The claims being made by Trump and Vance are not only completely bogus, they are directly hurting innocent people.

“Over the weekend, two hospitals in Springfield were locked down after bomb threats, police said. Other threats received by Springfield officials have forced government buildings to close, two elementary schools to be evacuated and the students moved to a different location, and a middle school to shut down altogether.”

“After JD Vance first began spreading baseless rumors about Haitians in Springfield, members of the neo-Nazi group “Blood Tribe” marched into the city carrying guns, wearing body armor, and carrying Neo-Nazi flags. At an August 27 town hall meeting, one claimed that the city had been taken over by “degenerate third worlders,” blamed Jews for the influx, and warned that “crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you allow in.”

“Springfield’s Haitian immigrants say they are afraid. Some have kept their children home from school, fearing violence. Others have reported harassment on the street, in their cars, and at stores. A Springfield family whose son died last year when the bus in which he was riding accidentally collided with a car driven by a Haitian immigrant has pleaded for Trump and Vance to stop using their deceased son for political purposes.”

“Trump is now talking about holding a rally in Springfield. ‘We’re going to get these people out,’ Trump said in a Friday news conference. Although Springfield’s Haitian immigrants are in the United States legally, he promised to stage ‘the largest deportation in the history of our country’ if reelected.”

“Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, told CBS News on Wednesday that “these Haitians came in here to work because there were jobs, and they filled a lot of jobs. And if you talk to employers, they’ve done a very, very good job and they work very, very hard.”

“Another of Trump’s bogus claims is now threatening legal immigrants in Aurora, Colorado, a Denver suburb that Trump has repeatedly asserted is being “taken over” by Venezuelan criminals. “Simply not true,” Aurora’s Republican mayor and city council member wrote in a joint statement.

“As in Springfield, Trump’s baseless claims are harming innocent people in Aurora. Immigrants there say they have been told their nationality makes them ineligible for jobs or housing. Trump’s claims have led to threats and drawn armed groups to the city, claiming to offer vigilante-style protection.

“Trump and Vance are using the oldest of tyrannical ploys — fueling deep-seated fears by creating an “other” — depicted as subhuman — who “take over” towns and “devour” loved ones.”

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-hate-is-no-joke-opinion/ar-AA1qEk70

Talk about a waste of public money and rather direct voter intimidation! Voter fraud is rare, generally individual cases, and is usually caught, but DeSantis created a state police force to “investigate voter fraud.” But it ends up being used to intimidate non-Republican voters in the spurious guise of looking for fraud.

“State police are showing up at Florida voters’ homes to question them about signing a petition to get an abortion rights amendment on the ballot in November, and a state health care agency has launched a website targeting the ballot initiative with politically charged language.

“Critics say they’re the latest efforts by Florida’s Republican elected officials to leverage state resources to try to block the abortion rights measure, moves which some Democratic officials argue could violate state laws against voter intimidation.”

“Critics say the investigation is a brazen attempt to intimidate voters in the country’s third-largest state from protecting access to abortion — and the latest in a series of efforts by the governor’s administration to target Amendment 4.”

“DeSantis signed a law in 2022 creating a state police force dedicated to investigating voter fraud and elections crimes. Voter fraud is rare, typically occurs in isolated instances and is generally detected.

“He said elections police are going to the homes of people who signed the petitions that got Amendment 4 on the ballot not to intimidate them, but because questions have been raised about the legitimacy of the signatures. He said the police have found evidence that some of the supposed signatures were from dead people.”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/florida-abortion-ballot-amendment-elections-police-cfd4e3479498e63e65f1116acd95f7be

Georgia is actually making it HARDER to vote! They’ve spent taxpayer money to develop a website — not to register to vote or to get an absentee ballot — but to REQUEST THE CANCELLATION OF VOTER REGISTRATION OF OTHER PEOPLE!

The Georgia Secretary of State says it’s intended for people moving out of state or who have a deceased family member. But in the last few years, Georgia has had hundreds of thousands of challenges of voter registrations by right-wing groups that didn’t even know the people involved, and most of those challenges were groundless and eventually denied.

When it launched on Monday, it was “marred by a glitch that allowed people to access a voter’s date of birth, driver’s license number and last four numbers of a Social Security number. That’s the same information needed to verify a person’s identity and allow a registration to be canceled.” Apparently the glitch only lasted an our or so, but it underscores concerns that the site could allow outsiders to unjustifiably cancel voter registrations.

“If someone knows my birthdate, you could get in and pull up my information and change my registration,” state Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, a Stone Mountain Democrat, said Tuesday. Democratic staff showed The Associated Press a copy of a document with Butler’s information that they said was produced by the system.

This kind of website isn’t actually needed and is clearly to make it even easier for extremists to challenge the voter registrations of anyone they don’t want on the rolls. The original language on the website attested to that, but was later changed.

Not only is there this context of right-wing challenges of voter registrations of so many legitimate voters, but there have been laws passed in Georgia that make it HARDER to vote. Example: requiring a “wet-ink signature” for people to be able to vote, but setting up this online portal to allow anyone to try to remove voter registrations. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t someone asking to remove someone have to sign a piece of paper, perhaps under the penalty of perjury? Making it easy to ask for the removal of voter registrations is simple disenfranchisement.

Source: https://youtu.be/MK4b-meIGPU

Source: https://apnews.com/article/georgia-cancel-voter-registration-personal-information-5bf7d7d474e0e077c7fd50141ff487e8

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/08/01/georgia-voter-cancelation-portal-launches/74616004007/

Source: https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/peace/democracy/ask-the-experts-voter-challenges-georgia.pdf