Summary
We’re wrapping up our live coverage of US politics for today, but our live coverage of what is happening now in Israel and Lebanon will continue.
Some of today’s key events:
A Georgia judge struck down Georgia’s restrictive ban on abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, and ruled that abortion care could once again be provided until around 22 weeks of pregnancy.
The ruling follows weeks of national scrutiny after a ProPublica investigation of what experts called the “preventable” deaths of two Georgia women, related to the state’s punitive anti-abortion law.
Fulton County superior court judge Robert McBurney’s ruling overturning the abortion ban was strongly worded, arguing that, “Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” and that forcing women to remain pregnant is a kind of “involuntary servitude,” which forces “primarily poor women, which means in Georgia primarily black and brown women – to engage in compulsory labor, ie, the carrying of a pregnancy to term at the government’s behest.”
In the wake of Hurricane Helene, as many as 600 people are still unaccounted for, and at least 100 confirmed dead, the White House said.
Donald Trump made a series of baseless claims related to the Biden administration’s handling of Hurricane Helene, asserting without evidence that his Democratic rivals “left Americans to drown” and claiming at an election event that Biden had not spoken with Republican Georgia governor Brian Kemp in the wake of the storm. (Kemp told reporters they had spoken.)
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris expressed support for legalizing marijuana.
Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has won the endorsement of Rudy Giuliani’s daughter, who declared: “I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad to [Donald] Trump. I cannot bear to lose our country to him too.”
Caroline Rose Giuliani was writing in Vanity Fair, where she lamented how her father, who was once the former president’s personal attorney and trusted adviser, became caught up in the “destructive trail” and chaos of the Trump administration and its aftermath.
“I’m unfortunately well suited to remind Americans of just how calamitous being associated with Trump can be, even for those who are convinced he’s on their side,” wrote Giuliani, a California-based film-maker and activist who has frequently taken issue with her father’s political positions.
“I am constantly asking myself how America is back here, even considering the possibility of electing Donald Trump again, after all of the damage he has caused, both in office and since. There are unmistakable reminders of Trump’s destructive trail all around us, and it has broken my heart to watch my dad become one of them.”
Rudy Giuliani, who became an immensely popular mayor of New York after guiding the city through the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, paid a severe price for promoting Trump’s lies that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent.
On Wednesday, Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz will debate Republican Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance for the first time. That debate takes place at 9pm EDT and we will bring it to you live.
Updated
Here is more on Biden’s comments, from the press pool report:
Asked about comments from Donald Trump, who has accused him and Governor Cooper of ignoring Republican-voting areas in their response to Helene, POTUS angrily interjected before pool finished asking the question.
“He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying. The governor told him he’s lying. I’ve spoken to the governor, spent time with him, and he told him he’s lying. I don’t know why he does it … that’s simply not true, and it’s irresponsible.”
POTUS also defended spending the weekend in Delaware when asked about the matter. He said Wilmington, Delaware is “90 miles from here.”
“I was on the phone the whole time,” he added.
He also held up what he said was “a list of every resource we’re getting in there” and said the question of most import was “how to get it in.”
“It’s hard to get it from point A to point B. It’s hard to get if somebody’s roads are wiped out. None of these are wiped out. There’s no ability to land, there’s no ability to get trucks, and no ability to get a whole range of things.”
Donald Trump spoke in front of a furniture store gutted by Hurricane Helene in Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, claiming falsely that Georgia’s governor had not been able to reach Joe Biden.
Upon landing in Valdosta, Trump claimed to reporters the president was “sleeping” and that Brian Kemp, the governor, was “calling the president and hasn’t been able to get him”. He repeated the claim when speaking in front of the store.
Kemp refuted the allegation earlier in the day. He said he had been playing phone tag with vice-president Kamala Harris, but also said: “The president just called me yesterday afternoon and he just said ‘Hey, what do you need?’ … He offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly, which, I appreciate that.”
During the White House press briefing on Monday, the homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall said the president offered Kemp “anything” Georgia needed in terms of storm response.
“So, if the governor would like to speak to the president again, of course, the president will take his call,” Sherwood-Randall said.
Trump traveled to the area with evangelist Franklin Graham and truckloads of relief supplies in tow.
“We brought many, many wagons of resources,” he said, without really describing what those resources were beyond a tanker of gasoline and some water. The Billy Graham Evangelical Association did not respond to a request for comment, though its website notes that it has sent chaplains to the affected areas.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins says that Biden has responded to Trump’s baseless claims earlier saying that Governor Kemp Biden had not spoken with Republican Georgia governor Brian Kemp in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Collins reports that, speaking in the Oval Office, Biden said Trump was lying. Collins said Biden spoke angrily, saying: “He is lying. Let me get this straight: he’s lying...I’ve spoken to the governor. I’ve spent time with him and he told me he’s lying. I don’t know why he does this.”
Biden, seated in the Oval Office, angrily says Trump is lying. "He is lying. Let me get this straight: he's lying...I've spoken to the governor. I've spent time with him and he told me he's lying. I don't know why he does this."
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 30, 2024
Joe Biden has released a statement on crime rates, noting that the rates of homicide and violent crimes have declined, and that the homicide rate, in particular, is falling at “record speed”.
The rate of violent crime has declined to its lowest level in 55 years, Biden says.
The comments come as Donald Trump is accused of invoking plotlines similar to The Purge – a dystopian horror film in which officially sanctioned murder is occasionally legal – as a possible solution to crime in the US after saying it could be eradicated in “one really violent day”.
Biden said, in part:
This year, the homicide and violent crime rates have continued their rapid decline from their peaks during the last administration. According to new preliminary data submitted to the FBI, in the first half of this year, the homicide rate continued to fall at record speed, declining by 22.7%, while the violent crime rate fell by 10.3% to its lowest level since 1969. These record decreases follow the historic declines in crime in 2023, including the largest-ever decrease in the homicide rate. Communities across our country are safer now than when I took office.
Under the previous administration, we saw the biggest increase in murder rates on record.”
This is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US politics coverage.
Asked about Donald Trump’s claims today that Democratic leaders were failing to help Americans in storm-damageed Republican areas of North Carolina, president Joe Biden said, “He’s lying.”
Today’s White House pool reporter noted that, when asked about Trump’s comments, Biden “ angrily interjected” before the reporter was even done with the question.
“He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying,” Biden said. “The governor told him he’s lying. I’ve spoken to the governor, spent time with him, and he told him he’s lying. I don’t know why he does it … that’s simply not true, and it’s irresponsible.”
After a Georgia judge’s ruling struck down the state’s restrictive 2019 abortion law, which abortion after roughly around six weeks of pregnancy, advocates and analysts have highlighted the order’s bold arguments, which invoked the Handmaid’s Tale and compared certain kinds of abortion bans to “involuntary servitude” or “compulsory labor.”
Some advocates, like senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, have highlighted the broader importance of Georgia allowing access to abortion care through 22 weeks of pregnancy, since many surrounding states in the south also have very restrictive anti-abortion laws.
This map does a great job of explaining why blocking the enforcement of Georgia’s abortion ban is so important — especially for women in the South. https://t.co/iDqN32mmRB pic.twitter.com/jGCP8FEfqf
— Tina Smith (@TinaSmithMN) September 30, 2024
Others, like my colleague Carter Sherman, have noted that this ruling comes after Georgia has made national headlines after a ProPublica investigation into the deaths of two Georgia women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, who died what experts called “preventable” deaths after delays in care that were related to Georgia’s anti-abortion law.
A Georgia committee of experts in maternal health deemed Candi Miller’s death “preventable.” The group, which includes 10 doctors, directly blamed the state’s abortion ban.https://t.co/SohvOopPxp
— ProPublica (@propublica) September 30, 2024
Thurman died after waiting 20 hours for emergency care under the state’s abortion ban. Sen. Ron Wyden demanded records his committee could review to determine whether the hospital violated the law. “It’s not even a question,” one expert said.https://t.co/42Z3meMpT1
— ProPublica (@propublica) September 29, 2024
Georgia judge describes ‘subtext of involuntary servitude’ in abortion debate
Another key quote from the order, by Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney, that overturned Georgia’s restrictive ban on abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy, which state legislators passed in 2019:
“There is an uncomfortable and usually unspoken subtext of involuntary servitude swirling about this debate, symbolically illustrated by the composition of the legal teams in this case. It is generally men who promote and defend laws like the Life Act, the effect of which is to require only women – and, given the socio-economic and demographic evidence presented at trial, primarily poor women, which means in Georgia primarily black and brown women – to engage in compulsory labor, ie, the carrying of a pregnancy to term at the government’s behest.”
Read my colleague Carter Sherman’s full report here:
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Who is Judge Robert McBurney, who struck down Georgia’s restrictive abortion ban?
It’s not the first time Robert C I McBurney, a Fulton county superior court judge based in Atlanta, has made national headlines.
McBurney previously struck down Georgia’s very restrictive ban on abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy and he also presided over parts of the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and key allies, a case that is currently stalled.
McBurney, a former federal prosecutor, was appointed to his role in 2012 by Republican governor Nathan Deal, to fill the seat of a judge who was retiring. He has since run for reelection and won.
In 2023, a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called McBurney “the hardest working judge in Georgia” and said that a joke recently at the Atlanta courthouse was , “Aren’t there any other judges in the county?”
McBurney is also set to hear a key case on election regulations in Georgia tomorrow, the Associated Press reports.
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Georgia judge: ‘Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property’
Some key quotes from the order in which Judge Robert McBurney struck down Georgia’s extremely restrictive abortion ban:
Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.
… [T]he liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could – or should – force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.
… [L]iberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.
Updated
Why a judge in Georgia struck down the state’s very early abortion ban
More from the Associated Press on the legal reasoning behind the order:
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his order that ‘liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.’
McBurney wrote that his ruling means the law in the state returns to what it was before the law was passed in 2019:
When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then – and only then – may society intervene.
An “arbitrary six-week ban” on abortions “is inconsistent with these rights and the proper balance that a viability rule establishes between a woman’s rights of liberty and privacy and society’s interest in protecting and caring for unborn infants”, the order says.
Updated
Abortions in Georgia can once again be performed through 22 weeks – report
After a judge in Georgia struck down the state’s ban on abortions once a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat, which is usually about six weeks into pregnancy, the procedure is once again legal in Georgia through about 22 weeks of pregnancy, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
More context from the Associated Press:
When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 and ended a national right to abortion, it opened the door for state bans. Fourteen states now bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Georgia was one of four where the bans kick in after about the first six weeks of pregnancy – which is often before women realize they’re pregnant.
Updated
Judge strikes down Georgia's abortion ban - report
A judge in Georgia struck down the state’s ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
The law was similar to many passed by Republican-led states after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Democrats, including Kamala Harris, have recently seized on the law as an example of the consequences of electing Donald Trump and the Republicans, after a woman was reported to have died in the state after being denied lifesaving care due to the law. Here’s more on that:
Up to 600 people unaccounted for in Hurricane Helene, White House says
As many as 600 people remain missing after Hurricane Helene swept through the south-eastern United States, White House homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall told reporters.
“The current data we have is that it looks like there could be as many as 600 loss of lives, but we don’t have any confirmation of that. We know there are 600 who are either lost or unaccounted for, and so that work is ongoing,” Sherwood-Randall said at the White House press briefing.
She added that there’s a high degree of uncertainty to the numbers:
I’ll caution you, because we’ve seen this before. Those numbers vary widely. There’s a lot of reporting that doesn’t add up about the numbers. And so, while we may see the numbers go up as we get to more locations that have not yet been fully developed in terms of disaster immediate emergency response operations, we may see more people who unfortunately perished, but we may also not see the numbers skyrocket as people have predicted they might.
Authorities in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and elsewhere have already confirmed more than 100 deaths from the storm that swept in from the Gulf of Mexico:
Updated
Donald Trump’s dystopian vision for the United States took a new turn on Sunday, when he mulled adopting something only seen in horror films to fight crime. The Guardian’s Robert Tait has more:
Donald Trump has been accused of invoking plotlines similar to The Purge – a dystopian horror film in which officially sanctioned murder is occasionally legal – as a possible solution to crime in the US after saying it could be eradicated in “one really violent day”.
In what was seen as an extreme display of demagoguery even by his standards, Trump drew cheers from an audience in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a picture of an out-of-control crime spree that he said could be ended “immediately” with one “real rough, nasty day”, or “one rough hour”.
“You see these guys walking out with air conditioners with refrigerators on their back, the craziest thing,” Trump said. “And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re told, if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension.
“They’re not allowed to do it because the liberal left won’t let them do it. The liberal left wants to destroy them, and they want to destroy our country.”
In a passage that provoked a storm on social media, the former president and Republican nominee then said: “If you had one day, like one real rough, nasty day with the drug stores as an example, where, when they start walking out with … ”
Updated
Further evidence that Donald Trump has no intention of giving the politicking a rest in the wake of Hurricane Helene can be found on X, where he implies, once again without evidence, that North Carolina’s Democratic governor Roy Cooper is frustrating the humanitarian response.
“I’ll be there shortly, but don’t like the reports that I’m getting about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas,” Trump wrote.
North Carolina is considered a swing state in this election, though it has not voted for a Democratic candidate since 2008, and polls there have lately shown Trump with a narrow lead.
The governorship seems to be slipping away from GOP candidate Mark Robinson, after CNN broke the news that he had a long history of making lewd and offensive comments on a pornography websites’s message board. Here’s the latest on that fiasco:
Trump makes baseless claim that Biden administration 'left Americans to drown'
When he spoke before a furniture store gutted by Hurricane Helene in Valdosta, Georgia, Donald Trump insisted he was not there for political purposes. His social media posts tell a different story.
About an hour ago on Truth Social, he seized on the below tweet from Kamala Harris:
I was just briefed by @FEMA_Deanne Criswell on the latest developments about the ongoing impacts of Hurricane Helene. We also discussed our Administration's continued actions to support emergency response and recovery.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) September 30, 2024
I also spoke with @NC_Governor Cooper about the ongoing… pic.twitter.com/nlZPB0h3mO
The former president wrote that the photo of the president was “FAKE and STAGED”, without providing evidence, then went on to accuse both Harris and Joe Biden of leaving “Americans to drown in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and elsewhere in the South”.
“Under this Administration, Americans always come last, because we have ‘leaders’ who have no idea how to lead!” Trump added.
Thousands of Americans died in hurricanes that struck Texas, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere during Trump’s presidency. After he left office, a report found that his administration unnecessarily delayed emergency money for Puerto Rico, after it was devastated by Hurricane Maria:
Updated
Donald Trump attempted to put politics aside as he spoke before a furniture store damaged by Hurricane Helene in Valdosta, Georgia.
That’s despite the fact that he had minutes earlier accused Joe Biden of not speaking to the state’s governor Brian Kemp following the storm, even though the White House said the two men spoke on Sunday.
“As you know, our country is in the final weeks of a hard-fought national election, but in a time like this, when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, none of that matters. We’re not talking about politics now. We have to all get together and get this solved,” Trump said.
Updated
Harris signals support for marijuana legalization in interview
Kamala Harris made a little bit of news earlier today, saying in an interview that she supported legalizing marijuana – a step even the cannabis-friendly administration of Joe Biden hesitated to embrace.
“I just feel strongly people should not be going to jail for smoking weed. And we know historically what that has meant and who has gone to jail,” Harris told the All the Smoke podcast. “Second, I just think we have come to a point where we have to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior.”
The vice-president added: “This is not a new position for me. I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it.”
The statement represents a break with Biden, who moved to lower restrictions on cannabis while still keeping it broadly illegal at the federal level. Full decriminalization would solve the array of conflicts that have developed as states have moved to legalize marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes. Here’s more on that:
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In about 30 minutes, Donald Trump will speak from a furniture store in Valdosta, Georgia, a town affected by Hurricane Helene.
The former president began his visit to the swing state by falsely claiming that Joe Biden had not spoken to Georgia governor Brian Kemp. Here’s video of the remark, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Trump in Valdosta on the Hurricane Helene response: "The governor is doing a good job, but he's having a hard time getting the president on the phone. They're being very non-responsive." Kemp said he's playing "phone tag" with the VP but praised the bipartisan response. #gapol pic.twitter.com/rWtctr3iLK
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) September 30, 2024
The White House announced yesterday that Biden had spoken to Kemp, a Republican, along with Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s Democratic governor, and Valdosta mayor Scott Matheson.
Updated
When Tim Walz and JD Vance take the debate stage tomorrow night, expect to see two very different styles of debating, and two equally different views of the nation’s future, the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports:
When Tim Walz and JD Vance square off as vice-presidential picks on Tuesday, it will be the biggest debate stage for both of the politicians who are newly becoming household names.
Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, and Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, have been honing their public-speaking skills – and their pointed barbs at each other – in TV appearances and at events around the country in the past few months.
Their experiences in electoral debates haven’t reached the levels or notoriety that come along with a presidential campaign, but both have faced opponents in public debates in past elections.
Given the tightness of the presidential race, and how poorly the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump went, there will probably be more people tuned in to the vice-presidential debate than in past cycles. While VP debates don’t usually tip the scales much, they could matter in a close race – and they build profiles for lower-profile politicians who will probably stay on the national scene for years to come.
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On a press call this morning, Tom Emmer, the Republican representative from Minnesota, confirmed he has been playing Tim Walz in JD Vance’s debate prep.
Republicans are seeking to frame Walz, the folksy Minnesota governor who has proved to be the most popular figure in the presidential race, as a mean-spirited, ogreish figure.
Asked about his portrayal of Walz, Emmer said: “Quite frankly, it’s tough because he is really good on the debate stage.”
Emmer, who ran unsuccessfully for Minnesota governor in 2010, added: “[Walz] is going to stand there and he lies with conviction, and he has these little mannerisms where he’s just, hey, I’m the nice guy, but he’s not nice at all.”
Emmer predicted that Vance “is prepared to wipe the floor with Tim Walz and expose him for the radical liberal he is”. He added: “Tim Walz is nothing more than Gavin Newsom [the governor of California] in a flannel shirt.”
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, predicted that Walz is “going to look to stick the shiv into JD Vance at every opportunity” and predicted that: “The Tim Walz we see tomorrow night will be a completely different character from what we’ve seen so far on the 2024 campaign trail.”
Asked whether Donald Trump would agree to debate Kamala Harris for a second time, Miller said Trump “has made it pretty clear where he is”. Harris has accepted an invitation to debate on CNN on 23 October, but Trump, who was widely viewed to have lost the first debate, has claimed that it is “too late” for a second debate.
Updated
The US Department of Justice has agreed to pay $22.6 million to settle a lawsuit by 34 women who claim they were wrongly dismissed from the FBI’s agent training academy because of their sex, according to a court filing today.
The settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge in Washington DC, would resolve a 2019 class action claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is part of the Justice Department, had a widespread practice of forcing out female trainees, Reuters reports.
The plaintiffs say that they were found unsuitable to graduate from the training academy even though they performed as well as or better than many male trainees on academic, physical fitness, and firearms tests. Some of them also say they were subjected to sexual harassment and sexist jokes and comments.
Along with the payout, the proposed settlement would allow eligible class members to seek reinstatement to the agent training program and require the FBI to hire outside experts to ensure that its evaluation process for trainees is fair.
Department’s internal watchdog released a report in 2022 finding that female FBI trainees were disproportionately likely to be dismissed and to be cited for conduct “unsuitable” for an agent. Less than one-quarter of FBI special agents are women, the agency said in a report released in April.
Man enters plea denying attempt to assassinate Trump in Florida
The man charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump after allegedly positioning himself with a rifle outside one of the former president’s Florida golf courses on 15 September pleaded not guilty this morning to five federal charges.
Ryan Routh, 58, entered the plea to charges that include attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate during a hearing in federal court. He has already been ordered to remain in jail to await a trial, Reuters reports.
Prosecutors have said Routh intended to kill Trump as he golfed at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Routh, a struggling roofing contractor, condemned the Republican presidential candidate in a self-published book and dropped off a letter months earlier with an associate referencing an attempted assassination on Trump, according to prosecutors.
This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you,” the suspect wrote, according to a court filing by prosecutors.
Lawyers for Routh suggested at a 23 September court hearing that the letter may have been an attempt by their client at gaining publicity and highlighted what they called Routh’s efforts to promote democracy in Ukraine and Taiwan.
Routh is accused of poking a rifle through a fence at the course with the intention to kill Trump. When a federal agent spotted it and fired shots, the suspect fled but was arrested.
Updated
Joe Biden finished up his remarks on the impact of Hurricane Helene by saying that as US president he had seen many disasters and heard “dozens of stories from survivors”.
“I know how it feels to be left with nothing,” he said, “not even knowing where or when you’re back on track. I’m here to tell every single survivor in these impacted areas that we will be there with you as long as it takes … I urge everyone returning to their communities and homes to listen to the local officials and follow all the safety instructions.”
He continued: “Take this seriously, please be safe, your nation has your back and the Biden-Harris administration will be there until the job is done.”
In answer to a press question, Biden said no decision has been made yet on whether to ask the US Congress (which is in recess) to come back for a special session to approve additional emergency funding as a result of what he described as the “really, really devastating” storm.
He said he had spoken to the governor of North Carolina [Democrat Roy Cooper] and expects to visit the state on Wednesday or Thursday of this week.
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Donald Trump has been taunting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for not rushing to the areas affected by Hurricane Helene and the storm’s aftermath.
Harris has returning early to Washington DC from election campaigning out west, as the Democratic party’s nominee for president since Biden, the sitting president, quit his race for re-election in July.
Trump, the Republican nominee for president, plans to go to Valdosta, Georgia, this afternoon to see storm damage. He’s blasted the US president and vice president, saying Biden was “sleeping” on the beach at the weekend instead of marshaling recovery efforts in the devastated areas, while Harris, instead of campaigning in the western US “ought to be down in the area”.
It wasn’t possible from the live audio to make out what Biden’s response was to a question about Trump’s remarks. We’ll bring it to you as soon as possible. Biden said he had spoken to all the affected state governors, has promised help to all those affected for “as long as it takes” and had explained how a White House visit to an emergency area too soon can be counterproductive, because it is such a complicated operation.
Biden has signed disaster declarations that free up more federal resources for affected areas – and Politico also said he spoke to the mayor of Valdosta at the weekend, as well as state governors.
Harris said in Las Vegas, Nevada: “We will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild.” She also plans to visit affected areas in due course.
Updated
Biden to visit areas affected by Helene 'later this week'
Joe Biden said he expects to visit areas affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Helene “later this week”.
The US president is now taking some questions from the press gathered at the White House.
He called it a historic storm, “never seen anything like it before”. He said he expected to go down to the area “Wednesday or Thursday”, saying that, including with a press entourage, a presidential visit in the middle of an emergency can be disruptive if made too soon.
Biden said at least 10 states had been affected. Despite saying he would only talk about the storm, he did take a question about the Middle East and said “we should have a ceasefire now” in the conflict in Lebanon that has suddenly intensified since Israel has launched fierce airborne attacks in the last almost two weeks on the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia based in Lebanon, labelled as a counteroffensive to Hezbollah’s attacks on its neighbor Israel since last October, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
Asked about reports that Israel plans a ground invasion of Lebanon and if he was comfortable with that, Biden said: “I’m comfortable with them stopping.”
Our Middle East live blog is here.
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Here is Joe Biden, talking about “the broad and devastating” impacts of the storm that made landfall as Hurricane Helene.
“Communities are devastated, loved ones waiting to hear if [folks] are OK, many unsure if they can return to their homes, when or ever. There is nothing like wondering, is my husband, wife, son, daughter, mother, father alive, many more who remain without electricity, water, food and communications,” the US president said.
He acknowledged that the death toll from the storm was over 100 and more than 600 were unaccounted for.
He is speaking from the White House and explained that he had not gone to the areas of destruction and emergency yet because, in line with normal presidential practice, he does not want to get in the way of the local authorities’ recovery efforts just now.
Updated
We’re still awaiting Joe Biden’s remarks from the White House about the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the impact of as it roared across Georgia and North and South Carolina and its effects spread across 10 states even as it was downgraded from hurricane status last week.
The US president is behind schedule, as he was due to begin speaking half an hour ago, but we’ll keep you abreast of developments.
Biden is due to talk to US Olympic athletes at 11.30am and then the White House daily media briefing with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is due at 2pm, so we’ll keep an eye on whether those times are pushed back.
CNN just said the death toll from the storm has now reached 115 in the US, and rising, as more deaths are discovered, with whole towns devastated and some blocked off and parts of western North Carolina, in particular, just flattened. Flooding has been the worst lingering effect after the initial 140mph winds began slowing once the hurricane came ashore in north-western Florida late last Thursday as a category 4.
The federal government said yesterday that the “historic flooding” was made worse because of global heating as the major part of the climate crisis.
Updated
Biden to give update on Hurricane Helene response
Joe Biden is scheduled to imminently begin speaking from the White House about the response to Hurricane Helene’s devastation in North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere in the southeast.
We’ll let you know what the president has to say.
Republican former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake endorses Harris
Jeff Flake, a Republican who represented swing state Arizona in the Senate and House of Representatives, endorsed Kamala Harris for president yesterday:
I’ll be supporting @KamalaHarris for President and @Tim_Walz for Vice President. My full statement below. pic.twitter.com/6b28mkBPMD
— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) September 29, 2024
Flake clashed with Donald Trump during his presidency, and opted not to run for re-election in 2018, paving the way for then-Democrat Kyrsten Sinema to take his place. The former senator has made his peace with the Democrats, and until earlier this month served as Joe Biden’s ambassador to Turkey.
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Donald Trump may dismiss it as a “scam”, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency believes the climate crisis made Hurricane Helene more severe, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:
The head of the US disaster relief agency has called Hurricane Helene, which has killed nearly 100 people, a “true multi-state event” that caused “significant infrastructure damage” and had been made worse because of global heating.
The storm killed at least 91 people, according to state and local officials in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Officials feared more bodies would be discovered.
“This is going to be a really complicated recovery in each of the five states” of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator, Deanne Criswell.
She noted that a 15ft storm surge hit Florida’s Taylor county, where Helene came ashore as a category 4 hurricane late Thursday with winds of 140mph (225km/h), and pointed out that areas of western North Carolina, where search and rescue operations are continuing, recorded 29in (74cm) of rain when the storm stalled over the region.
“This is historic flooding up in North Carolina,” Criswell told the CBS show Face the Nation on Sunday. “I don’t know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides they are having right now.”
Harris intends to visits areas affected by Hurricane Helene 'as soon as it is possible'
Despite Donald Trump’s insistence to the contrary, the White House says Kamala Harris was briefed on Hurricane Helene’s impacts as she was campaigning over the weekend on the west coast.
Harris has canceled campaign events in Las Vegas today so she can head to Fema headquarters in Washington DC for a briefing on the storm, a White House official said. She has also spoken to North Carolina’s governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and “contacted” Georgia and Florida’s Republican governors Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis.
“The vice-president intends to visit impacted communities as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations,” the official added.
Trump attacks Biden and Harris over Helene response at lengthy Pennsylvania rally
Donald Trump’s rally in Erie, Pennsylvania yesterday stretched for nearly two hours, and began with the former president accusing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris of failing to respond as Hurricane Helene struck the southeastern United States.
“Biden is in Delaware sleeping right now in one of his many estates,” Trump said, before alleging Harris was “at fundraising events with her radical left lunatic donors, when big parts of our country have been devastated by that massive hurricane and are underwater, with many, many people dead”.
Here’s the moment:
Western North Carolina is currently under water.
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 29, 2024
Kamala is at a fundraiser in San Francisco.
Biden is once again sleeping at the beach.
America's "leaders" are absent. pic.twitter.com/pV63bl7ENs
Harris’s campaign has thus far held back on making similar statements about Trump, but did seize on his comments downplaying the link between worsening natural disasters and climate change:
Trump in the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Helene: “[Climate change] is one of the great scams of all time” pic.twitter.com/AW9mYeUjln
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 29, 2024
Updated
Biden to address Hurricane Helene damage as Trump seeks to turn storm into campaign issue
Good morning, US politics blog readers. After churning across the southern US and causing massive destruction and dozens of deaths in North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere, Hurricane Helene appears set to collide with the presidential campaign. Donald Trump will speak this afternoon in Valdosta, Georgia about the storm, undoubtedly with an eye on turning the swing state’s voters away from Kamala Harris. The former president has already made the hurricane’s destruction into an attack line on the Democrats, reportedly accusing Joe Biden of “sleeping” as the storm raged. Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania yesterday he also accused Harris of turning a blind eye to the destruction.
Biden plans to speak from the White House at 10.30am ET about his administration’s response to the storm, while Harris has announced the cancellation of campaign events in Las Vegas today so she can return to Washington DC and be briefed on the storm’s impact at Fema headquarters. She’ll arrive just after 5pm.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Harris’s economic policies are more popular with voters than Trump’s, new polling commissioned by the Guardian finds. The vice-president laid out her plans in a major speech last week.
The vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz is set for tomorrow evening, with both candidates preparing for what is currently the last scheduled debate before the election.
Israel may or may not be on the verge of launching a ground invasion of Lebanon. We have a live blog covering the crisis, and you can read it here.
