Elon Musk is hampering hurricane relief efforts—and using X to do it

The social media platform has become Musk’s personal misinformation engine. His response to Hurricane Helene is proof.

When Federal Emergency Management Agency first responders raced to western North Carolina in the days after Hurricane Helene, they expected much of the devastation they found in its wake: totaled cars, crumbling roads, homes filled with mud or ruined by floodwaters or washed away entirely. What they didn’t expect was an alarming number of people under the impression that FEMA had already exhausted its disaster aid budget providing assistance to immigrants; that shadowy forces had orchestrated the hurricane to seize land for lithium mining; and that the U.S. government could control the weather from an undisclosed location somewhere in Antarctica, and may have aimed the storm at Republican-heavy areas in North Carolina in order to hurt President Donald Trump.