From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, October 15th.

Today, climate and the politics of hurricanes. After Hurricane Helene hit the Southern United States last month, a wave of conspiracy theories flooded social media about the storm and the response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA.

The misinformation was fueled, as we know, by Republican candidate for President Donald Trump.

Since Hurricane Helene made landfall on September 24th, Trump has been

falsely claiming repeatedly that FEMA money is being redirected from Americans who have been

devastated by the back-to-back hurricanes to migrants. A new CBS poll from over the weekend shows

on Trump's claim that FEMA's hurricane funds are going to people in the U.S.

illegally, 83% of his supporters say that is certainly or probably true. Among Harris supporters,

90% think those claims are certainly or probably false. On this program, we try to balance

coverage and debunking of false things that Donald Trump and others say without giving oxygen to conspiracy theories.

But this particular wave of misinformation is having very real world consequences.

So we're deciding to cover it in our climate story of the week.

In an email to his constituents on Wednesday,

Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards, who represents the hardest hit part of North Carolina,

wrote, quote, these conspiracy theories, while certainly frustrating, have done more harm than most

people realize. The spreading of falsehoods has diverted state, local, and federal resources from

helping North Carolina's 11th congressional district recover toward refuting hearsay and repeatedly

trying to set the record straight, unquote, that from the Republican congressman in that area

of North Carolina. Joining us now to talk about what FEMA is seeing on

the ground while battling falsehoods. It's Maxine Jossalo, who covers climate change and the environment

with a focus on U.S. climate policy and politics for the Washington Post. Hi, Maxine. Welcome back to

WN.YC. Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me again. Before we dispel some of the rumors, can we first start with the work that FEMA actually

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