Milton slams Florida as election looms and FEMA is stretched thin

Hurricane Milton was expected to make landfall on Florida’s west coast late Wednesday, but ahead of making landfall, the Category 3 storm produced a series of seven tornados that hit the Sunshine State. Meanwhile, rising surf and pouring rain were pounding Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Joe Biden, who canceled a planned trip this week to Germany and Angola because of the storm, has pledged the federal government’s full support. How political leaders respond to natural disasters, and how voters perceive those responses, can have an impact at the ballot box, and the US election is just 26 days away.

Meanwhile, the people tasked with relief efforts, FEMA workers, find themselves stretched thin as they simultaneously work to help thousands of people across several states dig out from last month’s Hurricane Helene. They are also contending with a deluge of conspiracy theories about their response to Helene, as well as politically charged misinformation that is leading people to disregard evacuation orders or to not ask the government for needed assistance. Donald Trump has falsely claimed that disaster funds were being used on illegal immigrants, rather than Americans impacted by disasters, and that the government was intentionally neglecting Republican-leaning areas in western North Carolina.

While the South braces for Milton’s worst, a geomagnetic storm is descending across the US, giving portions of the country – from Michigan, to Alabama, to California – the opportunity to see the Northern Lights. A geomagnetic storm happens when changes in solar wind currents create “a major disturbance of Earth’s magnetosphere,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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