Letters from an American - September 29, 2024

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

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September 29, 2024. Late Friday night, Tennessee House Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison posted, President Biden has finally approved Tennessee Governor Bill Lee's state of emergency request, Bill Lee's state of emergency request, making it sound as if the delay in federal support for the state during the devastation of Hurricane Helene was Biden's fault. In fact, while Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina all declared emergencies and requested and received federal approval of those declarations before the hurricane hit. Governor Lee did not. Instead, in keeping with an April joint resolution from the Republican-dominated Tennessee legislature

calling for 31 days of prayer and fasting to seek God's hand of mercy healing on Tennessee, Lee proclaimed September 27th a voluntary day of prayer and fasting. Lee did not declare a state of emergency until late on September 27th, after flash flooding had already created havoc. President Biden approved it immediately. The extraordinary damage from Helene in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee,

and Virginia continues to mount. At least 91 people have died, and search and rescue teams are at work across several states. More than 2 million people are without power, and western North Carolina is isolated after its roads washed out. A fire at a chemical facility in Conyers, Georgia, outside Atlanta, forced the evacuation of 17,000 people nearby. The National Weather Service office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, wrote to the residents of the Western Carolinas and Northeast Georgia, this is the worst event in our office's history. Faison's implication that Democratic President Biden, rather than Republican Governor Lee,

was to blame for the slow federal response to Helene in Tennessee illustrated the Republicans' attempt to create a fake world to motivate their base with fear and anger while leaving Democrats to come up with real-world solutions. And since those solutions are popular, Republicans are claiming credit for them. In the past two days, Republican lawmakers, who just days ago voted against funding the federal government and who have railed against government spending have been out front claiming credit for getting federal disaster relief.

Republican presidential nominee Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Ohio Senator J.D. Vance have been claiming that it was Trump who capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month. Vance has accused Vice President Kamala Harris of lying when the Biden administration takes credit for it. Vance's statement itself is a breathtaking lie. Trump signed an executive order in July 2020 establishing a temporary, voluntary program that let some Medicare Part D prescription drug plans cap monthly insulin co-payments at $35. The program ran from January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2023. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in August 2022, required all Part D plans to charge no more than $35 a month for all covered insulin products. All Democrats in the House and Senate voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, and all Republicans, including J.D. Vance, voted against it.

and all Republicans, including J.D. Vance, voted against it. As Republicans have lost the support of Republican women for their attacks on reproductive rights and embrace of the misogyny of the MAGA movement, they have tried to beef up the idea that they are the country's true supporters of women and families. Trump, who has been found liable for sexual assault, has been trying to assure women, I want to be your protector.

As president, I will have to be your protector. With him back in office, he said at a rally in Pennsylvania, women will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion. Journalist Jessica Valenti noted that anti-abortion activists are running advertisements blaming the deaths of women in states with abortion bans not on those bans or those who pass them, but on the Democrats trying to protect reproductive health care. Women have died when doctors would not give them

life-saving care out of concerns about prosecution under states' abortion bans, or were unable to access abortion care. But the ads, using the names and images of women who have died under anti-abortion regimes, claim that life-saving care is still legal, but doctors don't know they can use it because of misinformation from pro-choice activists.

Anti-abortion Republican Derrick Anderson, who is running to represent Virginia's 7th Congressional District, has appeared in campaign photographs with a woman and children posed as if they are his family, but they are not. He is unmarried and childless, and the family is that of a friend. That last one is really weird, but the biggest lies from the Republicans concern immigration, especially as voters blame the Republicans for killing a strong bipartisan border bill earlier this year

after Trump demanded they keep the issue open for him to campaign on. J.D. Vance was among those who voted against it. There were the lies Vance spread about Springfield, Ohio, of course, attacking the legal Haitian immigrants there who have been credited with revitalizing the city. On Friday and Saturday, Trump lied that Vice President Harris had let 13,000 or 14,000 convicted murderers enter the U.S. in the past three years, who freely and openly roam our country, a lie that Elon Musk called true. In fact, as CNN's Daniel Dale pointed out, it is a lie. The Department of Homeland Security clarified that the data to which Trump appeared to refer lists individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years, including during his own term,

committed crimes in the U.S. rather than their country of origin, and either are currently incarcerated or have served their sentences but can't be deported because their country of origin won't accept them. Such individuals are monitored. On Saturday, Julia Terruso of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a woman in a Philadelphia suburb received a letter that looked like an official document from the fake Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs telling her that she was expected to provide living space to five migrants under a program written into law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. As Teruso wrote, no office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program.

But the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam, and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly

become a focal point. Lies establish dominance over people being lied to because lies take away a person's right to make good decisions about their own life. So what's the purpose of the Republican lies? Former President Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, but his recent attacks on special counsel Jack Smith and his attempts to sell watches for up to $100,000 a piece suggest he is interested mostly in avoiding prosecution and gathering donations.

he is interested mostly in avoiding prosecution and gathering donations. At his recent events, he is slurring his words, unable to answer questions, and seems consumed with anger and a desire for revenge against those he sees as his enemies. He has recently referred to Harris as mentally disabled, and today in Erie, Pennsylvania, he said that crime would end if you had one really violent day, one rough hour, and I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately. He has, though, focused on painting a picture of the U.S. as a hellscape overrun with undocumented criminal immigrants. Journalist Aaron Ruppar of Public Notice, who clips Trump's speeches on social media, compared yesterday's rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to the two minutes hate against political enemies in George Orwell's 1984. Trump's attacks on immigrants were so extreme, even he admitted, this is a dark

speech. Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is also doubling down on anti-immigrant attacks. In that, they are echoing the language Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban used to get voters to support him out of fear of immigrants. Then Orban took control of Hungary, undermined its democracy, and set himself up as a dictator. Once in charge, Orban insisted that democracy was obsolete. The democratic principle that the law must treat everyone equally and give them a say in their government, he said, weakens a nation by treating women, LGBTQ plus individuals,

and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as equal to white heterosexual men. Immigration weakens a nation by diluting its purity. He set out to establish what he called illiberal democracy or Christian democracy, enforcing religious rules and laws that reestablish patriarchy. Project 2025 was backed by the Right-Wing Heritage Foundation, which has ties to Orban's Danube Institute, and to the extent he talks about policies, Trump echoes that game plan.

He has promised, for example, that he would replace civil servants with loyalists, and today again vowed to get rid of the Department of Education, both key items in Project 2025. Vance has gone further, attacking secular American society itself. In 2021, he said in an interview that American conservatives have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they've ever been. We've lost big business. We've lost finance.

We've lost the culture. We've lost big business, we've lost finance, we've lost the culture, we've lost the academy. And if we're going to actually really affect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class. I don't think there's sort of a compromise that we're going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we're going to keep losing. We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power," he said. On Saturday, Vance spoke at an event hosted by right-wing extremist evangelical leader Lance Wallnau, a member of the new Apostolic Reformation movement that seeks to end the separation of church and state and put the United States under religious rule. At the event, Vance claimed that American children can't add

five plus five, but they can tell you that there are 87 different genders. He claimed that schools are teaching children radical ideas rather than reading-writing arithmetic. He called it creeping socialism in our schools and called for cutting funding for public education. funding for public education. The White House today said that more than 3,300 federal personnel are deployed in the states impacted by Hurricane Helene, and that at least 50,000 people from 31 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada are working to restore power. FEMA has moved in food and is working to restore cell coverage. Federal search and rescue teams are on the ground. The U.S. Coast Guard is working to reopen damaged ports.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is assessing damage and moving debris. The Environmental Protection Agency is working on water systems. The Small Business Administration has 50 people on the ground to support small businesses. The U.S. Department of Energy is monitoring power, fuel, and supply chains. The Department of Agriculture is extending credit to farmers who lost crops and livestock. At a campaign event in Las Vegas tonight, Vice President Harris said, campaign event in Las Vegas tonight, Vice President Harris said, we will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild. Wall now has accused Harris of practicing witchcraft. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions,

Denham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss. you