The Hurricane Speech Panic is Here

In a sequel to the pandemic panic, politicians and elite media are calling for a European-style speech clampdown, this time using the weather as an excuse.

A week ago, before America felt the full weight of the Hurricane Helene and Milton disasters, Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas said his Federal Emergency Management Agency “does not have the funds to make it through the [hurricane] season.” Late this week FEMA contradicted its own boss:

In Covid-19, health officials issuing confusing or incorrect or shifting dictates caused significant loss of trust, which was then used as an excuse to call for clampdowns on the information landscape. Now a sequel misinformation panic is upon us, with incompetent disaster management stepping in the role of the health bureaucracy. Once again, we’re told it’s Donald Trump and other online miscreants the world cannot survive:

“I’m running out of ways to explain how bad this is,” wrote Charlie Warzel in the Atlantic. “Rumors on X are Becoming the Right’s New Reality,” added Renee DiResta. Stories in Politico, the New York Times, CNN, the Daily Beast, Vox, CBS, Bloomberg, the Guardian, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times similarly howled about the hurricane misinformation crisis.

As the theme built momentum through the week, it was only a matter of time before we saw the inevitable next-step headline, provided by Axios yesterday: