JD Vance, the junior Republican U.S. Senator who represents the people of Ohio, is on his tenth day of attacking the twelve to fifteen thousand legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, after he spread the lie that 20,000 “illegal migrants” from Haiti were dropped on the city and started to steal the pet cats and dogs of its residents, and eat them.

The claims have been so thoroughly debunked that The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday published a report: “How the Trump Campaign Ran With Rumors About Pet-Eating Migrants—After Being Told They Weren’t True.”

“Estimates of the number of immigrants vary, but Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday that roughly 15,000 Haitians immigrated to Springfield over the past four years,” The Journal reports. “They were able to immigrate legally under a Biden administration policy granting Temporary Protected Status to Haitians as part of a program created by Congress in 1990 to protect immigrants from countries deemed too dangerous to return to.”

That 1990 law, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), was signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush.

But according to Senator Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who has a law degree from Yale, the law is illegal and so are the Haitian immigrants, which is false.

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At a small rally in North Carolina on Wednesday (full video), a Politico reporter told Senator Vance, “the majority of the Haitians in Springfield came under TPS, so they are here legally. And I know you’ve expressed a lot of your issues with the TPS program and wanting to change that under a Trump Vance administration, but I guess my question for you is, if you become the vice president under a Trump administration, what will you guys do about the migrants that are already there since they did arrive legally? And a follow up to that, if you plan to deport them, how would you do that legally?”

Vance did not answer any of those questions.

“Well, look,” he replied, seemingly frustrated, “this is, this is a media and Kamala Harris fact-check that I want to, I want to clarify and clear up right now.”

“Now the media loves to say that the Haitian migrants, hundreds of thousands of them, by the way, 20,000 in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of them all across the country, they are here legally.”

“And what they mean is that Kamala Harris used two separate programs, mass parole and temporary protective status. She used two programs to wave a wand and to say, ‘we’re not going to deport those people here.’ Well, if Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien. An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal. That is not how this works.”

Senator Vance is wrong.

First, that is exactly how it works.

The Biden administration extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) (not temporary protective status, as Vance called it) twice, given the dire circumstances in Haiti.

There is nothing “illegal” about the program, nor are the immigrants here under the program “illegal,” as the Ohio freshman senator falsely insists.

Vance continued his remarks, to applause, calling the TPS program “completely bogus,” and “straight out of George Orwell.”

“That makes her border policy a disgrace and I’m still going to call people ‘illegal aliens,'” Vance vowed, attacking Vice President Harris, as the audience cheered.

“Who in this room, who in this country, consented to allowing millions of aliens to come into this country?” he asked, as some in the audience shook their heads no.

READ MORE: Vance Demands Fact-Check on ‘Pet-Eating’ Lie Despite Knowing Truth Pre-Debate

Vance is taking more heat over his latest comments.

“Bro needs to give his law degree back,” remarked MSNBC legal contributor and correspondent Katie Phang.

“What a phony loser @JDVance continues to be. He used to love immigrants. Now he blood libels them. Just like how he used to call his idol Trump ‘an American Hitler,'” commented The Nation’s Dave Zirin.

“This is just shocking,” declared former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. “Mr. Vance is blatantly calling a legal action illegal. I’ve studied my whole life how democracies break down. This is how it happens folks. I hope he really doesn’t believe this. Politicians say a lot of crazy things during elections. I fear he might.”

“When you hear people refuse to make distinctions between legal and illegal immigration, it’s safe to assume they want to use the latter as a tool to go after the former,” observed attorney Mark R. Yzaguirre.

“This is a straight up fascist project from JD here,” exclaimed Dante Atkins, an expert in strategic communications and campaign management.

Watch below or at this link.

“I’m still gonna call them an illegal alien” — JD Vance on Haitian migrants who are in Ohio legally pic.twitter.com/phe5yjiUyd

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2024

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In recent years Republicans have been accused of making up rules or redefining existing practices and policies across at least a dozen areas – including voting rights and gerrymandering, their use of the debt ceiling as a “bargaining chip,” and the conservative U.S. Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” all to push through their agenda or gain a short or long-term advantage.

For example, in 2016 then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell infamously refused to allow even a hearing on President Barack Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland. He falsely claimed it was a “rule,” but in 2020 apparently rescinded the non-existent rule when President Donald Trump nominated his third Supreme Court Justice, Amy Coney Barrett, whose confirmation process was rammed through in near-record time, despite the COVID pandemic – just before the election Trump would go on to lose.

Fast forward to today.

According to U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), there apparently is another never-before-heard-of practice that says the Federal Reserve cannot lower interest rates before an election.

And he is outraged.

READ MORE: Vance Demands Fact-Check on ‘Pet-Eating’ Lie Despite Knowing Truth Pre-Debate

To tame inflation and protect the U.S. economy, Fed Chairman Jerome “Jay” Powell Wednesday afternoon, after signaling for months a rate cut would be coming, and after four long years of interest rate increases and holding rates at a two-decade high, for the first time since the COVID pandemic hit announced he is lowering interest rates by a half-point, as Bloomberg reported.

“Hard to see how #Trump can keep saying #Biden has brought us the ‘worst economy ever’ — yesterday the Dow broke ALL records, hitting 41,622.08,” remarked Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Laurie Garret. “And now that the Fed has cut interest rates by 0.5% the Dow is climbing higher. #Bidenomics has worked:
– record high employment
– inflation heading to 2%
– interests rates down, forcast by FED to possibly go below 4% by January
– equity markets are record highs”

Powell’s decision comes after his judicious, and some have lamented far-too-slow, responses to economic conditions. Many experts had not only predicted a rate cut months earlier, but weeks ago when the jobs report came out worse than some expected, some economists and top U.S. lawmakers fearing recession, demanded Powell call a special session to immediately cut rates by three-quarters of a point.

Not Senator Tuberville.

“The Fed’s drastic rate cut is shamelessly political,” the former college football coach and freshman lawmaker, who once was unable to name the three branches of government, declared just after Powell’s announcement. “Our nation’s central bank has no business moving rates this close to an election and is clearly trying to tip the balance in favor of Kamala Harris.”

As many responded, mocking the 70-year old Republican senator, Donald Trump nominated Powell, a Republican, to the chairmanship in 2018.

He was confirmed in an 84-13 vote, “one of the widest margins of confirmation for a Trump nominee,” The Hill reported at the time. “Nearly all Republicans and a vast majority of Democrats supported Powell’s confirmation.” In 2022, President Biden re-nominated Powell to a second term, despite strong criticism from the left flank of his party. He was confirmed in another strong bipartisan vote, 80-19.

Senator Tuberville is not alone in his criticism.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also expressed his dissatisfaction.

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“The timing is a little suspect,” the GOP Speaker said, according to Capitol Hill reporter Jamie Dupree. Johnson’s remark flies in the face of Powell having been extremely transparent in his intentions.

“The European Central Bank has cut rates twice over the past three months,” remarked The Majority Report’s Emma Vigeland. “Inflation is at its lowest since early 2021. The real question is why Powell, a Trump pick Biden idiotically kept on, didn’t cut rates when we knew corporate [price] gouging was what was keeping prices high.”

“Everyone knew a cut was coming at this regularly scheduled meeting,” added political commentator Brian Normoyle.

“First off, Powell is a Trump appointee,” remarked former U.S Ambassador Luis Moreno. “Secondly, this has been talked about and predicted for months as the inflation data kept going down. Jonson should be worried about keeping the government running and stop auditioning for his master in Mar a Lago.”

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) joined Senator Tuberville and Speaker Johnson.

“GOP Sen. Ron Johnson told me the Fed should have waited until after the election to cut interest rates,” reports Semafor congressional reporter Joseph Zeballos-Roig, “but they didn’t because ‘they’re political.'”

Fox News also suggested the decision was political. Chairman Powell “shut down Fox’s question about election-driven ‘political motivations,'” Media Matters reported.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Watch Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell shut down Fox’s question about election-driven “political motivations” for rate cut: “Nothing else is discussed. … Our job is to support the economy on behalf of the American people” pic.twitter.com/jFnplS92KU

— Media Matters (@mmfa) September 18, 2024

READ MORE: ‘Megaphone for Hate’: Vance’s Slam of Dem ‘Rhetoric’ Backfires in ‘Streisand Effect’

Ohio’s freshman Republican U.S. Senator JD Vance knew his claim “20,000” Haitian “migrants” were stealing the cats and dogs of Springfield residents and eating them was a lie before Donald Trump spread it to tens of millions of Americans in last week’s widely-watched September 10 presidential debate. Despite that knowledge, the vice-presidential nominee is now demanding reporters “fact-check” the falsehood.

“City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of Sept. 9, from a staff member of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The staffer called to ask if there was any truth to bizarre rumors about Haitian immigrants and pets in Springfield,” The Wall Street Journal reports Wednesday.

“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” Heck told the staffer. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”

“By then,” WSJ noted, “Vance had already posted about the rumors to his 1.9 million followers on X. Yet he kept the post up, and repeated an even more insistent version of the claim the next morning.”

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A day-and-a-half after the Trump campaign knew the racist and dangerous allegations were a lie, Donald Trump stood on stage and told 67 million Americans, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating, the pets of the people that live there.”

As of Monday, Springfield, Ohio had already received 33 bomb threats. Among the targets: elementary schools and hospitals. Those threats forced the evacuation, search, and closure of at least 22 government facilities.

“Over the summer,” The Journal adds, “outside neo-Nazi groups—which specialize in exploiting local controversy to foment outrage about migrants—had seized on a local controversy and fanned the narrative of pet-eating Haitians.”

“Then the Trump campaign blasted those rumors to the world—and kept pushing them even after they were exposed as lies. The Trump campaign continues to run hard at the controversy. Trump last Friday said he planned “large deportations” from Springfield—whose Haitian community is overwhelmingly in the country legally. Trump campaign surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy plans to host a town hall in Springfield this Thursday. Vance said on Tuesday that Trump would like to visit Springfield, too, at some point. ”

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On Sunday, Senator Vance told CNN he was willing to “create stories” to advance his and Trump’s agenda, a boast his opponent, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz ran with Tuesday.

Tim Walz: JD Vance got called out by the press for spreading vicious lies about immigrants. But he did something. He said he’s willing to create stories to spread fear to drum up support.. At least they admitted it. What other things are they making up stories about? The reason… pic.twitter.com/646QFvPKqa

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 17, 2024

Also on Tuesday, Vance dug in his heels. At an Eau Claire, Wisconsin rally, Vance said it was the responsibility of the media, and not him, to “fact-check” his claims.

The Guardian reports Vance’s Sunday comments to CNN, “in which he appeared to say that politicians can brazenly lie, drew immediate rebuke. But during his rally, Vance defended them and claimed that numerous constituents had told him ‘they’d seen something in Springfield’.”

“On top of it, if there are certain people who refuse to listen to them, who refuse to take their concerns seriously,” he said, “that’s when it’s my job as United States senator to listen to my constituents.”

But those claims from Vance’s constituents have been debunked and proven false.

Among them, most recently, as The Independent reported, “Vance used a police report about a stolen cat to justify pet-eating rumors. ‘Miss Sassy’ was hiding in the basement.”

The woman who filed the police report apologized to her Haitian neighbors. Senator Vance has not.

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Megaphone for Hate’: Vance’s Slam of Dem ‘Rhetoric’ Backfires in ‘Streisand Effect’