Party of Election Lies and Climate-Change Denial Shocked by Milton Misinformation

Republicans who say things you can't believe can't believe what people will believe

Oct. 10: MTG is soclose to getting it … Emergency measures include temporary ban on fraud … Almost a million Lebanon refugees … Trump says he doesn’t care what women think, even when he’s not raping them …

Listen to the audio version of TFN here.

---

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), seen here speaking at an Oct. 4, 2024, rally, is being criticized for lies by the party that supports Pres. Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). (Screengrab / Fox video.)

Congressional Republicans are trying to shut down claims by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) that humans can affect the weather…because responsible, mainstream, long-term Republican leaders have spent two decades denying that humans affect the weather.

Greene obviously overstated the case by saying that “they can control” the weather, especially since “they” and “control” are ambiguous. But as Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida yesterday, Greene’s own party slammed into her for it.

So what did she actually mean? Did she mean Pres. Joe Biden can order a waterspout at Sea World? He cannot.

Did Greene mean that an invisible, all-powerful, sky magician who loves and tortures us can GPS the course of individual raindrops and then draw beautiful rainbows for us? Because both parties believe that.

But did Greene mean that some human activity can have some effect on the weather? She’s soclose to getting it!

But, no, hopeful Newsfucker, Greene doesn’t believe in human-driven climate change. And some of the same Republicans lecturing her yesterday that humans can’t control the weather are at least consistent in that they also deny that humans can affect the weather.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) isn’t an open climate-change denier, but he’s an open voter-against-doing-anything-about-climate-changer. 

“There’s no place for misinformation, especially when it’s on purpose,” Gimenez said yesterday about Greene the way he’s never said it about Big Oil’s “think tanks” and “research” institutions created on purpose to supply a respectable pipeline of climate misinformation. 

And Gimenez thought there was a place for misinformation during the 2020 vote certification when he voted — presumably on purpose — to reject the valid Electoral College votes of states that supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. 

Then there’s Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), scolding “an uptick in untrustworthy sources trying to spark chaos by sharing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and hearsay about hurricane response efforts.” Edwards wrote to his constituents, “I’m here to dispel the outrageous rumors that have been circulated online.”

Which is weird, because Edward’s also been here to spel other outrageous rumors that have been circulated online by him.

Here’s Edwards, just this year, spreading the outrageous, chaos-sparking, hearsay rumor that Biden was responsible for a stream of migrants seen in a picture taken during the presidency of one Donald J. Trump.

But at least Edwards is consistent when it comes to weather, because he told Greene, “Nobody can control the weather,” and he also won’t admit that humans affect the weather.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) posted yesterday that Biden was “taking all necessary actions to ensure that [DeSantis] and the State of Florida have the resources required to assist Floridians with hurricane preparation and recovery.”

Which was a sharp reversal from just last week when this Luna-tic posted a video pushing the lie that FEMA funneled disaster money to immigrants (the way Trump actually did) and then joined Trump on stage Friday at a rally where they spread the same lie.

Of course, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) had absolutely zero tolerance yesterday for toxic, ridiculous lies coming from someone who was not him.

“‘[I]f you put out crap online you can get a lot of people to share it and you can monetize that,” DeSantis said yesterday. And he should know!

Just hours after DeSantis got his state’s Board of Education to ban “critical race theory,” his political action committee sent out a fundraising email to monetize that.

“[I]f you are hearing something that’s just outrageous, just know in the state of Florida none of that stuff would ever fly,” DeSantis also said yesterday, after personally piloting flights over Florida of outrageous things about drag performers, Black people, teachers, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants.

Just this summer, DeSantis denied that climate change played any role in Florida’s record-breaking rainfall. Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene can explain it to him.

FEDERAL RESPONSE The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has deployed a dedicated website to help people withstand the flood of lies.

Florida Devastated by Category 5 Capitalism

Strengthened by capitalism, Hurricane Milton last night tore through a state weakened by capitalism.

Florida is so notorious for selling out its environment for the short-term gain of developers and corrupt politicians that writer Carl Hiassen became a fabulously successful novelist spinning far-fetched tales about it almost as crazy as the near-fetched truth.

We should know in a week or so how much of Milton’s force was a gift from Big Oil and Big Agriculture. That’s how long it took researchers to calculate how much of Hurricane Helene was due to climate change:

• Rainfall: +10% due to climate change

• Wind: +11% due to climate change

The Gulf of Mexico warmth that fueled Helene was made at least 200 times more likely by climate change.

Climate change played a heightened role in some areas hit by Helene. Parts of Georgia and the Carolinas got 50% more rain than they would have if ExxonMobil weren’t a big fat liar. And climate researchers say Milton will likely turn out to have been ‘roided up by climate change, too. It’s just a matter of crunching the numbers to find out how much.

One thing we do know is that Milton is so capitalist that last night it was franchising its powerful brand, spinning off at least 19 tornadoes.

FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS In a post for paid-subscribers only last night, I dug up the history of Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and others in pushing to privatize FEMA disaster response, even though privatizing has been a disaster.

Because I hate keeping anything from any TFN subscribers, as promised here’s your secret linky-link to read it for free. If you want to get these paid-only posts as soon as they go up — and support TFN digging into the history of these people — you can upgrade your subscription:

---

Florida’s Emergency Measures Include Temporary Suspension of Corporate Fraud

Hurricane Milton was so bad that the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) issued an emergency order last night that appears to prohibit insurance companies from committing fraud. It wasn’t immediately clear when the order will expire and insurers can resume their regularly scheduled fraud, but even a temporary suspension of fraud is a shocking sign of just how bad this storm was.

According to the Washington Post, the state’s order requires “that all claims adjusters provide an explanation for each change they make to a consumer’s loss estimate, document those changes and retain all versions of the estimate and identify who made those revisions.” It’s almost chilling to see that conditions are so extreme consumers will get emergency supplies of information about what they’re paying for. Drastic measures, indeed!

Of course, forcing insurers to tell consumers how they’re getting fucked over could threaten the ability of insurance companies to maintain their streams of fraud revenue in the immediate aftermath of Milton, until they’re able to resume hiding every fucking criminal thing they do.

DeSantis, of course, previously came to the rescue of the insurance companies. When insurers were at the mercy of individual humans who still had the right to sue them for fraud, DeSantis swept in and saved them. The companies, I mean.

Lebanon Marks One Year Until It Becomes Gaza

Three days after Israel marked the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, and two days after Gaza marked the one-year anniversary of the day after the Oct. 7 attacks, Lebanon is planning for next year’s one-year anniversary of the expansion of the war after the Oct. 7 attacks.

The week-old open conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon — and anyone in the proximity of anyone thought to possibly be Hezbollah in Lebanon — has now pushed almost one million people out of their homes, the United Nations reports.

Most are internally displaced, but 300,000 have fled to other countries. Lebanon’s shelter and refugee resources, obvi, are at maximum capacity. Half the country’s schools are now serving as shelters.

Israel’s helpful evacuation guidelines for not being in your home when Israel destroys it now cover one quarter of Lebanon’s surface area.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, CNN notes that there is now 14 times the amount of rubble, aka former buildings, than was created/destroyed in all of the Earth’s military conflicts over the past 16 years combined. By one estimate, 59% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed.

The wholesale destruction was necessary, Israel says, to eliminate Hamas and free the hostages. Neither of which have happened.

Trump Doesn’t Just Fuck Women, Now He Also Says Fuck Women

Former Pres. Donald Trump said this last night:

“Somebody said, ‘You should be nicer. Women won’t like it.’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’”

There ya have it, ladies and other women! Trump doesn’t give a shit what you think of the way he speaks. A real shocker, I know, coming from the party of Fuck Your Feelings.

Hilariously, Trump was also fucking over dude bros in his base. Trump scheduled the Pennsylvania rally last night during a Phillies playoff game. Genius.

Trump Is Nicer to This Guy

One thing that especially cheeses me off is when people say all politicians are the same. The odds against that are mathematically infinitesimal. And politicians are wildly different, actually.

Six years ago, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) promised Christine Blasey Ford that he would uncover the truth about the FBI’s non-investigation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. This was after she testified about his sexual abuse and Republicans didn’t believe her because look how well Clarence Thomas turned out.

Well, now Whitehouse has released his report.

The FBI was supposed to investigate the many credible claims that Kavanaugh was, like the president who nominated him, a serial abuser and/or harasser of women. But gosharootie despite the FBI’s extensive digging, the FBI told us all there was just no there there!

Whitehouse’s new report confirms that the FBI found no there there because it consciously didn’t look here or here or the other theres where there were theres there. And because then-President Donald Trump’s administration blocked a full investigation and then lied about it.

Whitehouse summarizes the report’s recommendations, saying in a statement, “[T]he report recommends that better standards be established for FBI supplemental background investigations—particularly for situations where major misconduct allegations come to light after an initial background investigation is complete.”

And now that TFN has acknowledged Whitehouse for keeping at it on this issue, it’s time to implement TFN’s patented Refusal To Stan Anyone™ and criticize the fuck out of the report’s recommendations.

Why in the world would the Senate continue to outsource its obligation to vet executive-branch nominees…to the executive branch?!? The Senate has its own investigators and there’s no reason their ranks couldn’t be expanded to vet all presidential nominees.

But also, Whitehouse says that FBI statements to the Senate were not true. The Senate has oversight of the FBI! It can recommend prosecutions for perjury! Recommending that the FBI adopt new procedures to break and then lie about breaking is not accountability!

As I will never stop saying, the problem isn’t people who violate norms, it’s gatekeepers not keeping gates.

Pennsylvania Republicans Sue to Block Military Votes

Six Pennsylvania Republican members of Congress are suing to force members of the U.S. military and other overseas voters to prove they’re citizens before their votes can be counted.

The six are:

• Rep. Mike Kelly

• Rep. Dan Meuser

• Rep. Scott Perry

• Rep. Guy Reschenthaler

• Rep. Lloyd Smucker

• Rep. Glenn Thompson

The six themselves are all veterans…of the 2020 effort to steal the presidential election.

Republicans used to support overseas voting…before drawdowns made the military a minority of overseas voters. Now, Democrats are a majority, with their laptops and remote working and liking other countries.

Federal law, however, says states don’t have to require ID, as Pennsylvania does not. And the law specifically says that overseas voting should not be burdensome, which Republicans would like it to be.

As the Washington Post notes, the Republican National Committee has filed its own suits challenging overseas voting rules in some jurisdictions in order to protect election integrity win.

Recommended Reading

LOLGOP’s Substack is about what people can do on the ground for campaigns. I don’t plug it often enough. So here ya go, because I’m trying to be the shepherd.

TCB

HUMBLEBRAG Okay, so you probably didn’t know that Substack ranks its publications. Well, thanks to all the sharing and support of you breathtaking Newsfuckers, yesterday for the first time TFN cracked the top 200 of Substack’s Top U.S. Politics publications. We were #200 last night and #198 as of this morning. Thank you, magnificent fuckers of news.

JOURNALISMING So, what’s the difference between yesterday’s Rick Scott piece and the original reporting I post at Jonathan Larsen’s Substack? All that I did for the Rick Scott piece was read old testimony, my own previous reporting on FEMA, and some other pieces.

It took time and thought and was a pain in the ass and I’d love for you to support it with a paid TFN subscription. But it didn’t involve speaking with human sources or obtaining documents that aren’t otherwise available to the public. In other words, it connected dots, but it didn’t mean digging up something that wasn’t already undugged.

That undugged stuff is what I post at the JL Substack. And, yes, you can support that undigging by becoming a paid subscriber to the JL Substack. If you just wanna support all of this TFN/JL crap that I’m trying to make a go of, you can always make a one-time donation.

You can also support TFN by restacking and sharing it on social media. We’re on Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, Spoutible, and Twitter. Boy, that’s a long list of ways to send me money, so any Newsfuckers still reading this, I am awed and humbled by your support. Thank you.

Now go get ‘em, kids!