Hello, happy Tuesday. There are only 28 days until the election, but MAGA lies are spreading faster than Hurricane Milton.

You may have heard that Milton has grown into a Category 5 monster and is scheduled to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday. The damage could be worse than Hurricane Helen, which hit six states including Georgia and North Carolina just a few days ago. Florida officials have already urged people to evacuate.

No doubt damage will be done and the federal government will respond. Federal authorities have already deployed thousands of National Guard troops and provided millions of dollars in aid to states affected by Helen.

But, of course, that’s not what Donald Trump means.

you will think with that comb President Trump will want to avoid strong windsbut instead he plunges into a whirlpool of wonder with enthusiasm. Elon Musk stands on stage at a rally.

Let’s dive in — cover your belly button.

Another woman MAGA hates: Mother Nature

First, climate change is real, displacing people from their homes, disrupting insurance models, and creating what I call climate poverty, the ability of generations to recover after losing everything to natural disasters. Let me remind you that it is increasingly becoming a political issue because it creates a state of inability. .

Because we are creatures of short memory, many of us who haven’t been affected by last year’s worst hurricane, Idalia, are unaware of the fact that she caused 12 deaths and $3.6 billion in damage, and the growing impact. You’ll probably forget that it caused a common buzz (for some people anyway). The effects of climate change are a concern not just in forests and coastlines, but everywhere where tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters are becoming more common and intense.

Please listen to me for a moment Sanibel IslandIdalia flattened in 2023 and is currently cleaning up from Helen (responsible for 230 deaths so far) while Milton is under evacuation order. You can deny science all you want and Mother Nature doesn’t care.

Trump doesn’t seem to care about the truth or recovery.

Trump (with the help of his newest best friend, Musk, sorry, JD) has gone from lies about the immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio (last week!) to claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency isn’t helping with hurricanes. It wasted no time in pivoting to false claims. survivor. Instead, it gives disaster relief funds to immigrants. It’s just helping the Democratic Party. Land is being confiscated. I understand.

“The great people of North Carolina are standing up with Harris and Biden, who have donated nearly all of FEMA’s funds to illegal immigrants, in addition to dozens of other rescue operations currently considered the worst in U.S. history. Billions of dollars are going abroad! North Carolina has been virtually abandoned by Kamala!!!”

It’s Trump Monday at Truth Social. The grammar police in me has to point out: billions of dollars. teeth I’m going. teeth! do not have teeth. But this is nonsense and fear-mongering, so I don’t see why you should care. But I do.

More to the point: “It’s frankly unfortunate that we have to deal with this narrative, and the fact that there are a minority of leaders who have a hard time telling the difference between fact and fiction. “Get the help they need to those who are crippling our ability to solve problems,” FEMA Administrator DeAnne Criswell told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

It’s gotten really bad, so FEMA had to launch an entire “Rumor Response” webpage.

election chaos

You could chalk this up to this week’s MAGA lie, but with so little time until the election (and early voting already happening in some areas), Trump is causing it. Resentment, confusion, and fear can play a role.

The crux of President Trump’s FEMA-bashing is, somewhat predictably, about immigration, particularly the claim that FEMA funds are being diverted from helping U.S. citizens disaster survivors to helping illegal immigrants at the border.

Like many of Trump’s lies, this one was born out of fact, like a tumor growing out of a healthy cell.

FEMA works with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to implement programs for immigrants. it is called Shelter and service programs And in 2024, it received approximately $640 million from its own capital bucket. Disaster relief funds are completely different..

This program aims to both save lives and assist border communities that do not have the resources to help the thousands of people who enter the United States without documentation each year. grants to external organizations to support Yes, folks, our immigration system needs fixing.

But like Mr. Springfield, Mr. Trump continues to perpetuate these lies, even though some Republican governors and legislators in affected states acknowledge that FEMA is operating extensively and that assistance is available. It’s doubled or tripled. This year, FEMA received $35 billion in disaster relief funding, but that’s not enough.

musk factor

Adding to the confusion, Musk promoted rumors on his cesspool social media site pete buttigieg In fact, it took a private conversation with Musk to counteract it.

It turns out that in the event of a disaster, airspace quickly becomes complex, with many government agencies and private organizations wanting to help, so it’s common for federal authorities to take over the response. There are lots of helicopters, planes, and even drones flying around. So, no, the US government did not stop aid, it just avoided accidents.

But the damage caused by all these lies is done. Apart from the confusion it has caused survivors, this particularly pernicious and racist propaganda – that Kamala Harris is helping immigrants rather than American citizens – is deeply ingrained in the psyche of swing states. People believe they don’t have money because they don’t have border control.

But the truth is even scarier, even if you won’t find a MAGA politician willing to admit the truth.

In 2023, the United States experienced a record number of infectious diseases. Disasters with damages exceeding $1 billion – 28 in total. FEMA also warned that it was short on funds that year.

By August this year, $19 billion eventWith the exception of recent hurricanes, the fire season has been relatively mild.

Disaster relief funds are running low as climate change causes increasingly severe disasters. That’s a reality we need to plan for, but I’ll leave it at that.

Project 2025, which President Trump claims he knows nothing about, calls for the privatization of FEMA and the abolition of FEMA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tracks hurricanes.

What could go wrong?

What else to read:

Must listen: “Call Her Daddy” podcast with Kamala Harris
LA Times Special Feature I: Will the influx of Californians to Arizona tilt politics in the battleground state?
LA Times Special Feature II: In the heart of Appalachia, a distant cousin of J.D. Vance is leading a movement of “true hillbillies” to oppose it.

stay golden,
Anita Chhabria

P.S. The Harris camp is not letting lies go unchecked. Here’s the response: Clip of Republican governor saying he’s receiving federal aid:

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