JD Vance

It was a lot more amusing when JD Vance’s buffoonery only resulted in MAGA heads carrying around cups of his pretend sperm. But now, the Ohio senator’s ridiculous rhetoric is resulting in violent threats being levied against school children.

Vance is one of many GOP officials who’s spread racist lies about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, amplifying vile fabrications about them eating pets and local wildlife. Springfield, a small city town in the middle of Dayton and Columbus, has seen an influx of Haitian immigrants in recent years.

Like many manufacturing towns, Springfield was experiencing a prolonged decline. Once a city of more than 80,000 people, its population dwindled to less than 60,000 by 2014. Faced with a multitude of problems, local officials started crafting plans to lure companies back. And their strategic initiatives worked. By 2020, Springfield had added an estimated 8,000 new jobs, according to the New York Times.

But decades of population decline, along with an addiction crisis, meant there weren’t enough workers to fill the new manufacturing positions. That’s when Haitian immigrants, hearing about the city’s abundance of jobs and cheap cost of living, arrived into town. Some estimates say as many as 20,000 Haitians now live in the community.

By any tangible measure, their presence has revitalized Springfield. But they’ve also encountered animosity, with far-right activists showing up at commission meetings and warning about an “invasion.”

Vance has done his part to fan the flames. Trump’s #2 has been targeting the city’s Haitian population since July, saying the town is “overwhelmed.” Since then, his language has only grown more hateful, culminating in his baseless claims about Haitians eating pets in Springfield.

“Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he posted Monday.

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The absurd conspiracy theory stems from neo-Nazis and other racist groups, which have amplified the lie with misleading stories and social media posts. Their efforts seemingly caught the attention of Trump, who ranted about immigrants “eating pets” at Tuesday’s debate. (Moderator David Muir fact-checked Trump on the spot, with receipts from the city manager.)

Vance, for his part, encouraged his followers to “keep the cat memes flowing.”

Well, Vance received his wish, and now we’ve seen the results: threats on people’s lives. Springfield City Hall was evacuated Thursday following a bomb threat, and two elementary schools were evacuated Friday morning.

In addition to smearing Haitians as “pet-eaters,” Vance has also used the tragic death of an 11-year-old boy to label them as criminals and murderers. Last August, an immigrant’s minivan crashed into a school bus in Springfield, resulting in the boy’s passing. On Tuesday, Vance referred to the boy on social media, saying a “child was murdered by a Haitian migrant.”

In response, the boy’s father told Vance to stop exploiting his deceased son, saying, “My son was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti.”

“This needs to stop now,” he added.

So far, Vance hasn’t heeded the grieving father’s advice. He peddled his anti-immigrant spiel this week on CNBC, only to came across as an ignoramus.

“If the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants, then Springfield, Ohio would be the most prosperous city in the world. America would be the most prosperous country in the world,” he said.

Umm… who wants to tell him?

As one can see, Vance is keeping the lies flowing, along with the cat memes. And hard-working, innocent people are paying the price.

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