On Wednesday, California became the first state to issue a declaration of emergency regarding the avian flu (H5N1). That same day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first severe case of the flu in a human on US soil and outbreaks in cow herds were detected in Southern California.

Still, the threat to humans is low according to the CDC. The agency has traced most human infections back to those handling livestock, and there’s been no reported transmission between people.

“I have dairies that are never coming back from this.”

But for cows and the dairy they produce, it’s a different story. This year was the first time the flu was detected in cows in the US, and it has ripped through many Western states’ dairy farms with startling speed. Since March, the virus has been found in cow herds of 16 states. For the last few months, infected herds have largely been concentrated in California—the state that makes up about 20 percent of the nation’s dairy industry. Last week, Texas, another one of the nation’s top dairy producing states, saw the reappearance of bird flu after two months without a detected outbreak.

In the industry hit hardest by bird flu, the poultry industry, the virus’ spread has resulted in the culling of entire flocks which has lead to higher egg prices on supermarket shelves. Will milk and butter prices soon go the same route? And how worried should you be about consuming dairy?

How exactly does bird flu affect dairy cows?

Some farmers are first identifying outbreaks in their herds through the color and density of the milk, in what they are coining “golden mastitis,” according to Milkweed, a dairy news publication. As early studies by University of Copenhagen researchers found, the virus latches onto dairy cows mammary glands, creating complications for the dairy industry beyond just the cow fatalities.

The virus is proving deadly to cows. According to Colorado State University Professor Jason Lombard, an infectious disease specialist for cattle, the case fatality rates based on a limited set of herds was zero to 15 percent. But California saw an even higher rate of up to 20 percent during a late summer heatwave in the states Central Valley. It was a warning for how the rising number of heatwaves and temps across the country could result in deadlier herd outbreaks in upcoming summers. 

For some of the cows that survived, there was a dip in their dairy production of around 25 percent according to multiple experts I spoke with. As a farmer told Bloomberg News, some of the cows aren’t returning to full production levels, an indication of longer lasting effects of the virus. It’s a finding experts are seeing in other parts of the US, too. According to Lombard, this may be due to the severity of the virus in the cow. According to reporting in Milkweed, there may also be “long-tail” bird flu impacts on a cow’s dairy production, health, and reproduction. Additional research is likely needed to understand the extent of these potential longterm effects of the virus and whether they could spell trouble ahead for recovering farms.  

A spokesperson with the California Department of Food and Agriculture told Mother Jones, “it’s too soon to know how production has been impacted.”

How is this impacting farms and farm workers?

As of today, more than half of the people who’ve contracted H5N1 are dairy farmworkers, according to the CDC. This population is particularly vulnerable because they are often the ones handling milking or milking equipment which can lead to spreading the virus. The CDC is recommending employers take steps to reduce their workers’ exposure to the virus by creating health and safety plans.

The CDC is working with organizations like the National Center for Farm Worker Health to expand testing, PPE availability, and training. According to Bethany Alcauter, a director at the organization, ensuring dairy farmworkers have access to testing is a tricky situation. The 100,000-some workforce faces barriers to accessing health care and testing, such as an inability to take paid-time off to get themselves tested if they are sick. And the system depends on the producer to decide to bring in the health department to oversee potential outbreaks within herds and staff, which doesn’t always happen because there’s no government mandate.

“It’s all recommendations and kindness—that’s what we’re running on. It’s not regulation and enforcement.”

“It’s all recommendations and kindness—that’s what we’re running on,” Alcauter says. “It’s not regulation and enforcement.” She believes the testing infrastructure could be strengthened by “recognizing that farm workers can be public-health first responders if they have the knowledge and the access to the right contacts, in the right system.”

Outside of navigating farmworker health, farmers face economic impacts when the virus spreads through their herds. “What you’re losing at the end of the day is revenue for your farm when it rolls through,” says Will Loux, vice president of economic affairs for the National Milk Producers Federation. “Depending on the financial situation of an individual farm it can certainly be devastating.” 

There are a handful of variables and factors that shape the financial losses of a dairy hit with an outbreak. Luckily, agriculture economist Charles Nicholson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and some colleagues created a calculator to estimate this financial impact of a bird flu outbreak. Based on Nicholson’s estimates for California, a typical farm of 1500 cattle will lose $120,000 annually. For context, this is about $10,000 more than the median household income of a dairy farmer. Based on those estimates, that would mean California’s farmers have collectively lost about $80 million at most due to avian flu so far. The US Department of Agriculture is providing support for farmers who are impacted by H5N1 outbreaks.

In reviewing a few herd datasets in Michigan, Phillip Durst, a dairy and cattle expert, noted that about half a year after an outbreak, herds were producing around 10 percent less than before. Not only do farmers face massive short term losses, they also struggle to return to full capacity again. And, there are high costs associated with putting resources into taking care of sick animals too. 

Even strong diaries that had “tip top” biosecurity measures, or comprehensive environmental protection measures in place, are shutting down, according to Anja Raudabaugh, CEO of Western Untied Dairies, a trade organization overseeing farms across California. “I have dairies that are never coming back from this,” Raudabaugh says. “This was just so cataclysmic for them. They’re not going to be able to get over that loss in production hump.”

There is some hope around the corner. A vaccine for cows, which the USDA claims is in the works, could help stop the spread and protect remaining uninfected herds. “Until we have a vaccine that we can inoculate them with at an early age, we have no choices except to hope that herd immunity sets in soon,” Raudabaugh says.

What’s the effect on milk?

In June, the US dropped 1.5 percent in production, around 278 million pounds of milk, compared to 2023. It was one of the early potential indicators of the industry’s vulnerability to this virus. However, since then, the nation’s production rebounded to above 2023 numbers. It’s largely why consumers are not seeing the same impact on the price and availability of dairy products like they are with eggs. 

“When one state gets H5N1 there are a lot of other states that tend to pick up the slack. So in general, when you look at the national numbers, you really have to squint to kind of find where H5N1 is in the milk production”,” says Loux.

California produces around a fifth of the nation’s dairy, and since August over half of the state’s herds had an outbreak. In October, California saw a near four percent drop in milk production compared to 2023, equating to about 127 million pounds of milk.

On Thursday, the USDA released November’s data on milk production showing California with the largest decrease this year of 301 million fewer gallons of milk compared to 2023. That is more than double the decrease of last month. Still, the nation only saw a near 1 percent decrease since 2023.

How the next administration handles this virus may spell a different story for the dairy industry and the country. With Trump’s history of downplaying infectious diseases and promoting unfounded cures, and public health cabinet nominations who decry vaccine effectiveness, a human-to-human outbreak could lead to another pandemic. Likely to take over the USDA is Brooke Rollins, who, according to Politico, had less experience in agriculture than others on Trump’s shortlist (though she does have a degree in agriculture development). It’s currently unclear what her plans are for handling this virus and supporting farmers and the industry at large. Rollins did not respond to my request for an interview.

Should I be worried about getting sick from drinking milk?

Drinking pasteurized milk is safe. For more than 100 years, pasteurization has kept the public safe by killing harmful bacteria and viruses.

The CDC is warning against raw milk consumption, on the other hand, due to it potentially having high-levels of bird flu. While there’s yet to be a human case of bird flu traced to raw milk consumption, there is fear that the unpasteurized product could lead to illness. And raw milk loaded with the virus has been linked to deaths in other mammals, like cats.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the likely soon-to-be director of Health and Human Services under Trump, has a history of promoting raw milk. Earlier this month, Kennedy’s favorite raw milk brand was recalled by California after testing positive for bird flu. Kennedy’s rise to public health power comes at time when raw milk is rising in popularity on TikTok.

In response to the spread of bird flu in raw milk, the USDA announced a national strategy requiring milk samples nationwide be tested by the agency. Since officially beginning testing on Monday, 16 new bird flu outbreaks in cow herds have been identified in two states.

For now, as the nation continues to work on controlling the spread of bird flu, consider tossing your raw milk out before it does more than just spoil.

On Wednesday, California became the first state to issue a declaration of emergency regarding the avian flu (H5N1). That same day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first severe case of the flu in a human on US soil and outbreaks in cow herds were detected in Southern California.

Still, the threat to humans is low according to the CDC. The agency has traced most human infections back to those handling livestock, and there’s been no reported transmission between people.

“I have dairies that are never coming back from this.”

But for cows and the dairy they produce, it’s a different story. This year was the first time the flu was detected in cows in the US, and it has ripped through many Western states’ dairy farms with startling speed. Since March, the virus has been found in cow herds of 16 states. For the last few months, infected herds have largely been concentrated in California—the state that makes up about 20 percent of the nation’s dairy industry. Last week, Texas, another one of the nation’s top dairy producing states, saw the reappearance of bird flu after two months without a detected outbreak.

In the industry hit hardest by bird flu, the poultry industry, the virus’ spread has resulted in the culling of entire flocks which has lead to higher egg prices on supermarket shelves. Will milk and butter prices soon go the same route? And how worried should you be about consuming dairy?

How exactly does bird flu affect dairy cows?

Some farmers are first identifying outbreaks in their herds through the color and density of the milk, in what they are coining “golden mastitis,” according to Milkweed, a dairy news publication. As early studies by University of Copenhagen researchers found, the virus latches onto dairy cows mammary glands, creating complications for the dairy industry beyond just the cow fatalities.

The virus is proving deadly to cows. According to Colorado State University Professor Jason Lombard, an infectious disease specialist for cattle, the case fatality rates based on a limited set of herds was zero to 15 percent. But California saw an even higher rate of up to 20 percent during a late summer heatwave in the states Central Valley. It was a warning for how the rising number of heatwaves and temps across the country could result in deadlier herd outbreaks in upcoming summers. 

For some of the cows that survived, there was a dip in their dairy production of around 25 percent according to multiple experts I spoke with. As a farmer told Bloomberg News, some of the cows aren’t returning to full production levels, an indication of longer lasting effects of the virus. It’s a finding experts are seeing in other parts of the US, too. According to Lombard, this may be due to the severity of the virus in the cow. According to reporting in Milkweed, there may also be “long-tail” bird flu impacts on a cow’s dairy production, health, and reproduction. Additional research is likely needed to understand the extent of these potential longterm effects of the virus and whether they could spell trouble ahead for recovering farms.  

A spokesperson with the California Department of Food and Agriculture told Mother Jones, “it’s too soon to know how production has been impacted.”

How is this impacting farms and farm workers?

As of today, more than half of the people who’ve contracted H5N1 are dairy farmworkers, according to the CDC. This population is particularly vulnerable because they are often the ones handling milking or milking equipment which can lead to spreading the virus. The CDC is recommending employers take steps to reduce their workers’ exposure to the virus by creating health and safety plans.

The CDC is working with organizations like the National Center for Farm Worker Health to expand testing, PPE availability, and training. According to Bethany Alcauter, a director at the organization, ensuring dairy farmworkers have access to testing is a tricky situation. The 100,000-some workforce faces barriers to accessing health care and testing, such as an inability to take paid-time off to get themselves tested if they are sick. And the system depends on the producer to decide to bring in the health department to oversee potential outbreaks within herds and staff, which doesn’t always happen because there’s no government mandate.

“It’s all recommendations and kindness—that’s what we’re running on. It’s not regulation and enforcement.”

“It’s all recommendations and kindness—that’s what we’re running on,” Alcauter says. “It’s not regulation and enforcement.” She believes the testing infrastructure could be strengthened by “recognizing that farm workers can be public-health first responders if they have the knowledge and the access to the right contacts, in the right system.”

Outside of navigating farmworker health, farmers face economic impacts when the virus spreads through their herds. “What you’re losing at the end of the day is revenue for your farm when it rolls through,” says Will Loux, vice president of economic affairs for the National Milk Producers Federation. “Depending on the financial situation of an individual farm it can certainly be devastating.” 

There are a handful of variables and factors that shape the financial losses of a dairy hit with an outbreak. Luckily, agriculture economist Charles Nicholson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and some colleagues created a calculator to estimate this financial impact of a bird flu outbreak. Based on Nicholson’s estimates for California, a typical farm of 1500 cattle will lose $120,000 annually. For context, this is about $10,000 more than the median household income of a dairy farmer. Based on those estimates, that would mean California’s farmers have collectively lost about $80 million at most due to avian flu so far. The US Department of Agriculture is providing support for farmers who are impacted by H5N1 outbreaks.

In reviewing a few herd datasets in Michigan, Phillip Durst, a dairy and cattle expert, noted that about half a year after an outbreak, herds were producing around 10 percent less than before. Not only do farmers face massive short term losses, they also struggle to return to full capacity again. And, there are high costs associated with putting resources into taking care of sick animals too. 

Even strong diaries that had “tip top” biosecurity measures, or comprehensive environmental protection measures in place, are shutting down, according to Anja Raudabaugh, CEO of Western Untied Dairies, a trade organization overseeing farms across California. “I have dairies that are never coming back from this,” Raudabaugh says. “This was just so cataclysmic for them. They’re not going to be able to get over that loss in production hump.”

There is some hope around the corner. A vaccine for cows, which the USDA claims is in the works, could help stop the spread and protect remaining uninfected herds. “Until we have a vaccine that we can inoculate them with at an early age, we have no choices except to hope that herd immunity sets in soon,” Raudabaugh says.

What’s the effect on milk?

In June, the US dropped 1.5 percent in production, around 278 million pounds of milk, compared to 2023. It was one of the early potential indicators of the industry’s vulnerability to this virus. However, since then, the nation’s production rebounded to above 2023 numbers. It’s largely why consumers are not seeing the same impact on the price and availability of dairy products like they are with eggs. 

“When one state gets H5N1 there are a lot of other states that tend to pick up the slack. So in general, when you look at the national numbers, you really have to squint to kind of find where H5N1 is in the milk production”,” says Loux.

California produces around a fifth of the nation’s dairy, and since August over half of the state’s herds had an outbreak. In October, California saw a near four percent drop in milk production compared to 2023, equating to about 127 million pounds of milk.

On Thursday, the USDA released November’s data on milk production showing California with the largest decrease this year of 301 million fewer gallons of milk compared to 2023. That is more than double the decrease of last month. Still, the nation only saw a near 1 percent decrease since 2023.

How the next administration handles this virus may spell a different story for the dairy industry and the country. With Trump’s history of downplaying infectious diseases and promoting unfounded cures, and public health cabinet nominations who decry vaccine effectiveness, a human-to-human outbreak could lead to another pandemic. Likely to take over the USDA is Brooke Rollins, who, according to Politico, had less experience in agriculture than others on Trump’s shortlist (though she does have a degree in agriculture development). It’s currently unclear what her plans are for handling this virus and supporting farmers and the industry at large. Rollins did not respond to my request for an interview.

Should I be worried about getting sick from drinking milk?

Drinking pasteurized milk is safe. For more than 100 years, pasteurization has kept the public safe by killing harmful bacteria and viruses.

The CDC is warning against raw milk consumption, on the other hand, due to it potentially having high-levels of bird flu. While there’s yet to be a human case of bird flu traced to raw milk consumption, there is fear that the unpasteurized product could lead to illness. And raw milk loaded with the virus has been linked to deaths in other mammals, like cats.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the likely soon-to-be director of Health and Human Services under Trump, has a history of promoting raw milk. Earlier this month, Kennedy’s favorite raw milk brand was recalled by California after testing positive for bird flu. Kennedy’s rise to public health power comes at time when raw milk is rising in popularity on TikTok.

In response to the spread of bird flu in raw milk, the USDA announced a national strategy requiring milk samples nationwide be tested by the agency. Since officially beginning testing on Monday, 16 new bird flu outbreaks in cow herds have been identified in two states.

For now, as the nation continues to work on controlling the spread of bird flu, consider tossing your raw milk out before it does more than just spoil.

The bird flu’s been around for generations. But this year, concerns have spiked after it jumped to humans and other mammals, leading to at least 58 confirmed cases in the United States among mostly farmworkers. 

Another, more obvious, cause for worry: The response to the prospective health crisis will soon be under the direction of President-elect Donald Trump. The former and future president will arrive in office next month with a track record of downplaying the severity of Covid-19, pushing unfounded cures, sharing conspiracy theories, and brandishing xenophobic rhetoric regarding Covid-19. A Lancet study found that under the Trump administration the US could have averted about 40 percent of its Covid-19 deaths compared to other high-income, G7 countries, and that’s partly due to the Trump administration’s manner of handling the crisis by politicizing masks and publicly dismissing its threat. 

Additionally, Trump is angling to bring prominent vaccine deniers to oversee agencies crucial to the nation’s bird flu response. If Trump gets his way, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be led by Tom Weldon, who has sought to remove the agency’s ability to conduct vaccine safety research and has spread vaccine misinformation himself. He also tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “go wild on health” as the director of Health and Human Services. Kennedy was labeled one of the “Disinformation Dozen” for spreading misinformation about the safety of the Covid-19 vaccine, and his anti-vaccine efforts contributed to a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in American Samoa. He has also stated “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” and is apparently a fan of raw milk, which can be a conduit for spreading bird flu.

“I don’t see our management of H5N1, which is already really bad, improving under a new administration.”

And more dangerous public health policy could be on the horizon. Project 2025 placed a target on the back of the CDC, calling it “perhaps the most incompetent and arrogant agency in the federal government,” and proposed cutting it in half. Eight former CDC directors, including Trump’s 2017 and 2018 appointees, opined that such a policy would “cost lives and damage the economy.” 

The CDC has always been intertwined with politics, from its director appointments to lobbying for money from congress. Yet the Covid-19 pandemic saw the CDC take on a new level of distrust and a decline in reputation, especially from Republicans. It led Congress to require congressional approval for a CDC director instead of just a tap from the incoming administration, making Weldon the first CDC nomination to undergo congressional scrutiny and approval.

This is all part of the larger, Covid-era “politicization of the CDC,” says epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera, a public health expert and host of the COVID Tracking Project series with Reveal. 

“Public health became public enemy number one for a lot of folks that are coming in with this new administration,” Malaty Rivera said. 

Public health in America has long been considered underresourced and disconnected, and that lack of data-sharing and organization was on full display when the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in 2020. 

Reveal’s Peabody-nominated COVID Tracking Project series explored how the government struggled to procure essential data to guide the Covid-19 response, navigate bureaucratic hindrances in the midst of an emergency, and mend a fragmented response to the pandemic. Many of these issues rested on weak data infrastructure and a lack of funding to support local public health agencies, causing the federal government to rely on a volunteer-led data collection effort. Public health agencies are working on fixing those issues, but the anticipated cuts will likely stymie those efforts and exacerbate the systemic problems.

“The public is looking at this new administration to come in and ‘clean house’ because they’re looking at this as retribution for how they experienced the Covid-19 pandemic,” Malaty Rivera said.

Not all systems have improved since the pandemic. During the 2020 outbreak, the federal government got every hospital to report Covid-19 data, making hospitalization data the most real-time indicator of the severity of surges. It provided the nation with immense public health surveillance capacity, but the Biden administration scaled this back and now the CDC surveils an estimated 10 percent of the nation’s population, leaving the United States with limited information about the ongoing spread and risks of viruses like avian flu.

Last year, Biden-appointed CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told Reveal that the CDC is unable to require states to share essential response data with them. She offered a potential solution: “Working with Congress, I think we could create authorities that would protect privacy, that would protect individuals, but that would allow… swift and nimble public health responses that we don’t have with the data systems we have in place right now,” Walensky said.

But Congress did not grant the CDC those data authority powers, and the possibility of this seems even less likely under the next administration. 

Walensky resigned from her post at the CDC soon after this interview aired, replaced by the current CDC director, Dr. Mandy Cohen. Cohen has conducted few interviews and largely centered the agency’s messaging on prepared public appearances and social media posts. The CDC denied multiple requests by Reveal for an interview with Cohen. However, Cohen answered questions swirling about the CDC’s future at a roundtable discussion in Raleigh, North Carolina, a day before the election.

“A well-funded CDC allows communities to thrive, but we all need to bring the data and the evidence to show that that money is working well here,” said Cohen.

A week after Trump’s election, she spoke about how the CDC might fare in the face of this next administration at a public health summit. She shared concerns for the proposed budgets that would “zero out” their ability to do work. 

“Fundamentally, folks want to make sure we have an entity that is ready to respond to health threats and that means we need data infrastructure to identify those things [and] have people who are talented to understand how to respond,” Cohen said. “This kind of work and that infrastructure takes resources and you need to maintain it.”

With the looming threats of Project 2025 and a vaccine denier poised to lead the agency, Malaty Rivera believes the CDC is about to “have its legs cut off” by the incoming administration. She believes the impact of this will extend globally as it will also slash funding to international health organizations that “help keep vaccine preventable diseases from becoming outbreaks and epidemics, and then pandemics, potentially.”

Although Malaty Rivera hasn’t seen the type of changes in the bird flu virus that would cause pandemic “alarm bells,” it is still a growing issue that is testing the US’s public health response systems. Malaty Rivera sees the Biden administration repeating some of the same Covid-19 mistakes, like a lack of available rapid testing and data transparency. 

“I don’t see our management of H5N1, which is already really bad, improving under a new administration,” said Malaty Rivera. “It’s about to get worse.”

The CDC still sees bird flu as a low risk to the public. The outbreak appears largely contained to farm animals and farmworkers, with the majority of human cases in California. While the CDC is monitoring bird flu outbreaks through wastewater systems, there seems to be a lack of a robust testing system that makes experts believe the current case count is likely an undercount. 

Last month the CDC said it has seen no evidence of human-to-human transmission. But several people who contracted the bird flu have reportedly not been in contact with infected animals, raising fears about human-to-human spread. There is still trepidation from public health experts about an unlikely but possible path: that the seasonal flu and bird flu could cohabitate in a person infected with both, and mutate into something more capable of infecting humans. It’s why the CDC has encouraged seasonal flu shots in hopes of reducing the chance of co-infection.

On Monday night, Christian Pulisic, the star of the US men’s national soccer team, scored in a match against Jamaica and promptly jogged over to the corner flag. After a jumping fist pump, the red, white, and blue bedecked central midfielder did what’s become known as the “Trump Dance,” laughing as he wiggled his arms and hips.

This dance is more than just “fun.” It’s a symbol of shifts in power and policy.

In a post-game interview, Pulisic—a multi-millionaire who is a registered Republican—was questioned about his celebration, and disavowed that it carried any deeper meaning: “It’s not a political dance. It was just for fun.”

No matter what Pulisic intended, there’s no denying he’s part of a larger wave of athletes, from the NFL to the collegiate level, who in the wake of Trump’s 2024 win have been imitating the president-elect’s dance, which he is known to perform along to “YMCA.” 

In discussing the trend, Fox News liberal commentator Jessica Tarlov identified a hypocrisy in contrast to the national stick-to-sports outrages that followed political statements by stars like Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James: “I guess we’ve gotten to the portion of the Trump era where we have moved past shut up and dribble, and now it is fantastic for athletes to talk about their politics.”

There’s no doubt some athletes are doing the dance as a show of support for Trump and his agenda. Take San Francisco 49ers pass-rusher Nick Bosa, who, a week before the election, wore a “Make America Great Again” hat during a post-game appearance. He was eventually docked $11,255 for breaking rules barring displaying written messages on the field, but, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the NFL delayed the fine until after Election Day in hopes of avoiding controversy or retribution from Trump. The following Sunday, Bosa did Trump’s dance in celebration of a sack; a video went viral after being shared by Sean Hannity on social media.

Trump’s election win is visible beyond American athletes. Players from the English football club Barnsley F.C—founded in 1887 and now playing in the third tier of professional British soccer—celebrated a goal with the dance. The display was broadcast to the world by the team’s social media managers, who shared a video backed up by the sounds of YMCA. And this month’s attacks in Amsterdam on Israeli soccer fans were kicked off after at least one supporter of Maccabi Tel-Aviv, the visiting team, was photographed hoisting a Trump banner. 

As Trump’s win reverberates in American culture and across the world, his reelection has confirmed his status as a global right-wing figure. In that sense, symbols that are associated with him will always speak to shifts in power and policy. When they crop up in sports, it’s hard to argue they are simply “just for fun.”

On Monday night, Christian Pulisic, the star of the US men’s national soccer team, scored in a match against Jamaica and promptly jogged over to the corner flag. After a jumping fist pump, the red, white, and blue bedecked central midfielder did what’s become known as the “Trump Dance,” laughing as he wiggled his arms and hips.

This dance is more than just “fun.” It’s a symbol of shifts in power and policy.

In a post-game interview, Pulisic—a multi-millionaire who is a registered Republican—was questioned about his celebration, and disavowed that it carried any deeper meaning: “It’s not a political dance. It was just for fun.”

No matter what Pulisic intended, there’s no denying he’s part of a larger wave of athletes, from the NFL to the collegiate level, who in the wake of Trump’s 2024 win have been imitating the president-elect’s dance, which he is known to perform along to “YMCA.” 

In discussing the trend, Fox News liberal commentator Jessica Tarlov identified a hypocrisy in contrast to the national stick-to-sports outrages that followed political statements by stars like Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James: “I guess we’ve gotten to the portion of the Trump era where we have moved past shut up and dribble, and now it is fantastic for athletes to talk about their politics.”

There’s no doubt some athletes are doing the dance as a show of support for Trump and his agenda. Take San Francisco 49ers pass-rusher Nick Bosa, who, a week before the election, wore a “Make America Great Again” hat during a post-game appearance. He was eventually docked $11,255 for breaking rules barring displaying written messages on the field, but, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the NFL delayed the fine until after Election Day in hopes of avoiding controversy or retribution from Trump. The following Sunday, Bosa did Trump’s dance in celebration of a sack; a video went viral after being shared by Sean Hannity on social media.

Trump’s election win is visible beyond American athletes. Players from the English football club Barnsley F.C—founded in 1887 and now playing in the third tier of professional British soccer—celebrated a goal with the dance. The display was broadcast to the world by the team’s social media managers, who shared a video backed up by the sounds of YMCA. And this month’s attacks in Amsterdam on Israeli soccer fans were kicked off after at least one supporter of Maccabi Tel-Aviv, the visiting team, was photographed hoisting a Trump banner. 

As Trump’s win reverberates in American culture and across the world, his reelection has confirmed his status as a global right-wing figure. In that sense, symbols that are associated with him will always speak to shifts in power and policy. When they crop up in sports, it’s hard to argue they are simply “just for fun.”

As Georgia vote counters page through the absentee and mail-in ballots, a few folks seated nearby who self-identify as “poll observers” are watching closely. A new election law in Georgia permitted anyone designated by an “independent candidate, nonpartisan candidate, a political party, or political body” to gain more access to voting centers and tabulation sites. Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump—who happens to be former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law—and RNC Chair Michael Whatley embarked on a drive to recruit more than 200,000 poll watchers. As absentee and mail-in ballots began to be tallied this weekend, Whatley tweeted, “We have eyes in the room as votes are being counted.” 

Live from Fulton County, Georgia… meet the self-appointed "vote monitors" looking for fraud: pic.twitter.com/tAOA2hqdVt

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) November 6, 2024

Mother Jones editor and senior reporter Kiera Butler lives in Georgia and visited the Fulton County Elections Hub and Operations Center, where she spoke with a few poll observers. She wondered why they were there, who they voted for, and what they thought about the 2020 election. Rodney Kelso, a Trump supporter from Chattahoochee Hills, wanted to observe and “make sure everything is fair and we have a smooth process.” Kelso believed the 2020 presidential election was riddled with problems and believes mail-in ballots made the US vulnerable to “more fraud and nefarious deeds.” Rodney’s wife, Debi, also a Trump supporter, who shares her husband’s suspicions about the 2020 election, signed on to observe the count in Fulton County because she wanted to see the process up close. 

As far as the January 6 attack on the US Capitol is concerned, both Rodney and Debi believe it was a farce. “It was a coup d’état,” said Rodney, “Our government was overthrown by foreign agents.” These were not Trump supporters storming the Capitol, they said. Debi believes the FBI was in on it. 

Accepting the results of the 2024 election for Debi will be no problem “if there’s no cheating and everything’s on the up and up,” she said. “Then the winners win, the losers lose, regardless of who it is.”

Today, voters in several states will get a say on ballot measures related to climate initiatives. Across the country, there are hotly debated propositions surrounding pipeline construction, climate infrastructure, and carbon reduction. (And fate of the planet aside, there’s also one referendum that could usher in a new tree-centric, state flag.)

Here’s a round-up of the green issues, big and small, that some voters will see on their ballot. 

Alabama:
Amendment 1
Currently, Alabama schools hold lands that are managed by the state’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which has prevented its timberland from being sold or leased. This amendment could allow some local boards of education to manage, sell, or lease land and its natural resources to fund education. 

California:
Proposition 4
California voters are deciding whether to allocate another $10 billion to climate change preparedness infrastructure projects. The money would go to preventing wildfires, developing drought and coastal resilience, mitigating rising sea level impact, improving drinking water, and other related projects, with 40 percent of the funding destined for disadvantaged communities.

Louisiana:
Outer Continental Shelf Revenues for Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund Amendment 
Louisiana voters will decide whether money the state generates from the production of wind, solar, or other alternative energy on the Outer Continental Shelf will, like similar revenue from oil and gas, be used to fund wetlands preservation, coastal restoration, hurricane protection, and infrastructure directly impacted by wetlands loss.

Maine:
Question 5
Maine’s flag might get a green boost. Residents will vote on replacing the state seal-based flag with one bearing the image of a pine tree and the North Star, inspired by “an Eastern White Pine in Governor’s Grove at Viles Arboretum,” according to the artist.

Minnesota:
Amendment 1
If passed, Minnesota will be allowed to extend for another 25 years a program allocating 40 percent of the state’s lottery revenue into the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, which supports conservation projects. 

Rhode Island:
Question 4
Ocean State voters will weigh issuing $53 million in bonds to fund environmental infrastructure projects, including wind development projects and climate change resilience efforts.

South Dakota:
Referred Law 21
South Dakotans will have a say in an ongoing battle surrounding a $5.5 billion carbon dioxide pipeline network and landowners rights. Supporters of the so-called “Landowner Bill of Rights,” argue it will create regulatory uniformity, protect private property, and boost agriculture. The opposition describes this bill as a ”trojan horse” for the pipeline company behind the project, Summit Carbon Solutions, allowing it to bypass local government by undermining “local control over zoning laws, pipeline setbacks, and other vital safety measures.”

Washington:
Initiative 2066 
This initiative, funded by fossil fuel and construction groups, would hinder, or even ban, government efforts to incentivize replacing gas stoves with energy-efficient electric appliances. 

Initiative 2117
Residents of the Evergreen state may also vote to repeal its 2021 Climate Commitment Act, a carbon market program that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent by 2050. As of 2023, the program took in over $2 billion from the state’s largest polluters—money that went into environmental programs. 

Across the country, you can find small town diners and watering holes proudly displaying photos of a president stopping by on the campaign trail. It’s not only a memento of how the person who got the nuclear codes may have ordered a burger or a slice of rhubarb pie—it’s a reminder of how voters have looked to national candidates’ food and beverage choices as one way to understand if inherently elite politicians are salt of the earth.

In forming her public image, Harris has showcased prowess in the kitchen.

This year, campaign season served up a buffet of food-related happenings and candidate signals, that sometimes, explains University of Buffalo political scientist Jacob Neiheisel, reveal politically salient “boundary markers between groups” and “status anxieties.” 

One food gaffe that stands out in history came during incumbent Gerald Ford’s 1976 campaign, when he bit into a tamale in Texas, husk and all, and nearly choked. Such missteps are consequential, Neiheisel says, because it’s “seen as some kind of indicator that they’re out of touch with the electors, that they don’t know the people who they would be representing.” 

This year, the closest we’ve come was JD Vance’s stop at Holt’s Sweet Shop, a Florida doughnut seller. His inability to engage the counter staff while standing draped in a suit and a seeming expectation that he’d be recognized—along with his order of “whatever makes sense”—brought national derision. As one succinct YouTube commenter put it, they had “never seen a VP candidate act with less charisma.” 

Mountain Dew, also largely thanks to JD Vance, became a token of a certain kind of white manhood, after he, in attempting a jab against overreaching “woke” politics, spoke about drinking a Diet Mountain Dew and how Democrats were for some reason “going to call that racist.” A week later, Democrat vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz proved him wrong by reaffirming his historic love for Diet Dew, telling a voter online that drinking one was the best way to start a morning. In October, the Harris campaign published a video of a blaze orange-bedecked Walz hunting and holding a shotgun, saying he’s looking to “grab a Diet Dew” and “pound one down.” As that guns-and-ammo display suggests, “Diet Mountain Dew has something to say about masculinity,” Contois says, “but also about regionality,” referencing the drink’s “hillbilly”-tied branding and popularity across a so-called “Mountain Dew Belt” spanning parts of Appalachia and rural, middle America.

Despite Walz’s language calling to mind frat basement chugging, the Minnesota governor brings nearly 30 years of sobriety to the ticket. But when Kamala Harris went on Stephen Colbert’s show, the late night host brought up what he called one of the “old saws” of political likability: would I grab a beer with the candidate? (To play along, she was served a can of Miller High Life.) 

But when it comes to playing politics with eating and drinking, Harris has largely been focused on letting voters know she likes to cook. That’s no surprise, according to the University of Tulsa’s Emily Contois, who has written that female candidates, in walking “an impossible line” of identity politics, often “navigate voter perceptions of both gender and electability through food and cooking.” 

“You have to be masculine enough that they believe you can do the job,” Contois, a professor of media studies, says. “You have to be feminine enough that they think you’re a real woman and a believable one.”

Trump’s campaign bought McDonald’s more than 150 times—there’s no record Harris’ has once.

When Hillary Clinton ran for president, it was against the backdrop of the cultural controversy kicked off by her comments, amid her national introduction during her husband’s 1992 presidential campaign, about how she had prioritized a legal career over staying at home and baking cookies. While men seeking the highest office sometimes seem to relish stuffing their faces on camera, in her 2016 campaign Clinton told the press—during an appearance where she was offered but refused cheesecake—that she had long ago “learned early on not to eat in front of all of you.”

“When it comes to women and food and eating and dieting and bodies,” Contois says, “it becomes a tangled thing.”

In forming her public image, Harris has repeatedly showcased interest and prowess in the kitchen. In her 2020 democratic presidential primary campaign, she ran a video series called “Cooking with Kamala” where she cheffed it up with celebrities, comedians, and politicians. In her speech accepting the party’s vice presidential nomination that year, Contois has written about how, by mentioning cooking Sunday dinner for her family to bolster claim to the nickname of Mamala, Harris sought to “cast herself as politically competent and suitably feminine in the eyes of voters… while also foregrounding her role as a mother and nurturer.”

Contois believes the quirky recipe details shared by Harris on the campaign trail—such as soaking greens in the bathtub—indicates genuineness and true passion, but also a savvy strategy. “It’s coming across as both truth, and a tactic that can help to construct that believably feminine side that people would expect and want to see in a woman,” Contois said.

Harris’ cooking references have become a tool of attack. As Laura Loomer, the right-wing influencer who has spent time on the campaign trail alongside Trump, posted in September, “Kamala spends more time making cooking videos than she does speaking to the media.” Loomer also, in a tradition that traces at least as far back as stigmatizing Italian migrants’ use of garlic, made a smear out of Harris’ Indian heritage and cooking by posting she would make “the White House smell like curry.”

“The spice and the smell and the difference,” Contois says, “that’s a more than 100-year-old tactic … of how to other someone.” An extreme version was also used to target Haitian migrants by the Trump and Vance ticket, in their comments pushing the false notion the community was eating pet dogs and cats. “To eat the family pet—it’s this huge anthropological, cultural taboo,” Contois said. “That’s why the rumor could take root and do so much harm.”

Donald Trump found his own way to use a kitchen to reshape his public image in the campaign’s closing weeks, by making his stage-managed appearance behind a fryer and drive-thru window at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s. It was not only a reminder of his love for the company and fast food generally, but a salvo in his one-sided narrative battle about Harris’ actual experience working at a McDonald’s—one that contrasts with his own silver spoon-fed upbringing.

Harris’ cooking references have become a tool of attack.

Federal Elections Commission campaign spending data shows another clear Trump-Harris contrast related to McDonald’s. While his campaign has paid for food from the home of the Big Mac more than 150 times, there’s no record Harris’ has ordered even once. His team’s second most frequented food business is Dunkin’ Donuts, closely followed by Chick-fil-A, where he has spent over 10 times as much money as Harris. The Harris campaign, since it launched in July, has tended to go big on fast casual spots like Chipotle, where her campaign spent 15 times more than Trump’s, and Sweetgreen, where they spent three times as much as Trump.

Of course, to look beyond symbolism and such spending, the candidates have pushed policies that could affect what and how Americans eat. While Trump loves to blast the rise in cost of groceries, his plan to deport masses of immigrants has been predicted to cause an over 20 percent increase in the price of hand-picked crops while nearly doubling the price of milk. With those kind of stakes, it’s clear this year’s election has left voters with plenty to digest.

Earlier this month, the Lincoln Project rolled out an ad centered on abortion rights featuring a chilling line uttered by the narrator, a young woman, in a monologue addressed to her Trump-voting father: “You knew his politics would end my freedom, my rights, my life,” she says. “You chose hate over me.”

The ad, which depicts a woman dying in agony as she suffers complications while giving birth, was produced by the Lincoln Project to swing a demographic group they’ve dubbed “Dobbs Dads”—a group of men open to voting to protect or restore their daughters’ access to abortion—who just might be the downfall of Trump. 

There’s evidence of such a shift in a recent Marist poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump by 20 points among college educated white men—a 5 point improvement over Biden’s 2020 margin with the same demographic. 

“We call them Dobbs Dads,” tweeted Joe Trippi, a veteran Democrat strategist who works with the Lincoln Project. “And they are breaking to Harris. One [of] our most important target groups.” 

The Dobbs Dads moniker, of course, comes from the 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling where the justices, led by three Trump appointees, effectively ended the federal right to access abortion. In the wake of that decision, 13 states have outright banned abortion, mothers have died due to lack of abortion access, maternal deaths in Texas doubled, infant deaths rose nationally, and Idaho’s legislature disbanded committees designed to investigate causes of maternal deaths, obscuring public understanding of how that state’s abortion ban has impacted mothers. With nearly two thirds of the U.S. public believing abortion should be legal, including 61% of men according to Pew research, the fast changing legal regime has made abortion rights one of the election’s top issues. 

Lincoln Project says it has identified roughly 680,000 Dobbs Dads in swing states.

According to Stuart Stevens, another Lincoln Project advisor, pregnancy related medical trauma has left more men open to voting against Trump, who has refused to rule out signing a federal abortion ban, and for Harris, who would work to restore abortion rights. Those men include, as Stevens recently told MSNBC, “voters who are more conservative than not, many of whom would check a box to say they are anti-abortion. But they are appalled by the specter of these tragedies.”  

“These are men who really have prided themselves as being the defenders of their daughter,” explains Trippi, “They suddenly are looking at what that means in terms of the Dobbs decision as they think about their daughter’s future and the world she’d live in.”

The Lincoln Project says its Dobbs Dads strategy is based on research conducted by a sister organization, the Lincoln Democracy Institute. An April 2023 LDI survey of over 17,000 voters helped their team zero in on two voting groups they considered ripe for persuasion: Dobbs Dads, and another they dubbed Red Dawn Republicans—older GOP voters who prioritize traditional international alliances, particularly in opposition to Russia.

Alex Shashlo, who helps run the Lincoln Project’s digital campaigns, said their “super targeted talking to dads approach on abortion” led them to choose female narrators for “Daisy”—the nightmarish ad set in a delivery room—and another similar spot, “This Year.” The strategy was partially inspired by a viral video clip of Taylor Swift speaking with her father about taking a political stand ahead of the 2018 elections. “If Taylor Swift said, ‘Hey, talk to your dad’, to all her followers, that would be a pretty powerful thing,” Trippi said. LDI’s research confirmed that the concept of daughters having conversations about abortion with their fathers could be effective in reaching men.

In a close election, the targeted campaign could make all the difference. The Lincoln Project says it has identified roughly 680,000 Dobbs Dads in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. In a recent podcast, Trippi also mused on the demographic’s potential to “surprise people in these Senate races like in Florida, in Texas, maybe Montana.”

“There is an opportunity here,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Lincoln Project rolled out an ad centered on abortion rights featuring a chilling line uttered by the narrator, a young woman, in a monologue addressed to her Trump-voting father: “You knew his politics would end my freedom, my rights, my life,” she says. “You chose hate over me.”

The ad, which depicts a woman dying in agony as she suffers complications while giving birth, was produced by the Lincoln Project to swing a demographic group they’ve dubbed “Dobbs Dads”—a group of men open to voting to protect or restore their daughters’ access to abortion—who just might be the downfall of Trump. 

There’s evidence of such a shift in a recent Marist poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump by 20 points among college educated white men—a 5 point improvement over Biden’s 2020 margin with the same demographic. 

“We call them Dobbs Dads,” tweeted Joe Trippi, a veteran Democrat strategist who works with the Lincoln Project. “And they are breaking to Harris. One [of] our most important target groups.” 

The Dobbs Dads moniker, of course, comes from the 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling where the justices, led by three Trump appointees, effectively ended the federal right to access abortion. In the wake of that decision, 13 states have outright banned abortion, mothers have died due to lack of abortion access, maternal deaths in Texas doubled, infant deaths rose nationally, and Idaho’s legislature disbanded committees designed to investigate causes of maternal deaths, obscuring public understanding of how that state’s abortion ban has impacted mothers. With nearly two thirds of the U.S. public believing abortion should be legal, including 61% of men according to Pew research, the fast changing legal regime has made abortion rights one of the election’s top issues. 

Lincoln Project says it has identified roughly 680,000 Dobbs Dads in swing states.

According to Stuart Stevens, another Lincoln Project advisor, pregnancy related medical trauma has left more men open to voting against Trump, who has refused to rule out signing a federal abortion ban, and for Harris, who would work to restore abortion rights. Those men include, as Stevens recently told MSNBC, “voters who are more conservative than not, many of whom would check a box to say they are anti-abortion. But they are appalled by the specter of these tragedies.”  

“These are men who really have prided themselves as being the defenders of their daughter,” explains Trippi, “They suddenly are looking at what that means in terms of the Dobbs decision as they think about their daughter’s future and the world she’d live in.”

The Lincoln Project says its Dobbs Dads strategy is based on research conducted by a sister organization, the Lincoln Democracy Institute. An April 2023 LDI survey of over 17,000 voters helped their team zero in on two voting groups they considered ripe for persuasion: Dobbs Dads, and another they dubbed Red Dawn Republicans—older GOP voters who prioritize traditional international alliances, particularly in opposition to Russia.

Alex Shashlo, who helps run the Lincoln Project’s digital campaigns, said their “super targeted talking to dads approach on abortion” led them to choose female narrators for “Daisy”—the nightmarish ad set in a delivery room—and another similar spot, “This Year.” The strategy was partially inspired by a viral video clip of Taylor Swift speaking with her father about taking a political stand ahead of the 2018 elections. “If Taylor Swift said, ‘Hey, talk to your dad’, to all her followers, that would be a pretty powerful thing,” Trippi said. LDI’s research confirmed that the concept of daughters having conversations about abortion with their fathers could be effective in reaching men.

In a close election, the targeted campaign could make all the difference. The Lincoln Project says it has identified roughly 680,000 Dobbs Dads in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. In a recent podcast, Trippi also mused on the demographic’s potential to “surprise people in these Senate races like in Florida, in Texas, maybe Montana.”

“There is an opportunity here,” he said.

Late on Wednesday night, as Hurricane Milton made landfall, Ryan Hall, the self-proclaimed “Internet’s Weather Man,” hosted a video stream where viewers peppered him with questions about which areas looked likely to be hit, where tornadoes were touching down, and how high the water had reached in treasured parts of Florida. 

“How’s Marco Island doing?”

“NORTH PORT storm surge?”

“Do you know if that came near D road? My sister has her horses there.”

The livestream featured Hall’s coverage, colleagues sharing tornado updates, dispatches from storm chasers on the ground, and a grid showing footage from cameras set up by the state of Florida, storm chasers, and other weather streamers to capture the hurricane’s arrival, landfall, and destruction. He drew in hundreds of thousands of viewers. 

According to Dr. Simon Dickinson, a University of Plymouth academic who has written on livestreaming disasters, forums like Hall’s serve as digital spaces where people can ask advice, get guidance, and build a sense of community. 

While there are of course viewers who could be defined as disaster voyeurs—people who want to see the “crash bang,” as Dickinson puts it—he says “there are also people there, equally, hoping that nothing happens.” 

“Hazards and disasters have a new kind of cultural value.”

But Milton saw another kind of disaster streaming, with Rolling Stone documenting how the hurricane had given rise to an online “content storm” of people seeking clout by sharing video of them riding out the storm. One man decided to take on Hurricane Milton on a blow up mattress. “I’m out here trying to entertain the people in the most creative way we can,” the streamer boasted. “We started a whole new trend on TikTok. A lot of people are doing hurricane streams now. Shout out to the whole movement.” 

Nearly 2 hours later, soaked by the rain, he cried “I’m done”—but only after supposedly making some $10,000.

While Dickinson notes it is dangerous for people to “put themselves in situations that they shouldn’t be for profit,” he has firsthand experience with video technology’s positive potential in a disaster. When studying for his PHd in the U.K., news broke about a tsunami alert in New Zealand, his home country. From a library he surveyed publicly available webcams, and soon realized he was “able to get more information about people and communicate to them from the other side of the world than they were able to in the event itself.”

Livestream resources and other cameras are even more common today than they were at the time. Doorbells, trail cams, and even traffic cameras can be repurposed to observe a hazard or disaster. News organizations are seeing the importance of providing these resources to their audience, like the Orlando Sentinel’s straightforward list of various webcams along Florida’s Gulf Coast to witness Hurricane Milton. Live Storms Media, a company specializing in weather footage, placed new ‘Surge Cams’ in areas they expected to be hit by Milton, which now provide a stark before and after gut check. And video’s frontier keeps expanding: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shared frightening images of the storm in the gulf produced by new waterborne drone technology, capturing waves over 28 feet high.

As the popularity of hurricane YouTube streams and social media trends about assembling ‘bugout bags’ suggests, “hazards and disasters have a new kind of cultural value,” Dickinson says, which can be used as a tool “in disaster communication.” When storm watching enters boring periods—last night, a commenter on one stream complained “all the cameras I’m watching keep dying” as others were, more prosaically, blurred by raindrops—the lulls can open the door to other valuable discussions. 

“Because nothing is happening, because it is quite mundane, the backdrop is very boring; naturally, conversation turns to climate justice, climate change, environmental risk,” he says.

And sometimes the conversations veer towards nostalgia as places being viewed hold some connection to commenters’ lives. In one example, Dickinson recalls two commenters realizing  they had honeymooned in the same exact path of a disaster.

“The threat of a pending doom or impending loss forces us to grasp what might be lost,” Dickinson says—not just in the storm on the screen, but in the many to come.

Late on Wednesday night, as Hurricane Milton made landfall, Ryan Hall, the self-proclaimed “Internet’s Weather Man,” hosted a video stream where viewers peppered him with questions about which areas looked likely to be hit, where tornadoes were touching down, and how high the water had reached in treasured parts of Florida. 

“How’s Marco Island doing?”

“NORTH PORT storm surge?”

“Do you know if that came near D road? My sister has her horses there.”

The livestream featured Hall’s coverage, colleagues sharing tornado updates, dispatches from storm chasers on the ground, and a grid showing footage from cameras set up by the state of Florida, storm chasers, and other weather streamers to capture the hurricane’s arrival, landfall, and destruction. He drew in hundreds of thousands of viewers. 

According to Dr. Simon Dickinson, a University of Plymouth academic who has written on livestreaming disasters, forums like Hall’s serve as digital spaces where people can ask advice, get guidance, and build a sense of community. 

While there are of course viewers who could be defined as disaster voyeurs—people who want to see the “crash bang,” as Dickinson puts it—he says “there are also people there, equally, hoping that nothing happens.” 

“Hazards and disasters have a new kind of cultural value.”

But Milton saw another kind of disaster streaming, with Rolling Stone documenting how the hurricane had given rise to an online “content storm” of people seeking clout by sharing video of them riding out the storm. One man decided to take on Hurricane Milton on a blow up mattress. “I’m out here trying to entertain the people in the most creative way we can,” the streamer boasted. “We started a whole new trend on TikTok. A lot of people are doing hurricane streams now. Shout out to the whole movement.” 

Nearly 2 hours later, soaked by the rain, he cried “I’m done”—but only after supposedly making some $10,000.

While Dickinson notes it is dangerous for people to “put themselves in situations that they shouldn’t be for profit,” he has firsthand experience with video technology’s positive potential in a disaster. When studying for his PHd in the U.K., news broke about a tsunami alert in New Zealand, his home country. From a library he surveyed publicly available webcams, and soon realized he was “able to get more information about people and communicate to them from the other side of the world than they were able to in the event itself.”

Livestream resources and other cameras are even more common today than they were at the time. Doorbells, trail cams, and even traffic cameras can be repurposed to observe a hazard or disaster. News organizations are seeing the importance of providing these resources to their audience, like the Orlando Sentinel’s straightforward list of various webcams along Florida’s Gulf Coast to witness Hurricane Milton. Live Storms Media, a company specializing in weather footage, placed new ‘Surge Cams’ in areas they expected to be hit by Milton, which now provide a stark before and after gut check. And video’s frontier keeps expanding: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shared frightening images of the storm in the gulf produced by new waterborne drone technology, capturing waves over 28 feet high.

As the popularity of hurricane YouTube streams and social media trends about assembling ‘bugout bags’ suggests, “hazards and disasters have a new kind of cultural value,” Dickinson says, which can be used as a tool “in disaster communication.” When storm watching enters boring periods—last night, a commenter on one stream complained “all the cameras I’m watching keep dying” as others were, more prosaically, blurred by raindrops—the lulls can open the door to other valuable discussions. 

“Because nothing is happening, because it is quite mundane, the backdrop is very boring; naturally, conversation turns to climate justice, climate change, environmental risk,” he says.

And sometimes the conversations veer towards nostalgia as places being viewed hold some connection to commenters’ lives. In one example, Dickinson recalls two commenters realizing  they had honeymooned in the same exact path of a disaster.

“The threat of a pending doom or impending loss forces us to grasp what might be lost,” Dickinson says—not just in the storm on the screen, but in the many to come.

When Gov. Tim Walz was announced as Kamala Harris’ running mate, Ben Jealous, the Sierra Club’s executive director, released a statement hailing him as someone who “has worked to protect clean air and water, grow our clean energy economy, and see to it that we do all we can to avoid the very worst of the climate crisis.” 

But to a group of Indigenous environmental activists familiar with Walz’s record in Minnesota—particularly their view he broke a promise to block the construction of Line 3, a cross-state oil pipeline—such a ringing endorsement of his green credentials rings hollow. 

A few days after her home state’s governor joined the ticket, Tara Houska, an attorney and Indigenous rights activist, expressed that point of view in an Instagram video post where she said he had led “a brutal, multi-year campaign to suppress Indigenous people and allies trying to stop Line 3 tar sands.” It showed a clash between protesters and police at a Line 3 pipeline construction site over a soundtrack of rising drums. In the final scene, Houska is being escorted away by police while in restraints. 

Houska first became involved in protesting pipelines in 2016 when, after working as a Native policy advisor for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, news about the Dakota Access Pipeline drew her back to the Midwest. After six months demonstrating against that pipeline at the Standing Rock reservation, Houska returned to the East Coast. She soon saw news coming out of the Midwest about a different pipeline: “I was like, ‘Oh, I need to go home.’”

The debate in Minnesota, which would lead to hundreds of demonstrators being arrested, came in the wake of major protests against the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. The projects were opposed by environmental activists upset they would speed fossil fuel extraction and consumption, and by Indigenous communities concerned about the impact on their historic lands and waters.

The controversy dates back to April 2015, when Enbridge, a Canadian energy company, proposed to then-Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration a plan to replace an aging pipeline originally completed in 1968. The project, Enbridge argued, would address “integrity and safety concerns” and allow the company to transmit 760,000 barrels of oil per day. The proposed new route traveled from Canada to Minnesota’s border with Wisconsin, passing through state forests and the Fond du Lac Reservation, home to over four thousand members of the Lake Superior Chippewa.

Beyond climate-related concerns, opponents feared the pipeline would threaten water systems, especially wild rice beds, that Indigenous communities rely on. Enbridge’s track record includes two of the largest inland oil spills in national history. In 1991, Line 3 released 1.7 million gallons of crude oil in Northern Minnesota, and in 2010, another Enbridge pipe spilled over 1 million gallons in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

“We were sold one thing to vote for them…When we did vote, we were totally betrayed.” 

Walz’s first public comments on the pipeline came in 2017, after Dayton announced he would not seek another term, and Walz, who had represented a southern Minnesota congressional district for 10 years, rolled out a campaign to succeed him. During a contested Democratic primary, Walz advocated against Line 3 by criticizing its harm to Native communities and lands. 

“Any line that goes through treaty lands is a nonstarter for me,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that “every route would disproportionately and adversely affect Native people. Unacceptable.” His stand drew in support from the Indigenous community and environmentalists, reassuring voters who may have been troubled by his record in Congress, where he was just one of thirty Democratic members to vote in favor of the Keystone XL Pipeline. 

“They got that extra push from climate folks and from tribal folks,” Houska recalled, explaining that Walz and his running mate, Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Nation, earned her vote in 2018. 

Enbridge’s proposal, after years of reviews, appeals, and public forums, finally garnered the approval of Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission in June of 2018. But in the final weeks of Dayton’s term, his administration sued to overturn the decision, with the outgoing governor writing that he hoped to “ensure that a project with this magnitude of environmental impact upon our state serves the needs of our citizens.” 

After Walz took office in early 2019, he said he would continue Dayton’s lawsuit, but in public remarks seemed to lay the groundwork to wash his hands of the issue, suggesting the project’s fate laid with an appeals court’s review of the commission’s decision. He explained he would not use executive powers to stop the pipeline “as a protection against the checks and balances being weakened.”

While Walz’s administration would continue to refile and support the suit Dayton launched, after a new environmental review, Enbridge was nonetheless able to obtain final permits and begin construction in December 2020. By early 2021, protests began to ramp up near Line 3 construction sites that would continue through the summer. In February, a group of tribal leaders asked Walz to enact an executive order to stop construction while litigation continued. At that point, a spokesperson for Walz said he did “not believe it is within his role to stay project permits that have been issued by state agencies after a thorough environmental review and permitting process.” 

Houska says Walz passed the buck. “The reality is his administration could’ve stopped Line 3,” she argues, by upholding treaty obligations—specifically the Ojibwe nation’s unique right to harvest wild rice, which activists warned was threatened by the pipeline. 

As opposition to the pipeline entered a new confrontational phase, demonstrators were met by a unique police force: the Northern Lights Task Force, which was made up of county law-enforcement agents whose time, training, and equipment were supported by a state account funded with $8 million from Enbridge. (Public records obtained by the Intercept show Walz hosted a conference call with senior task force members, and discussed its use of tear gas.) In addition to tear gas, rubber bullets, and other non-lethal weapons, police deployed “pain compliance” tactics that left multiple protestors partially paralyzed. 

Walz’s choice of Flanagan, who had supported the Standing Rock pipeline protesters, as a running mate had been seen as a signal within Native communities that he would stand fast against the pipeline. “When it came through that he wasn’t doing anything, Peggy was very silent on the matter. She never showed up to rallies. Didn’t show up to the treaty camps,” says Dannah Thompson, an Anishinaabe anti-pipeline activist from Roseville, Minnesota.

As protest activity swirled, the lieutenant governor faced pressure to step in. Flanagan released a statement in July 2021 on Facebook: “While I cannot stop Line 3, I will continue to do what is within my power to make sure our people are seen, heard, valued and protected. Using my voice is an important part of that work.”

Walz’s administration did not respond to a request for comment. But in August 2021, just after a thousand Line 3 protestors picketed at the state capitol, Walz defended the project, by saying that while “we need to move away from fossil fuels… in the meantime if we’re gonna transport oil, we need to do it as safely as we possibly can with the most modern equipment.”

Construction only took about 10 months. (Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources has since documented multiple aquifer breaches that took place during building.) When tar sands began being pumped through the pipeline in the fall of 2021, MN350, a state climate justice non-profit, issued a blistering statement: “Shame on Governor Walz, who broke his campaign promise.” 

“[We] fought as hard as we possibly could on every front: the ground fight, the regulatory fight, the political pressure, everything and anything to try to protect our wild rice and our waterways,” Houska said.

“Line 3 was an opportunity to prove that they wanted to take these bigger actions and stand up to financial powers and corporate powers,” says Thompson. “We were blindsided, and we were sold one thing to vote for them…When we did vote, we were totally betrayed.” 

“There is a small faction of us that I know who aren’t able to move past this,” Thompson adds. Citing “the violence that was pushed towards Native people” by police, she says sorting through Walz’s record on the pipeline is a pre-election “conversation that is going to be had in the months coming up in the Native community.”