NEW YORK — One New York House Republican has spread a viral but false claim about migrants eating pets. His neighbor, another vulnerable GOP freshman, has rejected it.

Now, both want to move on — but Donald Trump, JD Vance and mountains of memes stand in their way.

New York Rep. Marc Molinaro last week gave oxygen to the debunked rumor that Haitian newcomers to Springfield, Ohio, abduct and eat cats and dogs — posting it to X, Instagram and Facebook as one of a multitude of attacks meant to challenge his Democratic rival’s commitment to border security.

Two congressional districts to the south, Rep. Mike Lawler, whose constituency includes a sizable Haitian American population, released a statement urging his fellow Republicans to refrain from circulating unsubstantiated rumors. It was attributed to a spokesperson and blamed no one by name.

Both staked out their positions before the presidential debate, but neither can escape it now that Trump has thrust the racist trope into the national spotlight by musing about it onstage. His running mate, Vance, continues to defend it, telling CNN he’s been able to “create” a media focus on how immigration can overwhelm communities. And MAGA social media accounts are still circulating AI-generated art of Trump rescuing and embracing kittens and ducks.

There have been real-world implications for Springfield, including bomb threats that have closed schools and disrupted life there.

Molinaro and Lawler are battling for reelection in two of the country’s most competitive House races — and two of the six in New York that will help determine which party controls the narrowly divided chamber next year. Their divergent approaches reflect the challenging landscape that swing-district Republicans across the country must now navigate as Trump and Vance push the false narrative. The differences in their handling of the claim also speak to some of the contrasts in their campaigns.

Lawler is facing a Black challenger in former Rep. Mondaire Jones. And he’s confronting the reality that some of his Haitian American constituents believe Trump and Vance are targeting them simply because they’re Black immigrants.

“We didn’t come to the United States looking for racist people to keep insulting us,” said Renold Julien, the leader of a community center aiding Haitians in Lawler’s district. “We come here to make a living. We come here because we have been forced out of our country.”

The painful and dangerous claim has spread like wildfire via TikTok, other social media memes and audio remixes thanks to Trump’s debate remarks.

“In Springfield, they’re eating dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats,” Trump told the voting public as Vice President Kamala Harris shook her head incredulously at their recent debate.

Earlier that day, Molinaro posted a screenshot from Springfield featuring a Black man holding a goose and an accompanying message about a killed cat. He stood firmly by it on X after his Democratic opponent, Josh Riley, demanded he apologize.

In an interview, Molinaro then turned every question about his posts into a volley of attacks alleging Riley would surrender the southern border to criminals.

When pressed by POLITICO about it, the vulnerable Republican argued the Springfield claim is based in some truth about some Black immigrant cultures.

“Google Manlius,” Molinaro said, a reference to a popular swan that, according to police, was stolen, killed and eaten last year. “Listen, there are desperate people in the world who were allowed into this country with no capacity to support themselves.”

While his line of rhetoric has been challenged as racist, Molinaro’s focus on the broader migrant issue is not surprising. In the mid-Hudson Valley’s heated rematch, border security has emerged as a central theme.

Riley has hit Molinaro for his opposition to the bipartisan border bill, which died in the Senate — in large part due to Trump’s opposition to it. Molinaro has in turn attacked Riley’s work as a Senate attorney challenging Trump’s border policy. And both have blasted President Joe Biden and spotlighted migrant crime.

In an interview with POLITICO, Riley was similarly intent on focusing on the border, arguing he would work toward a solution and saying Molinaro is lying about his record.

“It’s beneath the office to pedal and traffic in dangerous and racist conspiracy theories,” the Democrat said. “We have real, big, serious challenges that we need to solve.”

Trump and Vance’s continued promotion of the pet-eating claim is harder to pivot away from in Lawler’s lower Hudson Valley district, where support from Haitian New Yorkers could mean the difference between winning and losing in what’s expected to be a tight race.

After Molinaro’s posts, but before the debate, Lawler’s office issued a mild rebuke — and perhaps the only one from a House Republican.

“He encourages his colleagues to exercise great restraint when spreading unfounded theories and claims based off of posts on Facebook,” Lawler’s spokesperson Nate Soule said in a statement.

Lawler declined POLITICO’s request for an interview. His campaign said his statement was not aimed at Molinaro.

Jones, meanwhile, told POLITICO that the Springfield claim is “gross” and “racist.”

“It’s sadly par for the course in Republican politics,” he said in an interview.

It’s also offensive to Haitian Americans in the district, “a community that Mike Lawler purports to be trying to make inroads in — for political purposes anyway,” Jones said.

Jones hosted a news conference Tuesday with leaders of Haitian descent to condemn Republican rhetoric.

Julien, the director of the Konbit Neg Lakay community center, told POLITICO he reached out and initiated the event because he had not heard from officials of either party since the Springfield claim went viral.

“It is a reminder that politically, Haitians in the United States, we don’t really have a lot of friends,” Julien said. “But it is not about Republican or Democrat, the thing is you’re talking about humanity.”

The toxic political climate and a complex web of threats — punctuated by Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump — is putting an extraordinary strain on the national security officials tasked with safeguarding American democracy.

Security experts say sharp polarization and increasingly hateful political rhetoric — fanned by foreign adversaries and supercharged by social media — have combined to test the nation’s ability to protect its candidates and institutions.

“The 2024 presidential election is taking place at a time when the U.S. is facing the most complex, dynamic, and dangerous threat environment I’ve experienced in the 40-plus years that I’ve been working in law enforcement, homeland security, and national security,” said John Cohen, a former senior Homeland Security intelligence and counterterrorism official.

“We’re facing cyber, physical, and other threats by foreign and domestic threat actors, and what’s different today is how they have fully embraced the power of the internet,” Cohen added.

He said security and law enforcement professionals have been slow to adapt to these changes.

After Sunday’s incident, Republicans were quick to call for increased security measures for the former president.

Other factors have combined to drive up the intensity of the moment: the emergence and surprising political strength of Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to lead a national ticket, after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid; the compressed election calendar resulting from Harris’ late entry into the race; the pileup of criminal charges that Trump has battled for a year; and election meddling by Iran (through hacking) and Russia (through disinformation).

Though every recent election cycle has featured some of these challenges, especially foreign interference, rarely has there been a moment when they’ve all collided at once — requiring the Secret Service to weigh a daunting blend of foreign and domestic threats.

John Sandweg, a partner at Nixon Peabody and former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called the 2024 cycle “an unprecedented time, at least in modern history, in terms of the demands that are on their resources.”

Election season is always challenging for the Secret Service because agents must protect people who are barnstorming the country — so while they guard Trump on his golf course, they must also plan ahead for rallies, campaign stops, and other appearances in unfamiliar venues that raise unique security concerns. The failures that allowed one would-be assassin’s bullet to strike Trump’s ear at a July rally in Butler, Pa., have been a constant reminder that the vaunted agency can still simply screw up.

Ryan Williams, a former aide to Mitt Romney who worked on his presidential bids, said in an interview that the violence directed toward Trump is like nothing he’s seen in his lifetime and that he fears the attempts on the former president’s life could inspire copycat shooters.

“We could potentially see that now in politics,” Williams said. “It’s scary because you can’t protect everybody in politics. There are hundreds of congressmen and senators and high-profile people — it’s just not possible to secure them all if this is what’s going to happen.”

Law enforcement agencies are also operating in an environment of deep distrust, stoked by Trump’s longtime attacks on the FBI and Justice Department amid the deluge of investigations and indictments he’s faced in recent years.

Some Republicans, like Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), called for the feds to stay out of the investigation into Sunday’s incident, saying instead that Florida authorities — under the leadership of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — should be the ones digging into the latest apparent attempt on Trump’s life. DeSantis obliged, announcing that Florida would do its own probe. But the criminal case against the suspect, identified as Ryan Routh, is a federal case being handled by the Justice Department.

Republicans have also renewed claims that Trump is receiving insufficient protection from the Secret Service, despite Trump’s own praise of the agency for its handling of the latest incident. Biden, for his part, denounced the attack and said he had directed that the Secret Service provide “every resource, capability and protective measure necessary to ensure the former President’s continued safety.”

Trump is expected to move forward with all campaign events previously scheduled this week, including stops in Michigan, New York, Washington, D.C. and North Carolina between Tuesday and Saturday. He was scheduled to receive a briefing from the acting director of the Secret Service on Monday afternoon in Palm Beach.

While Trump has railed for years against the Justice Department and the FBI as an ominous “deep state,” he has not criticized the Secret Service (which is a component of the Department of Homeland Security) or local law enforcement agencies. In public and private conversations after Sunday’s incident, Trump reiterated his support for the Secret Service and local sheriff’s office, while seeking to project an image of strength and resolve about continuing his campaign activities.

Questions remain about whether, if Trump were the sitting president, the roads surrounding the golf course would have been closed while he was playing on Sunday. But aides say that there had been a noticeable uptick in Secret Service security measures since the Butler shooting: a larger motorcade, stricter protocols for those flying on Trump’s plane and increased emergency medical staff traveling with him.

The Butler shooting is still the subject of intense scrutiny— both for how a lone shooter was able to position himself to get a clear shot at Trump despite obvious signs of danger minutes before the attack, and for the shooter’s motive, which remains a mystery two months later.

“I think there’s a hatred in our politics that wasn’t there before. The political rhetoric is sharper and more hateful today,” said Gordon Heddell, a retired assistant director at the Secret Service, who spent 28 years at the agency.

“Social media sites play a pivotal role in their capacity to initiate and further lies and conspiracy theories. Advanced technologies make it easier for an assassin to operate. The availability of high-powered military-style weapons and the ability to move about the country freely; and before you know it, the challenges facing the Secret Service have gone way up,” he added.

The proliferation of social media, in particular, has exacerbated challenges. They’ve allowed foreign adversaries to cloak subversive activity through anonymous accounts that amplify divisive messages and cultural conflicts; they allow disinformation to dilute reality and conspiracy theories to take root. And social media platforms have struggled to provide open forums for debate while combating violent rhetoric.

Already, Iran has been eyed as the culprit behind a hack-and-leak effort that penetrated the Trump campaign.

Cohen said the Secret Service is a leader in analyzing people’s behavior to predict if they pose a threat to protectees. But, he added, federal law enforcement officials need to face fewer constraints in viewing and analyzing public social media posts. It’s a complex policy issue, he said, given constitutional and legal protections that Americans enjoy. But intelligence and law enforcement personnel need to be able to do more.

“Sadly, what all too often is the case is that we fail to recognize the warning signs, we fail to respond rapidly to an emerging threat, and the outcome is very often much more tragic,” Cohen said. “Law enforcement needs the technical capabilities and the authorities to review online content associated with threat actors more broadly than they are doing today.”

Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.

A bipartisan House task force was already investigating the July assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. Sunday’s attack may have lawmakers expanding their probe.

Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Jason Crow (D-Colo.), the chair and top Democrat on the House task force, have requested a briefing for the panel with the Secret Service this week over what authorities have deemed another “attempted assassination” that occurred at Trump’s golf club in Florida. Shots were fired near Trump, who was unharmed, and a suspect is in custody.

“The Task Force is monitoring this attempted assassination of former President Trump in West Palm Beach this afternoon. We have requested a briefing with the U.S. Secret Service about what happened and how security responded,” Kelly and Crow said in a joint statement, vowing to “share updates as we learn more.”

The House task force was created earlier this year to investigate the assassination attempt against Trump at his July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Part of the group’s goal is to identify failures leading up to that incident and prevent similar attacks in the future. Members met just days ago with acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. as part of that investigation.

The joint statement is an early sign that the House panel could be expanding its scope to also probe the Sunday incident. The group is already under a tight timeframe; under a resolution that passed the House unanimously earlier this year, they have until mid-December to issue its findings and legislative recommendations.

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the task force, wrote on X that he expects the “Secret Service to brief us this week,” adding that the July 13 shooting “was not an isolated incident that we can take our time investigating as domestic and foreign threats are ongoing.” A task force spokesperson confirmed that committee leaders were also requesting that the briefing occur this week.

Some congressional leaders disclosed Sunday that they had already been briefed after the apparent assassination attempt. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was briefed by Rowe, the Democratic leader said in a statement.

“I applaud the Secret Service for their quick response to ensure former President Trump’s safety,” Schumer said. “There is no place in this country for political violence of any kind. The perpetrator must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Other lawmakers revived demands for increased security for Trump — echoing calls that they made in the wake of the July 13 shooting. Congressional investigators have raised questions about Trump’s security detail as part of their ongoing inquiries.

“Given the escalating threats, I’m calling on President Biden to issue President Trump the same security levels afforded to a sitting president to ensure his safety,” Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) wrote on X.

Democrats didn’t make the same demands, but expressed concern for the former president Sunday. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted on X: “Political violence has no place in a democratic society.”

Ursula Perano and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green engaged in an extramarital affair, the woman involved told POLITICO Friday — speaking out after a text message from Green’s estranged wife circulated among House Republicans.

In that message, first sent to a group of acquaintances on Wednesday, Camilla Green announced that the Tennessee Republican, her husband of 35 years, was leaving her for a younger woman he had met in Washington. It also included an allegation about the identity of the woman’s employer, sparking a legal threat from the company, which disputed the charge.

“He fell head over heels in love with her to the extent he wanted to marry her and start a new family,” she wrote, adding that she has tried to reconcile and “he wants nothing of it and has insisted on a divorce.”

“Satan has rewritten our marriage in his mind,” she wrote in the message, which was first reported by the Nashville Banner. “My heart is shattered. I really just don’t know how to do life right now.”

Mark Green, who has chaired the Homeland Security panel since 2023 and is in line to keep the gavel should Republicans keep their House majority in November, issued a statement through his congressional office that did not address the substance of his wife’s claims.

“This is a difficult time for my family and me, and we are currently going through divorce proceedings,” he said. “As this is a deeply private matter, I ask for privacy. I will continue to serve this district with all I’ve got, as I have for the last five and a half years.”

The story of Green’s marital infidelity has been complicated by the fact that Camilla Green subsequently said she initially pointed the finger at the wrong person. Her message identified Green’s romantic partner as a “32 year old woman that works for Axios,” the online news outlet.

In fact, Green’s relationship was with a different woman, who works in politics in Washington but has no affiliation with Axios, according to multiple people involved.

They include the woman who engaged in the affair, who told POLITICO she had an on-again-off-again relationship with Green. She was granted anonymity to clarify the situation as the message circulated on Capitol Hill over the past 24 hours.

“It is no secret that Mark is going through something personal, and I want to respect his privacy, but in the interest of making sure there is no collateral damage, I want to make sure people know that any rumors or claims of a relationship with a reporter are abjectly false,” the woman added.

Camilla Green apologized for the misidentification in a statement to POLITICO: “I want to correct the record, because I misidentified someone in that message. My husband has never had a relationship with a reporter from Axios, and I regret having said that.”

The accusation prompted an Axios attorney, Brian Westley, to send Camilla Green a cease and desist letter, insisting she “immediately set the record straight” to stop from wrongfully smearing one of their reporters — and threatening to take “further action” if she does not.

“This statement is false and per se defamatory — both to Axios and one of our Capitol Hill reporters, who has been contacted by multiple colleagues who wrongfully believed your message referenced her given her relative age and because Mark is one of her sources.”

The letter, which was reviewed by POLITICO, continued: “Your message has not only caused this reporter considerable emotional distress, it has harmed her professional reputation.”

Camilla Green’s statement did not dispute the remainder of her message, which accused her husband of becoming “intoxicated with power and adoration.”

“[H]e pushed God out of his life, me out of his life, and developed friendships with other congressmen and women having affairs and getting divorces, drinking, parties, all while hosting a weekly Bible study in the basement of our home,” she wrote.

Mark Green announced in February that he would retire from Congress, saying in a statement that it was “time for me to return home.” He thanked his wife and family “for standing beside me and for their service to our nation.”

He abruptly reversed course two weeks later, citing a request from former President Donald Trump, who had publicly called on him to reconsider. Green filed for divorce last month in Montgomery County, Tennessee.

Americans are about to vote with their wallets in a big way.

Financial exchange startup Kalshi on Thursday got the green light to begin offering day traders, wannabe political pundits and financial institutions the chance to wager thousands of dollars on whether Democrats or Republicans will control Congress next year. Some financial firms will be allowed to bet as much as $100 million.

The Silicon Valley-backed company debuted the first fully regulated election-betting markets in the U.S. shortly after District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington rejected a bid by Wall Street regulators to temporarily block the company from launching them. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the top U.S. derivatives cop, says the markets violate federal and state law.

How long the markets will last is unclear. The CFTC quickly appealed the judge’s ruling, and the agency’s lawyers indicated they plan to ask for a stay. But Kalshi’s markets are already drawing interest: As of 3:30 p.m. Washington time, 50,000 contracts had been traded, according to the company’s website.

Election betting has existed in the shadows of American politics for generations, through offshore betting sites like Polymarket and academic ventures such as PredictIt. But Kalshi’s markets could catapult it onto the main stage of election season, just in time for November.

It’s a striking reversal of fortune for the election-betting complex in the U.S. Over the last three years, the CFTC has waged a regulatory crusade against the prediction markets. For critics, wagering on voting outcomes is a risky development that could threaten the sanctity of American elections at a perilous moment when balloting integrity is a major issue. Supporters — who include former White House officials, Silicon Valley leaders and prominent economists — say the markets are superior to public opinion polls, in part because participants have money on the line.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) called it a “nightmare” scenario that could allow wealthy players to put their “thumb on the scale” in elections.

“Think about that anonymous political power or that anonymous corporate power that says, ‘Not only do we want this candidate to lose or that candidate to win, we’re going to bet on the person that we want to win,’” Merkley said in an interview. “It’s a deeply corrupting combination of dark money and election bets.”

Kalshi welcomed the judge’s ruling as a historic victory.

“Today marks the first trade made on regulated election markets in nearly a century,” CEO Tarek Mansour said in a statement. “Now is finally the time to allow these markets to show the world just how powerful they are at providing signal amidst the noise and giving us more truth about what the future holds.”

The CFTC didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Kalshi is offering traders within the U.S. the ability to bet on which party will control either the House or the Senate following the November elections, though the company has signaled plans for other markets as well. By comparison, New York-based Polymarket has a wide array of election-themed markets, but the company is not permitted to offer trading to people inside the U.S. And on PredictIt, a site affiliated with a university in New Zealand, traders can wager on the presidential election but with strict spending limits.

Gambling has already become enmeshed in the 2024 elections. Day traders have ratcheted up their bets on the presidential race since Vice President Kamala Harris took over the Democratic ticket. Betting odds from PredictIt and Polymarket have become fixtures in news coverage and on cable TV. In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s presidential debate, Fox News host Laura Ingraham called out how Harris had pulled even with Donald Trump — citing not opinion polls but the betting markets. And the companies themselves have sought to bolster their profile among the Washington elite.

During the Democratic National Convention, Kalshi touted itself as “The first legal election market in the US” on the back of a truck driving around downtown Chicago. Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan was photographed across the table from Donald Trump Jr. at an event during the Republican National Convention. His company also held a party at the DNC.

Those in favor of the markets say they can be a crucial tool for investors looking to offset the risks that their financial investments may face from a change in administration and therefore, a shift in policy toward certain industries.

Others say the data generated by the markets is an increasingly critical gauge of voter sentiment.

“Political polling has a long and storied history in the United States,” said Justin Wolfers, a public policy and economics professor at the University of Michigan. “Political polling is also pretty close to being dead.”

The movement caught new wind last week when Cobb, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, threw out the CFTC’s prior rejection of Kalshi’s plans. But hours later, the CFTC asked for Cobb’s ruling to be temporarily put on ice so the agency could review her opinion.

On Thursday, Cobb denied the CFTC’s request, ruling that the CFTC had exceeded its statutory authority when it rejected Kalshi’s proposal because the products did not involve illegal activity or gaming.

The CFTC has resisted political betting in the U.S. derivatives markets for years. Officials say such trading is already prohibited by federal and state law — and warn of its potential ripple effects on U.S. elections. Chair Rostin Behnam said in May that election-betting derivatives products could “commoditize and degrade the integrity of the uniquely American experience of participating in the democratic electoral process.”

“We saw what happened when, three years ago, a certain candidate didn’t win the election,” said Cantrell Dumas, director of derivatives policy for the financial watchdog group Better Markets. “Can you imagine a situation where people with real money in the election [are] betting? … The integrity of our Democracy is already in a fragile state.”

Kalshi’s launch will make it more difficult for the CFTC to shut down trading in the future, the agency has said.

The agency is working on a proposed rule for prediction market operators. The drafted rule, issued earlier this year, would effectively ban derivatives products that act as wagers on political elections, sporting events and even awards ceremonies like the Oscars.

“There’s a lot of caution here,” said Pratik Chougule, executive director of the Coalition for Political Forecasting and a long-time political trader. “We are going to have election betting in some shape or form. They’re going to be referenced and applicable to a greater degree in the mainstream political environment and disclosure. There’s no question about that. The question is: How does it happen?”