Last night, at about 11:10 local time, Hurricane Helene made landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida, where the state’s panhandle curves down toward the peninsula. It was classified as a Category 4 storm when it hit, bringing winds of 140 miles per hour (225 km per hour). The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane wind scale, developed in 1971 by civil engineer Herbert Saffir and meteorologist Robert Simpson, divides storms according to sustained wind intensity in an attempt to explain storms on a scale similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes.
The Saffir-Simpson scale defines a Category 4 hurricane as one that brings catastrophic damage. According to the National Weather Service, which was established in 1870 to give notice of “the approach and force of storms,” and is now part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a Category 4 hurricane has winds of 134–156 miles (209–251 km) per hour. “Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.”
Hurricane Helene hit with a 15-foot (4.6 meter) storm surge and left a path of destruction across Florida before moving up into Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky with torrential rain, flash floods, high winds, and tornadoes. A record level of more than eleven inches of rain fell in Atlanta, Georgia. At least 45 people have died in the path of the storm, and more than 4.5 million homes and businesses across ten states are without power. The roads in western North Carolina are closed. Moody’s Analytics said it expects the storm to leave $15 to $26 billion in property damage.
Officials from NOAA, the scientific and regulatory agency that forecasts weather and monitors conditions in the oceans and skies, predict that record-warm ocean temperatures this year will produce more storms than usual. NOAA hurricane scientist Jeff Masters noted that Helene’s landfall “gives the U.S. a record eight Cat 4 or Cat 5 Atlantic hurricane landfalls in the past eight years (2017–2024), seven of them being continental U.S. landfalls. That’s as many Cat 4 and 5 landfalls as occurred in the prior 57 years.”
President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations for Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina before Helene made landfall. Tennessee governor Bill Lee, a Republican, did not ask for such a declaration until this evening, instead proclaiming September 27 a “voluntary Day of Prayer and Fasting.” Observers pointed out that with people stuck on a hospital roof in the midst of catastrophic flooding in his state, maybe an emergency declaration would be more on point.
After a state or a tribal government asks for federal help, an emergency declaration enables the federal government to provide funds to supplement local and state emergency efforts, as well as to deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help save lives, protect property, and protect health and safety. Before Helene made landfall, the federal government placed personnel and resources across the region, ready to help with search and rescue, restore power, and provide food and water and emergency generators.
The federal government sent 1,500 federal personnel to the region, as well as about 8,000 members of the U.S. Coast Guard and teams from the Army Corps of Engineers to provide emergency power. It provided two health and medical task forces to help local hospitals and critical care facilities, and sent in more than 2.7 million meals, 1.6 million liters of water, 50,000 tarps, 10,000 cots, 20,000 blankets, 70,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and 40,000 gallons of gasoline to provide supplies for those hit by the catastrophe.
FEMA was created in 1979 after the National Governors Association asked President Jimmy Carter to centralize federal emergency management functions. That centralization recognized the need for coordination as people across the country responded to a disaster in any one part of it. When a devastating fire ripped through Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the day after Christmas in 1802, Congress agreed to send aid to the town, but volunteers organized by local and state governments and funded by wealthy community members provided most of the response and recovery efforts for the many disasters of the 1900s.
When a deadly hurricane wiped out Galveston, Texas, in 1900, killing at least 6,000 residents and destroying most of the city’s buildings, the inept machine government proved unable to manage the donations pouring in from across the country to help survivors. Six years later, when an earthquake badly damaged San Francisco and ensuing fires from broken gas lines engulfed the city in flames, the interim fire chief—who took over when the fire chief was gravely injured—called in federal troops to patrol the streets and guard buildings. More than 4,000 Army troops also fed, sheltered, and clothed displaced city residents.
When the Mississippi River flooded in 1927, sending up to 30 feet (9 meters) of water across ten states, including Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, killing about 500 people and displacing hundreds of thousands more, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover to coordinate the federal disaster response and pull together the many private-sector interests eager to help out under federal organization. This marked the first time the federal government took charge after a disaster.
In 1950, Congress authorized federal response to disasters when it passed the Federal Disaster Assistance Program. In response to the many disasters of the 1960s—the 1964 Alaska Earthquake, Hurricane Betsy in 1965, and Hurricane Camille in 1969—the Department of Housing and Urban Development established a way to provide housing for disaster survivors. Congress provided guaranteed flood insurance to homeowners, and in 1970 it also authorized federal loans and federal funding for those affected by disasters.
When he signed the Disaster Relief Act of 1970, Republican president Richard Nixon said: “I am pleased with this bill which responds to a vital need of the American people. The bill demonstrates that the Federal Government in cooperation with State and local authorities is capable of providing compassionate assistance to the innocent victims of natural disasters.”
Four years later, Congress established the process for a presidential disaster declaration. By then, more than 100 different federal departments and agencies had a role in responding to disasters, and the attempts of state, tribal, and local governments to interface with them created confusion. So the National Governors Association asked President Carter to streamline the process. In Executive Order 12127 he brought order to the system with the creation of FEMA.
In 2003, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., the George W. Bush administration brought FEMA into its newly-created Department of Homeland Security, along with 21 other agencies, wrapping natural disasters together with terrorist attacks as matters of national security. After 2005’s Hurricane Katrina required the largest disaster response in U.S. history, FEMA’s inadequate response prompted a 2006 reform act that distinguished responding to natural disasters from responding to terrorist attacks. In 2018, another reform focused on funding for disaster mitigation before the crisis hits.
The federal government’s efficient organization of responses to natural disasters illustrates that as citizens of a republic, we are part of a larger community that responds to our needs in times of crisis.
But that system is currently under attack. Project 2025, a playbook for the next Republican administration, authored by allies of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and closely associated with Republican presidential candidate Trump and vice presidential candidate Ohio senator J.D. Vance, calls for slashing FEMA’s budget and returning disaster responses to states and localities.
Project 2025 also calls for dismantling the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and either eliminating its functions, sending them to other agencies, privatizing them, or putting them under the control of states and territories. It complains that NOAA, whose duties include issuing hurricane warnings, is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
Right-wing politicians, parties and users often sow doubts about elections, ranging from election irregularities in the US to problems with postal voting in Germany. Why is this the case?
Only a few days before last weekend’s key elections in the German state of Brandenburg, the regional branch of Germany's far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) published a call on its Facebook page.
The message offered "indispensable tools" for voters to observe the elections and look out for "problems, fraud or mistakes." It linked to a podcast on the "most serious cases of electoral fraud in recent years."
The post also offered links to a group called "Ein Prozent," which brings together "electoral observers" and describes itself as "Germany's largest patriotic citizens' network." However, according to the country's intelligence services, "Ein Prozent" is a confirmed right-wing extremist organization.
This appeal by the AfD is part of a larger and long-standing strategy of sowing distrust in the democratic process before and after elections and calling out what the party sees as voter manipulation against it.
The distrust is also popular on social media under the hashtag "Wahlbetrug" (voter fraud in German). In the Brandenburg elections, which the AfD narrowly lost to the governing Social Democrats, dozens of posts on X (such as this oneand this one) alleged to show voter manipulation against the AfD.
The strategy is not exclusive to the AfD, but rather a narrative that is also seen in other countries, predominantly among right-wing populist parties and politicians who repeatedly bash the electoral process but rarely present waterproof evidence.
The claims, which to a large extent focus on postal voting, then fall on fertile ground on social media among their sympathizers.
For instance, the program of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) for this Sunday's legislative elections specifically calls for voters "who care about democracy" to turn up in person at the polling station and not vote by post.
Postal voting, according to the FPÖ, opens the door to electoral fraud because "there are repeated inconsistencies and accusations that votes are collected and cast centrally in 'migrant communities' or retirement homes."
There are several posts on social media channels, such as this one, that seem close to the FPÖ calling for a "megademo" in case of voter fraud.
And beyond Europe, politicians like the former US President Donald Trump and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have repeatedly pushed similar narratives.
Voter fraud claims are already making the rounds ahead of the US presidential election in November on various social media platforms. DW fact-checked several of the claims here.
The retirement-home theory
Daniel Hellmann, an expert at Germany's Institute for Parliamentary Research, told DW that these kinds of claims are being used not only to delegitimize political opponents but more broadly as an "attack on the credibility of the system as a whole."
It is also a narrative that seems to be becoming more prominent in the political debate, especially thanks to public figures like Trump.
The former US president blamed his election defeat in 2020 on a "rigged" voting system and in particular criticized mail-in voting by calling it a "whole big scam."
These claims echo similar narratives by the FPÖ in Austria and the AfD in Germany, which share the belief that postal votes are susceptible to manipulation.
German authorities, however, have stressed they are a proven alternative and "as secure as voting at the polling station."
And in individual cases where voter fraud may be suspected, investigations are carried out. In September's regional election in the state of Saxony, not far away from Brandenburg, police found postal ballots manipulated in favor of the Free Saxons party, described as a far-right extremist group.
Aiko Wagner, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University, explained that mail-in ballots are often criticized by parties like the AfD because they are seen as a less transparent way to vote than depositing the ballot in person.
This raises suspicions which, as Wagner adds in an interview with DW, are fueled even further when electoral results show the AfD performing worse among postal voters than among in-person voters.
This skepticism, for instance, was evident after the Brandenburg election.
AfD's co-leader Timo Chrupalla said in a press conference he didn't know whether AfD voters were generally not inclined to vote by post, but he added that it’s "no secret" that postal ballots are prone to be manipulated.
And he referred to what some call the "retirement-home theory." This is the idea that old people who cannot vote in person are not voting freely, but are rather put under pressure by specific parties.
Chrupalla said parties "go in and out of old people's homes," except the AfD, which is often denied entry. He didn't provide any evidence to support his claim.
Retirement home providers and nursing organizations have oftenrejected these kinds of accusations.
Moreover, the office of Brandenburg's returning officer told DW in an email that it hadn't received any information on electoral fraud allegations.
Nevertheless, Chrupalla's comments are arguably helping to sow mistrust in the electoral process, especially among voters of his party.
'Gateway' for conspiracy theories
It's not the only theory that is being linked to these claims about postal ballots.
Aiko Wagner described them as a "gateway" for conspiracy theories, as people can believe that something is being manipulated behind the scenes.
Wagner said they can fuel narratives such as there being "machinations of which the normal citizen is unaware" or "corrupt political elites that are betraying the true people."
Daniel Hellmann added another element –namely that many conspiracy theories have a kernel of truth from which a specific worldview is spun.
Hellmann says the kernel of truth in postal ballots is that it's more difficult than when people go to the polling station to ensure they're voting in secret.
This doesn't mean postal ballots are being structurally manipulated, but this kernel of truth is being used –as in the case of old people’s homes– to fuel doubts about a wider political process.
A political process that may be often questioned by right-wing populist parties, but is defended by most members of society as a core element of today's democracy. Despite these criticisms. Or even also because of them.
Do you? Can you? I can’t. I open the papers, scan the headlines, sort of shake my head, and don’t even bother. Is that bad of me? Am I being lazy, foolish, indolent, or is this…a sentiment you also share? Can’t read the news. Just feels totally disconnected from me. For me. So then what?
I’m bored.
Maybe you are too.
Of the way we think. Act. Feel. Are.
And I think that’s why I’ve stopped reading the news. Not because I’m sort of tired of doom and gloom. But because it’s just…anodyne. It feels pointless. Detached from reality.
If I open the news, I don’t see much in the way of how I think or feel. There’s no real sense of urgency. Yes, we all know Trump’s a fascist, thanks for finally saying it a decade late, I guess, here’s a pat on the back. Climate change? Mega-inequality? Predatory capitalism? Etcetera.
So. There I am. Sort of clicking around, looking for something that mirrors how I feel about the world, and I have to confess to you, I am bored.
But I don’t mean that as a complaint.
I mean it in the sense of…
Is It Just Me, Or is Our Civilization Paralyzed?
Why am I so bored?
This is a crucial juncture for our civilization.
But.
Our civilization is paralyzed.
This is it. You know what’s coming, I imagine, I say it often. This decade is the moment that we address our existential challenges, or we don’t.
And yet here we are, just paralyzed.
There’s the sense that things are barely staying functional, if that. If you like, that they’re dysfunctional, and just kind of holding on at the edge of collapse with their fingernails.
By things, what do I mean? There’s our politics. Enthused about the choice between Kamala’s neoliberalism lite and Trump’s…whatever it even is? I’m not, and I’d bet, unless you’re sort of a die-hard believer in the cult of personality of either one, you’re not either.
There’s our economy, which is always “booming”, if you ask elites, but never delivers for the average person. There’s always a bailout, subsidy, bonus, etcetera, for the powerful, but our economies stopped caring about the powerless long ago, it seems, and the idea that they could care, deliver, do much to raise living standards…that’s considered something of a joke by most, at this point, because we all know “the economy” is really only there to make the rich richer at this point.
There’s our societies, or lack thereof. Social contracts? What are those, even, anymore? I understand the enthusiasm around Kamala, and I guess, to a kind of forlorn extent, I share it, but let’s be real, she’s not exactly suggesting a new social contract. She’s stopped well short, because we all know that you can’t do that. It’s just not possible, a step too far, a giant leap in an age where even baby steps require all the might that’s left in the feeble, broken heart of our civilization.
I think discussing all that sheds a little light on why I’m so goddamned bored.
We’ve hit the limits of the possible.
The Limits of the Possible
And what’s left is now impossible.
Let me explain what I mean by using the example of climate change. It took us all the effort we could muster as a civilization. Decades of treaties, leadership, teeth-grinding efforts to build coalitions, get nations on board, and so on. It’s not that that was bad, that was good. But it only got us here, which is a place where carbon emissions are still rising.
They’re rising more slowly, and again, that’s good, in a lesser evil kind of way, but it’s not exactly enough.
And yet any further movement is now essentially impossible. It’s just not going to happen. Sure, you can buy into the pipe dreams of the various industries who want to claim that magically we’re going to reach a fossil-free future, but that’s just hype. There’s no real indication anymore that carbon emissions are going to slow, or even reverse, especially fast enough for us not to keep on warming the planet right past all its tipping points.
So. Do you see what I see in that example? Let me illuminate it.
We did what we could, as a civilization.
We reached the limits of the possible. Our limits of our possible.
And what’s left is now impossible.
But what’s impossible is what’s necessary, because we barely even scratched the surface of addressing our Grand Challenges and Existential Threats.
The Dent in History We Didn’t Make
Let me now put that to you more formally.
• Inequality is still rising
• Democracy is still in sharp decline
• Incomes are still stagnant or falling
• Emissions are still rising
• Politics is more dysfunctional than ever in contemporary times
• Society is divided, unsure, and pessimistic
These are the limits of our possible.
It’s not enough to say, as American pundits do, staring these mega trends in the face, that we’re doing well, or well enough. The world’s brighter minds are profoundly alarmed at where we are, from economists to planetary scientists to political scientists to visionary leaders of older generations, for a very good reason.
That reason isn’t just that things aren’t going well.
Rather, it’s that they’re not going well despite us making our best efforts to do something about them.
Our best efforts made no dent in any of these Existential Threats.
Not one.
What Happens When Our Best Isn’t Good Enough?
I want you to pause and think about that for a second with me. Really reflect on it.
This time, let’s use the example of America’s economy.
We’ve been discussing a sort of mind-blowing statistic lately, which is that median incomes for men are lower today than they were in 1979. You can take that in a broader sense, because of course women’s incomes started from a very, very low base.
Now think of all that’s happened since 1979. Reagan. Bush. Clinton. Bush Junior. Obama. Trump. Etcetera. Think of all their grand promises, plans, paradigms. Think of all they tried, and the legions of advisors, flunkies, lobbyists, cabinet members, involved.
None of it worked.
Unless you’re the cynical sort who believes that the plan was to basically strangle the middle class to death, and hey, maybe, looking at data that dire, you have a point.
The point I want to make, though, is that we’ve made no dent in our Grand Challenges. Not a single dent in a single one. And that’s sort of…insane…baffling…horrendous…when you think about it.
America’s primary challenge is to raise people’s incomes. So they can have a decent standard of living again. And when I say “not a dent,” you can immediately see: half a century of broken promises didn’t do anything. So incomes are flat or lower today, using the most basic measure, than they were 50 years ago.
That’s what “not making a dent” means.
In the case of carbon emissions, it means: they’re still rising. Sure, more slowly, but the point was to bring them down, to reverse the upwards trajectory.
That same pattern is true for inequality, democracy, society, etcetera.
(Freeing) Leadership in the 21st Century
So what do we do when we reach the limits of the possible?
That’s when we need leaders.
In the proper sense of the word.
Not just power figures. And this is where things get tricky. Is Kamala a leader in this sense? Not yet. Will she be one? I doubt it, because she shows no real signs of interest in taking on, much less seeing, our problems, in this way.
So we have a final failure before us, which is leadership.
And here, I hold up my hands.
I was supposed to be one of the guys who helped develop the leaders of the future. For those of you who remember my writings and column at HBR, that’s the sort of institution that’s supposed to take on that challenge.
But they failed at that, and I suppose, so did I.
We are failing at developing leaders in this truest and deepest of senses, and to illuminate it, we can think of the cliched example of, let’s say, Steve Jobs. What was he better at than all his peers? Redrawing the boundaries of the possible. Nobody thought a phone could do that. Nobody cared enough to.
That’s sort of where this highest level of leadership begins.
Today, we are failing abysmally at this. And no, I don’t really think that figures like AOC pass the test, either. Sure, you can propose more social housing, but it’s been pretty disastrous in places like Britain and parts of Europe. Not a magic bullet or a cure all. Sure, we can say that we’re social democrats, but take a hard look, because social democracy is not doing well at the moment.
Leadership is about redrawing the boundaries of the possible.
Our civilization does not have leaders anymore, of this calibre.
We’ve hit the limits of our possible, and nobody knows what to do.
So here we are, paralyzed.
Now, I can offer you all kinds of suggestions, and if you’re an old friend, you know them. Redesign our societies around well-being, so that our economies deliver higher living standards, instead of this mess we have today. Ditto for corporations and private sector institutions. But that’s not really the point either, because of course, I can’t do that by myself.
We need leaders of this calibre.
Or else we are going to stay paralyzed, in this most crucial of moments.
And if we do that, of course, our trajectory will not be a very good one.
How are we to develop those leaders? I don’t know if that’s so much the question. As freeing people to be them. Our institutions are straitjackets now, unless you’re kind of a sociopath, ruthless, domineering, amoral, and narcissistic. Anyone else is ruthlessly selected out as not strong or “smart” enough.
So we are going to have to redesign our institutions so that they free people to take on these challenges.
If leaders of Kamala’s category do that much, then at least there’s a pathway left to us. If they don’t, then the creative geniuses we need to redesign what’s left our civilization will be stuck there, their potential wasted away, and all the resources flowing to exactly the wrong kinds of people and personalities instead, not empathic, creative, authentic, wise, and allocentric kinds, but selfish, ruthless, and more or less sociopathic kinds.
Are second-tier, more functional, leaders of Kamala’s form—who are the best we currently have, and so I don’t mean that as an insult, just analytically—capable of doing that? I don’t know. But do they? That’s the question.
On Aug. 13, 84 days before this fall’s Election Day, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, announced an effort to “remove noncitizens registered to vote” in the state. According to a press release, Allen identified and instructed county election officials to remove from their voter rolls 3,251 registered Alabama voters who had been “issued noncitizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security.”
Allen also acknowledged in the press release that “some of the individuals who were issued noncitizen identification numbers have, since receiving them, become naturalized citizens and are, therefore, eligible to vote.” Those U.S. citizens would be able to update their voter registration information, the statement added.
But in a statement, the Justice Department characterized this process as a “systematic voter removal program” that has ensnared U.S. citizens, both those born in the United States and those who were naturalized, and put them on a path to no longer appearing on Alabama’s voter registration list.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar
5h
Trump: "I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I shouldn't say this, but I'd get other people in. I wouldn't pay."
Late Friday night, Tennessee House Republican Caucus chair Jeremy Faison posted “President Biden has finally approved [Tennessee governor Bill Lee’s] state of emergency request,” making it sound as if the delay in federal support for the state during the devastation of Hurricane Helene was Biden’s fault. In fact, while Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina all declared emergencies and requested and received federal approval of those declarations before the hurricane hit, Governor Lee did not.
Instead, in keeping with an April joint resolution from the Republican-dominated Tennessee legislature calling for 31 days of prayer and fasting to “seek God’s hand of mercy healing on Tennessee,” Lee proclaimed September 27 “a voluntary Day of Prayer & Fasting.”
Lee did not declare a state of emergency until late on September 27, after flash flooding had already created havoc. President Biden approved it immediately.
The extraordinary damage from Helene in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia continues to mount. At least 91 people have died, and search and rescue teams are at work across several states. More than 2 million people are without power, and western North Carolina is isolated after its roads washed out. A fire at a chemical facility in Conyers, Georgia, outside Atlanta forced the evacuation of 17,000 people nearby. The National Weather Service office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, wrote to the residents of the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia: “This is the worst event in our office’s history.”
Faison’s implication that Democratic president Biden, rather than Republican governor Lee, was to blame for the slow federal response to Helene in Tennessee illustrated the Republicans’ attempt to create a fake world to motivate their base with fear and anger while leaving Democrats to come up with real world solutions. And since those solutions are popular, Republicans are claiming credit for them.
In the past two days, Republican lawmakers who just days ago voted against funding the federal government and who have railed against government spending have been out front claiming credit for getting federal disaster relief.
Republican presidential nominee Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance have been claiming that it was Trump who capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month. Vance has accused Vice President Kamala Harris of lying when the Biden administration takes credit for it. Vance’s statement, itself, is a breathtaking lie. Trump signed an executive order in July 2020 establishing a temporary, voluntary program that let some Medicare Part D prescription drug plans cap monthly insulin copayments at $35. The program ran from January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2023.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in August 2022, required all Part D plans to charge no more than $35 a month for all covered insulin products. All Democrats in the House and the Senate voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, and all Republicans—including J.D. Vance—voted against it.
As Republicans have lost the support of suburban women for their attacks on reproductive rights and embrace of the misogyny of the MAGA movement, they have tried to beef up the idea that they are the country’s true supporters of women and families. Trump, who has been found liable for sexual assault, has been trying to assure women: “I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector.” With him back in office, he said at a rally in Pennsylvania, women “will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
Journalist Jessica Valenti noted that antiabortion activists are running advertisements blaming the deaths of women in states with abortion bans not on those bans or those who passed them, but on the Democrats trying to protect reproductive healthcare. Women have died when doctors would not give them lifesaving care out of concerns about prosecution under states’ abortion bans or were unable to access abortion care. But the ads, using the names and images of women who have died under antiabortion regimes, claim that lifesaving care is still legal but doctors don’t know they can use it because of misinformation from pro-choice activists.
Antiabortion Republican Derrick Anderson, who is running to represent Virginia’s seventh congressional district, has appeared in campaign photographs with a woman and children posed as if they are his family, but they are not. He is unmarried and childless, and the family is that of a friend.
That last one is really weird, but the biggest lies from the Republicans concern immigration, especially as voters blame the Republicans for killing a strong bipartisan border bill earlier this year after Trump demanded they keep the issue open for him to campaign on. J.D. Vance was among those who voted against it.
There were the lies Vance spread about Springfield, Ohio, of course, attacking the legal Haitian immigrants there who have been credited with revitalizing the city. On Friday and Saturday, Trump lied that Vice President Harris had let 13,000 or 14,000 convicted murderers enter the U.S. in the past three years, who “freely and openly roam our country,” a lie that Elon Musk called “true.”
In fact, as CNN’s Daniel Dale pointed out, it is a lie. The Department of Homeland Security clarified that the data to which Trump appeared to refer lists individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years—including during his own term—committed crimes in the U.S. rather than their country of origin, and either are currently incarcerated or have served their sentences but can’t be deported because their country of origin won’t accept them. Such individuals are monitored.
On Saturday, Julia Terruso of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a woman in a Philadelphia suburb received a letter that looked like an official document from the fake “Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs” telling her that she was expected to provide living space to five migrants under a program “written into Law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.”
As Terruso wrote, “No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam—and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly become a focal point.”
Lies establish dominance over people being lied to, because lies take away a person’s right to make good decisions about their own life. So what’s the purpose of the Republican lies?
Former president Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, but his recent attacks on special counsel Jack Smith and his attempts to sell watches for up to $100,000 apiece suggest he is interested mostly in avoiding prosecution and gathering donations. At his recent events he is slurring his words, unable to answer questions, and seems consumed with anger and a desire for revenge against those he sees as his enemies. He has recently referred to Harris as “mentally disabled,” and today in Erie, Pennsylvania, he said that crime would end “if you had one really violent day…. One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately.”
He has, though, focused on painting a picture of the U.S. as a hellscape overrun with undocumented criminal immigrants. Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who clips Trump’s speeches on social media, compared yesterday’s rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to the “Two Minutes Hate” against political enemies in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Trump’s attacks on immigrants were so extreme even he admitted “this is a dark speech.”
Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is also doubling down on anti-immigrant attacks. In that, they are echoing the language Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán used to get voters to support him out of fear of immigrants. Then Orbán took control of Hungary, undermined its democracy, and set himself up as a dictator.
Once in charge, Orbán insisted that democracy was obsolete. The democratic principle that the law must treat everyone equally and give them a say in their government, he said, weakens a nation by treating women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as equal to white, heterosexual men. Immigration weakens a nation by diluting its purity. He set out to establish what he called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy,” enforcing religious rules and laws that reestablish patriarchy.
Project 2025 was backed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has ties to Orbán’s Danube Institute, and to the extent he talks about policies, Trump echoes that game plan. He has promised, for example, that he would replace civil servants with loyalists and today again vowed to get rid of the Department of Education, both key items in Project 2025.
Vance has gone further, attacking secular American society itself. In 2021 he said in an interview that American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really affect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said.
On Saturday, Vance spoke at an event hosted by right-wing extremist evangelical leader Lance Wallnau, a member of the New Apostolic Reformation movement that seeks to end the separation of church and state and put the United States under religious rule. At the event, Vance claimed that “American children… can’t add five plus five, but they can tell you that there are 87 different genders.” He claimed that schools are teaching children “radical ideas” rather than “reading, writing, arithmetic.” He called it “creeping socialism in our schools,” and called for cutting funding for public education.
The White House today said that more than 3,300 federal personnel are deployed in the states impacted by Hurricane Helene and that at least 50,000 people from 31 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada are working to restore power. FEMA has moved in food and is working to restore cell coverage; federal search and rescue teams are on the ground; the U.S. Coast Guard is working to reopen damaged ports; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is assessing damage and moving debris; the Environmental Protection Agency is working on water systems; the Small Business Administration has 50 people on the ground to support small businesses; the U.S. Department of Energy is monitoring power, fuel, and supply chains; the Department of Agriculture is extending credit to farmers who lost crops and livestock.
At a campaign event in Las Vegas tonight, Vice President Harris said “we will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild.”
Wallnau has accused Harris of practicing witchcraft.
The Freedom party hasn’t only harnessed discontent at home – it is drawing on once-fringe ideas that have spread around the world
“We will kick upwards and clamp down on those who don’t mean well for us”, said Herbert Kickl in May 2023. Under Kickl’s leadership, the Austrian Freedom party (FPÖ) has scored its biggest election victory since it was founded in 1956 by Anton Reinthaller, an Austrian Nazi who had served as a lieutenant general in the SS. Not only is the FPÖ now more popular than ever, it is also at the height of its radicalism.
The FPÖ’s victory in Sunday’s national elections is being celebrated by far-right movements and influencers across Europe. No wonder: it demonstrates how successful they have been at normalising and internationalising their extreme ideologies, conspiracy myths and policy proposals.
Many of the FPÖ’s ideas have been inspired by Generation Identity, a pan-European white nativist movement that has its roots in France and is particularly strong in Austria. In a post-election livestream to his followers, the movement’s Austrian leader, Martin Sellner, celebrated the FPÖ win as “a dream result” . He has been one of the most influential proponents of the term “remigration” (the policy of mass deportation of people with a migration background), which had its first spike on social media following a 2014 extreme-right meet-up in France.
Ten years later, the FPÖ is far from the only far-right political party that has embraced the concept. Germany’s AfD party used “remigration” as part of its campaigns for regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia on 1 September, and Donald Trump recently called for “remigration” in a post about “illegal migrants” on X. Even though Sellner communicated with and received a donation from the Christchurch shooter who later killed 51 people in two consecutive mosque attacks in New Zealand in 2019, Kickl has since described the identitarian movement as “a project worthy of support”, which should be viewed as an “NGO from the right”.
A year before the Christchurch attack, Sellner wrote to me in a direct message on Twitter: “I don’t think that my videos and speeches incite violence. The anger is there in any case and I think it has its material basis.”
Immigration is only one of the FPÖ’s controversial campaign topics. Covid conspiracy myths, climate change denial, anti-feminism and anti-LGBTQ+ discourse are other features of the party’s branding. The FPÖ member of parliament Michael Gruber recently shared an election campaign video on Instagram that showed him throwing a rainbow flag in a bin with the tagline “Cleaning up for Austria”.
With Kickl using dogwhistles such as “climate communism” and “WHO dictatorship”, the FPÖ has been able to expand its support base among conspiracy theorists and Covid deniers. What does Kickl mean by kicking upwards, for example? He promised to become an FPÖ chancellor “who won’t bow down to the EU, Nato and the WHO”. In a new year’s speech he spoke of his long “wanted list”, which includes centrist politicians whom he refers to as “politicians of the system” (Systempolitiker) and whom he accuses of “treason against the people” (Volksverrat) – two terms known for their use by Adolf Hitler.
A key to FPÖ’s success has been the growing landscape of alternative, hyper-biased and conspiratorial news outlets that have formed around the party and its sympathisers. In the run-up to the election, a series of false claims spread in a chain reaction across these alternative media websites and social media channels such as Telegram. Reports, for example, were circulated claiming that the “deep state” wanted to steal the FPÖ’s victory or that centrist parties were planning to reintroduce mandatory vaccinations after the elections. AUF1, a particularly influential new rightwing channel, has aired ideas of “vaccine mass extermination” and a “deadly transhumanist agenda”. The channel was the first outlet to feature an appearance by Kickl on Sunday night after the election victory.
The FPÖ’s historic victory not only poses a risk to Austria’s minorities, independent media outlets, scientific community and democratic institutions, it also has the potential to significantly strengthen the far right in Europe and internationally. Alice Weidel of the German AfD, Marine Le Pen of the French National Rally and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom party all enthusiastically congratulated the FPÖ. “The Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, France, Spain, Czech Republic and today Austria! We are winning! Times are changing,” commented Wilders on X.
Despite the far-right populists’ focus on ultra-nationalism, their own networks are remarkably transnational. This global anti-globalism is not the only inconsistency in the far right’s ideology. If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be amusing that FPÖ is criticising the “corrupt mainstream media” while they were the ones who were caught wanting to sell Austria’s largest newspaper Kronen Zeitung to a Russian investor to push pro-FPÖ messaging in 2017. In addition, while Kickl publicly described the Covid vaccinations as “a genetic engineering experiment”, he was rumoured to have been secretly vaccinated against Covid (which he still denies). For a party that ordered a raid of the country’s intelligence agency BVT in 2018 and advocates policies that fundamentally contradict the pillars of the Austrian constitution, it also requires a lot of audacity to describe all other parties as anti-democratic.
As I argued in the Guardian last year, extremism has leaked into mainstream politics. With the global rise of an increasingly emboldened far right, it is more important than ever that other parties show that they are honest with their voters and can reliably translate words into action. We need a new generation of boundary-crossing leaders who can offer effective, but non-hateful solutions to the various sources of anger in previously underrepresented population groups. They must be capable of reversing the cumulative radicalisation that is threatening to break our democracies.
One hundred years ago tomorrow, former president Jimmy Carter arrived in the world in Plains, Georgia. According to the Atlanta Constitution of that date, he arrived just after the worst wind and rainstorm of the year passed off to sea. His home state of Georgia, along with North Carolina and Virginia, sustained significant damage, with railroad tracks and bridges washed out, crops damaged, and at least seven lives lost.
Today, almost a hundred years later, the destruction from Hurricane Helene continues to mount. At least 128 people have died in six states, and many more remain unaccounted for. Roads remain closed, and power is still off for more than 2 million people. In remarks to reporters today, President Joe Biden called the damage “stunning” and explained that the federal government is providing all the support it can. He noted that federal help was on the ground before the storm and when asked if there were more the government could be doing, answered no and explained that the administration had “preplanned a significant amount of it, even though they…hadn’t asked for it yet.”
Biden said this morning he will not tour the damaged areas until his presence will not disrupt emergency response operations. This afternoon, he said he would travel to North Carolina on Wednesday for a briefing and an aerial tour of Asheville, after ensuring the travel “will not disrupt the ongoing response.” He has also said he may have to ask Congress to come back into session before its mid-November return date to pass a supplemental spending bill. Punchbowl News political reporter Melanie Zanona noted that Congress left disaster aid out of the short-term continuing resolution to fund the government it passed before leaving town.
And yet, the hurricane has become the latest topic of disinformation for MAGA Republicans. Social media today is full of accounts claiming that the federal government is not responding to the crisis in western North Carolina because it prefers to spend money in Ukraine and on undocumented immigrants. Newsmax host Todd Starnes claimed that FEMA’s “top priority is not disaster relief” but to push diversity, equity and inclusion. “So, unless you’ve got your preferred pronouns spraypainted on the side of your submerged house—you won’t get a penny from Uncle Sam. Western North Carolina is just too Conservative and too Caucasian for FEMA to care.” The House Judiciary Committee posted that “Joe Biden was at the beach.”
These posts echo Russian disinformation, and Trump was on board with it. Touring Valdosta, Georgia, today, as a private citizen where people are still without power amidst the devastation, Trump said he had spoken to Elon Musk to get his Starlink satellites into North Carolina; FEMA has already provided 40 of the systems to North Carolina. He claimed that Georgia governor Brian Kemp is “having a hard time getting the president on the phone. They’re being very non-responsive.”
Kemp himself told reporters that Biden had called yesterday. “And he just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’” Kemp told him, “We got what we need, we’ll work through the federal process. He offered that if there’s other things that we need just to call him directly, which I appreciate that.” South Carolina governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, called it “a great team effort…the federal government is helping us well, they’re embedded with us. There is no asset out there that we haven’t already accessed.”
Republican governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin told reporters that he was “incredibly appreciative of the rapid response and cooperation from the federal team at FEMA.” Asheville, North Carolina, mayor Esther Manheimer told CNBC “We have support from outside organizations, other fire departments sending us resources, the federal government as well. So it's all-hands-on-deck, and it is a well-coordinated effort, but it is so enormous….”
FEMA spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg responded to a post claiming that FEMA was refusing to help certain Americans, saying: “This is a lie. We help all people regardless of background as fast as possible before, during and after disasters. That is our mission and that is our focus.”
In contrast, numerous posters today noted that Trump repeatedly withheld federal aid from Democratic governors—including that of North Carolina—after disasters in their states. After the Trump campaign organized a fundraiser for victims of the hurricane, David Frum of The Atlantic reminded readers that in 2019, Trump was fined $2 million and three of his children were ordered to take classes as a penalty for taking for their own use funds from charities they ran.
When a reporter asked President Biden and Democratic North Carolina governor Roy Cooper to respond to Trump’s accusation that they are ignoring the disaster, Biden responded: “He's lying. And the governor told him he was lying…. I've spoken to the governor, spent time with him…. I don't know why he does this. And the reason I get so angry about it, I don't care about what he says about me, but I care what he communicates to the people that are in need. He implies that we're not doing everything possible. We are…. I assume you heard the Republican Governor of Georgia talk about that he was on the phone with me more than once. So that's simply not true. And it's irresponsible.”
Economist Paul Krugman noted: “We’ve all become desensitized, but it’s amazing how at this point the Trump campaign rests entirely on denouncing things that aren’t happening—[an] imaginary bad economy, imaginary runaway crime and now an imaginary failure of Biden and Harris to respond to natural disaster.”
In Florida, though, Governor Ron DeSantis says his state does not need more federal help. “We have it handled,” he said. DeSantis might be eager to downplay the damage to the state in part because in May he joined other Republican leaders in an attack on Biden’s actions to address climate change.
DeSantis signed into law a new Florida measure that erased any references to climate change in state law, where they had been included in a 2008 climate change and renewable energy package then backed by the state’s Republicans. The new law prohibited cities and counties from approving restrictions on energy policy, relaxed regulations on natural gas pipelines, and state and local governments from taking environmental concerns into consideration in their investing policies. DeSantis also rejected more than $350 million in federal funding for initiatives to promote energy efficiency, and $320 million for reducing vehicle emissions.
Like DeSantis, the authors of Project 2025 claim that those working to address climate change are part of “the climate change alarm industry,” which is “harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
In fact, the U.S. economy is booming in part thanks to the climate change initiatives begun under the Inflation Reduction Act, which have prompted both domestic and foreign investment in alternative technologies. Biden approached the need to address climate change as an opportunity to create good jobs, including union jobs, in the United States.
With those investments, economist Mark Zandi wrote yesterday that the U.S. economy is one of the best performing economies in the past 35 years. “Economic growth is rip-roaring, with real GDP up 3% over the past year. Unemployment is low at near 4%, consistent with full employment. Inflation is fast closing in on Fed’s 2% target—grocery prices, rents and gas prices are flat to down over the past more than a year. Households’ financial obligations are light, and set to get lighter with the Fed cutting rates. House prices have never been higher, and most homeowners have more equity in their homes than ever. Corporate profits are robust, and the stock market is hitting a record high on a seemingly daily basis.”
Zandi noted that there are “blemishes.” Lower-income households are struggling, there is a shortage of affordable housing, and the government is running large budget deficits. As always, things could change quickly. “But in my time as an economist,” he wrote, “the economy has rarely looked better.”
North Georgia, the area represented by MAGA Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, is one of the areas that has been revitalized with new solar panel manufacturing funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. Yet Phil Mattingly and Andrew Seger of CNN reported on Friday, September 27, that while voters there like the strong economy, in this year’s election they say they still plan to back Trump, who has called Biden’s green energy initiatives a “scam” and vowed to claw back any money still unspent from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Aaron Zitner, Jon Kamp, and Brian McGill of the Wall Street Journal today called attention to this paradox, that people in counties that vote for Trump are significantly more likely than those that vote for Democrats to rely on federal government funding. This is in part because they are older and thus receive Social Security and Medicare, and in part because they live in areas hollowed out when industries there left. These are the areas the Biden-Harris administration have targeted for investment.
The authors note that these government-funded pro-Trump counties are clustered in the swing states that will decide the election. About 70% of the counties in Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina rely significantly on government income. So do nearly 60% of the counties in Pennsylvania.
In other news today, in Georgia, Fulton County Superior Court judge Robert McBurney struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban, which prohibited abortions before many women know they’re pregnant, as unconstitutional. A government investigation recently showed that two Georgia women died after being unable to obtain abortion care in the state shortly after Georgia’s ban went into effect.
In a searing 26-page decision, the Republican-appointed judge wrote that the state cannot force a woman to carry a fetus that cannot live on its own. “Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy.”
One hundred years ago tomorrow, former president Jimmy Carter arrived in the world...
Like DeSantis, the authors of Project 2025 claim that those working to address climate change are part of “the climate change alarm industry,” which is “harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
Quote:Like DeSantis, the authors of Project 2025 claim that those working to address climate change are part of “the climate change alarm industry,” which is “harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
Oh yeah. It's a huge industry. By magnitudes, it dwarfs the fossil fuel industry.
