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The Cat Eaters of Ohio

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The establishment media called it a racist myth, but is it?

Donald Trump shocked audiences at this week’s presidential debate with the claim that foreign migrants were eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio, a small town currently reeling under the strain of an unprecedented number of new arrivals, mostly from Haiti. “They’re eating the dogs,” Trump said. “They’re eating the cats.”

Reactions on both sides were spirited. Conservative social media accounts created memes that portrayed Trump, dressed in camouflage, and toting heavy weapons, as the savior of innocent pets. There was even a viral TikTok trend, which chopped up Trump’s speech and set it to dance music. “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating cats,” the music thumped. “Eat the cat! Eat, eat the cat!”

The establishment media was not amused. During the debate, ABC’s David Muir dismissed Trump’s rhetoric with his version of a fact check, citing the Springfield city manager’s statement that “there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” Other publications went further, blasting the former president for spreading a “racist smear,” a “century-old stereotype,” and a “cat-eating conspiracy theory.”

So, is there any truth to the charge? We have conducted an exclusive investigation that reveals that, yes, in fact, some migrants in Ohio appear to have been “eating the cats,” though not exactly in the manner that Trump described.

Our investigation begins in a run-down neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio, the closest major city to Springfield, about a half-hour’s drive away. We identified a social media post, dated August 25, 2023, with a short video depicting what appear to be two skinned cats on top of a blue barbeque. “Yoooo the Africans wildn on Parkwood,” reads the text, referring to Parkwood Drive. The video then pans down to two live cats walking across the grass in front of a run-down fence, with a voice on the video warning: “There go a cat right there. His ass better get missin’, man. Look like his homies on the grill!”

We spoke with the author of the video, who asked to remain anonymous but confirmed its time, location, and authenticity. He told us that he was picking up his son last summer, when he noticed the unusual situation. “It was some Africans that stay right next door to my kid’s mother,” he said. “This African dude next door had the damn cat on the grill.”

We then identified the home by matching it to the visuals in the video and cross-referencing it with the eyewitness. When we knocked on the door of the first unit, a family answered, telling us they were from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and that all of the surrounding units were occupied by other African migrants.

One of the residents told us that her former neighbors, also from Africa, had lived in the adjacent unit until last month. They had a blue grill and the father would find meat in the neighborhood. “Her dad was going to find meat,” she said. “Her dad was going, holding a knife.” The current residents also showed us a blue grill of the same make and model as in the video, which the former neighbors had abandoned after they moved out. There were at least ten cats wandering around the complex and another resident complained that they were breeding on the property.

According to the original witness, whose son was friendly with the neighbors, there was no doubt about what happened last summer. “They was barbecuing the damn cat!” he said. His son’s mother had previously witnessed the family butchering a mammal on the street, but the cats on the barbecue put him in such a state of shock, he felt the need to film it.

To be clear: this single incident does not confirm the particularities of Trump’s statement. The town is Dayton, not Springfield; cats alone were on the grill, not cats and dogs. But it does break the general narrative peddled by the establishment media and its “fact checkers,” who insisted that this has never happened, and that any suggestion otherwise is somehow an expression of racism.

It takes only a single exception, however, to falsify a hypothesis, and the logical next step, for any honest broker, is to ask if it is happening more often, and elsewhere. It is not implausible. Many developing nations, including the Congo and Haiti, have traditions of animal sacrifice or consumption of what Americans would consider household pets. And if this occurred in Dayton, where the migrant population is relatively small, it could be going on down the road in Springfield, where it is relatively much larger.

Independent journalists are already on the hunt and could reveal more. The Daily Wire has dispatched a reporter to Springfield to investigate. The Federalist has published a police report with allegations that a group of Haitians emerged from a city trail with dead geese in hand. Ohio’s attorney general, Dave Yost, has backed up this claim, arguing that citizens with such firsthand knowledge “would be competent witnesses in court.”

There is a legitimate debate to be had about migration and culture. All immigrants bring with them a particular tradition, which, in the case of countries such as Haiti and the Congo, can include practices that many Americans find disturbing. This cultural divide causes understandable consternation for non-migrants living in the rougher parts of places like Dayton and Springfield. They don’t enjoy the luxury of many in the establishment media, who can maintain a safe distance, condescending to those who raise the alarm while not even bothering to investigate anything themselves.

These revelations do not mean that assimilation is impossible, but the establishment will need to engage in a more honest debate, rather than simply smearing critics as racists and conspiracy theorists. One can make the case for migration, but one cannot, at the same time, deny that it comes with costs—which, in this case, seem to include a pair of flayed cats on a blue barbeque in Dayton, Ohio.

Christopher Rufo is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Crime

Letter Shows Biden Administration Privately Warned B.C. on Fentanyl Threat Years Before Patel’s Public Bombshells

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Fentanyl super lab busted in BC

In recent interviews with Joe Rogan and Fox News, FBI Director Kash Patel alleged that Vancouver has become a global hub for fentanyl production and export—part of a transnational network linking Chinese Communist Party-associated suppliers and Mexican drug cartels, and exploiting systemic weaknesses in Canada’s border enforcement. “What they’re doing now … is they’re shipping that stuff not straight [into the United States],” Patel told Rogan, citing classified intelligence. “They’re having the Mexican cartels now make this fentanyl down in Mexico still, but instead of going right up the southern border and into America, they’re flying it into Vancouver. They’re taking the precursors up to Canada, manufacturing it up there, and doing their global distribution routes from up there because we’ve been so effective down south.”

His comments prompted a public response from B.C. Premier David Eby’s top cop, Solicitor General Garry Begg, who disputed the scale of the allegations.

Controversially, Patel also asserted that Washington believes Beijing is intentionally targeting the United States with fentanyl to harm younger generations—especially for strategic purposes.

But a diplomatic letter obtained exclusively by The Bureau supports the view that high-level U.S. concerns—nearly identical to Patel’s—were privately raised by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken two years earlier.

The Blinken letter suggests that these concerns were already being voiced at the highest levels of U.S. diplomacy and intelligence in 2023—under a Democratic administration—which counters a widespread misperception in Canadian political and media spheres that the Trump administration has distorted facts about Vancouver’s role in global fentanyl trafficking logistics.

In a letter dated May 25, 2023, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote to Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West, thanking him for participating in a fentanyl-focused roundtable at the Cities Summit of the Americas in Denver. According to West, only several mayors were invited to discuss the FBI’s strategic focus on transnational organized crime and fentanyl trafficking—an indication of the summit’s targeted focus on British Columbia. “Thank you for discussing your city’s experiences with synthetic opioids and providing valuable lessons learned we can share throughout the region,” Blinken wrote.

The letter suggested U.S. officials were not only increasingly seeing Canadian municipalities as critical partners in a hemispheric fight against synthetic drug trafficking, but viewed Mayor West as a trusted partner in British Columbia.

West told The Bureau that Blinken privately expressed the same controversial and jarring assessment that Patel later made publicly—essentially arguing that the U.S. government had assessed that China is intentionally weaponizing fentanyl against North America, and that Chinese Communist Party-linked networks are strategically operating in concert with Latin cartels.

According to The Bureau’s reporting, Blinken described growing frustration among U.S. federal agencies over Canada’s legal and enforcement deficiencies. He pointed to what American officials saw as systemic obstacles in Canadian law that made it difficult to act on intelligence involving fentanyl production, chemical precursor shipments, and laundering operations tied to cartel and CCP-linked actors.

West told The Bureau that the U.S. government was alarmed that a major money laundering investigation in British Columbia—targeting the notorious Sam Gor synthetic narcotics syndicate, which collaborates with Mexican cartels in Western Hemisphere fentanyl trafficking and money laundering, according to U.S. experts—had collapsed in Canadian court proceedings. The Bureau has confirmed with a Canadian police veteran that this investigation originated from U.S. government intelligence.

West, a vocal critic of Canada’s handling of transnational organized crime, said U.S. agencies had begun withholding sensitive intelligence, citing a lack of confidence in Canada’s ability—or willingness—to act on it.

Blinken also framed the crisis in a broader hemispheric context, noting that while national leaders met at the Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles to address the shared challenges facing the region, it was city leaders who served at the forefront of tackling those threats.

Patel’s recent public statements—which singled out Vancouver as a production hub and described air and sea trafficking routes into the U.S.—have revived the debate around Canada’s role in the opioid crisis. U.S. experts, such as former senior DEA investigator Donald Im, argue that northern border seizure statistics do not capture the majority of fentanyl activity emanating from Canada as monitored by U.S. law enforcement.

Im cited, for example, the case of Arden McCann, a Montreal man indicted in the Northern District of Georgia and accused of mailing synthetic opioids—including fentanyl, carfentanil, U-47700, and furanyl fentanyl—from Canada and China into the United States. According to the indictment, McCann—also known as “The Mailman” and “Dr. Xanax”—trafficked quantities capable of causing mass casualty events. He was later sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for operating a dark web narcotics network that, between 2015 and 2020, distributed fentanyl to 49 states and generated more than $10 million in revenue.

As part of that investigation, the DEA reported that Canadian authorities seized approximately two million counterfeit Xanax pills, five pill presses, alprazolam powder, 3,000 MDMA pills, more than $200,000 in cash, 15 firearms, ballistic vests, and detailed drug ledgers. The ledgers showed that McCann and his co-conspirators purchased alprazolam from suppliers in China, pressed the powder into counterfeit Xanax pills, and sold the product to U.S. buyers via dark web marketplaces.

 

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conflict

One dead, over 60 injured after Iranian missiles pierce Iron Dome

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MXM logo MxM News 

Quick Hit:

Iran launched four waves of missile attacks Friday night, breaching Israel’s defenses and killing at least one person. Over 60 others were injured, with the IDF confirming direct strikes on civilian areas in Tel Aviv and central Israel.

Key Details:

  • The Israel Defense Forces reported four rounds of Iranian missile fire, with at least ten missiles making impact inside Israel.

  • One person was killed and 63 wounded, including several in critical condition, according to The Jerusalem Post.

  • The IDF said Iran deliberately targeted civilians, contrasting its own earlier strikes that focused on Iranian military assets.

Diving Deeper:

Several Iranian missiles broke through Israel’s air defenses during Friday night’s attack, striking Tel Aviv and other civilian areas. According to The Jerusalem Post, at least 63 people were wounded and one person was killed after four waves of Iranian ballistic missile strikes hit cities across Israel.

The IDF reportedly said roughly 100 missiles were fired in total. While the Iron Dome intercepted many, multiple missiles made it through and exploded in densely populated areas. Dramatic video showed a missile striking near downtown Tel Aviv, sending fire and debris into the air as people ran for cover.

Army Radio confirmed that ten missiles landed inside Israel between the first two waves. By the time the third and fourth waves hit, injuries had climbed sharply, with several listed in critical condition. The one fatality was reported late Friday night.

The Israeli Home Front Command temporarily allowed civilians to exit shelters but quickly reversed that guidance, urging residents to stay near protected areas amid fears of further attacks.

The IDF emphasized the nature of the targets, calling out Iran for targeting civilians. The IDF also released maps showing where air raid sirens were triggered throughout the night. Though Israel’s Home Front Command briefly allowed civilians to exit shelters, it advised them to remain nearby in case of continued strikes. As of late Friday, Iranian officials claimed a fifth wave could follow.

With tensions still high, Israeli defense officials are preparing for potential further escalation—and weighing how to respond to a direct Iranian attack on civilians.

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