peaceful transfer of power. And he asked Vance whether Trump lost the 2020 election.“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied.“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz shot back.Walz noted that Vance was only on the stage because Trump cut ties with his former vice-president, Mike Pence, for certifying the results of the last election.Vance did not answer the question about whether Trump, who continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, lost four years ago. The exchange served as a reminder of one of Trump’s biggest vulnerabilities heading into the election, one that the Harris campaign will continue to highlight in the coming weeks.Reuters has this interesting bit of analysis of Vance’s performance tonight, writing that the Vance on stage was the one the Trump campaign had in mind when Trump selected him as his number two in July.” The idea then was that the 40-year-old first-term senator and best-selling author of “Hillbilly Elegy” could serve as an articulate and rational voice for Trump’s Make American Great Again movement as well as perhaps one day become a generational torchbearer.But instead Vance had a rocky rollout on the campaign trail, becoming the target of online scorn and mockery while most often serving as Trump’s attack dog. The headlines were mostly negative, and his approval ratings suffered.On Tuesday, Vance largely kept his message positive, while taking every opportunity to advocate for Trump.Vance seemed to be succeeding at a vice-presidential running mate’s primary task: Making the candidate at the top of the ticket more palatable to the viewers at home.It was clear as the evening progressed, that it was this, rather than trying to smear Walz, that was the goal of the Trump campaign in this debate.More from the CNN poll – and as expected – the debate did not shift the polled voters’ views much. Just 1% of them changed their minds:Here is what the Guardian’s panellists made of the debate:When Harris was considering Walz as her vice-presidential candidate, he reportedly told her that he was a bad debater, and at the outset Vance, wearing a sharp blue suit, a pink tie, plenty of make-up and hair gel, looked the more polished performer. Walz, a former high school teacher and football coach, cut a more bustling figure in a loose black suit.Vance, the Ohio senator who has been a regular on rightwing news channels for years, was polished from the off, comfortably dodging a question about whether he believes the climate crisis is a “hoax” to lament how much money has been spent on solar panels.Walz rose to the vice-presidential nomination, in part, through his confident appearances on cable news – it was from there that his famous “weird” characterization of Vance and Trump was born – but appeared initially nervous, and did not reprise his searing critique of his opponents.Both men also frequently referenced their upbringing in the midwest.Tim Walz and JD Vance took to the stage on Tuesday night for a vice-presidential debate that served up less drama than September’s presidential debate, but offered revealing differences on abortion, school shootings, and immigration.Three weeks ago Kamala Harris and Donald Trump had endured a contentious hour-and-a-half, with an emotional Trump being goaded into ranting about the number of people who attend his rallies and declaring the vice-president to be a “Marxist”, before reportedly threatening to sue one of the debate moderators. Harris enjoyed a brief polling uptick from that performance.But on Tuesday, Walz and Vance largely avoided attacks on each other, and instead concentrated their fire on each other’s running mates. It was a more policy-driven discussion than that of their running mates’, but one with a few gaffes that might overshadow some of the substance in coming days.In a key exchange over abortion, Walz, the governor of Minnesota, followed Harris’s lead in using personal stories.Trump “brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v Wade”, Walz said. He noted the case of Amanda Zurawski, who was denied an abortion in Texas despite serious health complications during pregnancy – Zurawski is now part of a group of women suing the state of Texas – and a girl in Kentucky who as a child was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant.“If you don’t know [women like this], you soon will. Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said, which Vance refuted.Both candidates were seen more favourably after the debate than before it, according to CNN:
      Following the debate, 59% of debate watchers said they had a favorable view of Walz, with just 22% viewing him unfavorably – an improvement from his already positive numbers among the same voters pre-debate (46% favorable, 32% unfavorable).
      Debate watchers came away with roughly net neutral views of Vance following the debate: 41% rated him favorably and 44% unfavorably. That’s also an improvement from their image of Vance pre-debate, when his ratings among this group were deeply underwater (30% favorable, 52% unfavorable).
      That is the closest of the last five VP debates, according to CNN snap polls:CNN’s snap poll has viewers split over who won the debate – but Vance narrowly wins.The poll of 574 registered voters saw 51% say that Vance won the debate, with 49% choosing Walz.Polled before the debate, 54% of voters thought Walz was likelier to win.CNN adds this caveat: “The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public. Debate watchers in the poll were 3 points likelier to be Democratic-aligned than Republican-aligned, making for an audience that’s about 5 percentage points more Democratic-leaning than all registered voters nationally.” More

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      Memoir contradicts Republican Senate candidate’s ‘below the poverty line’ tale

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      At a recent campaign event in Whitehall, Montana, the Republican US Senate candidate Tim Sheehy told voters that a decade ago, when he set up the aerial firefighting company through which he made his fortune, he and his wife were living “below the poverty line”.“My wife and I homeschool our kids,” Sheehy said. “We made that decision several years ago. She’s a Marine, naval academy graduate, she could have a great job and even when our company was tiny, and we … were below the poverty line and making no money, we said: ‘No … the most important job in the world is being a mother.’ And she’s doing that every day.”A little more than a month from election day, in a race that could decide control of the Senate, such hardscrabble tales are helping Sheehy lead the Democratic incumbent, Jon Tester, a longtime Montana farmer. The two men are due to debate in Missoula on Monday night.But Sheehy’s claim about living in poverty while building his company, Bridger Aerospace, is contradicted by his own memoir.In that book, Mudslingers, published last year, the former navy Seal writes that when he and his wife contemplated leaving the military, in 2013, they “weren’t wealthy, but … did have resources”.This, he writes, was in part thanks to having “lived quite frugally during our time in the military, spending a lot of time deployed, accumulating savings, taking advantage of base housing and meals, and of course spending almost nothing while on deployment.“So, we had amassed a nest egg of close to $300,000. I also had some money that my parents had been putting away for me since I was a kid. All told, we had roughly $400,000 to allocate toward building a business and establishing a new life.”In 2014, as Sheehy got his company going, the US health department defined the poverty guideline for a family of three in Montana as $19,790. The poverty threshold, as defined by the US Census Bureau, was $19,055.By his own account, Sheehy set out to build Bridger Aerospace with 20 times that – a sum he calls “not exactly chump change”.Sheehy has also regularly claimed to have “bootstrapped” his company, a term the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as “to promote or develop by initiative and effort with little or no assistance”.Yet in his book, Sheehy describes both receiving the $100,000 his parents had saved for him and asking his father and brother to help him pay $500,000 to buy necessary planes. His father, he writes, “backed me, financially and emotionally, without expecting anything in return”, while his brother was given an “equity stake in the business”.Sheehy also describes how in 2017 his brother helped secure investment from Blackstone Group, the New York private equity behemoth led by Stephen Schwartzman, a top Republican donor, in order to pull off a $200m aircraft order.Sheehy grew up in Minnesota and attended the US Naval Academy in Maryland. Describing his early days in Montana, he has often told of how he, his wife and their first child started out living in a tent. That might boost his claim of living below the poverty line, but Sheehy has also described how living under canvas was a choice.Having purchased “60 undeveloped acres”, Sheehy writes in his book, “the simple and probably sane thing to do would have been to rent an apartment in town while we got the business off the ground”. But they chose to build a house, and to camp while the structure went up.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSheehy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. News of Sheehy’s book contradicting his own claim about living in poverty, however, follows similar reporting regarding his claims about his background.The Montana Free Press was among outlets to report that though Sheehy has said he grew up in “rural Minnesota … surrounded by farmland”, he in fact “grew up in a multimillion-dollar lake house, learned to fly under the tutelage of a neighbour, [and] attended a private high school”.In May, the Daily Beast reported that Sheehy’s campaign trail claims about how he left the US military do not match those in his book. Sheehy’s campaign responded angrily, claiming an attack on his patriotism and service. Then, this month, the Guardian reported documents seemingly showing Sheehy did not follow Department of Defense protocol for clearing sections of Mudslingers that deal with military subjects, including deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The campaign did not respond.Regardless, Sheehy seems well-placed to secure a Senate seat, holding seven- and eight-point leads over Tester, a three-term moderate Democrat.Federal figures regarding poverty in Montana in 2014 do back up one claim in Sheehy’s book. Describing how he hired his first employees, he says he paid just $1,500 a month, amounting to $18,000 a year, to his first chief pilot, Tim Cherwin.Cherwin brought with him “the chain-smoking desert rat Steve Taylor, who would become our director of maintenance”. Sheehy, who says he started the business with $400,000, says both men were “earning wages below the poverty line”. More