Donald Trump is safe after what officials say was the second, unsuccessful assassination attempt in two months. The FBI took the lead after Sunday’s shooting with the suspect in custody — and with Americans facing another dramatic event in what is already a high-stakes, high-drama election. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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LOS ANGELES — Being a venture capitalist carries a lot of prestige in Silicon Valley. Those who choose which startups to fund see themselves as fostering the next big waves of technology.
So when some of the industry’s biggest names endorsed former President Donald Trump and the onetime venture capitalist he picked for a running mate, JD Vance, people took notice.
Then hundreds of other venture capitalists — some high profile, others lesser-known — threw their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris, drawing battle lines over which presidential candidate will be better for tech innovation and the conditions startups need to thrive.
Venture capitalist and Harris backer Stephen DeBerry says some of his best friends support Trump. Though centered in a part of Northern California known for liberal politics, the investors who help finance the tech industry have long been a more politically divided bunch.
“We ski together. Our families are together. We’re super tight,” said DeBerry, who runs the Bronze Venture Fund. “This is not about not being able to talk to each other. I love these guys — they’re almost all guys. They’re dear friends. We just have a difference of perspective on policy issues.”
It remains to be seen if the more than 700 venture capitalists who’ve voiced support for a movement called “VCs for Kamala” will match the pledges of Trump’s well-heeled supporters such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.
“There are a lot of practical reasons for VCs to support Trump,” including policies that could drive corporate profits and stock market values and favor wealthy benefactors, said David Cowan, an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. But Cowan said he is supporting Harris as a VC with a “long-term investment horizon” because a “Trump world reeling from rampant income inequality, raging wars and global warming is not an attractive environment” for funding healthy businesses.
Several prominent VCs have voiced their support for Trump on Musk’s social platform X. Public records show some of them have donated to a new, pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC, whose donors include powerful tech industry conservatives with ties to SpaceX and Paypal and who run in Musk’s social circle. Also driving support is Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency and promise to end an enforcement crackdown on the industry.
Although some Biden policies have alienated parts of the investment sector concerned about tax policy, antitrust scrutiny or overregulation, Harris’ bid for the presidency has reenergized interest from VCs who until recently sat on the sidelines.
“We buy risk, right? And we’re trying to buy the right type of risk,” Leslie Feinzaig, founder of “VCs for Kamala” said in an interview. “It’s really hard for these companies that are trying to build products and scale to do so in an unpredictable institutional environment.”
The schism in tech has left some firms split in their allegiances. Although venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of the firm that is their namesake, endorsed Trump, one of their firm’s general partners, John O’Farrell, pledged his support for Harris. O’Farrell declined further comment.
Doug Leone, the former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, endorsed Trump in June, expressing concern on X “about the general direction of our country, the state of our broken immigration system, the ballooning deficit, and the foreign policy missteps, among other issues.” But Leone’s longtime business partner at Sequoia, Michael Moritz, wrote in the Financial Times that tech leaders supporting Trump “are making a big mistake.”
Much of the VC discourse about elections is in response to a July podcast and manifesto in which Andreessen and Horowitz backed Trump and outlined their vision of a “Little Tech Agenda” that they said contrasted with the policies sought by Big Tech.
They accused the U.S. government of increasing hostility toward startups and the VCs who fund them, citing Biden’s proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and regulations they said could hobble emerging industries involving blockchain and artificial intelligence.
Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio who spent time in San Francisco working at Thiel’s investment firm, voiced a similar perspective about “little tech” more than a month before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate.
“The donors who were really involved in Silicon Valley in a pro-Trump way, they’re not big tech, right? They’re little tech. They’re starting innovative companies. They don’t want the government to destroy their ability to innovate,” Vance said in an interview on Fox News in June.
Complicating the allegiances is that a tough approach to breaking up the monopoly power of big corporations no longer falls along partisan lines. Vance has spoken favorably of Lina Khan, who Biden picked to lead the Federal Trade Commission and has taken on several tech giants. Meanwhile, some of the most influential VCs backing Harris — such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, an early investor in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI — have sharply criticized Khan’s approach.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat whose California district encompasses part of Silicon Valley, said Trump supporters are a vocal minority reflecting a “third or less” of the region’s tech community. But while the White House has appealed to tech entrepreneurs with its investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and semiconductors, Khanna said Democrats must do a better job of showing that they understand the appeal of digital assets.
Naseem Sayani, a general partner at Emmeline Ventures, said Andreessen and Horowitz’s support of Trump became a lightning rod for those in tech who do not back the Republican nominee. Sayani signed onto “VCs for Kamala,” she said, because she wanted the types of businesses that she helps fund to know that the investor community is not monolithic.
“We’re not single-profile founders anymore,” she said. “There’s women, there’s people of color, there’s all the intersections. How can they feel comfortable building businesses when the environment they’re in doesn’t actually support their existence in some ways?”
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Iran’s threatening behavior toward the United States and its ally Israel is one of only a few foreign policy issues addressed by U.S. presidential rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the election campaign. Michael Lipin looks at the differing approaches of Harris and Trump in facing the threat from Iran and its proxies.
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When Kamala Harris and Donald Trump faced each other on the debate stage less than two months before Election Day, the two candidates were at odds on issues ranging from the economy to tariffs and Ukraine. But on immigration, their positions were especially different. VOA immigration reporter Aline Barros brings us the story.
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SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio.
Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents’ fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000.
At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.
“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life,” Joseph said.
A “Welcome To Our City” sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line Springfield’s main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising “CultureFest,” the city’s annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby.
Melanie Flax Wilt, a Republican commissioner in the county where Springfield is located, said she has been pushing for community and political leaders to “stop feeding the fear.”
“After the election and everybody’s done using Springfield, Ohio, as a talking point for immigration reform, we are going to be the ones here still living through the challenges and coming up with the solutions,” she said.
Ariel Dominique, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy, said she laughed at first at the absurdity of the false claims. But seeing the comments repeated on national television by the former president was painful.
“It is so unfair and unjust and completely contrary to what we have contributed to the world, what we have contributed to this nation for so long,” Dominique said.
The falsehoods about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants were spread online by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on the eve of Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders.
“This is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at the debate after repeating the falsehoods. When challenged by ABC News moderator David Muir over the false claims, Trump held firm, saying “people on television” said their dogs were eaten, but he offered no evidence.
Officials in Springfield have tried to tamp down the misinformation by saying there have been no credible or detailed reports of any pets being abducted or eaten. State leaders are trying to help address some of the real challenges facing the city.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Tuesday he would add more law enforcement and health care resources to an aid package the state has already provided to Springfield.
Many Haitians have come to the U.S. to flee poverty and violence. They have embraced President Joe Biden’s new and expanded legal pathways to enter, and have shunned illegal crossings, accounting for only 92 border arrests out of more than 56,000 in July, the latest data available.
The Biden administration recently announced an estimated 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. could remain in the country at least through February 2026, with eligibility for work authorization, under a law called Temporary Protected Status. The goal is to spare people from being deported to countries in turmoil.
Springfield, about 72 kilometers from the state capital of Columbus, suffered a steep decline in its manufacturing sector toward the end of the last century, and its population shrank as a result. But its downtown has been revitalized in recent years as more Haitians arrived and helped meet the rising demand for labor as the economy emerged from the pandemic. Officials say Haitians now account for about 15% of the population.
The city was shaken last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license. During a city commission meeting on Tuesday, the boy’s parents condemned politicians’ use of their son’s death to stoke hatred.
Last week, a post on the social media platform X shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The post claimed without evidence that the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” saw a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, outside a house where it claimed Haitians lived. It was accompanied by a photo of a Black man carrying what appeared to be a goose by its feet.
On Monday, Vance posted on X: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” The next day, he posted again, saying his office had received inquiries from Springfield residents who said “their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants.”
Longtime Springfield resident Chris Hazel, who knows the park and neighborhood where the pet and goose abductions were purported to have happened, called the claims “preposterous.”
“It reminds me of when people used to accuse others and outsiders as cannibals. It’s dehumanizing a community,” he said of the accusations against the city’s Haitian residents.
Sophia Pierrilus, the daughter of a former Haitian diplomat who moved to the Ohio capital of Columbus 15 years ago and is now an immigrant advocate, agreed, calling it all political.
“My view is that’s their way to use Haitians as a scapegoat to bring some kind of chaos in America,” she said.
With its rising population of immigrants, Springfield is hardly an outlier. So far this decade, immigration has accounted for almost three-quarters of U.S. population growth, with 2.5 million immigrants arriving in the United States between 2020 and 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Population growth is an important driver of economic growth.
“The Haitian immigrants who started moving to Springfield the last few years are the reason why the economy and the labor force has been revitalized there,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which provides legal and social services to immigrants across the U.S.
Now, she said, Haitians in Springfield have told her that, out of fear, they are considering leaving the city.
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washington — Recent moves by Pyongyang have focused attention on what will be one of the first major foreign policy challenges facing the next U.S. president: how to deal with North Korea’s rapidly developing nuclear threat.
In a set of rapid-fire developments on Friday:
— North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an “exponential increase” in the size of his nation’s nuclear arsenal, according to the state-run news agency KCNA. He made the same call in speeches on Tuesday and on the last day of 2022.
— State media released photos for the first time of the Nuclear Weapons Institute where North Korea processes uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The photos, which showed a sophisticated array of centrifuges, were made public as Kim toured the facility.
— North Korea announced that it had tested a new type of 600 mm multiple rocket launcher the previous day. South Korea said on Thursday that North Korea test-fired several short-range ballistic missiles into the waters off the eastern coast.
The developments came in the context of enhanced military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, which is believed to be helping Pyongyang to develop its weapons capabilities in exchange for munitions used in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The threat from North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs has been growing steadily and virtually unchecked over the course of several U.S. administrations,” said Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea.
“Whoever the next U.S. president is, she or he will face a more sophisticated and dangerous North Korean threat.”
Revere said in an interview that the winner of the U.S. election would have to find ways to weaken the link between Moscow and Pyongyang “and demonstrate to Beijing that its ‘partnership without limits’ with Russia is a dangerous and ill-advised path that will yield no benefits” for China.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared in May a “new era” in opposition to the U.S. and reaffirmed the “no limits” partnership that was first announced just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
While China has held back on providing Russia with arms for its war effort, the United States has accused it of delivering electronic components and other dual-use items that are keeping Moscow’s arms industry afloat.
Pyongyang, for its part, denies participating in any arms transfers to Russia, an act that would violate United Nations sanctions.
But a report this week by Conflict Armament Research, a U.K.-based group that tracks weapons in armed conflicts, said parts from four North Korean missiles have been found in Ukraine.
The missiles, examined by Kyiv, are either KN-23 or KN-24, known as Hwasong-11 short-range missile series, and thought to have been used in attacks in July and August, the report said.
Pyongyang-Moscow military ties have also been expanded to include tourism, trade, and economic and technical cooperation.
This makes the use of sanctions less effective as a policy tool to counter North Korea’s nuclear buildup, according to Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration.
“That’s not as much leverage now as it was before because of the Russian-North Korean relationship,” said Samore. “The U.S. doesn’t have very strong economic leverage that it can use with North Korea.”
With few obvious policy options available, the two presidential candidates – former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris – have largely confined themselves to criticizing each other’s approach without laying out any specific plans to roll back the North Korean threat.
At Tuesday night’s televised debate, Harris criticized Trump for exchanging “love letters with Kim Jong Un” during his presidency while Trump disapproved of the current administration’s handling of the issue, saying, “Look at what’s going on in North Korea.”
During his presidency, Trump held three summits with Kim but the diplomatic effort ultimately failed when Trump refused Kim’s demand for sanctions relief in exchange for a partial rollback of his nuclear program.
There have been no formal talks between the two countries since, although the Biden administration insists it is open to negotiations without preconditions, a policy that Harris could be expected to continue if elected.
The Biden administration also maintains that its goal remains the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, even as many experts suggest it is time to acknowledge that Pyongyang will not give up its weapons and say the international community should focus on containment.
Samore predicted that a Harris administration would continue to say that “as an ultimate objective … the U.S. seeks denuclearization in the long term.”
A second Trump administration, he theorized, may say “denuclearization is no longer possible” and “accept North Korea as a nuclear power.”
Robert Rapson, who served as charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said much would depend on how the winner of the election decides to work with regional allies South Korea and Japan.
“In the likely absence of any grand outreach towards Pyongyang, Harris will have to carefully manage the relationship with ally Seoul, with a focus for the foreseeable future on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula,” he said.
He added that it was “uncertain at this moment” whether Trump would feel compelled to reach out to Kim and whether he would diminish the value of the alliances with South Korea and Japan.
Eunjung Cho contributed to this report.
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Parenthood has become politicized this election season. As U.S. birthrates decline and more Americans choose not to start a family, some portend the collapse of the U.S. economy and society. But experts say it’s not that simple. Tina Trinh reports.
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RANCHO PALOS VERDES, California — Donald Trump refused on Friday to weigh in on recent racist and conspiratorial comments from right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer, who traveled with him earlier this week to the debate and several 9/11 memorial events.
“Laura’s been a supporter of mine,” Trump told reporters at a press conference near Los Angeles, where he was pressed on concerns from Republican allies about his ongoing association with Loomer.
“I don’t control Laura,” Trump said. “I can’t tell Laura what to do. She’s a supporter.”
Trump said Loomer has “strong opinions” but said he was unaware of her recent comments, including a post on X in which she played on racist stereotypes by writing that “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” of his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, wins in November. Harris is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants.
Loomer’s appearances on the campaign trail with Trump have alarmed many of the former president’s allies who worry he is hurting his chances of winning in November, particularly as Harris has driven up Democratic enthusiasm and repeatedly put Trump on the defensive in Tuesday’s debate. Harris was campaigning Friday across Pennsylvania.
Loomer’s comments have drawn rebuke from Trump allies, including Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Georgia congresswoman, herself known for spreading conspiracies, called the post about curry “appalling and extremely racist” and said it did not represent Trump’s movement.
Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, called Loomer “a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning reelection. Enough.”
Trump’s comments came at a news conference at his Los Angeles-area golf club after days of criticism of his performance at this week’s debate.
Trump, in remarks, unleashed against Harris a litany of attacks that his aides had suggested he would focus on during the debate, including accusing her of having been soft on crime in her previous positions.
Before she served as vice president, Harris represented California in the Senate and also served as the state’s attorney general and the district attorney of San Francisco.
“She destroyed San Francisco, and she destroyed the state,” Trump charged. He also assailed the ABC anchors who moderated the debate. He’ll travel later Friday to northern California for a fundraiser, followed by a rally in Las Vegas, the largest city in swing state Nevada.
Harris headed to Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre on Friday, campaigning in counties where Trump won in 2016 and 2020, as she tries to capitalize on her momentum after Tuesday night’s debate.
It’s her second day of back-to-back rallies after holding two events in North Carolina, another swing state, on Thursday. Her campaign is aiming to hit every market in every battleground state over four days, with stops by Harris, her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and other surrogates in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.
While speaking in Charlotte, Harris took a victory lap for her debate performance in which she needled Trump and kept him on the defensive. Recounting one moment while campaigning in North Carolina, she mocked Trump for saying he had “concepts of a plan” for replacing the Affordable Care Act.
“Concepts. Concepts. No actual plan. Concepts,” she said as the crowd roared with laughter.
Her campaign said she raised $47 million from 600,000 donors in the 24 hours after her debate with Trump.
Harris said the candidates “owe it to voters to have another debate.” But Trump said he won’t agree to face off with her again.
Trump’s morning press event was the second Friday in a row that the Republican has scheduled a news conference, although at his last appearance in New York, the former president didn’t take any questions. Instead, he railed for nearly an hour against women who have accused him of sexual misconduct over the years, resurrecting the allegations in great detail before his debate with Harris.
Harris has not held a news conference since becoming a presidential candidate, and the Democrat has sat for just one in-depth interview. Her campaign has said she will start doing more interviews with local media outlets in battleground states.
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RANCHO PALOS VERDES, California / WASHINGTON — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump promised mass deportations of Haitian immigrants in an Ohio city on Friday, shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden called for attacks on that community to stop.
“We will do large deportations in Springfield, Ohio,” Trump said at a news conference at his Los Angeles-area golf resort.
While Trump, 78, continued his attacks on immigrants, he did not revisit false and derogatory remarks he made during his debate on Tuesday night with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Those comments, including that the Haitian community was eating household pets, drew a sharp rebuke earlier Friday from Biden.
At a White House event celebrating Black excellence, Biden referred to his White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, as a proud Haitian American.
“A community that’s under attack in our country right now. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America. This has to stop — what he’s doing. It has to stop,” Biden said.
Haitian community leaders across the United States said the Republican candidate’s remarks could put lives at risk and further inflame tensions in Springfield, where thousands of recent Haitian arrivals have boosted the local economy but also have strained the social safety net.
Trump’s comments that “they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats” during the debate were the latest in a long list of lies about immigrants that have defined his political career. It followed a similar false claim spread by his running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance of Ohio, on social media about Springfield’s new residents.
City officials say they have received no credible reports of anyone eating household animals. Karen Graves, a city spokesperson, said she was not aware of recent hate crimes targeting Haitian residents but that some had been victims of “crimes of opportunity,” such as property theft.
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Former President Trump and Vice President Harris offer worlds-apart contrasts on top issues in presidential race
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ATLANTA — The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and others on Thursday tossed out three counts in the indictment — including two counts brought against the former president — saying that they lie beyond the state’s jurisdiction.
The case against Trump and others who are appealing an order allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue prosecuting the case is on hold while that appeal is pending. But Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued orders Thursday based on motions filed by two defendants, Shawn Still and John Eastman, who are not part of that appeal, meaning the case against them is not paused.
In the Georgia case — one of four criminal prosecutions against the Republican presidential nominee — a grand jury in August 2023 returned a 41-count indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging conspiracy to illegally try to overturn Trump’s narrow loss in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four people pleaded guilty last year after reaching deals with prosecutors.
Trump and other defendants tried to get Willis and her office removed from the case, arguing that a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired to lead the case, created a conflict of interest. McAfee ruled that there was not a conflict of interest that warranted Willis’ disqualification, as long as Wade left the case. Trump and others have appealed, and the Georgia Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments in December.
The judge in March had thrown out six counts of the indictment, a ruling that prosecutors are appealing. Even with a total of nine counts quashed, 32 counts remain, including an overarching racketeering charge brought against all of the defendants.
At issue in Thursday’s ruling are two counts having to do with the filing of a document with the federal court in Atlanta that declared that Trump had won the state of Georgia and 16 Republicans who signed the document were the “duly elected and qualified electors” from the state.
One of the counts charges three of those Republicans, including Still, with filing false documents. The other charges Trump and others, including Eastman, with conspiracy to file false documents.
McAfee wrote that punishing someone for filing certain documents with a federal court would “enable a state to constrict the scope of materials assessed by a federal court and impair the administration of justice in that tribunal to police its own proceedings.” He concluded that those two counts must be quashed “as beyond the jurisdiction of this State.”
The third count charges Trump and Eastman with filing false documents, saying they “knowingly and unlawfully” filed a lawsuit with the federal court in Atlanta while “having reason to know” that the document included at least one “materially false” statement about the 2020 election in Georgia.
McAfee cited case law that says complaints filed in federal court fall within the scope federal perjury statutes and said the charge must be quashed.
A spokesperson for Willis said prosecutors are reviewing the order and declined to comment.
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The U.S. presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remains tight. But Harris has opened a sizable lead over Trump among one group of voters — women, who vote at higher rates than men. As VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, Harris’ late entry into the race widened the political parties’ gender gap.
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This year, about 8 million young people will turn 18 and become eligible to vote. In all, an estimated 41 million members of Gen Z — people under age 27 — will be able to vote in the 2024 presidential election
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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were abducting and eating pets, repeating during a televised debate the type of inflammatory and anti-immigrant rhetoric he has promoted throughout his campaigns.
There is no evidence that Haitian immigrants in an Ohio community are doing that, officials say. But during the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump specifically mentioned Springfield, Ohio, the town at the center of the claims, saying that immigrants were taking over the city.
“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said.
Harris called Trump “extreme” and laughed after his comment. Debate moderators pointed out that city officials have said the claims are not true.
Trump’s comments echoed claims made by his campaign, including his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, and other Republicans. The claims attracted attention this week when Vance posted on social media that his office has “received many inquiries” about Haitian migrants abducting pets. Vance acknowledged Tuesday it was possible “all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
Officials have said there have been no credible or detailed reports about the claims, even as Trump and his allies use them to amplify racist stereotypes about Black and brown immigrants.
While president, Trump questioned why the U.S. would accept people from “s—hole” countries such as Haiti and some in Africa. His 2024 campaign has focused heavily on illegal immigration, often referencing in his speeches crimes committed by migrants. He argues immigrants are responsible for driving up crime and drug abuse in the United States and taking resources from American citizens.
Here’s a closer look at how the false claims have spread.
How did this get started?
On September 6, a post surfaced on X that shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The retweeted post talked about the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” seeing a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, claiming without evidence that Haitians lived at the house. The accompanying photo showed a Black man carrying what appeared to be a Canada goose by its feet. That post continued to be shared on social media.
On Monday, Vance posted on X: “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 said. The next day, Vance posted again on X about Springfield, saying his office had received inquiries from residents who said “their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
Other Republicans shared similar posts. Among them was Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who posted a photo of kittens with a caption that said to vote for Trump “So Haitian immigrants don’t eat us.”
Hours before Trump’s debate with Harris, he posted two related photos on his social media site. One Truth Social post was a photo of Trump surrounded by cats and geese. Another featured armed cats wearing MAGA hats.
A billboard campaign launched by the Republican Party of Arizona at 12 sites in metropolitan Phoenix plays off the false rumors. The billboard image resembles a Chick-fil-A ad, portraying four kittens and urging people to “Vote Republican!” and “Eat Less Kittens.”
Chick-fil-A said the party didn’t reach out to the restaurant chain before running the ad, declining to comment further. In a statement, the state party said the ad humorously underscores the need for border security.
What do officials in Ohio say?
The office of the Springfield city manager, Bryan Heck, issued a statement knocking down the rumors.
“In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” Heck’s office said in an emailed statement.
Springfield police on Monday told the Springfield News-Sun that they had received no reports of stolen or eaten pets.
Governor Mike DeWine held a news conference Tuesday to address the influx of Haitian immigrants to Springfield. He said he will send state troopers to Springfield to help local law enforcement deal with traffic issues and is earmarking $2.5 million over two years to provide more primary health care to immigrant families.
DeWine declined to address the allegations, deferring comment to local officials. But he repeatedly spoke in support of the people of Haiti, where his family has long operated a charity.
What do we know about a separate case 281 km away?
An entirely unrelated incident that occurred last month in Canton, Ohio, quickly and erroneously conflated into the discussion.
On Aug. 26, Canton police charged a 27-year-old woman with animal cruelty and disorderly conduct after she “did torture, kill, and eat a cat in a residential area in front (of) multiple people,” according to a police report.
But Allexis Ferrell is not Haitian. She was born in Ohio and graduated from Canton’s McKinley High School in 2015, according to public records and newspaper reports. Court records show she has been in and out of trouble with the law since at least 2017. Messages seeking comment were not returned by several attorneys who have represented her.
She is being held in Stark County jail pending a competency hearing next month, according to the prosecutor’s office.
What do advocates for Haitian immigrants say?
The posts create a false narrative and could be dangerous for Haitians in the United States, according to Guerline Jozef, founder and executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a group that supports and advocates for immigrants of African descent
“We are always at the receiving end of all kind of barbaric, inhumane narratives and treatments, specifically when it comes to immigration,” Jozef said in a phone interview.
Her comments echoed White House national security spokesman John Kirby.
“There will be people that believe it, no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is,” Kirby said. “And they might act on that kind of information, and act on it in a way where somebody could get hurt. So it needs to stop.”
What is the broader context of Haitians in Ohio and the United States?
Springfield, a city of roughly 60,000, has seen its Haitian population grow in recent years. It’s impossible to give an exact number, according to the city, but it estimates Springfield’s entire county has an overall immigrant population of 15,000.
The city also says that the Haitian immigrants are in the country legally under a federal program that allows for 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 United States because conditions in Haiti 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.
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TOPEKA, Kansas — State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the U.S. Postal Service that it hasn’t fixed persistent deficiencies.
In an alarming letter, the officials said that in the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable, a problem that could automatically send voters to inactive status through no fault of their own, potentially creating chaos when those voters show up to cast a ballot.
The officials also said that repeated outreach to the Postal Service to resolve the issues had failed and that the widespread nature of the problems made it clear these were “not one-off mistakes or a problem with specific facilities. Instead, it demonstrates a pervasive lack of understanding and enforcement of USPS policies among its employees.”
The letter to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy came from two groups that represent top election administrators in all 50 states.
“We have not seen improvement or concerted efforts to remediate our concerns,” they told DeJoy.
“We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service,” they added. “Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”
‘Ready to deliver’
The Postal Service on Wednesday reiterated DeJoy’s assurances that it’s well positioned to swiftly deliver election mail despite being in the midst of a network modernization that has caused some delivery hiccups. Mail is being delivered in 2.7 days on average, officials said.
However, the Postal Service is urging voters not to procrastinate.
“We are ready to deliver. We were successful in 2020 delivering a historic volume of mail-in ballots; also in 2022 and will do so again in November 2024,” Adrienne Marshall, director of election mail and government services, said in a statement.
The two groups, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, said local election officials “in nearly every state” are receiving timely postmarked ballots after Election Day and outside the three to five business days USPS claims as the standard for first-class mail.
The letter comes less than two weeks after DeJoy said in an interview that the Postal Service was ready to handle a flood of mail ballots expected as part of this November’s presidential election and as former President Donald Trump continues to sow doubts about U.S. elections by falsely claiming he won in 2020.
That year, amid the global pandemic, election officials reported sending just more than 69 million ballots in the mail, a substantial increase from four years earlier.
While it’s likely that number will be smaller now, many voters have embraced mail voting and come to rely on it. And both Democrats and Republicans have launched efforts to push supporters to vote early, either in person or by mail to “bank” their votes before Election Day on November 5.
Officials in rural states have been critical of the Postal Service for years as it has consolidated mail-processing centers to cut its costs and financial losses.
Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, the recent past president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, sent his own letter in recent days to DeJoy. He said nearly 1,000 ballots from his state’s August 6 primary election couldn’t be counted because they arrived too late or without postmarks — and more continue to come in.
“The Pony Express is more efficient at this point,” Schwab posted on the social media platform X in late August.
Schwab and other Kansas election officials also have said some ballots arrive on time but without postmarks, which keeps them from being counted under Kansas law. What’s more, Schwab told DeJoy, local postal clerks have told election officials that they can’t add postmarks later even if it’s clear that the Postal Service handled the ballot ahead of the mail-in deadline.
Schwab has promoted the use of local ballot drop boxes for voting in advance, breaking with other Republicans who have suggested without evidence that they can be sources of fraud. Schwab has long said the boxes are more secure than the U.S. mail.
“Keep your ballot out of the hands of the federal government!” he advised voters in a post on X after the August primary.
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Washington — When the U.S. announced the seizure of 32 internet domains tied to Russian efforts to ply American voters with disinformation ahead of November’s presidential election, prosecutors were quick to note the use of artificial intelligence, or AI.
The Russian operation, known as Doppelganger, drove internet and social media users to the fake news using a variety of methods, the charging documents said, including advertisements that were “in some cases created using artificial intelligence.”
AI tools were also used to “generate content, including images and videos, for use in negative advertisements about U.S. politicians,” the indictment added.
And Russia is far from alone in turning to AI in the hopes of swaying U.S. voters.
“The primary actors we’ve seen for election use of this are Iran and Russia, although as various private companies have noticed, China also has used artificial intelligence for spreading divisive narratives in the United States,” according to a senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive information.
“What we’ve seen is artificial intelligence is used by foreign actors to make their content more quickly and convincingly tailor their synthetic content in both audio and video forms,” the official added.
But other U.S. officials say the use of AI to spread misinformation and disinformation in the lead-up to the U.S. election has so far failed to live up to some of the more dire warnings about how deepfakes and other AI-generated material could shake-up the American political landscape.
“Generative AI is not going to fundamentally introduce new threats to this election cycle,” according to Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the U.S. agency charged with overseeing election security.
“What we’re seeing is consistent with what we expected to see,” Conley told VOA.
AI “is exacerbating existing threats, in both the cyber domain and the foreign malign influence operation-disinformation campaigns,” she said. But little of what has been put out to this point has shocked officials at CISA or the myriad state and local governments who run elections across the country.
“This threat vector is not new to them,” Conley said. “And they have taken the measures to ensure they’re prepared to respond effectively.”
As an example, Conley pointed to the rash of robocalls that targeted New Hampshire citizens ahead of the state’s first in the nation primary in January, using fake audio of U.S. President Joe Biden to tell people to stay home and “save your vote.”
New Hampshire’s attorney general quickly went public, calling the robocalls an apparent attempt to suppress votes and telling voters the incident was under investigation.
This past May, prosecutors indicted a Louisiana political consultant in connection with the scheme.
More recently, the alleged use of AI prompted a celebrity endorsement in the U.S. presidential race by pop star Taylor Swift.
“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” Swift wrote in an Instagram social media post late Tuesday.
“It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter,” she wrote, adding, “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
But experts and analysts say for all the attention AI is getting, the use of such technology in attacks and other influence operations has been limited.
“There’s not a tremendous amount of it in the wild that’s particularly successful right now, at least to my knowledge,” said Katie Gray, a senior partner at In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s technology-focused, not-for-profit strategic investment firm.
“Most attackers are not using the most sophisticated methods to penetrate systems,” she said on September 4 at a cybersecurity summit in Washington.
Others suggest that at least for the moment, the fears surrounding AI have outpaced its usefulness by malicious actors.
‘We jump to the doomsday science fiction,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent and counterterror consultant who heads up the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC).
“But instead, what we’re seeing is the number one challenge to all of this right now is access, just getting to the [AI] tools and accessing them,” he said, speaking like Gray at the cybersecurity summit.
Over the past 14 months, MTAC has logged hundreds of instances of AI use by China, Russia and Iran, Watts said. And analysts found that Moscow and Tehran, in particular, have struggled to get access to a fully AI toolbox.
The Russians “need to use their own tools from the start, rather than Western tools, because they’re afraid they’ll get knocked off those systems,” Watts said.
Iran is even further behind.
“They’ve tried different tools,” Watts said. “They just can’t get access to most of them for the most part.”
U.S. adversaries also appear to be having difficulties with the underlying requirements to make AI effective.
“To do scaled AI operations is not cheap,” Watts said. “Some of the infrastructure and the resources of it [AI], the models, the data it needs to be trained [on] – very challenging at the moment.”
And Watts said until the products generated by AI get better, attempted deepfakes will likely have trouble resonating with the targeted audiences.
“Audiences have been remarkably brilliant about detecting deepfakes in crowds. The more you watch somebody, the more you realize a fake isn’t quite right,” according to Watts. “The Russian actors that we’ve seen, all of them have tried deepfakes and they’ve moved back to bread and butter, small video manipulations.”
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In the U.S. presidential election, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, clashed with his Democratic Party rival, Kamala Harris, Tuesday evening over issues such as abortion, immigration and foreign policy. VOA’s chief national correspondent Steve Herman has details from the candidates’ first debate in Philadelphia.
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WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump faced off on Tuesday night in Philadelphia in a debate that comes less than two months before the presidential election.
The race is tight between the two candidates. Among registered voters, Harris leads Trump by 1 point — 49% to 48% — according to the latest PBS/NPR/Marist poll. That result falls within the margin of error.
The ABC debate marks the first face-to-face meeting between Harris, 59, and Trump, 78.
A former prosecutor, Harris is the first woman, Black American and South Asian American vice president. Trump, a businessman who has been criticized for his sexist and racist remarks, is the first convicted felon to run for president and, if elected, would be 82 by the end of his term.
During what could be their only debate, Harris and Trump sparred on issues ranging from the economy and immigration to democracy, abortion and the Israel-Hamas war.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the debate.
Economy
The economy was the debate’s first topic, with Harris saying she wants to create an “opportunity economy.” She cited her plan to increase the tax credit for starting new small businesses from $5,000 to $50,000.
“I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class,” she said, adding that Trump wants to help the rich with tax cuts.
Trump has said he will further reduce the corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 15%. Harris wants to increase the rate to 28%. It was 35% before Trump’s 2017 tax bill.
Trump spent much of his answer on the economy talking about immigration. However, he also said he created one of the best economies in the United States, without offering specifics, and that he will do it again.
“Look, we’ve had a terrible economy, because inflation, which is really known as a country buster,” Trump said.
Immigration
Immigration has been one of the biggest issues in this presidential campaign. Throughout the debate, Trump lambasted the Biden administration’s handling of immigration – often when the moderators asked questions unrelated to immigration.
Trump repeated his false claims that immigrants are “taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently.” He also cited baseless conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pet dogs and cats.
Harris criticized Trump for killing a bipartisan bill earlier this year that would have put 1,500 more border agents on the U.S. southern border. Harris has said she would support the bill.
Abortion
Trump and Harris grew increasingly combative when debating the question of abortion.
As president, Trump appointed three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped form the majority that overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. That decision laid the groundwork for states to impose restrictive rules on abortion around the country.
“The Supreme Court had great courage in doing it,” Trump said during the debate.
When asked if he would support a national abortion ban, he said: “No, I’m not in favor of abortion ban. But it doesn’t matter because this issue has now been taken over by the states.”
He also said he would not oppose abortion in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk. He also falsely claimed that Democrats support abortions “after birth.”
In response, Harris emphasized the importance of women’s reproductive rights.
“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” she said. She added that she would support Congress passing a bill to codify federal abortion protections and, as president, sign it into law.
Rule of law, threats to democracy and Jan. 6
Harris was a prosecutor for a dozen years, first as San Francisco district attorney and then as California’s attorney general. A central component of Harris’ campaign has been portraying Trump as a threat to democracy.
During the debate, Harris highlighted Trump’s status as a convicted felon. Trump replied with the unsubstantiated accusation that Harris and the Biden administration are “weaponizing” the government to prosecute him
When asked by the moderator whether Trump would acknowledge that he lost the 2020 presidential election, he replied with the false claim that he actually won the election. On the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump said, “I had nothing to do with that, other than they asked me to make a speech.”
“It’s time to turn the page,” Harris said.
“There is a place in our campaign for you to stand for our country, to stand for democracy, to stand for rule of law and to end the chaos and to end the approach that is about attacking the foundations of our democracy,” she added.
Russia-Ukraine War and Israel-Hamas War
In addition to domestic policy, the moderators also pressed Harris and Trump on foreign policy issues, including the ongoing wars between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Hamas.
On the Israel-Hamas war, Harris said the United States would defend Israel. She added that she supports a two-state solution. The war “must end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a cease-fire deal, and we need the hostages out,” Harris said.
Trump claimed that “Israel will be gone” if Harris becomes president, which is unsubstantiated. Trump also repeated his claim that the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas in southern Israel would have never happened if he were president.
Trump said the Russia-Ukraine war would not have happened if he were president. When asked if he wants Ukraine to win the war against Russia, Trump would only say, “I want the war to stop.”
Harris replied: “If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now.”
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WASHINGTON — Taylor Swift, one of the music industry’s biggest stars, endorsed Kamala Harris for president shortly after the debate ended on Tuesday night.
“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post, which included a link to a voter registration website.
Swift has a dedicated following among young women, a key demographic in the November election, and her latest tour has generated more than $1 billion in ticket sales. In a half hour, the post received more than 2.3 million likes.
She included a picture of herself holding her cat Benjamin Button, and she signed the message “Childless Cat Lady.” The remark is a reference to 3-year-old comments made by JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, about women without children not having an equal stake in the country’s future.
A Harris senior campaign official said the endorsement was not coordinated with the campaign. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, appeared to learn about the endorsement in the middle of a live interview on MSNBC. As Rachel Maddow read the text, Walz broke into a smile and patted his chest.
“That was eloquent. And it was clear,” Walz said. “And that’s the kind of courage we need in America to stand up.”
Swift wrote that her endorsement was partially prompted by Trump’s decision to post AI-generated pictures suggesting that she had endorsed him. One showed Swift dressed as Uncle Sam, and the text said, “Taylor wants YOU to VOTE for DONALD TRUMP.”
Trump’s posts “brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter,” Swift wrote. She added that “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice.”
The Trump campaign dismissed Swift’s endorsement.
“This is further evidence that the Democrat Party has unfortunately become a party of the wealthy elites,” said spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.
“There’s many Swifties for Trump out there in America,” she said, herself included.
Swift’s endorsement was not exactly a surprise. In 2020, she supported President Joe Biden, and she cheered for Harris in her debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence. She also was openly critical of Trump, saying he had stoked “the fires of white supremacy and racism.”
Swift is a popular figure nationwide, but especially among Democrats. An October 2023 Fox News poll found that 55% of voters overall, including 68% of Democrats, said they had a favorable view of Swift. Republicans were divided, with 43% having a favorable opinion and 45% an unfavorable one.
AP VoteCast suggests that a partisan divide on Swift was apparent as early as 2018. That’s the year Swift made her first political endorsement, supporting Tennessee Democrat Phil Bredesen for Senate over Republican Marsha Blackburn.
VoteCast found that among Tennessee voters that year, 55% of Democrats and just 19% of Republicans said they had a favorable opinion of Swift. Blackburn won by a comfortable margin in the deep red state.
Swift is the leading nominee at Wednesday’s MTV Video Music Awards. While it’s unclear whether Swift will attend the show in New York, she could use any acceptance speeches to elaborate on her support of Harris.
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