| By Zahra Hirji Back-to-back, catastrophic strikes by Helene and Milton in the southeastern US are changing the contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in its final weeks. In interviews and speeches, on the campaign trail and on social media, Harris, the Democratic nominee, and Republican Trump are increasingly talking about the same thing — hurricanes and disaster response — in very different ways. Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm Sept. 26 in Florida's Big Bend region. It unleashed historic levels of rainfall that triggered deadly flooding, especially in western North Carolina. In the storm's wake, Harris and Trump rejiggered their travel schedules to visit affected communities, and they increasingly started talking about recovery efforts — especially after Milton, another monster hurricane, formed in the Gulf of Mexico. Trump has used the twin disasters to attack Harris and President Joe Biden over their response, and has spread misinformation about that on his social media site Truth Social as well as in interviews and rally speeches. Trump has wrongly claimed that disaster relief funding is being redirected to migrants and that hurricane victims can only get $750 in aid. He also claimed without evidence that the relief effort is neglecting Republican communities.  Kamala Harris walks with members of the US Armed Forces and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper after being briefed on Hurricane Helene recovery operations in Charlotte on Oct. 5. Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images Meanwhile, Harris is spending much of her time talking about hurricane preparedness, response and relief. The issue came up when she appeared on the ABC daytime talk show The View. She pushed back on some of Trump's baseless claims about the Biden administration's post-Helene relief efforts. (Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, told Bloomberg News, "The only misinformation is coming from the Harris-Biden Administration.") She later called into The Weather Channel to counter more hurricane falsehoods. Read More: Disinformation Stirred by Musk and Trump Adds Strain to Hurricane Recovery Overwhelming scientific evidence shows climate change is making hurricanes more powerful, causing them to intensify more rapidly and infusing them with more rain. Harris hasn't dwelled on the link between the storms and global warming. And up to this point, she hasn't made climate a cornerstone of her election pitch, despite the significant climate legacy of the Biden administration and many Democrats saying global warming is among their top voting priorities. In the debate with Trump, she gave Biden's green initiatives a short mention before touting US oil and gas production. Trump, who in the past called climate change a "hoax," has vowed to gut Biden's climate policies while belittling clean energy technologies such as wind power and electric vehicles. Read More: Trump 2.0 Climate Tipping Points Both candidates are now talking about climate change even if they aren't using those words, says Pete Maysmith, senior vice president of campaigns for LCV Action Fund, the election-related side of the League of Conservation Voters.  Donald Trump, alongside Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, speaks at a temporary relief shelter in Evans, Georgia, on Oct. 4. Photographer: Evan Vucci/AP Photo "I think sometimes there's this view that we need these magic words to be uttered or else we're not talking about climate change," says Maysmith. "Of course we're talking about climate change." Environmental groups have followed the Harris campaign's lead on how to bring up climate with voters, focusing their ad buys and other voter education efforts on how federal climate spending is creating new jobs and bringing down energy costs generally, rather than detailing the policy specifics. And they're now taking her cue by messaging around the hurricanes. LCV Action Fund recently released a short video on Instagram that shows images and footage of Helene's damage with a voiceover of Trump saying: "When people talk about global warming, I say the ocean is going to go down 100th of an inch within the next 400 years. That's not our problem." (Trump has made versions of this claim in campaign rallies and TV interviews.) The video has raked in more than 4 million views, in part because American musician Billie Eilish reposted it. Read and share a full story on Bloomberg.com. | 
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