‘Springfield, Ohio, is caught in a political vortex, and it is a bit out of control’

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — In this city thrust unwillingly into the white hot center of Donald Trump’s immigration wars, conspiratorial fervor lept from internet memes into the humdrum tasks of everyday life. Just since Tuesday, bomb threats shuttered city hall, closed a middle school and forced the evacuation of two elementary schools. Even the city’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Ohio License Bureau closed Thursday.

As its own senator and the former president trafficked baseless claims that immigrants in this blue-collar swath of Ohio have been abducting and eating pets — something the state's GOP governor on Sunday called “garbage that was not true” — the city found itself turned upside down.

Many residents here had voted for Trump twice: In 2020, he won Clark County with more than 60 percent of the vote. But now, even some Trump-backing Republicans are expressing frustration with the former president, who elevated the hoax in his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday and has repeated it in days since .

By the end of a long week that had seen his city broadsided by the leader of his own party, the mayor, Rob Rue, had had enough.

“Any political leader that takes the national stage and has the national spotlight needs to understand the gravity of the words that they have for cities like ours, and what they say impacts our city,” Rue, who said he was tired and angry, told POLITICO. “And we’ve had bomb threats the last two days. We've had personal threats the last two days, and it’s increasing, because the national stage is swirling this up. Springfield, Ohio, is caught in a political vortex, and it is a bit out of control. We are a wonderful city — a beautiful town. And for what it's worth, your pets are safe in Springfield, Ohio.”

Asked whether he is going to vote for Trump, the 54-year-old mayor said, “I’m just probably not going to answer that question.” He said he is deeply “frustrated” with Trump’s remarks and how Springfield has become collateral damage.

“We have a big-hearted community, and we’re being smeared in a way we don’t deserve,” Rue said.

For Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance , the amplification of the baseless claims about migrants eating pets represented a guttural appeal to the base on an issue that is politically favorable for the former president. But even some Republicans have warned that peddling anti-immigrant conspiracy theories would serve as a distraction from a more coherent message on immigration. And in Springfield, it also showed the damage Trump’s rhetoric can inflict on even his own supporters.

In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not repeat Trump’s claims about people eating pets, but said: “President Trump and Senator Vance will continue to shine a light on the very real problems plaguing the residents of Springfield: skyrocketing rents, stressed public health and education services, increased vehicular accidents and public safety concerns due to the community being overwhelmed by a sudden influx of migrants from Kamala Harris’ open border.”

But on the same day his campaign seemed to have backed away from the unfounded claims, Trump took no responsibility for the threats. "I don't know what happened with the bomb threats,” he told reporters in Las Vegas . “I know that it's been taken over by illegal migrants, and that's a terrible thing that happened. Springfield was this beautiful town, and now they're going through hell. It's a sad thing. Not going to happen with me, I can tell you right now."

Flooding the city this week were right-leaning influencers enamored with the idea they could prove Trump and Vance right by finding evidence of his unfounded claims — not to mention a phalanx of national and even international members of the media.

On a street by city hall, beneath signs that read “NEIGHBORS HELPING NEIGHBORS,” and “CULTURE FEST: MUSIC DANCE FOOD FUN,” Johnathon Held, a self-described reporter and blogger, interviewed a local mother and TikToker about how Haitian immigrants had negatively affected her life.

“Trying to figure out if there’s really Haitians eating cats,” Held said of why he was here. “I think that’s what we’re all doing. Haven’t talked to any Haitians yet.”

Local officials and authorities have said there is no evidence to suggest immigrants are eating pets.

That didn’t stop a kind of conspiracy scavenger hunt by hordes of influencers and gawkers from unfolding across the city. Canada’s Rebel News combed the city for evidence of animal abduction and consumption, while its correspondent promoted a donation page featuring the image of a Black man carrying a dead goose that was taken in Columbus some 50 miles away. Nor did it stop Indiana state Rep. Jim Lucas from crossing state lines , posting to social media: “Just arrived in Springfield, let’s do some digging!”

And then there was the $5,000 bounty posted on X by the conservative intellectual and political activist Chris Rufo for “anyone who can provide my team with hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield, Ohio. Deadline is Sunday. Go.”

There’s no reason to believe that evidence exists. But the fervor gripping Springfield, while extreme, is now part of an ongoing feature of the Trump era — a city or a family or a crisis co-opted to score political points, collateral damage in the culture wars. To be certain, some examples predate Trump, too, including the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. But Ohio had seen the same thing happen a few hours north in East Palestine when a February 2023 train derailment led to conspiracy theories and drew visits from both Trump and Democratic Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. In Grand Rapids earlier this year, Trump faced questions over whether he fabricated an anecdote about speaking to family members of a woman authorities said was killed by an undocumented immigrant . Her sister later said Trump never called. “It’s always been about illegal immigrants,” she told the TV station Target 8 . The Trump campaign never explained the discrepancy.

On Friday, Trump also took aim at Aurora, Colorado, saying a Venezuelan gang is “taking over” the Denver suburb, which has also seen an influx of migrants to the diverse community.

And now, too, it is Springfield. In a video posted to social media earlier this week, the city manager, Bryan Heck, blamed “misinformation circulating on social media and further amplified by the political rhetoric in the current, highly charged presidential election cycle.”

Herad Harold, 40, an electrical engineer, and father of a 6-year-old daughter, is one of the 20,000 Haitian migrants — here legally — who have poured into the city in recent years. He said it was “hard to hear” Trump claim in the debate that immigrants are “eating the pets of the people that live there.” Or to hear him later threaten mass deportations of Haitian migrants .

“First of all, what we witnessed clearly was like a false accusation,” Harold said in a Creole accent. “We have to work hard to make it feel like we are more welcomed — more integration into the community.”

Vance, earlier this week, had urged a darker understanding of the goings on in Springfield, when he said on CNN that it was “important for journalists to actually get on the ground and cover this stuff for themselves when you have a lot of people saying ‘my pets are being abducted or geese at the city pond are being abducted and slaughtered right in front of us.’”

“This is crazy stuff,” he said.

Indeed, it did sound crazy — to some of Vance’s own Republican constituents here.

“Misinformation,” said Brian Frantz, 57, as he watched his grandson play long snapper at a Springfield High School football game Friday evening. “I’m not going to say they are eating cats.” He had twice voted for Trump, and despite all this, said he will again.

On Friday, two local TV affiliates idled outside city hall, and a reporter from a Spanish outlet wandered down a nearby sidewalk. Meanwhile, city officials were left picking up the pieces.

Republican Clark County Commission President Melanie Flax-Wilt, who said she backed Trump in 2016 and 2020 but is now undecided, largely refused to talk about national politics. But she said she was frustrated.

“I'm of the belief that it's our local community that is going to be here dealing with this after all of the national news is gone and everybody's done using Springfield, Ohio, as a poster child for immigration reform. We're the ones who are going to be stuck figuring out what to do with these challenges that are facing us,” said Flax-Wilt.

Sasha Rittenhouse, another Republican member of the county commission, said, “We've seen a lot of, I don't want to say crazy , but unfounded things. It’s a matter of trying to go back and see if there's any validity to any of it.”

She added, “And thus far, we have not been able to track anything down that definitively shows that any of these things are happening.”

Of her plans to vote this November, Rittenhouse said: “I have not decided what I'm doing. I've been a Republican my entire life, and I will leave it at that.”

To Rittenhouse, it seemed like the entire country — posting AI-generated cat and dog and geese memes and TikTok videos turning Trump’s comments into a song — had lost the plot, with both parties thinking the jokes were at the other's expense.

“I don't feel like right now everybody worried about the goose population is getting anything resolved in our community,” she said.

Springfield didn’t need MAGA YouTubers roaming the streets looking for evidence of an animal sacrifice or a duck on a spit roaster.

“We need translators,” she said. “We need more houses. We need more infrastructure. We need more nurses and doctors that can deal with the growing population.”

Still on Friday, over at the Peanut Pond at Snyder Park, a sign popped up that read: “Please do not eat the ducks.”

“It's going viral on TikTok: people are making it to the sound of Peanuts and Snoopy. It is highlighting, clearly, a major issue,” said Tricia McLaughlin, who served on Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s campaign and advises former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. “It's just that the framing is incorrect, because if it's based on the cats and dogs, I haven't seen or heard evidence of that.”

Flax-Wilt, the commissioner, did not expect the circus to leave anytime soon.

She said, “It will be like this now until the end of the election.”