At the start of this election year, Donald Trump spoke of “bedlam” breaking out if criminal prosecutions prevent him from retaking the White House. But the chaos the former president is threatening isn’t an abstraction. It’s already here, barely a month into 2024.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently warned of “a deeply disturbing spike in threats against those who serve the public.” Last month, his top deputy said the Department of Justice is receiving urgent reports of threats to public officials “on a weekly basis.” Around the country, election officials in key battleground states say they are devoting unprecedented resources to election and physical security, and are bracing for an increasingly hellish 2024 to come.
The man whohasinspiredmuch of the wave of threats and intimidation efforts directed at politicians, judges, prosecutors, and other officials is not disturbed by any of this. Trump has stressed to close allies that if those individuals — who he says are “harassing” him or trying to “cheat” him out of the 2024 election — simply did what he wanted, the torrent of death threats would stop immediately, two people with knowledge of the situation say.
Trump has publicly pledged that if the criminal cases against him hurt his election prospects, “It’ll be bedlam in the country.” Trump’s lawyers similarly warned the Supreme Court there would be “chaos and bedlam” should Colorado prevail in keeping him off the ballot.
At times, though, the former president has privately accused some officials and Democrats of making up certain threats and attacks to make him look bad, the two sources add.
But for the many people on the receiving end of those threats, there’s nothing fictitious about the dangers or the reverberating consequences. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working to find new ways to protect themselves and their staffers. Three years after the deadly Jan. 6 riot, U.S. Capitol Police are still grappling with an explosion in violent threats. And critical states in the upcoming election are experiencing a sharp rise in resignations among election workers and administrators, many of whom openly say they can’t withstand the pro-Trump, conspiracy-theory-fueled scare tactics any longer.
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To those who’ve worked closely with the former president, Trump’s steadfast refusal to condemn, or even discourage, right-wing violence is as part of his political DNA as anything else.
“There were instances when I was in the room when I worked in the Trump administration… when one person or more would advise him that his words could potentially cause violence, and he would just wave his hand at you, like he was swatting away a fly, as if to say, ‘whatever’ or ‘shut up,’” recalls Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s former White House press secretary. “Every time something like that was given to him [he would do that]. It was his signal that he didn’t want to hear something. It was always that hand, and you just knew. If you got the hand wave, you knew not to bring it up again — it was his way of showing he thought you were being overly dramatic.”
This reporting is based on new internal government data reviewed by Rolling Stone, as well as interviews with state election officials, senior congressional sources, former federal prosecutors, Biden administration officials, and other Democratic and Republican sources familiar with the matter.
A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone.
The numbers speak for themselves: The American discourse is growing more violent. Over the past five fiscal years, federal prosecutions for threats-related charges generally — against both public officials and private citizens — jumped by 47 percent compared to the previous five years, according to data provided to Rolling Stone by the Justice Department; the number of defendants prosecuted spiked from 769 to 1129.
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The Justice Department data includes prosecutions for violations of seven different threats-related statutes, among them a federal statute that prohibits kidnapping or killing a member of Congress or conspiring to do as much. From fiscal years 2012 to 2018, the Justice Department prosecuted only one such case. Since then, it has prosecuted four.
The number of threats investigated by the Capitol Police has doubled since 2017, Trump’s first year in office. The agency’s threat assessment caseload numbered just under 4,000 cases that year but grew to a record 9,625 in 2021. In 2023, Capitol Police investigated over 8,000 threats, with more expected as the country heads into a presidential election. “This is going to be a very busy year for our special agents,” Ashan Benedict, the Capitol Police’s assistant chief of protective and intelligence operations said in a statement.
Many ominous or intimidating messages sent to members of Congress often fall into a gray area between constitutionally-protected, albeit coarse speech and pledges of imminent violence, creating frustration among some public officials. The legal difference between a caller wishing death on a lawmaker or their staff versus actively threatening their lives is not always apparent to the recipient, and the former can be jarring, too.
Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) office tells Rolling Stone it has been exploring legislation that would allow law enforcement to prosecute a broader range of threats. “You never want to suppress free speech, but I do think we need to look at something between free speech and a specific, direct threat,” Swalwell says.
Of course, not every death threat in this ongoing trend can be attributed to extreme Trumpism or related ideologies. However, the former president’s relentless public targeting of various political and legal foes has clearly thrown a powerful accelerant on an already fraught national state of affairs.
Early this month police were called in when the residence of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is assigned to the federal election subversion case against Trump, was the target of an apparent “swatting” attempt. Elsewhere, Arthur Engoron, the judge presiding over the ex-president’s New York civil fraud trial, received a bomb threat this month. Last month, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) announced she had been inundated with death threats following the suit that caused Trump’s removal from the state’s 2024 ballot.
“Within three weeks of the lawsuit being filed, I received 64 death threats. I stopped counting after that,” Griswold wrote. “I will not be intimidated. Democracy and peace will triumph over tyranny and violence.”
Pete Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University, has sifted through court records of prosecutions for threats against elected officials, election workers, judges, law enforcement, and officials who work in education and health care. He says that threats are at a disturbing peak.
“We see the highest number of cases in 2023,” Simi says. “There’s a big spike around 2017 to 2018 and then it maintains at a pretty high level.”
The character of the threats has also changed recently. Offenders can have a variety of motivations for making threats, from losing touch with reality during a mental health crisis to a more calculated attempt to achieve political ends.
In about half of the cases identified by Simi, threat-makers had clear, discernible ideological motivation — a proportion which has only increased with time, peaking in 2023.
Simi — an expert witness in the Colorado Supreme Court case to remove Trump from the state’s 2024 election ballot for inciting an insurrection — believes that Trump plays a unique role in the worsening climate of threats.
“The spike in threats after 2017 reflected, at least to some extent, President Trump’s role in promoting political violence both during the 2016 presidential campaign and in the four years of his administration that followed,” he wrote in an October opinion piece.
Two Biden administration officials tell Rolling Stone that they only expect the volume of death threats and political intimidation to increase as Election Day 2024 approaches. The tide of intimidation has left at least one prominent swing state election official exceedingly frustrated.
“As cautious a person as Attorney General Merrick Garland is, I think he is being far too cautious here, when it comes to these investigations and prosecutions of threats against election administrators and election workers,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
Another senior state election official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, adds, “We’re losing election workers left and right because they don’t feel safe, and for good reason. And guess who is going to be there to replace them? A guy who thinks all elections are rigged unless Donald Trump or some other goon wins it.”
John Keller, a top prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, established during President Joe Biden’s first year in office, says the department is “taking threats to the election community extremely seriously.” A spokesperson pointed to a number of recentconvictions for election worker-related threats.
Last year, the Brennan Center for Justice released a survey of local officials across the nation showing that 45 percent “of local election officials said they fear for the safety of their colleagues.” The center’s analysis underscored these offices have experienced “high turnover amid safety threats and political interference” during and after then-President Trump’s failed crusade to overturn Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. (Due to those efforts, Trump is expected to stand trial in federal court amid his run for another term as president.)
“On a weekly basis — sometimes more often — I am getting reports about threats to public officials, threats to our prosecutors, threats to law enforcement agents who work in the Justice Department, threats to judges,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in December. “What we’ve seen is an unprecedented rise in threats to public officials across the board — law enforcement agents, prosecutors, judges, election officials.”
It is not just Democrats or Biden officials making these points. Current and former elected officials who speak out against Trump or his election-denialism movement often endure a similar new-normal: constantly worrying about their families’ safety in ways they never thought they’d have to before.
“It takes just one crazy person to think they are going to make a name for themselves and prove to themselves, one way or another, to be the savior of the country or savior of the cause… It just takes one crazy person to perpetrate some act of violence or shoot somebody,” Rusty Bowers, the former Arizona state House speaker, tells Rolling Stone.
Bowers, a Republican, refused to go along with Trump’s demands that he help him steal the election in the crucial battleground of Arizona, during the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 presidential contest. When Bowers refused to bow to Team Trump’s demands, MAGA supporters published his home address and cell phone number, showed up to his home armed, and drove a truck with a sign falsely claiming him to be a pedophile through his neighborhood, according to the Jan. 6 House committee.
The former state legislative leader now finds the current climate of pervasive, politically-motivated threats “deeply concerning.”
Bowers recalls that when he ran for office three decades ago, “low-level name-calling, and things like that” were commonplace. Now, he says that has been widely replaced by “doxxing, harming you, and putting your information on the internet,” as well as “making your children miserable” and chasing decent people out of public life.
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“When Donald Trump’s deportment justified and legitimized a level of discourse countrywide that others were quick to embrace, the genie was out of the bottle,” Bowers says. “We have a worship of violence in our country, it’s entertainment, and when you throw in politics, it just makes everything worse.”
“I don’t blame Trump if someone comes by my house and yells at me,” he adds. “But he could do something about it. Trump could calm down folks on his side. The level of intense, angry public discourse that we have today — that does not respect people, or humanity, or gender, or children, or age, like it’s open season to say whatever you want without any associated responsibility — seems to have coalesced around Trump’s attitudes.”
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
