Trump Targets a New Town With His Dangerous Migrant Conspiracy

Donald Trump has already found a new town to harass with racist claims that immigrants have overrun it, and it’s in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

At a rally in Tucson, Arizona, last week, Trump railed about immigrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, which he said had “experienced a 2,000 percent increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris.”

“So Pennsylvania, remember this when you have to go to vote,” Trump said.

“It’s a small town, all of a sudden they got thousands of people!” he continued. “The schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don’t speak not a word of English, costing local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.” 

The former president also claimed that the town had been rendered “virtually bankrupt” and that the increased immigrant population had led to an increase in crime.

Like with Springfield, local officials have had to come forward to combat the former president’s fearmongering. The borough manager of Charleroi, Joe Manning, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that many of the president’s claims about the town were blatantly untrue.

Manning said that the town’s Haitian residents were “not the burden on the local government or any of our resources or anything that’s being portrayed.”

“It’s no different than, you know, people moved to here from Tucson, Arizona, you’d have to deal with it,” Manning said.

While Charleroi’s population had increased by 2,000 percent as a result of immigration, that number was relative, Manning explained, because the town’s population had been so small. Charleroi had a population of 4,324 in 2022, according to the most recent census estimates.

Charleroi Area School District Superintendent Ed Zelich said that immigrant students were “not necessarily” costing taxpayers “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” as Trump had claimed. As enrollment rose, so did the reimbursement from the state’s Department of Education, he explained—but the new classmates didn’t present that much of a strain.  

“We have that in place. We have teachers in place,” Zelich told the Inquirer. “There was a language barrier at first for the younger students when they come, but it’s not insurmountable.”

“I just want to say there’s a cost associated with all parts of education,” Zelich added. “But these students are blending into classrooms.”

Charleroi Borough President Kristin R. Hopkins released a statement on behalf of the borough, expressing “deep concern” over Trump’s comments about the town. 

“Trump chose to exploit our town for political purposes, using divisive rhetoric to unfairly target the Haitian immigrant community,” Hopkins wrote. 

“Rather than acknowledging the real economic issues the town is facing, some have chosen to unfairly target the Haitian community, judging the entire group based on misinformation and fear of outsiders.”

Hopkins’s statement sparked considerable backlash from the Republican Party of Washington County and City Council Member Larry Celaschi, who said he had not signed off on the statement. 

Celaschi told right-wing propaganda site Breitbart News that the town’s budget was “suffering.”

“The impact of the immigrants has affected our school district tremendously, and so from the borough standpoint, it’s impacted our budget to where and the school districts. We weren’t prepared for any of this. We did not get any help from the federal government or the state government,” he said. 

The Haitian immigrants whom Trump has chosen to deride are in the United States legally under Temporary Protected Status. They pay taxes, own property, and work. Now Trump is counting on his attacks against a vulnerable group to persuade voters in swing states to support him.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced Monday that the state would implement additional Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers in Springfield schools to conduct daily sweeps amid the mounting bomb threats against government buildings, schools, and hospitals.

J.D. Vance said Monday that to even suggest that the Republican ticket’s anti-immigrant rhetoric was responsible for inciting the bomb threats was “disgusting.” 

Ohio’s Republican attorney general was called out Monday by CNN for his handling of the false and racist rumor that Haitian immigrants are capturing and eating cats, dogs, ducks, and geese. And he didn’t handle it well.

CNN’s Brianna Keilar asked Dave Yost about his role in repeating and advancing the false story, noting that the mayor of Springfield, the town at the center of the rumors, debunked the story last week.

“Do you think the mayor is lying?” Keilar asked.

Yost didn’t address the question, instead defending his own social media posts and saying they’ve been about “real impacts” on Springfield, insisting that “my tweet was about the media’s disregard for citizen reports, citizen interaction with their government.”

Keilar pushed the Ohio attorney general about those reports, which Yost said were about “several videotaped comments that were made by citizens regarding a variety of things going on in Springfield.” While Yost admitted that these comments were not enough “to make a case,” he then tried to say that too many of Springfield’s children in schools didn’t speak English.

Keilar then asked Yost why he was pushing a false story about killing animals instead of discussing the strain on local communities “when you are supposed to be a very serious law enforcement individual.”

This upset Yost, who accused Keilar of “implying, of course, that you think I’m not [serious].”

Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican like Yost, defended Springfield’s Haitian population Sunday, telling ABC’s Martha Raddatz that “the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies.”

Yost seems to be paying no attention to local officials, instead taking cues from Ohio Senator and Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, who on Sunday argued that spreading the false and dangerous rumor is justified because it is bringing “attention to the suffering of the American people.” In reality, the rumor has led to violent threats against Springfield’s schools, government buildings, hospitals, and other gathering places, even leading to the cancellation of a local festival.

If Vance, Yost, and the rest of the GOP were serious about their concern for the strain on local communities like Springfield due to a population increase, they’d perhaps be offering practical, positive solutions instead of amplifying racist rumors that terrorize their own constituents.

While Donald Trump’s allies have tried to create the illusion of distance between the Republican presidential nominee and Laura Loomer, the alt-right conspiracy theorist has continued to cozy up to him, going so far as to brag over the weekend that Trump “likes” and “trusts” her.

“The media is full of shit. OK?” Loomer said on her podcast, ​​Loomer Unleashed, on Saturday. “These people are liars. They are con artists, and all they do is lie. They are running a coordinated smear campaign because I am effective. Donald Trump likes me. Donald Trump trusts me. OK?

“Obviously, he trusts me if I’m on his plane, and I don’t work for Donald Trump,” she continued. “They can’t imagine the fact that the president of the United States has people in his life who he considers to be friends. Is the president of the United States not allowed to have a friend? Oh my God. Is he not allowed to invite people onto his own private jet?”

But Loomer’s insistence that she’s an “effective” addition to Trump’s political fold might not jibe with some of his closest allies. Loomer has taken credit for urging Trump to utter the Haitian migrant conspiracy theory that has plagued his vice presidential pick, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, over the past week. The self-described “white advocate” also sparked backlash from even the depths of the MAGA movement, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Lindsey Graham, after Loomer posted that Vice President Kamala Harris’s ascendency to the Oval Office would make the White House “smell like curry.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt insisted Saturday that Trump “does not agree with all of the comments” that Loomer has made. But any efforts to paint Loomer as an outsider have fallen flat.

Trump has been seen with Loomer several times over the last couple of weeks, with the pair getting eyebrow-raisingly close (Trump’s hand has been spotted in the small of Loomer’s back), while Melania Trump has largely remained out of the limelight. Loomer, a 9/11 denier, attended a 9/11 memorial service with Trump and also accompanied him to the presidential debate.

On Sunday, before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire celebrated the prospect of political violence against Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero,” the party wrote on X, before receiving swift backlash and deleting the post. Later that day, the party published a follow-up, announcing that it “deleted a tweet because we don’t want to break the terms of this website we agreed to” and claiming that libertarians are “the most oppressed minority.”

On Tuesday, the account released a lengthier additional follow-up, insisting that the original tweet did not call for Harris’s assassination but “merely acknowledg[ed] how some members would react to one.”

But the newest post somehow made things worse, referring to historical instances of violence that were supposedly “necessary to advance or protect freedom,” including the assassination of “past tyrants like Abraham Lincoln.” Further, it stated that “it’s good when authoritarians” (that is, “progressives, socialists, and democrats”) are made to “feel unsafe or uncomfortable,” which the account’s provocative posts “are frequently explicitly intended” to do.

On Sunday, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Chase Oliver condemned the post as “abhorrent.” The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire replied by calling him a homophobic slur.

On X, New York Times opinion writer and libertarian Jane Coaston criticized the provocative state party as repellent and noxious to its purported cause: “Like if the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire were a CIA plot to destroy the Libertarian Party writ large what would they be doing differently.”

Donald Trump’s campaign published a list Monday of people that it appears to blame for the recent assassination attempt against the former president. The list did not include the actual assassin, but rather a slate of statements from journalists and Democratic politicians.

“Make no mistake—this psycho was egged on by the rhetoric and lies that have flowed from Kamala Harris, Democrats, and their Fake News allies for years,” read the campaign’s statement.

Trump—who has been accused of interfering with the 2020 presidential election, called his political enemies “vermin,” promised to imprison his opponents, vowed to begin the largest deportations in the history of the United States, and spread racist lies about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs—is now accusing the other side of going too far by … pointing out that he did any of these things.

Statements from Harris appeared on the list three times, and President Joe Biden six times. The campaign wrote that Harris had repeatedly called Trump “a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”

The list also included statements from politicians such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, with a link to him speaking about “weird” MAGA Republicans. “Are they a threat to democracy? Yes,” said Walz. “Are they going to take our rights away? Yes. Are they going to put people’s lives in danger? Yes.”

It also inexplicably listed Walz’s wife, Gwen, who had simply said, “Buh-bye, Donald Trump,” during a rally—not quite the threat Trump’s team are pretending it is. But the kind of magical thinking on display in this list is certainly in line with Trump’s victim complex, which predated any failed attempt on his life.

Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and “Top Harris surrogate Liz Cheney” were among more than two dozen other Democrats who had, at one point or another, called Trump a threat.

Trump’s campaign also claimed that any journalist who honestly reported on his blatant use of extremist rhetoric—which has incited violence time and time again—was actually guilty of inciting violence against him.

The campaign included snippets of “deplorable commentary“ from journalists and news outlets covering Trump’s second attempted assassination. The campaign’s decision to identify journalists by name shifted the purpose of its list, not to a round-up of statements but a list of political targets.

The campaign included NBC’s Lester Holt, who said that the “apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail” and cited the “baseless claims” of the Republican ticket. It’s unclear what Trump’s team found objectionable about this particular phrasing of facts.

The campaign listed MSNBC’s Alex Witt, who merely questioned whether the Trump campaign might consider toning down its rhetoric in response to the near violence.

The list included several other journalists by name, from The Bulwark, The Washington Post, Meidas Touch News, The Atlantic, and New York magazine. Each observation by an outlet seemed more self-evident than the last. At one point, the campaign seemed to take issue with NBC News referring to the assassination attempt as the “golf course incident.”

“Democrats and the Fake News must immediately cease their inflammatory, violent rhetoric against President Trump—which was mimicked by yesterday’s would-be [assassin],” wrote the campaign. “President Trump said it best: ‘Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!’”

If what’s happened in Springfield, Ohio, is anything to go by, attacks from the former president’s mouth seem to sprout bomb threats. It’s clear that Trump doesn’t care about any of that (he said as much on Friday). Instead, the former president is taking the opportunity to continue painting targets on the back of anyone who says something he doesn’t like—and the repercussions could be dangerous.

A local Ohio sheriff has thrown himself into electoral politics, suggesting in a social media post last week that his constituents send him the personal addresses of locals with Kamala Harris’s campaign signs in their yards.

Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski issued the missive on Facebook Friday, referring to the vice president as a “Flip-Flopping, Laughing Hyena.”

“I say … write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards!” Zuchowski wrote. “Sooo … when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live … We’ll already have the addresses of their New families … who supported their arrival!”

The post was seemingly made in reference to a virulent conspiracy theory spread by top Republicans, including Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, about Haitian migrants eating other residents’ pets in Springfield, Ohio—roughly 200 miles away from Zuchowski’s district.

People in the area were infuriated by Zuchowski’s post, including local Republican leadership, one of whom—Portage County Commissioner Tony Badalamenti—resigned in protest from the county’s Republican Central Committee. Badalamenti said in a Facebook video that “this is not the leadership I want to be part of.”

“[Zuchowski] posted that we should all copy down the addresses of the people that display political signs which are different from our beliefs,” Badalamenti said. “It scares people. It’s called bullying, from the highest law enforcement official in Portage County.”

Springfield shut down two of its elementary schools Monday, while two local colleges switched to all-virtual classes and activities. The city also canceled its annual CultureFest due to safety concerns.

The city saw even more closures last week. Springfield evacuated two elementary schools and closed a middle school on Friday after receiving information from the Springfield Police Division. The day before, several other schools and a significant portion of Springfield’s government facilities—including City Hall, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Ohio License Bureau, the Springfield Academy of Excellence, and Fulton Elementary School—were shut down due to bomb threats.

Multiple city officials and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine have stated in no uncertain terms that the conspiracy is false.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts knows that Justice Samuel Alito’s antics and ideology are getting out of hand—and that’s why he’s taking care to protect him from the public eye.

The New York Times reports that Roberts had initially assigned Alito to write the majority opinion in a case ruling that prosecutors overreached by charging some January 6 rioters with obstruction of justice in April. But in May, Roberts took over the opinion himself, only four days after revelations that an upside-down U.S. flag, a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement, was displayed outside Alito’s home soon after the January 6 attack.

Switching authors on a Supreme Court opinion is unusual, the Times reported, citing court experts, and furthermore, Roberts had already written majority opinions in seven of the high court’s opinions during the term. It’s unclear whether Roberts’s decision was related to the flag incident, and none of the nine Supreme Court justices responded to the newspaper for comment.

Such an unusual occurrence on the court will raise suspicions, though, especially as Roberts keeps rejecting efforts on Supreme Court ethics reform. Despite Roberts’s conservatism, he has been a more moderate voice compared to his right-wing peers, and has voiced concerns about the legacy and image of the Supreme Court. But that didn’t stop him from ruling in favor of Donald Trump on the issue of presidential immunity, dramatically expanding the privileges of the presidency and limiting its accountability.

In the Times’ writing, Roberts perhaps thought that his immunity ruling would be seen as persuasive and nonpartisan. But the backlash to the decision demonstrated the opposite effect, with criticism over the Supreme Court essentially preventing Trump from experiencing any consequences for his actions.

Roberts’s move could indicate that there are cracks in the solidarity among the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices. Or it could just be the chief justice scrambling to protect the court’s public image, which has taken massive hits thanks to various ethics scandals as well as unpopular rulings, such as the presidential immunity case and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Either way, on some level, even the chief justice has to know that the Supreme Court is not functioning as it should, and changes need to be made.

Donald Trump’s and J.D. Vance’s lies about Haitian immigrants have continued to create chaos in the city of Springfield, Ohio.

Two elementary schools in Springfield were evacuated Monday morning in response to bomb threats. Simon Kenton Elementary School and Kenwood Elementary School became the fifth and sixth Springfield buildings to be targeted by bomb threats in the last week.

On Friday, Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary were evacuated and Roosevelt Middle School was closed altogether.

The continued threats are a direct response to the right-wing hysteria around claims of immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets that are being churned out by the Republican ticket. There have been no credible reports of immigrants eating pets, and the racist rumors have been dispelled by Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.

The city announced Monday that it would cancel its annual CultureFest for the safety of its residents and visitors.

The FBI is investigating threats of a shooting and a bombing that were sent to Wittenberg University in Springfield over the weekend, which were specifically in response to Republicans’ outlandish claims about the immigrant population. On Monday, the university announced that classes would be held remotely and that all activities and sports were canceled for the day.

“Both messages targeted members of our local Haitian community,” said a statement from the university. “Wittenberg Police are cooperating with the Springfield Police Division and the FBI as they continue to investigate these threats, which follow similar threats made toward city offices, healthcare establishments, local schools, and other locations in the area.”

Clark State College, a nearby community college, also took “proactive measures” to keep its students safe and announced it would be going remote for the week.

The FBI’s Cincinnati field office said in a statement Sunday that they are “working in coordination with the Springfield police department and Wittenberg University to determine the credibility of recent threats, share information, and take appropriate investigative action.”

Over the weekend, two hospitals in Springfield went into lockdown after receiving bomb threats. Vance, who is an Ohio senator, had previously claimed that the city’s health facilities were “overwhelmed” by the city’s population of migrants and that the spread of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV were on the rise. This was after Ohio’s Department of Health director Bruce Vanderhoff said last Tuesday that Springfield has “not seen a measurable, discernible increase in vaccine-preventable illness.”

Despite the fact Vance admitted that he was using claims about migrants eating pets to raise the profile of his and Trump’s favorite bogeyman, undocumented immigration, to a national level, Vance balked at the idea that he was responsible for inciting the bomb threats against his own constituents, calling the suggestion “disgusting.”

In Donald Trump’s first interview following the apparent attempt on his life on Sunday, he blamed the incident on his political rivals, telling Fox News that the would-be assassin “believed” and “acted on” the rhetoric of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country—both from the inside and out,” Trump told Fox. “They do it with a combination of rhetoric and lawsuits they wrap me up in.… These are the things that dangerous fools, like the shooter, listen to—that is the rhetoric they listen to, and the same with the first one.”

Trump assigned particular blame to Biden and Harris for characterizing him as a “threat to democracy,” while painting themselves as “unity” leaders. “They are the opposite,” he said, calling them “people that want to destroy our country.”

Trump went on to accuse his opponents of using “highly inflammatory language.” “I can use it too—far better than they can—but I don’t,” he added.

Critics were quick to note the irony in Trump’s comments, given his history of extreme, incendiary rhetoric. This past week, for instance, Trump said that Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, are abducting and eating pets, amplifying a baseless rumor that has resulted in threats against local schools, hospitals, and municipal buildings.

Even while urging Democrats to tamp down their rhetoric, Trump demonstrated his penchant for the inflammatory, describing his political opponents as forces of evil: “These are people who want to destroy our country,” Trump told Fox. “It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”

In a post on Truth Social Monday morning, Trump wrote “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!!!” and linked to a statement about the attempt that says “there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us.”

Postdebate polling has signaled that Vice President Kamala Harris has gained an advantage over Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race—but the shifting dynamic hasn’t thwarted Trump’s campaign, which apparently has zero interest in attracting new voters.

On Sunday, the Republican presidential nominee lashed out online, insisting that Americans who support Harris are “stupid.”

“All rich, job creating people, that support Comrade Kamala Harris, you are STUPID,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She is seeking an UNREALIZED TAX ON CAPITAL GAINS. If this tax actually gets enacted, it guarantees that we will have a 1929 style Depression. Perhaps even the thought of it would lead to calamity—But at least appraisers and accountants would do well!”

The day before, Trump practically threw away Republican voters who had decided to hop on the Harris bandwagon, suggesting to KTNV-TV that those individuals were “taken care of” by foreign entities such as China.

“If there was a Republican for Harris here in the room with us, what would you tell that person in terms of persuading them to vote for you as opposed to voting for Harris?” asked the reporter.

“I probably wouldn’t tell them anything, because usually it would be maybe a personality problem, maybe they don’t like the way I was tough on China,” Trump said. “You know a lot of them don’t want me to be tough on China. A lot of them don’t want me to be tough on anybody because they’re taken care of by people.”

“But for every one they have, I have many, I have so many that have left the Democrats and they’ve come here,” Trump continued, referring to West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, who switched to the GOP in 2017 after being elected as a Democrat.