Monday, October 07, 2024

'Do you not know any women?' Michael Moore calls it 'shocking' Dems think Trump will win

Matthew Chapman
RAW STORY
October 7, 2024 

Michael Moore / Shutterstock

Left-wing documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, who correctly predicted former President Donald Trump would win in 2016 and that Republicans would not have a blowout victory in 2022, has a new prognostication on CNN: Vice President Kamala Harris does not need to run away from liberal causes to win in 2024.

That's because, he argued, the same army of women who stormed the polls in 2022 will dictate 2024 — and then some — driven now, as then, by the same rage over the loss of abortion rights, that has only driven more grim headlines in recent months.

"There is thinking that you're aware of from, I think, Democrats in the political class, who say, 'Yeah, but Harris needs people in the middle and liberals are going to vote for her regardless, why would they stay home? It's as good as a vote for Trump,'" said anchor Brianna Keilar. "What do you say to that reasoning?"

"I honestly think we're going to have one of our largest turnouts ever," said Moore. "I don't think that many people are going to stay home. I certainly hope not because of everything that's at stake."

Democrats, he said, are "such a frightened group of people. I mean ... they still think that Trump is going to win. This is kind of shocking to me, like, don't you live with people? Are you not aware that there's going to be a tsunami of women voting between now and Election Day? That they were told 2 1/2 years ago that they no longer control their own bodies. They no longer have a say. If they get pregnant, an unplanned pregnancy, the law now is that in many of our states, that you have to have that baby. If we have to do whatever we have to do, sort of a legal version of strapping you down to the table until you birth that baby. That's Soviet. That's the law of the land now.

For anyone who believes women will just "tolerate" being treated that way, he added, "Do you not know any women? Do you not live with a woman? Is there a next-door neighbor? Is there somebody you could just go ask them, 'So what do you think about my gender here? My gender? Nobody can tell me what to do with my body.' And maybe some people should. I'm just saying. But seriously."

Watch the video below or at the link here.


Michael Moore: Only ‘landslide’ loss will guarantee Trump’s ‘permanent removal from the public eye’

Judy Kurtz
Fri, October 4, 2024 
The Hill.


Michael Moore says it’ll take former President Trump losing the election “in a landslide” in order to “guarantee” that he fades from the spotlight.

“We need to ensure that Trump loses in a landslide, with numbers so massive, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the entire country tuned in to watch Geraldo [Rivera] open up Al Capone’s vault,” the “Fahrenheit 9/11” director said in a Friday post on his website.

“Because that’s the only way to guarantee his permanent removal from the public eye,” Moore said.


“We should settle for nothing less.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed the 2020 election was fraudulent and rigged despite there being no evidence of widespread fraud.

Moore, a fierce critic of the 45th president who once performed an anti-Trump Broadway show, expressed optimism that Vice President Harris would win the White House next month.

“Trump is toast,” Moore wrote.

“If everyone does their part in the next few weeks, Trump is going down in flames.”

But he also suggested that Harris supporters exercise caution.

“We do know that Trump has a stellar streak of pulling off the impossible — and those who have written him off have more than once lived to see the day where they must eat humble pie. It is never wise to do a victory dance on the two-yard line when Trump is your opponent,” the Academy Award winner wrote.

Moore also warned that Harris’s campaign could falter in its final weeks before Election Day if the vice president “is advised by her wealthy donors to shun the left and drop her more progressive positions in favor of a ‘move to the center.'”

“This, too, could reduce or depress the vote for Harris, especially among the base. I know many of you don’t want to hear that, but I’m just trying to warn you that the actions of party hacks and pundits have consequences,” Moore said.

“If there ever was an election where the totally unexpected and crazy could happen, this is already that election,” the 70-year-old filmmaker and activist said.

“Assume nothing. Take zero for granted. Work to prevent the worst results and prepare to make a possible Trump presidency a complete failure by spending these next weeks helping to elect Democrats to the House and Senate, thus creating a Blue Wall that will guarantee Trump will not be able to do anything for the next four years,” he said.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. 

Michael Moore Warns This Move Could Cost Kamala Harris The Election

Eboni Boykin-Patterson
THE DAILY BEAST
Fri, October 4, 2024 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

On the same day Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning in Flint, Michigan, filmmaker Michael Moore is warning of a fatal “mistake that could be made in these final 4-5 weeks” until Election Day.

“If Harris is advised by her wealthy donors to shun the left and drop her more progressive positions in favor of a ‘move to the center,’” Moore writes in a new Substack post, it could “reduce or depress the vote.” The Fahrenheit 9/11 director grew up in the suburbs of Flint, and made the Midwestern city famous in his debut documentary, Roger & Me. He also voices his political views on The Michael Moore Podcast, and has been a frequent critic of Donald Trump. Overall, he thinks things are looking good for Harris.

“Right now, if you know how to really read the polls, or if you have access to the various private and internal polling being conducted by and shared only amongst the elites, Wall Street, and Members of Congress, then you already know that this election was over weeks ago,” he writes, presuming Harris the winner in several election scenarios. That said, “It is never wise to do a victory dance on the two-yard line when Trump is your opponent.” As such, Harris has to walk a fine line to see one of his successful scenarios come to fruition.

“Biden’s continued funding and arming of the Netanyahu regime has already depressed the Michigan vote,” Moore explains, so if Harris were to pivot towards the center, she could rock the boat. If she holds steady, however, Moore has glowing predictions for the vice president. “The vast majority of the country, the normal people, have seen enough and want the clown car to disappear into the MAGA vortex somewhere between reality and Orlando,” he writes.

What’s “being said to me in private by people I respect—and not just in whispers, but in excited tones of exuberance,” Moore writes, is that “a new era is being born, one where caucasian is just one of the options but no longer the bossy pants of the world.”

But complacency about a Harris win could be just as dangerous, he argues. “An aggregate of top polls as of today shows that Harris will defeat Trump in the Electoral College count by 270 to 268, but I think we need more,” he writes. “We need to ensure that Trump loses in a landslide.”



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White supremacist ideas go mainstream: How the GOP is embracing a dangerous narrative
RAW STORY
October 7, 2024

An attendee wears a t shirt with Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump's picture at a rally for Republican U.S. vice presidential nominee Senator JD Vance (not pictured) in Newtown, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 28, 2024. REUTERS/Hannah Beier

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. 

Abhorrence and fear of Haitian immigrants coming to Alabama to fill jobs in poultry plants had been building among conservative residents even before former President Donald Trump jolted the presidential campaign with his outlandish and thoroughly debunked claims that “they’re eating the pets.”

But in this state, which Trump carried in 2020 by a 25.5-percent margin, and other parts of the country where new immigrants have made an impression, a conspiracy theory fed by state and local officials is taking hold four weeks out from the Nov. 5 election.

The belief that the Biden administration is deliberately bringing immigrants into small communities so they can illegally vote in the election for the benefit of Vice President Kamala Harris is ricocheting through local mass meetings, halls of government and community Facebook pages.

The baseless narrative about non-citizen voting is seeding doubts about the election's outcome. It rests atop an aggregation of anxiety about cultural and language differences, misinformation about how both state voting laws and the federal immigration system work, and racist stereotypes about dark-skinned newcomers. Together, they reinforce a belief in the so-called “great replacement” — an idea with roots in the white supremacist movement — that has increasingly found mainstream acceptance within the GOP electorate since Trump was elected in 2016.

The notion that there is an incursion of immigrants orchestrated by the federal government, possibly with the intention of facilitating voter fraud, received a trumpet blast from Scott Stadthagen, the majority leader in the Alabama House of Representatives.

ALSO READ: The untold story of ‘they’re eating the pets’ in Springfield

“I think there’s no mistake that they’re coming,” Stadthagen said of the Haitian immigrants in his state during an interview on FM Talk 1065 last month. “It’s all organized. They’ve got EBT cards, working visas. They probably have voter ID cards, if I had to guess.

“It’s amazing how the federal government is allowing this to take place in the state of Alabama and other states,” he added.

Trump, whom Stadthagen praised during the radio interview, is among the loudest purveyors of the long-debunked claim. As far back as the run-up to the Iowa caucuses in January, Trump suggested that Democrats were encouraging immigrants to illegally come into the country so they could register them to vote in the election.


Many of the Haitian immigrants who have come to Alabama and other parts of the country in the past two years arrived under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s humanitarian “parole” program. This program provides “advance travel authorizations” for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals. Under the program, they are eligible to work in the United States.

But unless they become naturalized citizens — a long and arduous process — they are not eligible to vote. And while U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services handles applications for citizenship, state governments hold responsibility for registering voters and running elections.

Asked about his speculation that immigrants present on “working visas” might “have voter ID cards,” Stadthagen said in a statement issued to Raw Story through a spokesperson that Alabama’s secretary of state, Wes Allen, “is taking solid steps to make sure that only American citizens vote in our election.” He added, “I completely support his efforts, and so does every Alabama voter I’ve spoken to on the issue. Only American citizens should vote in our election, and I cannot believe that is even a question.”


Stadthagen did not respond to follow-up questions from Raw Story about why he speculated about immigrants being improperly registered to vote, and whether he was concerned that his statement could undermine confidence in the outcome of the presidential election.

During the radio interview, Stadthagen also criticized a city council in Sylacauga, 50 miles southeast of Birmingham, for cutting off public comment about Haitian immigrants during a meeting earlier in the month.

“Do we know where the individuals we’re discussing are coming from, where their point of origin is?” David Phillips, a Sylacauga resident, asked during the meeting, which took place on Sept. 5. “Because you’re treating them like lawful U.S. citizens, which they are not.”


“I’m going to cut it off, because we have no reason… to launch an investigation or to treat people differently because of how they look,” Tiffany Nix, the council president, told him.

“These people came here from Haiti,” Phillips said. “Haiti is a failed state. Their president was assassinated in 2021. There is no way the State Department can vet these individuals.”

After the council abruptly adjourned the meeting, a woman stood up in the back of the chamber and protested that the government would “spend our tax money.”


“They speak French,” she continued. “Are the teachers going to be able to educate the children that speak French?”

ALSO READ: Is this the October Surprise?


‘They intend to turn red states blue’


The notion that Haitian immigrants working in the state’s poultry plants are in Alabama as part of a scheme by the federal government to import illegal votes appears to have gained traction thanks in large part to the efforts of one man.

Jack B. Palmer, a former employee of the IT giant Infosys whose whistleblowing led to a $34 million settlement with the U.S. government for visa fraud and abuse of immigration systems in 2013, has traversed the state over the past two months addressing conservative residents concerned about Haitians living in their communities.

Speaking at a community meeting held at a church in Albertville, a small city north of Birmingham, in August, Palmer accused the Biden administration of “allowing unfettered immigration into the country to bolster the Democrats’ voting bloc in future elections,” according to an account of the meeting in the conservative outlet 1819 News.


During another community meeting at a church in Enterprise, located at the southern end of Alabama, 1819 News — which is widely read among Republican lawmakers and conservative voters in the state — reported that Palmer said the Haitian immigrants in Alabama were “illegal” because the program was “not authorized by Congress.”

The Biden administration expanded a program intended to provide humanitarian parole for immigrants from Venezuela by opening it to immigrants from Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua in January 2023. Twenty-one states, including Alabama, sued the Department of Homeland Security, claiming that the program exceeds the authority granted to the department by Congress, but a federal judge in Texas ruled in March that the plaintiffs did not have standing. The case is currently under appeal in the Fifth Circuit.

Reached by phone on Thursday, Palmer did not dispute that a federal judge has upheld the program, but he said that in his “opinion” it’s “illegal.”


During the meeting in Enterprise, Palmer repeated his previous claim about immigrant voting, according to 1819 News, which reported that he “warned the Democratic Party is trying to make ‘a new voting bloc’ and that ballots are ‘going out in Alabama only to illegal immigrants.’”

Palmer told Raw Story that the quotes on immigration and elections from 1819 News’ coverage of the meetings in Enterprise and Albertville accurately reflect his views.

“I mean, think about it,” he said. “If a Democrat lets you in the country, why would you not vote for him? That’s my opinion. What’s not my opinion is the cheap labor.”


An ‘uprising’ against Haitian immigrants

During that meeting in Enterprise, Palmer made another claim about Haitian immigrants, which would send local and state officials scrambling in a county 175 miles to the southwest.

Palmer reportedly told the audience that 1,000 Haitian immigrants were due to arrive in Baldwin County, across the bay from Mobile on the Gulf Coast, in the first week of October. He told Raw Story that since Haitians started coming to Alabama after the 2010 earthquake, he has “befriended the Haitian pastors, and this is where my information comes from.” The pastors, in turn, had learned the information from non-governmental organizations.

Two days after the meeting, the Baldwin County Citizens for Government Accountability Facebook page lit up with alarmist comments about the impending arrival of “thousands” of Haitians.

Donna Givens, who represents the county in the state House of Representatives, commented on the Facebook page, pledging to “stay on top” of the issue.

Commenters on the community's Facebook page erupted with fear and indignation as if the government was coddling a foreign enemy.

“Who are the local collaborators?” one man asked.

Some talked about stocking up on ammunition.

One woman warned that young, non-English speaking men in the dairy section at Walmart might stab local residents if they tried to squeeze past them while doing their shopping.

ALSO READ: Why Trump is barely campaigning


“Why is the governor allowing this?” one woman asked. “Are they legal? Were they sent here to flip the state? Very concerning.”

“They intend to turn red states blue and the immigrants will all vote for a Democrat,” another woman responded. “This is a conspiracy at the worst.”

“I’m so concerned for our grandchildren,” yet another woman wrote. “Life as we knew it in America is over.”







However, no Haitian immigrants have materialized in the Gulf Coast county.

“As of now, we don’t have any evidence or any proof that such a thing is going to happen,” Baldwin County Administrator Roger Rendleman told Raw Story. “We have reached out to the federal authorities. They have not responded to any of our inquires, so we can’t necessarily say there isn’t. But as of right now, we have no evidence that such a thing has occurred or is going to occur.”

Palmer had an explanation.

“They have been deterred from coming to Baldwin, number one, because of the press and the uprising,” he told Raw Story on Thursday night. “Number two, the housing.”

Instead, he said, the immigrants will be coming to Marshall County, on the north end of the state.

Palmer provided Raw Story with a screenshot from a phone text exchange with someone he described as a Haitian-American pastor.

“Are they coming here or Mobile area?” Palmer asks.

“In Marshall County,” the pastor responds.

“So, they’re not going to the Mobile area any longer,” Palmer writes. “Do you know how many? We want to be prepared.

“I want to know how much money to ask for,” he adds.

“I’m unable to provide a definite number at the moment,” the pastor responds.

Fear of immigrant voting as part of a ‘great replacement’

The idea that the government is accelerating immigration as a scheme to bank more votes for Democratic candidates is not new, but it has moved into the political mainstream since Trump’s first run for president in 2015 and 2016, said Caleb Kieffer, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“With the idea of importing a new voting bloc, this has been a longtime idea within ‘great replacement’ — that this is a coordinated effort to import the immigrants that are going to be loyal to the Democratic politicians,” Kieffer told Raw Story. “This thinking has long been prevalent in extremist circles. With the anti-Haitian rhetoric, we are really seeing this making a jump to the mainstream and showing up in electoral campaigns.”

Palmer told Raw Story he is merely sharing facts, but he doesn’t blame local residents for being angry.

“The communities have a right to be pissed off,” he said.

As to whether critics of the Biden administration’s immigration policy are blowing the impact of new immigrants out of proportion, Palmer insisted that cultural differences matter.

“When you bring a culture to the United States, the culture doesn’t know what to do,” he said.

Baseless claims that the federal government is enabling Haitian immigrants to illegally vote coupled with racist depictions of Haitians as savage and incompatible with the dominant American culture are proliferating in other communities across the country.

Cheryl Batteiger-Smith, a former Republican candidate for Indiana House of Representatives, criticized a program to help Haitian immigrants in Evansville, Ind. obtain commercial driver’s licenses through a local community college during a podcast posted on Sept. 25.

“And once they get the driver’s license, we know that they’re gonna vote,” she said. “They’re gonna vote. This is what the whole Biden administration’s end goal is, is to get them in here. ‘See what they’ve done for you. We’ve given you this free housing, free medications, free training, free any and everything. We’re gonna give you credit cards that have thousands of dollars on them…. And then, in return, we want you to vote for us.’”

In nearby Vincennes, a commenter on the Take Back Vincennes and Knox County Facebook page taunted another user for saying that those raising fears about their Haitian neighbors were misinformed because they consume Fox News.

“Betcha sing a different tune when 1 of em tries to lure your child outside or just breaks out a swinging machete over some minor infraction,” the commenter wrote on the Facebook page. “They are literally living FREE OFF OF OUR BACKS. DON’T CARE WHO YAR. A COUNTRY WORTH A S--- SHOULD ALWAYS LOOK OUT FOR THEIR VETERANS AND CITIZENS 1ST.”

Similar dehumanizing language about Haitians came up during the meeting in Albertville, Ala.

“I’ve been to Haiti… I’m not trying to be ugly, but it’s got a smell to it,” one attendee said, according to the report by 1819 News. “These people have smells to them. And I’ll tell you, these people are not like us. They don’t assimilate. They’re not here to assimilate…. These people are kind of scary.”

A 2022 poll conducted by Southern Poverty Law Center and Tulchin Research found that seven in 10 Republicans agreed with the basic premise of “great replacement” — “that demographic changes in the United States are deliberately driven by liberal and progressive politicians attempting to gain political power by ‘replacing more conservative white voters.’”

The “great replacement” narrative was cited by white supremacist mass shooters in El Paso, Texas and Buffalo, N.Y. Kieffer said the belief in “great replacement” heightens the risk of violence, while cautioning that not every white conservative who believes that the government is deliberately scheming to replace their votes and way of life is going to resort to violence.

“There’s a certain dehumanization and othering that happens if you’re going to uphold that ideology,” he said. “There’s a sense of violence that can be coupled with it. We’ve seen mass shooters motivated by that. If people really believe that they’re being replaced, people who are predisposed to violence might act.”

Following the presidential debate in which Trump turned the spotlight on the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, the tensions in Sylacauga, Ala. received renewed attention. Laura Barlow Heath, a conservative member of Sylacauga City Council, warned Fox News Digital last month local residents’ anger could turn to violence.

“I have a lot of concerns of civil unrest if we continue to not have answers to give to the people,” she said. Heath went on to say that residents are “very protective of their property” while speculating that the immigrants might engage in vandalism because “their culture is very broken right now.”

Heath could not be reached for comment for this story.

It remains unclear whether the city has experienced any change in crime that can be linked to Haitian immigrants. But Ashton Fowler, one of Heath’s fellow council members, said his interactions with a small group of Haitian immigrants who started attending his church gave him no cause for concern.

“The ones at church with me are great people,” he said during the Sept. 5 council meeting. “They want to come into church, haven’t asked for a thing, and worship and go home.

“Just as you would go to another town and buy a house and live there, they’re doing the same,” Fowler added. “We can’t ask them or watch them like a specific criminal or anything if they haven’t committed a criminal act. We know they’re here. We hope that they can provide to our economy and do things that help Sylacauga.”

Jordan Green is a North Carolina-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, covering domestic extremism, efforts to undermine U.S. elections and democracy, hate crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the staff of Raw Story in March 2021, Green spent 16 years covering housing, policing, nonprofits and music as a reporter and editor at Triad City Beat in North Carolina and Yes Weekly. He can be reached at jordan@rawstory.com. More about Jordan Green.
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GOP's voter fraud 'hysteria' bears 'striking' resemblance to 1880: columnist

Matthew Chapman
RAW STORY
October 7, 2024 

(Photo credit: Shutterstock)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, long at the forefront of efforts to prevent any expansion of voter access in America's second-largest state, is under fire after the state sent law enforcement to search and intimidate Latino activists, including a candidate for state House, as part of an investigation into "ballot harvesting."

History is repeating itself here, wrote Karen Tumulty for The Washington Post. A similar unfounded panic over illegal voting happened in southern Texas in 1880.

"My forebears would have recognized what it is going on. Then and now, officials in Texas employed heavy-handed tactics to intimidate voters, especially immigrants," she wrote.

The story began in 1850, when a group of Polish immigrants from then-Prussian-controlled Silesia fled political instability to start a new life in South Texas.

"From the port of Indianola, they walked more than 150 miles across forbidding prairie," she wrote. "Thirteen families, including that of my great-great-great grandparents Felix and Anna Maria Tudyk, established a settlement 18 miles east of San Antonio. They named it St. Hedwig, after the Catholic patroness of Silesia. Our family’s ties to St. Hedwig remain strong. My grandmother’s funeral Mass was held at Annunciation Catholic Church, which was built by those immigrants, and some of my relatives still worship there."

In the coming decades, the community fell under suspicion and distrust — partly because they did not understand or willingly support the cause of slavery when Texas fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and went on to do business with Black freedmen in the years after.

Tensions erupted in 1880, when Texas backed Democratic presidential candidate Winfield Hancock, even as Republican James Garfield managed a razor-thin victory nationwide.

"Back then, Texas elections were conducted in the open, not by secret ballot. Everyone knew who had voted for whom. And it’s not hard to imagine that feelings were sore. Local officials decided to take theirs out on five or six of the Silesians, by accusing them of voting illegally" — arguing that they had never become citizens.

While many of the Silesians were pressured into taking guilty pleas, Tumulty wrote, "one of them, Karl Zigmond, showed up in court with his passport, naturalization papers and a voter registration document dated in 1871" — and from there, everything was thrown into chaos.

"A subsequent investigation showed there was indeed some possible fraud going on — likely committed by the local officials who were running the election. Fourteen pages of district court records where the naturalization proceedings for some 300 immigrants were supposed to be recorded turned out to be ... blank. Two successive district clerks blamed each other."

The story here, she concluded, has some important lessons for the unfounded allegations of voter fraud being pushed by Paxton and other allies of former President Donald Trump.


"The integrity of our elections is under threat," wrote Tumulty — however, "as has been the case going far back in our history, some of those most determined to undermine it are the people who claim to be the guardians."
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'Eerie' similarities detailed between Trump and religious leader's 'lies' and 'delusions'

Maya Boddie, Alternet
October 7, 2024 7:17PM ET


Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump (AFP)

In an op-ed published by HuffPost last week, Cyd Chartier — a writer who grew up in the Christian Move of God group — details the "eerie resemblances" between the ministry's leader and Donald Trump.

Sam Fife, who died in 1979, founded the group in the early 1960s "after he was allegedly booted from the Baptist church for adultery," according to a Monday report by The Independent.

"Now that Trump once again threatens to take the reins of the federal government, the possibility of living under the eye of another misogynistic authoritarian regime feels frighteningly real," Chartier wrote.

Chartier's parents "bought it all," Chartier wrote, "Fife’s lies, delusions and conspiracies."

Per The Independent, the "enigmatic and autocratic leader" authored "a Divine Order doctrine in 1974 in which he claimed God had put The Move in place as a 'many-membered manchild to govern the world.'"


The report notes that Fife declared in one of his sermons that "God had selected him and his congregation to serve as warriors in the ultimate and final battle against worldly evil."

Like Fife, Trump has suggested that the two assassination attempts on his life this year might have failed because, "perhaps it’s God wanting me to be president to save this country; nobody knows."

Thinking back on the wave of emotions she had when Trump announced his 2016 presidential bid, Chartier wrote, "Under the guise of a politician with a fake tan and bad haircut was an angry man, an arrogant man, a dark and dangerous man — a man so like Sam Fife that I immediately knew I was facing the same threat I had faced as a young woman all those years ago."

She added, "Then, in 2015, as I watched Donald Trump float down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy for the US presidency, I felt a stab of recognition."

Following Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton, Chartier emphasized, "The lying, misogyny, apocalyptic language, fear-mongering and the enthusiastic embrace of conspiracy theories all set off ancient alarms inside of me. I fell into a deep depression."

She added, "And when I imagine the freedoms Trump will endanger should he regain power, that future looks untenable."


Chartier's full Huffpost op-ed is available at this link. 

The Independent's full report is available at this link.
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Checking the classifieds: Rental market in the US tightens


By Dr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
October 6, 2024


Rental prices for a single room in London reached a record high in the first quarter of this year - Copyright AFP/File Susannah Ireland

Those hoping for a smoother renting journey in 2024 may need to adjust their expectations. Considering the high lease renewal rates during this peak season (the time of year when prices are usually at their highest), along with the 94 percent occupancy and a slower pace of construction, the rental market seems very tight.

In terms of where growth is the greatest there has been a shift away from coastal cities. Instead so-termed ‘Chicagoland’ is now neck-and-neck with Miami as the biggest rental markets in the U.S.

Both appeal to younger people. Almost half of U.S. renters are under the age of 30. Renting is most common in dense urban areas, which are characterised by competitive real estate markets.

These findings are according to the company RentCafe, who has released the Rental Competitiveness Report. Central to the report is a significant shift in the national rental landscape.

The report reveals that more renters are choosing to stay put, with the lease renewal rate rising to 62 percent (up from 60 percent in peak season 2023). Additionally, fewer available units and strong demand are keeping the occupancy rate at a high 93.7 percent (a marginal 0.3 percent decrease from 2023).


These limited options mean a high number of applicants for each vacant apartment: The number of prospective renters per apartment has barely shifted, dropping from 10 to 9 since last year.


A consequence of the quick turnaround on vacant units provides less time for decision-making, as the average number of vacant days for an apartment increased to 39 (just 2 days up from 37 last year).


In terms of future growth, the share of new apartments has dropped from 0.86 percent last year to 0.65 percent this peak season, slowing the addition of modern rentals and leaving renters with fewer options to choose from.


Based on these metrics, RentCafe calculated a Rental Competitiveness Index (RCI) of 75.8 for the peak moving season, up from 69.4 in 2023, indicating a more competitive U.S. rental market.

This is in the context of each rental market (there are 137 presented in the overall report)having its own unique dynamic.
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Fact check: Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response

Daniel Dale, CNN
Mon, October 7, 2024


Former President Donald Trump has delivered a barrage of lies and distortions about the federal response to Hurricane Helene.

While various misinformation about the response has spread widely without Trump’s involvement, the Republican presidential nominee has been one of the country’s leading deceivers on the subject. Over a span of six days, in public comments and social media posts, Trump has used his powerful megaphone to endorse or invent false or unsubstantiated claims.

The chief targets of his hurricane-related dishonesty have been Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in the November presidential election, and President Joe Biden.

Monday: Trump falsely claims Biden hasn’t answered calls from Georgia’s governor

During a visit to Georgia on Monday, Trump said of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp: “He’s been calling the president, hasn’t been able to get him.”

It was immediately clear that Trump’s claim was false. Kemp, a Republican, told reporters earlier Monday that he had spoken with Biden the day prior — and that it was Kemp who had initially missed a call from Biden, not the other way around.

Kemp told reporters that he had successfully called Biden right back. Kemp added: “He just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ And I told him, you know, ‘We got what we need. We’ll work through the federal process.’ He offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly, which — I appreciate that. But we’ve had FEMA embedded with us since a day or two before the storm hit in our state operations center in Atlanta; we’ve got a great relationship with them.”

Monday: Trump cites baseless ‘reports’ about anti-Republican bias in the North Carolina response

In a social media post on Monday, Trump said of North Carolina: “I’ll be there shortly, but don’t like the reports that I’m getting about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.”

It’s unclear what “reports” Trump might have been getting, but there was no apparent basis for the underlying claim that the Biden administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper were maliciously abandoning certain communities out of partisan bias.
Trump provided no evidence when a reporter pressed him later in the day.

Thursday: Trump falsely claims the Biden-Harris response had received ‘universally’ negative reviews

Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday that Biden and Harris “are universally being given POOR GRADES for the way that they are handling the Hurricane, especially in North Carolina.”

That wasn’t even close to accurate. Though the Biden administration’s response had certainly received criticism, it had also been praised by various state and local leaders — including the Republican governors of some of the affected states and the Democratic governor of North Carolina, plus local leaders including the Democratic mayor of the hard-hit North Carolina city of Asheville.

For example, Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said at a Tuesday press conference that federal assistance had “been superb,” noting that Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had both called and told him to let them know whatever the state needed. McMaster also said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell had called.

Thursday: Trump falsely claims Harris spent ‘all her FEMA money’ on housing illegal migrants

At a campaign rally in Michigan on Thursday, Trump claimed that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.” He added in an election-related conspiracy theory, saying, “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”

This is false.

First, there is zero basis for Trump’s suggestion that the Biden administration is running some sort of scheme to get undocumented immigrants to vote illegally in the 2024 election. Voting by noncitizens is a felony.

Second, there is zero basis for claiming that FEMA disaster assistance money was stolen — by anyone, let alone Harris personally — for the housing of migrants.

Congress appropriated $650 million in the 2024 fiscal year to fund a program that helps state and local governments house migrants — and instructed US Customs and Border Protection to transfer that $650 million to FEMA to administer the program. But this $650 million pot is entirely distinct from FEMA’s pot of disaster relief funds; as the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and independent observers noted this week, they’re just two separate things funded separately by Congress.

Congress appropriated more than $35 billion in disaster relief funds for fiscal 2024, according to official FEMA statistics.

Friday: Trump falsely claims $1 billion was ‘stolen’ from FEMA for migrants and has gone ‘missing’

Though Trump’s Thursday claim about FEMA money and migrants had already been debunked by Friday, Trump repeated the claim to reporters at least twice on Friday — and then said it again at a Friday night town hall event in North Carolina.

Saturday: Trump falsely claims the federal government is only giving $750 to people who lost their homes

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump strongly suggested that Americans who lost their homes in the hurricane were only being offered $750 in federal aid.

“They’re offering them $750, to people whose homes have been washed away. And yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of. They’re offering them $750. They’ve been destroyed, these people have been destroyed,” Trump said. He added, “Think of it: We give foreign countries hundreds of billions of dollars and we’re handing North Carolina $750.”

Trump’s claim is wrong. As FEMA explained earlier in the week on social media and on a web page it created to combat misinformation about the response, $750 is merely the immediate, upfront aid survivors can get to cover basic, pressing needs like food, water, baby formula and emergency supplies. Survivors are also eligible to apply for additional forms of assistance, such as to pay for temporary housing and home repairs, that can be worth thousands of dollars; the current maximum amount for home repair assistance, for example, is $42,500.

During Harris’ visit to Georgia on Wednesday, she said, “And the federal relief and assistance that we have been providing has included FEMA providing $750 for folks who need immediate needs being met, such as food, baby formula, and the like. And you can apply now.” But she added just moments later, “FEMA is also providing tens of thousands more dollars for folks to help them be able to deal with home repair, to be able to cover a deductible when and if they have insurance, and also hotel costs.”

It’s also worth noting that this hurricane-related assistance to individual residents is separate from the hurricane-related assistance the federal government will provide to state governments. For example, the federal transportation department announced Saturday that it was immediately providing $100 million to North Carolina’s transportation department “to help pay for the costs of immediate emergency work resulting from Hurricane Helene flood damage.” Buttigieg added that this emergency funding “will be followed by additional federal resources.”

Saturday: Trump falsely claims there are ‘no helicopters, no rescue’ in North Carolina

Trump, criticizing Harris for participating in a political fundraising event in California the last weekend of September, said at the Saturday rally in Pennsylvania: “Kamala wined and dined in San Francisco, and all of the people in North Carolina — no helicopters, no rescue — it’s just — what’s happened there is very bad.”

This claim about North Carolina is false. There have been numerous government and private helicopters and other aircraft involved in rescue and aid efforts in North Carolina, though some residents died before they could be rescued and a significant number of residents have remained missing or stranded for days.

The North Carolina National Guard announced Thursday that its own air assets had “completed 146 flight missions, resulting in the rescue of 538 people and 150 pets.” The Washington Post reported Friday: “The drone of helicopters has become routine across western North Carolina in the wake of Helene. National Guard and civilian aircraft now crisscross the skies of a region where roads and bridges have been destroyed and people are trapped. The helicopters are delivering supplies, picking up people who need rescuing, dropping off firefighters and search-and-rescue crews and radioing for assistance for others who can be more easily accessed from the ground.“

CNN reported Saturday that air traffic over western North Carolina had increased 300% over the past seven days due to hurricane relief efforts, according to Becca Gallas, director of North Carolina’s Division of Aviation. The state said in an official update Saturday: “A total of 53 search and rescue teams from North Carolina and beyond, consisting of more than 1,600 personnel have conducted search and rescue operations during this event. Search and rescue teams have interacted with over 5,400 people, including assists, evacuations and rescues.”

Migrants, FEMA and $750: How Trump and his allies are spreading false claims about Hurricane Helene relief

Kelly Rissman
THE INDEPENDENT UK
Mon, October 7, 2024 

Migrants, FEMA and $750: How Trump and his allies are spreading false claims about Hurricane Helene relief


Donald Trump and his allies have spent the week in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene spreading false claims about the federal response to the devastation — misinformation that officials warn could be dangerous to survivors in need of aid.

As the death toll from Helene’s aftermath surpasses 200 and hundreds of thousands are still without power, the former president and those close to him have spent the week since the storm ripped through the southeastern part of the country spreading falsehoods about the response.

Sunday’s rally in Juneau, Wisconsin was no different. Trump baselessly claimed that as the flood waters were rising, President Joe Biden’s administration “was gone” and that survivors haven’t seen “anybody from the federal government yet.”


Not only have Biden and Kamala Harris have both paid visits to the areas wrecked by the Category 4 storm, there are also nearly 7,000 federal personnel on the ground in the affected region, according to a White House memo.

The Trump campaign, for its part, also partnered with a Christian humanitarian aid organization to supply fuel, food, water, and other resources to Georgia, a swing state.

Perhaps the most pervasive false statement is that the federal government is only providing $750 to disaster survivors.

Trump told a Butler, Pennsylvania crowd on Saturday that the administration is “offering them $750, to people whose homes have been washed away.”

“And yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of,” he said.

Meanwhile, his running mate JD Vance called it “insulting for people who have lost their homes and nearly everything to have somebody swoop in and talk about $750 like that’s a big sum of money.”

This amount has been misconstrued. The White House clarified that survivors will get an initial $750 after applying for Serious Needs Assistance, just one of many federal relief programs. This amount is meant to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, and medication. Survivors may qualify for more FEMA financial assistance. So far, the government has already provided more than $137 million in federal assistance to survivors.

Another frequently amplified falsehood revolves around a hot-button election issue: immigrants.

“They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank,” Trump said last week.

He also baselessly alleged that Harris spent “all of her FEMA” money on “housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.”

This false claim has been spread by ardent Trump supporter and tech billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and the owner of influential social media platform X, which he uses to promote the former president.

“You have migrants being housed in luxury hotels in New York City,” Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump told CNN on Sunday.

There is basis for claims that federal assistance was diverted to support migrants.

Incredibly, Trump did exactly what he now accuses Biden of doing — he redirected $155 million from the disaster fund in 2019 to pay for additional detention facilities and “migrant transportation” resources, according to a Department of Homeland notice first reported by the The Washington Post.

Kamala Harris visits areas impacted by Hurricane Helene in Augusta, Georgia, on October 2. (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

The former president has also accused the Biden-Harris administration of “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.”

Perhaps there’s no one better suited to dispute this claim than a member of Trump’s own party.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis, whose state of North Carolina was devastated by Helene, praised the federal response during a Friday media briefing.

“For anybody who thinks that any level of government, anybody here could have been prepared precisely for what we’re dealing with here, clearly, are clueless,” he said. “They’re doing a great job.”

Tillis added that he was “impressed with how much attention was paid to a region that wasn’t likely to have experienced the impact that they did.”

He also wrote an email to his constituents condemning the politicization of the recovery efforts. Although he didn’t call out Trump by name, he wrote: “The last thing that the victims of Helene need right now is political posturing, finger-pointing, or conspiracy theories that only hurt the response effort.”

Trump’s own allies also aren’t committing to returning to Congress to approve more disaster aid while criticizing the Biden administration for allegedly not delivering any. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday did not commit to calling Congress back into session before Election Day after Biden warned lawmakers about potential funding shortfalls.

Officials and others are warning that misinformation could have severe impacts on those who need assistance — especially those in the areas that could be ravaged by yet another hurricane this week.

“You know, it’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people, and that’s what we’re here to do,” FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.

“It’s also demoralizing to all of the first responders that have been out there in their communities helping people,” he added.

National Guard members organize donations to be distributed to survivors following the passing of Hurricane Helene in Hendersonville, North Carolina, on October 6. (REUTERS)

White House officials have also warned about the dangers of these false claims.

“A number of scam artists, bad-faith actors, and others who want to sow chaos because they think it helps their political interests are promoting disinformation about the recovery effort, including ways to access critical and live-saving resources,” according to a statement from communications director Ben LaBolt and director of digital strategy Christian Tom.

“This is wrong, dangerous, and it must stop immediately,” they wrote.

The editorial board for the second-largest newspaper in North Carolina have also taken issue with the conspiracy theories floated by Trump and his loyalists.

“This is not a situation to capitalize on for political gain. But former President Donald Trump has politicized the situation at every turn, spreading falsehoods and conspiracies that fracture the community instead of bringing it together,” the board wrote.

“There’s no evidence to support any of those ridiculous claims,” the board continued. “And by every indication, state and federal agencies have been working to help people in need.”

False claims about the federal response to Helene are an ominous sign for the coming election

Analysis by Brian Stelter, CNN
Sat, October 5, 2024 



False claims about the federal response to the historic devastation left by Hurricane Helene are spreading out of control on social media, hampering recovery efforts in hard-hit areas, according to local officials.

The flood of misinformation targeting the Biden administration’s response to the destructive storm is an ominous sign for the coming election, with the presidential contest between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris sure to trigger further attacks on the truth.

“If you think the lies and distortions and know-nothing takes about FEMA are bad, just wait until this time next month,” Tim Alberta, The Atlantic staff writer and author, wrote on X, one of the primary platforms where falsehoods have spread faster than facts.


Elon Musk, the X owner who has endorsed Trump, has repeatedly posted rumors and innuendo denigrating the federal government’s response to Helene. Most of the misinformation is brazenly political, portraying President Joe Biden and Harris as incompetent in an attempt to help Trump win reelection.

Politicians and emergency responders in the disaster zone stretching from Georgia to North Carolina, including many Republican elected officials, have refuted the lies and urged people to stop sharing unsupported rumors on social media.

Kerry Giles, the public information officer for Rutherford County, NC, told CNN on Saturday that debunking the rumors “did consume resources that could have been more effectively utilized in the recovery efforts.”

Giles and her colleagues issued a statement on Friday shutting down several lies swirling online about the devastated towns of Lake Lure and Chimney Rock Village. No, they said, the government is not taking over Chimney Rock; no, there is no discussion about seizing property; no, there are not dead “bodies everywhere” as a result of the storm.

“Snopes.com and regional media outlets have covered much of the debunking, which has helped to reduce some of the misinformation circulating,” Giles told CNN.

Some of the most-shared lies on social media have involved FEMA’s response. Trump has falsely claimed that relief funds are being withheld from predominantly Republican areas after the agency directed relief money to help migrants.

“A billion dollars was stolen from FEMA to use it for illegal migrants,” Trump falsely claimed Friday in Georgia.

But Trump was actually accusing the Biden administration of an act very similar to something he did as president.

“Republican elected officials keep rebutting the BS, and MAGA does not care,” conservative columnist David French said in a social media post Saturday. “They follow liars, and when the liars lie, they believe them and hate anyone who tells the truth.”

Veteran users of X say the sheer amount of bogus and baseless information on the platform is getting worse – in part because Musk reversed efforts to reduce viral misinformation and reinstated accounts of conspiracy theorists.

Officials at FEMA have published a rumor control page to push back on bogus claims, including the assertion that it “is confiscating donations for survivors.” Mike Rothschild, a journalist who has written two books about conspiracy theory culture, called FEMA’s effort “noble but doomed.” He wrote on X that “nobody who wants to believe the lies will trust the source, and the denials will just be rolled into the conspiracy theories.”

Or, as the hosts of the progressive podcast Appodlachia commented, more bluntly, “the internet has broken peoples’ brains.”

Misleading AI-generated images purporting to be from the disaster zone have been proliferating on Facebook, leading one local news station to publish a “how to spot AI-generated Helene storm photos” explainer.

As North Carolina columnist Billy Ball wrote on Friday, “We have a lot of crises in the U.S., but few are as significant as the information crisis. People are lying to us to make us hate each other, to get our money, to boost some cause or another.”

And all signs point to an even uglier climate once votes start to be counted next month

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