Watch: Meteorologist Breaks Down on Air Covering Hurricane Milton

The longest tenured meteorologist in south Florida is sounding the alarm on Hurricane Milton, warning of the storm’s strength as it hits Category 5 status.

John Morales had trouble keeping his composure on Miami’s NBC 6 Monday morning, pointing out that the hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 160 miles per hour, and climate change is the reason for the stronger hurricane.

“It is just gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico, where you can imagine, the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot, a record hot, as you might imagine,” Morales said. “You know what’s driving that, I don’t need to tell you: Global warming, climate change leading to this and becoming an increasing threat for the Yucatan, including Merida, and Progreso, and other areas there.”

Morales has seen many natural disasters in his nearly three decades of experience, but his voice was shaking as he was describing how the hurricane would affect viewers in south Florida. 

“Even though it is expected to weaken on approach, it is so incredibly strong right now that you’re going to find it very difficult for it to be nothing less than a major hurricane when it makes landfall in Florida,” Morales said.

Later, on X, Morales explained how “extreme weather driven by global warming has changed me. Frankly, YOU should be shaken too, and demand #ClimateActionNow,” and linked back to an article he wrote for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on how such hurricanes aren’t outliers anymore.

The center of Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall on Wednesday in the Tampa Bay region, which hasn’t witnessed a storm of its nature in at least a century. Climate change is going to make these kinds of storms stronger, with no regard to which countries and communities get hit. It’s good to see a meteorologist taking the risk seriously and refusing to sugarcoat what causes extreme storms, but unfortunately, politicians have not been as forthright.  While Donald Trump proudly plans to dismantle critical hurricane infrastructure, Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democrats have not boldly made a case for climate action. Maybe they should look to Morales for inspiration.

Senator Marco Rubio posted on X Monday to warn users of the severity of Hurricane Milton, an explosively intensifying Category 5 storm that is expected to make landfall in Florida in the coming days.

“Several years ago I asked @NHC_Atlantic to show me what the worst case storm hitting Florida would look like,” Rubio wrote, tagging the National Hurricane Center. “What they showed me back then is almost identical to the #Milton forecast now.”

Rubio included an image of a map, showing the forecasted storm surge from Hurricane Milton across Florida’s western coast.

While Rubio’s post functioned as explicit evidence of worsening extreme weather, as journalist Aaron Rupar pointed out, the senator has been extremely dismissive of climate change in the past.

In 2022, Rubio wrote a snide post on X (then Twitter) about the Inflation Reduction Act, deriding it as a “climate change bill.”

“While working Americans are struggling with high prices, worried about the border and terrorized by crime the Senate is spending all night voting on a democrat climate change bill,” Rubio wrote.

Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration was able to provide more than $1 billion to help communities become more resilient to extreme weather, according to the White House. Rubio voted against the measure.

Rubio spent years downplaying the causes and effects of climate change, before eventually being forced to acknowledge its increasing effects along Florida’s coastline. Still, in a 2019 op-ed, Rubio wrote that pouring money into “reactionary” climate legislation would only hurt the U.S.

“Plans stemming from panic will constrain our economy and cripple our ability to invest future resources in solving longer-term issues,” Rubio wrote. “They would also neutralize our tenuous economic advantage over China, which is doing barely anything to reduce its emissions.”

The Inflation Reduction Act wasn’t the first time Rubio neglected to support legislation that would protect his constituents from the effects of worsening storms and natural disasters. In 2021, Rubio voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill that put $47 billion toward preparing communities for extreme fires, floods, and weather.

Elon Musk and his super PAC, America PAC, have taken over the @America handle on X to promote their mission to elect Donald Trump.

Musk appeared to acquire the handle over the weekend as he spoke on stage with Trump at his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. “Read @America to understand why I’m supporting Trump for President,” read Musk’s new bio that Saturday.

Following the acquisition, the pro-Trump super PAC made a big announcement: They’ll be paying for personal information of swing-state voters.

The American PAC is offering the public a $47 referral fee for each registered swing-state voter who signs an online petition in support of the First and Second Amendments. The petition requires signers to submit their personal contact information in the process. Presumably, they will be targeted by the PAC in its quest to elect Trump.

While it is a federal crime to pay someone to vote or to register to vote, Musk’s group is skirting the law given that it’s not illegal to pay voters to sign a petition (or to pay the third party referrers in this case). But earlier this year, the super PAC was under fire by multiple states for election interference for a different data-collection scheme.

Musk’s PAC says its goal “is to get 1 million registered voters in swing states to sign in support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms,” which means Musk may have to pay up to $47 million to Trump supporters.

X users were annoyed but not surprised over the billionaire’s recent moves.

As of Monday, it’s unclear how the PAC will deliver the cash.

On the one year anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and the ensuing one year of Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza, Donald Trump took the opportunity to attack Jewish people for not supporting him enough, and to wonder aloud about developing Gaza’s real estate.

Trump called into the New York radio show Sid & Friends Monday morning, bragging that “nobody’s done more for the Jewish people than I have.”

“No person has ever been better to the Jewish people, probably no person, period, to the Jewish people and Israel,” Trump said.

The former president was on the same tack on conservative Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, talking about how much, in his eyes, he did for Israel during his four years as president.

“I think Israel has to do one thing: They have to get smart about Trump,” he said. “I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not a reciprocal, as they say. Not reciprocal.”

As one might expect, his comments didn’t go over well on social media.

Also on the podcast, Hewitt asked Trump if Gaza, which has been devastated by a brutal Israeli assault on the territory that has completely wiped out its infrastructure and claimed at least 41,000 Palestinian lives, could be “Monaco if it was rebuilt the right way.”

Trump answered the absurd question by claiming, “It could be better than Monaco, it has the best location in the Middle East, that best water, the best everything it’s got. It is the best.”

“They never took advantage of it as a developer. It could be the most beautiful place, the weather, the water, the whole thing, that climate. It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East, but it could be one of the best places in the world,” Trump added.

Trump’s own son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has spoken openly about the redevelopment prospects of “waterfront property” in Gaza, so perhaps Trump has discussed the idea with him. However, it’s quite callous to minimize the conflict as a mere real estate issue, after a year in which 1.9 million Palestinians (nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s population) have been driven from their homes and 66 percent of the territory’s buildings have been destroyed.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s alleged pursuit of being apolitical has veered straight into the hyper political.

The Republican governor has reportedly been avoiding calls from Vice President Kamala Harris in the wake of Hurricane Helene on the basis that the emergency relief calls “seemed political,” according to an aide close to DeSantis that spoke with NBC News.

“Kamala was trying to reach out, and we didn’t answer,” the unidentified source told NBC News.

The same aide told the outlet that they were not aware of any direct communication between DeSantis and President Joe Biden. Instead, DeSantis has been in contact with Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, Director Deanne Criswell.

When asked whether the White House believed that politics were seeping into the storm response, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told NBC News that it was “for the governor to speak to,” adding that the executive office had invited DeSantis to survey the damage from Hurricane Helene alongside Biden last week.

“It was his decision … to not attend or not be there with the president.... It is up to him,” Jean-Pierre said. “We are doing our part, in the Biden-Harris administration, working—obviously FEMA is work—is on the ground, all hands on deck, whole of government. Robust approach here. And so, again, that’s for Governor DeSantis to speak to.”

Across the six states that the Category 4 storm hit, at least 231 people have been reported dead, making Helene one of the deadliest recorded storms in U.S. history. Overall, Helene has been described by weather forecast offices as “one of the most significant weather events” to hit the area “in the modern era.”

But in the aftermath of that storm, another potentially devastating hurricane looms on the horizon: Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm scheduled to hit the west coast of the Sunshine State by Wednesday evening. In light of the imminent catastrophe, DeSantis has taken another suspiciously politicized route, opting not to alter the state’s voting procedures, refusing to extend the deadline for voter registration and instead curtly offering that fleeing or bunkering denizens should spend their time applying to vote now.

Extreme weather is already wreaking havoc on voting ahead of the election. Hurricane Helene upended postal service in North Carolina, potentially delaying early and mail-in voting in the crucial swing state.

Meanwhile, Republicans across the country have elevated false claims launched by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, insisting that the Biden administration diverted emergency relief funds from FEMA to aid immigration efforts.

FEMA has roundly rejected those charges, stating that the MAGA-launched rumor is “frankly ridiculous and just plain false.”

“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” Criswell said on Sunday. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people.”