Election Live Updates: Harris to Appear With Oprah in Michigan While Trump Talks in D.C.

Over the past two weeks, a new super PAC called Duty to America has spent almost $7 million on anti-Harris messaging like this, putting content aimed at millennials and Gen-Z voters in digital ads and text message programs. The group was formed in June and has not yet disclosed any contributors, but the size of the expenditures in September suggests some backing from major donors.

The group, created by a Republican campaign-finance compliance official, did not return requests for comment. Its website describes the super PAC as an “organization dedicated to electing leaders who understand and are focused on solving the challenges facing the far too many Americans who feel left behind by politicians and that their American Dream is out of reach.”

Cost-of-living arguments are nothing new in politics, but the specific issues the super PAC is targeting are novel.

“Democrats are dialed in on one thing: banning our nicotine pouches,” the narrator of an ad airing on YouTube says. “If Democrats spent their time fixing real problems, instead of telling us what to do, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Kamala Harris, stay away from our pouches.”

Ms. Harris has not publicly said anything about nicotine pouches, though other Democrats have. Earlier this year, Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, asked the F.D.A. to investigate one popular brand of the pouches, Zyn, and their effect on teenagers.

Nicotine pouches have become a sensation among social-media influencers and younger Americans, particularly those on the right, including Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host turned podcaster. (Mr. Carlson promoted Zyn pouches but has now turned against the brand over supposed political differences.)

Several other digital videos and ads seem targeted to young men who are followers of sports and gambling, using plenty of betting metaphors.

“Fifty bucks — that used to be a pretty good wager,” another ad says. “Enough to make winning sweet, but not enough to hurt if you lost. But now, 50 bucks is too much to lose and not enough to win. What can you even do with 50 bucks today?”

The ad continues: “This November, vote no on Harris and the Democrats. They’re a losing bet every time.”

Other spots stress that Ms. Harris is “taking your vote for granted.”

There has been concern among Democrats about losing ground with young, male voters. The ads appear to be an effort by pro-Trump forces to make inroads with that very constituency.

The lawsuit argues that state law prohibits election officials from notifying voters of such errors and allowing them to be fixed in time to have their ballot counted, a process known as curing.

More than half of states allow curing for some types of errors, such as a missing signature or date on a ballot envelope, or a signature that doesn’t match the one election officials have on file for the voter. Former President Donald J. Trump railed against the process as he falsely alleged election fraud in 2020 and tried to overturn his loss, and it has been a point of contention since then in Pennsylvania and in other states.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, and Republicans have sought to restrict mail voting in various ways, casting their efforts as fighting fraud. There is no evidence of significant election fraud in mail ballots or any other form of voting.

The new lawsuit notes that different counties in Pennsylvania have adopted different procedures for curing, and it argues that this violates a requirement in the state constitution that election processes be “uniform.” It also argues that the state legislature would need to authorize any curing process and that existing state law precludes curing because it forbids the “inspection” and “opening” of mail-in ballots before Election Day.

“The Election Code thus bars election officials from providing notice of defects in time for them to be cured,” it says.

It also takes issue with two actions by state officials: first, guidance to voters that they can cast a provisional ballot on Election Day if they believe their mail ballot was defective, and second, the generation of automated emails to voters whose mail ballots are marked as potentially defective, informing them that they have the right to cast a provisional ballot.

Provisional ballots are a standard option for voters who are unable to vote normally at their polling place because of questions about their eligibility — for example, voters whose names don’t appear on the rolls, but who believe they are registered. The voter’s eligibility is assessed after the fact, and the provisional ballot is counted if they are deemed to have been eligible.

The Pennsylvania secretary of state’s office said it was reviewing the lawsuit.

“The Shapiro administration supports allowing voters to rectify technical deficiencies so their vote is counted,” a spokesman, Matt Heckel, said. “We will continue to fight for every eligible citizen’s right to vote and have their voice heard.”

With less than seven weeks until the election, all five Republicans who represent the state in Congress are pushing for Nebraska to return to a winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes that had been used before 1992 and was based on the statewide popular vote.

Under the state’s the current hybrid system, its electoral votes are split: Two go to the winner of the statewide popular vote, and the other three are based on who wins the popular vote in each of Nebraska’s three U.S. House districts. Maine also has a hybrid system.

In 2016, Mr. Trump secured all five of Nebraska’s electoral votes, but he was denied a sweep in 2020 when President Biden won the popular vote in the Second District, which includes Omaha, the state’s most populous city. The area, which has become known in Nebraska as the “blue dot,” is near where Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate, was born.

Bracing for a close election, Mr. Trump’s allies are trying again to blot out the “blue dot” — which, in a close race, could play an outsize role — after their previous efforts stalled.

If Mr. Trump flips Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, states won by Mr. Biden in 2020, there is still a pathway for Ms. Harris to win the presidency by holding onto the other states that Mr. Biden won, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Under that scenario, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump would each end up with 269 electoral votes, one short of the 270 needed to win the presidency. A victory in Nebraska’s Second District for Ms. Harris could break that tie. Otherwise, the House of Representatives would break the tie, with each state delegation getting one vote, giving Republicans the advantage.

In a letter sent on Wednesday to the governor and the State Legislature’s speaker, who are both Republicans, the group called for an end to the hybrid system.

“It is past time that Nebraska join 48 other states in embracing winner-take-all in presidential elections,” the group wrote in the letter.

Also on Wednesday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, visited Nebraska, where he too advocated for the state to change its rules.

Representatives for Mr. Graham, who The Nebraska Examiner reported had visited the governor’s mansion, did not respond to requests for comment. When he was asked by reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday about his trip to Nebraska, he said that the Trump campaign had not dispatched him to make the case for the winner-take-all system.

“Trump’s going to win the state by 20 points,” Mr. Graham said, according to CBS News.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. The Harris-Walz campaign did not immediately provide a comment.

Changing the state’s system of awarding electoral votes would require a special session of the Legislature, a unicameral body that is officially nonpartisan but is controlled by Republicans.

Carol Blood, a Democratic state senator who is running for Congress in the First District, criticized the push, saying on Thursday that its timing was suspect and that a winner-take-all system would make Nebraska less relevant on the national political map.

“The blue dot is what keeps Nebraska from being a flyover state,” said Ms. Blood, who lost an open-seat race for governor in 2022 to Jim Pillen, a Republican.

Representatives for Mr. Pillen did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

In a statement last week, the governor declared his support for awarding all five of Nebraska’s electoral votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote.

“As I have also made clear, I am willing to convene the Legislature for a special session to fix this 30-year-old problem before the 2024 election,” Mr. Pillen said. “However, I must receive clear and public indication that 33 senators are willing to vote in such a session to restore winner-take-all.”

Mike McDonnell, a Republican state senator who was a Democrat until earlier this year, has emerged as potential swing vote in the process, according to published reports in Nebraska. When he changed parties in April, he said that he opposed a winner-take-all system.

Mr. McDonnell did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

In addition to generating a torrent of headlines, his previous comments have underscored a right-wing worldview that would, if elected, make him one of the most conservative governors in the United States.

During his campaigns for statewide office, Mr. Robinson often spoke in North Carolina’s conservative evangelical churches to outline his socially conservative platform, condemning homosexuality and “transgenderism” as “filth” and questioning the separation of church and state and, in some cases, the role of women in the church.

(On the messaging board, Mr. Robinson posted about how he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, according to CNN, and described himself as a “perv” who liked “tranny on girl” porn.)

During one appearance at the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, N.C., in August 2021, Mr. Robinson said of abortion, “that baby in your womb ain’t no clump of cells and if you kill that child you’re guilty of murder.”

During another evangelical event later that year, he suggested that the exclusion of Christian teachings in schools was to blame for mass shootings.

“Do you not think that maybe if, in the homeroom, before school started every day, if you were singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ giving God some praises and introducing his word back in that school, his wisdom back into those schools, maybe them schools wouldn’t be getting shot up to begin with?” he asked.

Tar Heel Democrats have sought to underline Mr. Robinson’s public comments, particularly about abortion, which has emerged as one of the foremost issues for voters in the state. In August, Mr. Robinson told the story of his wife’s abortion in an advertisement for his campaign for governor, calling it “a very difficult decision” that drove a rift between them.

In the ad, he endorsed the state’s abortion law that outlaws the procedure at 12 weeks with exceptions for sexual assault, incest and health of the mother.

Mr. Robinson’s online presence was concerning to some Republicans in the state, who privately lamented the damaging headlines they generated over the course of the campaign. On Facebook, he has disparaged Black Americans as “hypocrites who remain silent while they murder each other in abortion clinics,” quoted Adolf Hitler and called the survivors of the Parkland School shooting who were pushing for gun control “spoiled, angry, know-it-all children.”

Before the CNN report on Thursday emerged, Mr. Robinson posted a video on X claiming the posts were leaked by his Democratic opponent in the governor’s race, Attorney General Josh Stein. The posts he reportedly made on these sites, Mr. Robinson said, “are not the words of Mark Robinson.”

He also compared himself to Justice Clarence Thomas, who said that he was a victim of a “high-tech lynching” during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

“Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is too,” he said.

On Wednesday night at a rally on Long Island, Mr. Trump said he planned “to go there in the next two weeks.” The former president has a long history of saying he’ll do something — and do it in two weeks — only to move on and never mention it again.

Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio and the city’s mayor, Rob Rue, both of whom are Republicans, said on Thursday that preparations were underway for a potential visit.

At a news conference, the mayor, Mr. Rue, said he hoped Mr. Trump would change his mind and that doing so would “convey a significant message of peace” to Springfield. Mr. DeWine, appearing at the same news conference, said that if Mr. Trump continued to make baseless allegations about the Haitian residents of Ohio, he would correct him, but that it wasn’t his place to discourage Mr. Trump from visiting his state.

Mr. Rue also issued a public safety proclamation for the city. The directive, according to a city statement, grants the mayor “temporary emergency powers to mitigate public safety concerns.” The city has faced bomb threats, many of which Mr. DeWine has said were from foreign actors looking to stir chaos.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump said she had nothing more to add about when a visit might take place. And a person briefed on Mr. Trump’s plans said that some members of his team believe that a visit to Springfield is so contentious that he might appear in a different city but would still tie it to his focus on immigrants.

That would be a relief to Sue Call, 75, the owner of Sue’s Furniture in downtown Springfield.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said on Thursday of a possible Trump visit. “It’s just going to stir a lot of people up.”

Ms. Call was among those who were unhappy with Mr. Trump pushing a claim that local officials have repeatedly said has no merit.

“For that caliber of person just taking hearsay? That hurt a lot of people,” she said, adding that Haitians are among her regular customers. “They respect me, I respect them. It’s all been good that I can see.”

The Haitian community in Springfield is mostly made up of immigrants who are in the country legally, despite Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance’s repeated insistence on using them as an example of undocumented immigrants taking over a city. Most of the immigrants are protected legally because they fled dangerous conflict in Haiti.

At least some Springfield residents, however, said they were receptive to a Trump appearance.

Standing in line to pick up items at a mobile food pantry run by the nondenominational Central Christian church, Dave Ryan, 46, welcomed a Trump visit.

“I think it’s good if a soon-to-be president comes here to see how the Haitians are affecting people here and how to fix it,” Mr. Ryan said.

He said Mr. Trump needed to see the situation firsthand, adding, “The Haitians affect everyone. People are scared. Their way of life is different than ours.”

Ann Walters, who was volunteering at the food pantry, disagreed, and said Mr. Trump’s presence in Springfield would be bad for the city.

“I think there’s been enough attention already,” she said. “It would just create more violence and problems.”

And Reginald Silencieux, 40, the pastor of First Evangelical Church of Springfield, said the former president was free to visit. Pastor Silencieux, a Haitian immigrant, spoke in an interview on Thursday assisted by a congregant who speaks English and Haitian Creole.

He added that there had been a significant cost to the Haitian community, because of the threats brought on from the attention.

“We are scared to go outside,” he said. “We’ve been receiving a lot of threats, physically and verbally.”

Even before the report emerged on Thursday, the state’s Republicans were increasingly concerned about their chances of retaking the governor’s mansion, with Mr. Robinson trailing his Democratic rival, Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general, by more than a dozen percentage points in some polls.

And while a Democratic presidential candidate has not won North Carolina since 2008, when Barack Obama became the first in his party in more than three decades to do so, Democrats are feeling hopeful. A flailing Mr. Robinson, combined with the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris has drawn more support among key portions of the Democratic base there than President Biden had been able to, could create an opening for them to reverse their fortunes in a state that has broken their hearts over several election cycles.

North Carolina’s demographics have also changed considerably in the last 16 years as an influx of young people and people of color have moved to the state. A better-funded party operation in key corners of the state has also helped galvanize more Democratic voters.

Ms. Harris’s allies are paying attention, too. A senior adviser to her campaign, David Plouffe, responded to CNN’s reporting with four simple words: “16 key electoral votes.”

Ms. Harris’s presidential campaign and allied Democratic groups are pouring millions into advertising and canvassing operations across the state in the hopes of flipping it and helping to elect a handful of state house candidates to break the Republican supermajority there. Minutes after CNN published its story, Ms. Harris’s campaign released a video advertisement showing video footage of former President Donald J. Trump as he praised Mr. Robinson and called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Mr. Robinson has also vowed to stay in the race for governor, saying in a video on Thursday that the story was a leak from Mr. Stein, his Democratic opponent, though he offered no evidence of that.

“We are staying in this race,” he said in a direct appeal to his supporters. “We are in it to win it. With your help, we will.”

The deadline for a candidate to withdraw is Thursday. To withdraw, a candidate must submit a written request to the North Carolina State Board of Elections before midnight on Thursday.

If Mr. Robinson were to drop out, the executive committee of the North Carolina Republican Party would select a replacement candidate. Then the state Board of Elections would determine “whether it is practical to reprint the ballots with the replacement nominee’s name,” according to state law.

Given that the deadline was just hours away after the CNN report was published, it is highly unlikely that the board would choose to reprint the ballots, though the Republican Party could sue to have it do so. It recently won a court case seeking to have the board reprint ballots for absentee voters after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the presidential race.

Should Mr. Robinson leave the race and his name remain on the ballot, all votes cast for him would automatically be considered as votes for whomever the party chooses to replace him.

Mr. Robinson, a social conservative who has been a strident opponent of transgender rights, also posted about how he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, according to CNN, describing himself as a “perv” who liked “tranny on girl porn.”

In his Thursday video, Mr. Robinson said: “Let me reassure you. The things that you will see in that story — those are not the words of Mark Robinson.”

CNN said it had chosen to publish only some of Mr. Robinson’s messages, many of which were sexually explicit and graphic in nature. He made the comments between 2008 and 2012, according to the report.

To verify that Mr. Robinson was the poster behind the comments, CNN identified the username “minisoldr” as one Mr. Robinson used frequently online. In addition to matching biographical details, the report said, Mr. Robinson had listed his full name on the Nude Africa site along with an email address that he had used on various websites “for decades.”

The New York Times was not able to immediately independently verify the posts.

The fallout from Mr. Robinson’s old online comments and his decision to stay in the race could affect the presidential contest, as well.

Former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Mr. Robinson at a rally in North Carolina in March, saying he was “Martin Luther King on steroids.” A person with direct knowledge of the discussions, who was not authorized to describe them publicly, said some people had warned Mr. Trump in 2023 against supporting him because the bare minimum of opposition research on him had already turned up controversial statements.

On Thursday, the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris was quick to highlight the ties between them, circulating clips of Mr. Trump praising Mr. Robinson along with pictures of the two men posing together.

Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, issued a statement on Thursday that did not address Mr. Robinson directly. Instead, she said that Mr. Trump would win the White House and called North Carolina a “vital part of that plan.”

“We will not take our eye off the ball,” she said.

In his video in advance of the report, Mr. Robinson accused without evidence his Democratic rival, Attorney General Josh Stein, of being responsible for it. He vowed he would not exit the contest, which is one of the nation’s most competitive races for governor this year and is unfolding in a key presidential battleground.

“We are staying in this race,” Mr. Robinson said. “We are in it to win it.”

Mr. Stein’s campaign said in a statement that “North Carolinians already know Mark Robinson is completely unfit to be governor. Josh remains focused on winning this campaign so that together we can build a safer, stronger North Carolina for everyone.”

National Republicans have already spent more than $12 million on television ads supporting Mr. Robinson in his race this year, according to data from AdImpact, the ad-tracking firm, with the Republican Governors Association providing much of the funding.

A spokeswoman for the R.G.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

North Carolina is a state that both Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are contesting as part of their path to 270 electoral votes. The state was the closest one in the nation that Mr. Trump won four years ago, and Ms. Harris’s team in particular has believed it can make inroads, partly because Mr. Robinson had already attracted so much negative attention.

Mr. Trump is scheduled to visit North Carolina on Saturday.

Since the beginning of his campaign, Mr. Robinson has faced scrutiny for a string of inflammatory statements and social media posts, including one that quoted a statement attributed to Adolf Hitler. He has also called the survivors of the Parkland school shooting who have been vocal in supporting gun control measures “spoiled, angry, know-it-all children.”

Mr. Robinson had long been seen as a risky standard-bearer for governor in Republican political circles but he still easily won his party’s nomination. Mr. Trump’s ties to the state were deepened earlier this year when the former president tapped Michael Whatley, then the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, to serve as the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Mr. Whatley and Mr. Robinson spoke briefly by phone on Thursday before the story broke. The chairman was not yet aware of the specifics in the piece and did not ask Mr. Robinson to step aside, said one person with knowledge of the conversation, who was not authorized to discuss the private call publicly. Mr. Robinson told Mr. Whatley that the coming report was false, the person said.

People close to Mr. Trump had been prepared for a story on Mr. Robinson coming this week, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations, amid long-term concerns among establishment Republicans in the state that more damaging information would emerge.

Mr. Trump had declined to have Mr. Robinson attend at least one recent event the former president held in the state. His campaign was also preparing to distance itself further from Mr. Robinson, but did not plan to call on him to drop out, the person with direct knowledge said.

Mr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, held a campaign rally on Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C., accompanied by a number of House candidates, Tim Moore, the State House speaker, and Hal Weatherman, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. Mr. Robinson himself was absent, and Mr. Vance made no mention of him during the rally.

Some close to Mr. Trump’s team had hoped that Mr. Robinson would decide to leave the race, so reporters would stop covering his controversies and put an end to negative headlines that could damage Mr. Trump in the key battleground state.

Despite Mr. Trump now planning to distance himself, he has long praised Mr. Robinson, hosting a fund-raiser for him at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., last year and appearing alongside him at rallies.

“He’s an outstanding person. I’ve gotten to know him so well and fairly quickly,” Mr. Trump said at the fund-raiser, adding that Mr. Robinson was a “star” and needed to be cherished “like a fine wine.”

Mr. Robinson was also invited to speak at the Republican National Convention, the party’s most important platform.

In his video on Thursday, Mr. Robinson invoked comments made by the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is also Black, during his contentious confirmation fight three decades ago.

“Clarence Thomas famously once said he was the victim of a high-tech lynching,” Mr. Robinson said. “Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is, too.”

According to the CNN report, Mr. Robinson was responsible dozens of disturbing comments on the Nude Africa site, including a message where he recounted how, as a 14-year-old, he went “peeping” on women in public gym showers. He described fantasizing about the memory as an adult.

Mr. Robinson also wrote approvingly of a return of the days of slavery.

“Slavery is not bad,” he wrote. “Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.”

In another message on the forum, dated to 2012, he said that he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama. “I’d take Hitler over any of the [expletive] that’s in Washington right now!” he wrote.

He also used slurs against Jewish, Black, Muslim and gay people, CNN reported.

In his video, Mr. Robinson tried to dismiss the reporting as “salacious tabloid trash.”

Even if Mr. Robinson did decide to leave the race, it’s not certain that he could avoid being on the ballot this close to November.

North Carolina law states that “the rules shall provide for the reprinting, where practical, of official ballots as a result of replacement candidates.” Overseas and military ballots from North Carolina are set to go out on Friday, and all of those ballots have already been printed.

Recreating ballots with a new name would be costly and make meeting overseas ballot deadlines extremely difficult. A spokesman for the North Carolina Board of Elections said the deadline to withdraw is before overseas military ballots are transmitted, which is Friday.

Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Nick Corasaniti and Chris Cameron contributed reporting.

The event will feature representatives from some of the dozens of online groups that have coalesced around Ms. Harris since she became the Democratic nominee, including “White Dudes for Harris,” “Cat Ladies for Kamala” and “Latinas for Harris.”

Ms. Winfrey is hosting the event in collaboration with “Win With Black Women,” which was the first group to draw tens of thousands of people to a Zoom fund-raiser for Ms. Harris after she entered the race, inspiring some of the other groups that followed. The group’s founder, Jotaka Eaddy, will join Ms. Harris and Ms. Winfrey at the event. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is also expected to attend.

Ms. Winfrey endorsed Ms. Harris last month, and gave a full-throated speech on her behalf at the Democratic National Convention, her first time addressing a party convention. In her speech, Ms. Winfrey called on Americans to choose “optimism over cynicism” and “inclusion over retribution.”

“Decency and respect are on the ballot in 2024, and just plain common sense,” Ms. Winfrey said.

Ms. Winfrey’s endorsement is a coveted one, as she has largely shied away from politics, reserving her influence for a few major races. In 2007, she endorsed then-Senator Barack Obama for president, and hit the campaign trail for him in Iowa.

Ms. Winfrey said she wanted to use Thursday’s virtual rally to motivate people to go to the polls.

“What is essential to me is getting people motivated to vote — and that’s my intention in hosting this event,” Ms. Winfrey said in a statement announcing the event. “My goal is to get people excited about the privilege and power of the vote.”

“If Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” he said in response to a reporter’s question after a rally in Raleigh, N.C. “An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal.”

Congress created the temporary protected status program in 1990 and presidents from both major parties have used it in response to wars, natural disasters and other humanitarian crises in various countries. The program allows people from countries designated by the Department of Homeland Security to live and work legally in the United States for 18 months, a period that the department can renew indefinitely. It does not include a path to permanent residency or citizenship.

The Obama administration granted the temporary protected status to Haitians living in the United States illegally after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010. Under President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security has granted or renewed temporary protected status to immigrants from a number of countries, including Haiti, Ukraine and Venezuela. Ms. Harris did not make those decisions.

Former President Donald J. Trump has long criticized the program. His administration sought to end protections for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan, though some of those decisions were challenged in court, and Mr. Biden reversed some.

Mr. Trump recently said that the mass deportations he has vowed to carry out would begin with immigrants in Springfield, Ohio (largely Haitians) and Aurora, Colo. (largely Venezuelans), which would mean the removal of thousands of people living and working legally with temporary protected status.

Mr. Vance’s comments on Wednesday were of a piece with his and Mr. Trump’s attacks over the past two weeks. They have repeatedly spread false claims that Haitians in Springfield are stealing and eating pets, smears that local officials — including Republicans — and journalists have debunked.

Schools and offices in Springfield have received bomb threats for days, leading Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio to deploy the state police. Mr. DeWine and the mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, both Republicans, have denounced the false claims from Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump.

“It’s frustrating when national politicians, on the national stage, mischaracterize what is actually going on and misrepresent our community,” Mr. Rue said last week, calling the bomb threats a “hateful response to immigration in our town.”

Mr. DeWine told ABC News on Sunday that the claim that migrants were eating pets was “a piece of garbage” and that, while the influx of thousands of people over a short period of time had brought some “challenges,” Springfield’s Haitian residents were there legally and had benefited the city economically.

Around the same time Mr. DeWine was speaking on Sunday, Mr. Vance was standing by the claims in a series of interviews, telling CNN, “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 going to do.”