Whenever President Trump lashes out against someone or something in a way that defies traditional expectations for presidential behavior — for instance, his decision to criticize the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday morning after her city was devastated by Hurricane Maria — it yields a debate about what was behind it. After […]
Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. Today’s theme song: “Makin’ It” from the television show “Makin’ It.” Poll of the week As a humanitarian crisis unfolds in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island last week, the U.S. government’s response has been criticized, and much of the mainland news media has been focused […]
While Puerto Rico suffers after Hurricane Maria, much of the U.S. media (FiveThirtyEight not excepted) has been occupied with other things: a health care bill that failed to pass, a primary election in Alabama, and a spat between the president and sports players, just to name a few. Last Sunday alone, after President Trump’s tweets […]
The images and reports coming out of Puerto Rico show an island in crisis. Many ports remain closed, airports are damaged, and roads are blocked by debris or have been washed away by floods. Electricity will likely be gone for months. Internet and phone service have become luxuries. Homes lie in ruins across the island. […]
Hurricane Maria, currently headed for Puerto Rico, stunned forecasters by rapidly intensifying from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 within a 15-hour period on Monday, battering the island of Dominica in the process. Indeed, the forecast error for Maria’s wind speed is one of the worst for a 24-hour hurricane forecast in the […]