Ohio GOP Gov. DeWine slams Trump and Vance for baseless claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield
(NEW YORK) — Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine delivered his strongest condemnation yet of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, for their continued false claims regarding Haitian migrants in Springfield.
“As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there,” DeWine wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times published Friday morning.
DeWine said Trump and Vance’s rhetoric was a distraction, diminishing immigration policy conversations that “dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border.”
DeWine has previously shot down the false claims from Trump and Vance that the Haitian migrants were eating neighborhood pets.
On ABC’s “This Week,” DeWine said the stories were baseless and “a piece of garbage.”
“This idea that we have hate groups coming in, this discussion just has to stop. We need to focus on moving forward and not dogs and cats being eaten. It’s just ridiculous,” he said on the program.
Earlier this week, DeWine revealed the city of Springfield has received at least 33 separate bomb threats in the last few days.
Asked for comment on the op-ed, the Trump campaign referred ABC News to a statement from vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s spokesperson.
“Senator Vance is glad that Governor DeWine supports the Trump-Vance ticket for president,” said Vance spokesperson Will Martin. “They’re not always going to agree on every issue. When Kamala Harris abuses our immigration system to bring thousands of illegal immigrants into this country, small Ohio towns like Springfield bear the brunt of the burden. President Trump and Senator Vance will secure our border and put a stop to this chaos.”
Vance chose to continue to share the claim about pets after an aide was told by a city official that it was categorically untrue.
The aide to Vance was informed by a top Springfield official earlier this month that claims about Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs were false, but the vice presidential nominee went ahead with spreading the rumor anyway the day before the presidential debate in which Trump repeated the claim, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by ABC News.
City manager Bryan Heck, in a Sept. 9 phone call, told a Vance staffer the “claims were baseless” when asked if they were true. A city spokesperson confirmed to ABC News the accuracy of the Wall Street Journal’s reporting about the call.
Even still, Ohio is not quite a swing state — Trump beat Biden by 8 points in 2020 and Clinton by 9 points in 2016. It’s ultimately unclear if his and Vance’s continued push of this narrative moves the needle electorally.
ABC News’ Soorin Kim, Hannah Demissie, Kelsey Walsh, Lalee Ibssa, Armando Garcia, and Jeremy Edwards contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, continue to travel to battleground states as Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance campaigns on behalf of himself and former President Donald Trump.
Here’s how the news is developing:
Harris cautions donors to ‘not take anything for granted’
Vice President Kamala Harris attended a fundraiser in San Francisco Sunday where she maintained her campaign “will win this election,” but cautioned donors to “not take anything for granted.”
“I know there’s a lot of enthusiasm out there,” Harris said, adding, “And you know, I’ve never been one to really believe in the polls — whether they’re up or they’re down.”
“What we know is the stakes are so high and we can take nothing for granted in this critical moment,” she continued. “So we will fuel our campaign as we have, with enthusiasm and optimism, but also with a deep commitment to the hard work it’s going to take, and to campaign.”
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi introduced Harris at the event, touting the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration and the background of vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, several times calling the Harris-Walz ticket “the freedom ticket.”
“[Harris] makes us all so proud. She brings us so much joy. She gives us so much hope,” Pelosi said, calling the vice president “politically very astute.”
(INDIANAPOLIS) — As Vice President Kamala Harris ramps up her presidential campaign, she spoke to fired-up members of historically Black sorority Zeta Phi Beta in Indianapolis on Wednesday, where she highlighted Biden administration wins and worked to shore up support from Black voters — a key voting group in the 2024 election.
“In this moment, I believe we face a choice between two different visions for our nation, one focused on the future, the other focused on the past, and with your support, I am fighting for our nation’s future, and let us be clear about what that future looks like,” said Harris, who was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority — another historically Black sorority.
“I know the leaders in this room, and I know the future we believe in, and we fight for,” the vice president added.
Harris’ 15-minute-long speech was well-received in the room of about 6,000 Zetas, where she was met with raucous applause throughout.
Harris touted some wins under President Joe Biden such as forgiving student loan debt, working to establish affordable childcare and tackling prescription drug costs.
She mentioned Biden’s address to the nation on Wednesday night — where he will talk about his decision to abandon his reelection bid.
“Tonight, our president will address the nation about his decision to step down as a candidate, and he will talk about not only the work, the extraordinary work that he has accomplished, but about his work in the next six months,” Harris said.
Harris also slammed former President Donald Trump over Project 2025, the conservative presidential transition blueprint fronted by the Heritage Foundation.
Zeta Phi Beta, like Harris’s own sorority, is a part of the “Divine Nine” — a collection of nine historically Black fraternities and sororities. Both the Zetas and the AKAs were founded at the vice president’s alma mater of Howard University, a historically Black university.
The significance of this moment for these women is profound. A last-minute organizing fundraising Zoom call Sunday night saw some 44,000 Black women donating nearly $1.6 million, which contributed to a record-breaking $126 million raised since President Joe Biden’s endorsement of Harris for the job, according to a memo the campaign sent outlining its path forward.
“Vice President Harris has well-documented support from the Biden-Harris coalition of voters that delivered victory in 2020,” said campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon. “She has significant advantages with key parts of the Democratic base: Black voters, Latino voters, AANHPI voters, women, and young voters.”
Black voters are a key group of voters that both Harris and Trump will work to connect with as the November election approaches.
During her speech, Harris encouraged the Black attendees to head to the polls to “make history.”
“We know when we organize, mountains move; when we mobilize, nations change; and when we vote, we make history,” Harris said. “So let us continue to fight with optimism and faith and hope. Because when we fight, we win.”
Trump — as well as then-candidate Biden — have worked to court Black and Hispanic voters on the issues of the economy, education, immigration and more.
Trump has recently attended events at Black Conservative Federation Gala in South Carolina, 180 Church in Michigan and New York City’s South Bronx to court Black voters and announce his “Black Americans for Trump” coalition.
Trump has centered his appeal to Black voters by equating his criminal prosecutions to the historic discrimination Black Americans have faced.
The Harris campaign’s push comes at a time when it’s trying to shore up continued interest from a constituency that has historically voted for Democrats.
Harris’ event, which the White House announced in early July — before Biden’s decision to leave the 2024 race, came at a controversial time. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting Washington this week and addressed Congress on Wednesday — yet Harris was not there. It marks the first time Harris will miss a world leader visit since she has become vice president.
Harris, who in her secondary role to the president, has created some distance from Biden on the war in Gaza. Some pro-Palestinian groups tell ABC News that if she is able to strike the right tone in the coming weeks, she could win back the support Biden had lost.
The vice president is scheduled to meet with Netanyahu on Thursday.
(WASHINGTON) — Both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have extensive records when it comes to criminal justice policy – records that are sometimes completely opposed to one another, and at other times are aligned.
As Trump – who has a criminal record of his own, having been convicted on 34 felony counts – prepares to face off in the general election against Harris, who is a former prosecutor, district attorney and attorney general, their past actions on criminal justice have come into the spotlight.
Here’s a look at some of the candidates’ policy records on crime, the death penalty, policing, and prison reform:
Recidivism
In 2005, as the district attorney for San Francisco, Harris launched “Back on Track,” a reentry initiative aimed at reducing recidivism among young, low-level, first-time felony drug-trafficking defendants.
Candidates between the ages of 18 and 30 who first complete six weeks of community service and then plead guilty to their charges are eligible to participate in the program, during which their sentencing is deferred until they complete a 12 to 18-month supervised “individualized personal responsibility plan” that includes “concrete achievements in employment, education, parenting, and child support,” among other mandates. The program reported that fewer than 10% of the program graduates reoffended after being released, compared to a 53% recidivism rate for California drug offenders within two years of release from incarceration.
The Biden-Harris administration also implemented a new Small Business Administration rule that removed loan eligibility restrictions based on a person’s criminal record.
“Making this available, reducing and eliminating that restriction is going to mean a lot in terms of second chances and the opportunity for people to excel,” Harris said of the program earlier this year.
In 2018, Trump signed a bipartisan bill into law similarly aimed at supporting recidivism reduction programs – a bill Harris voted for as a senator.
The First Step Act (FSA) called for the development of risk and needs assessment programs to reduce recidivism, and required the Bureau of Prisons to help incarcerated people access federal and state benefits, obtain identification, and more. Under the act, incarcerated people could earn time credit for participating in recidivism reduction programming and other activities, which could be applied toward early release.
According to the Council on Criminal Justice, recidivism is estimated to be 37% lower among FSA releases when compared to “similarly situated pre-FSA releases.”
Death penalty
Trump has consistently been pro-death penalty. Federal executions began under the Trump administration in 2020 for the first time in roughly 17 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
In 2020, the federal government completed 13 federal executions in the final months of the Trump presidency, according to the DPIC.
In 1989, prior to his time in office, Trump called for the return of the death penalty in a series of ads amid the case of five Black and brown boys then known as the “Central Park Five” who were convicted of assaulting and raping a woman in New York City.
Trump took out full-page ads in local newspapers within two weeks after the April 19, 1989 attack, calling to “Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police!” However, the ads never explicitly mentioned the five boys, who were incarcerated for years before they were exonerated after another man confessed to the crime.
Harris has been consistent in her stance against the death penalty: “My entire career I have been opposed – personally opposed – to the death penalty,” Harris said in an August 2019 debate. “And that has never changed.”
However, some have criticized Harris for decisions regarding several death penalty-related cases.
For example, Harris declined to take up the case of convicted murderer Kevin Cooper, who was sentenced to death for a quadruple homicide in California in 1983 and is currently awaiting execution. His team had asked the state for additional DNA testing that they maintained could have exonerated him.
Harris has since changed her views on Cooper’s request, later telling The New York Times “I feel awful about this.”
Additionally, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney overturned the death sentence of Ernest Dewayne Jones in 2014, ruling that the nearly 20 years he spent waiting for execution on death row was a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and so the death penalty was unconstitutional.
As the state’s attorney general, Harris appealed the ruling, arguing that the court’s decision “is not supported by the law, and it undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.” Carney’s ruling was overturned on appeal the following year.
Prison policy
Under the Trump administration, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 rescinded an Obama-era initiative to phase out private prisons. Sessions then began distributing contracts for new privately-run detention centers.
In January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration ordered the Department of Justice not to renew contracts for privately-operated criminal detention centers. In December 2022, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) ended all contracts with privately owned prisons and transferred federal inmates who had been incarcerated in them to BOP-operated prisons.
Pardons and commutations
The Trump administration commuted the sentences of more than 90 individuals and granted pardons to more than 140 people, according to the DOJ. The Biden-Harris administration has so far commuted the sentences of more than 120 individuals and granted pardons to 25 people, according to the DOJ. The plan ahead
Though the Harris campaign hasn’t yet released the vice president’s official 2024 platform, she previously has supported legalizing marijuana at the federal level, ending solitary confinement, embracing cash bail reform, ending federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, and furthering rehabilitative services for the incarcerated. She has also supported the Justice in Policing Act, which would limit “unnecessary” use of force and no-knock warrants, limit qualified immunity for police officers, and increase accountability for law enforcement misconduct.
The Trump administration’s plan, according to his official campaign website, states that he plans to increase funding to hire and retrain police officers, strengthen qualified immunity and other “protections” for police officers, increase penalties for assaults on law enforcement, and “surge federal prosecutors and the National Guard into high-crime communities.”
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.