Ron DeSantis Snubs Harris’s Hurricane Relief Calls for Dumbest Reason

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s alleged pursuit of being apolitical has veered straight into the hyper political.

The Republican governor has reportedly been avoiding calls from Vice President Kamala Harris in the wake of Hurricane Helene on the basis that the emergency relief calls “seemed political,” according to an aide close to DeSantis that spoke with NBC News.

“Kamala was trying to reach out, and we didn’t answer,” the unidentified source told NBC News.

The same aide told the outlet that they were not aware of any direct communication between DeSantis and President Joe Biden. Instead, DeSantis has been in contact with Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, Director Deanne Criswell.

When asked whether the White House believed that politics were seeping into the storm response, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told NBC News that it was “for the governor to speak to,” adding that the executive office had invited DeSantis to survey the damage from Hurricane Helene alongside Biden last week.

“It was his decision … to not attend or not be there with the president.... It is up to him,” Jean-Pierre said. “We are doing our part, in the Biden-Harris administration, working—obviously FEMA is work—is on the ground, all hands on deck, whole of government. Robust approach here. And so, again, that’s for Governor DeSantis to speak to.”

Across the six states that the Category 4 storm hit, at least 231 people have been reported dead, making Helene one of the deadliest recorded storms in U.S. history. Overall, Helene has been described by weather forecast offices as “one of the most significant weather events” to hit the area “in the modern era.”

But in the aftermath of that storm, another potentially devastating hurricane looms on the horizon: Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm scheduled to hit the west coast of the Sunshine State by Wednesday evening. In light of the imminent catastrophe, DeSantis has taken another suspiciously politicized route, opting not to alter the state’s voting procedures, refusing to extend the deadline for voter registration and instead curtly offering that fleeing or bunkering denizens should spend their time applying to vote now.

Extreme weather is already wreaking havoc on voting ahead of the election. Hurricane Helene upended postal service in North Carolina, potentially delaying early and mail-in voting in the crucial swing state.

Meanwhile, Republicans across the country have elevated false claims launched by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, insisting that the Biden administration diverted emergency relief funds from FEMA to aid immigration efforts.

FEMA has roundly rejected those charges, stating that the MAGA-launched rumor is “frankly ridiculous and just plain false.”

“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” Criswell said on Sunday. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people.”

In an unfortunate back and forth, the Georgia Supreme Court has reinstated a law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. The ban will remain in place as the high court reviews the state’s appeal against a lower court ruling striking the law.

The Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, or the LIFE Act, will take effect again at 5 p.m. Monday, making abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant.

This decision comes just one week after a Fulton County Superior Judge overturned the Georgia law, arguing that it was unconstitutional and issuing a dire warning on how the ban could set up a dystopian world similar to the one portrayed in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Last week, Judge Robert McBurney wrote that: “It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could—or should—force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.”

The lower judge’s ruling allowed abortion until 22 weeks, as was legal before the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, giving clinics a chance to expand their abortion options for the past week.

“We know that several providers in Georgia were able to resume abortion care really quickly,” Brittany Fonteno, the president and chief executive of the National Abortion Federation, told The New York Times. “It speaks to the resilience of the providers in Georgia. They were really overwhelmed by the amount of people who immediately came to them for care.”

The constant back and forth in the courts is sure to fuel confusion in the state about what is and isn’t legal.

Meanwhile, JD Vance is playing dumb about reproductive rights in Georgia, saying he doesn’t know which side he is on.

Donald Trump went beyond his usual racism and seemed to embrace eugenics Monday morning.

Speaking on conservative Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, Trump ranted against Kamala Harris, claiming that “she wants to go into a Communist Party–type system.” He then attacked her for supposedly allowing serial murderers into America through open borders, “now happily living in the United States.” But Trump didn’t stop there.

“You know now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes, and we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” Trump told Hewitt.

Attaching genetics to crime is another way for Trump to make racist claims about immigrants to the United States, implying that some ethnicities are predisposed to killing. It fits into what he’s said about different populations in the past, such as in 2018, when he referred to immigrants from Haiti and African nations as “people from shithole countries.”

Trump began his political career by complaining that Mexico was “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” And earlier this year, Trump complained to wealthy donors at a fundraiser in Florida that immigrants weren’t coming from “nice” countries “like Denmark,” in effect saying that he’d prefer only white immigrants in the United States.

The former president has spread racist lies against immigrants during his current campaign, in particular against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania. He has said that he wants to institute “bloody” mass deportations of immigrants if he returns to the White House. But blaming their “genes” is new, and is a reminder that he doesn’t seem to think being compared to Adolf Hitler, the most infamous eugenicist, is a bad thing. Was his latest remark inspired by the long list of things he likes about Hitler?

Another massive hurricane is barrelling toward Florida’s coastline, but that doesn’t mean the state is shifting its standards to help its denizens prepare for Election Day.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will reportedly not be extending the Sunshine State’s deadline for registering to vote, according to the Orlando Sentinel’s Jeffrey Schweers, despite the fact that much of the state is preparing for or fleeing the imminent Category 5 storm due to hit its west coast this week.

“There is nothing inhibiting people from registering today,” DeSantis told the publication.

Last week, DeSantis issued an executive order allowing local election officials to change early voting sites and set up consolidated voting centers in areas ravaged by the last major weather event to rip through Florida, Hurricane Helene, which displaced thousands of voters and poll workers late last month. The executive order also loosened restrictions on mail-in ballot requests and allowed state employees to take paid leave to work as poll workers on Election Day, according to CBS News.

But DeSantis’s rigidity on the threat posed by the oncoming hurricane doesn’t come from a place of ignorance. So far, the Republican governor has issued a state of emergency for 51 of Florida’s 67 counties. “A major hurricane is the most likely outcome,” DeSantis said on Sunday while expanding the ordinance. “This is not a good track for the state of Florida.”

The brunt of Hurricane Milton is scheduled to slam the west side of the state by Wednesday evening, but the rain has already begun. Rainfall could reach totals of five to 10 inches, with localized totals adding up to 15 inches across regions of the Florida peninsula and the Florida Keys, threatening minor to moderate river flooding, hurricane center specialist Eric Blake told USA Today.

“Regardless of the details, there is increasing confidence that a powerful hurricane with life-threatening hazards will be affecting portions of the Florida west coast around the middle of this week,” the hurricane center said Sunday.

Extreme weather is already wreaking havoc on voting ahead of the election. Hurricane Helene has upended postal service in North Carolina, potentially delaying early and mail-in voting in the crucial swing state.

The Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal from Elon Musk’s X Corp. on the company’s claim that special counsel Jack Smith took an unlawful deep dive into Donald Trump’s social media account without notifying the former president.

X Corp. begged the Supreme Court in July to determine under what circumstances a tech company can be compelled to turn over information on its users, while being prevented from alerting those users that they’re being investigated.

The court did not publish a comment Monday, and there were no dissents.

Last year, Smith’s team was able to use a “nondisclosure order” to prevent X Corp. from notifying Trump that prosecutors were using a search warrant to obtain private communications from Trump’s X (formerly Twitter) account, including direct messages, location data, and his drafts from the weeks leading up to the January 6 insurrection.

When X Corp. challenged the order, it was found in contempt and fined $350,000. Prosecutors argued that notifying Trump of the search would endanger the evidence.

Last week, an unsealed filing from Smith’s team showed precisely how the prosecution in Trump’s January 6 trial intended to use tweets from the Republican nominee’s personal X account to demonstrate his alleged election interference.

Trump’s tweets cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 election results, spread false claims of voter fraud, attacked those trying to share accurate information about the election, cheered on those traveling to Washington for the rally that would become the riot, and helped the former president conduct a pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence.

At 2:24 p.m. on January 6, 2021, as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

This tweet was then read out to the crowd at the Capitol, who later chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” Moments after Trump tweeted, Pence had to be ushered to a secure location, according to the filing. When Trump heard that Pence had been taken to safety, he reportedly responded, “So what?”