A state of emergency
Hello, and welcome to the last issue of Grist’s special series on how climate disasters are shaping elections. I’m Zoya Teirstein.
I was at an election night watch party in Asheville, North Carolina, last week when it became clear that Vice President Kamala Harris’ path to victory had become impossibly narrow. On the drive back to my hotel, I detoured around roads that had been carved away by Hurricane Helene two months prior. It’ll take years for Asheville, Black Mountain, Swannanoa, and other hard-hit communities in western North Carolina to recover from that storm. Residents will be reliant on the next White House administration to ferry them safely through this disaster and any others that may strike in the next four years.
As the final ballots were counted, evidence mounted that Donald Trump had swayed a significant number of U.S. voters to the right. But political observers pointed out that a handful of the very few counties nationwide that bucked the trend — actually moving further left this presidential election cycle — happened to fa... Read
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