Trump Tells North Carolina Hurricane Relief Depends on Midterm Outcome

President Donald Trump told a North Carolina audience that if Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley doesn’t win in November, he would withhold FEMA funds. But don’t worry, he’s only joking!

“We spent more than $2 billion, FEMA funding, and you know you’re waiting for some additional money to take care of some of the back, and I’m gonna get that to you, Michael. Now, if Michael loses, I’m not sending it, OK. No, I’m only kidding, you’re getting it. You’re going to get it, Michael, so. He’s been bugging me, he’s been bugging me,” Trump said to a packed rally in Gastonia, Whatley’s hometown Wednesday.

Trump was in North Carolina to stump for Whatley and other Republicans in the state, which is still recovering from the aftereffects of Hurricane Helene two years ago. Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in the state since 2008, but Democrat Roy Cooper is ahead in all of the state’s major polls, making Trump’s presence in North Carolina almost a requirement for the state GOP.

How much will a bad joke help, though? The Trump administration has been known to use federal funding to punish states that vote against him enough times that he has been challenged in court over it. While North Carolina hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 2008, Trump and Republicans are polling historically underwater. Not only could they lose this Senate seat, but they could set the stage for an even bigger loss in two years.

Two nominees on course to help lead America’s public health policy have distanced themselves from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and his anti-vaccine positions.

Dr. Nicole Saphier and HHS counselor Chris Klomp are on track to become the country’s next surgeon general and deputy HHS secretary, respectively. As such, both would work underneath Kennedy and his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Yet neither hesitated to rebuke the health secretary’s unscientific preachings during Senate confirmation hearings this week.

In one exchange with Republican senator (and former physician and medical educator) Bill Cassidy, Saphier explained that not only does she “not believe the [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine to be lethal” but also that she had “not seen reputable evidence that would suggest vaccines cause autism.”

“I believe the MMR vaccine is our greatest tool for combating measles,” elaborated Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News contributor. 

“That’s music,” Cassidy sighed.

“I do not believe childhood vaccines cause autism,” Saphier added.

Klomp similarly dismissed Kennedy’s hokum Tuesday, firmly endorsing the measles vaccine while describing the fight against the current measles outbreak as America’s chief public health priority.

“Unquestionably, the MMR vaccine is the single most effective public health tool that we have against measles,” Klomp told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden.

The conspiratorial rhetoric of the anti-vax movement has had disastrous effects on U.S. inoculation rates, spurring a regional measles health crisis that has killed four  people this year, a high not seen since 1992. Another 3,200 people have been infected, exceeding the tally for 2025 by hundreds of cases.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, vaccination coverage for U.S. kindergartners fell by nearly 3 percent—from 95.2 percent to 92.4 percent—between the 2025–2026 school year and the 2019–2020 school year. The dip is more significant than it seems at face value: The lowered figures place the age groups below the threshold for herd immunity that would protect even unvaccinated members of a community (95 percent.)

Democratic officials have called for Kennedy to be removed from his post since letters emerged unequivocally tying his 2019 anti-vax propaganda trip to Samoa to a lethal measles outbreak that occurred on the island later that year.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey said in a statement that Kennedy “cannot be trusted to run HHS for even one more day,” while Hawaii Governor Josh Green—who personally witnessed the Samoan outbreak—said Kennedy needed to immediately resign “for the safety and health of our country.”

Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks told CNN that America’s current measles outbreak could be “tied directly to the horrific leadership of Secretary Kennedy.”

President Trump had yet another predictable meltdown after his handpicked Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, refused to lower interest rates—instead raising them for the first time in three years.

“Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World—BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year,” Trump wrote Wednesday afternoon on Truth Social. “The word ‘Deficit’ is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!”

Lower interest rates are something Trump has demanded since he returned to office.

The Federal Reserve unanimously voted to increase interest rates by 0.25 percent, bringing its flagship rate to between 3.75 and 4 percent.

Trump’s demand for lower interest rates clearly fell on deaf ears, as Warsh told reporters after his rate hike announcement that he had “nothing” on “the discussion with the president.”

While used to lower inflation, raising interest rates also makes it more expensive to borrow money—something millions of consumers will be affected by, and right before midterm elections in November.

The Trump administration is admitting that Trump’s proposed “Triumphal Arch” in Washington, D.C., will harm historical sites, but claims it must be built anyway.

The Washington Post, citing a National Park Service document and email correspondence, reports that government officials fully acknowledge that the proposed arch, which would be built on the Memorial Circle traffic roundabout, would overshadow the nearby Arlington National Cemetery and have negative impacts on other historic sites, including the Lincoln Memorial.

The “adverse effects cannot be fully avoided,” an NPS document states, but there’s nowhere else that the arch can be built because “the proposed location at Memorial Circle is central to the undertaking.” The document is a proposed agreement that Trump officials want historical preservation organizations to sign as part of federal requirements.

“NPS recognizes that Memorial Circle is located within a highly sensitive historic and commemorative landscape and that the Undertaking’s location contributes to adverse effects to historic properties whose significance is associated with setting, design, feeling, association, spatial organization, circulation, and contributing views and vistas,” the document states.

The only remedies the White House is offering to these negative effects are new signs and web pages explaining the project to the public, managing construction so as not to interfere with burials at the cemetery, and documenting the surrounding landscape before beginning to build.

An email states that the NPS asked historical preservationists and other groups to review and sign the agreement by noon Monday, which would overcome legal hurdles and secure final approval for the arch. The White House hopes to submit the project to the National Capital Planning Commission for final approval as early as November.

Three veterans and an architectural historian have sued to stop the arch’s construction, and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan last week ordered the government to give 48 hours before breaking ground on the project, which the Trump administration is fighting. But considering that the White House just admitted that the underlying reason for the lawsuit is valid, the arch may be tied up in court for a while.

Postmaster General David Steiner wants out.

The United States Postal Service chief told individuals close to him that he wants to resign from his post, according to a report from Reuters on Wednesday. “The message was, this isn’t what he signed up for, and he didn’t come on board to get beat up like this,” one source said.

This report comes as President Trump has been attempting to use the supposedly independent mail service to do his bidding in his last-minute midterm election interference, commanding it to only deliver ballots if they had a unique barcode and if states handed over voter lists to the agency. The Supreme Court struck that dream down on Monday, just two days before reports of Steiner’s discontent.

USPS has denied the report, saying it has “absolutely zero ⁠validity.”

Steiner was apparently most discouraged after an intense Senate hearing earlier this summer in which he essentially admitted under oath that USPS would bend the knee to Trump’s attacks on vote-by-mail.

However, sources familiar with Steiner’s plans told Reuters his discontent stretched back even further. The White House was making efforts to assuage Steiner since the end of last year, with donors even setting him up on a golf outing with Trump on one of his properties in Florida in December.