HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. — Just 21 days before the start of early voting, Hurricane Helene delivered biblical-level destruction to the hills, hollows, and mountains of North Carolina. The massive storm brought devastating floods that killed 232 people — half of them in this state — and buried entire riverside communities in rivers of mud.

Now, residents struggle for basic supplies. More than 2,500 families are homeless. Crowded shelters are well above capacity. Hundreds of road and bridge closures are disrupting transportation and the delivery of crucial aid.

Two days after the storm, Gov. Roy Cooper requested a Major Disaster Declaration from the federal government in order to surge assistance to state and local agencies and provide immediate relief to suffering North Carolinians. FEMA claimed in a news release that it sent 25 trailer loads of food and 60 trailer loads of water to North Carolina. But Hendersonville resident Andrea Corn says she has not seen a state or federal worker yet.

After the storm, Corn — a 55-year-old accountant who is more accustomed to preparing tax forms for local businesses than organizing relief missions — formed an ATV group to rescue elderly victims in Henderson County. Most roads and bridges had crumbled or washed away, and many folks could be reached only by going off-road.

Andrea and her husband, a volunteer fireman, brought supplies to victims stranded in remote “hollers.” Many residents were without power for more than a month following Helene’s visit. Samaritan’s Purse, a nondenominational evangelical Christian charity, distributed solar-powered lights to light

When Vice President Kamala Harris was California’s attorney general, her team found evidence of corruption after the closure of a nuclear power plant left customer ratepayers to cover the multibillion-dollar settlement bill. Harris was criticized for failing to prosecute. Now, The Federalist has reviewed financial records revealing that the company operating the plant had been giving hundreds of thousands to state Democrats when Harris decided to look away.

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station permanently shut down in 2013, following a radiation leak the previous year. The settlement originally left customers with 70 percent of the financial burden, or $3.3 billion. And it left 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste on a popular California beach. 

As attorney general in California, Harris’s team uncovered evidence of a secret meeting between an executive of Southern California Edison (SCE) — the primary owner of the nuclear power plant — and the then-president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to apparently draft the settlement. But as Harris was running for U.S. Senate in 2016, the investigation seemingly began to trail off.

Democrat then-Gov. Jerry Brown — who appointed members to the CPUC and endorsed Harris’ bid for Senate in 2016 — met with an SCE executive in 2013, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Later that year, SCE funneled $54,400 to his reelection campaign, state records show. Evidence later revealed another SCE executive secretly met with the then-CPUC president in Poland in 2013. This SCE executive had been a long-time contributor to the campaign

The first time I saw Donald Trump in person was at the Cleveland debate in 2015 when he mocked Rosie O’Donnell as a “fat pig,” “dog,” “slob,” and a “disgusting animal” following a question from Megyn Kelly. I then stood at the Capitol and watched him take the presidential oath 18 months later.

Trump is obviously one of the most unique figures to ever lead the country, and I had only seen Trump one other time — when he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). But I had never attended one of his signature rallies, characterized by NBC as “a key fixture of America’s political landscape for nearly a decade,” with more than 900 such events since the notorious golden escalator ride at Trump Tower. While browsing his events page Sunday night, I saw he was going to speak at a Pittsburgh stadium three hours from my home in Columbus, Ohio. Trump said in September he will not run again if he loses, so the rally was my last chance to hear him as a candidate.

I went to Pennsylvania less as a reporter and more as a spectator. With just hours to go until polls close, no one needs another column on how Trump says “X” about “Y” at another swing-state event, and I didn’t even bother with a press pass. Mystifying politicians is obnoxious and lame, but there’s an element of historical significance to Trump’s rallies worth acknowledging. After all, his crowd sizes were arguably one