Trust your gut
Top story on US right-wing staple The Drudge Report, Iâm sure Trumpâs devoted fanbois here will find some way to spin it though.
Spoiler alert: all the threats are being made by Trump supporters.
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1744741834080059894
Rusty Bowers, a former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives who played a pivotal role in resisting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, drove into his neighborhood east of Phoenix the day after Christmas to a spine-chilling scene.
His home, nestled off a dirt road in an unincorporated slice of the desert, was surrounded by sheriffâs deputies. An unknown caller had reported that there was a pipe bomb inside and that a woman had been murdered.
After searching the house and questioning Bowersâs wife and grandson, according to Bowers and authorities, sheriffâs deputies determined that neither claim was true.
The incident of swatting, a prank call to emergency services designed to draw a law enforcement response, wasnât just a terrifying moment for Bowers and his family. It was one of many violent threats and acts of intimidation that have defined the lives of various government officials since the 2020 election. And now they are casting a shadow over the 2024 campaign as Americans prepare to vote in a primary season that kicks off this month.
Those on the receiving end span the range of Americaâs democratic system, including members of Congress, state officials, local leaders and judges. While some are prominent, others have relatively low-profile roles. The intensity has accelerated in recent weeks.
Bomb threats last week caused evacuations at state capitol buildings across the country. Federal authorities arrested and charged a man with threatening to kill a congressman and his children, while other members of Congress dealt with swatting incidents. The Maine secretary of state and the Colorado Supreme Court, both of which recently deemed Donald Trump ineligible to run for the presidency because he engaged in an insurrection, received a surge of threats after being castigated by Trump in speeches and social media posts.
Police responded to an alleged swatting attempt Sunday night at the home of Tanya S. Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing Trumpâs election subversion case in D.C., according to a person familiar with the matter and a Chutkan family member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the incident is being investigated.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday called the wave of threats against government workers and public servants a âdeeply disturbing spike.â
While some on the right have been affected, many targets share a common attribute: They have done or said something that has earned Trumpâs ire.
Experts say that acts of physical violence toward officials and politicians since the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021, remain relatively rare. But they caution that the possibility of harm being inflicted on public servants is already undermining the health of U.S. democracy because the intimidation risks influencing their decision-making.
Officials who have been targeted say they fear that threats could, at any time, tip over into physical violence.
*â*I am really worried that there is going to be a tragedy,â Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Jill Karofsky said in an interview. âI believe people when they say that they want to hurt us or kill us. I donât think theyâre idle threats.â
Members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court were hit with a wave of threats â many of them misogynistic and antisemitic â after they ruled 4-3 in December 2020 to uphold Joe Bidenâs victory over Trump.
The court has continued to receive threats in the years since, including one on Thursday that came into the court clerkâs office. The court had been dominated for years by conservatives, but following an election last year, it has a liberal majority that has begun to rule on key political questions, including state legislative redistricting.
Karofsky, who is part of that narrow majority, said she views the threats as an attempt to intimidate judges into changing their rulings.
*â*I think mostly radical people on the right ⌠are trying to exert influence on the judiciary in an anti-democratic fashion,â she said. âIt is through intimidation. It is through threats. It is through violence.â
On Wednesday, bomb threats forced evacuations, closures or stepped-up security measures at more than a dozen state capitols, in Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Maine, Oklahoma, Illinois, Idaho, South Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Maryland and Arizona. The FBI said it had no information to indicate that the threats were credible.
Additional security threats were reported Thursday in Arkansas, Florida, Maine, Mississippi and Wisconsin, according to officials and local news outlets.
The day before sheriffâs deputies surrounded Bowersâs home â an incident that has not been previously reported â Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, was the target of a swatting attempt on Christmas Day. So was Rep. Brandon Williams, a Republican from New York, according to social media messages from both politicians and local news outlets. Federal authorities arrested a Florida man on Wednesday and charged him with threatening to kill Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and his children.
âThis is just a small snapshot of a larger trend that has included threats of violence against those who administer elections, ensure our safe travel, teach our children, report the news, represent their constituents and keep our communities safe,â Garland told reporters on Friday. âThese threats of violence are unacceptable. They threaten our fabric of democracy.â
He said Justice Department officials had been working to combat such threats for years and were meeting Friday âto determine how we can double down on those efforts in the new year.â
Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University who studies democracies around the world, said politicians and election workers who are threatened have their lives affected, often needing to adopt new security measures or other safeguards.
There is also an impact on decision-making as officials attempt to safely carry out their jobs. Violent threats âmake us a less democratic political systemâ because of how they change political incentives, Levitsky said. Politicians have, for instance, acknowledged that they have changed their votes out of fear for their familiesâ safety.
Levitsky noted that while violent threats span the political spectrum, the âvast majorityâ come from activists and others on the far right. Crucially, those threats are often not discouraged by their representatives in government, he said. Rather, Trump and others have appeared at times to encourage and condone the behavior.
For instance, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) said on NBCâs âMeet the Pressâ over the weekend that she condemned violence, but she also echoed Trumpâs characterization of those incarcerated for their role in the violent Jan. 6 insurrection as âhostages.â
The lack of widespread political violence since the Jan. 6 insurrection doesnât make people feel safer, Levitsky added, because so much âfantasy violenceâ is playing out on social media.
Such threats have âan acute effect of stopping people from doing their jobs,â said Lilliana Mason, associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. Longer term, people can be discouraged from running for office or engaging in election work, added Mason, who is the co-author of the book âRadical American Partisanship.â
âSo it not only intimidates people who are in office, but it changes the makeup in the future of people who will be in office,â Mason said.
From left, Arizona House Speaker Russell âRustyâ Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia state election official Gabriel Sterling are sworn in to testify in June 2022 before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Research from Princeton Universityâs Bridging Divides Initiative, which tracks political violence and threats directed at election officials in collaboration with CivicPulse, has found that women and people of color, who are much more likely to be violently threatened in the first place, are also more likely to step away from the work that is exposing them to threats.
Law enforcement officials often advise targets of threats and swatting attacks not to discuss in public the difficulties such attacks cause, according to several swatting targets, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe their experiences. The perpetrators of such threats often crave the validation that they have caused fear or disruption; knowing they have been successful only encourages them, these people said.
But officials also said it was also important for the public to know when officials are being threatened for doing their jobs.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who in late December removed Trump from the stateâs presidential primary ballot under the Constitutionâs insurrection clause, was the target of a swatting call the day after she issued her decision.
âI was prepared for anger and pushback and criticism,â Bellows, a Democrat, said in an interview. âBut I was not prepared for aggressive and threatening communications not only targeting me, but members of my family. Nor was I prepared for the swatting incident.â
An unknown man called emergency services and said he had broken into Bellowsâs address, according to the Maine Department of Public Safety. Bellows and her husband were not home at the time, and law enforcement âresponded perfectly and efficiently and they were very communicative,â said Bellows.
The incident, she added, âseemed designed to send me a message to silence me or inspire fear, and that is unacceptable.â
On Wednesday, Gabriel Sterling, chief operation and financial officer for the Georgia secretary of stateâs office, received a call from the police chief in his hometown of Sandy Springs in suburban Atlanta, asking whether he was okay. The police chief had received a call about an active threat at Sterlingâs home.
Sterling arrived home to 14 police cars outside his house.
âMore than anything, it just pisses me off,â Sterling, a Republican, said in an interview. âThe intent of these things, regardless of who is doing it, is to breed panic and concern and expend emotional and real resources for people.â
Sterling was a key election official in Georgia during the 2020 presidential election. He spoke out forcefully against Trumpâs attempts to cast doubt on the election results and the threats to election workers that followed the vote.
âSomeoneâs going to get hurt,â Sterling said at the time. âSomeoneâs going to get shot. Someoneâs going to get killed.â
Sterling described that warning as prescient, given how much more common violent threats have become. In response to such intimidation, âyou put on your big-boy pants and you keep doing your work,â he told The Post. âYou donât let people who are trying to undermine the institutions undermine institutions.â
Like Sterling, Bowers has been repeatedly threatened and harassed since the 2020 election. He was out running errands when the call about the bogus report of a murdered woman and a pipe bomb at his home came in to law enforcement. His wife and adult grandson were inside when police showed up.
âYou just get kind of hardened by all this,â Bowers, who testified in 2022 alongside Sterling before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, told The Washington Post. âI donât know if someoneâs trying to make our lives miserable or why, and thereâs just an uncertainty.â
Karofsky, the Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, said she thought it was important to let the public know what officials are dealing with.
âWe are at a moment of time where our democracy literally is on the line, and we have to figure out if we are just going to turn it over to a bunch of insurrectionists who think it is perfectly okay to use violence and intimidation to get the rulings that they want in a courtroom,â Karofsky said. âOr are we going to have a democracy where people follow the rule of law? And if I donât stand up and if other people donât stand up, and we donât talk about this, weâre going to lose this battle.â
Wingett Sanchez reported from Phoenix and Marley reported from Madison, Wis. Perry Stein, Peter Hermann, Keith L. Alexander and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.
A policy Ewanrique loves no doubt
Trump team argues assassination of rivals is covered by presidential immunity
I think Trump will go buck mental if he gets in again and the likes of the fellas trying to storm capitol hill will be only in the hapenny place. Hell definitely make himself president for life or pull off so completely mad dictator type stuff. Heâll be completely emboldened and feel way more bulletproof than the last time.
The only even remotely plausible way out of this shitshow America has is if Trump gets a stroke which turns him into a vegetable like Ariel Sharon and even at that his supporters would probably go apeshit and all believe Biden and Fauci implanted some evil vaccine microchip to make him have a stroke.
Anyway, hopefully that happens because itâs about the most benign prognosis.
Even at that, Haley or some other pathetic cuck like De Santis or Ramaswamy or Cruz would try and take up his mantle as fascist dictator in waiting, but it would be a bit like Karl Donitz trying to give a Nuremberg speech.
The Democrats are literally trying every trick in the book to prevent their most popular political opponent from even being on the ballot! And your take is Trump may become a dictator. You possibly need to not take what your man @Cheasty says as actual reality⌠trump bad man is all they have and they will force that down your throat until youâre literally retyping their propaganda on tfk
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âEpstein goodâ
Ah Trump is a very very dangerous cunt.
Ffs lad. He may well be- but have you noticed anything about US involvement in ukraine or IsraelâŚnot to mention the open hostility with china?
Look maybe Iâm wrong and I donât think Iâm hysterical really on any other issue but I genuinely think Trump getting in again could be an absolute Hitler in 1933 moment. I fully realise now that there are no real good guys in this whole geo political thing and I wouldnât give a fiddlerâs shit really if it was any other Republican vs biden but Trump is different gravy and will be much much worse the second time around. Hell probably throw me in jail for writing this
Ii think heâll be like that emperor palatine out of that star wars documentary and blast his enemies with death rays
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âHitlerâ 
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Nikki Haley vs Ron DeSantis square off in two hours whilst Donie T on his lonesome does a townhall with Fox viewers after a 2yr hiatus from the channel at the same time. It should all be shite. It would be utterly ridiculous if Asa Hutchinson didnât drop out after Iowa. Ramaswamy should too if he ends up in 4th place in the state, but heâs fluffing for a VP role, and to raise his company share prices. Christie will wait until New Hampshire to drop out as thatâs what he banked on from the beginning but his campaign is shot. A terribly boring GOP race. Even if Biden beats Trump, America is fucked. Itâs only going to get continually worse. Their system, which once workedâŚis their biggest hindrance to progress.
Other than some faux identity window dressing, nicky is just a younger, slightly less malignant version of biden. Biden might be a dementia ridden degenerate but his degeneracy is intact.
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Christie dropped out about an hour and a half ago. Said anybody who canât say Trump is unfit to be president is unfit to be president themselves.
Holy shit. He was the only half sane one in the pack.
If Trump wins, can he go for reelection again or will he have already have his two terms?
That would be his second and last term, but I wouldnât rule out him trying to challenge that if he fancied another pop which would throw a serious cat amongst the pigeons. He may need to try, in order to avoid prosecution.
Will likely appoint himself king of the universe and unlimited presidential terms in to his late 90s.
Thatâs what @drumpfnotmypresident1987 on twitter and the lads here are advising and youâd have to take those guys seriously.
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