Remember Springfield, Ohio? Trump’s Racist Haiti Lies Are Killing It.

It’s been almost a year since President Donald Trump targeted Springfield, Ohio, with racist lies that Haitian immigrants had begun eating their neighbors’ pets in order to stir up his voter base. Now, the city’s Haitian immigrants, who helped revive Springfield’s struggling economy, are being chased out by Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.

Springfield is currently home to an estimated 10,000-15,000 Haitian immigrants, but The New York Times reported Friday that dozens have already fled the city—and more are sure to follow.

The wave of Haitian immigration had helped Springfield, a town of just 60,000, rebound, the Times reported. Now, all that could go away.

The Trump administration has already ended some humanitarian programs that allowed Haitians to live and work legally in the United States, leaving local employers with no choice but to dismiss scores of workers. A nearby Amazon warehouse, a major employer in the area, was forced to dismiss hundreds of employees in June. The Times reported that a local food pantry at the local nonprofit St. Vincent de Paul had received twice as many Haitians families as usual on a recent Tuesday.

Thousands more Haitians are expected to lose work in February 2026, when the administration plans to end Temporary Protected Status, which prevents their deportation.

And the more Haitian immigrants are forced to lean on social services, or fill up emergency rooms because they lack access to health insurance, the more likely it is that politicians will use these changes to stoke the same issues that Trump preyed upon: scarcity and sickness.

Vice President JD Vance pushed rumors on the campaign trail that the city’s new arrivals had contributed to the spread of communicable diseases, though local health officials said there had been no discernable increase in those illnesses.

In July, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who’d refuted but refused to condemn Trump’s racist lies last year, said that “suddenly losing a large number” of workers would have a “significant impact” on businesses. “It’s not going to be good,” he said.

Now, Haitian immigrants face three options. They could go back to Haiti, which is still plagued by widespread violence, or attempt to gain asylum elsewhere, such as Canada. Or they could remain without lawful status, facing steep economic hurdles, as targets for Trump’s massive deportation scheme.

John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser turned vocal Trump critic, is the latest target of the president’s weaponization of the government against his political adversaries.

On Friday morning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Maryland home of Bolton, whose 17-month stint under the president was characterized by stark foreign policy disagreements until it abruptly ended.

NBC News reports that the raid is part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records”—accusations that echo Trump’s previous attempts to wield the government to silence and punish Bolton for supposedly sharing classified information in his 2020 tell-all book, The Room Where It Happened, which described Trump as incompetent and unfit for the presidency.

Bolton frequently issues scathing criticisms of Trump. In March 2024, he said the then candidate “hasn’t got the brains” to be a dictator. Months later, he said that, while Trump “falls into the general definition of fascist,” he lacks the thoughtfulness to fit the bill: “To be a fascist, you have to have a philosophy. Trump’s not capable of that,” he said.

Last August, Bolton said Trump doesn’t lie a lot, “because to lie, you have to do it consciously. He just can’t tell the difference.” This February, he told CNN the president’s “mind is full of mush.”

He also regularly lays into the president for his perceived friendliness toward Russia in its war against Ukraine. In 2022, he called Trump a “useful idiot” for Putin.

And just last week, Bolton incensed the president by saying he had, in arranging his Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin, handed the Russian president a victory.

Bolton’s barbs have, of course, not been ignored.

Trump, for example, called the ex–national security adviser “really dumb” and a loser for his latest criticisms. And after meeting with Putin, Trump blamed “stupid people like” Bolton for “mak[ing] it much harder” to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

On Friday, top Trump officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, seemed to gloat about the FBI raid in oblique posts on X.

This latest instance of lawfare comes as the Trump administration escalates its attacks against other political opponents—most recently training its sights on Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. This is not to mention Trump’s threats to launch even more retributive legal attacks against his perceived foe Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, among others.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Friday that the Trump administration would stop issuing work visas for commercial truck drivers.

“The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,” Rubio wrote in a post on X, announcing the new policy. 

The decision appears to be spurred by a recent traffic accident in Florida that officials have described as an alleged “vehicular homicide.” A commercial truck driver was arrested earlier this month after allegedly attempting to make an unauthorized U-turn, resulting in a crash that killed three people. Because the driver, Harjinder Singh, was an undocumented immigrant from India, Republicans have been quick to politicize the accident. 

Florida Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins blamed California Governor Gavin Newsom for the crash on Thursday, because Singh had received his commercial driver’s license in California after illegally entering the United States from Mexico. “Three lives lost because of Gavin Newsom, because of California’s failed policies,” Collins said, according to Fox News. “We’re done with that shit.”

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin was also quick to point the finger at Newsom, writing on X Monday, “How many more innocent people have to die before @GavinNewsom stops playing games with the safety of the American public?”  

It’s not clear what Singh’s country of origin or immigration status could possibly have to do with his driving abilities, but that’s not stopping the Trump administration from using the fatal accident in Florida as justification to punish all immigrants. 

Rubio’s decision comes amid a national shortage of commercial truck drivers. The industry is struggling with a shortage of about 60,000 drivers, according to trade group the American Trucking Association. 

Foreign-born drivers make up about 18 percent of the total commercial truck driver workforce as of October 2024, according to the National Association of Truck Stop Owners, citing Labor Department data.

Donald Trump’s vision of the nation’s capital does not appear to be attuned to reality.

Nearly two hours after midnight, the president claimed that the federalization of Washington’s law enforcement had brought peace to the city, apparently ignoring the citywide protests rejecting the White House occupation. But Trump’s self-praise came part and parcel with an ominous threat: that a “complete and federal takeover” of Washington was still a possibility.

“Washington, D.C. is SAFE AGAIN!” Trump announced on Truth Social. “The crowds are coming back, the spirit is high, and our D.C. National Guard and Police are doing a fantastic job.”

In the first week of the operation, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that the administration had made nearly 400 arrests across the capital. At least 160 of those arrests were undocumented immigrants, reported ABC News.

“They are out in force, and are NOT PLAYING GAMES!!!” Trump continued. “As bad as it sounds to say, there were no murders this week for the first time in memory. Mayor Muriel Bowser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures, or bad things will happen, including a complete and total Federal takeover of the City! Washington D.C. will soon be great again!!!”

Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to Washington and federalized the capital’s police department last week to combat what he described as a crime-riddled hellscape. To justify the government infringement, the president pointed to rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were from 2023, before violent crime plummeted across the country.

More recent numbers from the Metropolitan Police Department told a remarkably different story: Crime in the nation’s capital was actually down 35 percent in 2024 compared to the year prior. But the administration is apparently not satisfied with the narrative of that data. On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced a criminal investigation into the Washington police department to determine whether the law enforcement bureau had manipulated data to make crime in the city seem lower than officers have claimed.

A federal judge ruled Thursday night that the government could no longer send people to Alligator Alcatraz and that the ramshackle detention facility must be dismantled, Politico reported.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams gave the government 60 days to remove the facility’s fencing, lighting, and generators—rendering the facility unusable and forcing it to clear out its detainee population.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit from Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe alleging that construction on the new facility was greenlit without providing time for public notice and comment, or conducting proper environmental reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and state and local land-use laws. The facility was built on a defunct Miami-Dade airstrip adjacent to the Big Cypress National Preserve and several tribal villages.

“Every Florida governor, every Florida senator, and countless local and national political figures, including presidents, have publicly pledged their unequivocal support for the restoration, conservation and protection of the Everglades,” Williams wrote. “This order does nothing more than uphold the basic requirements of legislation designed to fulfill those promises.”

Earlier this month, Williams had ordered Florida to halt construction at the Trump administration’s premier wetland-themed concentration camp, where both detainees and former employees have alleged horrific living conditions.

The judge also weighed a long-standing question about the hastily constructed facility: Who exactly runs it? Williams rejected the federal and state government’s claim that Alligator Alcatraz was run by the state of Florida and was therefore not subject to NEPA’s requirements.

“That the deputized officers’ regular salaries are paid, required uniforms are bought, and standard work hours are controlled by their state agency supervisors is not germane because their status there as deputized officers and their activities at the camp are controlled by ICE,” she wrote.

The purposeful ambiguity about whether the facility is managed by ICE has resulted in an erosion of detainee rights, as immigration attorneys watch their clients disappear from the ICE detainee tracker and have no idea how to contact them once they’re inside the camp.