Law & Crime – The Tarbabys Blog

Sam Elliott in pro-Harris ad: ‘Are we really going back down that same f‑‑‑ing broken road?’

The Hill

Sam Elliott in pro-Harris ad: ‘Are we really going back down that same f‑‑‑ing broken road?’

Sarah Fortinsky – September 24, 2024

Actor Sam Elliott, known for his deep and resonant voice, urged Americans to back Vice President Harris’s presidential bid in an ad released Monday by The Lincoln Project.

The celebrated Western actor narrated the approximately minutelong ad, called “Choose Change,” a title illustrating Harris’s effort to present herself as the change candidate in the race even though she is part of the current administration. Former President Trump, the GOP nominee, is also seeking the mantle of the change candidate.

The ad draws on themes of masculinity and the great outdoors to make the case for the Democratic nominee.

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again. So here we go. You know who the candidates are,” Elliott says in the video, as a photo of a serene American landscape transitioned to a depiction of an American farmer walking down a dirt path between his crops.

“You know what’s at stake,” Elliott says. “One candidate promises a divided America filled with lies and hate, and one stands for change. Kamala Harris has more courage, more honor, more guts than this guy ever had.

“So you decide: Are we really going back down that same f‑‑‑ing broken road? Or are we moving forward towards hope, towards freedom, towards change?”

The video showed three side-by-side images from Trump’s presidency: The first photo depicted rioters holding “TRUMP” flags while they attacked police officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; the second was the photo Trump took holding up a bible in front of a church, after threatening military action against protesters; the third depicted men marching and carrying torches, in what appeared to be the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.

After quoting Harris advocating for “a strong middle class,” Elliott invoked gender explicitly, challenging skeptics to overcome their reservations about a female president.

“There’s promise that lies in change, and the time for change is now. So what the hell are you waiting for? Because if it’s the woman thing, it’s time to get over that. It’s time for hope, for change,” Elliott said.

“It’s time to be a man and vote for a woman,” he continued.

That line is notable, as Harris has also largely avoided discussing her race and gender on the campaign trail.

What is Putin holding over trump? Trump praises Russia’s military record in argument to stop funding Ukraine’s fight

Associated Press

Trump praises Russia’s military record in argument to stop funding Ukraine’s fight

Adriana Gomez Licon – September 24, 2024

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks about the tax code and manufacturing at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Savannah, Ga. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives for the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, at UN headquarters. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Donald Trump on Tuesday praised Russia’s military record in historical conflicts and derided U.S. aid to Ukraine as he again insisted he would quickly end the war launched by Moscow’s invasion if elected president.

Speaking in Savannah, Georgia, Trump mocked President Joe Biden’s frequent refrain that the U.S. would back the Ukrainian armed forces until Kyiv wins the war. He raised two long ago conflicts to suggest Moscow would not lose — the former Soviet Union’s role in defeating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in World War II in the 1940s, and French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s failed invasion of Russia more than a century earlier.

Trump insisted that the U.S. had “to get out,” though he did not specify how he would negotiate an ending to U.S. involvement in the war.

“Biden says, ‘We will not leave until we win,’” Trump said, lowering his voice to mimic the Democratic president. “What happens if they win? That’s what they do, is they fight wars. As somebody told me the other day, they beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do. They fight. And it’s not pleasant.”

An official on Trump’s campaign also said Tuesday that the Republican nominee will not meet this week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is visiting the U.S. to attend the opening of the U.N. General Assembly.

No meeting had been scheduled between the two, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning, despite a statement from Ukrainian officials last week that said Zelenskyy had planned to see the former president.

Trump on Tuesday repeated his characterization of Zelenskyy as “the greatest salesman on Earth” for winning U.S. aid to help Ukraine.

“Every time Zelenskyy comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion,” Trump said, erroneously. The U.S. has provided more than $56 billion in security assistance since Russia invaded in 2022, according to the State Department.

Trump and Zelenskyy have a long history dating back to the former U.S. president’s time in the White House. The then-president pressured Zelenskyy to open investigations of Biden and his son Hunter as well as a cybersecurity firm Trump falsely linked to Ukraine. That call — and the hold placed by the White House on $400 million in military aid — led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Zelenskyy plans to meet with Biden and Harris in Washington.

Earlier this week, in an interview with The New Yorker, Zelenskyy implied Trump does not understand and oversimplifies the conflict, and said his running mate JD Vance is “too radical” and essentially advocates for Ukraine to “make a sacrifice” by “giving up its territories.”

On Monday, Trump’s son Donald Jr. criticized Zelenskyy on X, reminding his followers that the suspect in his father’s second assassination attempt had lambasted Trump’s approach to foreign policy, including the war in Ukraine.

“So a foreign leader who has received billions of dollars in funding from American taxpayers, comes to our country and has the nerve to attack the GOP ticket for President?” he posted.

Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.

Opinion – Trump is at 48 percent. How could this be possible but for widespread racism?

The Hill – Opinion

Trump is at 48 percent. How could this be possible but for widespread racism?

Juan Williams, Opinion Contributor – September 23, 2024

At this point, the racism is obvious. How else does it make sense that 48 percent of registered voters in last week’s Fox News poll say they have no problem putting Donald Trump back in the White House?

Who are these people who look the other way when their candidate tells a bold lie about Black immigrants eating a mostly white Ohio town’s cats and dogs?

How can it be that not a soul among the 48 percent cares that Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, says it is okay to “create” racist lies about immigrants eating pets “so the American media actually pays attention”?

How can 48 percent of voters back a candidate who says immigrants coming from “infested” places are “poisoning the blood of our country?”

Is it just snowflakes who notice when one of Trump’s close allies says, “The White House will smell like curry” if Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant, wins the presidency?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.), no snowflake, condemned the comment as “appalling,” “racist” and “hateful.”

Do these voters also prefer to sail past Trump once calling a Black woman and former aide a “dog”? And he called Alvin Bragg, the Black Manhattan district attorney who successfully prosecuted him for business fraud, an “animal.”

Maybe Trump’s 48 percent don’t excuse his racism so much as get the message. They are inside a Republican Party that is 82 percent white. Most of those white Republicans are in small towns and rural areas.

“Beginning in the early 2010s — and accelerating during the presidency of Donald J. Trump…” The New York Times noted earlier this year, “white voters without a degree, increasingly moved toward the Republican Party. Nearly two-thirds of all white, non-college voters identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party.”

This is the heart of Trump supporters who told YouGov pollsters they believe Trump is telling the truth about Haitian immigrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.”

The YouGov polls also found that 80 percent of Trump supporters also buy his lie that Venezuela is “deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions” into the U.S. I wrote a 2018 book about Trump’s history of racism. Vice President Harris echoed the book’s research in talking last week of Trump’s racist past. She pointed back to his participation in the “birther” lie, the incendiary claim that the first Black president, President Obama, had not been born in the U.S.

Harris said Trump can’t be trusted to serve as president after “engaging in…hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country…to have people pointing fingers at each other.”

In this year’s campaign, one of Trump’s regular dog-whistles at his rallies is his false claim that big cities, full of racial minorities and immigrants, are scary places full of crime and failure. Last week he flatly lied at a rally when he said a parent who leaves a child alone on the New York subway has “about a 75 percent chance that [they’ll] never see [their] child again. What the hell has happened here?”

Trump’s use of racism to stir up his white supporters was called out by writer Fran Lebowitz back in 2018. Trump, she wrote, has “allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that…It’s a shocking thing to realize people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives.”

There are real consequences to all these racist lies. Last week, a Trump-supporting sheriff in Ohio encouraged people to report their neighbors who displayed Harris-Walz lawn signs. This incident called to mind parallels with police in Nazi Germany.

Widening the racial and political divide leads to alarm over possible violence. USA Today recently reported that more than one-third of Republicans who have a favorable view of Trump “say political violence is acceptable.”

According to a new Deseret News-HarrisX poll, 77 percent of U.S. voters say they are “very” or “somewhat” concerned about political violence before Election Day, including 80 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Democrats.

“We are seeing an unprecedented and extremely disturbing level of threats of violence and violence against public officials,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said last week in a speech.

The 48 percent backing Trump try to move away from his racism by talking about the need for a better economy. But Trump’s main economic plan is to impose tariffs that will drive up prices. He has no plan to improve health care or provide more affordable housing.

It was less than 30 years ago when Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, stared down racism in the GOP. “If there’s anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion…,” Dole said at the 1996 convention, “the exits, which are clearly marked, are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.”

Where are those Republicans now?

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Reveals What He Will Do In 2028 If He Loses The Election

HuffPost

Trump Finally Reveals What He Will Do In 2028 If He Loses The Election

Ed Mazza – September 23, 2024

Donald Trump’s Confounding Child Care Solution

Former President Donald Trump said he won’t run for president in 2028 if he loses to Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s election.

“I don’t see that at all,” he told journalist Sharyl Attkisson in a clip posted online on Sunday. “Hopefully we’re gonna be successful.”

At 78, Trump is the oldest presidential nominee in U.S. history and already facing the same questions about his age and mental acuity that drove President Joe Biden from the race over the summer.

Trump would be 82 by Election Day in 2028.

However, Trump promised in 2020 that he’d vanish if he lost the election.

“You’ll never see me again,” he told a rally crowd.

That didn’t happen.

Trump had also previously suggested that, if he wins, he should be allowed to remain in office for more than the two terms limited by the U.S. Constitution. He said in 2020 he should get a third term as a “redo” because “they spied on my campaign.”

Trump has a long history of refusing to acknowledge his defeats, from primary races right up the 2020 election. His lies about the 2020 election culminated in a riot after he sent his supporters to the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of the results.

There are already warning signs that Trump and his allies are setting the stage to deny the results of the election yet again if he loses.

Scientists looked deep beneath the Doomsday Glacier. What they found spells potential disaster for the planet

CNN

Scientists looked deep beneath the Doomsday Glacier. What they found spells potential disaster for the planet

Laura Paddison – September 20, 2024

Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise.

Since 2018, a team of scientists forming the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, has been studying Thwaites — often dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier” — up close to better understand how and when it might collapse.

Their findings, set out across a collection of studies, provide the clearest picture yet of this complex, ever-changing glacier. The outlook is “grim,” the scientists said in a report published Thursday, revealing the key conclusions of their six years of research.

They found rapid ice loss is set to speed up this century. Thwaites’ retreat has accelerated considerably over the past 30 years, said Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey and part of the ITGC team. “Our findings indicate it is set to retreat further and faster,” he said.

The scientists project Thwaites and the Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse within 200 years, which would have devastating consequences.

Thwaites holds enough water to increase sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts like a cork, holding back the vast Antarctic ice sheet, its collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise, devastating coastal communities from Miami and London to Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands.

Photograph of the high cliffs of Thwaites Glacier taken from the British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter aircraft. - Rob Larter — Photograph of the high cliffs of Thwaites Glacier taken from the British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter aircraft. – Rob Larter

Scientists have long known Florida-sized Thwaites was vulnerable, in part because of its geography. The land on which it sits slopes downwards, meaning as it melts, more ice is exposed to relatively warm ocean water.

Yet previously, relatively little was understood about the mechanisms behind its retreat. “Antarctica remains the biggest wild card for understanding and forecasting future sea level rise,” ITGC scientists said in a statement.

Over the last six years, the scientists’ range of experiments sought to bring more clarity.

They sent a torpedo-shaped robot called Icefin to Thwaites’ grounding line, the point at which the ice rises up from the seabed and starts to float, a key point of vulnerability.

The first clip of Icefin swimming up to the grounding line was emotional, said Kiya Riverman, a glaciologist at the University of Portland. “For glaciologists, I think this had the emotional impact that perhaps the moon landing had on the rest of society,” she said at a new conference. “It was a big deal. We were seeing this place for the first time.”

Through images Icefin beamed back, they discovered the glacier is melting in unexpected ways, with warm ocean water able to funnel through deep cracks and “staircase” formations in the ice.

Image of Icefin under the sea ice near McMurdo Station. - Rob Robbins/ITGC — Image of Icefin under the sea ice near McMurdo Station. – Rob Robbins/ITGC

Another study used satellite and GPS data to look at the impacts of the tides and found seawater was able to push more than 6 miles beneath Thwaites, squeezing warm water under the ice and causing rapid melting.

Yet more scientists delved into Thwaites’ history. A team including Julia Wellner, a professor at the University of Houston, analyzed marine sediment cores to reconstruct the glacier’s past and found it started retreating rapidly in the 1940s, likely triggered by a very strong El Niño event — a natural climate fluctuation which tends to have a warming impact.

These results “teach us broadly about ice behavior, adding more detail than is available by just looking at the modern ice,” Wellner told CNN.

Among the gloom, there was also some good news about one process which scientists fear could cause rapid melting.

There is a concern that if Thwaites’ ice shelves collapse, it will leave towering cliffs of ice exposed to the ocean. These tall cliffs could easily become unstable and tumble into the ocean, exposing yet taller cliffs behind them, with the process repeating again and again.

Computer modeling, however, showed while this phenomenon is real, the chances of it happening are less likely than previously feared.

The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica - NASA/Reuters — The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica – NASA/Reuters

That’s not to say Thwaites is safe.

The scientists predict the whole of Thwaites and the Antarctic Ice Sheet behind it could be gone in the 23rd Century. Even if humans stop burning fossil fuels rapidly — which is not happening — it may be too late to save it.

While this stage of the ITGC project is wrapping up, the scientists say far more research is still needed to figure out this complex glacier and to understand if its retreat is now irreversible.

“While progress has been made, we still have deep uncertainty about the future,” said Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and part of ITGC. “I remain very worried that this sector of Antarctica is already in a state of collapse.”

Bill Maher Urges All Americans to Be More Like ‘JD Vance’s C—Sucker-Loving Grandma’ | Video

The Wrap

Bill Maher Urges All Americans to Be More Like ‘JD Vance’s C—Sucker-Loving Grandma’ | Video

Ross A. Lincoln – September 20, 2024

Bill Maher devoted his “New Rules” segment of Friday’s “Real Time” to a message of tolerance between all Americans that culminated in the punchline that people ought to try and be more like “JD Vance’s c—sucker-loving grandma.”

He didn’t mean that in a derogatory way, but instead meant it as a metaphor for being tolerant of other people, inspired by the right wing Republican vice presidential candidates own memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Maher got there, basically, by starting with an uncharacteristically obtuse understanding of an obvious joke.

Maher said he wanted to know “how Americans can keep becoming more alike, but also hate each other more than ever. I was made to think of this recently when it came to my attention that vice presidential candidate JD Vance f—s his couch. Oh, I’m sure you heard it too. It was everywhere. One guy wrote it on Twitter, and immediately half the country was all in.”

“Our hate for each other is so intense, we all just immediately believed anything bad about the other side. I mean, don’t get me started on ‘they’re eating the dogs. They’re coming to eat all the dogs,” Maher said, referring to the bigoted lie about Haitian Americans that JD Vance has been spreading even after admitting on CNN that he’s knows it’s not true.

“Look, I think JD, Vance is kind of a giant asshole. Still would love to get you on the show. JD,” Maher said as an aside. “but he doesn’t f— the couch. It’s not in his book, as the rumor suggested, what goes on between a man and upholstery is none of my business, but in this case, it just didn’t happen.”

Now we need to take a brief moment to correct Maher’s mistake. Contrary to what he’s saying in his “New Rules” segment, no one actually believes JD Vance has sex with couches. The guy who first told the joke even explained in an interview that the point was that (in his view) Vance is a creep who ‘gives off’ that kind of vibe — and the fact the joke took off has more to do with a whole lot of people agreeing that Vance seems like that kind of guy.

Whether or not you believe this joke is funny or awful, it needs to be made clear that at no point has anyone ever seriously suggested it’s true. Everyone understood it to be exactly what is is: A mean joke. About someone who also happens to tell vicious, racist lies about immigrants that has resulted in a small town in Ohio being basically shut down by terrorist threats inspired by that lie.

But back to Maher, who mentioned Vance’s book to make his larger point. “What is in that book is a much more interesting passage where Vance recalls how at age eight, he thought he might be gay… the eight year old Vance goes to his grandmother… and he asks her if she, a woman born in Kentucky in 1933, thinks he’s gay.”

“She says, ‘JD, do you want to suck d—s?’” Maher continued. “And he says, ‘No, Mama.’ And she says, ‘then you’re not gay, and even if you did want to suck d—s, that would be okay, God would still love you.’”

Maher argued that this was “a teachable moment” for the rest of us. He then devoted the bulk of “New Rules” to examples of what he sees as tolerance and open-mindedness in red states.

Then he concluded, “Why don’t we just resist our worst impulses, and next time we’re tempted to be hateful and just want the other side to die, stop, stop, and think about JD Vance’s c—sucker-loving grandma. She’s told with us, maybe we’re not so different after all.”

Watch the whole thing:

below:https://www.youtube.com/embed/UaRjTq8kV3o?feature=oembed

Cognitive Decline? Trump Stutters, Stumbles During New York Rally

The New Republic – Opinion

Cognitive Decline? Trump Stutters, Stumbles During New York Rally

Hafiz Rashid – September 19, 2024

Speaking in Long Island on Wednesday, Donald Trump was as bombastic and boastful as ever—but also slurred his words on several occasions.

Trump’s erratic mental state has been on full display as his presidential campaign enters its final months before November. During last week’s debate with Kamala Harris, he went on long-winded rants unrelated to the questions asked. His speech patterns and alertness looked vastly different from 2016, as CNN demonstrated in a video comparing last week’s debate to one from eight years ago. Cognitive experts have also compared his recent speeches to ones from years ago, and see worrying signs.

Trump even seems to have his own, false recollection of the debate, telling Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld about a nonexistent audience going “crazy” for him. Somehow, though, Trump remains neck and neck with Kamala Harris in the polls despite these stumbles. With the election less than two months away, will the Harris campaign be able to capitalize?

‘They’re eating pets’ – another example of US politicians smearing Haiti and Haitian immigrants

Ohio Capitol Journal

‘They’re eating pets’ – another example of US politicians smearing Haiti and Haitian immigrants

Nathan Dize – September 19, 2024

Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. JD Vance. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.)

Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance continues to defend the false claim that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been abducting and eating area cats and dogs.

That outlandish idea has been thoroughly debunked since former President Donald Trump repeatedly raised it as an anti-immigrant talking point in the Sept. 12, 2024, presidential debate. Trump never mentioned where the migrants allegedly “eating the pets” came from, but many viewers understood it as a reference to Haitians, a population that Trump has previously degraded.

As debate moderator David Muir stated in his real-time fact check, there is no evidence that any pets in Springfield have been taken or consumed. NPR and other media outlets have also declared the rumor, which began with local right-wing advocates and officials in Springfield decrying the city’s disorganized response to an influx of Haitian migrants in recent years, to be false.

The Republican ticket’s untrue rumors about Haitians in Springfield reflects a long history of prejudice toward Haitians in the United States. As a scholar of Haitian history and literature, I have identified three anti-Haitian ideas prevalent in the United States that will help put the Springfield story into context.

The unfitness of Haitians ‘to govern themselves’

In July 1915, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson invaded Haiti under the guise of restoring order and economic stability following the assassination of Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam.

Five years into what would become a 19-year military occupation, the American diplomat and civil rights leader James Weldon Johnson was sent by the NAACP to investigate the supposed benefits of the occupation. His resounding takeaway: “The United States has failed Haiti.”

In related pieces for The Nation and The Crisis, Johnson chronicled abuses ranging from extra-judicial killings of Haitian citizens – U.S forces killed 15,000 Haitians between 1915 and 1934 – to the harassment and rape of Haitian women. Johnson said the U.S. occupation amounted to nothing more than a belief in the “unfitness of the Haitian people to govern themselves.”

By undermining Haitian sovereignty, Wilson’s administration had successfully created a justification for seizing control of Haitian banks, rewriting its constitution and importing American Jim Crow-style segregation into the capital city of Port-au-Prince. This was a clearly racist presidential administration that hosted White House screenings of D.W. Griffiths’ anti-Black film “Birth of a Nation,” as historian Yveline Alexis demonstrates in her book “Haiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte.”

“Racism,” Alexis writes, “was at the core of the seizure of Haiti and all interactions with Haitians.”

The ‘4H disease’

In June 2017, Trump reportedly “stormed into a meeting” on immigration from Haiti and repeated a slanderous anti-Haitian claim: “They all have AIDS,” he said.

The account, from author Jake Johnston, a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, shows the then-president repeating a falsehood that has circulated since HIV erupted in the 1980s.

Ever since a number of Haitians fell ill while at a Florida immigrant detention center in June 1982, Haitians became part of what the late public health expert Paul Farmer called the “geography of blame” that linked this highly communicable disease to certain places and people.

The federal government turned a small disease cluster into a migration policy designed to keep Haitians out of the U.S.

Betweeen 1981 and 1991, more than 27,000 Haitian asylum-seekers fleeing Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship were intercepted off the coast of Florida and detained. The vast majority were repatriated, in part because of a deportation agreement with Duvalier and in part because stopping Haitians at sea was a “screening strategy” to prevent HIV/AIDS from spreading in the U.S.

The Reagan administration called the virus the “4H disease,” referring to Haitians, hemophiliacs, homosexuals and heroin users. This designation spread harmful lies about four groups, but Haitians were the only nationality singled out as an “at-risk” population for contracting HIV/AIDS.

By the time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed Haitians from its list of highest-risk groups in 1985, the damage had been done. Haitians in the U.S. were effectively vilified as vectors of a deadly virus.

As a young Haitian man in Port-au-Prince remarked to writer Martha Cooley in 1983, “This 4H thing is just one more way to keep us out.”

Haiti’s problems are homegrown

Haiti’s occupation by foreign forces has continued on and off in different forms since the U.S. invasion of 1915.

United Nations troops were stationed there for nearly two decades following the the 2004 ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. After the devastating 2010 earthquake, they were joined by the Red Cross and Oxfam. As all three organizations have since acknowledged, their humanitarian interventions left numerous crises in their wake, including cholera, chronic corruption in rebuilding projects and a market for sexually exploiting young girls.

Still, Haiti has long faced the accusation that its instability is homegrown. It is widely portrayed in the U.S. as a basket-case nation incapable of managing its own affairs. Trump, as president, once dismissed the entire country as a “shithole.”

At present, Haitians are coping with overlapping crises that have U.S. fingerprints.

After President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021, the Biden administration hand-picked Haiti’s interim prime minister, Ariel Henry, as its new leader. This undemocratic decision was such a resounding failure that in March 2024, Haitian gangs revolted against Henry’s administration, unleashing a wave of gruesome violence that ultimately forced Henry out of office.

So many catastrophes in Haiti over the past four decades have created an overwhelming sense of insecurity among its people. Many hundreds of thousands have fled the country for the U.S., Dominican Republic, Brazil and beyond.

In July 2024, the Biden administration granted temporary protected status to 500,000 Haitian migrants in the U.S., allowing them to stay in the country, in recognition of the life-threatening conditions back home.

The people Trump insists are “illegal aliens” are in fact authorized U.S. residents from a country buffeted by American meddling in its politics.

A very old pattern

In barking about cats and dogs in Springfield, Trump, Vance and their right-wing supporters are spreading the same kind of anti-Haitian rhetoric that has sown a harmful distrust of Haitian migrants for over a century.

“This is not the first time that we [Haitians] have been the victims of ‘yon kanpay manti,’” said the Ministry of Haitians Living Abroad in a press release following the debate, using the Haitian Creole phrase for “a campaign of lies.”

The result of such misinformation, it added, is “mistreatment, hatred, and misunderstanding in the interest of politics.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

America is a land of immigrants. Stop weaponizing false language about them.

The Oklahoman – Opinion

America is a land of immigrants. Stop weaponizing false language about them.

Alex Seojoon Kim – September 19, 2024

In the recent presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, both sides traded jabs without much regard for the opposition. It made sense, as pulling punches now could spell disaster for the presidential hopefuls. With election day less than two months away, the national stage in Pennsylvania was the perfect opportunity to sway middle ground voters that often determine the result of an election. Yet, in the heat of lax factual statements, one claim made by Trump sparked immense outrage in a large community.

Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets, cats and dogs, in Springfield, Ohio. Not only are these comments harmful, but they are insensitive and dangerous. Assuming these stereotypes about immigrants, specifically those of Haitian descent, can be immensely damaging in the face of the plight and challenges these people face.

Springfield, Ohio, is reported to have “approximately 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants” from Haiti in their county. They are “legally [there] as part of a parole program” in the hopes that they can bring family members from Haiti into the United States. And yet Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have both been targeting this minority community with a lack of reasonable decency behind their claims.

Several reputable leaders from the city, including Springfield’s mayor, police chief and even the state’s governor, have said that these claims are far from true. Troubled by bomb threats at schools since the Trump-Vance pet-eating allegations, at least one with anti-Haitian sentiment, Springfield continues to battle this antilogic.

A cat sits on the porch on a tree-lined street in Springfield, Ohio, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. The area has attracted national scrutiny after conservative figures, including former President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance, spread debunked claims that Haitians in the community were stealing and eating people’s pets.More

“We do not have any evidence that [this incident] has happened, and I’ve made it known in multiple interviews that this is absolutely not true,” Springfield Mayor Bob Rue said on BBC Newshour, wanting to make clear that “the weight of [politicians’] words … can negatively affect communities.”

Harsh rhetoric is not new in American politics. Immigrants have been falsely accused of bringing a multitude of undesirable ideas and practices into the United States for a long time ― from disease to overpopulation. For centuries, millions flocked from Europe at first, and later Asia, to the United States to escape harsh living conditions and in pursuit of a fair chance of achieving the “American Dream.” Yet nativist ideology spread rapidly through the states time and time again, leading to limitations such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924. Demoralizing language and actions were key in spurring these laws.

Now, both Trump’s and Vance’s incendiary comments about Haitian immigrants seem to be nothing more than a weaponization of rumors for political gain. Similar tactics have been used by politicians in scapegoating other marginalized groups, such as Asians and Hispanics, as well. When prominent figures use their elevated platforms for statements viciously attacking minority groups, it only adds fuel to the fire by instigating hate crimes. Not only are the Haitians in Springfield at risk, but physical and verbal threats can harm all residents in the area.

More: JD Vance repeats baseless claims that Haitians in Ohio are eating pets: What we know

It’s important to remember that immigrants make up an important sector of this country’s workforce and contribute to their local communities. According to news reports, before Haitian immigrants arrived on the scene, Springfield had lost a quarter of its population over the past few decades, a startling decline for a once-booming agricultural economy. Now, Haitians are essential to the workforce, especially at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables, where they’re “hired to clean and package produce” and to work at automotive machining plants. Their businesses, cultural foods and identities have merged into the Ohio city, transforming it into a bustling place of diversity. And this is the main reason Trump’s and Vance’s threats of deporting these civilians is so detrimental.

A nation founded, in part, on the backs of immigrants should not use improper, falsified accusations as political leverage. This is not only offensive to Haitians but to all immigrants in the United States. The speeches talking about eating pets in Ohio are not just wrong but a sad distraction from more authentic issues at hand, such as the reformation of immigration laws. Empathy must come first to create a nation that includes and values its citizens and residents, regardless of their origin.

Alex Seojoon Kim is a high school student in Stillwater.

Fact check: 12 completely fictional stories Trump has told in the last month

CNN

Fact check: 12 completely fictional stories Trump has told in the last month

Daniel Dale, CNN – September 19, 2024

Watch Daniel Dale fact-check Trump’s false debate claims Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

Former President Donald Trump is littering his public remarks with fictional stories.

This isn’t run-of-the-mill political spin, the kind of statistic-twisting and accomplishment-exaggerating that political candidates of all stripes engage in. Rather, the Republican presidential nominee is telling colorful lies that are completely untethered to reality.

Trump’s inflammatory assertion about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he baselessly accused at the September presidential debate of eating people’s dogs and cats, has received the most attention. But Trump’s lower-profile recent public appearances, like rallies and interviews, have also featured wholly imaginary tales.

Here are 11 additional examples from the past month alone.

Harris and the military draft

At a rally in Las Vegas last week, Trump claimed his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is talking about forcing Americans to serve in the military: “She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft, and draft your child, and put them in a war that should never have happened.”

That’s absolute bunk. Harris is not talking at all about bringing back the draft.

Harris’ CNN interview

Trump claimed during a Fox News event in Pennsylvania in early September that Harris “had notes” to assist her during the television interview she did with CNN in late August. He even performed an impression in which he portrayed Harris supposedly looking down at these notes.

She didn’t actually have any notes.

Transgender children and schools

At an event held by a conservative group in late August, Trump claimed that schools are sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ knowledge. He said, “The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

Trump’s campaign subsequently made clear to CNN that it could not find a single example of such a thing having happened anywhere in the United States. Parental consent is required for gender-affirming operations; schools have not performed or approved these surgeries for minors behind their parents’ backs.

Even after Trump’s campaign demonstrated that it couldn’t substantiate the story, he repeated it days later at a Wisconsin rally in early September.

Harris and the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Trump told a vivid story on Fox News in late August about how President Joe Biden supposedly sent Harris to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022 in an effort to prevent an invasion of Ukraine. Trump claimed Harris was sent “to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She went. She said – she gave her case. He attacked three days later. He attacked three days later. He laughed at her. He thought she was a joke.” Trump also told a version of the story at the September debate.

But this story, too, is wholly false.

Biden never sent Harris to negotiate with Putin – in fact, the Kremlin said in July that Harris and Putin have never spoken – and Harris did not travel to Russia just prior to the invasion. Rather, Harris traveled to a conference in Germany to meet with US allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky.

Harris’ identity

Trump claimed at a convention of Black journalists in late July that Harris used to “only” promote her Indian heritage, then “all of a sudden” made a “turn” and “became a Black person.” Defending the claim, Trump reiterated at the September debate that Harris had “put out” at some point that “she was not Black.”

None of that is true.

Harris – who was raised in a Black community and graduated from a historically Black university – has embraced her Black identity since her youth. While she has also fondly discussed her South Asian heritage, she never “put out” that she wasn’t Black.

Harris’ 2020 primary performance

Trump has repeatedly claimed during the last month that Harris was so unpopular when she previously ran for the presidency, in 2019, that she was the very first candidate to drop out of the crowded Democratic primary. “She was one of 22 people that ran. She was the first one to quit,” he said at a Pennsylvania rally in late August.

Not even close.

In fact, 13 other Democratic candidates dropped out of the race before Harris did – including the sitting or former governors of Washington, Montana and Colorado; the sitting mayor of New York City; and sitting or former members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

Opinions of Roe v. Wade

Facing heavy criticism from Harris and others for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision in 2022, Trump concocted a tale that this unpopular decision fulfilled the wishes of “everybody” – including “every Democrat.”

“Every Democrat, every Republican, everybody wanted Roe v. Wade terminated and brought back to the states,” Trump said on Fox News in late August.

This is not even remotely accurate.

Roe was consistently supported by a majority of the American public, and it was overwhelmingly popular among Democrats – with 80% support or better among Democrats in many polls.

Elections in California

At a September press conference in California, Trump claimed that “if I ran with an honest vote counter in California I would win California, but the votes are not counted honestly.” He had delivered an even more colorful version of the claim in an interview in late August, saying, “If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, okay?”

More rubbish.

The votes are counted honestly in California, as they are in every other state; Trump loses California because it is an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has not chosen a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. He lost the state in 2020, fair and square, by more five million votes and more than 29 percentage points.

A ‘Man of the Year’ award in Michigan

Since 2016, Trump has told a lie that he was named “Man of the Year” in Michigan before he entered politics. Media outlets including CNN have repeatedly noted that Trump never got such an award and that the award doesn’t even appear to exist. But Trump claimed at a Michigan event on Tuesday that he has now been vindicated.

“The press said, ‘Oh, it never happened.’ Well, then it did happen. They found out where it was,” Trump said. “But it was like 15 years ago, a beautiful area, but nobody remembered it; nobody remembered it all. All of a sudden, like through a miracle, they found out it did exist.”

That’s a lie on top of a lie. The media has not discovered proof that Trump got a Michigan Man of the Year award.

His campaign didn’t respond Wednesday to a request to explain what he was talking about.

Migrants, prisons and ‘the Congo’

For months, Trump has told a story about how “the Congo” has deliberately emptied prisons to somehow get its criminals to come to the United States as migrants. “Many prisoners let go from the Congo in Africa, rough prisoners,” he said at an August event in Arizona. At an August rally in Pennsylvania the week after, he said, “In the Congo, in Africa: 22 people deposited into our country. ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘The Congo.’ ‘Where in the Congo?’ ‘Jail.’”

But Trump has presented zero evidence that “the Congo” has actually emptied any prisons for migration purposes. Representatives for the governments of both the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo have told CNN on the record that the claim is fiction, experts on the two countries say they have seen no evidence it is true, and Trump’s campaign has ignored requests to offer any substantiation.

The jobs revision

After the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in August that its annual revision of jobs data found that the economy added about 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported for the 12 months ending in March, Trump told a story about how the government had been planning to announce this downward revision “after November 5th,” Election Day, but was forced to do so before the election because of “a whistleblower” – “a patriot leaker.”

Another fabrication. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly releases the preliminary revised data in August, and it had disclosed the precise date of this particular data release – August 21 – weeks in advance.

William Beach, a conservative economist who was appointed by Trump to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wrote on social media: “For those who think the big revision to the BLS jobs numbers ‘leaked’ and was meant to come out after the election, remember that BLS always announces its draft revisions in August and announced this year’s date, August 21, many months ago. It is important to check your facts.”