Newsletter: During hurricanes and elections, seek out ‘boring’ sources of information

Good morning. It is Saturday, Oct. 12. Here’s what’s happening in Opinion.

If we can learn anything from the last two weeks of climate disasters and election hysteria, it’s this: We need to reacquaint ourselves with sober, reliable, boring sources of information.

By that, I mean not X or Instagram or TikTok influencers who put themselves at the center of every spectacle, but actual scientists at universities and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who study hurricanes, and the journalists who distill their research and disseminate it for the masses. Learn to differentiate between elected leaders earnestly connecting constituents to emergency services and those trying to score political points by spreading conspiracy theories about government weather control and lies about emergency response.

One group gains no immediate personal benefit, only the satisfaction that decent people derive from saving lives and speaking truth. The other gains the fleeting favor of “likes” and “followers” on social media or perhaps the approval of Donald Trump.

These opposing forces have been on stark display since Hurricane Helene destroyed communities in the Southeast, and more recently, since Hurricane Milton battered Florida. One side lied about the Biden administration maliciously flubbing disaster response in Republican-leaning areas, forcing some Republican elected officials to weigh their loyalty to Trump against their duty to help besieged residents. Their efforts were aided by Elon Musk’s X, where paranoia, racism and dishonesty have thrived since the “Dark MAGA” convert took over the platform in 2022.

This is bad enough for hurricane survivors looking for help; it’s doubly worrying for a country with an election next month. If it’s this easy to lie to the masses that humans control the weather, imagine how effortlessly the world’s richest person — who’s already convinced people they look cool in a Cybertruck — can make us think the election will be stolen. Already his mother tweeted how great it would be if each MAGA follower voted 10 times apiece, because that’s what Democrats do. (They don’t.)

Journalists and honest commentators can play whack-a-mole and debunk those lies after they are told. But election day is a real-time stress test of American democracy. Passing that test depends on voters trusting their election system, and this is where information literacy comes in.

So, this is what I humbly suggest: Avoid X for election updates and predictions (and for the love of God, don’t scroll though the “For You” feed). Instead, bookmark your local election agency and secretary of state website for updates on ballot tabulations. Here in Los Angeles, that’s lavote.net for local races and sos.ca.gov/elections for statewide races. The L.A. Times will also provide vote count updates on election night and as mail-in and provisional ballots trickle in the following weeks. Elsewhere in the state and country, local newspapers and election agencies will also be counting votes and providing updates.

Following newspapers and election agencies for updates may provide less stimulation than compulsively scrolling social media feeds on election night (and the days and weeks following), but it’s a pretty good way to resist the misinformation spread by the likes of Musk (and his mother).

Donald Trump’s $59.99 Bible is just what Oklahoma schools ordered. Isn’t that special? The schools chief in Oklahoma amended his requirement for classroom Bibles in his state to essentially match the “God Bless the USA” Bible being sold by Trump. But you know what else is curious? “If you do the math, 55,000 Bibles at $59.99 a pop comes out to just about $3.3 million,” almost exactly the requested amount by the schools chief, notes Dartmouth religion professor Randall Balmer.

Trump says he’ll expel a million immigrants. Believe him — it happened before. Historian Dana Frank warns that the former president’s promise of mass deportations might not merely be bluster: “During the Great Depression, when many falsely blamed Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans for the economic crisis, as many as a million were forced out of the country, a majority of whom were U.S. citizens. Known as ‘Repatriados,’ they have largely disappeared from popular memory, along with the atrocity of their expulsion.”

I’m a rabbi and a former IDF soldier. This Yom Kippur I’m atoning for my part in the occupation. As a young soldier in the West Bank, Aryeh Cohen felt the contempt that one Palestinian villager expressed only by looking at him. Now, he protests the country he once served in uniform: “My protests, my call for a cease-fire, are part of the way I am still responding to that moment, decades ago, when I locked eyes with my Palestinian neighbor carrying her laundry while I held an M-16 and felt ashamed. As a rabbi and a teacher of rabbis, I’m repenting this Yom Kippur for having been a part of the occupation.”

Why Trump and RFK Jr. won’t “make America healthy again.” If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. honestly cares about the toxic additives allowed in the foods that Americans eat, he picked an odd candidate to endorse in Trump. Journalist Christopher D. Cook lists the “many ways in which Trump undermined food safety and public health in his first term.”

It’s not fair to ask voters to decide complicated healthcare tax policy. Proposition 35 involves a tax on managed-care organizations, Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for medical providers, federal healthcare funding and the state budget. For that reason alone, voters should reject it, The Times’ editorial board writes. “We elect a full-time Legislature, and allow it to hire top-notch staffers, to make decisions about this kind of granular policy.”

More from opinion

From our columnists

• Jackie Calmes: When Trump talks “bad genes” and “racehorse theory,” he is telling us who he is
• Mike Pence’s story is crucial to the Jan. 6 case against Trump. Can Jack Smith still use it?

From guest contributors

• Why California’s legacy admissions ban won’t help low-income students go to college
• Where both presidential candidates’ tax promises go wrong
• Much of the world is terrified by another Trump presidency. Here’s why

From the Editorial Board

• Yes on Proposition 2 to repair California’s many dilapidated schools
• No on Charter Amendment FF. L.A. can’t afford this pension giveaway
• Michelle Chambers for Senate District 35
• No on Proposition 33. This rent control measure could make the housing shortage worse

Letters to the Editor

• Liz Cheney’s support of Kamala Harris is a profile in courage
• “Blessed are the boastfully rich” — is that in the Trump Bible?
• Gavin Newsom totally blew it on the Intuit Dome booze bill