Vance doesn't back away from false claims about migrants in Ohio even amid threats to the community

News

Vance doesn't back away from false claims about migrants in Ohio even amid threats to the community

2024-09-16 00:33 Last Updated At：00:40

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance did not back away on Sunday from the false claims he and Donald Trump have been making that Haitians in an Ohio community are abducting and eating pets, even as the state's GOP governor and other officials insist there is no evidence of such behavior.

Vance, an Ohio senator, said constituents in Springfield are bringing concerns to him and that at least 10 were “verifiable.” In a series of news show interviews, he said he was amplifying the claims as a way to draw attention to Democrat Kamala Harris' immigration policies, which he said are lax, while adding, "Everybody who has dealt with a large influx of migration knows that sometimes there are cultural practices that seem very far out there to a lot of Americans.”

Local and state officials have said the claims are untrue, wrongly cast the city in a negative light and have brought unwanted and frightening negative attention since Trump mentioned it in the presidential debate last week, when he called out Springfield by name. For two days straight, bomb threats prompted the evacuation of schools and government buildings, with some emailed threats referencing an influx of migrants into the community.

But it wasn’t just Springfield officials who were refuting the claims. Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said Sunday that “there’s a lot of garbage on the internet and, you know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all.”

He went on to say: “Let me tell you what we do know, though. What we know is 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. What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there. And, frankly, that’s helped the economy.”

Still, the narrative has dominated the Trump’s campaign messaging over the past week and is highlighting how some in the Republican Party are willing to embrace and amplify false claims as part of the inflammatory and anti-immigrant rhetoric that Trump has promoted throughout his campaigns.

“Whatever some local mayor said about this case, I am hearing from dozens of constituents who are concerned about these issues,” Vance said.

He added: “I think it’s important to say we’re not mad at Haitian migrants wanting to have a better life. We’re angry at Kamala Harris for letting this happen to a small Ohio town, and thank God Donald Trump has called attention to it and would fight back against these policies if the American people.”

Roughly 15,000 immigrants have arrived in the past few years to the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000 just over an hour west of Columbus.

Springfield also says the Haitian immigrants are in the United States legally under a federal program that allows them to remain in the country temporarily. Last month the Biden administration granted eligibility for temporary legal status to about 300,000 Haitians already in the U.S., citing conditions in Haiti that are considered unsafe for them to return. Haiti’s government has extended a state of emergency to the entire country due to endemic gang violence.

Vance was asked in an interview whether he knew the claims were false.

“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," Vance said, quickly clarifying that he "created the focus that allowed the media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by policies.”

Vance was on CBS' 'Face the Nation," CNN's “State of the Union” and NBC's "Meet the Press,” while DeWine appeared on ”This Week" on ABC.

Death toll in attack on Christmas market in Germany rises to 5, with more than 200 injured

2024-12-21 19:29 Last Updated At：19:30

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and injuring at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany for nearly two decades, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The governor of the surrounding state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose from two to five and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what caused him to drive into a crowd in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum seekers.

Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann said he had yet to come across a suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.

“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing could surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists — that really wasn’t on my radar, " Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London, wrote on X.

“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters. “Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market.

Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned the attack on X.

Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.