If Senator JD Vance of Ohio had a moral compass, a shred of decency or a belief in anything other than his own ambition and will-to-power, he would resign his Senate seat effective immediately, leave the presidential race and retire from public life, following a mournful apology for his ethical transgressions.
As it stands, Vance has done none of the above, which is why he is still, as of today, using his position in the United States Senate and on the Republican Party presidential ticket to spread lies and smears against his own constituents in Springfield — Haitian immigrants who have settled there to make a new life for themselves.
The main impact of those lies and smears — which began Monday when Vance told his followers on X that “reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country,” and continued Tuesday when Donald Trump told an audience of 67 million people that “they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats” — has been to terrorize the entire Springfield community.
On Thursday, bomb threats led to the evacuation of two elementary schools, city hall and the state motor vehicle agency’s local facility. The mayor has received threats to his office, and local families fear for the safety of their children. Several Springfield residents, including Nathan Clark — father of Aiden Clark, the 11-year-old killed when his school bus was struck by a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant — have pleaded with Trump and Vance to end their attacks and leave the community in peace.
“My son was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti,” said Clark, rebutting a claim made by Vance. “This tragedy is felt all over this community, the state and even the nation, but don’t spin this towards hate,” he continued. “Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose.”
This direct rebuke from a grieving father has stopped neither Vance nor Trump from spreading anti-immigrant — and specifically anti-Haitian — lies and fanning the flames of hatred. “Don’t let biased media shame you into not discussing this slow moving humanitarian crisis in a small Ohio town,” Vance said on Friday. “We should talk about it every day.”
The “humanitarian crisis,” it should be said, is the revitalization of Springfield after years of decline. Haitian immigrants have filled jobs, bought homes and filled city coffers with property and sales taxes. And while there are growing pains from the sudden influx of new residents, the charge that Haitian immigrants have, in Vance’s words, brought a “massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates and crime” is false. He is lying about people, the very people he swore an oath to represent, in ways that will inspire additional threats of violence and may well bring physical harm to the community.
In his speech accepting the Republican nomination for vice president, Vance rejected a creedal notion of American identity. America, he said, “is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.” He went on to add that America is a “homeland” and that “people will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.”
To some overly credulous commentators, this was nothing more than respect for place and a call to assimilate. But as Adam Serwer observes in The Atlantic, Vance’s argument was more radical than it appeared at first glance.
To say that Americans are willing to fight for their plot of land is to say that they are like every other group of people that has ever existed and that exists now. It is to say that there is nothing particularly special about America or American ideals at all. But the ideals that have animated the American project have exercised such a powerful appeal around the world precisely because they speak to more universal aspirations.
To reject creedal nationalism, Serwer says, is to embrace, in its stead, a blood-and-soil nationalism that hold some Americans as more American than others. It is to say that there are some people who, on account of their origins or those of their parents and grandparents, cannot be full and equal members of the national community.
In waging rhetorical war on the Haitian immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, Vance has clarified the meaning of his convention speech. It does not matter, to Vance, that these Haitian newcomers came here legally, under the Temporary Protected Status program. It does not matter that they filled a valuable need. It does not matter that they reversed a slow collapse that has already sapped the life from so many former industrial towns. It does not matter that they work hard and seem eager, by all accounts, to establish themselves as productive members of the community.
What matters to Vance is who they are, where they come from and what they look like. They don’t belong to this soil, he might say, and therefore they don’t belong. Right now, the most Vance can do to wage this war is use his words. I shudder to think what might be possible if he had the authority of the state to wield as well.
What I Wrote
In my Tuesday column, I gave a few tips for how to decipher Donald Trump’s ranting and raving.
This brings us to the second thing you must keep in mind if you want to understand Trump. He may rant and he may rave, but his rantings and ravings aren’t static; they carry meaning, even if the signal is hard to find in the noise.
And in my Friday column I asked for a better, more job-oriented approach to covering the presidential election.
Americans deserve a much fuller conversation than they ever get about the actual job at hand. Yes, it is important to know the goals and priorities of the people running for president. They should, when appropriate, talk about policy. But the fact of the matter is that a successful presidency is much more about organization, vision and values than it is the scope of a given legislative package.
I wrote about JD Vance’s initial smear of Haitian immigrants for the Opinion blog and I joined my colleagues Michelle Cottle, Carlos Lozada and Ross Douthat on the “Matter of Opinion” podcast to discuss Vice President Kamala Harris’s debate performance and what comes next for her campaign.
Now Reading
Tad Delay on evangelical Zionism for Parapraxis.
Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon on the construction of “a legal justification for genocide” in Jewish Currents
Duncan Hosie on the Supreme Court’s quiet assault on the Eighth Amendment for The New York Review of Books.
Sophie Gilbert on Nicole Kidman for The Atlantic.
Lauren Michele Jackson on James Earl Jones for The New Yorker.
Photo of the Week
I took this at one of the nearly abandoned shopping centers in Charlottesville. The primary colors, as well as the geometry of the scene, stuck out to me.
Now Eating: Smoky Chicken Chili
Let this recipe be my reminder to you to always keep an assortment of dried chiles in your pantry! I usually have a few varieties on hand: the guajillo and New Mexico chiles that this recipe calls for, ancho chiles and chile de árbol. Keeping dried chiles around makes it much easier to tackle Mexican cooking at home, especially the more complex sauces and braises that are a highlight of the cuisine.
This recipe comes from NYT Cooking.
Ingredients
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3 guajillo or dried New Mexico chiles, stemmed and seeded
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¼ cup golden raisins
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1 medium tomato, quartered
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4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
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¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
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1 cup finely chopped onion
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½ cup finely chopped carrot
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Salt and pepper
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3 garlic cloves, minced
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2 tablespoons tomato paste
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1 tablespoon chipotle chile powder
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½ teaspoon dried oregano
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1 large bell pepper, diced into ½-inch pieces (1½ cups)
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1 (15.5-ounce) can pinto beans, rinsed
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1 rotisserie chicken, meat coarsely shredded (4 cups)
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Tortilla chips, chopped cilantro, sliced radishes, chopped avocado and sour cream, for serving
Directions
In a small, heatproof bowl, combine chiles and raisins with enough boiling water to completely cover and let stand until softened, 5 minutes. Drain, then transfer to a blender; add tomato and broth and purée until smooth.
In a large Dutch oven or other heavy lidded pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium. Add onion and carrot, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, 5 minutes. Add garlic, tomato paste, chile powder, oregano and the remaining 2 tablespoons oil; cook, stirring frequently, until tomato paste is caramelized, about 2 minutes.
Add bell pepper and the blended sauce, season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil over medium-high. Cover, reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until peppers are tender, 15 minutes. Add beans and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally and mashing half of the beans, until the sauce has reduced and is slightly thickened, 5 minutes.
Spread shredded chicken evenly on top, cover and turn off the heat. Let stand until chicken is warmed through, about 2 minutes.
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