Trump-Vance lies continue to disrupt everyday life in Springfield

Plus, Alabama Republicans continue to undermine voting rights in the state.

The fallout from comments made about Haitian immigrants by former President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) continue to disturb the city of Springfield, Ohio. 

Both Trump — during his primetime debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last week — and Vance — through right-wing media and online platforms — have circulated the widely debunked story that newly settled Haitian residents living in Springfield are eating neighborhood pets and park-dwelling waterfowl. 

When confronted with the fact that there are no credible reports of such incidents, Vance has doubled down. 

“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes," Vance said in a Sunday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."

And last Friday, Trump told reporters at a campaign event in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. that Springfield would be ground zero for his mass deportation policy.

“We’re going have the largest deportation in the history of our country, and we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora,” Trump said. Aurora, Colo., like Springfield, has been the site of another migrant hoax, wherein right-wing pundits claimed that the Venezuelan street gang, Tren de Aragua, had overrun the city. (It has not.)

But such incendiary and xenophobic language has had major consequences for both cities. In the case of Springfield, it resulted in dozens of bomb threats; two hospitals, two universities, the city hall and a multitude of civic buildings have been forced to evacuate, shut down or cancel events. Officials are now canceling public events weeks into the future for safety reasons.

For example, Clark State College mandated that all classes be taught remotely after a bomb threat. 

Gov. Mike DeWine, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue and the city’s chief of police — all Republicans — have urged Trump and Vance to cease their rhetoric. 

“I think it’s unfortunate that this — this came up. Let me tell you what we do know, though. What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work,” DeWine said over the weekend. 

“Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence, with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies. What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there. And, frankly, that’s helped the economy,” he concluded. 

Meanwhile, Rue directly put the blame on Republicans like Trump and Vance for the chaos in Springfield.

“We have a beautiful city, and we need, we need the national stage to pay attention to what their words are doing to cities like ours,” Rue said at a press conference. “We don’t need this pushback that is hurting our citizens and hurting our community — I would say that to anybody who would take a mic and say those things.”

A group of Alabama-based voting rights groups are suing the state’s secretary of state and attorney general over a policy preventing naturalized citizens from exercising their suffrage. 

The lawsuit claims that efforts to purge voting rolls just before the 2024 presidential election violate the National Voter Registration Act and are being used to target voters who are legal citizens but were not born in the United States. Some 3,251 Alabama residents were removed from the rolls because they previously held noncitizen identification numbers.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and Secretary of State Wes Allen have also been subjected to a lawsuit from national voting rights groups. Last Friday, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Fair Elections Center (FEC), and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed the suit on behalf of four individuals targeted by the purge. 

Instead of protecting Americans’ freedom to vote in the November election, Alabama is shamefully intimidating naturalized citizens and illegally purging qualified Americans from voter rolls,” Paul Smith, the senior vice president of CLC, said in a statement. 

“Our local election officials work hard to make sure only American citizens can vote. In practice, voter purges like what we are seeing in Alabama target naturalized citizens and prevent qualified Americans from exercising their right to vote. Our democracy works best when every American can participate without fear, and CLC will continue to fight for Americans’ freedom to vote.” 

Such legal action comes after both Allen and Marshall sought to enforce Senate Bill 1, which claims to be a tool to prevent so-called “ballot harvesting” in Alabama. In reality, it essentially criminalizes those who would assist voters with absentee and by-mail voting. 

“SB 1’s cruel and unlawful restrictions harm voters who need assistance with their absentee ballot applications — particularly Black voters, elderly voters, incarcerated voters, voters with disabilities, and low-literacy voters — as well as nonpartisan civic engagement groups, including churches, working to help Alabamians participate in the political process,” a March press release by the Legal Defense Fund explains. 

“This extreme law is the latest development in Alabama’s long history of restricting the political engagement of Black voters and other marginalized communities.”