America stares down a misinformation hurricane
Helene and Milton aren’t man-made: the lies surrounding them are.
A few weeks ago, after CNN published its bombshell report about North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, I was texting with a friend.
Rumors had been flying around the political world all day about what the report would bring. Now that it had arrived, my friend told me he was unimpressed; it wasn’t as earth-shattering as he’d been expecting.
“One day, when your grandchildren ask you what American politics was like in 2024,” I responded, “you can tell them that we learned a gubernatorial candidate called himself a Nazi on a porn website, and your initial response was to shrug.”
But things in politics change quickly. That was last month. Now I already have a new candidate for Best Historical Artifact To Explain This Political Era.
When my grandchildren ask me what American politics was like in 2024, now I’ll simply tell them it was the year that a Republican congressman felt it was necessary to clarify to his constituents that “nobody can control the weather.”
And, also, that he had to do so because another member of the U.S. Congress was telling people otherwise.
Sigh. Let’s get into it.
The U.S. is currently grappling with two major hurricanes at once — trying to prepare for one while still recovering from the damage of the other.
The latter, Hurricane Helene, was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. More than 200 people have been killed, mostly in North Carolina, but also in Georgia and South Carolina as well. Entire towns in western North Carolina were leveled; some residents have now gone more than a week without running water.
The former, Hurricane Milton, is expected to make landfall in Florida tonight. Forecasters suggest that it could hit Tampa Bay, which was also impacted by the devastation of Helene but has not been in the direct path of a hurricane since 1921. The city is considered uniquely vulnerable to natural disaster; analysts are already predicting damage upwards of $50 billion.
Local, state, and federal officials have been pleading with anyone in Milton’s path to evacuate immediately. “I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said on CNN earlier this week.
“Several years ago I asked [the National Hurricane Center] to show me what the worst case storm hitting Florida would look like,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) posted on X. “What they showed me back then is almost identical to the #Milton forecast now.”
With both storms hitting the U.S. only weeks before a heated presidential election, it is not shocking that they has quickly been sucked into the political discourse. America has a long history of election-year disasters becoming talking points on the campaign trail, from Hurricane Andrew hurting George H.W. Bush in 1992 to Hurricane Sandy boosting Barack Obama in 2012.
But the responses to Helene and Milton have been marked by something new: an unprecedented flood of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Don’t take it from me. Take it from FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who told reporters on a Tuesday conference call that the misinformation surrounding these two hurricanes has been “absolutely the worst I have ever seen.”
Many of the false claims have come directly from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has claimed that: the Biden administration is “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” (GOP governors have said otherwise); that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants” (FEMA’s congressionally-appropriated program to help local governments house migrants is completely separate from FEMA’s disaster relief funds); and that “we give foreign countries hundreds of billions of dollars and we’re handing North Carolina $750” (that is merely the amount of aid made available to hurricane victims immediately; over the long run, victims can receive up to tens of thousands of dollars in support).
A slew of Trump allies, including X owner Elon Musk, have amplified several other conspiracy theories online. But the prize for Biggest Whopper goes to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who posted — on her official congressional account — this week: “Yes they can control the weather.”
The supposed “they” was not immediately identified, although Greene previously suggested in 2018 that California wildfires that year were caused by space lasers linked to the Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish family that has long been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories. (Greene posted again about “lasers controlling the weather” this week.) In recent weeks, Hurricanes Helene and Milton have sparked a flurry of antisemitic attacks against Jewish officials involved in the response, including claims that they created the disasters.
In her initial post, Greene attached a video of former CIA Director John Brennan discussing geoengineering, an umbrella term for scientific research into manipulating climate systems in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Geoengineering remains largely theoretical; it is not possible to geoengineer a hurricane, and the technology has no connection to anything that happened with either Helene or Milton.
“Climate change is the new Covid,” Greene asserted in another message. “Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled. Did you ever give permission to them to do it? Are you paying for it? Of course you are.”
Other right-wing influencers advanced the argument. “The weather can and is being manipulated,” Georgia Republican Party official Kandiss Taylor posted to her nearly 60,000 X followers, adding: “[Georgia] voting has been compromised and don’t know if we will be able to get all our early voting days in. Now, a hurricane is coming straight for Florida. These two states are necessary for a Trump victory! No coincidence.”
Taylor’s message has received more than 3 million views on X.
The theories became popular enough in right-wing circles that Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), who represents Asheville and most of western North Carolina (the area hit hardest by Helene), issued a press release on Tuesday to reassure his constituents of the falsity of various claims.
Near the top of the list? “Nobody can control the weather,” he wrote. The statement, in its entirety, is a fascinating historical document — showing the types of claims that a Republican congressman felt he needed to fact-check in 2024, partially due to misinformation spread by his own colleagues and his party’s presidential candidate.
Western North Carolinians could easily have faced the hurricane with a much less responsible representative. Edwards is only in Congress because he defeated then-Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), a farther-right lawmaker, in a Republican primary in 2022. While Edwards was providing fact-checks on Tuesday, his predecessor was showing the type of statement he would have been producing had he still been in Congress.
“Had the opportunity to deliver around 15 thousand pounds of supplies to western North Carolina,” Cawthorn wrote on X. “We knew we had to do something once we realized that the government was allowing American citizens to suffer and die without helping them, worse than that the government has been actively impeding attempts to rescue and provide supplies to those in need.” (FEMA has provided more than $286 million in assistance to Helene survivors. There is no evidence that the government has been blocking rescue efforts.)
Things will likely only get worse from here, on several levels. From a meteorological standpoint, experts expect that the effects of climate change will lead to only more major hurricanes like Helene and Milton. Politically, his 2022 defeat notwithstanding, congressional primaries have been more likely to produce Cawthorns than Edwardses recently, as the Republican membership in Congress has moved sharply to the right.
At the center of all of this is America’s collapsing trust in its own institutions, which exacerbates the spread of conspiracy theories like those currently flying — and is, in turn, exacerbated by them.
Last year, when Gallup polled trust in 16 government agencies, only four received positive job-performance ratings from a majority of Americans. FEMA just barely missed the cut-off: 49% of Americans said, at the time, that they thought the agency was doing a “good” or “excellent” job, making FEMA the fifth-most-trusted agency.
I would be prepared to bet that, the next time such a poll is taken, FEMA will have fallen several spots, due to the misinformation spread around Hurricanes Helene and Milton — and the similar theories that will almost certainly circulate around future storms, especially as climate change makes them simultaneously more frequent and more politicized.
Maybe my grandchildren won’t be so surprised by the necessity of Rep. Edwards’ statement after all.
More news to know
Politico: “Not a thing that comes to mind” for Harris on what she would have done differently from Biden
NPR: Harris proposes Medicare cover home care costs to help the “sandwich generation”
CBS: Walz says “Electoral College needs to go,” but campaign says that’s not its position
NYT: Trump Holds Up Transition Process, Skirting Ethics and Fund-Raising Rules
WaPo: Citing omelets and chili, justices seem likely to uphold ghost gun rules
Reuters: Biden announces new rule to remove all US lead pipes in a decade
Axios: White House loses trust in Israeli government as Middle East spirals
The Hill: Cook Political Report shifts Wisconsin Senate race toward GOP
CNN: Afghan national charged with Election Day terrorist plot in U.S.
The day ahead
All times Eastern
President Biden will receive a briefing on the federal preparations for Hurricane Milton and response to Hurricane Helene. Latter, he will hold a call with U.S. rabbis to mark the Jewish High Holidays, meet with Irish Taoiseach H.E. Simon Harris, and deliver remarks on Hurricane Milton (watch at 5:30pm).
VP Harris will virtually join Biden’s hurricane briefings from New York City.
Former President Trump will campaign in Scranton (watch at 3pm) and Reading, Pennsylvania (watch at 7pm).
Gov. Tim Walz will campaign in Arizona, holding an event with John McCain’s son in Chandler (watch at 2pm.); meeting with Native American leaders in Phoenix (watch at 3:30pm); and holding a rally in Tucson (watch at 6:30pm).
Sen. JD Vance will also campaign in Tucson (watch at 3pm).
The House and Senate are on recess.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Glossip v. Oklahoma, a death penalty case (listen at 10am).
Before I go…
Let’s end on a lighter note. Kind of. Here’s a tweet that made me laugh:
Your column is enlightening and, as always, on point. One quibble: misinformation should be disinformation as the lies are deliberately created to sway voters, not mistaken information.
I second the comment about MISinformation vs DISinformation. I think we need to be more forthright about calling out this information as deliberate lies with the intent to confuse and sow doubt. These were not casual, misinformed statements.