#Erika Lee

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kelby Vera at HuffPost:

An Ohio woman whose police report was used to power racist rumors about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating neighborhood cats has admitted her pet was found in her home, just days after she reported her Haitian neighbors to local police. Baseless reports about missing pets in Springfield, Ohio gained national attention after Donald Trump parroted the rumor during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris last Tuesday. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in this country.”

Despite the former president receiving an instant fact-check from moderator David Muir, his unfounded anti-immigrant rhetoric continued to circulate online and in the media, backed by several of his campaign surrogates. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), doubled down on the misinformation during multiple media appearances this past weekend. But the day before the Trump-Harris debate, Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck had explicitly debunked the rumor to a Vance aide, according to a Thursday report from the Wall Street Journal. When the Journal approached Vance’s team about the cat-eating claim, a spokesperson provided a police report from a Springfield resident who accused her Haitian neighbors of being responsible for her cat going missing in late August.

But when the outlet contacted the person who filed the report, Anna Kilgore, she told the paper that her pet, Miss Sassy, was found in her basement days after she contacted the police. Kilgore, who was wearing a Trump shirt and hat when the Journal spoke with her, told reporters that she had since apologized to her Haitian neighbors. While Miss Sassy was not in any harm, the same now can’t be said about Springfield and the city’s Haitian community.

[...] Another Springfield resident, whose Facebook post began the pet-eating rumor that Kilgore’s police report ostensibly proved, has apologized for inciting a backlash against her city.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump supporter Anna Kilgore, the one who filed the report that blamed Haitian immigrants for causing her pet to go missing, revealed that her cat Miss Sassy was found in her basement a few days after she contacted the police.

Kilgore’s report was fuel for the right-wing media and the Trump/Vance ticket to amplify racist and xenophobic cat-eating hoaxes against Haitians and cause the city of Springfield, Ohio needless trauma.

See Also:

The Present Age: The Wall Street Journal Provides a Template for Covering the Right's Springfield Lies

MMFA: JD Vance, Springfield, and how MAGA media spun a racist lie out of control

Daily Kos: Vance knew Haitian immigrants weren't eating pets—and lied anyway

[homobiwan]

- Erika Lee, 2015

[reverie-quotes]

It is not a matter of the United States being either a “nation of immigrants” or a “nation of xenophobia.” It is also not a matter of the United States being a “nation of immigrants” during certain moments of its history and a “nation of xenophobia” during others. Rather, just as racial progress and racist progress can happen at the same time, Americans’ embrace of immigrants and their fear and hatred of them have coexisted as equally strong forces shaping the United States.

— Erika Lee, America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States

[say-hi-intrepid-heroes]

some of yall really out here missing the entire point of misfits and magic

you can't make a problem go away just by pretending it doesn't exist. you have to call it out.

misfits and magic calls out that book series in every way possible, from the general discrimination to the lack of diversity to the specific idea that kids are evil from age 11.

should that book series get more publicity? no. but if the bullshit that author does is ignored, it will only fester and become a bigger problem. call out the issue without giving the issue any money. call out the issue in an effective manner. and in this case, call out the issue in a fun way that supports actual queer people.

[worldsbeyondpod]

Everyone please tell Brennan how brave and strong he is.

ICYMI, we dropped a SURPRISE Patreon-exclusive Q&A video a few days ago!

Join us by the fireside for $5 a month to get access to this 50+ minute long video!

[gamechangershow]

undefined

A new Make Some Noise is out now on Dropout - with Izzy, Brennan, and Erika!

[embraceweird]

wait?? The 2026 winter olympic mascots are FUCKING STOATS!!!!

[audible301]

Saw this song on tiktok (creds to @/cartervailmusic over there) and thought it described a certain group of Mug- Magical Misfits

[ramavoite]

[rainebownerd]

Erika just reached into almost every daughter's nightmares and pulled this line out and Brennan knew exactly how to respond to that

[kittyoverlord]

Brennan always making sure people know not to talk to cops.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alicia Victoria Lozano at NBC:

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout. “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday. Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported.  Newton told Newsguard that Lee’s Facebook post misstated her story, and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend” rather than her daughter’s friend. Newton could not be reached for comment. Lee said she had no idea the post would become part of a rumor mill that would spiral into the national consciousness. She has since deleted the Facebook post. 

Other posts have also contributed to the false allegations, including a photo of a man holding a dead goose that was taken in Columbus, Ohio, but was spread by some online as evidence of the claims about Springfield. Graphic video of a woman who allegedly killed and tried to eat a cat was also found not to have originated in Springfield but in Canton, Ohio, and does not have any connection to the Haitian community. Local police and city officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of such crimes in Springfield, but that hasn’t stopped the lies from spreading across the country and igniting a national frenzy that landed on the presidential debate stage this week. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who was born less than an hour away from Springfield, have repeated the baseless allegations. Lee said she never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate. “I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”

Erika Lee, the Facebook poster from Springfield, Ohio who kicked off the bat guano cat-eating hoax that JD Vance, Donald Trump, and the right-wing media ate up, regretted her role in creating the viral racist anti-Haitian attack.

[fischyplier]

Can not wait for Sept 25! <3

[reverie-quotes]

In these compromised choices, Congress's liberals opted for reform, but not justice.

— Erika Lee, America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States

[18catsreading]

Aabria: lair action

Jasper: oh, it's okay

Aabria: huh?

Jasper: it's okay, you don't have to do that

Aabria: I don't have to?

[Brennan laughing]

Izzy: we're good

Siobhan: no, thank you

Aabria: that threw me off so fucking much.

Brennan: the authority of, I was like, like that, whatever that was made me be like [imitating a ear piece call]: Aabria, Jasper says no on that

Aabria: yeah yeah, oh I'm so, can you tell him I'm so sorry--

Erika: it's the accent

Aabria: yeah, fucking British accent cinders authority

Jasper: came from such a deep sense of fear. That was where I was coming from

Siobhan! Yes, exactly, the accent. It comes from a deep sense of fear

Brennan: I've never seen someone who's being faced with death and ruin with a voice of like [calmly]: I'm gonna send this back to the kitchen because this was not very good

[junewild]

every new make some noise episode gives me a new favorite make some noise clip of all time.

make some noise, season 2, “the wicked switch of the west.”