We begin today’s roundup with this piece by Jay Reeves and Brendan Farrington at The Associated Press that details the devastation in Florida, devastation that the President has barely mentioned, choosing instead to attend campaign rallies and hang out with celebrities:
The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Michael came into focus Thursday with rows upon rows of homes found smashed to pieces, and rescue crews struggling to enter stricken areas in hopes of accounting for hundreds of people who may have stayed behind.
At least three deaths were blamed on Michael, the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in over 50 years, and it wasn’t done yet: Though reduced to a tropical storm, it brought flash flooding to North Carolina and Virginia, soaking areas still recovering from Hurricane Florence.
Under a clear blue sky, families living along the Florida Panhandle emerged from shelters and hotels to a perilous landscape of shattered homes and shopping centers, wailing sirens and hovering helicopters.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump defended his choice to go to a campaign rally while Americans sheltered and tried to survive the hurricane:
He said only the “natural haters” criticized him for stumping for GOP candidates — and his own 2020 re-election — as Americans were in Michael’s path.
And yes, there’s a tweet for everything (he slammed Obama for going to event days after Hurricane Sandy subsided):
Here’s Ryan Cooper’s piece at The Week:
The Florida panhandle is recovering now from the devastation of Hurricane Michael — a bit over a year since Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a Republican bill loosening its building codes. Meanwhile, half the Republicans running for re-election in the midterms are swearing up and down that they support ObamaCare regulations to protect people with pre-existing conditions — that is, telling a baldfaced lie about their multiple attempts last year to completely repeal ObamaCare and the ongoing efforts to repeal it through the courts.
How can Republicans get away with this kind of malignant incompetence? Because they're masters of distraction.
Switching topics, Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast writes about the Republican’s plan of voter suppression for the midterms:
A review by The Daily Beast found at least five voter suppression practices in active use today. All are led by Republicans, all have disproportionate impact on non-white populations, and all are rationalized by bogus claims of voter fraud. They include:
- Closing polling places in communities of color
- Purging eligible voters from the rolls without their knowledge
- Barring felons from voting
- Voter ID laws
- Eliminating early voting
Each one of these alone is troubling. In the aggregate, though, they paint an unmistakable picture of Republican efforts to hold onto power in an increasingly non-white nation by making it harder for non-white people to vote.
Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times looks at the attempts to suppress the vote in Georgia:
As secretary of state, Kemp oversees voting and voter registration rules for his own election. (He’s refused to recuse himself.) He appears to be using his position to try shape Georgia’s electorate to his advantage. According to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kemp allowed 214 voting locations — nearly 8 percent of the state’s total — to be closed in the last six years. Worse, The Associated Press recently reported that, under the guise of “voter roll maintenance,” Kemp’s office has canceled more than 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012, and nearly 670,000 registrations in 2017 alone, ostensibly to guard against voter fraud. Further, 53,000 new voter registration applications are “on hold” at Kemp’s office. [...] The A.P. reported that almost 70 percent of the registrations that are now on hold are for African-American voters. (Kemp has blamed sloppy work by the New Georgia Project for the holds. His office told The A.P. that voters whose registrations are in limbo can cast provisional ballots.)
On a final note, do not miss this powerful piece by Ady Barkan on activism and taking action:
[A]t the ripe old age of 32, I was given my death sentence: The doctor told me I had ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—which would rapidly destroy all the connections between my brain and my muscles, leading to complete paralysis and death, likely in three to four years.
Three weeks later, our world was turned upside down a second time, when America elected a racist kleptocrat to the White House. [...] Activism is precisely about not accepting the tragedies of this world, but rather on insisting that we can reduce pain and prolong life. Social justice means creating a stable floor beneath our feet and then putting a safety net under that, to catch us if it suddenly vanishes: universal health insurance, affordable housing, unemployment benefits. Being part of a progressive political movement is about fighting back and building toward a better future. “Acceptance” is not part of our vocabulary.