A Torrent of B.S.: Trump-led Lies About Hurricane Relief Spark Fears
Plus: Harlan Ellison Gets a Little Help from His Friends
Recently in The Bulwark:
TIM MILLER & SAM STEIN: A Woman Among Cowardly Men
JVL: Meet the Racists Who *Love* to Talk About Demographics 🔐
Overtime is for everyone. If you’re a subscriber: thank you. If you’re not, there’s no better time to subscribe to Bulwark+ than today. If you like today’s issue, you can share this newsletter with someone you think would value it.
SAM STEIN AND TIM MILLER: A Torrent of B.S.: Trump-led Lies About Hurricane Relief Spark Fears
The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene has given way to a torrent of disinformation, rumors, conspiracies and lies about the federal government’s response to the disaster.
Much of it appears to be pushed by Donald Trump and his allies, who have accused the Biden-Harris administration of a host of actions that government officials insist is simply untrue.
Trump has argued that FEMA has depleted its storm relief funds because it spent much of that money “housing” illegal migrants. His allies have accused FEMA of confiscating property, of making people apply for help, of asking for cash donations, and of preventing everyone from Elon Musk to the Department of Defense from helping out with the response efforts. Virtually all of them have pushed stories insisting that Kamala Harris told storm victims they could get only $750 in aid. (That’s just one type of assistance they can get quickly, not the full amount available.)
CATHY YOUNG: Amy Wax Has Become a Right-Wing Troll. But Her Punishment Is Wrong.
THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA’S DECISION last week to punish tenured law professor Amy Wax with a one-year suspension and other sanctions for what her defenders call controversial opinions—and her detractors call racist hate speech—has been widely criticized as an egregious assault on intellectual freedom. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) calls the sanctions “chilling”; two other groups that represent academics across the political spectrum, the conservative-dominated Academic Freedom Alliance and the politically idiosyncratic Heterodox Academy, have joined in the condemnation. Meanwhile, some on the left cheer what they see as a bigot’s overdue comeuppance, and some on the right hail Wax as a brave truth-teller. Still others caution that while the university unacceptably targeted Wax for her opinions, some charges against her may involve actual misconduct toward students.
🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧
Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: John Dickerson: Hero Story [YouTube]
Across the Movie Aisle: In the Criterion Closet 🔐
The Secret Podcast: Systems Failure 🔐
Did you know? Bulwark+ members can listen to an ad-free version of these podcasts on the player of their choice.
Learn more at Bulwark+ Podcast FAQ.
📣Bulwark+ members can now listen to ad-free podcasts on Spotify! Learn more here.
✍️Also: Did you know that every podcast has a transcript for B+ members? Yes! If you’re more a reader than a listener/viewer, open any podcast and the transcript button is beneath the player.
SONNY BUNCH: ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review
I think it’s impossible to recall the appeal of 2019’s Joker—an R-rated comic book movie without any superheroes that grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide—without remembering how weird everything felt toward the end of 2019. A simmering rage had been building for years and society writ large was finding release points: there were angry rallies for and against Donald Trump; the reckoning that was #MeToo burned through Hollywood; white supremacists were on the march on college campuses and across city streets; black-masked Antifa counterprotesters met them on the same streets and quads. It was a genuinely strange moment, one made all the stranger by the unsettled American political scene and the unsettled mind within its most famous address, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
BILL RYAN: Harlan Ellison Gets a Little Help from His Friends
I BECAME A FAN OF HARLAN ELLISON long after his heyday, long after he’d established himself not only as an uncommonly good science fiction writer, but also as a funny, unreasonable, ambitious, prolific pain in the ass. Therefore, from where I sat, the saga of the notoriously unfinished third volume of his purported trilogy of groundbreaking speculative fiction anthologies, The Last Dangerous Visions (following the genuinely influential and genre-altering Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972)), was over and done with. All anyone could do by the time I’d gotten to it was wonder what had happened, and trace the development, and crumbling away of, this book through Ellison’s own periodic references to it in his various columns and essays.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Friday! And Go Guardians! My dream of a Guardians / Mets (read: Swift/Kristol) cage match World Series is still possible. I’ve got some birthday organizing to do for this weekend’s festivities, so I’m keeping today’s Overtime section shorter, also because we have so much good new content.
🎵Still on the Jukebox…🎵 Coldplay’s All My Love, the official video of which is now out. Another great track from the album is the title track: MOON MUSiC.
Kim Wehle on Utterly Moderate! One of your favorite Bulwark contributors on one of my favorite non-Bulwark shows. Tune in.
Come see us live in Philadelphia on October 17, Pittsburgh on October 18, and greater Detroit on October 19. Tickets going on sale soon—be on the lookout, and see you there!
Someone Was Arrested For Killing Geese In Springfield… But It Wasn’t A Haitian (HuffPo)
Mark Cuban & Reid Hoffman Explain… Why Kamala Harris is the Key to Economic Growth (Business Leaders for Harris Podcast)
Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
—30—
Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.