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    In Springfield, Ohio, Threats Leave Haitian Residents Shaken

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    Tension hangs over the city after a week of closings and lockdowns, and the strain of recent months has led some Haitian immigrants to consider moving to bigger cities.After a week that saw schools, businesses and City Hall closed in Springfield, Ohio, by bomb threats, this weekend began with two of the city’s hospitals going on lockdown. A sweep of both facilities on Saturday morning turned up nothing, but the new threats only added to the unease hanging over the city since former President Donald J. Trump dragged it into the race for the White House.During the presidential debate on Tuesday, Mr. Trump cited a debunked rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were abducting and eating pets, and days later, he vowed to begin his mass deportation effort with the Haitians in Springfield, even though most of them are in the United States legally.The increasingly hostile rhetoric from Mr. Trump, other politicians and some extremist organizations has shaken some of the thousands of Haitians who have settled in Springfield in recent years.“Honestly, I don’t feel safe. It’s not good right now,” says Jean-Patrick Louisius, 40, who moved to Springfield four years ago with his wife and two daughters. He was part of an early wave of Haitian arrivals, attracted to the city by plentiful jobs and affordable housing. Estimates of the number of Haitians who have arrived in recent years range from 12,000 to 20,000.But tensions between longtime residents and more recent arrivals had been building before the national spotlight landed on the city, about 25 miles from Dayton.Even as the Haitian immigrants have been welcomed by employers and injected energy into fading neighborhoods, the arrival of thousands of people in a short period of time has strained schools and some government services.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Phil Donahue, Daytime Talk Show Host, Dies at 88

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      Phil Donahue, who in the 1960s reinvented the television talk show with a democratic flourish, inviting audiences to question his guests on topics as resolutely high-minded as human rights and international relations, and as unblushingly lowbrow as male strippers and safe-sex orgies, died on Sunday at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 88.His death was confirmed by Susan Arons, a representative of the family.“The Phil Donahue Show” made its debut in 1967 on WLWD-TV in Dayton, Ohio, propelling Mr. Donahue on a 29-year syndicated run, much of it as the unchallenged king of daytime talk television.Almost from the start, “The Phil Donahue Show” dispensed with familiar trappings. There was no opening monologue, no couch, no sidekick, no band — just the host and the guests, focused on a single topic.At the time, audiences were expected to be seen and not heard, unless prompted to applaud. Mr. Donahue changed that. He quickly realized from chatting with audience members during commercial breaks that some of them asked sharper questions than he did. And so he began his practice of stalking the aisles, microphone in hand, and letting those in the seats have their say. He also opened the telephone lines to those watching at home. Electronic democracy, as some called it, had arrived.Few subjects, if any, were off limits for Mr. Donahue, who was said to have told his staff, “I want all the topics hot.” It mattered little that at times the subjects made some viewers, and local station managers, squirm. His very first guest was guaranteed to stir controversy: Madalyn Murray O’Hair, at the time America’s most famous, and widely unpopular, atheist.Across the years — he moved from Dayton to Chicago in 1974, and then to New York in 1985 — he interviewed presidential candidates and Hollywood stars, consumer advocates and feminist pioneers. He also televised a child’s birth, an abortion, a reverse vasectomy and a tubal ligation. From inside a maximum-security prison in Ohio, he examined the American penal system. He was among the first television hosts to explore the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, and the first Western journalist to go to Chernobyl, in Ukraine, after the 1986 nuclear accident there.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses

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      Former President Donald J. Trump, at an event on Saturday ostensibly meant to boost his preferred candidate in Ohio’s Republican Senate primary race, gave a freewheeling speech in which he used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, maintained a steady stream of insults and vulgarities and predicted that the United States would never have another election if he did not win in November.With his general-election matchup against President Biden in clear view, Mr. Trump once more doubled down on the doomsday vision of the country that has animated his third presidential campaign and energized his base during the Republican primary.The dark view resurfaced throughout his speech. While discussing the U.S. economy and its auto industry, Mr. Trump promised to place tariffs on cars manufactured abroad if he won in November. He added: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”For nearly 90 minutes outside the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio, Mr. Trump delivered a discursive speech, replete with attacks and caustic rhetoric. He noted several times that he was having difficulty reading the teleprompter.The former president opened his speech by praising the people serving sentences in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Mr. Trump, who faces criminal charges tied to his efforts to overturn his election loss, called them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots,” commended their spirit and vowed to help them if elected in November. He also repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, which have been discredited by a mountain of evidence.If he did not win this year’s presidential election, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nuclear Missile Remnants Found in a Garage

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      The police responded to a call from a U.S. Air Force museum that said a man had offered to donate a Cold War-era missile stored in his late neighbor’s garage.Garages are often cluttered with dusty boxes of heirlooms, untouched gym equipment or a multitude of tools.But how about a piece of a Cold War-era nuclear missile?Members of the bomb squad in Bellevue, Wash., on Thursday were called to inspect parts of a military-grade missile in the garage of a resident.Elements of the larger, intact missile, such as the warhead, were missing and the authorities deemed the piece to be inert and safe, the police said in a news release on Friday.An Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio, contacted the police in Bellevue on Jan. 31 to report that a resident had offered to donate the missile, which belonged to his late neighbor.The resident had been put in charge of his neighbor’s estate, according to the Bellevue police, and said that his neighbor had originally purchased the missile from an estate sale.The police were unable to contact any of the neighbor’s family, and did not identify the Bellevue man out of respect for his privacy, said Officer Seth Tyler, a Bellevue Police Department spokesman.The next day, the man was “surprised” to hear from the police because he had not called them but invited the bomb squad to inspect the missile remnant, Officer Tyler said.Squad members identified the rocket as a Douglas AIR-2 Genie missile, designed to carry a 1.5-kiloton nuclear warhead.First put into operation in 1957, the Genie was the world’s first nuclear-armed rocket designed to destroy aircraft targets, and was the most powerful interceptor missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force, according to Boeing.In 1954, Douglas Aircraft began work on “a small unguided nuclear-armed air-to-air missile,” according to Boeing. Douglas Aircraft built more than 1,000 Genie rockets before discontinuing production in 1962.It was clear that the missile remnant did not pose a threat given that it was missing its warhead and did not contain rocket fuel, Officer Tyler said.“It was essentially just a rusted piece of metal at that point,” he said. “An artifact, in other words.”Because the military did not request it back, the police left it with the man to donate.It was not immediately clear whether the missile remnant would be destined for the museum in Ohio, and efforts to reach the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton on Sunday were unsuccessful.Given Bellevue’s proximity to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a large military base, Officer Tyler said it was not unusual for the police to respond to calls about hand grenades or other unexploded ordnance.But a missile from the Cold War would be a first, said Officer Tyler, who has worked for the department for 18 years. The department also seemed to believe it would be the last, referring to Elton John’s classic song “Rocket Man” in a social media post.“And we think it’s gonna be a long, long time before we get another call like this again,” the Bellevue police said. More

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      How Nan Whaley, Dayton’s Mayor, Sees Ohio Politics and Portman’s Senate Seat

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Nan Whaley, Dayton’s Mayor, Sees Ohio Politics and Portman’s Senate SeatIn an interview, Ms. Whaley, a Democrat, discusses what her party needs to do to start winning more statewide races in Ohio, including the 2022 races for Senate and governor that she is mulling.Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, during a 2019 rally for Pete Buttigieg in South Bend, Ind. Ms. Whaley is considering a 2022 campaign for governor or for the Senate seat currently held by Rob Portman.Credit…Darron Cummings/Associated PressJan. 26, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSenator Rob Portman’s announcement on Monday that he would not seek a third term in 2022 sent a shock wave through Ohio politics and dealt a setback to national Republicans who were counting on Mr. Portman, 65, to easily keep his seat in G.O.P. hands next year. By the afternoon, a throng of ambitious Republicans were circling the race, including the far-right Representative Jim Jordan, as well as a few prominent Democrats.One of those Democrats was Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton. A 45-year-old progressive who campaigned for Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 presidential primaries, Ms. Whaley has long been seen as a likely candidate for governor or Senate. In 2019, she led her city through the aftermath of a mass shooting in which nine people were killed.Democrats in Ohio have seen the political tide turn hard against them over the past decade, and they have lost three races for governor, two out of four Senate campaigns and nearly every other statewide election, leaving Senator Sherrod Brown, 68, as a lonely Democrat holding high office there. Though Barack Obama won Ohio twice, Donald J. Trump carried it by eight percentage points in both 2016 and 2020.In an interview with The Times on Monday evening, Ms. Whaley confirmed her interest in being a candidate in 2022 and said President Biden must move swiftly to deliver economic relief to the people in her state. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.What’s it going to take for Democrats to get back in the game statewide?We have all recognized, from the close governor’s race in ’18 and the tough presidential races, that we have to have an Ohio-specific message. So, regardless if it’s a federal race or a local race, there is a message like the message Sherrod Brown delivers that resonates very well in this state. It’s not necessarily being a moderate. It’s a message of being very real and talking about the issue that affects Ohioans the most, first — and that is the fact that for three decades, they have been working harder and harder and getting further behind.The true civil war in the Republican Party gives Democrats in this state a great opportunity.In a backward-looking way: Do you think Obama’s success in Ohio gave people an unrealistic sense of how purple it is, or do you think Trump’s strength there has given people an unrealistic sense of how red it is?I think it’s both, honestly. I think what people forget about Ohio is, it’s an economic populist state, and its economic populism is why Sherrod does so well here. When Trump was like, “$2,000 stimulus checks for everyone,” I was like, “Absolutely, I agree with Trump, that’s right.”What people want in Ohio — it’s not complicated. They want to work and they want to get paid decent for that work. It’s not rocket science. And over three decades, both parties have not been paying attention to that.I think ’22 gives us a real opportunity to localize some of these issues in Ohio.When you say “localize” — how much is that an admission that, look, the national brand and the national cultural orientation of the Democratic Party is just a big problem in Ohio?I am frustrated sometimes with the national messaging, and it’s not just the Democratic Party. Just, a lot of times, the elitism that comes off from the coasts. That’s a challenge.The Michigan Democratic message? That’s a good message for Ohio.How does that elitism translate in the political message of the party?It’s what we choose to talk about first.You know, I was on a call this week with John Kerry and Gina McCarthy about the work on climate change, which we all agree on. But the key, for us, if you look at what Bill Peduto has moved forward with mayors from Ohio and the Ohio River Valley, the Marshall Plan for Middle America — we have to bring these jobs to the middle of the country.It can’t just be, “This is great for the climate.” It’s also, “It’s a great job creator.” And that’s what we should lead with in these states.Are there things that national Democrats talk about that you feel like, it’s not even a question of emphasis or angle, but it needs to not be on the agenda — period?No, I don’t. I don’t think there’s anything like that. But I think what we lead with a lot of times comes off in a way that doesn’t resonate.One of the challenges in our party is, we have a lot of smart people in the party and everyone wants to be the smartest person in the room. And shouldn’t we be focused on what makes people’s lives better, even if it’s a regular person’s idea?Do you think Biden could have won the state?Yes, I do.What would it have taken?Not to be in Covid. We did no voter reg in the state. They [Republicans] did.And then we didn’t do any voter contact on the ground, and they did. I’m glad we saved lives, don’t get me wrong. But that affected our turnout in urban communities, it affected their turnout in rural communities. We did nothing.What do you think people in Ohio need to see from Biden in the next year, or even in the next three months, in order to ——They need the rescue package. They need to see that something is different, and it’s moving quickly. They need to see that they don’t have to worry every month on whether or not they’re going to get bailed out at the last minute on unemployment and eviction, even though it’s no fault of theirs that the pandemic happened to them, and that they happen to work on frontline jobs that people can’t go to now because the pandemic is raging. And that we’ve got their back.Do you think they care about legislation like that being bipartisan, or do you think they just want it fast?No. No. They want it fast. Nobody cares what happens in D.C. and who voted what. They just want it done, and we should provide that.Where is your head, about your options for 2022?We’re going to make the decision in the coming weeks. I’ve gotten a lot of encouragement today, with probably every Ohio Democrat giving me their opinion on what I should do, which has been really nice.Are both the governor’s race and the Senate race on the table?Yeah.Do you expect to be on the ballot, one way or the other?I hope so.If Jim Jordan decides to run [for Senate], it is highly likely he will win that primary. We recognize that the soul of our state is at stake, and that’s a motivation to all of us.What would your message be to a Democrat from outside Ohio — let’s say someone on the coast — who looks at the results from the last election and the results from Georgia this month, and says, “Why are we even bothering in these states where we’re getting our [rear ends] kicked when there are states that are moving our way?”I would say, there are four states that put Biden over, and they were won collectively by a little more than 100,000 votes. So, you ignore this, as a party, at your own peril. We won, decisively, the popular vote, but democracy is really at stake if we don’t pay attention to places like Ohio.You look at the Senate, you look at our long-term play, and we’ve still got a lot of work to do.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More