Brian Ler on WNYC, now we turn to our climate story of the week, which we're doing on the

show every Tuesday all this year. 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.

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