A progressive policy group in North Carolina was among those expressing alarm on Sunday as news spread that federal emergency workers were forced to evacuate an area hit hard by Hurricane Helene late last month after officials warned that “armed militias” were “hunting” hurricane response teams.
But the news didn’t come as a shock to Carolina Forward, an independent think tank, considering that it came after weeks of lies from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump about the Biden administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) response to the hurricane.
“This is what MAGA does,” said Carolina Forward on social media. “Eventually, their lies have real world consequences.”
As The Washington Post reported Sunday evening, a U.S. Forest Service official sent an urgent message to other federal agencies involved in the recovery on Saturday afternoon, saying FEMA had advised all federal responders in Rutherford County, North Carolina “to stand down and evacuate the county immediately.”
National Guard troops in the area, said the official, “had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA.”
The message was verified by two federal officials.
Emergency responders moved to a “safe area” and paused their work in Rutherford County, where they had been delivering supplies and clearing trees from roads in order to help search-and-rescue crews.
“Let’s be clear: Armed militia are terrorizing FEMA rescue workers and causing important work to stop because Donald Trump spread lies and disinformation about the hurricane. This is on the Republican candidate for president with help from Elon Musk,” said media critic Jennifer Schulze, referring to the billionaire owner of X who has used the social media platform to amplify Trump’s lies. “Shameful and disqualifying.”
The forced pause in the work is just the latest example of the measurable impact of statements made by Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), about FEMA in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned last Thursday that federal employees, thousands of whom have been deployed to states including North Carolina and Florida to help with the response to the devastating storms, have received threats in recent days. Meteorologists have received angry messages from people convinced that weather experts and government officials “are creating and directing hurricanes,” The Guardian reported last week.
“I have had a bunch of people saying I created and steered the hurricane, there are people assuming we control the weather,” Katie Nickolaou, a meteorologist in Michigan, told The Guardian. “I have had to point out that a hurricane has the energy of 10,000 nuclear bombs and we can’t hope to control that. But it’s taken a turn to more violent rhetoric, especially with people saying those who created Milton should be killed.”
President Joe Biden was driven to address Trump’s lies about the hurricane response last week, saying the disinformation was “undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken and will continue to be taken.”
Since Helene swept through a number of states late last month, catching communities in western North Carolina off-guard with devastating flooding, Trump has baselessly claimed that:
- Biden ignored a call for help from Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who denied Trump’s claim;
- He received unspecified “reports” that North Carolina officials were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas”;
- Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, spent “all her FEMA money” on housing for undocumented immigrants; and
- FEMA is providing only $750 to people who lost their homes.
Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service official in hard-hit Asheville, North Carolina, told the Post that locals have told FEMA employees who have arrived with aid to to help with repairs, “We don’t want your help here.”
“It’s terrible because a lot of these folks who need assistance are refusing it because they believe the stuff people are saying about FEMA and the government,” Duncan told the newspaper. “And it’s sad because they are probably the ones who need the help the most.”
In the town of Chimney Rock in Rutherford County, FEMA has shifted to working in secure areas in fixed locations instead of going door to door to assess community needs, the Post reported, “out of an abundance of caution.”
Matt Ortega, a web developer in Oakland, California, said the impact of Trump’s baseless claims about the hurricane response mirror that of his earlier lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, where schools and government business ground to a halt in recent weeks due to bomb threats stemming from claims that Haitian people were stealing neighbors’ pets and eating them.
“Trump and Republicans’ FEMA lies [incur] a debt, just as they did in Springfield,” said Ortega. “The people who pay it are children whose schools are closed due to bomb threats in Springfield and recovery aid workers when militias are ‘out hunting FEMA.'”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.