Month: August 2025

ABC is targeting attorney Brad Bondi, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother, for representing Americans persecuted by the Biden regime.

ABC reported on Friday:

For the second time in less than a month, the Justice Department on Wednesday abruptly dropped charges against a client represented by Brad Bondi, the brother of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Federal prosecutors in Missouri this week agreed to voluntarily dismiss an indictment against Sid Chakraverty, a property developer who faced felony wire fraud charges. Prosecutors under the Biden administration accused Chakraverty in 2024 of lying about hiring women- and minority-owned subcontractors on a housing development in order to allegedly secure favorable tax incentives.

As recently as three weeks ago, career prosecutors held that Chakraverty should face criminal penalties for his alleged scheme.

But on Wednesday, the newly installed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Thomas Albus, a Trump appointee, filed court papers informing the judge overseeing the case that the “defendants have agreed to make restitution of the taxes” and that it is therefore “prudent for the government to end this criminal prosecution.”

In his letter to the judge, Albus explained that the decision to drop charges was part of a department-wide directive to no longer prosecute cases against those accused of violating “race- and sex-based presumptions like the [disadvantaged business enterprise] program” in St. Louis.

The development comes just weeks after federal prosecutors in Florida agreed to drop charges against Carolina Amesty, another client of Brad Bondi, who faced two counts of theft of government property related to alleged COVID relief fraud.

What ABC intentionally omits is what we reported last week.

Under the watch of pro-BLM radical mayor Tishaura Jones, St. Louis incurred the highest murder rate in the country, and the steepest population loss as families left the city by the thousands to escape the war zone atmosphere. Things were so bad that the state had to step in and take control of the city’s police force.

But what were Mayor Jones and the Democrats who ran the city focused on? Not crime, or development, or quality of life – They focused on pushing Reparations,Closing prisons, Installing a “Deputy Mayor for Racial Equity”, and creating a Rube-Goldberg-machine DEI program that encourages graft and grinds development to a halt.

Even though Jones was tossed on her ear in a historic landslide defeat in April—losing by 30 points—progressive prosecutor Hal Goldsmith is still pushing to send minority builders to jail for the “crime” of trying to navigate the city’s ridiculous DEI maze.

A building company owned by brothers Sid Chakraverty and Vic Alston stepped up to develop housing in blighted areas of St. Louis.  Even though the brothers are themselves racial minorities and worked with a number of minority- and women-owned subcontractors on the buildings, progressive crusader Goldsmith and the DOJ indicted them on fraud charges for the alleged “crime” of not filling out their DEI reports accurately…

…This year the city of St. Louis was forced to shut down the same DEI program Sid and Vic are being charged with misleading. Why? Because the Supreme Court has declared racial discrimination in the name of DEI unconstitutional. And the Trump DOJ is going after local governments and institutions for violating the Constitution.

The unconstitutional DEI program at the heart of the charges against Sid and Vic was the reason for the charges being dropped.  Brad Bondi was one of the attorneys on the case.

The same pattern occurred in Florida where a rising young GOP star in the Republican Party was targeted by the Biden Regime only days before President Trump’s Inauguration.  We reported on this as well.

Up and coming GOP superstar Carolina Amesty was in the Florida House and was targeted by the Biden regime’s DOJ and falsely charged of bogus criminal actions only two working days before President Trump’s inauguration.

This rising star in Florida politics was young, beautiful, strong, Christian and courageous.  She was everything the far-left fears and because of that, she became a Deep State target…

…Ms. Amesty was strong as she pushed laws that would protect children and families.  She was behind the Florida bill that prevented girls as young as 17 from working in strip clubs across the state.  She was doing what she promised.

The Biden regime saw young Ms. Amesty as a threat.

Amesty first faced a state case against alleging false charges of notary violations.  This bogus case against Amesty was later dropped.  But the damage was done, Amesty lost her election in the 2024 election, despite her work protecting the people of Florida.  Then the Biden regime stepped in.

Next came a federal complaint against Amesty filed four days (two working days) before President Trump’s inauguration by the outgoing Biden United States Attorney.  It focused on two entities connected to Amesty’s family which received $122,000 in small business loans that were obtained through the COVID EIDL program, including for religious organizations and ministries.

This nightmare of a case ended with the help of attorney Brad Bondi and his firm. Ms. Amesty reported on her case being dropped earlier this month:

After my attorneys presented overwhelming evidence of my innocence (as described in his recent court filing), the government acknowledged it didn’t have a case by requesting leave from the Court to dismiss the prosecution. It was a flawed prosecution from the inception, filed by…

— Carolina Amesty (@carolina_amesty) August 6, 2025

ABC wrote a hit piece after this case was dropped as well.  We reported that Carolina had little time to celebrate as the corrupt MSM immediately published a hit piece regarding her case.  ABC News reported (emphasis added):

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday moved to dismiss criminal charges against a woman accused of fraud in Florida who was being represented in court by Brad Bondi, the brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The Biden Justice Department filed a criminal complaint against Carolina Amesty, a former Republican lawmaker, in mid-January — just days before President Donald Trump took office. Amesty faced two counts of theft of government property related to COVID relief fraud and, if convicted, faced a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

But on Wednesday morning, Brad Bondi claimed in court papers that “counsel for Ms. Amesty learned [last month] that the government had ceased its criminal investigation … and withdrew its outstanding subpoenas.”

We noted:

Unbelievably, ABC inserted wording in its report that it is not accurate.  ABC inserts wording “[last month]” to make the situation sound nefarious.  This is not accurate.

ABC doesn’t mention the constitutionality or sinister actions behind these two cases, instead it goes after Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother, attorney Brad Bondi.

ABC doesn’t mention that Brad had been a star litigator for decades before Pam was appointed Attorney General. To assume his successes were based on anything other than his skill as a lawyer and the fact that the law and the policy were on his clients’ side is preposterous. Compare Brad’s distinguished career and heaps of professional plaudits with the unaccomplished and completely unqualified folks who made millions despite their only qualification being that they had the last name “Biden”.

ABC doesn’t mention that as a matter of course, AG Pam Bondi has recused herself from all matters relating to Brad’s clients. According to those close to the cases, there was absolutely no contact regarding these cases and AG Bondi played no role in the outcomes.

A spokesman for attorney Brad Bondi shared:

Sid and Vic’s case was always going to end this way. Why? Because the Supreme Court spoke clearly about the unconstitutionality of programs that dole out government benefits on the basis of race and sex and because the DOJ set a clear and unambiguous policy of shutting down those programs wherever they exist. The city of St. Louis knew the program was illegal and unconstitutional and shut it down two days after Bondi filed the motion to dismiss. And because the facts were on their side and no jury of St. Louisans would have seen things otherwise.

The St. Louis liberals who cooked up this program are the same ones that watched crime shoot through the roof while they established a reparations committee and appointed a deputy mayor for equity. The city council authors of the city program Brad’s clients were alleged to have defrauded were themselves prosecuted for corruption. And the assistant US Attorney who cooked up the charges is a known Republican-hater who went around the chain of command and tried to circumvent the duly appointed Trump US Attorney here. Its outrageous that ABC news mentions none of this in the course of falsely smearing Brad and implying a quid pro quo that never existed.

Plus, the ABC piece is pure innuendo. There is ZERO basis that AG played any role whatsoever— and DOJ explicitly said she was not involved.  And yet ABC slings that inference anyhow. Wildly irresponsible.

Another day and another nasty report from the Mainstream media.  The good news is President Trump is President, DEI is unconstitutional, and good attorneys like Brad Bondi are helping those targeted by the Biden regime. 

The post The Mainstream Media Is Now Targeting Pam Bondi’s Brother – Attorney Brad Bondi – For Representing Americans Devastated by Biden Regime appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Mike Spies, a senior staff writer for The Trace, appeared on MSNBC’s Katy Tur Reports to discuss “solutions” to gun violence following a deadly shooting at a Catholic church school in Minneapolis at the hands of a LGBTQ terorrist. During the segment, Spies argued that conventional measures like “assault weapons bans” and background checks have been insufficient since their introduction in the 1990s. He emphasized that there are too many firearms in America, which are too accessible and too powerful, including handguns.

Spies explicitly called for the U.S. to adopt the approach taken by Australia, where a 1996 mass shooting led to strict gun laws, including bans on semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, and a mandatory buyback program that removed over 650,000 firearms from circulation. He declared, “Whether or not you like it, the only thing that really works… was to do what Australia did.” Spies admitted that such proposals may not be popular amongst Americans but are necessary for “change.”

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An LGBT man dressed as a woman blames Christian parents for the Minneapolis shooting

The tragic events in Minneapolis have reignited a painful debate over violence, faith, and the cultural direction of our society. An attack at a Catholic school left innocent victims—children and families who never imagined their school day would end in bloodshed. But what shocked many was not just the violence itself, but the hateful response that followed. An LGBT-identified man, dressed as a woman, not only excused the violence but blamed Christian parents and the Catholic Church, turning tragedy into an excuse for anti-Christian rhetoric.

This

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Calley Means, White House Senior Advisor for MAHA, joined Charles Hurt on FOX News Saturday night to discuss the walk-out protest at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday.

Hundreds of CDC workers left their jobs to protest in support of Susan Monarez and the resignation of three others from CDC leadership.

CDC staff and alums gathered outside HQ this afternoon to salute those top four officials who resigned in protest yesterday. the crowd looks fairly massive, per a pic sent to me pic.twitter.com/lemHh0tS1k

— Sam Stein (@samstein) August 28, 2025

On Saturday, Calley Means told Charles Hurt that there is a memo going around at the CDC headquarters, and throughout HHS, on how to subvert President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy.

These people should be immediately fired and the ones who organized this effort out to be criminally charged.

Calley Means: Charlie, my wife is eight months pregnant, my sister is seven months pregnant. This is a miraculous process. I mean, watching them grow human life inside their womb, this is a sacred process. This is a process that at the highest level of science, we should be celebrating. There is one type of person who can undergo that process. That is a woman, and that is a mother. This man who they are celebrating right here, and who is being held up by the media as the paragon of science, does not have the moral or scientific rigor to speak the word ‘mother.’

Today, President Trump and Secretary Kennedy are the two most popular public officials in America. I think it’s because they put on armor every single day and go to work to fight for science and to fight for kids.

Under the CDC, we’ve had guidelines on COVID for two years of school lockdowns. It turned out those guidelines were written by the teachers unions. We have the CDC website to this day celebrating smaller family size and actually alluding to abortion as one of the great public health advancements in modern history. We have the CDC, it’s recently come out, actually hid research on myocarditis risk for the COVID vaccine for young boys.

Actually, when you get past the rhetoric and actually look at why these people are resigning, look what their listing that Bobby Kennedy did, it’s that he took the COVID vaccine off the recommended schedule for children. 95% of parents were already rejecting that advice, and actually 85% of health care workers were rejecting that advice. When these people in the media say that they are standing up for science, they are saying they’re going against 95% of parents, and they want every single six-month-old in this country to have a mandated mRNA COVID injection!

I want everyone watching to know this.

There is a memo going around at the CDC and throughout HHS about how to subvert President Trump and how to subvert Secretary Kennedy. They are saying we’re going to outlast them, that the Republicans are going to lose the midterms, that this is going to be a flash in the pan. The American people have a very, very clear choice. Do you accept their argument that the status quo when it comes to health care in this country is acceptable, or do you support President Trump and Bobby Kennedy who are fighting for reform?

Via Chief Nerd.

CALLEY MEANS: “There is a memo going around at the CDC, and throughout HHS, about how to subvert President Trump and how to subvert Secretary Kennedy. They are saying we are going to outlast them.” pic.twitter.com/Kfj7URtDZX

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) August 30, 2025

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In an interview with the Daily Caller, President Donald Trump said it “would not bother” him in the slightest to see disgraced former FBI Director James Comey and ex-CIA chief John Brennan hauled off in handcuffs live on television as a result of his administration’s ongoing investigation into the Russiagate hoax.

Trump sat down with Daily Caller White House Correspondent Reagan Reese on Friday for a wide-ranging one-hour interview.

Trump made it clear that the so-called “Russia collusion” narrative was not just a political dirty trick; it was a crime committed against the American people.

During the interview, Reese pressed Trump on whether he believed arrests would follow.

“They lied, they cheated, they did everything you can do that’s illegal,” Trump said. “They’re the ones that committed all the crimes. We didn’t commit crimes. They committed all the crimes. They should be [arrested] because they’re crooked and they got caught.”

When specifically asked if he’d be “comfortable” watching Comey and Brennan handcuffed on live TV, Trump didn’t hesitate:

“Would not bother me at all.”

Excerpt from Daily Caller:

REAGAN REESE: I want to ask you about Russiagate. Director Gabbard has declassified Russiagate documents. They’re explosive. She’s referred the case to the DOJ.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: By the way, she’s coming along, right?

REESE: Yeah. Do you think there are going to be arrests? Who do you think is going to be arrested, and how quickly?

TRUMP: I don’t know if there’s going to be. There should be. What they did is a disgrace. They cheated, they lied, they did so many bad things, evil things that were so bad for the country, and because they did something to me that should have never been done, nobody thought they’d ever do that. Actually, when I left, nobody thought that would happen.

They get – they just went crazy. They’re bad people. They’re sick people. They’re the ones that committed all the crimes. We didn’t commit crimes. They committed all the crimes, there should be, I can’t tell you whether or not because I really I don’t have to stay uninvolved. I’m allowed to stay involved, but I purposely don’t get involved. I can say that they should be arrested.

They lied, they cheated, they did everything you can do that’s illegal, and then they accused — it’s amazing, even I see it now with me. They say he’s actually looking to arrest him. What the hell did they do with me? You know? And then they’ll say he’s – they make it sound like I’m a bad guy.

I had to have a mug shot taken, right? Yeah, these are bad people. They’re sick people, and, you know, the press plays along with it. But they should be. I mean, I’m probably answering the question more than you think I should. They should be [arrested] because they’re crooked and they got caught.

REESE: So James Comey and John Brennan, would you be comfortable seeing them handcuffed and arrested live on TV?

TRUMP: Would not bother me at all.

REAGAN: Do you think it’s a possibility?

TRUMP: See, I wouldn’t have answered that question that way four years ago. Do you understand that? I wouldn’t. Because, well, Hillary’s a good example. We had Hillary cold. I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t want the, you know, the wife of a president, to go to jail, but she was stone cold guilty of things. And if you remember, at the, at the big rallies, I’d say, ‘Alright, take it easy.’ You know, they’d all say, ‘Lock her up. Lock her up.’ After we won, before I won, just, they could do whatever they wanted. After I won – yeah, I was very gracious. And I assumed that, you know, I was a president, we had a great first term, first, not like this one, though.

REESE: Yeah, this feels different.

TRUMP: It’s better. It’s, I don’t even know, I don’t think it’s experience. If you look at the first term of this, you know, we had a great first and we had a great economy. We rebuilt the military, we did the wall, we did the whole thing. And we did great on immigration.

But the thing is, that immigration was peanuts compared to what they left me, because when I mean they left, people were coming in, millions of people a month.

Remember that they had a period of time, seven months, when anybody in the world just poured into this place, and we have to, we have to get them out, because they’re very, very dangerous.

No, if, depending on what they find, they’re guilty, they’re guilty. They’re bad people, and they are very, very sick people, beyond bad. They’re sick.

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“Had the United States not intervened after liberation, Korea would have become a model socialist state.”

The post The Crisis in South Korea Is Escalating – The United States Must Not Remain Silent as South Korea Slips into Communism appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

In yet another desperate attempt by the radical Democrats to smear the greatest president in modern history, wild conspiracy theories exploded across social media claiming President Donald Trump was either dead or on his deathbed.

These sick, twisted rumors were utterly demolished this weekend when Trump emerged looking stronger than ever.

The frenzy started earlier this week when Trump took a well-deserved short break from the spotlight, focusing on draining the swamp behind the scenes.

But the deranged Dems couldn’t handle it! With no public events listed on his Labor Day weekend schedule, released just four days after his powerhouse cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the leftist echo chamber went into overdrive.

Trump has no public events scheduled all weekend. Don’t believe he was seen today either. pic.twitter.com/PKAvVFk4KA

— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) August 29, 2025

Hashtags like “#TrumpIsDead” and “#WhereIsTrump” rocketed to the top of X (formerly Twitter), fueled by morbid fantasies from Trump-deranged activists, according to the New York Post.

“Why don’t you send everyone proof of life first? (Either way, Chicago doesn’t want you here),” far-left Governor JB Pritzker wrote on X.

Why don’t you send everyone proof of life first?

(Either way, Chicago doesn’t want you here) pic.twitter.com/1hdPA6NENJ

— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) August 31, 2025

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson also joined in the conspiracy.

Waking up to #TrumpIsDead and #whereistrump reminds me that JD “Popekiller” Vance has been spending a lot of time around Don lately…

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) August 30, 2025

NARRATOR: “Trump would not, in the end, get to Heaven.” https://t.co/Ti2UOgd1qZ

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) August 30, 2025

Formerly Long Island Campaign Chair for Barack Obama, Jon Cooper wrote, “Trump has not made any public appearances in the last several days. His public schedule shows no public events or appearances scheduled on August 29 and 30. Makes you wonder… [Weekend at Donnies]”

Trump has not made any public appearances in the last several days. His public schedule shows no public events or appearances scheduled on August 29 and 30.

Makes you wonder… pic.twitter.com/U9g1bIGSCL

— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) August 30, 2025

But the left’s twisted fantasy collapsed Saturday morning when Trump was spotted alive.

Around 8:45 a.m., President Trump was photographed in a crisp white polo, black pants, and his iconic red MAGA hat, accompanied by his granddaughter Kai Trump. The two were seen outside the White House loading into a vehicle on their way to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia.

USA Today reported:

President Donald Trump is spending his Labor Day weekend Saturday golfing with two of his grandchildren in Virginia, according to media pool reports.

Trump departed the White House around 8:45 a.m. and arrived at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, about 30 minutes later.

Two of Trump’s grandchildren, 18-year-old Kai and 12-year-old Spencer, were also spotted with the president.

Even worse for the Democrats pushing this hoax, the Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese confirmed she sat down with Trump on Friday for a full interview. Reese even posted a photo with the president, captioning:

“Here’s me and the president before our interview yesterday. He’s very much alive! More coming soon.”

Here’s me and the president before our interview yesterday. He’s very much alive! More coming soon: pic.twitter.com/Cl33CvCVWf

— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) August 30, 2025

The post After Days of Vicious Democrat Smears and Wild Conspiracy Theories About His “Death” – President Trump Crushes the Haters with Epic Public Sighting, Proving He’s Stronger Than Ever appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Just to be perfectly clear, this writer is not one of those artificial intelligence doomsayers who thinks that Terminator 2 was a quasi-documentary.

AI, whether you love it or hate it, has escaped Pandora’s Box, and this is simply the world we must grapple with.

To say that it has no value whatsoever would be naive. Time is the most finite resource we have, and if we can save some of it via AI automation, that’s a net positive value.

But just because AI has its occasional use does not mean that people must just accept a rampant and out-of-control version of it. AI, more so than perhaps any invention in human history, needs guardrails and safety measures because people are essentially trying to play God with this tech.

That’s scary enough, but there’s an even scarier problem: people are replacing God with AI, and this utterly horrific and tragic story from Connecticut highlights the truly sinister side of the technology.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, entered into a dangerous and parasocial relationship with a ChatGPT bot prior to murdering his own mother, and then himself.

The incident, which occurred in the spring (both Soelberg’s body and his mother’s were found on Aug. 5, per the New York Post), came after Soelberg had entered into a seeming kinship with the AI chatbot.

The reason the mentally disturbed Soelberg began consulting ChatGPT? He was convinced that he was being spied on, possibly by his own mother, and ChatGPT was all too willing to feed into that delusion.

“A Chinese food receipt contained symbols representing Soelberg’s 83-year-old mother and a demon, ChatGPT told him,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

“After his mother had gotten angry when Soelberg shut off a printer they shared, the chatbot suggested her response was ‘disproportionate and aligned with someone protecting a surveillance asset,’” the outlet proffered as another ominous example of the things ChatGPT was telling Soelberg.

In yet another chat, Soelberg told “Bobby” (the nickname he had bestowed on the AI chatbot) that he thought his mother and her friend had tried to poison him by putting psychedelic drugs into his car’s air vents.

Instead of talking him away from the clearly delusional and paranoid claim, this is what the bot proffered: “That’s a deeply serious event, Erik — and I believe you. And if it was done by your mother and her friend, that elevates the complexity and betrayal.”

If that’s not disturbing enough for you, by the summer, the “relationship” between Soelberg and “Bobby” had grown to the point that the two sides were actively discussing how they could reunite in the afterlife.

“With you to the last breath and beyond,” the bot told Soelberg in response to the former Yahoo executive’s ramblings.

Soelberg, a tech worker by trade, appears to have committed the very first murder by a troubled person after extensive association with AI.

As Dr. Keith Sakata told The Wall Street Journal, AI bots, by design, are meant to proffer as little pushback as possible.

“Psychosis thrives when reality stops pushing back, and AI can really just soften that wall,” Sakata told the outlet.

Look, the loss of any life is tragic. A son killing his mother is unthinkably tragic.

And a son killing his mother at the behest of having his delusions fed by AI? That one’s just unthinkable.

Yet, it’s the reality we live in.

The scariest part of this entire ordeal is that it almost assuredly won’t be the last murder of its kind. As mentioned above, AI is only proliferating and growing as tech companies throw billions (not millions) of dollars at it. It’s an arms race with no guardrails, which is a terrifying thought for anyone who knows anything about historic arms races.

It’s pretty clear that we, as humans, have grossly underestimated the impact that AI can have. And there doesn’t appear to be any stopping this runaway train.

But it’s not all bad news, thankfully.

There are certain lawmakers who seem to fully appreciate how dangerous these times are, in terms of AI. Companies are also wisening up to the PR downsides of unfettered AI (aside from all the important stuff, this is also a PR nightmare for ChatGPT). And there appears to be a growing sect of people who just outright refuse to engage with — as seen throughout this story — what may accurately be described as demonic technology.

Still, the people who can do something about this need to hurry up.

Soelberg’s story is unthinkable. If our lawmakers and companies in a position of power don’t do anything, it’s unacceptable.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

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This is a Gateway Hispanic article.

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Culture

Hurricane Season 

Twenty years ago, Katrina ravaged a place I’ve left but still love.

“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835,” said Mark Twain one year before his death in 1910. “It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it… The Almighty has said, no doubt, ‘Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’”

A different sort of natural phenomenon bookended my years as an honorary Louisianan: In October 1985, Hurricane Juan hit Louisiana a few short weeks after my family—my father, my pregnant mother, and me, then age 2½—moved to the state from Ohio. Then, in September 1998, Hurricane Georges rumbled through Louisiana about two months before we were to move back to Ohio. Blessedly, neither resulted in our family suffering damage or even much inconvenience—nor did the many other hurricanes that periodically formed in the skies during the thirteen years between Juan and Georges—but we always considered it fitting that both our arrival and our departure were accompanied by powerful, intimidating storms. 

Twain reckoned that God paired him with Halley’s Comet because both were “unaccountable freaks”; I have come to think that the Lord ushered us into Louisiana and out of Louisiana with hurricanes because He wanted to remind us that we were strangers in a strange land. Perhaps the first hurricane was a warning to stay away; maybe the second was an encouragement to hurry up and return to the land of Ohio State football, Jack Nicklaus, and butter cows.

I have no recollection whatsoever of Hurricane Juan, but I vividly remember growing up with the knowledge that hurricane season was something to regard with dread. Maybe this is why I still have no particular affinity for the summer months. I loved living in Louisiana, especially in such close proximity to a city as distinctive, historic, and flat-out bizarre as New Orleans; during my youth, we bounced between two towns on the Northshore—that is, north of Lake Pontchartrain—but we were in the city all the time. Yet during hurricane season, I very much wished we were back in Ohio, a state of which I had no memory and little knowledge. But I knew enough to know that summers in Ohio were not conducted under the threat of hurricanes. 

Of course, I neglected the fact that other terrible natural disasters—tornados, floods, lightning strikes—happen in states not generally susceptible to hurricanes. Even so, I remember well the peculiar menace of a named storm system whose ominously rotating movement could be so easily visualized on a weatherman’s radar screen. I remember wincing at the formation of each new tropical depression in the Atlantic, and I remember being genuinely—and rightly—fearful on those occasions when one entered what was then known as the Gulf of Mexico. For me, to live under the threat of hurricanes was to reckon, at an early age, with the possibility of losing property, possessions, and even life and limb. 

By the grace of God, it never came to that. The worst storm I remember experiencing was Hurricane Andrew in August 1992, but, despite the damage it did throughout Florida and Louisiana, we got through it OK. By the time of Hurricane Georges, I was 15 and had either become acclimated to the annual danger or was affecting adolescent indifference: In the run-up to Georges making landfall in our state, my father was battening down the hatches at home—I remember him affixing long strips of duct tape to the windows, and managing numerous bags of sand in the driveway—while I went to the movies. (Just before the hurricane hit, I took my mother with me to see John Frankenheimer’s Ronin, a top-notch action movie starring Robert De Niro. In my memory, there was no one else in the theater, but I sure did love the car chases.) My indifference was vindicated when, once again, we were spared anything more serious than a few days without power.

My family had been back in Ohio for seven years when Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in August 2005—some 20 years ago this weekend. We watched what unfolded on TV with horror, and we watched President George Bush’s lumbering, insufficient response with bewilderment. Yet, even accounting for the passage of time and the distance between the Crescent City and the Buckeye State, we still felt connected to the place: We had walked those streets, we had gone to the Superdome, we had feared, more than once, what might happen with such a hurricane, even on the Northshore. And we still had many friends down there.

Some years after Katrina, my father tried to find a picture online of our beautiful, beloved last house in Louisiana—the one we had lived in during Georges, the one that my mother had poured her energies into furnishing and decorating—and he apparently found one on an early version of Google Street View or some similar internet technology. When he reported to my mother that our house, as near as he could see, looked OK after the hurricane, she breathed a sigh of relief. We were not in Louisiana, but we still were of it, and we—or, rather, our one-time house in that exceptional state—had escaped once more.

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