How hurricane falsehoods are dividing the Republican Party

As Donald Trump and his allies spread false claims about Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the Republican Party has split into two camps: those who try to dispel the falsehoods, and those who are doubling down on them.

Helene made landfall on Sept. 26, tearing through parts of Florida and Georgia before devastating much of western North Carolina, ultimately causing more than 230 deaths. Milton made landfall Wednesday evening near Sarasota, Fla., bringing powerful winds, tornadoes and deadly floodwaters.

As the country digs out, Republicans in storm-battered states appear torn between the need to curb conspiracy theories and fear of drawing a rebuke from Trump just weeks before the election. Many lawmakers and officials have sought to counter these rumors without directly criticizing the former president or their party.

One of the most prevalent falsehoods spread by Trump is the claim that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has used some disaster relief funds to help migrants. Though the emergency agency and migrant relief programs are both part of the Department of Homeland Security, their funds are in separate accounts, and money earmarked for aid to migrants can’t be transferred to cover hurricane costs.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a Trump ally, has also spread the conspiracy that the government controls the weather — a theory with roots in antisemitic tropes about Jewish people manipulating world events.

Far-right conspiracist Alex Jones — who in June was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages to the families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims after spreading false conspiracies about the shooting — has spent a few weeks promoting unfounded claims about FEMA and hurricanes in his show Infowars. His live stream shared Wednesday — in which he claimed that Helene was a government-controlled weapon used against Americans — received nearly 600,000 views on the social media platform X.

Some Republicans have sought to discredit such conspiracies, warning that they could erode trust in FEMA and other officials offering lifesaving advice during disasters.

“Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government,” Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican from hard-hit North Carolina, said in a statement Tuesday. “Nobody can control the weather.”

North Carolina state Sen. Kevin Corbin was among the first GOP officials in the hard-hit region to speak out against the rampant misinformation, decrying the “conspiracy theory junk” in a Facebook post last week. Mayor Glenn Jacobs of Knox County, Tenn., also urged his followers last week to “quit spreading those rumors as they are counterproductive to response efforts.”

Edwards, Corbin and Jacobs all refrained from criticizing Trump or even mentioning the former president. In contrast, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) specifically slammed Trump on Tuesday for amplifying falsehoods about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and FEMA using disaster money on migrants.

“Trump told us that people in Springfield are eating dogs and cats. He likewise said that FEMA money, our emergency money, instead of helping people that were hit by the hurricane is being used to help illegals,” Romney said during a discussion at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “I mean, he just makes it up.”

Falsehoods about FEMA

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that FEMA ran out of money for the Helene response because it used the funding on people “who came into the country illegally.” The White House has slammed Trump’s false claim as “poison.”

Asked for comment on Trump’s false claims, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt repeated them. “The only misinformation is coming from the Biden-Harris administration,” Leavitt said in an email. “White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lied to the nation Friday when she said it is ‘categorically false’ that FEMA funds are being used to support illegal immigrants.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who visited storm-ravaged areas of North Carolina on Wednesday alongside Edwards and the state’s two Republican U.S. senators, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, defended Trump’s statements in a news conference Wednesday evening. The speaker said the former president “is expressing his frustration about the lack of resources being provided here,” and he repeated the false claims about migrants.

In the same news conference, however, Edwards said that he attributes the “rumors that are out there” about FEMA funding to “good old-fashioned storytelling.”

On Tuesday, Edwards issued a lengthy fact sheet dispelling multiple falsehoods about Helene and FEMA. The fact sheet noted that FEMA “has NOT diverted disaster response funding to the border or foreign aid,” and that NOAA official Charles Konrad has “confirmed that no one has the technology or ability to geoengineer a hurricane.”

Johnson was among the lawmakers who shared Edwards’s fact sheet on X. FEMA also set up a webpage disputing the conspiracies, stating clearly that “no money is being diverted from disaster response needs.”

Weather-control conspiracies

Greene, for her part, has continued to promote her unfounded theory that “they control the weather.” She wrote Wednesday that some of the individuals who allegedly control the weather are “listed on NOAA,” referring to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In response, Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.) shot back: “Humans cannot create or control hurricanes. Anyone who thinks they can, needs to have their head examined.”

Asked for comment, Greene spokesman Nick Dyer said the congresswoman was not suggesting that Helene was engineered by humans. He said Greene was merely trying to bring attention to what he called “weather manipulation.”

“Every one of Congresswoman Greene’s critics … want to ignore the science-based factual evidence she has shared,” Dyer said. “They are the ones peddling conspiracy theories about her.”

Greene has apologized for previously embracing the conspiracy theory that the Rothschild family used lasers from space to start wildfires. The Rothschilds, a famous European business dynasty, have repeatedly been subjected to antisemitic allegations that they and other Jews clandestinely manipulate world events for their advantage.

President Joe Biden, during a White House briefing Wednesday, chided those sharing misinformation.

“For the last few weeks, there’s been a reckless, irresponsible, relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies that are disturbing people,” Biden said. “It’s undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken and will continue to be taken. It’s harmful to those who need help most.”

Climatologists and weather experts have expressed dismay at the spread of once-fringe conspiracies about hurricanes into the mainstream.

“Yesterday, my mother told me I needed to do ‘deep research’ because everything I know and learned about hurricanes is wrong,” wrote University of Miami climatologist Brian McNoldy, who has long tracked storms in the Atlantic Ocean, on X. “I can’t even process the ignorance and brainwashing.”