SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — In this small Ohio city rocked by national political vitriol, parents, students, teachers and local officials are contending with threats that have derailed the community’s schools just weeks into the academic year.
Since former President Donald Trump falsely claimed the city was under siege by thousands of Haitian migrants eating residents’ pets, the city’s residents have been unsettled by bomb threats that have shuttered their schools, upending life for nearly 10,000 students, from kindergarten through university.
Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has deployed extra security to secure schools and stressed that most of the threats have come from overseas — a sign of just how widely the smears about Springfield have traveled.
And as Trump and his running mate JD Vance — who represents Ohio in the Senate — have continued making those claims, they see no end in sight.
“It doesn’t make any sense, why they gotta threaten the kids? Kids ain’t got nothing to do with the government and what’s going on with politics, and it doesn’t make any sense,” said Richard Butler as he walked his 7 and 5 year old nieces home from school.