Biden fails his Hurricane Katrina moment

“I didn’t know which storm you’re talking about,” President Joe Biden said this week, as Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States. “They’ve gotten everything they need. They’re very happy across the board,” he said, as private citizens have stepped in to fill the void created by the federal government’s lackluster response.

Some Americans who have flown helicopters to rescue victims from the storm have reportedly been threatened with arrest, including one who is a volunteer firefighter. Nevertheless, Biden insists that Americans have what they need, and Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to rush to the scene after promising one-time payments of $750.

If the federal government’s response were sufficient, private citizens would not need to use their own drones to search for survivors, and Elon Musk would not need to have Starlink systems delivered so that Americans can access the internet to let their loved ones know that they are still alive. 

Biden’s slow response time hasn’t been because he’s particularly busy, either. Axios’s Alex Thompson reported that Biden rarely has any public events, and has next to none outside the hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It has also been a hallmark of his administration’s lack of alacrity when it comes to responding to a series of domestic crises. Biden took around a year to visit East Palestine, Ohio, following a massive train derailment, and Harris has barely been to the southern border since taking office. 

President George W. Bush’s legacy is still defined in part by photos of him looking at the devastation of Hurricane Katrina from a window; Biden’s legacy — and to a certain extent, Harris’s — should be defined in part by how he chose to vacation over a forceful response to the chaos left in Hurricane Helene’s wake.

-Matthew Foldi

On our radar

NO LONGER HIDIN’ BIDEN President Joe Biden will campaign for incumbent senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania as Democrats fear their chances in the pivotal swing state. Recent polls found Casey with a mere three-point lead over Republican challenger Dave McCormick, and the presidential race remains effectively tied. 

STRIKE ON DELAY The longshoreman strike has been delayed until January after a two-day work stoppage amid negotiations over wage increases and automation. The port workers will receive a 62 percent wage increase over six years — well above the 50 percent previously offered by employers — and will continue to negotiate outstanding issues through January. 

SMITH FILING MADE PUBLIC A new court filing by special counsel Jack Smith was released Wednesday by a federal judge. Trump called its release “weaponization of government” and “election interference,” as Smith’s case has been delayed for trial until after the November election. 

Project 2025, persona non grata

Project 2025 reared its ugly head again this week during the vice-presidential debate showdown in which Senator JD Vance took Governor Tim Walz to the cleaners. In between gasping for air, Walz again falsely tied Donald Trump and Vance to the Heritage Foundation project that they’ve distanced themselves from more times than Walz falsely claimed to have been in combat zones.

While Walz is wrong to tie the GOP ticket to the extremely unpopular project, behind-the-scenes panic and fall-out over the effort has been intense in recent days. 

One conservative policy adviser told The Spectator that “email traffic between volunteers used to be lively and is now dead,” adding that, “people involved have been asking staff to scrub their names from documents.” 

Following the joint declaration of war on Project 2025 by both Trump and his top strategists, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, “volunteers are terrified they’ll be blacklisted” should Trump win, the adviser noted. 

This behind-the-scenes drama follows months of public dumping on the effort by the Trump orbit. Howard Lutnick, one of the co-chairs of Trump’s transition efforts, recently said that Project 2025 is “radioactive,” and that he would say “no thank you” to résumés delivered to him by the organization. 

The war has not been one-sided, however. Paul Dans, Project 2025’s recently-ousted head, went on CNN to blast Trump’s campaign team. John McEntee, a senior adviser to Project 2025, recently posted a video of him chowing down on a Chipotle burrito and condemning Israel for its targeted elimination of Hezbollah terrorists via exploding pagers. McEntee is also under fire for allegedly interacting inappropriately with eighteen-year-old girls on a conservative dating app he helped start.

Meanwhile, Kevin Roberts, the academic-turned-podcaster who helms Heritage, has made a name for himself in part by opposing the neoconservative tendencies in the GOP. But, his feud with Trumpworld has many pondering whether a regime change is in store at Heritage, regardless of next month’s outcome.

“Roberts has overseen one of the most damaging efforts to a presidential candidate in history,” a GOP campaign consultant quipped. “What does that hold for his future?”

–Cockburn

Reliable divorces

Taylor Lorenz — a journalist known for questions about her age, her unrelenting belief in the existence of “long-Covid,” and her strange habit of messaging teenagers — announced with much fanfare that she is quitting “legacy media” to spend more time engaging with Gen-Z influencers and writing about them on her Substack.

The New York Times and Daily Beast alumna’s departure from the Washington Post comes after the outlet launched an internal probe into a post from Lorenz in which she appeared to call President Joe Biden a “war criminal.” Lorenz, who frequently covers the dangers of so-called misinformation, claimed the screenshot was doctored before claiming that she never “denied it was real.”

Despite lamenting that the legacy media won’t allow her to be buddy-buddy with her subjects, Lorenz announced her move in a lengthy interview with the Hollywood Reporter, an outlet founded almost 100 years ago. Paid subscriptions start at as little as $7 a month, roughly one-third the price she paid for a now-infamous avocado toast in 2018, but interested parties can offer to pay up to $1,000 a month. 

Current titles on her site include, with no sense of irony, “Stop letting right wing influencers cosplay as ‘independent’ media,” “The panic over kids and smartphones has gone too far,” and “Why are kids crying to AI-generated cat videos?”

It is not immediately clear how Lorenz’s Substack coverage will differ from what the Post allowed her to print. The forty-something journalist infamously doxxed Chaya Raichik, the creator of the @LibsofTikTok account, in the pages of the Post. 

Doxxing her subjects has been a passion for Lorenz, who outed the girls who ran a popular Instagram account as being the kids of right-wing commentator Pamela Geller. Her reporting immediately got a planned show for the girls canceled, which she gleefully reported on as well.

Lorenz’s exit from legacy media isn’t giving too many in that esteemed realm pause. “It all finally caught up with her,” a fellow journalist noted to Cockburn.

–Cockburn