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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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    ‘They’ve destroyed the place’: Trump repeats racist, anti-immigrant lies

    Donald Trump repeated racist claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, on Friday, doubling down on anti-immigrant rhetoric as residents in the town have faced bomb threats and have detailed their fears amid harassment.“In Springfield, Ohio, 20,000 illegal migrant Haitians have descended upon a town of 58,000 people, destroying their way of life. They’ve destroyed the place,” Trump said during a rambling press conference at his golf course in Los Angeles. “People don’t like to talk about it. Even the town doesn’t like to talk about it, because it sounds so bad for the town. They live there … for years it was a great place. Safe. Nice. Now they have 20,000 and I actually heard today it’s 32,000.”He later added: “We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations. We’re gonna get these people out. We’re bringing them back to Venezuela,” stating the incorrect country where most of the immigrants are from.Haiti is one of 16 countries the US government has granted temporary protective status (TPS) to because of ongoing conflict, making it easier for immigrants to get authorization to work in the United States. As president, Trump tried to end TPS for Haiti and referred to the country as a “shithole”.Trump’s comments come after Tuesday’s presidential debate in which he first repeated the false claim that migrants in Springfield are stealing and eating people’s dogs and cats. The claim has been repeatedly debunked.Springfield has received several bomb threats this week, prompting it to close its government buildings and evacuate its schools. Haitian residents in the town have reported receiving severe threats and harassment, according to the Haitian Times.JD Vance, who represents the residents of Springfield as Ohio’s US senator, continued to attack the town on Friday, leaning into racist tropes that immigrants were responsible for bringing disease and crime to the community.Just before Trump spoke in California, Joe Biden condemned his attacks on Haitians in Springfield.“A community that’s under attack in our country right now. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America. This has to stop – what he’s doing. It has to stop,” Biden said at the White House. More

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    ‘This has to stop’: Biden condemns attacks on Haitian US immigrants

    Joe Biden on Friday said the hostile attacks on Haitian immigrants in the US “[have] to stop” after Donald Trump repeated a false and derogatory claim about a Haitian community in Ohio.“It is simply wrong that the proud Haitian community is under attack right now in this country,” Biden said. “There’s no place in America. This has to stop – what he’s doing. It has to stop,” the US president said at a White House event marking Black excellence.The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, earlier on Friday said that the bomb threat made on Thursday that forced the evacuation of the city hall, two schools and other buildings was explicitly anti-immigrant and hostile to the city’s Haitian community, following Donald Trump’s stoking of a rightwing conspiracy theory that some residents’ pets are being eaten.Rob Rue, the mayor, accused national Republicans who are amplifying wild rumors from a far-right provocateur that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are hunting and eating other people’s pets of “hurting our city”.The threat “used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians in our community”, Rue told the Washington Post, and added that Springfield “is a community that needs help”.No bomb was found after the threat was made. But Rue told the local Fox outlet that, in the threat, “there was enough negative language toward immigrants, towards Haitian folks that would bring enough concern. And then when it followed up with … at the end, of a bomb threat … It was pretty much just the beginning of the conclusion that they’re going to threaten to harm people.”Springfield has been the subject of national attention in recent days after the false social media rumor about the Haitian community.Trump even referenced the conspiracy theory in Tuesday night’s debate with opponent Kamala Harris. Trump repeated the inflammatory falsehood, saying: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats … They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” His move triggered a wave of anger and ridicule.That same day, JD Vance mentioned the rumor on X (formerly Twitter), which has also been flooded with AI-generated images of Trump surrounded by dogs, cats and ducks.Rue on Tuesday condemned the rumors as totally false, with “zero” verified reports of such disparaging claims. ABC’s debate moderator David Muir made the same factcheck live on Tuesday night after Trump’s remarks.Rue told the Springfield News-Sun: “Rumors like this are taking away from the real issues such as issues involving our housing or school resources and our overwhelmed healthcare system.”Meanwhile, during a Springfield city commission forum, Nathan Clark, the father of an 11-year-old boy who was killed last year when a minivan driven by an immigrant from Haiti collided with his school bus, told Trump and Vance to stop using his son’s name for “political gain”.Reuters contributed reportingRead more about the 2024 US election:

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    Bomb threat shuts down Ohio city hall after Trump spreads baseless migrants rumor

    The city of Springfield, Ohio, has closed down its city hall due to a bomb threat issued to multiple facilities.Springfield has been the subject of national attention in recent days after Donald Trump’s campaign and rightwing Republicans amplified a false social media rumor of the community’s Haitian immigrants eating local pets. There is no evidence to back up the claims.In a Facebook post on Thursday, city officials said that they were alerted to the bomb threat via an email at 8.24am, adding that the email was sent to “multiple agencies and media outlets”.“As a precautionary measure, the building has been evacuated, and authorities are currently conducting a thorough investigation. Our primary concern is the safety and well-being of our employees and residents. We are working to address this situation as swiftly as possible,” city officials said.They went on to add: “We ask the community to avoid the area surrounding City Hall vicinity while the investigation is ongoing and to report any suspicious activity to the Springfield police division. We appreciate your patience and cooperation as we work through this matter.”Trump even referenced the conspiracy theory in Tuesday night’s debate with opponent Kamala Harris. Trump repeated the inflammatory falsehood, saying: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats … They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” His move triggered a wave of anger and ridicule.That same day, JD Vance mentioned the rumor on X, which has also been flooded with AI-generated images of Trump surrounded by dogs, cats and ducks, some of which appear to be armed and in protection of him.Meanwhile, during a Springfield city commission forum on Tuesday, Aiden Clark, the father of an 11-year-old boy who was killed last year when a minivan driven by an immigrant from Haiti collided with his school bus, has asked Trump and Vance to stop using his son’s name for “political gain”.“They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio,” said Clark. More

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    Father of Ohio boy, 11, tells Trump and Vance to stop using son’s death for ‘political gain’

    The father of an 11-year-old boy who was killed last year when a minivan driven by an immigrant from Haiti collided with his school bus has asked Donald Trump and JD Vance to stop using his son’s name for “political gain”.During a city commission meeting on Tuesday in Springfield, Ohio, Nathan Clark, the father of Aiden Clark, addressed the forum alongside his wife, Danielle. Speaking at the meeting, Clark said: “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone,” the Springfield News-Sun reports.Clark went on to list politicians including Trump and Vance, who he said have been using his son’s name for “political gain”.“Bernie Moreno [the Ohio Republican senate candidate], Chip Roy [the Texas Republican representative], JD Vance and Donald Trump … have spoken my son’s name and used his death for political gain. This needs to stop now. They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio,” said Clark.“I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies. To clear the air, my son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti. This tragedy has been all over this community, the state and even the nation. But don’t spin this towards hate,” he continued.Clark went on to say: “Did you know that one of the worst feelings in the world is to not be able to protect your child? Even worse, we can’t protect his memory when he’s gone. Please stop the hate.”Clark’s comments come after the Trump campaign and Vance mentioned Aiden Clark’s death earlier this week amid hateful and baseless rumors surrounding the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield.In a post on X on Tuesday, Vance alluded to Clark’s death by saying a “child was murdered by a Haitian migrant” on X. In the same post, Vance also repeated the falsehoods surrounding Haitian immigrants eating local pets – a rumor brought up again by Trump during Tuesday’s debate with Kamala Harris.Meanwhile, the Trump War Room, an X account used by the Trump campaign, also mentioned Aiden Clark, accusing Harris of refusing to say his name.Aiden Clark died last August when the school bus he was riding in collided with a minivan driven by 36-year old Hermanio Joseph, a Haitian father of four children. More than 20 other students were injured in the collision and Joseph was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide. In May, Joseph was sentenced to nine to 13.5 years in prison.In a statement to NBC on Clark’s remarks, a spokesperson for Vance said that people should hold Harris “and her open border policies accountable for the deaths of their children”, adding: “The Clark family is in senator Vance’s prayers.”The Guardian’s Julius Constantine Motal contributed reporting More

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    A coal plant bulldozed an Ohio town displacing residents. Now its owners include a big Trump donor

    Nestled beneath two precipitous spires billowing smoke from what has been called the deadliest coal plant in the United States lies the husk of the small but once-thriving town of Cheshire, Ohio.When residents here were routinely shrouded in a toxic, blue-tinged fog of pollution from the plant two decades ago, a unique yet telling solution was settled upon: the company causing the pollution would purchase the entire town to move people en masse from their homes.For the several hundred people who lived here beside a nook of the Ohio River on the eastern border of the state, the wrenching dismemberment of their community in 2002 is still raw. Yet looming stubbornly over the remnants of this ghost town is the imposing Gavin coal plant, as its owners battle federal regulators who allege ongoing violations of clean air and water rules.“Rather than deal with the source of pollution they thought it better to buy out and bulldoze a whole town,” said Neil Waggoner, an Ohio-based campaigner at the Sierra Club, which estimates Gavin’s pollution causes about 244 premature deaths a year, making it America’s most lethal coal plant, it said in a report last year based on Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and census data. “It’s extraordinary. In many ways, it’s dystopian.”View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenThe tale of the Gavin power station, one of the largest coal complexes in the US and the country’s sixth highest such emitter of planet-heating carbon dioxide, is one that illustrates deep seams of support for coal in this part of the midwest but also – with a looming presidential election – salient politics.Since 2017, the Gavin plant has been part-owned by Blackstone, a private equity firm whose billionaire chief executive, Stephen Schwarzman, is one of the leading backers of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, having donated $3m to a Trump-aligned Super PAC in 2020. Individuals connected to Blackstone are also among the most generous financial supporters of JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Trump’s running mate.Both Trump and Vance have lambasted moves by Joe Biden’s administration to regulate coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels and a catalyst of the climate crisis, with particular ire aimed at a recent EPA rule that requires coal-fired power plants to slash CO2 emissions by 90% within a decade or face closure.Trump has vowed to kill off the rule he’s called “a regulatory jihad to shut down power plants all across America” if he returns to the White House, while Vance has complained of “wanton harassment of fossil fuel companies” and joined with other Senate Republicans in attempts to block the regulation.The EPA edict poses an existential threat to the Gavin plant, which spews out 13m tons of carbon dioxide a year, along with a host of other toxins. Faced with the costly task of capturing the plant’s emissions, Lightstone Generation, the joint venture operator, is also wrestling with EPA allegations from this year that it violated clean air laws and failed to properly contain a vast nearby dump of coal ash – the leftover waste from burning coal that can leach arsenic, mercury and other cancer-causing toxins into rivers and streams – fed by a mile-long conveyor belt from the power plant.“Blackstone is used to playing that political game and it’s in their interest to keep the status quo so coal plants don’t face accountability,” said Alissa Jean Schafer, climate director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, which outlined in a recent report that Gavin’s operators face upwards of $40m in costs to remedy its pollution issues, recommending it join a spate of coal plants that have closed in Ohio and nationwide.“There is a trend of private equity walking away from polluting assets without being liable for the environmental cleanup,” Schafer added. “They want to squeeze as much profit as possible while they can from this outdated, dangerous coal plant.”View image in fullscreenBlackstone’s Schwarzman, who has previously warned of energy shortages and “real unrest” around the world if fossil fuels are phased out too quickly, has allied with Trump, who weakened rules around coal ash disposal and coal plant emissions when he was president. “You can imagine folks at Blackstone want to see similar rollbacks under a second Trump presidency, and you can imagine Vance towing the line,” said Schafer.A Blackstone spokeswoman said the Gavin plant is a “legacy investment” that has spent more than $1bn to update its air quality control technology, complies with federal and state limits on emissions, and is in the process of closing a coal ash pond. “All political donations by our employees are strictly personal,” she added.The reach of the Gavin plant, built in 1974 and named after Gen James “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin, is prodigious. It chews through about 20,000 tons of coal a day, enough to electrify 2m homes. A pair of enormous 800ft-tall rust-colored smokestacks, jutting imperiously above the treeline on the approach to Cheshire, waft a cocktail of emissions for hundreds of miles, with environmentalists blaming it for causing hazy skies as far away as the Shenandoah national park, in Virginia.The immediate surroundings of the largest power plant in Ohio, however, are denuded. The blue plumes are gone but the plant itself still gives off a pungent sulphur smell, a violent whiff akin to rotting eggs that stings the nose. The small cluster of Cheshire streets at the foot of the plant contain patches of grass where homes once sat, like a mouth that’s had most of its teeth knocked out.View image in fullscreenA church, a school and even the traffic lights here have been removed, along with the houses that were torn down. Just a few scattered buildings remain. During the exodus, some people lifted their entire wood-paneled homes on to trailers and moved them away. In all, 221 residents, the vast majority of the population, departed in just six months in 2002.“I couldn’t even watch my house being torn down, it was terrible,” said Jennifer Harrison, who grew up near Cheshire and moved to the town with her now late husband in 1980. “We spent the first 23 years of our married life and raised our kids here. I just can’t think about it too much, it’s horrible.”Harrison, who served as Cheshire’s town clerk and lived a short distance from the Gavin plant, remembers getting blurry eyes and tasting sulphur in the air in the late 1990s – a problem that worsened to the extent that a blue-hued haze of pollution would settle upon the town, particularly on humid days. It became so bad that residents had to stay indoors, the miasma so strong it would eat the paint off cars.“We had what we called ‘touchdowns’, where this plume would come from the smokestack and touch down in town,” she said. “It was like clouds on the ground. People got sores on their mouths, they got breathing problems, it affected lives.”View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenIronically, the problems worsened once the EPA, in 2000, cited the Gavin plant for violating the Clean Air Act for contributing to acid rain as far away as New York. In response, pollution controls installed by the plant triggered what American Electric Power (AEP), the plant’s owner until 2017, called a “totally unexpected” increase in sulphur trioxide that mixed with water vapor from scrubbers used to filter pollution from the smokestacks.This combination allowed a sulphuric acid mist to flood into Cheshire, causing what the EPA documented as “irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat; shortness of breath; and asthma-like symptoms” among residents in 2001. “We had to fight them continually,” Harrison said of the plant’s owner. “We had to become a pain in their ass just to finally get anything done.”AEP, facing mounting legal pressure over the toxic air, eventually offered a deal thought to be a US first: $20m to buy the town of Cheshire, with homeowners offered three times the asking price for their houses – around $150,000 each – in return for locals relocating and agreeing to not sue the company over any future adverse health impacts.Elderly residents who wished to stay in their homes were allowed to do so, with some holdouts remaining until they died, when their homes were bulldozed too. AEP, which had revenues of $14.5bn in 2002, was able to subsume a town founded in 1811, with lawyers taking around a quarter of the total buyout fund.Harrison, who was involved in the effort to pursue AEP through the courts, said she was initially “shocked” at the offer but came to realize it was the only viable choice. “We probably should’ve held out for more but the lawyers told us that was the final deal,” she said.“We felt if we didn’t take the deal we’d be stuck here forever and they wouldn’t fix the problem. Most of the people let them buy the property and got out of town because at that point our properties were worthless.”What was lost was a slice of Americana, a close-knit place of white picket fences, a church, village picnics and a trusted community. “Everyone knew everyone, you could hear your kids out playing on their bikes and know someone was looking out for them,” said Harrison. “It was very Norman Rockwell.”The grief of this loss stirred anger among some Cheshire residents, not so much at the coal plant in a stretch of Appalachia where the harms of coal have long been sold as a price worth enduring, but rather at town council leaders like Harrison who struck the buyout deal. Friendships were severed, angry words shouted and graffitied dollar signs were sprayed onto the Harrison family home.“It was really unsettling,” said Megan Lawhon, Harrison’s daughter who turned 18 the day before the buyout was agreed to. She’s now a high school teacher. “People blamed us for a lot of untrue things, said we were greedy for taking the buyout money. I find it really hard to even come back here.”Gesturing to the Gavin plant, Lawhon added: “The culprit is just still sitting here. It’s like a family member has been murdered and the killer was just allowed to pay out some money and that’s it. And everyone here accepts that’s just the price of living in Appalachia, that there is no other option. We just die with a smile on our faces.”Advocates for the Gavin plant point out that it generates about half of the economic activity in Gallia county, in which Cheshire sits. There remains a certain cynicism that anything, such as a clean energy boom that Biden has sought to spur, can replace the jobs and investment that coal has long conferred to the Ohio River valley.In 2020, Trump, who has offered unfulfilled promises to resurrect the ailing coal industry, amassed 77% of the vote in Gallia county. A barn sitting beside the Gavin plant features a large picture of the former president shaking his fist with the words: “The audits prove Trump won!”“I know if Kamala [Harris] and that other gentleman [Tim Walz] had their way this coal plant would be shut down right now and we’d be going back to the 1800s,” said Mark Coleman, who is mayor of Cheshire. Coleman lives on the outskirts of the town, which had its boundaries expanded to now cover a population of 124.“If that plant closed our area would be gone. I’ve lived here all my life, this has always been part of it, my dad was a coal miner. The problem was fixable and Gavin did fix it, we haven’t seen a blue plume in years. I was more frustrated with the people who sold out.”View image in fullscreenLightstone, Gavin’s operator, still owns the relic of Cheshire and has shown no willingness to sell the land to usher in new residents. Neither Blackstone nor ArcLight Capital, the two joint venture partners that form Lightstone, answered questions on Cheshire’s future.Coleman said attracting new businesses here is tough; a plan for a Dollar General was recently dashed, and even getting a street paved is difficult. Drug addiction, like in much of Appalachia, stalks this place. Cheshire’s future appears moribund, a marooned corner of a region where old certainties have evaporated.“Our town has lost its identity, it’s sad,” Coleman said. “It’s hard to get things started back up again. Time has healed wounds, but at the same time we don’t go out to dinner with everyone. People have drifted apart.”The mayor has not heard from Vance about Cheshire’s situation. The vice-presidential candidate didn’t respond to questions from the Guardian about his links to Blackstone and the Gavin plant, or what his plan is for communities exposed to coal-related pollution.“If JD Vance really feels a connection to Appalachia, which he has ridden hard, you’d think he’d at least ask some questions about all this,” said Lawhon.“But I’d be surprised if he even knew about us. I mean if it’s going to cut into profits, the environment won’t ever be a priority. Which means that this whole thing could happen again somewhere else in the United States, and somebody’s going to have to fight the exact same battle we did.” More

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    Republicans spread unsubstantiated slurs about Haitian migrants in Ohio city

    Prominent Republicans including the Trump campaign and JD Vance are sharing false and unsubstantiated claims that Haitian migrants in an Ohio city are eating pets and local wildlife.The salacious and often racist social media posts claim, without evidence, that migrants from Haiti to Springfield, Ohio, are stealing pets and local wildlife such as ducks and geese and are butchering them for food. Many of the posts, including one shared by the X account for the Republicans on the House judiciary committee, use images generated by artificial intelligence to show Donald Trump holding and protecting cats and ducks, casting him as a savior to the town. Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, shared a meme of two cats hugging one another that said, “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us.”The Springfield News-Sun reported on Monday that police have “received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten”.The claims appear to have originated from a commenter at a local city meeting, who said migrants were grabbing ducks from the park to kill and eat, and from local crime-watch Facebook groups. They were then shared on other social media platforms and made it into a headline in the Daily Mail.The misinformation about migrants in Springfield comes as the Trump campaign has sought to make immigration a key issue, tying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the towns unprepared for migrants arriving via the southern border. Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, went on Fox to say the Biden administration was to blame for “failing cities like ours and taxing us beyond our limit”.The city has seen a large number of migrants from Haiti, which has both helped the economy there with staffing concerns while also stretching the capacity of some services like clinics and schools, the New York Times reported. A Biden administration policy provided temporary protected status to hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants, who have left their home country because of ongoing violence. Some estimates say as many as 20,000 people from Haiti have come to the city, the Times said.Last year, a migrant driving a van outside Springfield crashed intoa school bus, killing one child, which added fuel to the concerns some residents have had with migration. Housing costs have also increased, which has led to fewer options for low-income residents of all backgrounds, the paper reported.Residents at recent council meetings have appealed to their elected officials to better manage the new stream of residents. In now viral testimony, one woman said she and her husband might need to move from their home because of ongoing problems with “men that cannot speak English in my front yard screaming at me” and throwing items in her yard.Some have also tried to tie a woman who was charged recently in Canton, Ohio, for allegedly killing and then eating a cat to the influx of migrants in Springfield, a different city more than 150 miles (241km) away. She does not appear to be a Haitian migrant.Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, has spoken against Haitian migrants in Ohio for months and again posted about it on Monday. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he wrote, referring to Kamala Harris.The Trump campaign sent out an email on Monday blasting the vice-president for the unrest in Springfield, saying: “It’s all coming to your city if Kamala Harris is elected in November. It doesn’t have to be this way. Beginning on day one, President Trump will begin the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history – because he’ll always put America, and Americans, FIRST.”On Monday, the Ohio attorney general, Dave Yost, a Republican, announced he would use his office’s resources to “research legal avenues to stop the federal government from sending an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities”. He said his office would “exhaust all possibilities” to address the migrants. Among other complaints from residents, he said that the migrants were reportedly “killing wildlife for food”. More