While the raging debates over cats – first childless cat ladies and now whether or not Haitian migrants are actually eating felines in Springfield, OH – might seem small on the surface, the ferocity reveals much more fundamental issues underneath.
Six months ago, if you were to suggest that the presidential election would be dominated by cat memes and talk of cats in general, I would have said you are crazy. Surely, more important issues, from the economy to the multiple wars happening around the world would take precedence, but for better or worse, this is proving to be a contest unlike any other in American history on matters both large and small. While the raging debates over cats – first childless cat ladies and now whether or not Haitian migrants are actually eating felines in Springfield, OH – might seem small on the surface, the ferocity on both sides reveals much more fundamental issues underneath, making the cats themselves merely a symbol for what really divides the country. The most recent controversy began before last week’s debate, but former President Donald Trump thrust it into the national consciousness as only he can, when he declared on stage, before almost 70 million viewers, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” The “they” in this case is a rather sudden and large influx of Haitian refugees in a small Ohio town. Conservatives believe this influx represents the complete failure of the Biden-Harris immigration policy and the accompanying danger to the average citizen while progressives claim it is an outright lie, representing the hate and racism the former President and his supporters hold for immigrants in general. Springfield itself is a small, unremarkable, unheralded town in southwestern Ohio off Interstate 70, west of Columbus and a little north and east of Cincinnati. Like many of its kind in the Midwest, Springfield used to boast a vibrant manufacturing industry. In fact, it was a pioneer in aviation once upon a time. The Wright Brothers wrote their original 1904 patent for the first airplane in the Bushnell Building downtown. It was also the home of major factories, producing tires, agricultural equipment, and more. As late as 1983, Newsweek referred to Springfield as one of America’s “dream cities,” but by 2011, Gallup described it as the “unhappiest” in the entire country after the manufacturing plants closed down, leaving many residents without an economic lifeline. Between 1994 and 2011, Springfield experienced the largest drop in median income of any metropolitan area in the United States, some 27%, as the population declined from 82,000 to less than 60,000. Desperate to fight these trends, the city council launched a “Welcome Springfield” campaign in 2014 to encourage new residents, mainly immigrants, and by 2018, began attracting Haitian refugees in the tens of thousands, leading to approximately one quarter of current population being transplants who have arrived in the past six years, some 20,000 in total. Technically, most of the Haitian migrants are there legally as part of the “temporary protected status” program President Biden and Vice President Harris initiated early in their tenure. As the Vice President explained it, “That is why, also, starting with our administration, we gave TPS, temporary protected status, to Haitian migrants, 55,000. And then more recently we extended temporary protected status to over a 100,000 Haitian migrants for that very reason, that they need support, they need protection.”
Whatever the Administration’s reasoning, the impact on the community has been dramatic, dating back long before any of the current cat memes, an impact that shouldn’t be surprising when one in four residents has only recently arrived with barely the clothes on their back, unable to speak the language. Earlier this year, local politicians grew so desperate to cope with the surge of the underprivileged population that they began pleading for federal assistance to support crucial city services that have been unable to keep pace. As House Representative Mike Turner put it recently, “They are in desperate need of federal assistance from a federally created influx of population that have specialized needs of which they’re not getting any aid.” The local mayor, Rob Rue, described the town as “now saturated” while blaming local businesses for attracting the migrants, claiming his “Immigrant Accountability Response Program” “knew they were going to make an effort to bring in individuals who were crossing the border.” Ohio’s Republican Governor, Mike DeWine, apparently agreed with this assessment, committing $2.5 million in state funds late last week to help provide healthcare while criticizing the federal government’s failure to deal with a problem they created. “I want the people of Springfield and Clark County to know that as we move forward, we will continue to do everything we can to help the community deal with this surge of migrants,” he explained. “The federal government has not demonstrated that they have any kind of plan to deal with the issue. We will not walk away.” Meanwhile, community organizations have been importing Creole translators to address the language barrier and local schools have been incredibly strained with 1,500 new students who need instruction in basic English. Perhaps needless to say, relations between the original residents and the new Haitian arrivals haven’t always been ideal for obvious reasons, but the situation deteriorated dramatically last year after a migrant driving illegally slammed into a school bus, rolling it over, killing one child and injuring 23 others. “This morning’s school bus accident in Clark Co. is truly heartbreaking,” Governor DeWine wrote in a statement at the time making no mention that the crash never should’ve happened in the first place because the perpetrator should never have been on the road. “Fran and I offer our sincere condolences to the family of the young child who was killed. Our hearts also go out to those on the bus and their families, peers, and teachers. Our prayers are with you all.” The illegal driver, Hermanio Joseph was ultimately found guilty of vehicular manslaughter and is currently surviving nine to 13 years in prison, but many residents, upset over how rapidly their town was changing for the worse in their eyes, were not appeased.
Last month, several took to a public town council meeting to voice their concerns, some of which are rather extreme and traumatic. One older woman said she was desperate and “wants out of this town.” “I’m done with what I’m seeing,” she said. “It’s so unsafe in my neighborhood anymore. I have the homeless that were trying to camp out and I have made concessions with them and I try to help them to keep them from trying to squat on my property, but it is so unsafe. I have men that cannot speak English in my front yard, screaming at me, throwing mattresses in my front yard, throwing trash in my front yard, and I can’t look – Look at me, I weigh 95 pounds. I couldn’t defend myself if I had to. My husband is elderly.” “I don’t understand what you expect of us as citizens,” she continued. “I understand they’re here under temporary protected status and you’re protecting them, and I understand that our city services are overwhelmed and understaffed, but who’s protecting us? Who’s protecting me? I want out of this town. I am sorry. Please give me a reason to stay.” Another resident, this time a black man, criticized the city council for doing nothing except wearing expensive suits, claiming “these Haitians are running into trash cans, they’re running into buildings on the street, and I don’t know like how you can all be comfortable with this and I don’t know like who’s getting paid from this. I honestly feel like some one’s getting paid from this in advance.” He mentioned a local resident and young mother in need of welfare services, but who couldn’t get them because “there’s nothing but immigrants down there.” Then, he described a chilling scene of Haitian migrants brutalizing local wildlife, similar to the accusation about the cats and dogs though not related to domestic animals. “They’re grabbing up ducks in the park by the neck, cutting the heads off, and walking off with them and eating them,” he said before concluding, “…Y’all need to put on some t-shirts and crocs and come on down here…you all need to do something.” Another resident shared something equally disgusting, claiming to have seen migrants “pulling off of the highway to clean and gut the roadkill.” Somewhere between these statements at the town hall meeting in Springfield and the Presidential debate, a viral post on Facebook introduced the idea that the Haitian migrants were also abducting local pets, cats and dogs, and eating them. This claim, while merely a rumor at this point, received outsized attention when it was retweeted by President Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance and Elon Musk. The town itself almost immediately pushed back, however, claiming they have no “credible evidence” or police reports specifically accusing anyone of killing a pet and eating it. For its part, the media immediately considered the matter closed – while studiously avoiding all of the other concerns and the fact that some in the town government had recently dismissed the same claims regarding geese and ducks only to have them prove true, complete with photographic evidence and calls to the local police. Before the debate and the cat meme controversy, Springfield’s deputy director of public safety and operations, Jason Via, blamed the racist tendency of his own residents and denied anything untoward has been happening at all. “I think it’s sad that some people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear,” he told NPR. “We get these reports ‘the Haitians are killing ducks in a lot of our parks’ or ‘the Haitians are eating vegetables right out of the aisle at the grocery store.’ And we haven’t really seen any of that. It’s really frustrating. As a community, it’s not helpful as we try to move forward.”
Senator JD Vance wasn’t pleased with this sort of response prior to former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris meeting on the debate stage last Tuesday. According to him, residents had been in contact with his Senate office over the past several months about conditions in the area, and rather than accept the prevailing wisdom that Haitians couldn’t possibly be eating cats, he chose to highlight what he saw as the fundamental challenges facing Springfield while urging his supporters to keep the subject front and center. “In the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve 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,” he posted on X. “Do you know what’s confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here,” he continued while highlighting the impact migration has had on health and education services. “If you’re a reporter, or an activist, who didn’t give a shit about these suffering Americans until yesterday, I have some advice: Spare your outrage for your fellow citizens suffering under Kamala Harris’s policies. Be outraged at yourself for letting this happen,” the Senator concluded. Shortly after, he followed up, “In short, don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing.” If tensions were simmering then, the story only exploded from there once his would-be boss, Donald Trump, officially weighed in at the debate. While the media – including the moderators at the debate itself – continued to insist the story was false, believing it’s yet another example of the President spreading right wing hate, conservatives on X and Facebook wouldn’t back down, claiming that only Donald Trump could keep our pets safe in a wide variety of memes including a few musical numbers if you can believe that. In the view of most conservatives, myself included, it doesn’t matter whether or not the claim about eating cats and dogs in particular is true*. The reality is that the town has been fundamentally altered beyond recognition, if not outright destroyed, as a result of the establishment’s industrial policy prior to the Biden-Harris Administration and Biden-Harris’ specific immigration policies over just the last few years. Whatever the local government may insist, they’re supposedly in charge and yet they’re also the ones begging the state and the federal government for assistance because the town is no longer self-sufficient as it once was and is surely supposed to be. Springfield has gone from a proud, independent community to a town that cannot support itself without millions of dollars flowing in from outside. Further, the resources that are already in place are no longer being invested in local residents. They’re being consumed by new arrivals here on a purely temporary status, literally taking from US citizens to give to foreigners. The quality of life has collapsed during the same period, with violent crime increasing to rates significantly higher than the national average (35.4 violent crime rate compared to 22.7). At least one child is dead, and immigrant men and women are literally walking the streets with dead ducks and geese.
The fact that the establishment blames the residents themselves for this, claiming they are haters, tells you exactly where their priorities lie and how little they care about the American taxpayer. It also seems obvious, to me at least, that progressives in their proverbial ivory towers are comfortable punishing the town because it is relatively poor and lacks the power to defend itself. When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis transported around 50 migrants to wealthy, progressive Martha’s Vineyard in 2022, they were removed within 48 hours by 125 members of the National Guard. “Shortly after the arrival of these individuals, Martha’s Vineyard residents joined with local and state officials to create temporary shelter and provide necessities in a moment of urgent need,” Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker said in a statement. “However, the island communities are not equipped to provide sustainable accommodation, and state officials developed a plan to deliver a comprehensive humanitarian response.” Now disgraced Democrat Senator Robert Menendez claimed these migrants don’t belong there because they didn’t fit the “cultural diaspora.” In other words, black and brown people with no resources who don’t speak the language have no place in wealthy neighborhoods. They are some other, most likely poorer communities problem. Similar scenes played out in other Democrat enclaves when other conservative governors transported a few thousand migrants to New York City and Chicago. Democrat mayors there were incensed, claiming their cities couldn’t handle the influx, and demanding immediate assistance, but somehow a small town in Ohio is supposed to withstand a quarter of its population effectively appearing overnight and residents are racist if they disagree? Who in their right mind would want to see this happen to their own town, especially when we know that wealthy progressives will not allow it in theirs? This is why I don’t see the situation as a winning issue for Democrats, whether or not anyone has actually eaten a cat. To a large extent, that is the least of Springfield’s worries thanks to a cataclysmic immigration policy brought out by President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris. Anyone who actually researches the issue is likely to learn what they have done to this town and consider what might happen to their own. It seems clear that the attempts to insist all claims related to Haitian migrants in Springfield have been debunked on account of one rumor proving false are an intentional distraction from the underlying issue, one Democrats and progressives know will not redound to their benefit. Conversely, conservatives are eager to push the issue, cat memes and all, because of this, transforming felines into a metaphor for a much larger debate over immigration, one they are confident they will win.
* To be clear, it’s not clear the claims are false. Conservative personality and scholar Christopher Rufo conducted an investigation and found that there were documented incidents of immigrants eating cats in Dayton, OH, just 30 minutes from Springfield. The migrants in question were from the Republic of Congo, not Haiti, but the details are damning. As he described it:
Our investigation begins in a run-down neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio, the closest major city to Springfield, about a half-hour’s drive away. We identified a social media post, dated August 25, 2023, with a short video depicting what appear to be two skinned cats on top of a blue barbeque. “Yoooo the Africans wildn on Parkwood,” reads the text, referring to Parkwood Drive. The video then pans down to two live cats walking across the grass in front of a run-down fence, with a voice on the video warning: “There go a cat right there. His ass better get missin’, man. Look like his homies on the grill!”
We spoke with the author of the video, who asked to remain anonymous but confirmed its time, location, and authenticity. He told us that he was picking up his son last summer, when he noticed the unusual situation. “It was some Africans that stay right next door to my kid’s mother,” he said. “This African dude next door had the damn cat on the grill.”
We then identified the home by matching it to the visuals in the video and cross-referencing them with the eyewitness. When we knocked on the door of the first unit, a family answered, telling us they were from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and that all of the surrounding units were occupied by other African migrants.
You can learn more here: https://christopherrufo.com/p/the-cat-eaters-of-ohio
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