Comment on Report: Mark Robinson Skips Vote on Hurricane Helene Support—Again

It appears as though Mark Robinson is hellbent on his apparent refusal to take emergency action in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Following the North Carolina lieutenant governor’s role as the sole lawmaker to skip a vote on North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s request to declare a state of emergency before Helene struck late last month, Robinson, also the Republican gubernatorial candidate, was once again the only official to fail to respond to Cooper’s executive order to increase relief efforts.

On Monday afternoon, Miami meteorologist John Morales went viral. In a video that’s been shared thousands of times on social media, Morales gave an emotional briefing on the status of then-Category 5 Hurricane Milton in the Gulf of Mexico, which is now barreling toward Central Florida. “It’s just an incredible, incredible, incredible, hurricane,” Morales said on the air for NBC 6 South Florida.

Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, has gone “Deep MAGA.” The billionaire owner of X—the “everything app“—endorsed Donald Trump seconds after the former president was nearly assassinated in July, and within a few days was hatching plans to spend $45 million to get Trump elected. On Saturday, Musk joined the former president on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he did his signature hop (which is vaguely in the shape of an X), and predicted that if Kamala Harris is elected there will be no more elections in the United States. Musk has a habit of making predictions that don’t amount to much.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday unveiled a new plan to offer a Medicare benefit to help pay for at-home, long-term care for senior citizens and people with disabilities. In announcing the plan on ABC’s daytime talk show The View, Harris said the plan could ease the caregiving burdens of the so-called “sandwich generation“—which constitutes nearly a quarter of Americans overall—as well as help people avoid the exorbitant costs of nursing homes and assisted living. “There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle: They’re taking care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents, and it’s just almost impossible to do it all, especially if they work,” Harris said.

On October 7, 2024, the Costs of War Project at Brown University released two new reports. One report from the military-research group details how much the United States government has spent aiding the Israeli military between October 2023 and September 2024. The other gathers and evaluates previously published data to estimate the human cost of this past year’s unrelenting violence.

Trump needs more messaging discipline to drive home to voters his tremendous economic record, I&I believes, following an astonishing polling result.