Milton’s October surprise

Hello, and welcome back to State of Emergency. I’m Jake Bittle, and today we’re talking about the political impact of Hurricane Milton, the second major storm to strike the United States in the last few weeks.

I grew up in Tampa, Florida, less than 20 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes were never more than an abstraction to me and my family, despite the storm-preparedness PSAs that aired on television every June. When my family moved there from New England in 2007, it had...