Evelyn Reynolds

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    More bomb threats hit Springfield, Ohio, after Trump elevates false claims about Haitians

    Two hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, were sent into lockdown after bomb threats, police said Saturday, marking the fourth such case in as many days that appears linked to false claims circulating among the far right that Haitian immigrants there are eating domestic pets and wildlife.Saturday’s threats came even after the woman who started the rumors acknowledged to NBC News that they were unfounded and publicly apologized.Kettering Health Springfield was one of the medical facilities targeted, with officials later saying they found nothing suspicious during a search. Another hospital, Mercy Health’s Springfield regional medical center, received a similar threat.A spokesperson with Mercy Health said the hospital has continued to operate and thanked Springfield police as well as hospital staff “for their swift, efficient and caring response”.The bomb threats Saturday came after others had been called in to government buildings Thursday, forcing their closure and causing local schools to be evacuated.“We recognize that the past few days have been particularly challenging for everyone in our community,” Springfield police said in a statement. Police added “we remain fully committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of each and every person”.On Friday, a Springfield woman, Erika Lee, apologized for rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets that resulted from a post she wrote on Facebook claiming that the friend of a neighbor’s daughter lost her cat – and then found the animal strung up outside the home of a Haitian family.Lee now says she had no firsthand knowledge of the claim. The neighbor referenced in the post, Kimberly Newton, revealed that she also had heard the story from an acquaintance and not her daughter.Lee said she was filled with regret and insists she never intended to put a target on the backs of the Haitian community.“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Leetold NBC News on Friday.Local authorities in Springfield had already debunked the lies even before Donald Trump made the allegation that Haitian immigrants were eating pets during the debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday. Lee told the outlet she never imagined her social media post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate aimed at the Haitian community in Springfield.“I’m not a racist,” Lee said, adding that her daughter is half-Black and she herself is mixed race as well as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that – and that was not my intent.”The city of Springfield believes the rumors may also have arisen from a case in Canton, Ohio, where an American with no known connection to Haiti was arrested in August for allegedly stomping a cat to death and eating the animal.Separately, an explanation for a viral photo of a man carrying two geese in Columbus, Ohio, has been made, although it also helped set off the now-discredited rumors about pet-eating in nearby Springfield.The Ohio state division of wildlife told TMZ that the man had been picking up the two geese that had been hit by a car. The agency also reported that there is no evidence that the man is Haitian, an immigrant or that he intended to eat the geese.About 15,000 Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield – a city of 60,000 – to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017. They have been in demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables and at automotive machining plants whose owners grappled with a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. More

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    Alarm in UK and US over possible Iran-Russia nuclear deal

    Britain and the US have raised fears that Russia has shared nuclear secrets with Iran in return for Tehran supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to bomb Ukraine.During their summit in Washington DC on Friday, Keir Starmer and US president Joe Biden acknowledged that the two countries were tightening military cooperation at a time when Iran is in the process of enriching enough uranium to complete its long-held goal to build a nuclear bomb.British sources indicated that concerns were aired about Iran’s trade for nuclear technology, part of a deepening alliance between Tehran and Moscow.On Tuesday last week, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, made a similar warning on a visit to London for a summit with his British counterpart, David Lammy, though it received little attention, as the focus then was the US announcement of Iran’s missile supply to Moscow.“For its part, Russia is sharing technology that Iran seeks – this is a two-way street – including on nuclear issues as well as some space information,” Blinken said, accusing the two countries of engaging in destabilising activities that sow “even greater insecurity” around the world.Britain, France and Germany jointly warned last week that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium had “continued to grow significantly, without any credible civilian justification” and that it had accumulated four “significant quantities” that each could be used to make a nuclear bomb.But it is not clear how much technical knowhow Tehran has to build a nuclear weapon at this stage, or how quickly it could do so. Working with experienced Russian specialists or using Russian knowledge would help speed up the manufacturing process, however – though Iran denies that it is trying to make a nuclear bomb.Iran had struck a deal in 2015 to halt making nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief with the US and other western nations – only for the agreement to be abandoned in 2018 by then US president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump.Iran responded by breaching agreed limits on the quantity of enriched uranium it could hold.Western concern that Iran is close to being able to make a nuclear weapon has been circulating for months, contributing to tensions in the Middle East, already at a high pitch because of Israel’s continuing assault on Hamas and Gaza.Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, are supporters of Hamas – and Tehran’s nuclear development is therefore viewed as a direct threat by Jerusalem.Soon after Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Iran began supplying Shahed delta winged drones to Moscow and helped Russia build a factory to make more to bomb targets across Ukraine. In April this year, Iran launched a Russian-style missile and drone attack aimed at Israel, though it was essentially prevented and stopped with the help of the US and UK.Russia and Iran, though not historically allies, have become increasingly united in their opposition to the west, part of a wider “axis of upheaval” that also includes to varying degrees China and North Korea, reflecting a return to an era of state competition reminiscent of the cold war.Last week in London, Blinken said that US intelligence had concluded that the first batch of high-speed Iranian Fath-360 ballistic missiles, with a range of up to 75 miles (120km), had been delivered to Russia.Able to strike already bombarded frontline Ukrainian cities, the missiles prompted a dramatic reassessment in western thinking as well as fresh economic sanctions.Starmer flew to Washington late on Thursday to hold a special foreign policy summit with Biden at the White House on Friday, beginning with a short one on one in the outgoing president’s Oval Office followed by a 70-minute-long meeting with both sides’ top foreign policy teams in the residence’s Blue Room.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThe leaders and their aides discussed the war in Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East, Iran and the emerging competition with China.Starmer brought along with him Lammy, Downing Street’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, and the UK’s national security adviser, Tim Barrow, , while Biden was accompanied by Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, among others.Prior to the meeting, UK sources indicated that the two countries had agreed in principle to allow Ukraine to fire long-range Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles into Russia for the first time. But Biden appeared to suggest the topic was one of the reasons for the face-to-face, saying to reporters: “We’re going to discuss that now,” as the meeting began.There was no update after the meeting, partly to keep the Kremlin guessing. Any use of the missiles is expected to be part of a wider war plan on the part of Ukraine aimed at using them to target airbases, missile launch sites and other locations used by Russia to bomb Ukraine.Britain needs the White House’s permission to allow Ukraine to use the missiles in Russia because they use components manufactured in the US.Protocol dictated that Biden and Starmer – the only two present without printed-out name cards – did most of the talking, while the other politicians and officials present only spoke when introduced by the president or the prime minister.Lammy was asked by Starmer to update those present on his and Blinken’s trip to Kyiv on Thursday to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.Shortly after the meeting, Starmer said the two sides had had “a wide ranging discussion about strategy”. More

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    Inquiry finds communications breakdowns before Trump assassination attempt

    An internal Secret Service investigation has confirmed that multiple, substantial communication breakdowns preceded the 13 July attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.The Washington Post, citing unnamed officials, reported on Saturday that the former president’s security detail failed to direct local police to secure the roof of the building used by the gunman.The Secret Service had discussed placing heavy equipment and flags between the stage and what would become Thomas Matthew Crooks’ perch
    atop a glass factory 300ft away to block the clear sight lines from the roof.But supervisors who arrived at Butler for the rally found cranes, trucks and flags were not placed in a way that blocked the line of sight.Crook was later able to climb on to the roof and fire a rifle seven times, killing one spectator, wounding Trump in the ear and injuring two others, before being shot dead by Secret Service snipers.The internal probe, known as a mission assurance investigation, found that unlike security details guarding a sitting president and vice-president that have military support, the Secret Service uses a command post separate from local police to protect political figures who are not serving in office.But in Butler, Trump’s security detail had no way of communicating with local police guarding the perimeter of the fairground.The astonishing lack of communication led to Crooks being able to get on the roof despite reports of a suspicious person carrying a rangefinder an hour before Trump was due to speak that were not relayed to the Secret Service. It took rally-goers to alert local police to a man “bear-crawling” on the roof before he loosed off shots at the former president, with one clipping Trump’s ear.Instead, local countersnipers were instructed to text a photo of Crooks to just one Secret Service agent, and agents never heard local police radio traffic about trying to track him down. Butler county police also reportedly warned the Secret Service that they would not be able to post a patrol car next to the building but received no further instruction.Kimberly Cheatle resigned as director of the agency days after the shooting after saying the roof’s slope was too steep for agents to manage. Acting agency director Ronald Rowe said in a statement to the outlet that “the Secret Service cannot operate under the paradox of ‘zero fail mission’ while also making our special agents and uniformed division officers execute a very critical national security mission by doing more with less”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe report also found that the Secret Service had been slow to beef up Trump’s security even after it received reports of an Iranian plot to kill political candidates. Rowe testified to Congress later in July that he was “embarrassed” by security lapses and vowed to reform the agency’s practices. Two separate congressional investigations are also looking at security lapses.The Trump campaign has said it has sometimes been forced to cancel or postpone events over concerns that security is insufficient and followed years of requests from Trump aides for greater security. Both the first lady, Jill Biden, and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, were in Pennsylvania that day, lending credence to claims that the Secret Service was stretched too thin.“I think the American people are going to be shocked, astonished and appalled by what we will report to them about the failures by the Secret Service in this assassination attempt on the former president,” Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal told Fox News after being briefed on the internal review. More

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    Trump ally Laura Loomer called herself ‘white advocate’, audio reveals

    Close Donald Trump ally Laura Loomer told a white nationalist conference in 2022 that she considered herself a “white advocate”, according to a recording of the speech obtained by the Guardian.Loomer has come under scrutiny in recent days after being seen accompanying Trump on a flight to the presidential debate on Tuesday, and a subsequent string of racist tweets aimed at Kamala Harris.That caused a political firestorm after Trump’s disastrous debate performance, with Harris emerging the clear winner. In particular, Trump’s raising of false claims around Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets triggered outrage and mockery of him.Some observers have placed the blame on Trump’s performance partly due to his recent closeness to Loomer, including being pictured standing with him in his entourage at this week’s 9/11 commemorations.The revelation of Loomer’s comments about being an advocate for white people is likely to further fuel the controversy around Trump’s relationship with Loomer, not least because they are just the latest in a long line of extremist remarks by the podcaster and self-described journalist.Her attendance at the American Renaissance conference was reported at the time by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), but the contents of her speech have not been scrutinized until now.The American Renaissance conference, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a venue where “racist ‘intellectuals’ rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists”.Loomer spoke to the conference in November 2022, after losing a Republican primary in Florida’s conservative 11th district that August. To the applause of the audience, Loomer said: “I consider myself to be a white advocate and I openly campaigned for the United States Congress as a white advocate.”Apart from her claim to be a “white advocate”, Loomer’s speech was focused on her grievances with traditional and social media companies and the Republican party, all of whom she blamed for her loss.She claimed that during her campaign, “local TV stations would actually not allow me to have a congressional debate even though every other congressional candidate was able to have a televised debate in their district, because they called me a white supremacist”.Loomer continued: “And they said that I was, you know, too much of a nationalist and too far right, because I openly ran my campaign to the right of the GOP.”She said: “I have been a Republican my entire life, but unfortunately we live in a two-party system, which really just feels like a uniparty, but I’m here to tell you today that the Republican party is no longer rightwing enough for me.”She then struck a hopeful note about a third party. “So perhaps they’re going to be an alternative in the future some day.”Loomer then turned her sights on “Kevin McCarthy and the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Republican party”, saying they had “made such an effort this year to spend hundreds of millions of dollars … to get the Hispanic vote pushing to get the Black vote” while they also “used millions of dollars, by their own admission, to campaign against America First nationalist candidates”.Loomer told the gathered white nationalists that “the top three issues I focused on in my campaign were election integrity, combating big tech social media censorship and election interference, and a 10-year minimum immigration moratorium”.She said: “I was one of the first candidates to campaign in favor of mass deportations in an immigration moratorium and I was the first candidate to campaign on breaking up big tech.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLoomer’s anti-immigrant rhetoric to the conference echoes Trump’s policy positions. In recent days the former president has repeated his promises to carry out mass deportations, and during the debate he falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets.Loomer told the conference crowd that her positions had “demonized – as I mentioned – as an extremist by even my own Republican party”.But the remarks at the conference hardly stand alone.Weeks earlier, in a podcast recording before the conference, Loomer thanked Jared Taylor, the podcast’s host and conference organizer, for his “white advocacy and being a white advocate and pioneering the intellectual discussion, right around race and demographics in this country”.In March, in her podcast appearance before the primary, Loomer told Taylor that “my district is also the whitest district in the entire state of Florida”, and that she was pursuing “issues of [critical race theory] and anti-white racism and anti-white hatred”, and opposing the “anti-white Christian mentality the Democrats are pushing”.Loomer asserted to Taylor that Democrats were “trying to persecute white people. They’re trying to persecute Christians, the most persecuted people in the world.”Loomer added: “I look forward to being their advocate when I win my race and, you know, get elected as their next congresswoman.”Loomer subsequently lost to Congressman Daniel Webster.Loomer emerged as an anti-Muslim, pro-Trump activist during Trump’s first run at the White House in 2016. She has a long history of controversies, including protesting against a performance of Julius Caesar she saw as anti-Trump, handcuffing herself to Twitter’s headquarters to protest her deplatforming there, and now attacking migrants and Kamala Harris in the wake of Trump’s debate performance, which has been widely portrayed as disastrous for his campaign.The Guardian has contacted Loomer for comment. More

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    What debate? Harris and Trump back to brutal grind of swing state campaigns

    Even as gleeful Democrats spent days circulating video clips and memes of Kamala Harris ridiculing and riling Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential debate, the candidates themselves got back to the brutal grind of winning over the tiny proportion of voters who will decide November’s election in a clutch of swing states.Harris is on a “New Way Forward” tour of pivotal areas this weekend to exploit the momentum from her humiliation of Trump. On Friday, she was in Pennsylvania, perhaps the most crucial of crunch states, to push the themes she hit hard in the debate in painting the former president as a threat to democracy, women’s rights and the US’s international standing.Trump is in Arizona on Saturday and then headed to Michigan, both states he narrowly won in 2016 and then lost four years later, as he attempts to recover from what was widely recognised to be a damaging performance.The contest for the White House remains on a knife edge.Before the debate, Harris’s narrow lead in the polls was being chipped away by a Trump campaign trying to claw its way back from the shock of Joe Biden exiting the contest. After Trump’s poor debate showing, Harris appears to be edging up again. But neither campaign is taking anything for granted and both are returning to the daily fight.A CNN poll showed that 63% of debate watchers thought Harris won as Trump made outlandish claims about immigrants eating family pets and Democrats wanting to kill newborn babies. A focus group of undecided swing state voters put together by the Washington Post overwhelmingly said Harris came out on top.Even Fox News conceded the defeat. Its political analyst, Brit Hume, said Trump spent too much time airing old grievances that do nothing to win votes.“Let’s make no mistake, Trump had a bad night,” he said.Still, more cautious Democrats recognised that one bad night for the former president is far from a knockout blow and that their candidate remains particularly vulnerable on the economy, the top issue for large numbers of voters hit by surging inflation.The CNN poll showed that confidence in Harris to handle the economy fell by two points to 35% because of the debate after she failed to address inflation, or even acknowledge the hardship it has caused, while trust in Trump on the issue rose by two points to 55%.And while the latest YouGov poll gives Harris a nine-point advantage over Trump in favourability ratings, the presidential race is still neck-and-neck with each candidate claiming the support of 45% of the electorate.Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette Law School polling of voters in the swing state Wisconsin, where only about 20,000 votes separated Trump and his opponent in the last two presidential elections, said that while it was clear Harris won the debate, he doubted the outcome would shift the dial very much in those states where the election will be decided.“The question is, how much does it move the electorate in Wisconsin? Our electorate is pretty highly polarised even by national standards and so moving it much seems a little far-fetched,” he said.“The trouble is that voters always go to debates looking at it through their partisan glasses. If their candidate is clearly doing poorly, they come up with reasons why that is that still doesn’t lead them to reconsider their support for that candidate.”Swathes of Trump supporters lamented his performance but then shifted the blame to the debate moderators by accusing them of picking on the former president while giving Harris an easy ride.Polling says that about one in 20 voters in swing states have yet to make up their minds about who to vote for. But political analysts are sceptical that so many people are really undecided when Trump is such a known and divisive candidate.Nicholas Valentino, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, said that even though Harris’s positions are not particularly well-known, few people can be in doubt about the differences between the contenders on key issues from abortion to immigration and healthcare.“There are very few undecided voters left in the electorate at this point in the campaign. When those undecided voters say we need more substance from either of the candidates, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t know the differences or that they’re really waiting for some key piece of information that will tip the scales. That’s ambivalence. It’s not ignorance about where the candidates stand,” he said.Franklin said his polling showed that when uncommitted voters in Wisconsin are pressed about the reasons for their indecision, it often has less to do with policies or individual candidates than how they feel about politics in general.“The fact that they are negative towards politics, though, also sounds like many of Trump’s supporters, and that is one argument to think that Trump might have an advantage winning over those folks who are undecided but very negative about politics,” he said.Nonetheless, the YouGov poll shows Harris has the opportunity to make headway with voters who say they favour a candidate but are open to changing their minds. Four per cent of Trump supporters would consider voting for Harris while just 1% of Democrats are prepared to contemplate switching. But many of those Trump supporters see the economy as the most important issue. A majority of voters continue to view the former president’s tenure in the White House as a time of greater prosperity and have much more confidence in him to improve their finances.For all that, Harris’s combative approach to the debate was informed by the recognition in both campaigns that the key to victory almost certainly lies in turnout and generating enthusiasm among ambivalent supporters.In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by fewer than 45,000 votes out of nearly 6m cast. Four years later, Trump increased his vote in the state by more than 400,000 ballots. But he still lost Pennsylvania in 2020 because Biden was able to boost the Democratic turnout by 530,000 votes.That was a pattern repeated across swing states that delivered a Biden victory and that Harris must now almost certainly win. Probably no state is more pivotal than Pennsylvania.“It’s mostly now about the turnout game,” said Valentino. “It’s very likely that this election in Pennsylvania will be decided by fewer than 100,000 votes, just like it has been in the last two elections. There are many, many voters in Pennsylvania – white, less-than-college-educated men, women in the suburbs around the big cities – that each respective camp is going to be trying to turn out.”Polling shows that enthusiasm for the election among Democrats shot up after Biden dropped out of the race in July. Franklin saw it in Wisconsin.“Democrats are now running about nine points ahead of Republicans in enthusiasm, which certainly seems to point to another very high-turnout election,” he said.The YouGov poll shows that, nationally, 72% of Harris supporters say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting. Only 67% of Trump supporters say the same. But enthusiasm is significantly lower among younger people, whom the Democrats need. Only 78% of under-30s say they are likely to vote, compared with 95% of over-45s, who lean toward Trump.Harris continues to alienate some Democrats who outright refused to vote for Biden, calling him “Genocide Joe” over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians. Harris sought to defuse the issue during the debate by saying that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”, but that prompted critics to ask: how many innocent deaths is too many?The Democrats were particularly worried about the impact of Gaza policy on the significant Arab American vote in swing state Michigan, but Valentino thinks it has lost some of its sting, particularly among younger voters now focused on concerns about Trump returning to power.After the debate, Harris faced criticism for spending her time taunting Trump instead of detailing economic policy and a political vision. But Democratic strategists are only too aware that the surge in turnout for Biden in 2020 was less about support for the candidate than to get Trump out of the White House.Valentino said Harris’s approach may have served her well in that regard.“Her campaign strategy in this debate was clearly to allow Trump to display this kind of intense anger and goad him into making highly questionable arguments that they would cause moderates, and maybe even some moderate Republicans, to either become disillusioned with Trump and stay home from voting,” he said.“The other reason she was doing this is to mobilise her own base. Young people are worried about the future of democracy. I have data that shows the issue of protecting electoral institutions and elections is a very mobilising issue for Democrats, especially young Democrats. They know that they’re going to have to live and vote in this country for a lot longer than older folks and they are really worried about democratic institutions. That’s an issue that’s very potent for the Democratic party and for Harris, and she’s trying to make the most of it.” More

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    Haitian immigrants helped revive a struggling Ohio town. Then neo-Nazis turned up

    While Donald Trump made baseless, dangerous claims that immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets in front of millions of viewers at Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Johnson Salomon, a Haitian man who moved to Springfield in 2020, was watching cartoons with his kids before putting them to bed.He got a text from a friend telling him to turn on the debate. When he saw the headlines about what the former president and Republican nominee in November’s election had said, he was in total shock.“This was a false claim. I couldn’t believe that such a high official could make such a claim,” Salomon said.Trump’s running mate JD Vance, Elon Musk and prominent Ohio Republicans had already spread the false rumors, lying about how Haitian immigrants had been killing and eating people’s pets in Springfield, a blue-collar town of 60,000 people in western Ohio. But the rumors, leaving Salomon and other Haitians in fear of being targeted for violence and discrimination, didn’t start with them.They were initially spread online in August on social platforms used by far-right extremists and by Blood Tribe, a neo-Nazi hate group.Springfield officials and police say they have received no credible reports of pets being harmed by members of the immigrant community, instead suggesting the story may have originated in Canton, Ohio, where an American woman with no known connection to Haiti was arrested in August for allegedly stomping a cat to death and eating the animal.View image in fullscreenBut that hasn’t prevented Republican party politicians from scapegoating Springfield’s 15,000 Haitian immigrants as Trump and others attempt to propel immigration to the center of their fall political campaigns. In addition to Tuesday’s debate, Trump held a news conference Friday in which he rambled without evidence about how Haitians had descended on Springfield “and destroyed the place”.When Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017, some thought the new residents could help the city regain its former vigor as a once-thriving manufacturing hub. Once home to major agricultural machinery companies in the mid-20th century, Springfield has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.“They came to us for one reason: they were looking for ways to find out how to work,” Casey Rollins, executive director of the St Vincent de Paul Society’s Springfield chapter, said of those who came to the Ohio city from Haiti.“So we got together immigration lawyers and interpreters to figure out how to help them work. We are getting them online and getting them to apply [for work permits]. We wanted workers here [in Springfield] – they want to work.”View image in fullscreenHaitians and immigrants from Central American countries have been in high demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables – where they’ve been hired to clean and package produce – and at automotive machining plants whose owners were desperate for workers due to a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.New Caribbean restaurants and food trucks have opened across south Springfield where once abandoned neighborhoods are now bustling with residents. A popular Haitian radio station has been broadcasting for several years. And every May, thousands turn out for Haitian Flag Day that’s celebrated at a local park.But the glut of new arrivals has also stretched hospitals and schools in the area, angering many locals who resented their presence. The outrage reached a crescendo last August, when an 11-year-old boy was thrown from a school bus and killed after its driver swerved to avoid an oncoming car driven by a Haitian immigrant who didn’t have an Ohio driver’s license.The child’s death fueled anger and racism on Facebook and at Springfield city commission meetings, where public comments about immigration have often run for more than an hour. Locals upset by the growing immigrant community wondered if they were being taken over – if Springfield had become ground zero for the baseless “great replacement theory”.Soon, rightwing extremists seized on Springfield’s unrest.Armed neo-Nazi members of Blood Tribe – a hardcore white supremacist group, according to the Anti-Defamation League – flew flags bearing swastikas and marched through a prominent downtown street while a jazz and blues festival was taking place nearby in August.One witness to the march, who declined to be interviewed by the Guardian due to fearing for their family’s safety after being doxed by rightwing extremists online, reported that members of the group pointed guns at cars and told people to “go the fuck back to Africa”.A Springfield police representative, however, appeared to downplay the scene, telling local media that the hate group’s march was “just a little peaceful protest”.Several days later, a leading member of Blood Tribe who identified himself as Nathaniel Higgers, but whose real name is Drake Berentz, spoke at a Springfield city commission meeting.“I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late,” Berentz told Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue. “Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.”Berentz was promptly kicked out for espousing threatening language. Nonetheless, on Thursday morning, a bomb threat prompted Springfield’s city hall, a school and other government offices to be evacuated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe same group has marched in South Dakota and Tennessee this year.Last year, having turned up to protest a drag story time event in Wadsworth, Ohio, where white supremacists gave Nazi salutes and shouted “Sieg heil”, the organization allegedly set up a chapter in the state. Last year, Blood Tribe members were driven out of Maine having attempted to set up a compound and Nazi training camp in the rural north-eastern part of the state.View image in fullscreen“Blood Tribe celebrated Donald Trump bringing up the [immigrants killing cats] lie during the debate,” said Maria Bruno of Ohioans Against Extremism, a non-profit founded last month in part due to a rising presence of extremists in Ohio. “They are thrilled that there are politicians willing to echo their talking points.”JD Vance has regularly claimed that “illegal immigrants” are “generally causing chaos all across Springfield” on the campaign trail in recent weeks. Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, said he plans to direct his office to “research legal avenues to stop the federal government from sending an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities”.However, the vast majority of Haitians in Springfield are in the US legally through a temporary protected status (TPS) that’s been allocated to them due to the violence and unrest in their home country. Citizens of 16 countries, including Afghanistan and Myanmar, are eligible for TPS. It is not a pathway to US citizenship and is valid for only 18 months, at which point it must be renewed by the federal homeland security department for a status holder to remain in the country legally.“They are entrepreneurs, they want to innovate,” Rollins said of Haitian people in Springfield. “They just work excessively once they are eligible.”But many Haitians have been targeted in Springfield.View image in fullscreenIn December, a Springfield man was sentenced to 20 years in federal jail for hate crimes after attacking eight Haitians earlier in 2023. Last year, the local Haitian church was broken into and damaged twice. Longtime Black residents of Springfield have reported being verbally abused when walking on the city’s streets, having been confused with members of the Haitian community.The effect is plainly obvious.“Normally, when I drive through south Springfield, where a lot of Haitians live, you see people walking on the streets, at the Haitian markets and restaurants,” Salomon said.“For the past few days, I have seen far fewer people.”Rollins said she has received threats that the St Vincent de Paul branch would be destroyed for its support of Haitians.“People are messaging me, telling me that I’ve destroyed Springfield,” she said. “We’re just trying to help people.” More

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    I read the full 900-page Project 2025 manifesto – here’s why it matters

    I printed out all 900-plus pages of Project 2025 in February on my home printer, stacking the unwieldy chapters on my desk. Bit by bit, each evening, I read my way through the plans that seek to dramatically alter each federal agency.Most Americans who know about Project 2025 consume it in bite-size pieces, like Instagram infographics, or see the name on billboards. They hear politicians, like Vice-President Kamala Harris, mention it on stage – or former president Donald Trump disavow it in TV interviews. These attempt to neatly distill all the ways the document could upend the US government. For Democrats, Project 2025 has become a buzzword for the 2024 election, a shorthand way to warn voters what could be ahead if Trump wins again in November.My own consumption of the project was not as piecemeal – I read the full conservative manifesto by the Heritage Foundation and its many rightwing allies. Here’s what I learned from the document and all the controversy surrounding it.Project 2025’s policy guidebook, Mandate for Leadership, describes an America poisoned by “wokeness” and overtaken by lawlessness and chaos, where conservatives need to seize power immediately – and for as long as possible – to right a sinking ship.The guide is just one part of the broader plan Project 2025 and Heritage had in mind to dismantle the government, recruit thousands of politically aligned people to staff an incoming Trump administration, and quickly guide the next president into the steps needed to accomplish their preferred policy changes.Trump has claimed he does not know what it is or who is involved, though he does indeed know many of the people involved. Perhaps more importantly, his policy plans often align with what’s in the project.By seeking to influence Trump, the project – which counts more than 100 conservative groups as supporters and contributors – probably poisoned Heritage and its allies’ chances of forming part of Trump’s inner circle and potential next administration by claiming it could influence a man who hates to see himself as influenced by others. Other thinktanks that kept their hands clean of the power struggle could instead become more influential, though it would be difficult, or impossible, to staff thousands of political jobs with people who have no ties to Heritage or Project 2025.In an ironic turn, given the toxicity of the project to voters, it could cost Trump the election in November.Could it actually happen?Outside groups always hope to influence presidents. Heritage has put together and released a version of the Mandate for Leadership every four years since Ronald Reagan’s first term. Why did this one catch such fire? For one, they wrote it all down and released it publicly, with a splashy online presence and media appearances. They also recruited tons of other conservative groups to sign on as allies. They publicly called it a plan for “institutionalizing Trumpism”.Democrats seized on it, seeking to tie Trump directly to the plan by plastering the project on billboards and mentioning it in speeches as much as possible. They have been successful – though the plan was released in 2023, the public’s knowledge of it has increased dramatically in the last two months because of this negative attention.Could the ideas in Project 2025 actually happen? Not all of them, and not overnight. But a movement amasses power that then can lead to massive social change piece by piece. Some of the plans, like dismantling the Department of Education, have been on conservative wishlists since the department began. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t happen – it just means there is an eventual tipping point where they could. Take the fall of Roe, for instance.One way the plan seeks to create more tipping points is by adding in more political appointees, a change Trump has tried in the past in what’s known as Schedule F. It would classify thousands more positions in the federal government as political instead of neutral career civil servants. And the recent US supreme court ruling that made accountability difficult if a president’s official acts break the law certainly helps with amassing power in the executive branch, too.Dismantling government and elevating religionAs I have watched and covered the project and the backlash to it from Democrats and Trump’s circle, it has become clear that few have read the document itself. It is at times less aggressive than its detractors would have you believe and at others far more wide-reaching and consequential than a simplistic infographic.It doesn’t say to defund social security, for instance, despite what some TikToks claim. But it does say a whole lot else that would affect the daily lives of people in the US and beyond.Across multiple agencies, it would make access to abortion infinitely more difficult. It would change the name of the federal health and human services department to the “Department of Life”. It would criminalize pornography. There would be mass deportations and curtailments of legal immigration programs, including Daca. It would dismantle the Department of Education.Throughout the manifesto, authors also recommend ways to increase funding for religious organizations by giving them more access to government programs – largely through increased use of school vouchers that could go to religious schools or by modifying programs like Small Business Administration loans to make religious groups eligible for funding.In some parts, the project takes a more explicit Christian worldview. In the chapter about the Department of Labor, the manifesto suggests a communal day of rest for society because “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest”. One way to enforce this idea would be for Congress to require paid time-and-a-half for anyone who works on Sundays, which the project calls the default day of Sabbath “except for employers with a sincere religious observance of a Sabbath at a different time”.In nearly all chapters, there is a mention of driving out any forces that seek to increase diversity in the federal government. And whenever LGBTQ+ rights are mentioned, it is to say there should be fewer of them.Project 2025 is also steeped in the culture wars: the document characterizes so many elements of governance as woke – the woke treasury department, woke weather reports – that the term is rendered meaningless. It also describes the country as run by “elites” – though not, apparently, the elites that run heavyweight Washington thinktanks.Trump’s policy positions are typically much less detailed than what’s in Project 2025. We have at times referred to Project 2025 as the meat on the bones of a Trump presidency. To figure out where Trump and the project’s policy goals align, I also looked up what Trump has said – or not said – on the issues the project covers.How to remake a governmentSchedule F, the wonkily named plan to create a government more beholden to its executive, is perhaps the biggest change that the project seeks, and it’s one Trump is aligned on.In each agency chapter, there are suggestions for how more non-partisan, civic employees in the federal government could be turned into political appointees who would be beholden to the Trump agenda and less likely to push back on policy changes.In that sense, we shouldn’t think of Project 2025 as solely aimed at Trump: it is instead a vision for conservatives for Trump and far beyond, a rightwing wishlist aimed at generational change in how the government operates and the chief executive’s role within it.I will use what the project suggests for the US census – the huge count that the government carries out every 10 years – as an example.The census helps decide how federal resources should be allocated to communities, but, for our purposes here, it’s most relevant that census data is used to decide how to divvy up seats in the US House and make electoral maps during decennial redistricting done by states. The census can alter the balance of power in statehouses and in Congress.Given its influence, the project suggests an incoming conservative president needs to install more political appointees to the census bureau and ensure ideologically aligned career employees are “immediately put in place to execute a conservative agenda”. The next census isn’t until 2030, but plans for it are already under way.That conservative agenda includes adding a citizenship question, something Trump tried to do for the 2020 census but was blocked by the US supreme court. The project says “any successful conservative Administration must include a citizenship question in the census”.The project also suggests reviewing and possibly curtailing plans to broaden the race and ethnicity categories because “there are concerns among conservatives that the data under Biden Administration proposals could be skewed to bolster progressive political agendas”. And a program that uses partnerships with trusted community groups to increase responsiveness to the census should make sure to “actively engage with conservative groups and voices to promote response to the decennial census.“In 2020, lack of conservative participation was one factor in an undercount in some areas of the country, affecting representation of certain states,” the project claims, echoing a sentiment Heritage has elevated before.Why it mattersMany of the project’s ideas are more or less conservative consensus – they align with what Trump has said and done in the past on the topic and they represent what could happen if he wins again.But some parts of it go beyond Trump’s stated plans, like broader restrictions on abortion access, or they are more blunt about exactly what could happen if a conservative wins.And many other parts still are not issues Trump has weighed in on, where he may default to what the conservative movement wants. Some of its ideas are pie-in-the-sky: we are probably not making a return to the gold standard, at least not anytime soon.For liberals, Project 2025 has become a boogeyman. For conservatives, it’s a weight around them as they seek electoral wins – and a sign that liberals will do whatever they can to malign Trump for his associations.Though Trump would love few things more than never hearing the term “Project 2025” again, there’s a case to be made for paying close attention to what Heritage and the project do this election and beyond. If you’re liberal, you should work to understand what the other side is doing. If you’re conservative, you should know what’s being said in your name.The final chapter of the manifesto makes clear the groups involved view their goals as an ongoing existential battle for America.“In Washington, there are no permanent victories,” wrote Edwin J Feulner, a Heritage co-founder. “But neither are there permanent defeats. Rather, there are permanent battles throughout the policy arena. The other side is never standing still.“While we may achieve tremendous successes under conservative leaders, the Left is always working to chip away at them, which is why we must constantly be prepared for the next fight.” More

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    The polling is in and Harris won the debate. But Democrats shouldn’t get cocky | John Zogby

    A total of 67 million Americans watched the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on Tuesday, and the first polls taken after the event all show the vice-president gaining a little ground over the former president.Harris’s lead ranges from three to five points, depending on the poll, but we need to be careful about drawing any exaggerated conclusions. One poll by Reuters has Harris leading by five points, but she had been leading by four in their previous poll published on 21 August. Another by Morning Consult also revealed similar results, but her lead had been three points the day before the debate and four the day of the debate.All polls agree that Harris won by a large margin and that favorable ratings rose by as many as nine points. She is seen as better for protecting democracy by nine points and on abortion by 21 points.But the new polls also make clear that Trump’s numbers really did not change much. According to interviews conducted by CNN before and after the debate, he is still given higher marks for handling the economy and immigration, the two top issues in the campaign.A CNN flash poll found that debate viewers felt, by a margin of 63% to 37%, that Harris turned in a better performance onstage in Philadelphia – with 96% of her supporters saying that she had done a better job, while a smaller 69% majority of Trump’s supporters credited Trump with having a better night.Similarly, in the eyes of most pundits, Harris came across as confident and did not lose her cool. She framed her performance around the idea that she represents a new generation that will not dwell on the past. She also laid out her plan for an “Opportunity Economy” with tax credits for small businesses and expansions of affordable housing and the Affordable Care Act, among other things.She did a good job of contrasting her positive approach with Trump’s negativity. She linked him with tax cuts for billionaires, raised tariffs on China that were tantamount to a “20% sales tax” on consumers, an expansion of the powers of an unchecked presidency and the massive defunding of federal agencies and bureaucrats in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.For his part, Trump chose a scowling face, perhaps to demonstrate that he is very serious. There was very little attempt at humor during the debate. He certainly came out swinging at Harris’s claim of millions of new jobs by claiming they were “bounce back jobs” that had been lost during the Covid epidemic. He roundly attacked her (and, of course the president Joe Biden’s) record on immigration and for the badly managed and deadly exit of American troops from Afghanistan. He also attacked the Biden administration for being unwilling to fire poorly performing government staff. He focused on her early opposition to fracking, a major issue in the battleground Pennsylvania, which also happened to be the location of the debate. He predicted that her election would mean the end of Israel, while she called for a two-state solution and a ceasefire.Harris touted her background as a prosecutor and bragged of shutting down drug lords. She chided Trump for talking tough on crime while he has been indicted and convicted numerous times. Perhaps her best moment was when she drew a sharp distinction on reproductive rights. Women have been hurt by the striking down of Roe v Wade by the US supreme court, an issue that has drawn otherwise disengaged women voters to the polls and given Democrats victories in state and local elections.She put Trump on the defensive for his changing positions, something which has hurt him also with Christian conservatives. He resorted to accusing the Democrats of supporting the possible execution of newborn infants. He was immediately fact-checked by the moderators on that one – and lost. Harris, he said, was “all talk” on abortion and relief on student loans because she knows that Congress will never pass anything nor will federal courts allow it.Trump resorted to the bizarre at times. The small city of Springfield, Ohio, has seen entry of about 15,000 Haitian immigrants in recent months and he raised an unsubstantiated far-right claim that Haitian immigrants have been caught eating longtime residents’ pets. David Muir, chief anchor for ABC News and one of the moderators, immediately jumped in to say there was no evidence found of that, citing a statement from the local mayor.Trump also claimed a huge rise in violent crimes under the Biden-Harris administration while the most recent report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation actually notes that violent crime is in dramatic decline. And, of course, he still claims that he won the 2020 election because the Democrats defrauded the system by allowing undocumented immigrants to vote. Again, the moderators stepped in.Harris did have some weak moments. When asked if Americans were “better off” financially under the current administration, she completely ignored the question and talked instead about her vision of an “Opportunity Economy”. There are times when talking about the future is just not good enough. The economy is the elephant in the room and she is simply going to have to do better. Trump will be sure to remind her of that.Similarly, the Israel-Gaza war is a major issue for younger voters and Democratic progressives. Her attempt at a middle ground may not be reassuring to those who believe a genocide is being conducted with American weapons.At times, Trump was simply ridiculous. But he did not receive a knockout blow. “We have a nation in decline and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris know it.” While Harris hit him hard without appearing to bully him and turn him into a victim, he nonetheless had one of the most memorable lines of the evening: Harris “has been in for three and a half years, so why hasn’t she done” all the things she is promising? A good question that she will have to answer.Harris won on points. She may have regained the momentum she had most of August, but the race is still at equilibrium.Do these debates matter? They certainly have in the past. We all saw the strengths and weaknesses of both campaigners and now we have a clearer sense of what to watch from here.

    John Zogby is senior partner at the polling firm of John Zogby Strategies and is author of Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read the Polls and Why We Should More