Politics
Trump and Vance still stoking fears of Haitians, as Ohio community faces bomb threats…
Donald Trump and his running mate on Friday continued to disparage Haitian migrants in an Ohio community, further fueling false claims the Republicans have promoted even as the city saw bomb threats and school evacuations and local officials called for a cooling of the anti-immigrant rhetoric. “We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio,” Trump
Donald Trump and his running mate on Friday continued to disparage Haitian migrants in an Ohio community, further fueling false claims the Republicans have promoted even as the city saw bomb threats and school evacuations and local officials called for a cooling of the anti-immigrant rhetoric.
“We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio,” Trump said Friday during a news conference in California, adding that he could possibly hold a campaign event or town hall in the city and claiming the migrants are “destroying the way of life.”
Ohio authorities have said there are no credible or detailed reports to support the debunked allegations circulated this week by both Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, that Haitian immigrants are eating domestic pets and birds in the city’s public parks. Trump mentioned the claims during a debate Tuesday with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, prompting her to laugh and call the GOP presidential nominee “extreme.”
After city agencies were targeted in a bomb threat, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue on Thursday called on politicians to tamp down the rhetoric.
“All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it,” Rue said in an interview with WSYX.
A city spokesperson said an emailed threat claimed that bombs had been planted in the homes of Springfield’s mayor and other city officials. A second email claimed that bombs had been placed at locations including Springfield City Hall, a high school, a middle school, two elementary schools and the local office of the state motor vehicles bureau.
The buildings were evacuated, and authorities with explosive-detection dogs swept and cleared them, officials said.
On Friday, President Joe Biden said the Haitian community is “under attack” right now, and called for an end to Republicans’ comments.
“It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America,” Biden said while speaking at a White House luncheon. “This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop.”
Trump suggested Friday that local officials aren’t being truthful about the problem because of its severity. While he stated the “real threat” of immigration is happening at the Southern border, he said, “The people of Ohio are scared.”
In a post on X on Friday Vance stated, without evidence, that Springfield has experienced “a massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates, and crime.”
“Don’t let biased media shame you into not discussing this slow-moving humanitarian crisis in a small Ohio town,” he said.
Vance repeated those claims in another X post later Friday, though he added: “Nothing justifies violence or the threat of violence levied against Springfield or its residents. We condemn both.”
Trump and his supporters have used the furor over migrants in the Ohio community to draw further attention to Trump’s signature campaign issue of immigration reform and blame Harris for an influx of migrants into the U.S. It’s a theme that Trump has used throughout his bids for public office.
The situation surrounding Springfield, a city of roughly 60,000 located west of Columbus, started with an online post that was fueled by right-wing actors on social media. Vance amplified the posts from his own X account.
“Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country,” Vance posted Monday on X.
“Where is our border czar?” Vance asked, referring to a label that some used to reference Harris, whom Biden tapped to deal with some issues related to immigration in 2021.
In a later post, Vance said his office “has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants,” adding, “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
Springfield has seen its Haitian population grow in recent years. It’s impossible to give an exact number, according to the citybut it estimates that Springfield’s entire county has an overall immigrant population of 15,000.
The city also says that Haitian immigrants are in the country legally under a federal program that allows them to remain in the country temporarily. Last month the Biden administration granted eligibility for temporary legal status to about 300,000 Haitians already in the United States because conditions in Haiti are considered unsafe for them to return. Haiti’s government has extended a state of emergency to the entire country due to endemic gang violence.
Following Vance’s initial post, the internet subsequently exploded with AI-generated imagery of Trump appearing to rescue dogs, cats and birds from harm, with Trump posting several of the memes to his own Truth Social account.
Trump repeated the claim during Tuesday’s debate.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said Tuesday. “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.”
Debate moderators pointed out that city officials have said the claims are not true.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine — whose family operates a charity in Haiti in honor of their late daughter, Becky, who died in a car accident — said this week he would add more law enforcement and health care resources to an aid package the state has already provided to Springfield. DeWine 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 the state.
On Wednesday, DeWine said that he believed the Springfield mayor’s assessment that the claims were unfounded, telling CBS News that the internet “can be quite crazy sometimes.”
There have been other responses, including from the father of an 11-year-old Ohio boy killed last year when a Haitian immigrant driver hit a school bus. At a Springfield City Council hearing on Tuesday, Nathan Clark implored Trump and other politicians to stop invoking his son’s name in the immigration debate.
Democrats have addressed the situation, with the Democratic National Committee pushing out a fundraising email on Wednesday with the subject line, “Chaos, cats, and conspiracy.”
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Michael Rubinkam in northeastern Pennsylvania, Chris Megerian in Washington, Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
Construction crews could begin the excavation process for what will be President Donald Trump’s massive 250-foot-tall arch in as soon as the next two weeks, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced on Thursday.
The monument — which will be erected in a traffic circle at the head of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River, coming between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery — has generated controversy as concerns emerged about the design and traffic congestion during construction.
The arch would take two to three years to construct on the proposed schedule, according to documents released in June.
“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck,” Burgum said in a social media post.
The 250-foot-tall arch will be among Trump’s most visible projects, as the administration continues its attempts to remake Washington. Critics, however, have voiced fears that the structure may be too large, and overshadow other monuments, like the Lincoln Memorial on the other side of the Potomac River.
The proposed arch will dwarf the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in size. It is unclear at this time how much construction will cost; the National Endowment for the Humanities earmarked $15 million for the monument.
“This will be one the the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington National Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World,” Burgum said.
The monument will be constructed on land overseen by the National Park Service, and critics have argued Trump’s latest project requires explicit congressional approval. However, the Interior secretary continues to rebut these claims.
Instead, Burgum echoed previous statements and said historically “Congress and various congressionally chartered commissions decreed that a monumental work should adorn Columbia Island,” the traffic circle where the monument is planned to be constructed.
“Despite Congress’s intent, the site became and remains today a barren traffic circle lacking any monumental treatment and significant historic value,” he said.
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