\n<\/p>\n
In January, a caller began leaving threats in the voice mail inboxes of members of Congress: \u201cI want to see their throat cut from ear to ear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another caller left a blunt threat for a U.S. senator: \u201cI\u2019m going to murder you, and I\u2019m going to start with your children.\u201d<\/p>\n
A state attorney general received this three-word missive: \u201cBang, bang, bang.\u201d<\/p>\n
Serving in public office in the United States is dangerous. From state and local government to Congress, an unending river of violent threats is washing through the mailboxes, offices, voice mail and texts of those who govern the nation. Thousands of public servants are living, working and, in the final weeks of election season, campaigning in a state of fear.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s getting worse, officeholders said in dozens of interviews.<\/p>\n
An investigation by The New York Times examining hundreds of records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents and law enforcement logs has found that, over a two-year period from 2024 to August of this year, thousands of violent threats inundated the lives of elected officials in unprecedented ways.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Some threats were vague; some were frighteningly specific. They promised torture, stabbing, rape and murder. They aimed at Republicans and Democrats alike, and at a range of officeholders from county clerks to United States senators. They targeted spouses, parents, siblings and children.<\/p>\n
At least 44 governors, as well as their staff and families, have been subjected to violent threats over the past two years, The Times\u2019s investigation found. That\u2019s also true of at least 70 of the nation\u2019s 100 senators, and at least 185 members of the House of Representatives \u2014 nearly half the body. More than half of the country\u2019s secretaries of state, most of whom serve as their states\u2019 chief election officers, have received threats of violence.<\/p>\n
Actual violence also spiked during that period: assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the killing of Charlie Kirk, the assassination of the legislative leader Melissa Hortman and her husband in Minnesota, the firebombing of Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s home in Pennsylvania. For many elected officials, the escalation is a grim testament to the toxicity of violent rhetoric and how it can shake the country\u2019s democratic institutions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The threats have also reshaped private lives. Dozens of officials have fortified their homes, installed cameras and hired private security guards, often at their own expense. They\u2019ve changed their daily routines, moved their children to new schools, grocery-shopped only at certain times and places. They\u2019ve scrubbed the internet to remove personal information about themselves and their loved ones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Some of them have altered what they say in public and, in rare cases, how they govern<\/a>. Some, including members of Congress, have quit. Both parties have struggled to recruit candidates, especially women.<\/p>\n And policing violent threats against officials is a difficult task. The Times\u2019s review of federal court data from the past two years found only 53 cases in which individuals were charged with threatening public officials, excluding the president.<\/p>\n Vague state and federal laws and free speech protections can make prosecution challenging. Anonymous letters and screen names can be hard to track. The sheer volume of threats can make hunting down those responsible virtually impossible.<\/p>\n This new normal can also be measured in dollars spent. In the 2017-2018 election cycle, candidates for federal office spent roughly $6 million on security-related items, according to campaign finance records. In the current midterm cycle, candidates had already spent at least $25 million by Aug. 1, with the final general election sprint still to come. That excludes what many officials are spending from their own pockets.<\/p>\n Overall, the threats tallied by The Times are likely undercounts; state laws and communication policies bar many offices from disclosing security issues. Many members of Congress said privately that it\u2019s hard to imagine any remaining offices on Capitol Hill that have not experienced a violent threat this decade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The rhetoric is abetted by the anonymity of the internet, a polarized political landscape and the entrenched public opinion that politicians are not improving American lives. Those receiving threats include divisive figures who have juiced the increasingly belligerent tone of political rhetoric, as well as others who avoid inflammatory talk but are targeted for their policies, ideology or party affiliation.<\/p>\n Representative Derrick Van Orden, a Republican from Wisconsin seeking re-election next month, attended the \u201cStop the Steal\u201d rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in support of President Trump\u2019s false claim that he had won the 2020 election. Mr. Van Orden was outside the U.S. Capitol that day when a mob attacked it, though he has denied entering the building. He was elected to Congress in 2022.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when the threats began.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a Navy SEAL for over 22 years,\u201d Mr. Van Orden said in an interview with The Times. \u201cI hunted terrorists around the world a lot and was very successful at that. Never had a single threat to my family. Ever.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Now, Mr. Van Orden travels with armed security personnel. His family, he said, is \u201cprotected 24 hours a day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For much of her political career, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Republican House member from Georgia, injected herself into the most pitched political battles. Her liberal foes said she courted controversy to raise her profile. But her rapid rise also came at a cost.<\/p>\n What started out as a flood of threats primarily from the left evolved into menace from the right, too, after Ms. Greene\u2019s break with President Trump last fall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Greene\u2019s dispute with the president centered largely on Jeffrey Epstein, the sexual predator who eventually killed himself in jail. Like many on the far right, Ms. Greene had agitated for the release of government files pertaining to Mr. Epstein. Then she began agitating directly against the president she had once fawned over, when his government refused to do so.<\/p>\n Her disillusionment expanded after Mr. Trump took the country to war against Iran. She believed his tariff policies and curtailment of health subsidies were hurting her constituents in rural northwest Georgia, she said, and flouting his promise to put \u201cAmerica First.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her breaking point came after the president called her a \u201ctraitor.\u201d Of the torrent of threats that followed, one stood out. It was aimed at her son.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the one that bothers me on a visceral level,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ms. Greene reached out to Mr. Trump, hoping for compassion from a president she had stood by for years. She forwarded copies of the threats to him, hoping that seeing the threats against her family would be enough to tone down the attacks.<\/p>\n She got a five-word reply from the president: \u201cYour fault, you deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n Weeks later, Ms. Greene announced her retirement from Congress.<\/p>\n \u201cI looked at what are the risks and what is the reward,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd for me, it was, I\u2019m not going to be treated that way, and I\u2019m not going to have my children\u2019s lives threatened.\u201d<\/p>\n A White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, did not deny the contents of Mr. Trump\u2019s text, but he said the president condemned political violence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHaving survived multiple assassination attempts \u2014 and having seen his dear friend Charlie be assassinated last year \u2014 no one understands the dangers of political violence more than President Trump,\u201d he said, referring to Mr. Kirk.<\/p>\n Women are often more aggressively targeted than men, and harder to recruit, said Greta Neubauer, the Democratic minority leader in the Wisconsin State Assembly. Mothers are more apt to avoid the risk to themselves and their families, she said.<\/p>\n If potential recruits don\u2019t bring up fears of violence on their own, Ms. Neubauer does. \u201cThere is an amount of risk that you and your family are going to need to accept if you choose to do this,\u201d she regularly says to potential candidates. \u201cAnd we want to make sure that you are fully aware of that in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat from Minnesota, nearly walked away, too.<\/p>\n He was inundated with violent threats after Kamala Harris, then the vice president, selected him as her running mate in 2024. But it was the assassination of two close friends, the former Minnesota House speaker, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, in June 2025 that led Mr. Walz to question his resolve to keep going.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The tragedy also altered Mr. Walz\u2019s daily life. His security team was on increased alert. He felt helpless to protect state lawmakers who felt exposed and unsafe after losing one of their own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019re a part-time legislature,\u201d Mr. Walz said. \u201cThese folks go back home and teach school, run their business, they\u2019re dentists, they\u2019re nurses, they do all those things. How do you follow them in the nine months they\u2019re not here?\u201d<\/p>\n A former C.I.A. analyst and Defense Department official, Senator Elissa Slotkin had been trained to deal with a variety of \u201cthreat environments.\u201d<\/p>\n Her family had not. So when political foes started targeting her parents, including an ailing father, Ms. Slotkin couldn\u2019t shield them from a toll they had not invited.<\/p>\n Last November, Ms. Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan, joined five others in a video telling U.S. soldiers that they did not have to follow unlawful orders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The message infuriated Mr. Trump, who described it as \u201cseditious behavior from traitors\u201d and \u201cpunishable by death.\u201d Conservatives labeled the lawmakers the \u201cseditious six.\u201d The threats poured in \u2014 especially to Ms. Slotkin, the one who had posted the video on the social-media platform X.<\/p>\n The Capitol Police assigned round-the-clock shifts to protect her. What they couldn\u2019t prevent: her parents\u2019 home being swatted in the middle of the night. Her father, 81 at the time, was dying of cancer when someone called the local police with a false report that a man was killing his wife at the couple\u2019s address.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The senator\u2019s brothers put security details in front of their homes. Staff members temporarily moved out of theirs. Her father died just a few weeks after the police came to his door.<\/p>\n \u201cI signed up for this, but my family and my staff did not,\u201d Ms. Slotkin said.<\/p>\n Threats to family and staff feel more chilling, several officials said, and the impacts are often more disruptive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMy daughter just sent me one yesterday,\u201d Mr. Walz told The Times, \u201cwhere somebody said, \u2018Wait what I\u2019ve got in store for you \u2014 and then a picture in front of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Van Orden moved his family because of violent threats. \u201cI know exactly what these people are trying to do,\u201d he said. \u201cTo make me leave the public square through threatening my family, because they know threatening me has no effect at all because of my background.\u201d<\/p>\n Many officials cite a desire to improve their country for their children and grandchildren as motivation for seeking office. The deluge of threats has done the reverse, pushing the civic-minded out of the public square to shield their loved ones from an increasingly toxic world.<\/p>\n Carly Koppes, a Republican county election official in Colorado, saw a new kind of violent threat after her pregnancy became public: messages targeting both her and her unborn child.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Rodric Bray, the Republican leader of the Indiana Senate, drew critics, but rarely threats, after he became a well-known power broker in Indianapolis \u2014 until his chamber bucked Mr. Trump\u2019s push to eliminate the state\u2019s two remaining Democratic congressional districts.<\/p>\n Amid headline after headline about the intraparty disagreement, threats of violence overwhelmed the staid political atmosphere of the Indiana Statehouse. Mr. Bray became the main target.<\/p>\n Bomb threats were called into his office. Death threats, too. \u201cThey were very short,\u201d he said. \u201cJust saying, I\u2019m going to come down there and kill you.\u201d Same with messages about his house. \u201cJust, \u2018There\u2019s going to be a bomb mailed to your house,\u2019 or, \u2018There\u2019s been a bomb placed at your house.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Bray said he forced himself into a stressful state of high alert. He changed his daily routine. He talked with his family about staying \u201cextra vigilant\u201d around the house and away from home. Friends kept watch. Once, law enforcement noticed something suspicious on his patio, alarming neighbors and keeping family away until it was cleared.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Koppes said she, too, changed her hours and took different routes to work after learning that some threats against her had come from a man living directly across from her office. \u201cGood day War Criminal,\u201d one of them read. \u201cYou traitor guilty of treason and sedition; oath breaking piece of trash loser, you should get gang raped.\u201d<\/p>\n Shenna Bellows, the Democratic secretary of state in Maine, and her husband moved out of their home after law enforcement told her it wasn\u2019t safe to stay. Ms. Bellows, Maine\u2019s chief election officer, had been receiving threats at least since 2020, when Mr. Trump and his allies persuaded thousands of his supporters, without evidence, that the election that year had been rigged.<\/p>\n Ms. Bellows was swatted in 2023, a day after she removed Mr. Trump from the state\u2019s presidential primary ballot under the Constitution\u2019s insurrection clause. She later reversed herself after a court ruled against a similar measure in Colorado, but the threats kept coming.<\/p>\n In January, someone posted her cellphone number and other personal information online. Menacing voice mail and text messages poured in. Her social media was inundated. \u201cShenna bellows I\u2019m coming for you,\u201d one person wrote, adding profanity. \u201cbeheaded soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Gina Hinojosa, a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives, was out of state when an activist posted a picture of her home online. She urged her family to move in with relatives.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a feeling of being hunted,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Now the Democratic candidate for governor in Texas, Ms. Hinojosa has installed new fencing and other barriers at home \u201cso that we\u2019re just not as easily accessible, we\u2019re not as easily seen.\u201d<\/p>\n Officials are also buying guns. Jennifer Johnson, a county judge in rural Florida, recently purchased one and enrolled in a firearms course<\/a> after an animated video of her being murdered circulated online.<\/p>\n Security equipment has become a huge expenditure for officeholders. Much of it has come on Capitol Hill, where, in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot, threats of violence spiked dramatically.<\/p>\n\u2018This is just not worth it\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018My family didn\u2019t sign up for this\u2019<\/h2>\n
The challenge of staying safe<\/h2>\n