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Elon Succeeded Where FEMA Failed
First responders plan relief efforts in Burnsville, North Carolina. “Presidents can’t afford to turn their backs on people like Musk. They do so at their own—and the country’s—peril,” write Joe Nocera and Madeleine Rowley for The Free Press. (Allison Joyce via via Getty Images)
While the Starlink CEO was racing to help the victims of Hurricane Helene, where was the federal government?
By Joe Nocera and Madeleine Rowley
10.08.24 — Tech and Business
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Robby Starbuck, a right-wing activist who loves to troll the left, lives on a 12-acre farm in Tennessee, about four hours from the area that Hurricane Helene ravaged last week. After the storm hit southern Appalachia, a friend told him that hurricane victims were struggling to connect with the outside world. 

“So many people were worried that their famil…

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Joe Nocera
Joe Nocera is an editor and writer at The Free Press. During his long career in journalism, he has been a columnist at The New York Times, Bloomberg, Esquire, and GQ, the editorial director of Fortune, and a writer at Newsweek, Texas Monthly and The Washington Monthly. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2007.
Madeleine Rowley
Madeleine Rowley is an investigative reporter covering immigration, financial corruption, and politics. She is a 2023-2024 Manhattan Institute Logos Fellow with previous bylines in The Free Press, City Journal, and Public. As a U.S. Army spouse for almost a decade, she's lived in six states and spent two years in Jerusalem, Israel. She currently resides on the East Coast with her husband and daughter.
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