No story has more thoroughly dominated the news over the last few weeks than the one repeatedly spread by JD Vance and Donald Trump about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, supposedly stealing and eating their neighbors’ cat and dogs. “They’re eating the dogs,” Trump declared last week, in a deranged debate moment that will forever live in infamy. “They’re eating the cats.” Meanwhile, Vance has been steadfast in his refusal to stop amplifying the story—which he has maintained in the face of both local officials saying there is zero evidence of pet consumption actually happening and dozens of bomb threats terrorizing the city. But maybe the cat at the very center of these lies showing up alive and well will cause the senator to change his tune?

Yes, The Wall Street Journal reports that when pressed about the Ohio senator’s thoroughly debunked claims, a Vance spokesperson provided the outlet with a police report in which a woman claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors. The problem? Like, aside from the fact that the report contained no concrete evidence to back up the things Vance has been saying? The cat in question is very much alive.

Per the Journal:

…when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement.  Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile phone translation app.

Unfortunately, the fact that Miss Sassy is still alive will probably have no effect on Vance when it comes to the possibility of backing down or even, y’know, admitting he was wrong and apologizing to the community. How do we know this? For one thing, the VP hopeful is a shameless MAGA Republican, and apologizing is not something they do. For another, Vance has long been aware that the pet-eating stories are lies, and yet he chose to spread them anyway.

Here’s the Journal again:

City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of September 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. “He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck. “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, 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…. The cat-eating rumors, started with a post by a Springfield woman on a private Facebook page, turned out to be third-hand and were subsequently disavowed by the original poster, according to NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation.

As of Tuesday night, three dozen bomb threats against the city had been recorded, and the state police had been dispatched to protect children returning to schools that had been forced to temporarily close. In addition to not disavowing the pet-eating lies, Trump has chosen to further terrorize the community, saying last Friday that he plans to enact “large deportations” from Springfield—despite the fact that the majority of the Haitians living there are doing so legally. On Sunday, Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash that it was “disgusting” for the media to suggest any of his comments had led to the threats against Springfield; during the same interview, in reference to the debunked rumors he has spread, he said, “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“We have told those at the national level that they are speaking these things that are untrue,” Springfield mayor Rob Rue, a registered Republican, told the Journal, adding that the claims have nevertheless been “repeated and doubled down on.”

Today in the horrifying effects of antiabortion laws

In Louisiana’s rush to criminalize the possession of abortion medicine, GOP lawmakers may end up killing new mothers. Per The Washington Post:

Staff in some Louisiana hospitals are doing timed drills, sprinting from patient rooms and through halls to the locked medicine closets where the drugs used for abortions, incomplete miscarriages and postpartum hemorrhaging will have to be kept—as newly categorized controlled substances—starting Oct. 1. That’s hardly the only preparation taking place across the state as a law targeting mifepristone and misoprostol, the first of its kind in the country, goes into effect in two weeks.

Pharmacists are still trying to decipher guidance from state officials about the two drugs and the diagnosis codes that will be required before prescriptions for them can be filled. And they and doctors are speaking out about the extra layers of difficulty expected because of the law, which they worry will put patients experiencing serious pregnancy-related complications at even greater risk.

In addition to inducing abortions, misoprostol is also used, among other things, to stop postpartum hemorrhages, which just so happen to be a leading cause of maternal mortality in Louisiana.

“It adds a few minutes,” Jennifer Avegno, director of the New Orleans Health Department, told the Post of the upcoming restrictions on the drug. “Most patients would likely make it. But I’ve seen myself what can happen when someone is bleeding out from a miscarriage. And a few minutes could mean life and death in some cases.”

Republicans continue to grossly suggest Harris isn’t really a mother despite stepchildren she helped raise

Elsewhere!

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