Biden to visit Florida and Georgia to survey hurricane aftermath as Trump rages online about Helene response – live | US elections 2024
Biden to visit Florida and Georgia to survey hurricane aftermath
Joe Biden is set to visit Florida and Georgia on Thursday where he will survey the aftermath of Hurricane Helene which has killed nearly 200 people.
Biden’s upcoming visit follows his visit to the Carolinas yesterday where he met with local and state officials and first responders.
On Wednesday, Biden amended North Carolina and Georgia’s disaster declaration by authorizing an increase in the level of federal funding for emergency work undertaken in the wake of the hurricane.
“Under the president’s order today, federal funds for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct federal assistance, has been increased to 100% of the total eligible costs for 90 days from the start of the incident period,” the White House said.
Pieces of a destroyed dock in Lake Lure, North Carolina, on Wednesday, after the passage of Hurricane Helene. Photograph: Allison Joyce/AFP/Getty Images
Key events
Melania Trump has doubled down on her support for abortion rights, saying in a new video released on Thursday:
“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard. Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women posess from birth? Individual freedom. What does my body, my choice really mean?”
In her upcoming autobiography Melania, the former first lady took a stance on abortion rights that deviated from her husband’s.
In one part of her book which the Guardian reviewed, Trump wrote:
“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.”
With a little over a month left to go until Election Day, reproductive rights has been a divisive issue throughout the campaign trail, with Republicans including Donald Trump and his supporters repeatedly attacking abortion rights and spreading falsehoods.
During the presidential debate last month, Trump, using an oft-repeated attack line, falsely claimed that Democrats support abortion “after birth” and “executing” babies.
Biden to visit Florida and Georgia to survey hurricane aftermath
Joe Biden is set to visit Florida and Georgia on Thursday where he will survey the aftermath of Hurricane Helene which has killed nearly 200 people.
Biden’s upcoming visit follows his visit to the Carolinas yesterday where he met with local and state officials and first responders.
On Wednesday, Biden amended North Carolina and Georgia’s disaster declaration by authorizing an increase in the level of federal funding for emergency work undertaken in the wake of the hurricane.
“Under the president’s order today, federal funds for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct federal assistance, has been increased to 100% of the total eligible costs for 90 days from the start of the incident period,” the White House said.
Pieces of a destroyed dock in Lake Lure, North Carolina, on Wednesday, after the passage of Hurricane Helene. Photograph: Allison Joyce/AFP/Getty Images
In a new Truth Social tirade on Thursday morning, Donald Trump accused Joe Biden and Kamala Harris of poorly handling the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
The former president wrote:
Kamala and Sleepy Joe are universally being given POOR GRADES for the way that they are handling the Hurricane, especially in North Carolina. It is going down as the WORST & MOST INCOMPETENTLY MANAGED ‘STORM,’ AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL, EVER SEEN BEFORE – BUT THEIR MANAGEMENT OF THE BORDER IS WORSE! MAGA2024.”
The hurricane, which has killed nearly 200 people in recent days across multiple states, has been used as a major talking point by Trump’s campaign team as the former president and his running mate, JD Vance, cast skepticism toward climate change.
During Tuesday’s debate, Vance appeared to call the climate crisis “weird science” by saying: “One of the things that I’ve noticed some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions – this idea that carbon emissions drive all the climate change … Let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument, so we’re not arguing about weird science. Let’s just say that’s true.”
As some Americans are informed they need to prove their citizenship, Donald Trump and other Republicans are spreading the false idea non-citizens could vote in vast numbers.
The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang and Sam Levine report:
These purges are not just complicating the ability of some qualified voters to cast a ballot this year. They’re also setting the stage for future laws that restrict voters’ access to the ballot and are giving fuel to Donald Trump and his allies to seed doubt about the integrity of elections and undermine results if he loses in November.
Trump and other Republicans are already using the false idea that non-citizens could vote in widespread numbers to suggest the election could be stolen.
“Our elections are bad,” Trump said during the 10 September debate. “And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote. They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.” .
There is no proof that non-citizens are voting, or even registering to vote, in any meaningful numbers. It’s not the first time Republicans have made these claims, but the purges and rhetoric over non-citizen voting this year is, perhaps, at its apex.
For the full story, click here:
As part of the Anywhere but Washington series, the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland traveled to Georgia where election deniers and rightwing conspiracy theorists are facing a new generation of gen Z candidates and voters who could tip the race in favor of the Democrats:
Can Kamala Harris defeat Trump’s election lies in battleground Georgia? – video
Sam Levine
The Democratic National Committee is buying new billboards and digital ads in the places where Donald Trump is campaigning this week aimed at reminding voters that he and his running mate, JD Vance, still are refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election.
The billboards will go up in Saginaw, Michigan and Fayetteville, North Carolina. They feature a picture of Trump and Vance and say: “Trump and Vance still deny the 2020 election results. Defeat these election deniers.”
The advertisements come on the heels of a debate in which Vance repeatedly refused to say whether Trump won in 2020 and also declined to give a straight answer on whether he would certify the 2024 vote. “That’s a damning non-answer,” Tim Walz said during the debate. The Harris campaign has already cut an ad on the topic.
“Nearly four years later, Donald Trump and JD Vance still deny the results of the 2020 election, which Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won.Trump and Vance can continue to try to rewrite history, but this is the truth: when Trump lost fair and square, he encouraged a violent insurrection on our nation’s capital and attempted to overturn Michiganders’ votes for his own personal benefit,” Stephanie Justice, a DNC spokesperson, said in a statement.
Donald Trump said yesterday that he would revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, as he double downed on his vow to deport them if he is reelected in November’s presidential election.
“Springfield is such a beautiful place – have you seen what has happened to it? It has been overrun. You can’t do that to people. They have to be removed,” Trump told NewsNation in an interview.
Trump, asked if he would revoke the migrants’ TPS, said: “Absolutely. I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country.” Pressed on what would happen in the event the Haitian government refused to receive the migrants, he said “they will”, without providing additional details.
Donald Trump tells NewsNation that he’d “absolutely revoke” the Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. pic.twitter.com/WnMwCsgyWs
The majority of the 15,000 Haitians in Springfield are in the US legally under TPS, a decades-old programme which provides deportation relief and work permits. The Biden administration extended TPS to hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the US in June. Violence in Haiti has displaced over half a million people and nearly five million are facing severe food insecurity.
In September, Trump pledged to conduct mass deportations of Haitian immigrants from Springfield, despite most being there legally. Springfield become a flashpoint in the presidential election after baseless claims by Trump and his running mate, US senator JD Vance, that migrants in the town were eating cats and dogs. It has faced a series of bomb threats to schools and other facilities in the wake of the claims.
Flood insurance coverage lowest in counties hit hardest by Hurricane Helene – report
Only about 2% of households in the 100 counties hit hardest by Hurricane Helene-related power outages were protected by flood insurance, according to NBC News. The figures were compiled through analysis of census bureau data, PowerOutage.us data and national flood insurance programme policy data.
Less than 1% of the North Carolina counties most heavily affected by the hurricane were covered, while in South Carolina it was under 0.3%, according to the analysis.
Many people who lived in houses damaged by Helene are likely to see their insurance costs rise steeply. Flood insurance is sold separately from homeowners’ insurance, which usually does not cover flood damage.
The storm, which slammed into Florida’s Gulf coast almost a week ago, has dumped almost unprecedented amounts of rain through Georgia and the Carolinas, to Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky. You can see a visual timeline of the hurricane here.
Destroyed homes in Chimney Rock, North Carolina, after the passage of Hurricane Helene. Photograph: Allison Joyce/AFP/Getty Images
In a court filing made public yesterday, US prosecutors said Donald Trump was acting outside the scope of his duties as president when he pressured state officials and then-vice president Mike Pence to try to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Federal prosecutors said he “resorted to crimes” in a failed bid to cling to power.
The 165-page filing is likely the last opportunity for prosecutors to detail their case against Trump before the 5 November election given there will not be a trial before then. You can read more on this story here.
The special counsel Jack Smith outlined what he called Trump’s “increasingly desperate” efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results. He has also accused Trump of knowing “his fraud claims were false because he continued to make those claims even after his close advisors – acting not in an official capacity but in a private or campaign-related capacity – told him they were not true”.
Special counsel Jack Smith is continuing efforts to try to prosecute Donald Trump. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters
The filing is meant to keep the federal criminal election subversion case against the Republican presidential candidate moving forward following a July US supreme court ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution for their official actions in office. Trump’s lawyers tried to keep the latest filing sealed. Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called it “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”.
Responding on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to four criminal charges accusing him of a conspiracy to obstruct the congressional certification of the election, defraud the US out of accurate results and interfere with Americans’ voting rights.
Where will Harris and Trump be campaigning today and tomorrow?
Much of the media attention today will focus on Kamala Harris delivering remarks in the battleground state of Wisconsin, during which she will praise former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney.
Here is a look at where Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump will be campaigning before the weekend, with their focus shifting to Michigan:
Thursday: Trump will hold a rally in Saginaw county, a key Michigan city in the centre of the state. He has stepped up his focus on Michigan, holding two rallies there less than a week ago. In 2020, Joe Biden’s win in Saginaw county by a slim 303 votes contributed to his victory in the state.
Friday: Harris will hold a campaign rally in Flint, Michigan, continuing her tour of states that have been critical to Democratic victories. Trump won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan in 2016, and Joe Biden won them in 2020.
Donald Trump looks on during a town hall event with US senator Marsha Blackburn at Macomb community college in Warren, Michigan, on 27 September, 2024. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The seven swing states critical to the November election are:
Arizona
Georgia
Michigan
Nevada
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir
Melania Trump made an extraordinary declaration in an eagerly awaited memoir to be published a month from election day: she is a passionate supporter of a woman’s right to control her own body – including the right to abortion.
“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” the Republican nominee’s wife writes, amid a campaign in which Donald Trump’s threats to women’s reproductive rights have played a central role.
“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.
“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
You can read the full story by my colleague Martin Pengelly here:
Kamala Harris to be joined by Liz Cheney for campaign event in GOP birthplace
Good morning, US politics readers.
The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, is set to be joined by Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman, on Thursday for a campaign event in Ripon, a small Wisconsin town known as the birthplace of the Republican party. They will appear together in a historic white schoolhouse in Ripon, where a series of meetings held in 1854 to oppose slavery’s expansion led to the birth of the GOP.
In a further bid to appeal to more moderate Republican voters and independents, Harris is expected to praise Cheney – a vocal opponent of Donald Trump – for what she will describe as her patriotism and commitment of putting country before party.
In her speech, Harris will say she will uphold the constitution and the rule of law if she wins the November presidential election, stressing that her outlook is not dictated by rigid ideology.
She will say that anyone who has called for the termination of the constitution should never be allowed to serve as president (in December 2022, Trump called for the termination of the constitution to overturn the 2020 election – which he falsely claims he won - and reinstate him to power).
Wisconsin is a battleground state both Harris and Trump are eager to win. Trump in particular is probably going to need to take the so-called Badger state, one of the closest swing states of recent elections. In 2016, he won the state by less than 1% of the vote and then lost it four years later by an even narrower margin.
Liz Cheney with her father in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2022. Photograph: Jabin Botsford/AP
Cheney, the former representative of Wyoming and daughter of the former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, endorsed Harris for president last month. Today will be Cheney’s first campaign appearance with Harris since the endorsement. Cheney voted to impeach Trump, the former Republican president, after the January 6 insurrection and led the committee that would refer him to the justice department for criminal prosecution.
Her father, who was seen as an influential figure during the presidency of George W Bush, endorsed Harris a couple of days later, saying there had “never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump”. Hundreds of former and current Republican officials in the military, national security and local governments have publicly backed Harris for president.
Recent polling shows Harris is struggling to gain traction with Republican voters despite already having moderated many of her positions on key policy areas to appeal to them. She abandoned her opposition to fracking and private healthcare, for example. Harris is also alienating many Democratic voters by staunchly supporting Israel, despite its war on Gaza and invasion of Lebanon.
While Harris led Trump 47% to 40% among all voters in a 20-23 September Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 5% of the poll’s Republican respondents said they would back her in the election.
