Letters from an American - October 7, 2024

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

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October 7th, 2024. People in Florida are evacuating before Hurricane Milton is expected to hit the state's Gulf Coast on Wednesday evening, bringing tornadoes, high winds, a dramatic storm surge, and upwards of 15 inches of rain. Milton grew from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in a little over a day, fed by water in the Gulf of Mexico that climate change has pushed in some places to 4 degrees Fahrenheit or 2.2 degrees Celsius, higher than normal. Veteran Florida meteorologist and hurricane specialist John Morales choked up as he called it horrific. President Joe Biden has approved an emergency declaration for Florida, enabling the federal government to move supplies in ahead of the

storm's arrival. But the state's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has refused to take a call from Vice President Kamala Harris about planning for the storm. When asked about DeSantis' refusal at today's White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that the president and vice president have reached out to give support to the people of Florida. As for DeSantis, it's up to him if he wants to respond to us or not, but what we're doing is we're working with state and local officials to make sure that we are pre-positioned to make sure that we are ready to be there for the communities that are going to be

impacted. We are doing the job to protect the communities and to make sure that they have everything that is needed. When asked about DeSantis' snub, Harris answered, it's just utterly irresponsible and it is selfish and it is about political gamesmanship instead of doing the job that you took an oath to do, which is to put the people first. Before this year, Florida had goals of moving toward clean energy, but in May 2024, DeSantis signed a law to restructure the state's energy policy so that addressing climate change would no longer be a priority. The law deleted any mention of climate change in state laws, saying that Florida rejects the designs of the left to weaken our energy grid, pursue a radical climate agenda,

and promote foreign adversaries, the governor posted a graphic on X that said the law would insulate Florida from green zealots. Like DeSantis, Trump and Project 2025, a playbook for the next Republican administration, authored by allies of the Right-Wing Heritage Foundation and closely associated with Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, take the position that concerns about climate change are overblown. Project 2025 says the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, whose duties include issuing hurricane warnings, is one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.

It calls for either eliminating its functions, sending them to other agencies, privatizing them, or putting them under the control of states and territories. The U.S. Supreme Court came back in session today in Washington, D.C. It has decided not to hear arguments about whether the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTLA, overrules Texas's state abortion ban. EMTLA requires that hospitals provide emergency abortion care to save a woman's life or stop organ failure or loss of fertility. Texas's ban remains in place. As legal analyst Joyce White Vance commented, at least no one can pretend we don't understand the consequences for women and others of putting appointments to the court back in Republican control. The Georgia Supreme Court today reinstated the state's six-week abortion ban after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney,

appointed in 2012 by Republican Governor Nathan Deal, decided last week that the law violates Georgia's constitution. In his decision, McBurney wrote that liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights, the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her health care choices. McBurney's decision came shortly after a state investigation revealed that at least two women in Georgia died after the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision struck down the abortion protections the court put in place in 1973 with Roe v. Wade.

In anticipation of an end to Roe, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in 2019 signed a six-week abortion ban prohibiting the procedure before most women know they're pregnant. The Dobbs decision allowed that law to go into effect. The Georgia Supreme Court stayed McBurney's decision during the state's appeal of it. Chris Geidner of Lawdork noted that the court did leave in place McBurney's block on the law's provision that district attorneys can have access to health

records where an abortion is performed or where someone who received an abortion lives. In her attempt to reach new audiences, Vice President Harris sat down for an interview with Alex Cooper of the Call Her Daddy podcast to talk about women's issues. Call Her Daddy is the second most popular podcast in the country, reaching as many as 2 million downloads per episode. According to NPR's Elena Moore, Call Her Daddy's audience is 70% women, 93% under 45. Cooper began the interview by acknowledging that she does not usually talk about politics, but at the end of the day, I couldn't see a world in which one of the main conversations in this election is women, and I'm not a part of it.

I am so aware that I have a very mixed audience when it comes to politics. So please hear me when I say that my goal today is not to change your political affiliation. What I'm hoping is that you're able to listen to a conversation that isn't too different from the ones that we're having here every week. Cooper said she had also reached out to Trump, adding, if he also wants to have a meaningful, in-depth conversation about women's rights in this country, then he is welcome on Call Her Daddy anytime. On the podcast, Cooper and Harris talked about the prevalence of sexual assault before addressing abortion.

When Cooper quoted Trump's promise to protect women, Harris noted that he was the one who appointed the three extremists to the Supreme Court that overturned Roe versus Wade, and that 20 states now have abortion bans, some with no exceptions for rape or incest. Harris pointed out that the majority of women who receive abortion care are mothers, and that every state in the South except for Virginia has an abortion ban. For a woman in those states, and one out of every three American women lives in one,

the journey is expensive, hard, and traumatic. You don't have to abandon your faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government shouldn't be telling her what to do, Harris said. And that's what's so outrageous about it, is a bunch of these guys up in these state capitals are writing these decisions because they somehow have decided that they're in a better position to tell you what's in your best interest than you are to know what's in your own best interest. It's outrageous. Harris pointed out that she is the first vice president or president to go to a reproductive health care clinic. and she noted that those clinics perform pap smears, breast cancer screening, and HIV testing, and that they are having to close

because of the abortion bans. She noted, though, that since Dobbs, people across the country have chosen to protect abortion rights. The article in the Right-Wing National Review about the interview was titled, Kamala Goes on Sex Podcast to Lie About Georgia Abortion Law. audience. When Cooper asked her how she was going to help young people not feel left behind, Harris agreed it is a very real issue and we need to take it seriously. She promised to address housing costs by increasing the housing supply, working with home builders in the private sector to build 3 million new housing units by the end of her first term, help with $25,000 down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, and enact tax cuts for 100 million middle-class working people, including a $6,000 tax credit for new parents to help them afford the costs of a child's first

year. The Committee for a Responsible Budget noted today that a moderate reading of Harris's economic plans suggests they would increase the U.S. debt by about $3.5 trillion through 2035. A similar examination of Trump's plans say they would increase the debt by $7.5 trillion. Meanwhile today, Trump openly embraced the race science favored by Nazis. In a scattered call to right-wing host Hugh Hewitt's show, Trump called Harris a communist and lied again that she has let 13,000 murderers into the country. And then he claimed that murder is in a person's genes, and we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. He also noted that it would be very dangerous for anyone to admit they were voting for Kamala Harris at one of his rallies because they would get hurt.

Hurricane Milton spurred meteorologist John Morales to step forward to take a stand, sharing his thoughts after Hurricane Helene hit. Something shifted, he wrote, and it's not just the climate. He noted that with Helene on the way, I did what I've done during my entire 40-year career. I tried to warn people. Except that the warning was not well received by everyone.

A person accused me of being a climate militant, a suggestion that I'm embellishing extreme weather threats to drive an agenda. Another simply said that my predictions were an exaggeration. But it wasn't an exaggeration, he wrote. For decades, I had felt in control, not in control of the weather, of course, but in control of the message that if my audience was prepared and well informed, I could confidently guide them through any weather threat, and we'd all make it through safely. But no one can hide from the truth. Extreme weather events, including hurricanes, are becoming more extreme. I must communicate the growing threats from the climate crisis, come hell or high water. Pun intended.

Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Denham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.