Happy Tuesday!

All eyes are on Florida as Hurricane Milton begins its assault. The storm blew up from a Category 2 to a Category 5 storm in a matter of hours yesterday, with winds hitting 175 mph Monday afternoon. This one will get ugly, even if it does lose some steam before it makes landfall. We pray it will dissipate and loses its punch just as quickly as it gained it.

Still, the wisest thing to do is get out of its way. Floridians, please heed all evacuation notices. We need you to be safe.

Four Weeks to Go

How is the presidential race looking?

If you believe the national polls and Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website, the race is within the margin of error. (Which means Kamala Harris is running far behind where Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were at this stage of the game in 2016 and 2020.)

However, the Polymarket betting site gave Donald Trump a 54% chance of winning as of noon Eastern time Monday. And the Real Clear Politics Electoral College map shows Trump eking out a 281-257 win in November.

I believe this is being generous. RCP puts Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan solidly in Harris’s column. Plus, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, the last poll conducted in what is supposed to be reliably blue New Jersey took place June 26-27, before Trump’s debate with Joe Biden. In that poll, Trump was winning 41% to 40%. Just saying, nobody’s polled there since. Is a California liberal like Kamala Harris really going to do better in New Jersey than Scranton Joe from neighboring Delaware?

Still, four weeks is an eternity in an election season. Just ask Hillary Clinton.

Harris Trips During Media Blitz

Kamala Harris will be appearing on The View this morning, meaning New York City is currently under a flood advisory from all the drooling those ladies will do. She’ll also be appearing on Howard Stern’s show, along with Late Night With Stephen Colbert. Because when you are the American vice president and a Category 5 hurricane is about to slam a major state, Appalachia is still ravaged by the previous one, and the actual president is semi-comatose, clearly the place to be is New York City, cackling on the couch of a late-night comic.

Even when she’s in friendly confines, however, Harris manages to muck things up. While on the usually sexually graphic “Call Her Daddy” podcast over the weekend, Harris thought she had a clever gotcha line when promoting abortion.

Kamala Harris: Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?

Brett Kavanaugh: I'm not thinking of any right now https://t.co/d4txnOHgaj pic.twitter.com/fZPmTbpRGA

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 6, 2024

Social media lit Harris up with the obvious answer: The Selective Service Act, which drafted millions of men into the military to serve, and in so many cases, die.

THE LIE: There are no laws that allow the government to make decisions about the male body.

THE TRUTH: Federal Law requires 18 year old men to register for the draft.

Hundreds of thousands of men lost their lives due to the governments decision to use their body.

Her “cute”… pic.twitter.com/yfMYoK3n9n

— KamalaHQLies (@KamalaHQLies) October 7, 2024

By the way, the fact that the podcast host asked the exact question Harris asked Brett Kavanaugh in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings suggests this chat was as scripted as an episode of Law & Order. The fact that Harris laughs and says as she starts the question, “I know what you’re going to ask!”? Priceless. 

Victory for Life! Supreme Court Rejects Biden-Harris Bid to Block Texas Pro-Life Law

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the Biden-Harris administration’s bid to pull all the teeth from a strong pro-life law in Texas. Abortion groups wanted to expand the law’s exceptions beyond the life of the mother to, as LifeSiteNews put it, “make it a full health exception loophole that would allow abortion on demand.” Lower courts rejected that suit, the Biden administration made an emergency appeal, and SCOTUS nixed it. 

Georgia Supreme Court Halts Lower Court Ruling Striking Down Pro-Life Law

There was another victory for life in the Peach State on Monday. Georgia’s Supreme Court halted last week’s ruling by a lower court striking down the state’s law protecting the unborn. The lower court declared the law unconstitutionally prohibits abortions beyond about six weeks of pregnancy. Monday’s decision means the ban stays in place until Georgia’s Supreme Court can decide the case on its merits.

Abortion and the Election

A few weeks ago, branding expert Steve McKee wrote a fascinating article for the Daily Signal called “Abortion: How to Begin to Win.”

He writes that we have to consider the emotional, and not entirely conscious, context guiding the debate over abortion. Not what’s on women’s minds, but what’s in their guts:

Women believe they must protect themselves and those they love — from criminals, yes, but more commonly from men who’ve let them down. From deadbeats and slackers. From cowards. From men who would abandon them; not only those who have, but those who might. Even if it hasn’t happened to them personally, it’s enough that it could happen potentially.

“I am against abortion, but what if it happens to me?” they ask. Or my daughter? My best friend. Conservative candidates have an opportunity to step into that gap with a positive message as powerful as the destructive message of the Left.  

Candidates can rhetorically go after cowards who selfishly use and abuse women. They can advocate stronger laws to stop predators more effectively, from abusive husbands to sex traffickers to dangerous illegal aliens.

They can work to increase the certainty and severity of penalties for sex offenders. They can vow to hold men financially accountable for their offspring from the moment of conception.

And they can use the power of the bully pulpit to exhort deadbeat dads to embrace accountability, encourage basement boys to take responsibility, and take to task today’s so-called alpha males for their abdication of true manhood.

McKee concludes:

The more men live up to their calling as men, the more women will embrace their instinct to nurture and protect those who can’t protect themselves.

And the more children will be saved from the scourge of our time.

Walz Doesn’t Think You Care When He Lies

Speaking of abortion and that Georgia law, during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz lied. He once again peddled the vile falsehood that Georgia’s pro-life law is the reason a young woman died — saying it somehow prevented her from getting appropriate medical care — when the truth is she died from a chemical abortion gone wrong.

I’m sorry but this is some of the ugliest behavior of this cycle.

Amber Thurman died because of complications from an abortion drug – her own family and attorneys have said it had *nothing to do* with Georgia’s abortion laws.

How depraved do you have to be to lie like this? https://t.co/VkeJIQzNWr

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) October 6, 2024

He also falsely stated that Trump and running mate J.D. Vance support a national ban on abortion.

When anchor Shannon Bream called Walz out over the lies in his own bio, he told her, “I don’t think people care.”

However, Walz did prove himself to be a master of the non sequitur. When Bream asked him about giving drivers licenses and free college tuition and health care to illegal immigrants, and why should taxpayers should foot the bill for that, Walz said Minnesota is one of the top five states for business … and its roads are the safest in the nation.

🚨 Walz DEFENDS signing into law free driver's licenses, free college, and free health care for illegal immigrants: "Minnesota ranks as a top five business state!"

This is what's to come in a Harris-Walz administration — paid for by taxpayers, while citizens come last. pic.twitter.com/J6iMb0W2pj

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 6, 2024

That’s tantamount to the following exchange:

“Mr. Simpson, you murdered two people in cold blood.”

“Well, Shannon, I was the first person in NFL history to rush for more than two thousand yards in a season, and I made some great Hertz commercials.”

One might call Walz a knucklehead, but he’s already called himself that.

FEMA Spent $4 Billion on What?

Sure, the White House denies that FEMA has run out of money because it spent a billion dollars the last two years on illegal immigrants. Administrators must have missed the news reports at the time.

Here’s ⁦@CNN⁩ talking about how #FEMA gave money to illegal immigrants.

Both Kamala Harris & mainstream media are now claiming this never happened. pic.twitter.com/HtuiXCYqKO

— James Blair (@JamesBlairUSA) October 7, 2024

However, perhaps the White House is correct in this sense. What if we told you they spent four times that amount last month alone on — wait for it — “COVID-19 aid”? Look at that again. We’re talking about spending $4 billion in September 2024 on COVID-19. That’s the most since October 2023 — and that was two years after COVID was already in the rearview mirror.

Four words: Are you kidding us?

BREAKING: @fema's Disaster Relief Fund monthly report reveals that nearly $4 BILLION was spent on "COVID-19 aid" in September of 2024, the most of any month since October 2023.

Billions of dollars are being spent on a pandemic that's been over for years while Helene victims are… pic.twitter.com/5fbmdSkvft

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 7, 2024

Smells like the ol’ government End of Fiscal Year Spend It or Lose It Plan … though we can’t rule out “creative accounting” practices.

Two more words: Forensic audit.

As the nation now faces the destructive wrath of Milton on top of the devastation of Hurricane Helene, we pray that every FEMA dollar earmarked for an inexplicable program or illegal side hustle ends up going to to those who actually need it.

Along The Stream

Dr. Michael Brown tells us, through heartbreak, that “One Year Later, Israel Is Still in Agony.”

And Stream contributor Anne Morse offers a compelling story with a personal connection about “Why I’m Voting for Donald Trump.”

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.