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      Trump administration protected Brett Kavanaugh from full FBI investigation

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      The Trump administration protected Brett Kavanaugh from facing a full FBI investigation in the wake of serious allegations that he sexually assaulted two women – once in high school and once in college – during his controversial 2018 Senate confirmation to become a supreme court justice, according to a new report.An investigation led by the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse also found that both the Trump White House and the FBI “misled the public and the Senate” about the scope of the investigation it did conduct into the sexual assault allegations by falsely claiming that the FBI had conducted its investigation thoroughly and “by the book”.Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the Senate seemed to be in doubt after Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University, alleged he had sexually assaulted her while the two were in high school. A classmate at Yale, named Deborah Ramirez, alleged in a report published by the New Yorker that Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party. Kavanaugh denied both allegations.The Senate judiciary committee agreed after Ford publicly testified about her allegations that the FBI conduct a supplemental background check to examine those allegations before the full Senate voted on his nomination.In the aftermath of Kavanaugh’s ultimate confirmation by the Senate, in a 50-48 vote, Whitehouse and his staff set out on a six-year investigation to try to find answers about how the FBI conducted its investigation.The investigation was hampered, Whitehouse said, by executive branch delays, reluctance to answer even basic questions, and often incomplete answers.“In 2018, I pledged to Christine Blasey Ford that I’d keep digging, for however long it took, and not give up or move on from Senate Republicans and the Trump White House’s shameful confirmation process for Justice Kavanaugh,” Whitehouse said.“This report shows that the supplemental background investigation was a sham, controlled by the Trump White House, to give political cover to Senate Republicans and put Justice Kavanaugh back on the political track to confirmation.”The findings are significant because at least eight senators cited the FBI’s findings – that “no corroborating evidence” had been found to back up the allegations against Kavanaugh – when they voted to confirm the justice. They include the then majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Shelley Moore Capito, former senator Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins.In reality, the Whitehouse report claims the FBI’s limited supplemental background investigation involved only a “handful” of interviews of relevant witnesses, and ignored other potential sources, including Kavanaugh himself, Ford, or others who had offered to give the FBI corroborating or otherwise relevant information.Ford was not interviewed, the report said, even though her attorney repeatedly contacted the FBI directly to request the FBI interview her.A lawyer for Ramirez provided lists of suggested witnesses to the FBI, including a list of 20 additional witnesses likely to have relevant information who Ramirez suspected could corroborate her account.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn one case, a former classmate of Kavanaugh at Yale named Max Stier sought to come forward to report that he had once witnessed Kavanaugh with his pants down at a drunken party, and that his friends pushed the future justice’s penis into the hands of a female student.The alleged incident was separate from others that became public during the investigation but bore similarities to the allegations made by Ramirez. Stier notified the Senate and the FBI about his account, according to media reports, but the matter was never investigated by the FBI.The FBI director, Christopher Wray, was even personally notified by Senator Chris Coons of Delaware about Stier’s account but he was never contacted.Stier, who runs a non-profit in Washington, has declined to discuss the matter with the Guardian. He is married to Florence Pan, who serves as a circuit judge on the US court of appeals, a post formerly held by the supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.In response to the release of the report, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, lawyers for Ford, said in a statement: “Dr Ford performed a heroic act of public service that came at a steep personal cost for her and those close to her. We know today that Trump White House officials acted to hide the truth. They conspired, with the FBI complicit, to silence those who offered important evidence, including one college classmate who ‘saw Mr Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.’ We also know that this will likely result in no consequences for those involved, though it should.”The FBI also declined to pursue information it received through the agency’s tip line. The tips were forwarded directly to the White House. More

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      Will white women abandon Republicans and vote for Kamala Harris?

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      White female voters have been the backbone of the GOP for decades – but polls indicate their support for the party may erode this November, thanks to younger white women who are moving left at breakneck speed.In the weeks after the 2016 presidential election, after Donald Trump stunned the world by defeating Hillary Clinton, media outlets seized on white women to explain his shock win. Forty-seven per cent of white women voted for Trump, while 45% backed Clinton, according to an analysis of validated voter files by the Pew Research Center.Trump’s success with white women highlighted a longstanding truth: this group votes for Republicans. Over the last 72 years, a plurality of white women have voted for the Democratic candidate in only two presidential elections – in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson won 44 states, and in 1996, when Bill Clinton ran in a three-way race. Trump’s lead with white women even grew in 2020, when 53% supported him. In contrast, 95% of Black women voted for Joe Biden in 2020, along with 61% of Hispanic women, Pew found.But quite a bit has changed since 2020 – especially for women. The US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, transforming abortion rights into a major election issue. Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic candidate from Joe Biden, becoming the first woman of color to secure a major-party nomination for president. All this raises the question: will 2024 be the year that white women, who make up almost 40% of the national electorate, finally join women of color in supporting the Democrats?Well, not necessarily. But the gap very well may shrink.There are signs that younger white women are peeling off from the GOP – a trend that is linked to a steady drift by all young women to the left.“Young women of color and young white women, in my research, are pretty uniformly liberal and feminist,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the recent book The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy. “I think Harris’s selection as the nominee now – as opposed to Biden – has really further made them enthusiastic about voting. So I strongly suspect that young, white women voters are going to defy the longer-term trend of white women in general voting for Republicans.”Young women are increasingly queer, increasingly secular and getting married later in life – all characteristics that tend to be linked with liberalism and support for the Democratic party. (People who identify as liberal are very likely to be Democrats, though the inverse is not necessarily true – not all Democrats identify as liberal.)Between 2011 and 2024, liberal identification among white women rose by 6%, according to a Gallup analysis shared with the Guardian. Such identification also rose by 6% among Black women, but fell by 2% among Hispanic women.Gen Z is the most diverse generation of Americans yet, but Gallup research suggests that doesn’t explain young women’s leftward drift. Between 2017 and 2024, 41% of white women between the ages of 18 and 29 identified as liberals – 2 percentage points more than their peers of color.Young women are also unusually involved in politics. Women have long outvoted men, but in 2020, 60% of 18- to 29-year-old white women voted – more than any other group of youth voters, according to an analysis of AP VoteCast data by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Fifty-five per cent voted for Biden.Trump’s 2016 victory may have something to do with these trends. Raised by Democratic-leaning independents, Chloe Fowler said Trump’s election was a critical inflection point in her political evolution. She was a sophomore in high school when Trump won; the day after, somebody in her school hallway shouted gleefully: “Grab ’em by the pussy!”“Things like that stick with us,” recalled Fowler, who is white. A few months later, her mom took her to the Women’s March in Omaha, Nebraska. “That was a very pivotal moment for me, honestly – doing a bunch of chants with her and wearing the pink cat ear hats.”Fowler is now the vice-president of Nebraska Young Democrats. The 23-year-old has been phone-banking furiously in her home district – Nebraska’s second congressional district, which may end up deciding whether Trump or Harris becomes president.‘Why is this race so close?’A 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll in September found that white women narrowly prefer Harris to Trump, 42% to 40%. (The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1%.) The remaining 18% can make or break the election, of course. The gender gap between white women and white men is larger. Fifty per cent of white men prefer Trump, with only 36% supporting Harris.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA majority of Black women support Harris, that poll found, as do pluralities of Hispanic and Asian American women.Jane Junn, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, says what is often misunderstood as a “gender gap” between male and female voters is really a race gap. While women as a whole may end up voting for Harris – a September New York Times/Siena poll showed that 54% of women planned to vote for Harris, compared with 40% of men – white women, Junn predicted, will remain Republicans in 2024. “If all of a sudden, the white women were like: ‘Oh, my God, I’m burning my bra and my Barbie shoes and my long fingernails and all the plastic sprays I put into my body’ – we’re not seeing that,” Junn said. “Why is this race so close? It’s so close because these groups remain fairly consistent in their partisan loyalty.”Polling from Galvanize Action, an organization that seeks to mobilize moderate women – especially in the critical “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – has found the race in a dead heat among moderate white women, who are split 43% to 44% in favor of the former president. These women, who Galvanize Action defines as not ideologically entrenched as Democrats or Republicans, account for more than 5 million voters in those three states.Trump has the edge when it comes to these women’s top issues of the economy and immigration, but the women polled by Galvanize Action trust Harris more on democracy and reproductive freedom.“Even among women who say that economy or democracy is their No 1 issue, a good segment of those people also say: ‘I’m not going to vote for anyone that won’t protect abortion,’” said Jackie Payne, Galvanize Action’s executive director and founder.Democrats are hoping that abortion rights-related ballot measures – which voters will decide on in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Nevada and Nebraska’s second congressional district – will spur turnout among their base. However, white women may in effect vote split-ticket, simultaneously voting for a pro-abortion rights measure and for Republicans. More than half of white women voted for Ohio’s 2023 abortion-related ballot measure – but more than 60% of white women supported Mike DeWine, the Republican governor who signed a six-week abortion ban into law, in 2022, just months after Roe fell.“This is going to be all about turnout. This is going to be a very, very close election,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. “The Democratic party counts on women. They count particularly on Black women to turn out. Will they be more energized?” More

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      Trump marks 7 October anniversary and criticizes ‘weak’ Biden and Harris

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      Donald Trump marked the first anniversary of the 7 October Hamas terrorist attacks, which he called “one of the darkest days in all of history”, with a commemoration for victims and hostages at his golf resort in Miami on Monday night, but swiftly turned the event into an attack on Kamala Harris.He also repeated a previous claim that the attack on Israel would never have happened if he was still in the White House.Blaming Harris and Joe Biden for the “weakness” he said gave Hamas the confidence to launch the attack, the Republican presidential nominee told a crowd of about 300 supporters, mostly from the Jewish community, that a wave of anti-Israel sentiment which he said was sweeping the US, and wider world, could be blamed on their administration.“Almost as shocking as 7 October itself is the outbreak of antisemitism that we have all seen in its wake,” he said.“The anti-Jewish hatred has returned … and within the ranks of the Democratic party in particular. The Republican party has not been infected by this horrible disease, and won’t be as long as I’m in charge.”The attacks, which left 1,200 people dead and an additional 250 taken hostage by Hamas, provided “a moment in horrible history”, he said.“It seemed as if the gates of hell had sprung open and unleashed their horrors unto the world. We never thought we’d see it … and a lot of that has to do with leadership of this country.”After claiming the attacks would not have taken place had he been elected to a second term, Trump said he would restore the closeness with Israel he insisted the US had lost, despite Biden and Harris both expressing support for the country’s right to defend itself.“If, and when, they say, when I’m president, the US will once again be stronger and closer [to Israel] than it ever was. But we have to win the election,” he said.“What is needed is more than ever unwavering American leadership. The dawn of new, more harmonious Middle East is finally within our reach. I will not allow the Jewish state to be threatened with destruction. I will not allow another Holocaust of the Jewish people. I will not allow a jihad to be waged on America or our allies, and I will support Israel’s right to win its war.”Trump’s fire and brimstone delivery was at odds with remarks earlier in the day from Harris, his Democratic opponent in November, who paid tribute to those who lost their lives, but also spoke of ensuring Israel had what it needed to defend itself.Biden expressed sorrow for suffering on all sides of the conflict in the Middle East, and in a statement condemned a “vicious surge in antisemitism in America” since the attacks.Trump’s address began more than two hours later than billed. He joked about a bumpy flight from New York, and his concern for Florida from Hurricane Milton, a category 5 storm predicted to slam into the state on Wednesday.His supporters, some wearing yarmulkes with the former president’s name embroidered on them, cheered as he took the stage of the ballroom at Trump National in Doral.He spoke against a backdrop of six American and Israeli flags, and images of the almost 1,200 victims, including 46 Americans, killed by Hamas one year ago. A succession of speakers and guests, including two Holocaust survivors, Jewish religious leaders and Republican politicians, lit remembrance candles as they took the stage.Along one wall, rows of candles sat in front of photographs of the dozens of people taken hostage. Each name was marked by the word “kidnapped” in capital letters.View image in fullscreenTrump has presented himself as Israel’s strongest, most outspoken defender, but has also drawn criticism for his previous comments. A year ago, in the days following the terrorist attack on the Nova music festival, he called Hezbollah, the Lebanese group closely allied to Hamas, “very smart”, and Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant “a jerk”.Speaking at an event in Florida last October, Trump said Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not prepared, and that Israel’s enemies were “smart, and, boy, are they vicious”.The White House condemned his comments as “dangerous and unhinged”.Trump also raised eyebrows last month when he claimed he was “the most popular person in Israel”, and bemoaned a lack of support from Jewish voters after polls showed him below 40% with them.Insisting he had been “the best president by far” for Israel, he said: “Based on what I did … I should be at 100%.” Trump did not repeat the boast on Monday.Some supporters in the audience in Miami were pleased to hear Trump speaking forcefully in defense of Israel.“Kamala Harris will stand for Hamas. She is no friend of Israel,” Ben Fisher, a Miami resident, said. “Donald Trump speaks the way a strong leader should. He knows if your country is attacked you cannot let that go, if it’s the attack on the festival or the missiles from Tehran.”Harris spoke earlier in the day at the vice-presidential residence, promising that if elected next month she would “always ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself”.Unlike Trump, she resisted the opportunity to make political remarks, focusing instead on victims by telling the story of two Americans who died, and naming each of the seven Americans taken by Hamas to Gaza, four of whom are still believed to be alive. 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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      Kamala Harris pays tribute to victims of 7 October attacks on first anniversary

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      US politicians on both sides of the aisle issued statements marking the anniversary of the 7 October attacks, with Kamala Harris paying tribute to the victims and calling, in their honor, to “never lose sight of the dream of peace, dignity, and security for all”.Outside the vice-presidential residence, Harris, accompanied by her husband, spoke of the nearly 1,200 people, including 46 Americans, killed in Israel one year ago.She mentioned a singer from Missouri who died shielding her son from bullets, an academic and peace activist who studied in Seattle, and a dancer from California who was killed at the Nova music festival.Harris expressed a commitment to “always ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself” and named each of the seven American hostages still held in Gaza, including four still believed to be alive.“We must uphold the commitment to repair the world, an idea that has been passed on throughout generations of the Jewish people and across many faiths,” she added. “To that end we must work to relieve the immense suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza who have experienced so much pain and loss over the year.”Earlier, Joe Biden commemorated the anniversary with a candle-lighting ceremony at the White House on Monday.The US president was joined by Jill Biden and Rabbi Aaron Alexander, who said a short prayer. Biden did not speak at the ceremony, but he paid tribute earlier in a statement to “the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust” and condemned the “vicious surge in antisemitism in America” since the attacks.“The October 7 attack brought to the surface painful memories left by millennia of hatred and violence against the Jewish people,” he said, before also referencing the suffering of Palestinians.“I believe that history will also remember October 7 as a dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day. Far too many civilians have suffered far too much during this year of conflict.”Harris also nodded to the more than 40,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza.“I am heartbroken over the scale of death and destruction in Gaza over the past year – tens of thousands of lives lost, children fleeing for safety over and over again, mothers and fathers struggling to obtain food, water, and medicine,” she said in a statement. “It is far past time for a hostage and ceasefire deal to end the suffering of innocent people.”The Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, also spoke out on Monday, using the occasion as an opportunity to attack Biden and Harris. Speaking at a pro-Israel rally in Washington DC organized by the Christian group Philos Project, he called the attacks of 7 October “the worst terrorist attack since 9/11” and an attack not only on Israel and Jewish people but “on Americans”.“It is disgraceful that we have an American president and vice-president who haven’t done a thing,” he said. “Vice-President Harris, our message is: ‘Bring them home.’ Use your authority to help bring them home.”Vance then criticized what he described as the “pro-Hamas” protests happening across the country on Monday and the students that he said are “supporting Islamic radicals, destroying property, and threatening Jewish students and professors”.Meanwhile, Donald Trump paid a visit to the Ohel, the gravesite of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in New York City on Monday. The site is considered a pilgrimage destination by many Orthodox Jews – a group that widely supports the former president, in contrast with other Jewish Americans who tend to vote Democratic.Trump is scheduled to speak later on Monday at a remembrance event at his golf course in Doral, Florida.He is widely expected to turn the event into an attack on his rival. In recent weeks, he has said that he has been “the best president by far” for Israel, and that Jewish voters supporting Harris “should have their head examined”. 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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      Warren and Dean demand Coke, Pepsi and General Mills stop ‘shrinkflation’

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      It’s becoming a common experience for Americans going to the grocery store: your bag of chips seems lighter, your favorite drink comes in a slimmer bottle, and you’re running out of laundry detergent more quickly than usual. And yet things are staying the same price.On Monday two Democratic lawmakers launched an attempt to get to the bottom of the phenomena, accusing three major companies, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills, of shrinking the size of products while charging consumers the same price – a price-gouging practice known as “shrinkflation”.Senator Elizabeth Warren and US representative Madeleine Dean allege in letters to the CEOs of the three companies that they have participated in shrinkflation, subtly decreasing the size of cereals and sodas sold in stores.General Mills decreased its box of “family size” Cocoa Puffs from 19.3 ounces to 18.1 ounces over the last few years, the letter alleges. Meanwhile, PepsiCo downgraded the size of Gatorade bottles from 32 ounces to 28 ounces.Companies often say that decreases in size can be attributed to changes in packaging that are unrelated to pricing or the economic environment. PepsiCo told NBC News in July that their 28-ounce bottle has been around for years and that the company had planned to widen its distribution as part of a long-term strategy.But many remain skeptical at the widespread variety of products that seem to be shrinking.“Shrinking the size of a product in order to gouge consumers on the price per ounce is not innovation, it’s exploitation,” Warren and Dean said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this price gouging is a widespread problem, with corporate profits driving over half of inflation.”People on social media have been talking about the slimming down of products for months, with users posting about their shrinkflation experiences with side-by-side pictures of products before and after shrinking.“Major corporations are trying to gaslighting us, trying to make us believe that what we’re seeing is not real,” said TikTok user Melissa Simonson in a video from March, where she points out the sizes of drinks, cereals, chips, orange juice, gum and laundry detergent, among other grocery store items, have gotten smaller.Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the letters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates the US inflation rate each month, says its economists try to incorporate any instances of shrinkflation into its inflation calculations. For example, if a tub of 64-ounce vanilla ice cream was priced at $5.99 in January, then the price-per-ounce is $0.093. If in February, the tub remains the same price, but shrinks to 60 ounces, the price-per-ounce has gone up, representing a kind of price increase.Warren and Dean also used the letters as an opportunity to blast the companies for paying less taxes on higher profits after Donald Trump’s corporate tax cuts in 2017. The lawmakers cited a recent report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that said Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills all paid taxes at a rate of 15% or under from 2018 to 2022, despite making billions in profit.“We strongly oppose these corporate tax giveaways, and have fought to pass tax increases on big corporations, including the 15 percent minimum tax on billion-dollar corporations,” the lawmakers said in their statement. “No corporation should pay a lower tax rate than working Americans – especially when that same corporation turns around and gouges consumers on the other end through shrinkflation.” More

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      Georgia residents on Trump and Harris’s post-Helene trips: ‘He’s here to get votes, she’s here to help’

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      Mayor Garnett Johnson didn’t want to put his troubles in front of people wrestling with despair in his community of Augusta, Georgia. On Friday, he was upbeat as he spoke about shelter availability and repair trucks a week after Hurricane Helene mowed down trees and ripped roofs off of houses, leaving half the city without power. But as he talked about unburying Augusta while helping hand out boxes of grapes and bananas and carrots in a church parking lot to a line of cars stretching a mile and a half, he let something slip.“We got seven confirmed deaths as a result of Hurricane Helene. I personally was … unfortunately, I had to witness one, but we’re getting through it.”The night of the hurricane, his cousin Melissa Carter needed help.“She called me,” Johnson said. “One of the lowest points in all of this was on Friday morning, I was wondering why she called me so frantically. She said: ‘I need you to come to my house. Daverio. I can’t … there’s a tree on him, and I can’t get the tree off.”Daverio Carter, her husband of 11 years, had been crushed by a tree that fell on their house. Johnson drove there in the storm. “Of course, you know, there’s nothing I could do.”Carter died in front of them while they waited for help. He was 51, and had five children.“They were able to recover his body at about 9 o’clock that night,” Johnson said. “They actually had to call in a crane to remove the tree to recover him … You’re looking at her as a mayor. I could do a lot of things. But I couldn’t get a crane to get it off of her husband, and for them to see him actually take his last breath while he’s laying in bed.”Daverio Carter’s funeral was Saturday. Johnson made that much time to grieve.“I literally don’t have power in my home. No water,” Johnson said. Debris still blocks his personal vehicles, he said. “On Friday, I had to literally climb old trees and power lines just to get out of the neighborhood to get down to the emergency operations center. So, we have so many dedicated city employees that have been working tirelessly, sometimes 16, 20 hours a day just to try to get this city back running around. I think we’re close.”Johnson has been burying himself in work while his family buries its dead. He did talk to Kamala Harris about it when she came for an emergency management briefing Tuesday, he said. Harris also spoke to Melissa Carter.“Mayor, I want to thank you for your leadership, in particular,” the US vice-president said in Augusta on Wednesday during a visit to access damage and console families. “I was just talking with one of the members of the community and her daughter who lost her husband. And there is real pain and trauma that has resulted because of this hurricane and what has happened in terms of the aftermath of it.”Thanking first responders and local leadership, she said: “The local folks are folks who have personally – and their families have personally – experienced loss and devastation. And yet they leave their home, leave their family to go to centers like where I was earlier to do the work of helping perfect strangers. And it really does highlight the nobility of the kind of work that these public servants have dedicated themselves to, which can be, in moments of crisis like this, so selfless in the way that they do that work.”Harris pointedly toned down her presence in Augusta, giving little advance notice of her arrival last week. She toured some of the poorest parts of the city, where the downed trees on roofs and in yards from the storm compete with rotten siding and missing windows after decades of decay.People living in these neighborhoods who turned out for the fresh produce said they understood why Harris would play things quietly, even five weeks before election day. At the time, people were still struggling to find a gas station with the lights on, dodging price gougers selling gas in five-gallon jugs for $40 on the side of the street.“It shows concern, and shows that she cares,” said Annie Gardner. At 95, she’s the oldest member of Augusta’s Good Samaritan Missionary Baptist church, where people were redistributing food from nearby DeKalb county to local residents. “I’m very impressed already, I was liking her already, and I even like her even more now.”View image in fullscreenShe’s a skeptic of political theater right now, though. “Trump’s not coming here in this neighborhood. He’s out with the rich white folks. If he does, I’d be really surprised. I don’t think nobody cares if he doesn’t come, either.”Both Harris and Donald Trump have a delicate dance to perform. Visibility matters.Michael Thurmond, DeKalb county’s CEO, arranged for the delivery of hundreds of thousands of dollars in produce to Augusta after seeing the reports of devastation in Augusta. “People are looking to see that their leaders are doing something,” he said.But photo-op politics in a crisis leads to images like Trump tossing paper towels at hurricane victims. The former president and Republican presidential nominee seemed somewhat more aware of that in his appearances in Georgia over the last week.“If [Trump] brought a thousand trucks like this, he would still not get my vote,” said April Terry, an Augustan waiting for a box of produce Friday morning. “All that is showing that he’s got money, showing that all he wants is your vote.”Trump spoke to reporters in Evans, Georgia, just north-east of Augusta, on Thursday. There was no attempt to stage a massive rally, though about 100 supporters staked out the road near the venue to wave flags. But he did appear side by side with Governor Brian Kemp, whom the former president has pointedly attacked as unsupportive of his election claims.On Thursday, Trump said Kemp “is doing a fantastic job”.Kemp in turn praised the former president for “keeping the national focus on our state as we recover”, then recited the litany of destruction, noting that major Georgia crops had been all but wiped out. The Georgia governor noted that that the federal government is quickly approving his requests for federal disaster declarations, which will help move relief funding and federal reimbursement.View image in fullscreenAhead of those comments, the state insurance commissioner John King took issue with the political implications of Harris’s promise of 100% federal reimbursement. Doing so would require an appropriation that hasn’t yet been made, essentially daring the House speaker Mike Johnson to refuse. “It’s political blackmail,” he said.Evans, in Columbia county, Georgia, is comparatively affluent. But it also sustained catastrophic damage, and its mostly conservative voters are digging out of much the same hole as everyone else in the region.“You’ll see, if you go in there, at least our street, all the yards along the road are lined with cut-up logs,” said Gage Gabriel, a 19-year-old Trump supporter watching for the motorcade. Public reaction to the storm could change the way people vote, he said. “Depending on the concern showed from the federal government. If the federal government doesn’t seem to show concern to a large section of the country … it should at least sway some results, depending on how caring politicians seem to the plight of especially North Carolina.”Gabriel wants to see leaders with a chain saw in their hands cutting down trees. “Not just shaking the hands of people putting up some power lines.”Jordan Johnson, a Richmond county commissioner, said: “It’s hard to really focus on politics in this very moment, because folks are trying to find power and folks are trying to find food.” But the contrast between the two candidates is stark, he added.“If you look at where Kamala Harris went, she went to a very hard struck part of town in south Augusta. She went to a shelter. She spoke to people, she gave food. Donald Trump is going to one of the most affluent parts of the [Augusta area]. I don’t know what impact their business will have. I’m not really interested in the campaign aspect. He has no purpose here in Augusta other than as a campaign stop. Kamala Harris came as vice-president of the United States announcing that help and aid is on the way. I mean, it tells you a lot about the two candidates are and what their missions are. He’s here to get votes, and she’s here to help.” More