Hello, it’s 2024

and the weather is partisan now, in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, something curious has happened. The far right has begun to weaponize the federal government’s response to the disaster with the presumed goal of chaos. I guess

you’ve heard of FEMA. They’re the federal organization at the forefront of disaster relief operations, and have deployed substantial resources throughout the impacted area, including over 137

million in assistance and 1000s of personnel to aid affected communities. Look, FEMA is a good thing. They don’t ask to see your voter registration before pulling you to safety. We need them.

But FEMA is response efforts have it seems become the latest victim of misdirected political liar predominantly from far right groups,

these factions have leveraged social media to propagate misinformation question fema’s resource allocation and alleged mismanagement. They propagated conspiracy theories about geoengineering and spread misleading images and false claims regarding federal response actions and political leaders including Yes, Donald Trump have amplified these narratives, leveraging engagement driven algorithms on platforms like X, formally Twitter, that’s what I’m going to

call it, sorry. And political leaders including Yes, Donald Trump have amplified these narratives, leveraging engagement driven algorithms on platforms like X, formerly Twitter, to reach a wider audience.

All this politicization has shockingly not been good for the disaster response. When you have a pervasive environment of distrust of federal agencies, this significantly impacts said agencies ability to effectively manage the issues they’re sent to address.

Of course, it also deters individuals who who need the help from seeking the help.

It also, of course, deters affected individuals from seeking aid. Basically all this misinformation, all it’s doing is making it harder for FEMA to help during a time when they are very much needed, which is bad enough. But last weekend, FEMA aid to some parts of rural North Carolina, it had to be halted entirely. Why?

Because there were reports that natural,

which is bad enough, but last weekend, FEMA aid to some parts of rural North Carolina had to be halted entirely because there were reports that National Guard troops had witnessed the disaster assistance workers being threatened by, quote, armed militia.

Yeah, armed militias have reportedly been active in disaster stricken regions, with some groups allegedly declaring intentions to hunt FEMA. Now it’s important to note that the credibility of these threats has been questioned, but they are significant enough to have necessitated a cautious response from federal authorities,

and the fact that individuals hunting FEMA is of any concern, let alone enough concern to materially affect a federal emergency response just speaks to how deeply volatile the president political environment is. It’s a disaster. It’s a natural disaster. We shouldn’t have to worry about the safety of the first responders deployed to help, but these far right groups have exploited the chaos of a major weather event to advance their agendas and

and now we do

try that again. I.