President Joe Biden condemned a racist smear circulating online falsely accusing Haitian immigrants of eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, telling Black guests at the White House on Friday that the rhetoric had no place in America.
Alluding to his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, whose campaign first promoted the rumors on Monday before he amplified them during the presidential debate on Tuesday, Biden said the attacks have to stop.
The Haitian-American community “is under attack in our country right now,” Biden said. “It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America. This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop.”
Biden was addressing a gathering on the South Lawn of the White House in celebration of Black community achievements. He noted that his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is a “proud Haitian American.” Biden also said that he had “made a commitment my administration would look like America, and it does.”
Trump, his vice president running mate JD Vance and their supporters have spent the week spreading debunked claims about Haitian immigrants abducting and eating their neighbors’ pets and wildlife in Springfield. The midwestern town, which had a dwindling population of only about 60,000 residents just a few years ago, has seen an influx of immigrants from Haiti after the Biden administration granted them legal immigration protections due to...
On June 25, 2025, Chief Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued a ruling in the case of U.S. ex rel. Sarah Behnke v. CVS Caremark Corp...