AS FLORIDA CONTINUES to deal with the damage caused by Hurricane Milton, the US government’s response has become a divisive political issue.
With just a few weeks until the US presidential election, some Republicans – including Donald Trump – have been exploiting the death and destruction left by Milton and Hurricane Helene, which struck the southeast of the country at the end of September.
Republicans and conspiracy theorists alike have spread a deluge of misinformation about how the federal government has responded to both events, and even the origin of the storms.
Outgoing US President Joe Biden and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris have fought back in an effort to show the government is in control of the situation, and have accused Trump in particular of putting survivors in danger.
This week, Biden labelled misinformation around the hurricanes as “un-American”, as Republicans seek to use the devastation wrought by them to win support for Donald Trump in the final weeks of the presidential race.
False claims about the US government disaster relief response started to spread in the aftermath of Helene, which struck large parts of the southeastern United States in late September.
North Carolina, which could be a pivitol state in the upcoming election, was especially badly hit.
One claim Trump and others made after Helene was that the Biden administration diverted funds away from disaster relief and towards supporting immigrants.
In a further attempt to politicise the hurricanes, they also alleged that the US government is withholding support from Republican states affected by the recent storms.
“Hopefully on 20 January, you’re going to have somebody who’s really going to help you,” Trump said in a video message on Thursday to the people of Florida, the state where he resides, in reference to the date the next president will be sworn into office.
These claims have been repeatedly refuted by the White House.
Ironically, Trump himself attempted to divert emergency funds away from disaster relief and into migrant deterrence when he was in office.
“Assertions have been made that property is being confiscated. That’s simply not true. They’re saying people impacted by these storms will receive $750 in cash and no more. That’s simply not true,” Biden said on Wednesday.
“They’re saying the money needed for this crisis is being diverted to migrants. What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s not true.”
Although most of the false claims spread about the storms are related to relief and rescue efforts, one falsehood relates to how the storm actually formed.
Biden also slammed the “even more bizarre” claims being promoted by Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican who is known for her belief in outlandish conspiracy theories.
Taylor Greene, a diehard suppoter of Donald Trump, was elected to Congress on the back of her promotion of conspiracies, most notably QAnon, which casts Trump as a saviour figure battling against evil forces in the “Deep State” in Washington.
She responded to the hurricanes by claiming that the US federal government was “literally controlling the weather”.
Taylor Greene’s suggestion was that the US government created Hurricane Helene via geoengineering, something that is not physically possible.
In a post on X, she wrote: “Climate change is the new Covid. 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.”
Comparisons between Covid lockdown measures and green policies have become popular among conspiracy theorists in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Their belief is that both the virus and the storms are manmade weapons designed to reduce the world’s population, something that conspiracy theorists believe is an objective of world elites, or “globalists” (with a corollary that government efforts to minimise Covid, like vaccines, or introduce measures to reduce climate change are oppressive).
Notably, professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is among those who have been promoting the claim.
In another post, Taylor Greene also shared a video of former CIA director John Brennan talking about the potential for geoengineering as a way to reduce global warming.
“Yes they can control the weather,” she wrote. “Anyone who says they don’t, or makes fun of this, is lying to you. By the way, the people know it and hate all of you who try to cover it up.”
There have been numerous attempts made by scientists to control the weather through geoengineering in the past.
Those attempts have sought to do the opposite of what Taylor Greene has suggested.
Rather than making weather systems more dangerous, they have sought to weaken storms and alleviate the impacts of climate change.
The memory of 2005′s Hurricane Katrina casts a long shadow in the southern United States, and provides important context for claims about Helene and Milton.
The Bush Administration’s response to the storm, particularly in New Orleans, was the source of widespread outrage and anger, and was criticised as too slow and inadequate.
Although the Biden administration’s response to the two storms is still in its early phases, it has come under attack and been tarred with outright lies.
Some of the attacks have come in light of the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is underfunded, although there are reportedly enough resources to deal with the aftermath of Helene and Milton.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in early October.
“FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
Trump and some members of his Republican party have accused Biden and Kamala Harris of misappropriating FEMA funds and spending them on immigrants.
“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 said in Michigan last week.
It’s a false claim that has been repeatedly debunked. Harris has described it as “extraordinarily irresponsible.”
The claims conflate FEMA’s disaster relief fund with a separate programme it administers that provides support to homeless immigrants.
Money assigned by Congress to the disaster relief fund must be used for that purpose; any other use is illegal.
Virginia Congressman Ben Cline has made the claim too. In a post on X, he wrote: “The Biden-Harris Administration has diverted over $1 billion in FEMA funds meant for disaster relief to illegal immigrant services.”
Ohio congressman Jim Jordan has also posted the claim on X.
Both posts link to an article on The Federalist website, which has a history of publishing false information.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, it featured an article by a man described as a physician, whose medical license had expired, which argued for the hosting of parties to help spread the virus.
“There’s a lot of mis- and disinformation being pushed out there by the former president about what is available, in particular, to the survivors of Helene,” Harris said.
“No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. None,” the White House has said.
Biden has written a letter requesting a recall of Congress in order to allocate more funds for disaster relief, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, has said he has no plans for an early recall.
“We’ll be back in session immediately after the election,” Johnson told Fox News.
“That’s 30 days from now. The thing about these hurricanes and disasters of this magnitude is it takes a while to calculate the actual damages, and the states are going to need some time to do that,” he said.
There has been a slew of other falsehoods and rumours about the federal response that FEMA’s chief has criticised as “dangerous” because they plant doubt in the minds of people who need help and lead to mistrust in the agency.
Debunking the false claims has also been a distraction for FEMA officials.
In fact, there have been so many rumours and lies about FEMA’s response that the agency has set up a webpage dedicated to refuting them.
They range from accuastions that FEMA is stealing land to claims that the agency is preventing people from evacuating.
“They’re being treated very badly in the Republican areas,” Trump told Fox News, referring to people affected by Helene. “They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything.”
Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, who is a vocal supporter of Trump, has used his social media platform to accuse the Federal Aviation Administration of blocking the flights of private disaster relief groups headed to North Carolina.
Replying directly to Musk, Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that no flights had been blocked.
Right-wing activists and fringe media sites have also spread claims that the government intends to bulldoze entire towns as part of a “land grab”, or that FEMA plans to take people’s homes from them.
This is playing on fears that did materialise in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, but in a more subtle way.
Many social housing developments were demolished and replaced with private condominiums as land was snapped up by wealthy developers in a process the author Naomi Klein has called Disaster Capitalism.
Speaking about the rumours around the federal response in Republican states, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell told MSNBC: “It’s frankly disappointing that we’re having to deal with this narrative.”
Criswell said the fact that “there’s a few leaders that are having a hard time telling the difference between fact and fiction” has been impeding relief efforts.
According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, some of the conpiracy theories spread online have been of an antisemitic nature and could lead to federal aid workers being the targets of attacks.
With recovery efforts from Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene still in the early stages and likely to take months if not years, the topic looks set to remain a major political issue right up until US voters go to the polls on 5 November.
With reporting from AFP
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