They live on separate sides of Springfield, but Rhonda Zimmers and Melissa Skinner noticed gradual changes to their neighborhoods in this Ohio city midway between Dayton and Columbus, starting around three years ago.

“Longtime residents who I used to see were no longer there. They moved out, and Haitian migrants moved in. They didn’t speak English. I started to see a lot of foot traffic on the streets. And you could see a dozen or more people coming and going from the houses. It was clear there were a lot of people living in the houses,” Zimmers told The Epoch Times.

Skinner, who serves with Zimmers on the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals, observed a similar transition in her neighborhood.

“We used to know everyone, and mostly everyone got along, but then we started seeing more turnover on our street. We no longer knew many of our neighbors,” Skinner said.

Our colleague, Jeff Louderback, spent several days in Springfield speaking with locals about the impact of the new immigrants on the close-knit community. Read Jeff’s full story here›

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Sept. 13 upheld a requirement in the key battleground state that voters must include accurate dates on the exterior envelopes of their mail-in ballots for the votes to be counted.

The split 4–3 ruling vacates a previous Commonwealth Court decision that had halted enforcement of the legal requirement under Pennsylvania law that disqualified mail-in ballots if they were undated or featured incorrect dates. The Commonwealth Court found that the date requirement was unconstitutional when enforced against voters who submit their ballots by deadline.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that the Commonwealth Court did not have the authority to review that case because the plaintiffs did not include all 67 county election boards as defendants. Even though they included Al Schmidt, the secretary of the Commonwealth, as a defendant, that alone wasn’t enough to give the Commonwealth Court authority to decide the case. Read the full story here›

The Chinese regime is becoming more aggressive and more creative about how they manipulate Americans, Taiwanese, and other targets online. In one case study, a video began circulating on TikTok prior to Taiwan’s presidential election this year showing Congressman Rob Wittman (R-Va.) making remarks about Taiwan that he’d never actually said. His original remarks about Ukraine had been artificially manipulated.

The Chinese regime deploys networks of fake accounts to give false narratives the semblance of organic popularity. They also pay popular content creators in the West to parrot propaganda. There have been multiple cases of vloggers creating videos whitewashing human rights abuses in Xinjiang while on trips funded by the Chinese regime.

Besides planting and amplifying desired narratives, a big goal of the Chinese regime is to sow discord and fuel polarization in target nations. In America, fake accounts linked to China have been found posting incendiary, polarizing content on both sides of the political spectrum. Watch the full story here›

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