Trump’s demonization of entire categories of immigrants is dangerous. But when he advocated for a Muslim ban during his first presidential run, he did not direct his followers’ anxiety and loathing toward worshippers at one particular mosque or community.
With this new smear, Trump and his running mate are fomenting hatred for a discrete group of 15,000 people in one location. This dramatically increases the risk that their campaign of dehumanization will lead to acts of violence. And indeed, on both Thursday and Friday, Springfield was forced to shutter its public schools and municipal buildings in response to bomb threats. Meanwhile, a Haitian community center in the city is getting threatening calls and Haitian families are keeping their kids home out of fear for their safety.
Alice in the Afternoon, by Catriona Millar
The juxtaposition between the victimization of such innocents, and Republicans’ gleeful dissemination of AI-generated cats that are purportedly imperiled by the existence of Springfield’s Haitians, is morally nauseating, at least to any person who believes in the equal dignity of all human life. And the fact that Vance has implored his social media followers to keep spreading such libelous memes, at the expense of his own constituents’ safety, is similarly disgraceful.
Why do Trump and Vance believe it is in their interest to advertise such moral bankruptcy and recklessness?
The Republican ticket’s foray into inciting ethnic hatred in a single municipality cannot be understood as unthinking or impulsive. Sure, Trump routinely makes demagogic statements that are inspired less by political calculation than whatever he happened to just witness on Fox News.
But Vance is nothing if not a ruthless and self-disciplined striver. One does not rise from his humble origins to Yale Law School without some ability to filter one’s thoughts or rationally pursue one’s goals. And a person capable of likening Trump to an opiate in 2016, and then becoming an apologist for his insurrection just a few years later, when that posture became politically useful, is plainly willing to do most anything in a calculated bid for power.
Wednesday Reads
Posted: September 18, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: abortion, Amber Thurman, Candi Miller, D&C, election interference, Georgia, J.D. Vance, Lawrence O'Donnell, Springfield Ohio 4 CommentsGood Day!!
Autumn Portrait of Lydia Cassatt, by Mary Cassatt, 1880
Last night, Lawrence O’Donnell opened his show with a scathing rant on the results of the Republican crusade against legal abortion titled, “Women are dying. They got what they wanted.” He talked about the ProPublica article about Amber Nicole Thurman, who died in a Georgia hospital because doctors were afraid to give her the basic procedure (dilation and curettage or D&C) that would have saved her life. They then continued to withhold treatment until she died of sepsis. As a result, Thurman’s 6-year-old son has been left without a mother. O’Donnell then talked about what happened to his own mother when he was 6 years old. His mother had a miscarriage and was immediately given a D&C. This was before abortion was legal. O’Donnell choked up as he told this story. You can watch the video at MSNBC.
Today, Kavita Surana posted the story of the second Georgia woman known to have died because of the state’s anti-abortion laws: Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Stayed at Home and Died.
Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her.
“They said it was going to be more painful and her body may not be able to withstand it,” her sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, told ProPublica.
But when the mother of three realized she had unintentionally gotten pregnant in the fall of 2022, Georgia’s new abortion ban gave her no choice. Although it made exceptions for acute, life-threatening emergencies, it didn’t account for chronic conditions, even those known to present lethal risks later in pregnancy.
At 41, Miller had lupus, diabetes and hypertension and didn’t want to wait until the situation became dire. So she avoided doctors and navigated an abortion on her own — a path many health experts feared would increase risks when women in America lost the constitutional right to obtain legal, medically supervised abortions.
Miller ordered abortion pills online, but she did not expel all the fetal tissue and would need a dilation and curettage procedure to clear it from her uterus and stave off sepsis, a grave and painful infection. In many states, this care, known as a D&C, is routine for both abortions and miscarriages. In Georgia, performing it had recently been made a felony, with few exceptions.
Her teenage son watched her suffer for days after she took the pills, bedridden and moaning. In the early hours of Nov. 12, 2022, her husband found her unresponsive in bed, her 3-year-old daughter at her side.
An autopsy found unexpelled fetal tissue, confirming that the abortion had not fully completed. It also found a lethal combination of painkillers, including the dangerous opioid fentanyl. Miller had no history of drug use, the medical records state; her family has no idea how she obtained them or what was going through her mind — whether she was trying to quell the pain, complete the abortion or end her life. A medical examiner was unable to determine the manner of death.
Her family later told a coroner she hadn’t visited a doctor “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.”
The conclusion of experts:
When a state committee of experts in maternal health, including 10 doctors, reviewed her case this year at the end of August, they immediately decided it was “preventable” and blamed the state’s abortion ban, according to members who spoke to ProPublica on the condition of anonymity.
They came to that conclusion after weighing the entire chain of events, from Miller’s underlying health conditions, to her decision to manage her abortion alone, to her reticence to seek medical care. “The fact that she felt that she had to make these decisions, that she didn’t have adequate choices here in Georgia, we felt that definitely influenced her case,” one committee member told ProPublica. “She’s absolutely responding to this legislation.”
This is the second preventable death related to abortion bans that ProPublica is reporting this week. Amber Thurman, 28, languished in a suburban Atlanta hospital for 20 hours before doctors performed a D&C to treat sepsis that resulted from an incomplete abortion. It was too late. “This young mother should be alive, raising her son and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” Vice President Kamala Harris said of Thurman on Tuesday. “This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down.”
There are almost certainly other deaths related to abortion access. Georgia’s committee, tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths to improve maternal health, has only reviewed cases through fall 2022. Such a lag is common in these committees, which are set up in each state; most others have not even gotten that far.
Path in the garden of the asylum, Vincent Van Gogh
The situation women are dealing with now is far worse than what happened in the years before Roe. Old right-wing men without even basic knowledge of the female anatomy and medical procedures are making decisions that can condemn women to death and their families to the loss of a mother or daughter who becomes pregnant in a red state. Of course none of this could have happened without six monsters on the Supreme Court. As Lawrence O’Donnell said, “Women are dying. They got what they wanted.”
Here’s another horror story out of Georgia; this one is about election interference. Justin Glawe at The Guardian: Network of Georgia election officials strategizing to undermine 2024 result.
Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.
The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. Crew shared the emails with the Guardian.
Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.
The communications include correspondence from a who’s who of Georgia election denialists, including officials with ties to prominent national groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network, a group run by Cleta Mitchell, a former attorney who acted as an informal adviser to the Trump White House during its attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
The group – which includes elections officials from at least five counties – calls itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition.
These emails go way back:
Among the oldest emails released are those regarding a 30 January article published by the United Tea Party of Georgia. Headlined “Georgia Democratic Party Threatens Georgia Election Officials”, the article was posted by an unnamed “admin” of the website, and came in response to letters sent to county election officials throughout Georgia who had recently refused to certify election results.
“In what can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate elections officials,” the article began, “the Georgia Democratic party sent a letter to individual county board of elections members threatening legal action unless they vote to certify upcoming elections – even if the board member has legitimate concerns about the results.”
The letter had been sent by a lawyer representing the Democratic party of Georgia to county election board members in Spalding, Cobb and DeKalb counties. Election board members in each of those counties had refused to certify the results of local elections the previous November. In their letter, Democrats sought to warn those officials that their duty to certify results was not discretionary in an attempt to prevent further certification refusals, including in the coming presidential election. In response, the United Tea Party of Georgia took issue with the letter, calling it “troubling” and saying that it was “Orwellian to demand that election officials certify an election even if they have unanswered questions about the vote”.
While the author of the article was not named on the United Tea Party of Georgia’s website, the emails obtained by Crew show that it was Hancock, an outspoken election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections, who has become a leading voice in the push for more power to refuse to certify results.
There’s more at the link.
Autumn in Honfleu Cote de Grace, cir. 1906, byEmile-Othon Friesz
More efforts at election interference were reported by ABC News: Suspicious mail containing white powder was sent to election offices in at least 16 states.
The FBI and Postal Service are investigating suspicious mail containing a white powder substance that was sent to election offices in at least 16 states this week, according to an ABC News canvass of the country.
None of the mail has been deemed hazardous so far – and in one case, the substance was determined to be flour – but the scare prompted evacuations in some locations.
Election offices in New York, Tennessee, Wyoming, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Colorado received the suspicious packages. Similar suspicious mail was addressed to offices in additional states – Arizona, Georgia, Connecticut and Maryland among them – but investigators intercepted them before they reached their destination.
The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service said in a statement Tuesday that they were investigating letters containing white powdery substances. A law enforcement source said at this point none of the packages were believed to be hazardous.
“We are also working with our partners to determine how many letters were sent, the individual or individuals responsible for the letters, and the motive behind the letters,” the statement read.
At least some of the packages were signed by the “United States Traitor Elimination Army,” according to a copy of a letter sent to members of the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center obtained by ABC News.
The Saga of Springfield goes on and on. The Wall Street Journal learned that before he began spreading rumors of dogs and cats being eaten, he was told by city officials that the stories were baseless. We know this from a story in The Wall Street Journal. It’s behind the paywall, so this is a summary from Raw Story:
A representative for J.D. Vance was told “point blank” that the Republican vice presidential nominee’s claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio were not true, but he continued to smear them anyway as bomb threats were called in to local schools and government offices.
The Republican senator posted about the rumors on X, where he’s got 1.9 million followers, and he did not delete the post even after one of his staffers called Springfield city manager Bryan Heck on the morning of Sept. 9 to ask whether Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating cats and dogs, as other social media users had alleged, reported the Wall Street Journal.“
He asked point-blank: ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” Heck told the newspaper. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.” [….]
Vance has admitted the claims are false, but he continues to make dubious and debunked claims about Haitian immigrants in the state he represents in the U.S. Senate, such as his claim that communicable diseases have spiraled out of control in Springfield.“Information from the county health department, however, shows a decrease in infectious disease cases countywide, with 1,370 reported in 2023 — the lowest since 2015,” the Journal reported.
“The tuberculosis case numbers in the county are so low (four in 2023, three in 2022, one in 2021) that any little movement can bring a big percentage jump. HIV cases did increase to 31 in 2023, from 17 in 2022 and 12 in 2021. Overall, sexually transmitted infection cases decreased to 965 in 2023, the lowest since 2015.”
Another claim by Vance fell apart after a spokesperson provided the Journal reporter with a police report involving a woman who alleged that a Haitian immigrant may have taken her cat.“But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later — found safe in her own basement,” the newspaper reported. “Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.”
The Autumn, by Alphonse Mucha, 1896
Trump says he wants to visit Springfield, but the mayor would prefer that he didn’t. NBC News: After false pet claims, Springfield mayor says Trump visit would be ‘an extreme strain’ on resources.
The Republican mayor of Springfield, Ohio, the city that has been the target of unfounded claims from former President Donald Trump and his running mate about Haitian immigrants’ eating residents’ pets said Tuesday that a visit from Trump would tax the city’s resources.
“It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Mayor Rob Rue said at a news conference at City Hall.
NBC News reported Sunday that Trump planned to visit the city “soon,” according to a source familiar with his planning, after he amplified during the presidential debate a baseless claim that had circulated in right-wing spheres online for weeks, saying Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs” and cats of local residents.
Officials in Springfield have said the allegations are meritless, with city police issuing a statement that said there were “no credible reports” of Haitian immigrants’ harming pets.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, had also “panned the claims as “garbage,” and he visited Springfield Tuesday as the city responds to dozens of bomb threats, deemed hoaxes that have led to temporary closings and evacuations of schools and city buildings.
DeWine said a campaign visit from a presidential candidate is “generally very, very welcomed,” but he acknowledged that it would pose challenges.
“I have to state the reality, though, that resources are really, really stretched here,” he said.
Trump and Vance should stay the hell out of Springfield, Ohio.
Trump is holding a rally on Long Island tonight–a strange use of campaign resources in a blue state this close to the election. Anyway, there’s been a “suspicious occurrence.” Newsweek: ‘Suspicious Occurrence’ Near Donald Trump New York Rally: What We Know. “
Nassau County police responded to a “suspicious occurrence” near the location of former President Donald Trump‘s Wednesday night rally in Long Island, noting that no explosives were located, the department confirmed to Newsweek.
“We did respond to a suspicious occurrence in the vicinity of the Nassau Coliseum, however there was no validity of an explosive device being found,” a public information officer told Newsweek after a report about an explosive device at the rally site circulated online.
“We’re unsure where this information originated, but we can confirm that no explosives were discovered.”
I suppose we’ll be dealing with these false alarms from now on.
More Republicans are backing Kamala Harris every day now. This is from The New York Times: 111 Former G.O.P. Officials Back Harris, Calling Trump ‘Unfit to Serve.’
More than 100 former national security officials from Republican administrations and former Republican members of Congress endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday after concluding that their party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, is “unfit to serve again as president.”
In a letter to the public, the Republicans, including both vocal longtime Trump opponents and others who had not endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, argued that while they might “disagree with Kamala Harris” on many issues, Mr. Trump had demonstrated “dangerous qualities.” Those include, they said, “unusual affinity” for dictators like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and “contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior.”
John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves, 1855–1856
“As president,” the letter said, “he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests and betrayed our values, democracy and this country’s founding documents.”
The letter condemned Mr. Trump’s incitement of the mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, aimed at allowing him to hold onto power after losing an election, saying that “he has violated his oath of office and brought danger to our country.” It quoted Mr. Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, who has said that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”
The letter came not long after former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, both said they would vote for Ms. Harris. Democrats featured a number of anti-Trump Republicans at their nominating convention last month, including former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Mr. Pence has said he will not endorse Mr. Trump but has not endorsed Ms. Harris.
The 111 signatories included former officials who served under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. Many of them had previously broken with Mr. Trump, including two former defense secretaries, Chuck Hagel and William S. Cohen; Robert B. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank; the former C.I.A. directors Michael V. Hayden and William H. Webster; a former director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte; and former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts. Miles Taylor and Olivia Troye, two Trump administration officials who became vocal critics, also signed.
But a number of Republicans who did not sign a similar letter on behalf of Mr. Biden in 2020 signed the one for Ms. Harris this time, including several former House members, like Charles W. Boustany Jr. of Louisiana, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Dan Miller of Florida and Bill Paxon of New York.
I’ll end with this piece by conservative Stuart Rothenberg in Roll Call: So, you’re sure the presidential race will be close?
If there is one thing on which liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, journalists and political partisans all agree, it’s that the 2024 presidential race is too close to call.
Vice President Kamala Harris may have a slight advantage nationally and in a couple of competitive states, but polling in at least half a dozen swing states – including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin – shows that the presidential race between Harris and former president Donald Trump is separated by only a percentage point or two.
As the New York Times wrote on Sept. 8 and updated three days later, “The national results are in line with polls in the seven battleground states that will decide the presidential election, where Ms. Harris is tied with Mr. Trump or holds slim leads, according to New York Times polling averages. Taken together, they show a tight race that remains either candidate’s to win or lose.”
But if you are something of a gambler and everyone you know believes the 2024 presidential contest is and will remain extremely close, you probably should put a few dollars on the possibility that November will produce a clear and convincing win for Harris.
That assessment isn’t based on the most recent survey numbers but on the current dynamics of the race and the advantage of taking a contrarian position.
Harris has plenty of momentum going into the fall election. She has become a strong speaker at her rallies, and she should have a considerable financial advantage over the next couple of months.
Her coalition, which includes some high-profile Republicans and conservatives, stretches from former Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative intellectual Bill Kristol on the right to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the left.
Harris clobbered Trump in their first (and possibly only) debate, and another debate would be extremely risky for Trump, who can’t afford another bad performance.
Harris wasn’t merely good on one or two topics during the debate. She successfully deflected Trump’s attacks and baited him so that he spent more time defending himself than defining his opponent. Harris was particularly effective on abortion/reproductive rights and foreign policy/national security.
The Democratic ticket is drawing huge crowds in the key states where Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are campaigning, and it’s quite possible that pollsters are underestimating the turnout that the Democrats will generate in the fall.
Read the whole thing at the link.
Have a nice Wednesday, everyone!!
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: September 14, 2024 Filed under: Donald Trump, Haiti, immigration | Tags: anti-immigrant discrimination, food and ethnicity, Haitian immigrants, JD Vance, Laura Loomer, slavery, Springfield Ohio 4 CommentsHappy Caturday!!
By Joan Gillchrest
This week, Trump has truly shown himself to be a fascist. To our everlasting shame as a country, this disgusting man, this convicted criminal–found guilty of rape and 34 counts of business fraud–is still permitted to run for president. If he somehow wins the election in November, he will be able to act with impunity, since the right wing Supreme Court has said that the president cannot be prosecuted for official acts. Thanks to this horrible creature Trump, our democracy hangs in the balance.
Now, as Dakinikat wrote in detail yesterday, Trump has been spreading an insane attack on legal Haitian immigrants in a small Ohio city, Springfield, creating a crisis there involving attacks on innocent people and bomb threats that have closed the city hall and two elementary schools on Thursday and Friday.
Trump’s VP candidate J.D. Vance was the first to spread the hateful rumors, and he has continued to do so even after they have been debunked. Vance also called attention to the event that began the anti-Haitian fervor in Springfield–a bus crash that killed a young boy. The bus driver was a Haitian immigrant.
As Daknikat also wrote, Trump has been hanging around with Laura Loomer, a hateful far right activist, and she may also have been a source of the anti-Haitian rumors. (FYI: Here is a very good Guardian article about Loomer) Trump has been taking Loomer with him on his plane to events such as the 9/11 anniversary commemorations in Shanksville, PA, and New York City and the debate with VP Kamala Harris on Tuesday. Loomer reportedly has been staying at Mar-a-Lago for at least the past week.
As you can tell, this is a follow-up to Dakinikat’s excellent Friday post. I want to add a little more background.
An Op-Ed by Lydian Polgreen at The New York Times: Trump Has Crossed a Truly Unacceptable Line.
When my family moved back to the United States from East Africa in the mid-1980s, one might have thought it was a peak time of compassion for people suffering in faraway places. A glittering group of music superstars had recorded “We Are the World,” a smash hit charity single to raise money and awareness for the victims of a brutal famine that had gripped my mother’s home country, Ethiopia.
But when I told my new grade school classmates of my origins, I was met with cruel taunts. I was awfully fat for an Ethiopian, one said with a snigger. Must be nice to be able to have access to so much food, another joked. At the time, this was puzzling and upsetting — I had moved from Kenya, not Ethiopia, to my father’s home state, Minnesota. But the facts didn’t matter. These unkind remarks did the job the bullies hoped they would: They made me feel like an alien, an unwelcome stranger.
We live in even crueler times now, with humanitarian catastrophes unfolding on several continents, but the response of the wealthy world has been to demand tighter borders and higher fences. There is no blockbuster charity single raising money for starving refugees from the civil war raging in Sudan. And now, the cruel taunts come not just from schoolyard bullies and cranks on the political fringes, but from the lips of a man who stood on the presidential debate stage on Tuesday, a former president who once again has a coin-flip shot at regaining the most powerful office in the world.
And so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by that lowest of moments at the debate, when Donald Trump repeated a vile, baseless claim that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio. This allegation appears to stem from viral social media posts and statements at public meetings. It was picked up by some of the most rancid figures at the fringe of the MAGA-verse, then quickly hopscotched from there to a social media post by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, and finally to the debate stage, sputtered by Trump himself.
There is a temptation to treat this as yet another Trump rant, a disgusting lie about immigrants like the ones he uttered as he began his presidential bid in 2015, describing migrants crossing the border with Mexico as rapists and criminals. He’s done it time and again since. He is the master of exaggerated and fabricated claims against the boogeymen, a skill he has used for decades to polarize public opinion and raise his profile and power at the expense of others.
But there is something particularly insidious about this claim, uttered at this time, from that stage. Food and pets are, to use a Freudian term, highly overdetermined symbols in our political life. They are capable of receiving and holding a multiplicity of very potent meanings, transmitting deep messages about identity and belonging.
What you eat is an instant way to communicate the most basic forms of human connection. There’s a reason American political rituals cluster around cookouts, clambakes and fish fries. The human need for sustenance — food and water to feed the physical body — is universal. But what is also universal is the meaning food carries. Everyone has a personal version of Proust’s madeleines, a food that immediately and ineffably names who you are, where you come from, the culture that made you. Food is a powerful signifier, of both belonging and exclusion.
Below is a gift link, if you want to read the entire article. It’s well worth the time.
At the Atlantic, Isabel Fattal provides a timeline for the spread of the ugly rumors: The Springfield Effect: Trump and Vance spread racist memes that turned into bomb threats and school evacuations.
To say that Donald Trump is reckless with his public comments is about as big an understatement as you could make. But this week, we are watching the real-world effects of that recklessness play out with alarming speed.
Consider the timeline. On Monday, Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, mentioned on X the claim—for which there is no verifiable evidence—that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “abducting” and eating pets. Vance was promoting a racist theory that had been circulating in certain corners of the internet in recent days, a manifestation of the anti-Haitian sentiment that has bubbled up in Springfield after roughly 15,000 Haitian migrants arrived in the town over the past few years. MAGA supporters quickly kicked into action, sharingcat memes referencing the pet-eating theory.
By Alice De Miramon
On Tuesday, Vance posted on X that his senatorial office in Ohio had “received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants.” Vance acknowledged in his post that these rumors may “turn out to be false” but went on to say: “Do you know what’s confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.” And he egged on the internet trolls in a subsequent post: “Keep the cat memes flowing.”
Vance was referring to an 11-year-old who was killed when a Haitian driver crashed into a school bus last year. (The driver has since been convicted of involuntary manslaughter.) On Tuesday, the boy’s father spoke out against the politicization of his son’s death. “My son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti,” Nathan Clark said in remarks before Springfield’s city commission. “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would ever say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.”
In 2020, the population of Springfield, Ohio, was nearly 60,000. The town had been losing residents because of declining job opportunities, but a recent manufacturing boom has brought in an influx of immigrants, who are mostly Haitian, as Miriam Jordan of The New York Times hasreported. Most of these immigrants are in the U.S. legally; local authorities and employers say that Haitian immigrants have boosted what was once a declining local economy, but such a mass arrival of migrants has also strained government resources.
Trump’s decision to bring up Springfield at the debate—in his now-infamous and bizarre “eating the pets” non sequitur—may have been his attempt to redirect attention to immigration, which he sees as a winning topic for his campaign. But it was also a reminder of his penchant for spreading conspiracy theories and his habit of fueling the fire of racism and hate in America. The days that followed revealed how a rambling Trump comment—with the help of Vance and the pair’s social-media faithful—can generate actual threats of violence.
JD Vance continues to spread disgusting anti-Haitian rumors. Christopher Wiggins at The Advocate: JD Vance now says Haitian immigrants are spreading HIV after bizarre pet-eating claim flops.
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Trump’s running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, made a series of controversial, bigoted, and inflammatory statements during an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Vance doubled down on debunked claims about Haitian immigrants abducting pets to eat them and falsely linked the migrant community to rising rates of HIV and tuberculosis in Springfield, Ohio. His remarks have since drawn widespread condemnation for their harmful, fear-mongering nature.
During the interview, Vance insisted on the veracity of a discredited conspiracy theory circulating in Springfield that claims Haitian immigrants have been abducting pets for food, a laughable claim Trump made during the debate. Local officials have already said that “no credible evidence” supports these allegations, but Vance continued to push the narrative. “We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground… saying this stuff is happening,” Vance said. When Collins pointed out that officials had found no evidence, Vance responded, “They’ve said they don’t have all the evidence.”
By Marek Brozowski
Collins pressed Vance on his responsibility as a public figure to avoid spreading misinformation. “If someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn’t mean they saw Bigfoot,” Collins asked. Vance, however, stood firm, responding, “Nobody’s calling my office and saying that they saw Bigfoot. What they’re calling and saying is we are seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats.”
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Trump’s running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, made a series of controversial, bigoted, and inflammatory statements during an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Vance doubled down on debunked claims about Haitian immigrants abducting pets to eat them and falsely linked the migrant community to rising rates of HIV and tuberculosis in Springfield, Ohio. His remarks have since drawn widespread condemnation for their harmful, fear-mongering nature.
During the interview, Vance insisted on the veracity of a discredited conspiracy theory circulating in Springfield that claims Haitian immigrants have been abducting pets for food, a laughable claim Trump made during the debate. Local officials have already said that “no credible evidence” supports these allegations, but Vance continued to push the narrative. “We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground… saying this stuff is happening,” Vance said. When Collins pointed out that officials had found no evidence, Vance responded, “They’ve said they don’t have all the evidence.”
Collins pressed Vance on his responsibility as a public figure to avoid spreading misinformation. “If someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn’t mean they saw Bigfoot,” Collins asked. Vance, however, stood firm, responding, “Nobody’s calling my office and saying that they saw Bigfoot. What they’re calling and saying is we are seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats.”
Wiggins discusses the history of false attacks on Haitian immigrants:
Vance’s comments tap into a broader, troubling pattern of discrimination that Haitian migrants have faced for decades. Historically, U.S. immigration policy has treated Haitians disproportionately, often in ways that are harsher than those directed toward other groups. According to a 2021 U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants report, Haitians have frequently been misclassified as economic immigrants rather than political refugees, even when fleeing violence during authoritarian regimes, stripping them of asylum rights and leading to mass deportations.
One of the most egregious examples of discrimination occurred in the early 1990s, when Haitians attempting to flee their country were subjected to HIV and AIDS screenings by U.S. authorities. Even as the HIV epidemic was waning, Haitians who tested positive for the virus were held to higher standards when seeking asylum. Many were sent to quarantine camps in Guantanamo Bay, where they lived in squalor and were denied proper medical care, the report notes.
This history of associating Haitians with disease resurfaced during the Trump administration, when Title 42—a public health measure aimed at stopping the spread of communicable diseases—was invoked to justify the expulsion of Haitian migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
This is a very good article by , , and How a fringe online claim about immigrants eating pets made its way to the debate stage.
“In Springfield they’re eating dogs,” the former president said, referring to an Ohio city dealing with an influx of Haitian immigrants. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating … the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
The extraordinary moment — the airing of a claim worthy of a chain email while participating in a prime-time presidential debate — probably puzzled most of the 67.1 million people tuned in for Trump’s clash with Vice President Kamala Harris. But the rumor, which has been criticized as perpetuating racist tropes, was already thriving in right-wing corners of the internet and being amplified by those close to Trump, including his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
No one involved in Trump’s debate preparations or in a position to speak for his campaign agreed to discuss the strategy on the record or answer questions abouthow it mutated from a fringe obsession to a debate stage sound bite….
While the fallout has been a combination of bafflement and outrage, the makings of the moment are rooted in grievances that have long defined and animated Trump and his followers — and on the platforms where those grievances blossom….
By Catriona-Millar
How the rumor developed and made its way out of the right wing fever swamps:
Blood Tribe, a national neo-Nazi group, was among the early purveyors of the rumor in August, posting about it on Gab and Telegram, social networks popular with extremists. While the group’s leader has taken credit for Trump’s indulgence of the claims, Blood Tribe’s reach is unknown; its accounts on those sites have fewer than 1,000 followers.
Some Blood Tribe members also planned a couple of events in the real world, like a small Aug. 10 march in Springfield protesting Haitian immigration and an appearance at a city commission meeting later that month.
The rumor soon crossed over to mainstream social media, like Facebook and X. NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation, traced the origins to an undated post from a private Facebook group that was shared in a screenshot posted to X on Sept. 5.
“Remember when my hometown of Springfield Ohio was all over National news for the Haitians?” the user wrote. “I said all the ducks were disappearing from our parks? Well, now it’s your pets.”
Around that time, other social media posts about the rumor sprouted and went viral, some of them based in part on residents’ comments at public hearings. On Sept. 6, there were 1,100 posts on X mentioning Haitians, migrants or immigrants eating pets, cats, dogs and geese, according to PeakMetrics, a research company. The next day there were 9,100 — a 720% increase.
The article says that many social media participants suspected Laura Loomer of passing the rumor on to Trump. Others blamed Vance. Anonymous Trump sources responded:
Loomer and Trump did not speak on the plane ride, a source familiar with the trip said. And a Trump aide noted that Loomer “is not a member of our staff.”
“The president is the most well-read man in America, and he has a pulse on everything that is going on,” the aide added.
Claire Wang at The Guardian: ‘A very old political trope’: the racist US history behind Trump’s Haitian pet eater claim.
People of Haitian descent say these xenophobic attacks are nothing new for their community, and experts say the “dog eater” trope is a fearmongering tactic white politicians have long deployed against immigrants of color, particularly those of Asian descent.
“The way white Americans have positioned themselves as culturally and morally superior, this is low-hanging fruit to rally xenophobia in a very quick way,” said Anthony Ocampo, a professor of sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
By Joan Gillchrest
Demonizing immigrants through falsehoods about their diet is a political tactic that originated in the late 19th century, during the height of anti-Chinese sentiment, said May-lee Chai, author and professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University.
Before the 1888 presidential election, Grover Cleveland’s campaign published trading cards that featured cartoonish sketches of Chinese men eating rats, and smeared his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, as “China’s presidential candidate”, according to the book Recollecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History.
“It’s a very old political trope to dehumanize Chinese male immigrants and show them as a threat to white American workers,” Chai said. Chinese workers posed not only a “labor threat” in the restaurant industry but also a “civilization threat”, she added, as one rationale for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was that Chinese immigration would contribute to the “browning of America”.
An urban legend alleging that Chinese restaurants serve dog meat, cat meat or rats dates back to the beginning of Chinese immigration to the US. An editorial from a Mississippi newspaper in 1852, for example, laments that trade with China is “not what it ought to be”, then says, “and besides, the Chinese still eat dog-pie”.
Chinese people may have been the first immigrant group to be widely profiled as “dog eaters”, but the slur was soon directed at other Asian communities, said Robert Ku, author of Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA.
At the 1904 world’s fair in St. Louis, organizers reportedly forced the Indigenous Igorot people from the Philippines to butcher and eat dogs for entertainment – an event that cemented the stereotype against Filipinos.By the late 20th century, Ku said, groups including Koreans, Filipinos and Cambodians became “principally stereotyped as dog eaters”.
More recently, in 2016, the Oregon county commissioner and US Senate hopeful Faye Stewart accused Vietnamese refugees of “harvesting“ dogs and cats for food. And last May, a false claim that a Laotian and Thai restaurant in California served dog meat caused months of harassment and eventual closure of the business.
It’s not surprising that these claims have extended to other non-white immigrant groups.
At The Nation, Elie Mystal writes: White People Have Never Forgiven Haitians for Claiming Their Freedom.
I could tell you that the only ”evidence” for the baseless Republican claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, comes from an American-born woman charged with animal cruelty in Canton, Ohio. I could tell you that the Haitian immigrant community living in Ohio is made up largely of people who are in the country legally, under temporary protected status visas. I could tell you that Haitian immigrants, like those in all immigrant communities, are generally hard-working people who pay their taxes and commit fewer crimes, per capita, than native-born citizens.
But I can also tell you that none of these facts matter one jot to vile and racist Republicans like JD Vance and Donald Trump, who spread lies and misinformation about immigrants. The people pushing these falsehoods long ago abandoned any tether to facts or reality. The very online, white-wing MAGA movement has found another group of dark-skinned people to hurt. Today, it’s Haitians; yesterday it was Venezuelans, and tomorrow it will be some other group of Black or brown people.
By Marek Brozowski
The goal—their only goal—is to hurt people. It’s their kink. Hurting people of color titillates and excites them. It makes them feel powerful and important. When these small people see reports that Haitians in Springfield are afraid to send their children to school; when they read about the damage being done to immigrants’ property, it makes them feel strong. Imagine being able to contribute to a lynch mob raised against largely defenseless people from the comfort of your own home, simply by sharing a cat meme. That kind of power is intoxicating to some people, and what you see online is the real, honest thrill a racist experiences whenever they find someone to menace.
I hate to give these people the satisfaction of being hurt by them. I hate to acknowledge their lies and insults, and I’d like to pretend that I can’t even hear them. As a New Yorker of Haitian descent, I’d like to tell these people “Kou langett manman ou!” (which loosely translates to: “Have an inappropriate relationship with yourself, followed by your mother, posthaste”) and go about my day.
But the pain racist Republicans and their cult spokespeople are causing is too real to laugh away. It’s too familiar to ignore. And it’s entirely too consistent with how this country has always treated Haitians to pretend that it isn’t all happening again.
Haitians committed the greatest sin possible in the modern world: We took our freedom back from the white man. Haiti is the birthplace of the only successful slave-led revolt in the “New” or “Western” world. Like everywhere else in this hemisphere, enslaved Haitians asked for their freedom, agitated for it, and were willing to negotiate terms with the enslavers for their emancipation. Unlike everywhere else, when those negotiations and political dealings resulted in nothing more than the continuation of permanent chattel slavery, Haitians stopped talking and started rebelling—and by 1804 had liberated themselves from their suddenly-not-so-superior captors.
White people have never forgiven us for being free. The French demanded “reparations” from the Haitians for taking their property—that property being the formerly enslaved Haitians themselves—as the price for their freedom. And the Americans, under the presidency of inveterate slaver Thomas Jefferson, refused to recognize Haiti or its independence, and imposed a trade embargo on the fledgling nation. Remember that the next time someone calls Jefferson a lover of liberty: That man didn’t just enslave and rape Africans brought here against their will; he tried his best to snuff out the embers of freedom burning on his doorstep.
Please read the rest at The Nation.
One last excerpt from a piece by Eric Levitz at Vox: Republicans know exactly what they’re doing. The twisted political logic behind Trump’s attacks on Haitian immigrants.
Finally Friday Reads: MAGA and Domestic Terrorism
Posted: September 13, 2024 Filed under: MAGA Domestic Terrorism | Tags: @repeat1968. John Buss, immigration, MAGA Bigotry, MAGA Domestic Terrorists, Republicans against Trump, Springfield Ohio 9 Comments
“For those who missed it. The childless cat lady won.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’ve been out of the national news loop the last few days since I’ve been fixated on the local news station’s continuous reports on Hurricane Francine. My immediate neighbors and I were fortunate. The electricity/WIFI glitched as the eyewall came over the city like a CAT 1 hurricane. We actually had the city’s largest rain levels coming in at 6.8 inches per minute, but our pump had been fixed recently, the electric lines had been up-armored, and the main pipes on my street were replaced a few years ago. You may recall I called the Tom Joad Memorial Dust Bowl construction site. All that mess must have paid off, as the drains and pump cleared the water when I went out around midnight with Temple. There were a lot of leaves and a few small, dead branches around, but everything was lit up and standing. Others were not so fortunate.
Just think. Trump wants to get rid of the National Weather Service. He probably hates them since they shut down his little act with the black Sharpie. He wants to get rid of FEMA. He wants to get rid of the folks in the EPA working diligently to stop the encroachment of the Gulf waters, making the Louisiana coastline and the textbook Louisiana Boot impossible to see in reality because a lot of it is gone. I’d rather make him Impossible.
This morning’s check of social media, headlines in legacy media, and television news reporting in cities that usually do not garner headlines has led me to conclude that the MAGA movement is a Domestic Terrorist Organization as well as an Insurrection movement. You may recall in December 2022, that DonOld called for the termination of the U.S. Constitution in a Truth Social post. This was definitely a harbinger of things to come, including Project 2025. This is from the files of CNN.
Former President Donald Trump called for the termination of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and reinstate him to power Saturday in a continuation of his election denialism and pushing of fringe conspiracy theories.
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
Trump’s post came after the release of internal Twitter emails showing deliberation in 2020 over a New York Post story about material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Saturday that Trump’s remarks are “anathema to the soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned.”
“You cannot only love America when you win,” Bates said in a statement. “The American Constitution is a sacrosanct document that for over 200 years has guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our great country. The Constitution brings the American people together – regardless of party – and elected leaders swear to uphold it. It’s the ultimate monument to all of the Americans who have given their lives to defeat self-serving despots that abused their power and trampled on fundamental rights.”
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, an outspoken Trump critic, denounced the former president’s Truth Social statement on Sunday. Cheney, who serves as vice chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, tweeted that Trump’s statement “was his view on 1/6 and remains his view today.”
“No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution,” she said.
“Dick Cheney has entered the chat.” John Buss, @repeat1968
That belief is shared by Cheney’s father and many of Trump’s former staff and an increasing number of Republicans who have announced they’re voting for the Harris/Walz ticket. DonOld has become increasingly unhinged after his sorry performance in the Debate on Tuesday. It also appears that the notorious Laura Loomer has become a major influence on him. She has been traveling with him everywhere and parked in his Florida Bunker. News film has shown hints of more familiarity than we’d think possible, given his physique and everything accompanying it. So, rumors now abound. But, it’s likely she has less venial interest in him than monetary ones. This is from The Bulwark, the major source of Never Trump Republican thoughts.
A failed congressional candidate with a penchant for conspiracies and pot-stirring, Loomer has long been viewed by a faction of Trump land as a Rasputin-like figure. Last year, Trump offered her a job on the campaign, but her internal critics ultimately persuaded him to withdraw the offer. At issue was the controversy that surrounds her. Loomer has called Kamala Harris “a drug using prostitute.” As for why Harris doesn’t have biological children, she once said: “I’m willing to bet she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.”
A more recent Loomer tweet said that the White House would smell of curry if Harris, who is of Indian-American descent, won the election. This week’s 9/11 commemorations led to the resurfacing of past posts made by Loomer in which she questioned whether the U.S. government had a role in, or forewarning of, the attacks on that day.
Loomer insists that she wasn’t questioning whether the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” noting that she never actually used that phrase (she shared a video in a lengthy post on X that did use the phrase). A self-identified Islamophobe (she was kicked off Twitter for it years ago before Elon Musk reinstated her), she re-stated her belief that al Qaeda was to blame for the attack.
But the rap sheet of Loomer’s controversial posts extends well beyond the aforementioned topics. And in comments on Wednesday and Thursday, Greene said that Trump was better off ditching Loomer, whose congressional campaign she had supported.
“I don’t think that [Loomer] has the experience or the right mentality to advise a very important president,” Greene said. “To me, many of the comments that she makes and how she attacks Republicans like me, many other Republicans that are strong supporters of President Trump, I think they’re a huge problem.”
Shortly thereafter, Graham weighed in too, telling HuffPost on Thursday that he believed Loomer was “just really toxic.”
Loomer was removed from Twitter in 2022 and other social media until Elon Musk bought the now-beleaguered social media platform. Her incendiary remarks, along with the Russian Limbaughs and other MAGA provocateurs led by Trump’s outraged public comments, have led to what can only be referred to as a massive Domestic Terrorist network. If you haven’t read the news about the terror inflicted on the small city of Springfield, Ohio, you will read about it here. If you’ve followed any recent rallies or appearances on FOX or News Max, you will observe that Trump is living on the Dark Web now. His talk is riddled with whacko, hateful conspiracy theories.
I know that it’s fun to watch these videos of cats and dogs attacking the TVs while Trump announces that Haitian immigrants in the small city are feasting on pets and park birds, but I’m not going to put up anything reinforcing the stereotypes. I’m also avoiding the memes and cartoons because we don’t need anything egging these folks on. It seems weird and funny to us, but it’s a full-on terror attack on that small town and everyone who lives there. It’s gone beyond making fun of a very damaged, aging, bigoted idiot whose biggest routine is angrily belittling others.
There’s a Bomber in Springfield. Public buildings and elementary schools have been shut down. The source of this untrue story is what NewsGuard’s Reality Check calls ” Triple Hearsay'”
In just days, a bizarre and baseless claim accusing Haitian migrants of eating pet cats in Springfield, Ohio, went from an obscure Facebook post in a private group to a talking point by Republican Donald Trump during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
The journey of the viral claim from vague, third hand gossip among Ohio neighbors to the presidential debate stage — where it was broadcast to 67 million people — is as stunning as the claim itself, according to those who started it all.
NewsGuard identified and tracked down the two people central to the claim: Erika Lee, the Springfield resident who wrote the original Facebook post, and Kimberly Newton, the neighbor who had provided her with a third-hand account of the rumor, making Lee’s social media post a fourth-hand account: the alleged acquaintance/cat owner; Newton’s friend; Newton; and Lee, who posted it on Facebook.
In exclusive interviews, NewsGuard spoke both with Lee, a 35-year-old hardware store worker who has lived in Springfield for four years, and Newton, her neighbor and a 12-year resident of Springfield. The interviews reveal just how flimsy and unsubstantiated the rumor was from the beginning — based entirely on third hand hearsay. Yet it quickly gained traction and, remarkably, found its way to Trump’s lips on a national stage.
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton said about the rumor she had passed on to her neighbor, Lee, the Facebook poster. Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.”
That adds up to three people with no firsthand knowledge of the allegedly victimized cat: Newton’s “friend,” Newton, and then her neighbor Lee. Or perhaps it’s four people if we count the “source” that Newton says her “friend” relied on.
This is from the Washington Post. “Springfield bomb threat used ‘hateful’ language toward migrants, Haitians, mayor says. “Springfield is a community that needs help,” Mayor Rob Rue said in an interview with The Post, adding that national leaders should provide that help.”
The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, said a bomb threat Thursday that led to the evacuation of City Hall and numerous buildings “used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians in our community.”
“Springfield is a community that needs help,” Mayor Rob Rue said in an interview with The Washington Post. The mayor added that national leaders should provide that help and not “hurt a community like, unfortunately, we have seen over the last couple of days.”
The Ohio city recently gained national attention as it became the subject of dehumanizing and xenophobic conspiracy theories amplified by former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who claimed Haitian immigrants there were killing and eating people’s pets. Police officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence to support the claim, which Trump repeated in Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said at the ABC News debate between him and Vice President Kamala Harris that 67 million people watched. “And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
When moderator David Muir pushed back, saying that the city manager of Springfield has said there were no credible reports of such claims, Trump refused to concede.
“I’ve seen people on television. … The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food,” Trump said, interrupting Muir. “So maybe he said that, and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.”
Earlier this week, White House national security spokesman John Kirby called the unsubstantiated reports Vance had pushed “dangerous” misinformation.
“Because there will be people that believe it, no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is. And they might act on that kind of misinformation, and act on it in a way where somebody can get hurt, so it needs to stop,” Kirby said Tuesday, ahead of the debate.
Even GOP officials have gotten into the act, exaggerating the tragedy unfolding in the small city. Ohio’s Republican Governor, Mike Dewine, responds like a responsible person. This is from the AP. “Ohio is sending troopers and $2.5 million to a city that has seen an influx of Haitian migrants.” The state’s Attorney General is inflaming the situation.
The governor of Ohio will send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants that has landed it in the national spotlight.
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday he doesn’t oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which some 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help impacted communities.
His news conference was held just hours before the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump, where the divide over immigration policy was sure to be an issue.
On Monday, Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost also drew attention to the crisis when he directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending “an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities.”
Thousands of temporary Haitian migrants have landed in the city in recent years, as longstanding unrest in their home country has given way to violent gangs ruling the streets.
…
DeWine’s family operates a charity in Haiti in honor of their late daughter, Becky, who died in a car accident. He said the Haitians who have moved to Ohio are generally hard-working people who love their families and who are seeking to escape the violence in their home country for good jobs in Ohio.
This article about the Ohio Attorney General comes from The Ohio Capitol Journal. “Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost defends conspiracy chorus about Haitians in Springfield. Springfield public buildings and a local elementary school had to be closed Thursday due to bomb threats,”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Wednesday did his bit to amplify a conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants legally present in Springfield, Ohio are stealing and eating pets, ducks and geese.
The conspiracy has been debunked by the Springfield mayor, city manager and chief of police, as well as by Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. Yost is looking to succeed DeWine as governor in 2026.
“Citizens testified to City Council,” Yost posted on X Wednesday. “These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?”
Many of Springfield’s public buildings were closed for much of the day Thursday due to bomb threats after former President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated a widely debunked conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were stealing people’s pets and eating them.
“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said during a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
A day earlier, on Monday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, posted on X that “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Thursday, between 15,000 and 20,000 Haitians have migrated to Springfield over the past five years. Contrary to Vance’s claim, the great majority of them are legally in the United States, either as naturalized citizens or under temporary protected status due to the violent chaos in their home country. Earlier this week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced he would send state highway patrol troopers to Springfield to help, as well as $2.5 million to help with health care resources.
While resources in the city of almost 60,000 have been strained by the heavy influx, the New York Times last week reported that many there believe it also revitalized a community that had long been on the decline.
But Trump and his supporters have long been whipping up fears of immigrants — particularly those of color — even though multiple studies show that immigrants — particularly the undocumented — commit crime at substantially lower rates than the native-born.
The influx of thousands of immigrants had already brought hate groups to Springfield, with a neo-Nazi group marching there in August.
Some Springfield residents have begged politicians to stop promoting conspiracy theories about their community. And some Haitian immigrants are keeping their children home out of fear for their safety, the Haitian Times reported Thursday.
But last week, Yost’s campaign claimed that undocumented immigrants were “terrorizing” Ohio communities. As evidence, it pointed to a Fox News article about the situation in Springfield that made no such claim.
Nevertheless, on Wednesday, Yost continued to perpetuate assertions about Haitians in Springfield.
“There’s a recorded police call from a witness who saw immigrants capturing geese for food in Springfield,” Yost said in his X post. “Citizens testified to City Council. These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?”
In other words, Yost, a former journalist, was criticizing the media for not assigning the same credibility to any claim made in a police call or council meeting as they would to the public declarations of the Springfield mayor, city manager, police chief, and the Ohio governor.
GOP Congressional members are creating more havoc. “Republicans seemed more disturbed by the moderators fact-checking Trump than they were with his false claims.” This comes from NOTUS. Haley Byrd Wilt provides the analysis.
If you’ve watched Donald Trump demonize immigrants to fuel his political rise over the last decade, the former president’s insistence that immigrants are abducting the cats and dogs of Americans and eating them shouldn’t come as a surprise.
It probably also shouldn’t come as a surprise that Republican lawmakers are not only indifferent to the former president making these claims; they largely support him spreading the conspiracy.
In interviews with more than two dozen GOP lawmakers this week, Republicans brushed off Trump’s allegation that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. They didn’t care that Trump’s claims during a presidential debate were, predictably, not true. They weren’t worried that, by blurting out “they’re eating the dogs,” he was elevating racist rumors — the most cited of which relies on a neighbor’s daughter’s friend — to the national stage.
They told NOTUS Trump was simply sharing something he believed to be true, that he was doing important work by raising the broader issue of immigration and that they weren’t concerned about the ramifications his rhetoric could have for Haitians living in their states.
Some even added their own allegations.
“Apparently there’s pictures of it,” Rep. Greg Steube of Florida said of Haitians eating cats. “The fact that you’re saying it’s not happening, it’s not true.”
Steube mentioned a woman — an American citizen who was arrested recently for allegedly killing and eating a cat during an apparent mental breakdown — as evidence for his claims. When told she was an American, Steube was undeterred.
“Well, apparently there’s reports that there are. In Ohio. Haitians are doing that,” he told NOTUS. “It’s just interesting that, like, you have news reporters that are taking one guy’s — some city manager or something — when there’s reports.”
Asked where he was getting these reports, Steube said, “From all over.”
He said he would have his staff send over the reports. And his team forwarded NOTUS a newsletter from a right-wing blog, which linked to a story alleging animal sacrifices are happening in New York — unconnected to Haitians in Springfield — and a local news story about the American woman who had been arrested. The blog falsely described her as “a hungry Ohio immigrant.”
“Pictures of Jamaicans and Haitians doing pagan sacrifices,” Steube told NOTUS, incorrectly summarizing the right-wing blog post. “In Ohio.”
Rep. Brian Mast was also dismissive. “The point of it is that we have a major problem with illegal immigration,” he told NOTUS.
Mast’s state has a large Haitian population, but he didn’t sound worried about how any of his own constituents might be affected by Trump spreading rumors and racist stereotypes.
“It’s not a stereotype that people eat different animals. I mean, it’s just a fact of the matter,” Mast said. “You go to different markets in different parts of the world, and you’re going to find horse on the menu, you’re going to find dog on the menu, you’re going to find cat on the menu.”
People in Florida often eat “chicken of the trees,” he said, referring to lizards.
Still, even if cuisines differ, Trump was saying something else entirely. He was saying immigrants are stealing household pets to eat. Pressed whether it was appropriate for the former president to make a claim like that, Mast sidestepped.
“I’d say this,” Mast said. “They’re stealing the taxpayer dollars.”
Haitians have received temporary protected status to live and work in the United States because of the dangers they face back home. As many as 15,000 Haitians have moved to Springfield in recent years, saying it’s where they found job opportunities or that they followed family members who were already living there. Some Haitians have said since the debate that they now feel unsafe in the community. Springfield’s city hall was also evacuated this week after receiving a bomb threat, according to local officials.
Let’s get back to the community itself, as reported by NBC News. “Bomb threats force second consecutive day of school closures in Springfield, Ohio. Several local leaders have also been targeted in the wake of baseless claims aimed at Haitian immigrants that have been repeated by former President Donald Trump.”
Bomb threats on Friday forced the evacuation and closure of public schools and municipal buildings for a second consecutive day, as the city continues to deal with sudden national attention due to false claims involving its Haitian population.
Students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary Schools in Springfield “were evacuated from their buildings to an alternate district location,” school district spokesperson Jenna Leinasars said.
Roosevelt Middle School had already been “closed prior to the beginning of the school day in relation to the information received from the” Springfield Police Department, Leinasars added.
In addition to those school evacuations, several city commissioners and a municipal employee were the target of an emailed bomb threat, city spokesperson Karen Graves said.
A second email threatened multiple locations that included Springfield City Hall, Cliff Park High School, Perrin Woods Elementary School, Roosevelt Middle School, the Bureau of MotorVehicles and the Ohio License Bureau Southside, Graves added.
“As a precaution, all affected buildings have been evacuated. Authorities, with the support of explosive detection canines, have conducted thorough inspections and cleared the facilities listed in the threats,” Graves said in a statement.
Local police and FBI agents based in Dayton are working “to determine the origin of these email threats,” the city official said.
The city just west of Columbus has been the focal point of a national political firestorm that has included false rumors that Haitian immigrants have been stealing and eating household pets. City officials and police have said there is no credible information to support those outlandish claims.
Reuters reports on the truth of the economic value of the Haitian Immigrants to the town’s previous frail economy. “How Haitian immigrants fueled Springfield’s growth.”
The arrival of Joseph, Oreus and as many as 15,000 other immigrants from Haiti over roughly the last three years has reshaped this city of 58,000, offering some promise of economic revival along with growing pains. It also has unwittingly thrust Springfield into the middle of a national conversation about immigration, the economy and race – with Republican candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance recirculating what local police and city officials say are false claims of crimes and atrocious acts being committed by Haitians.
After a half-century of decline, data show the rapid population rebound has had a notable impact in Springfield.
…
What didn’t happen, according to interviews with a dozen local, county and officials as well as city police data, was any general rise in violent or property crime. Wages didn’t collapse, but surged with a rising number of job openings in a labor market that remained tight until recently.In early July, days before he was tapped to be Trump’s running mate, Vance read aloud a letter from Springfield officials as he quizzed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at a congressional hearing on whether immigration added to inflation by increasing housing costs, and whether a rising supply of new workers hurt others by holding down wages.
What was happening in Springfield was “a very real example of this particular concern, straight from the horse’s mouth,” Vance said.
Powell responded that those effects might be apparent in some places, but overall the rising labor supply in recent years had helped grow the economy and slow inflation. And in the long run, he said, the impact was “kind of neutral” because markets adapt.
More recently, Vance and other Republicans have amplified false claims aired by some residents at weekly city commission meetings. City commissioners in their public comments have pushed back, noting that the vast majority of Haitians are in the country legally and have a right to live where they choose.
Springfield police also responded forcefully: “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” they said in a statement. “Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes.”
Still, Trump aired those falsehoods including the baseless claim that immigrants are eating pets in his debate Tuesday night with his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Biden White House earlier on Tuesday condemned the viral misinformation, saying such remarks sought to divide Americans through lies and was based on racism.
If you delve into the world of academic research on trying to regenerate the viability of small-town America, you find that the solution is immigration. That link goes to a study by the Richmond Fed.
Rural areas, however, can also benefit significantly from immigration:
- Immigrants can bring skills not available in the local labor market.
- They can help fulfill seasonal labor shortages in industries like agriculture and tourism.
- They spend money and pay taxes in their local communities, which can help develop other businesses.
Business leaders have long held that immigration is essential to many industries. This link goes to the American Immigration Council.
The main findings of the report include:
- A total of 219 companies in the Fortune 500 list had immigrant roots: 102 of those companies were founded by immigrants, and 117 companies were founded by the children of immigrants.
- Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants employ more than 14.8 million people worldwide.
- The over $7 trillion in revenue generated by Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants is greater than the GDP of every country in the world outside the United States, except China.
- Immigrant-founded Fortune 500 companies drive 68 industry sectors across the American economy.
- 35 U.S. states are headquarters to at least one New American Fortune 500 firm, and seven of those states have at least 10 firms.
MAGA once again proves that it has nothing to do with economic prosperity, the U.S. Constitution, or anything linked to form a more perfect union. It is racist. It is misogynistic. It is xenophobic. It is homophobic and transphobic. It’s purely a terrorist movement made up of White Christian Nationalists who will do anything to maintain their beliefs that only they are the true Americans despite all evidence to the contrary.
So, let’s write about and create more memes about who they are. Let’s also ensure that their mean, bigoted viewpoints are identified and not presented as a set of alternative facts. Most importantly, let’s vote the ones that creeped into our political positions at all levels the hell out of office.’
Let’s hope the FBI and law enforcement in Ohio catch this MAGA terrorist before anyone gets hurt.
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