Closing Summary

This blog is closing now, thanks for following along. You can find the latest US elections coverage here. Here are today’s highlights:

• As Hurricane Milton prepares to make landfall in Florida Wednesday night, President Biden has said the hurricane “could be the worst storm to hit Florida in over a century.” Scientists at Noaa are working to collect data from inside the storm, astronauts aboard the international space station have captured images of the storm, and fleeing Floridians are facing gas shortages.

• Kamala Harris continued a week of media apperances on three New York shows today: The View, the Howard Stern Show and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

• Trump secretly sent Covid-19 testing machines to Vladimir Putin in 2020, and has called the Russian leader as many as seven times since leaving the White House, investigative journalist Bob Woodward has reportedly written in a forthcoming book.

• The FBI never acted on tips received about Brett Kavanaugh during his supreme court nomination process, a Democratic senator opposed to the Trump appointee revealed in a report.

As Hurricane Milton approaches, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida went into HURCON II – one of five rankings the center maintains for what preparations should be made ahead of an approaching hurricane.

The spaceport is now restricted to essential personnel only. Tropical storm force winds are expected to reach the center by Wednesday evening, with hurricane force winds expected early Thursday.

The center, with support from SpaceX, have alread secured the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

As Hurricane Milton barrels toward Tampa, staff at the city’s zoo and aquarium are taking preparations to ride out the storm with animals that can’t be relocated.

Many animals have already been transported out of town, but about a dozen zoo and eight aquarium staff are expected to stay in Tampa to care for those that haven’t, the Washington Post reports. That includes animals too large to transport, like elephants and giraffes, which staff are relocating to a hurricane-proof barn with enough food and water to survive for a few days in case the building isn’t immediately accessible.

New footage from the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University captures the eye of Hurricane Milton.

More videos of the hurricane, including a lightning show at the center of the storm, are available on the institute’s website.

As Floridians in the path of incoming Hurricane Milton rush to evacuate, gas stations across the state are running out of fuel. As of 6:30pm ET, Reuters reports, 17.4% of the state’s gas stations had run dry.

Demand for gasoline had jumped, said Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy, a fuel markets tracker: “These numbers will continue to rise very fast.”

Florida is the third-largest gasoline consumer in the US, but there are no refineries in the state, making it dependent on waterborne imports. More than 17m tons of petroleum- and natural gas-related products move through Tampa Bay in a typical year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

More on those fuel import pauses from Reuters:

Kinder Morgan (KMI.N) has shut its Central Florida Pipeline system, which moves refined products between Tampa and Orlando, the company said in an emailed statement. It has closed all fuel delivery terminals in Tampa, but expects trucks to be able to pick up fuel from Orlando wholesale racks until winds exceed 35 miles per hour.

Fuel trucks cannot safely deliver at wind speeds exceeding that threshold, wholesale distributor Mansfield explained, and said it expects wind conditions to bring all Florida fuel deliveries to a near-halt by Wednesday.

Refiner CITGO Petroleum and infrastructure and logistics provider Buckeye Partners are also shutting down their Tampa terminals, the companies told Reuters.

Mansfield has moved all Florida markets to its ‘Code Red’ classification, requiring a 72-hour notice to make new deliveries.

It is also requesting 48-hour notices for new deliveries in southern Georgia.

Milton could potentially be the biggest disruptor to Florida’s gasoline supply since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, said Tom Kloza, head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service.

‘I’d be hard pressed to come up with an area that could be more prone to lingering problems should a Cat3 or greater storm hit the infrastructure,’ Kloza said. ‘It’s hard to anticipate any tankers or barges coming in to Tampa Bay until Sunday or Monday,’ he added.

In an attempt to reach more Americans and counter rampant disinformation, the White House is launching a Reddit account to share updates on Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Scripps News reports.

Launched in 2005, Reddit is a forum-style social media platform conducive to Q&As.

Still grappling with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, hospitals and healthcare facilities on Florida’s Gulf coast are now preparing for Milton to make landfall.

The state is currently seeing its “largest evacuation ever”, said Steve McCoy, the chief of the Florida department of health’s bureau of emergency medical oversight.

Ten hospitals have reported evacuations as of Tuesday afternoon, the Associated Press reported, and 300 healthcare facilities have evacuated, including 63 nursing homes and 169 assisted living facilities.

“I’ve lived on the Gulf coast my entire life and in Sarasota for 20 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,” said David Verinder, CEO of Sarasota Memorial health care system. “Our anxieties are high, but we’re as prepared as we know how to be.”

More from the AP:

Health officials are using almost 600 vehicles to take patients out of the storm’s path, tracking them with blue wristbands that show where they were evacuated from and where they are being sent. They plan to keep getting patients out through the night, until winds reach sustained speeds of 40 mph and driving conditions become unsafe.

Tampa General Hospital has stocked up on more than five days of supplies, including food, linens and 5,000 gallons of water, in addition to an on-site well. In the event of a power disruption, the hospital also has an energy plant with generators and boilers located 33 feet above sea level.

Tampa General deployed an “aquafence” to successfully prevent storm-surge flooding during Hurricane Helene two weeks ago. The barrier will be up again when Milton makes landfall and can withstand a storm surge of 15 feet. The U.S. National Hurricane Center estimates Milton’s surges will be 10 to 15 feet high at their peak.

Hurricane Milton is bringing business and tourism to a halt in large swaths of Florida as the state readies itself for a storm officials have warned will be “extremely dangerous” and potentially among the most destructive on record in the area.

Orlando international, one of America’s busiest airports, said it would cease operations Wednesday morning while Tampa international closed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Universal Studios and Disney World said its theme parks would close Wednesday afternoon. Retailer Target said it would temporarily close or adjust hours at some locations.

Waffle House, which famously often stays open during extreme weather, announced that it would close multiple locations in south-west Florida.

A team of “hurricane hunters” from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) flew through Milton as the category 5 hurricane barrelled towards Florida’s coast.

The team shared footage of their bumpy ride into the storm to gather data that will provide information for forecasting and hurricane research.

Milton is expected to be one of the worst hurricanes to hit the US in decades. Joe Biden warned that evacuation orders for those in the storm’s path were a matter of “life and death” while the Tampa mayor told residents: “If you choose to stay … you are going to die.”

Hurricane Milton strengthens back into category 5 storm

Fema has stationed major resources in Florida to support the state before Hurricane Milton makes landfall, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday.

The agency has dispatched dozens of teams overseeing incident management, search and rescue, swift water rescue, disaster medical assistance and temporary power along with 300 ambulances and 30 “high water vehicles” from the defense department. More than 20m meals and 40m liters of water are available as needed, Fema said.

“The National Hurricane Center forecasts Hurricane Milton will be a large and extremely dangerous hurricane when it approaches the west coast of Florida tomorrow, bringing devastating hurricane-force winds and life-threatening (storm) surge,” the statement read. The agency also warned “time is running out to prepare for the hurricane’s potentially deadly impacts”.

The announcement comes as the Biden administration grapples with the effects of back-to-back hurricanes as well as misinformation spread by Donald Trump and his supporters and others about the federal response to recent storms and false claims that Fema is preventing people from evacuating in Florida.

Large number of gas stations in Florida out of fuel amid mass evacuation

Meanwhile, the supreme court’s latest term is under way, and the nine justices heard oral arguments today in a case challenging the Biden administration’s regulation of “ghost guns”. As the Guardian’s Cecilia Nowell reports, the conservative-dominated body seemed ready to take the government’s side. Here’s more:

The US supreme court signalled a willingness to uphold the regulation of “ghost guns” – firearms without serial numbers that are built from kits that people can order online and assemble at home.

The manufacturers and gun rights groups challenging the rule argued the Biden administration overstepped by trying to regulate kits.

Justice Samuel Alito compared gun parts to meal ingredients, saying a lineup including eggs and peppers isn’t necessarily a western omelet. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, though, questioned whether gun kits are more like ready-to-eat meal kits that contain everything needed to make a dinner like turkey chili.

Chief Justice John Roberts seemed skeptical of the challengers’ position that the kits are mostly popular with hobbyists who enjoy making their own weapons, like auto enthusiasts might rebuild a car on the weekend.

Many ghost gun kits require only the drilling of a few holes and removal of plastic tabs.

“My understanding is that it’s not terribly difficult to do this,” Roberts said. “He really wouldn’t think he has built that gun, would he?”

A ruling is expected in the coming months.

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, says he expects Hurricane Milton to reach the state’s west coast by tomorrow night or early on Thursday morning.

He also says his administration has taken steps to help people flee areas under evacuation warnings, including negotiating lower hotel prices and arranging free rides with Uber:

From his perch on the International Space Station, Nasa astronaut Matthew Dominick got a view of Hurricane Milton as it churned across the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida’s west coast:

Biden says his team is doing everything ‘to save lives and help communities’