--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Noel King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noel King.
--:-- Noel King: The rumor that Haitian migrants are eating people's pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio, has been debunked by the city's leaders. So why do J.D. Vance and Donald Trump keep repeating it?
--:-- Noel King: Here's J.D. Vance explaining himself in a weekend interview with CNN's Dana Bash.
--:-- Dana Bash: The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.
--:-- J.D. Vance: If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.
--:-- Dana Bash: He's creating stories. He's making it up.
--:-- J.D. Vance: The Trump campaign is trying to score political points on immigration and taking an ugly rumor viral is one way to do that.
--:-- Noel King: But in Springfield, people's lives have been turned upside down, and that story is coming up on Today Explained.
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--:-- Noel King: This is Today Explained. I'm Erin Glynn. I'm a state government reporter for USA Today Ohio.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Anyone who watched the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris last week will remember a moment in which Donald Trump said... In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats.
--:-- Erin Glynn: He was talking about this in the context of immigration.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Now, this is one of those wild rumors that has been debunked. There have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Well, I've seen people on television. And yet it's a rumor that has kind of moved from online into the real world.
--:-- Erin Glynn: When we talk about how this is affecting the town of Springfield, what do you see there?
--:-- Erin Glynn: Before this rumor started, there was already a lot of tension between longtime Springfield residents and this relatively recent influx of Haitian immigrants.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And this rumor has kind of fanned the flames even more.
--:-- Erin Glynn: People are still coming in. I mean, what's going to come up with? Is there going to be 60,000 immigrants living here? Are they going to take over our whole city?
--:-- Erin Glynn: I don't think they're going to do that. It's getting close to people are getting really fed up. And things are going to get ugly.
--:-- Erin Glynn: With national media descending on the town, it's made it really hard for residents to get back to their daily lives.
--:-- Erin Glynn: What this has done is created a negative light, obviously, that we did not look for, we did not ask for.
--:-- Erin Glynn: These claims, they were just untrue.
--:-- Noel King: How did immigration become such a big issue in Springfield?
--:-- Erin Glynn: So back in July, Springfield's city manager asked for federal support because the city's Haitian population has grown by about, he said, from 15,000 to 20,000 people in the last four years.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance read the letter as part of a hearing.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Now this letter, I want to quote from it.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Springfield has seen a surge in population through immigration that has significantly impacted our ability as a community to produce enough housing opportunities for all.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Springfield's Haitian population has increased 15,000 to 20,000 over the last four years in a community of under 60,000 previous residents, putting a significant strain on our resources and ability to provide it.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And he said that immigrants were overburdening city services and housing.
--:-- Noel King: So, Erin, the city says there is no evidence that this claim is true. That's last week.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And then what happens over the weekend in Springfield?
--:-- Erin Glynn: Yes. So on Saturday, police were alerted to two bomb threats at Springfield hospitals, Kettering Health and Mercy Health.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Both of those hospitals were temporarily on lockdown, but the threats were not credible after police investigation.
--:-- Erin Glynn: We learned on Sunday that Wittenberg University in Springfield will be online only Monday and all their sports and other activities have been canceled.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And then the other college, Clark State College, is going to online classes this entire week because of similar threats.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Two local universities closing their campuses with classes going remote after the school say they received emails making threats of a bomb and potential shooting on the campuses.
--:-- Erin Glynn: At least one of those emails targeting Haitians in the community.
--:-- Erin Glynn: So that's two elementary schools, city hall, two hospitals and two colleges that have all received threats.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And Springfield officials say that this may be evidence of swatting.
--:-- Erin Glynn: They're getting the Dayton Office of the FBI to investigate.
--:-- Noel King: So there's been a lot of tension in Springfield this week, and residents don't really know when it'll end.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Erin, before all of this started happening, what was Springfield, Ohio, like?
--:-- Erin Glynn: It's an industrial town. It was home to several manufacturing companies in the late 1800s, kind of the classic Ohio Rust Belt town.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Springfield has a lot of manufacturing and factory jobs like auto part factory jobs. It a population that kind of declined in the 90s.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Today it a city of almost 60 people. The population is about 70% white, and it has about a 20% black population.
--:-- Erin Glynn: After a lot of manufacturing companies left between the late 90s and 2014, the city made a conscious effort to attract new businesses and jobs, which has in turn attracted immigrants looking for work.
--:-- Erin Glynn: A lot of Ohio's population growth is due to immigration. And so this is something we've actually seen before in cities like Columbus, which has a larger Somali population now.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Dayton had their Welcome Dayton program and had a large influx of Turkish immigrants. So this is not something that's actually that unusual in Ohio.
--:-- Noel King: Tell me about what brought Haitian immigrants in particular there.
--:-- Erin Glynn: The Haitians I talked to said that they have like a very tight-knit community and word of mouth spreads maybe more quickly than it does in other communities.
--:-- Erin Glynn: People move there. There are a lot of Amazon warehouses in the area. There are a lot of other factory jobs.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And they told their families, hey, there's a lot of work to be had here. And so it was kind of a very organic movement.
--:-- Erin Glynn: The area on the south side of Springfield, residents have started calling it Little Haiti.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Springfield now has two Haitian restaurants, seven Haitian grocery stores.
--:-- Erin Glynn: The library has a French language section for Haitian patrons.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And the Haitian residents say, like, we're here, we're working the jobs that nobody else wanted to work.
--:-- Erin Glynn: You know, there's houses on this part of town that have been abandoned for 20 years, and now they have people living in them.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, so there are real changes here that people in the city have reported.
--:-- Erin Glynn: The city manager says an influx of 15,000 to 20,000 people in a town of about 60,000.
--:-- Erin Glynn: How did the people who were already living there respond to that influx?
--:-- Erin Glynn: Well, they told me Springfield has struggled with its housing stock and homelessness before this influx.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And they're concerned about rents going up.
--:-- Erin Glynn: They say groceries have been hard to find. ATMs have run out of cash.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Kind of things that you might expect from any large population increase in a short amount of time.
--:-- Erin Glynn: While we are experiencing challenges related to the rapid growth of our immigrant population, these challenges are primarily due to the pace of the growth rather than the rumors being reported.
--:-- Erin Glynn: A lot of the residents I spoke to are very sympathetic and understand that people from Haiti want a better life, came here to work.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And the Haitians, or whatever you want to call them, they're just here to try to better themselves.
--:-- Erin Glynn: They're beautiful, wonderful people. They're engineers, electrical. They're highly educated people that own businesses.
--:-- Erin Glynn: I've never seen a Haitian crackhead. I've never seen a Haitian bum in front of Kroger's on East Main asking me for change.
--:-- Erin Glynn: They said that the influx was just very fast and Springfield didn't have the resources.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And if you haven't seen them killing no ducks, if you haven't seen them stealing nothing, don't make no accusations.
--:-- Noel King: People are concerned about overcrowding in schools and housing, as I said, although both of those issues kind of predate the immigration influx.
--:-- Erin Glynn: They're also just concerned about supply and demand as far as groceries and housing.
--:-- Erin Glynn: I did not notice any shortage of grocery products in Springfield, but many Haitian residents and other residents mentioned that it can be an issue on the south side of town.
--:-- Noel King: Which is where the Haitian population lives.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Yes. All right, so the tension was there in Springfield and then it started growing.
--:-- Erin Glynn: When does the tension hit a boiling point?
--:-- Erin Glynn: Last year, tensions increased when an immigrant from Haiti was driving a minivan and accidentally struck a school bus that overturned.
--:-- Erin Glynn: An 11-year-old student, Aidan Clark, died, and then more than 20 other students were injured in the crash.
--:-- Erin Glynn: I will deal with them while they're here, but we're not taking any more.
--:-- Erin Glynn: We're not taking people who are kicking out people out of their houses that are driving erratically around town.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Um, Aidan's father, Nathan Clark, has said publicly that he wants politicians to stop using his son's death as a political tool.
--:-- Erin Glynn: I wish that my son Aidan Clark was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would ever say something so blunt.
--:-- Erin Glynn: But if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, The incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And he wants the community to honor his son Aidan by stopping hateful rhetoric.
--:-- Noel King: And then when does a lie about people eating pets enter the picture?
--:-- Erin Glynn: So J.D. Vance posted this on X, and he noted that it's possible that all the rumors would turn out to be false, but then he repeated the rumor.
--:-- Erin Glynn: We've heard from a number of constituents on the ground, Caitlin, who both firsthand and secondhand reports saying this stuff is happening.
--:-- Erin Glynn: If someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn't mean they saw Bigfoot.
--:-- Erin Glynn: It's a totally fair point, but nobody's calling my office and saying that they saw Bigfoot.
--:-- Erin Glynn: What they're calling and saying is we're seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats and city officials aren't doing anything about it.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And I think online, some people conflated this rumor with an actual case in Canton on the other end of Ohio, where a woman who is not an Asian immigrant is accused of killing and eating a cat, and she is pled not guilty by reason of insanity.
--:-- Erin Glynn: The Springfield Police Department have said they've received no reports of any immigrants abducting or killing pets.
--:-- Erin Glynn: It is a so unfortunate situation targeting the Haitian immigrants as eating pets or dogs.
--:-- Erin Glynn: So we do not have that in our culture.
--:-- Noel King: Actually, a Columbus resident posted a picture of a man holding a goose on a street corner in Columbus to the Columbus subreddit.
--:-- Erin Glynn: This picture got picked up by people online and right-wing accounts are tweeting and saying that Haitian immigrants were taking geese from Springfield City Parks.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And then the man who originally posted the picture told the Columbus dispatch that he wished he had never posted it.
--:-- Erin Glynn: He never would have expected the picture he thought of just something you don't see every day would get turned into this anti-immigrant messaging.
--:-- Noel King: What have you heard from Haitian families, Haitian people in Springfield, since this became an issue?
--:-- Erin Glynn: Yes, I talked to a 19-year-old who moved to Springfield in 2020 to be with his mom and his sister.
--:-- Erin Glynn: He works at an Amazon warehouse nearby, and he said that people have called him a dirty Haitian and illegal and that he came to Springfield through this temporary protected status program.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And he and the other Haitians I talked to said that they just came here to work.
--:-- Erin Glynn: I know so many Haitians, they came here with nothing, just like me, with nothing, and they had to make a life for themselves, you know?
--:-- Erin Glynn: Car, house, and everything, and now a lot of people are just mad because they're just doing a little bit better than them, you know?
--:-- Erin Glynn: I just don't agree with that.
--:-- Erin Glynn: I went to the Haitian Evangelical Church's services on Sunday, and there were three police cars outside.
--:-- Erin Glynn: A mediator with the Haitian Evangelical Church told me that a lot of their congregants, several have received phone calls in which people call anonymously, say, go back to your country and then hang up.
--:-- Erin Glynn: A lot of the Haitians I spoke to over the weekend say that they feel like they're being targeted.
--:-- Erin Glynn: They don't feel safe leaving their houses anymore.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Miriam Joseph, who came here in 2020, she's a home health care worker who primarily cares for white people.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And she says she's afraid to go into their houses, especially when they ask her about politics.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And she said her 15-year-old son called her last week and asked to be picked up from Springfield High School because he was afraid.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Parents are coming to get their kids because they feel worried or they feel like their kids are unsafe here with the bomb threats.
--:-- Noel King: Certainly some Springfield residents spoke to said that all of this is about the Trump campaign wanting to talk about immigration and doesn't have anything to do with the city of Springfield.
--:-- Erin Glynn: They said people know that Haitian immigrants aren't killing dogs or cats, that everyone in the community works.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Although it's certainly resonating with other Springfield residents.
--:-- Erin Glynn: I've come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you're doing before it's too late.
--:-- Erin Glynn: Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.
--:-- Erin Glynn: And with it, public frustration and anger.
--:-- Noel King: Based on the comments today. If I could ask the police.
--:-- Noel King: And outside the city commission this week, there are a few residents holding signs for Trump.
--:-- Noel King: I think the reason we hear this anti-immigrant rhetoric on the debate stage is because it's a polarizing issue.
--:-- Noel King: It's an issue that Americans feel very seriously about.
--:-- Noel King: And so I guess the question is politically, do you imagine this landing in places like Springfield in Ohio?
--:-- Noel King: Well, Springfield has a pretty similar history and background to J.D. Vance's hometown of Middletown.
--:-- Noel King: So I can see that resonating with Springfield residents.
--:-- Noel King: 60 percent of the population voted for Donald Trump in Clark County in 2020.
--:-- Noel King: So it's definitely an area that is sympathetic to the Trump campaign.
--:-- Noel King: I do think there's a responsibility for presidential candidates.
--:-- Noel King: It's not to amplify claims that we don't have evidence for.
--:-- Noel King: That was Erin Glynn of USA Today Ohio.
--:-- Noel King: Coming up, the roots of an online rumor and how it moved offline.
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--:-- Noel King: This is Today Explained.
--:-- Noel King: Gabby Del Valle is a policy reporter at The Verge, focusing on immigration, politics and technology, among other things.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: J.D. Vance has served as the gossip-in-chief, helping this once-online rumor go wide.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: But what was going on before he got involved? Where did this start?
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: I'm not sure exactly where and when the rumor began, but one of the earliest tweets that I saw was from an account called End Wokeness, which posted on September 6th a screenshot of that Facebook post that was like, my friend neighbor sister cousin or whatever got her cat kidnapped and she found it outside a house where Haitians live.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: And also posted a picture of a man holding a goose and said that ducks and pets are disappearing in Springfield Ohio a place where there are a lot of Haitian migrants.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: And then on September 8th, Charlie Kirk posted the same screenshot from Facebook and Elon Musk replied to it saying, apparently people's cats are being eaten.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: The original end wokeness post right now has 4.9 million views.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Musk's reply to Charlie Charlie Kirk has 1.6 million views.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Charlie Kirk's post was viewed at least 4 million times.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: This, you know, kind of left the ecosystem of right-wing Twitter, partially because Elon Musk got involved.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Yeah, what happens generally, and in this case, when Elon Musk gets involved?
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Why does he matter?
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: In addition to, you know, owning Twitter and to, you know, letting go of the content moderation team, the Trust and Safety Council.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: I can't speak with certainty here, but I will say that Elon Musk has several pet causes that he posts about a lot, one of which is immigration, another one of which is, you know, quote unquote, wokeness.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: And just there is a sense that what Elon cares about gets pushed out to users on the app.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: And even if there's not an algorithmic change that is, you know, putting content that Elon cares about in front of everybody.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: He has a lot of influence, a lot of followers, and a lot of power.
--:-- Noel King: All right. So this is not true. It is not true in Springfield. It is not true in the way it's being presented.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: And then we hear it again on the debate stage.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Again, there's a round of debunking. This isn't true.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Has the debunking had any impact on this rumor's staying power?
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: The debunking has done absolutely nothing in terms of the rumor staying power.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: In some senses, it's actually kind of fueled the narrative because the narrative on the right is not just like people are eating cats in Springfield.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: It's, well, you know, maybe actually this isn't happening, but even if it's not happening, why is the media so focused on debunking whether people are eating cats in Springfield and why are they not talking about the Haitian immigrant invasion of Springfield.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Why are they not looking at that?
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: The media won't investigate the story at all, because if they did, they'd have to report on the dangerous migrant payload Kamala unleashed on Springfield.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: On Truth Social, Trump has posted a bunch of different kind of like AI images of him saving cats, of cats and ducks watching the presidential debate.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: The Republican Party of Arizona put out 12 billboards in the Phoenix area that say, eat less kittens, vote Republican.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: This has become like just the new Republican Party kind of rallying cry.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: The cat memes are almost like a shorthand for this overall belief about not only Springfield, but communities across America supposedly being taken over by migrants.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: It's like a visual representation of what is called the Great Replacement Theory, which is this conspiracy theory that there's an outside force replacing local, often white populations with imported migrants of color.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Sometimes the proponents of that theory claim that Democrats are turning a blind eye to illegal immigration and allowing undocumented people to vote so that they have staying power.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Sometimes the conspiracy theory is about how Democrats or other elites want to foment demographic change.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: But the underlying premise is always local American populations, which almost always means white populations, are being replaced by non-white immigrants.
--:-- Noel King: Does 2024 feel different to you than, for example, 2020 or 2016?
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: I would say yes and no.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: Like Trump's 2016 campaign famously began with these racist claims about Mexican immigrants being rapists and murderers, very bad people, etc., etc.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: So I think that this is kind of the logical outcome of that.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: It's pure, unvarnished racism.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: And the point is to dehumanize Haitians.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: But it's definitely escalated.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: It's gone further than before.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: On some circles of right-wing Twitter, people are talking about the links between race and IQ.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: And there's this implication, and sometimes just outright statements, that migrants from Haiti and elsewhere are not intelligent enough to be assimilated into American society.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: And for them, it's about more than culture.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: It's about more than even skin color.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: It's this kind of biological hatred.
--:-- Gabby Del Valle: And that's just like the extreme rhetoric that has not only gone unchallenged, but has gotten more and more extreme as the years have gone on.
--:-- Noel King: That was The Verge's Gabby Del Valle.
--:-- Noel King: Today's episode was produced by Halima Shah and edited by Matthew Collette.
--:-- Noel King: It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristen's daughter.
--:-- Noel King: The rest of our team includes Amanda Llewellyn, Avishai Artsy, Hadi Moagdi, Miles Bryan, Peter Balanon-Rosen, and Victoria Chamberlain.
--:-- Noel King: Amina El-Sadi is a supervising editor.
--:-- Noel King: Miranda Kennedy is EP.
--:-- Noel King: Sean Ramos-Firm is perfecting a slideshow.
--:-- Noel King: We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder.
--:-- Noel King: I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Noel King: Today Explained is distributed by WNYC.
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--:-- Noel King: And if you want to support our journalism, you can do that by joining our membership program today.
--:-- Noel King: Just go to Vox.com slash members to sign up.
--:-- Noel King: And thank you.
--:-- Noel King: Thank you.
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