Politics
I know how Hurricane Helene survivors feel. And what they don’t want to hear.
My heart breaks for the people of western North Carolina and eastern Tennesseewhose experience of Hurricane Helene was a flood of biblical proportions. That’s not an empty expression of sympathy. It emerges from remembering the first time I walked through my house in New Orleans, which took on 8 feet of water, after the city’s floodwalls broke during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
One of the more awful things about flooding is hearing other people’s opinions about what it all means politically.
The stench of the water and food rotting in refrigerators and freezers. The squishiness of wet drywall and warped, waterlogged floors. The shock at the sight of all types of fungi and mold growing on the walls — and somehow even on the ceiling fans. The sting of finding a lifetime’s worth of books and snapshots and family heirlooms in a sodden heap on the floor.
While not as bad as seeing the totality of one’s life possessions moldering on the curb, one of the more awful things about flooding is hearing other people’s opinions about why you flooded or what it all means politically. You lived in a place that’s too low. You lived in a place controlled by the GOP. Or, from the other side: You should have picked a place more conservatively Christian that God wouldn’t strike with a storm.
Such simple-minded arguments proliferated on social media this weekend and are depressingly easy to find. Comments ran the gamut: from people saying residents in North Carolina, for example, got what they had coming because the state typically votes for Republicans for president, to people saying Asheville got what it had coming because it’s far more liberal than the rest of the state.
Regardless of the political persuasion making the argument, it’s borne of the idea that some people are deserving of disaster and some people are smart enough to avoid such disaster, while others aren’t.
It’s also based on an argument — contradicted by the reality that flooding is the most common disaster in the U.S. — that floods are to be expected only in certain places, places easily avoided by people with sense.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, “Ninety percent of natural disasters within the United States involve flooding. Consequently, floods inflict more economic damage and loss of life and property than any other natural hazard.” Pew reported in 2022: “Since 2000, at least one flood occurred in the U.S. on nearly 300 days per yearon average. The NOAA[
In January 2014, more than a year after Hurricane Sandy had struck New Jersey and New York and more than eight years after Hurricane Katrina, I appeared on a stage with Tom Ashbrook, then the host of NPR’s show “On Point,” who was recording his show in front of a live audience in New Orleans.
When I noted that the subsidized National Flood Insurance Program had problems and argued instead for a kind of catastrophic insurance plan that would spread the risk and pull in people at risk of disasters from all over the country, the host posed an argument on behalf of people who might balk at such a proposition. He said, “If you’re sitting up on a mountaintop and thinking about that coast and thinking just how serious the threat of sea-level rise is and what it may cost to back that up, you might not want to pay for that.”
According to the Department of Homeland Security, “Ninety percent of natural disasters within the United States involve flooding.”
“It flooded in Colorado last summer,” I said. “It flooded in NashvilleTennessee, just a few years ago. Flooding is the most common natural disaster in the United States, and I would hope that people would stop seeing it as just a Louisiana problem.”
Even though I was already aware that a place as hilly as Asheville could flood, it was still shocking that a hurricane that first struck the Gulf Coast would be a cause of it. (I say “a” cause because a so-called 1,000-year storm had already dumped as much as 8 inches of water in Asheville ahead of Helene’s arrival.)
I’d spent a lot of time thinking about how frightening it is that storms have been exploding in strength before they make landfall. But I hadn’t stopped to consider that stronger storms’ hitting the coasts could mean stronger storms and scarier rainmakers far inland.
KD Minor, an organizer who created a relief effort for people in her native Lake Charles, Louisiana, after that area of southwest Louisiana was hit by two hurricanes (Laura and Delta) in a six-week span in 2020, wrote Sunday on X, “The climate catastrophe doesn’t have an address on it.”
Nor does the climate catastrophe care whom you’re voting for in November or whether you’re gay or whether you live at sea level or whether you’re high above it. It affects us all.
If that’s not a reason to try to heal the climate, I don’t know what is.
WASILLA, Alaska — Three weeks out from Election Day, President Donald Trump took a helicopter to a plane to another helicopter to a motorcade to an ice hockey rink in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, traversing nearly 4,000 miles over more than eight hours to turn out his base here to help Republicans defend the Senate.
But Trump’s trek might not be enough to save Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s running in a tougher-than-expected race against Democrat Mary Peltola in a state where the president’s approval rating is underwater and independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.
Alaska strategists and voters who spoke to Blue Light News acknowledged that Sullivan faces a difficult path to reelection, despite Trump’s time investment and the outside money pouring in.
“Very conservative MAGA voters can’t vote for you harder,” said Scott Kendall, a veteran political strategist who worked on two of Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaigns and was chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. “Donald Trump’s support in this current climate is both a blessing and a curse.”
Even some Trump supporters at the Tuesday night rally admitted the outlook appeared bleak.
“I think Alaska’s turning blue,” said Matt Niessink, a 45-year-old general contractor from Wasilla. He said he had voted for Trump three times and planned to support Republicans this year.
What did he wish the president would do differently? “I wish he’d shut his mouth sometimes and not be such a pompous ass,” Niessink said.
The president was in Wasilla — population 10,556 — because the outlook is darkening for his party in a state he carried by 13 points just two years ago. In a midterm year defined by the cost of gas and groceries, the Last Frontier has been hit particularly hard, with the average price of diesel nearing $7 per gallon. In the Senate race, Peltola is flush with cash and leads Sullivan in most polls. MAGA Inc., the cash-rich Trump-aligned super PAC, is increasingly focusing on Alaska as one in a slate of states that can help Republicans hold the Senate.
Enter Trump, who has been spending the cycle’s crucial final weeks holding rallies in red states to juice support among his base, which tends to see depressed turnout in years when he’s not on the ballot.
“That was a lot of flying,” the president said at the top of his remarks. “In fact, they were thinking about canceling. They said, ‘Sir, you’re very busy, this is very tough.’” But, Trump continued, he refused to cancel for a state he won three times.
Echoing his comments at other red-state rallies, Trump asked the roaring crowd for “one big favor” — to “pretend that I’m on the ballot, because every time I’ve been on the ballot, we win.” He repeated his promise that Americans will receive $5,000 dividends if Republicans hold both chambers.
“What this is about is getting out the vote,” Sullivan told reporters before Trump’s speech. “A rising tide of enthusiasm lifts all the candidates.”
Unlike some other Republican candidates in tight races, Sullivan has shied away from distancing himself from the least popular aspects of Trump’s presidency.
Sullivan proclaimed on stage at the rally that “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.” And although a campaign aide released a statement condemning Trump’s move to import Russian diesel, Sullivan did not join four of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Murkowski, who called on Trump to reverse the decision.
Art Hackney, a veteran Republican strategist in Alaska, said that “most of the people who support” Sullivan “think that he should” break more with the president.
Hackney, who runs a pro-Sullivan super PAC called “We Stand with Dan,” attributed that choice to loyalty — but suggested the president’s demand of fealty, and treatment of frequent dissenter Murkowski, could also be part of Sullivan’s calculus.
“A lot of his longtime supporters and the people who are in the industries that would benefit from that wish he would be more blunt,” Hackney said. “But with what Murkowski has done, if Dan did something considered a disrespectful trigger or something, what do you think would happen? It could well have implications for things that affect Alaska’s economy.”
Like this content? Consider signing up for Blue Light News’s Playbook PM newsletter.
Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.
Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.
One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.
Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”
Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.
Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.
The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”
As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.
“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.
Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.
“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.
In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.
NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”
Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.
The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.
“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”
Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words