Come for Morning Wire’s Afternoon Update’s straight news, but stay for the Rapid Reactions. The following five stories, and more, can be heard on today’s Morning Wire Afternoon Update podcast. Click here to listen.
Hurricane Idalia
Hurricane Idalia made landfall as a Category 3 strength storm in Florida’s Big Bend at 7:45 a.m. this morning, smashing into the town of Keaton Beach, with 125 mph winds. Called “an unprecedented event” by the National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Idalia is the most powerful storm to hit Florida’s Big Bend in over 125 years, triggering evacuation orders affecting tens of thousands of people. FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN that the state’s response has helped restore power rapidly:
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell: “I gotta tell you, the amount of mutual aid the State of Florida brought in to support power restoration is significant…What we saw during Hurricane Ian is that they were able to restore the power rather quickly, and I expect the same to… pic.twitter.com/077gQyYjR4
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) August 30, 2023
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gave updates mid-day:
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) says the eye of Hurricane Idalia has moved out of Florida, but the storm’s bands are still impacting the state.
Power restorations are underway, but DeSantis says more outages could be reported. pic.twitter.com/rkT6M1kjQZ
— The Recount (@therecount) August 30, 2023
Rapid Reaction: It’s amazing what a difference competent, prepared leaders make in government. This isn’t DeSantis’ first rodeo.
Biden Admin Focused On Everything But What’s Important
In the midst of the Biden administration’s chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan, top Pentagon officials were working to get the Secretary of Defense to sign a major climate change initiative – that’s according to emails obtained by The Daily Wire.
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The emails show that in the two weeks between the Taliban takeover of Kabul and the final U.S. military flight out of Afghanistan, Pentagon officials were scrambling on an unrelated matter: getting Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to finalize a Climate Adaptation Plan. He signed it just two days after the withdrawal, declaring climate change a major national security threat. The Pentagon confirmed to The Daily Wire that Austin spent time during the withdrawal considering the climate initiative. His critics say his full attention should have been on getting Americans and our allies safely out of Afghanistan, where 13 service members had just been killed by a suicide bomber.
Rapid Reaction: On the other hand, having incompetent, unprepared leaders results in chaos. The Biden administration is staffed with such “leaders.”
Chicago Journalists Robbed While Reporting On Robberies
A local news crew reporting in Chicago was robbed at gunpoint by three armed men in ski masks while coincidentally reporting on a string of robberies. Here with more is Daily Wire Investigative Reporter Mairead Elordi:
Spanish-speaking channel Univision Chicago says that a reporter/photographer team was out filming at 5:00 a.m. on Monday in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood when the incident occurred. As Luis Godinez, the Channel’s Vice President of News, Told the Chicago Tribune, “They were approached with guns and robbed.” The burglars mainly stole personal items, as well as the news photographer’s camera. Godinez says the footage they shot was in the stolen camera, and the story never made it to air.
Rapid Reaction: Until Chicagons stop voting Democrat, this sort of crime will continue.
CNN Names New CEO
A new report suggests that CNN is set to name a new CEO in the coming days after the network fired its last CEO over the summer following a damning profile piece and a town hall debacle involving former President Donald Trump.
As early as Thursday, CNN is expected to name former New York Times Company CEO and BBC director general Mark Thompson to be the network’s next chairman and CEO. The report said that Thompson has a reputation for “restructuring legacy media assets and pursuing innovative growth strategies” and that he could not be more different than the network’s last CEO, Chris Licht, who departed from the company in June.
Rapid Reaction: Something tells me the new CNN will be even more liberal than it was under Zuckerberg — and snobbier, too.
To listen to the audio version of Afternoon Update, click here. And for more in-depth discussion of the biggest stories of the day, listen to the latest full episode of Morning Wire every morning.
