A stunning new report in The New York Times examined the violent threats experienced by U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle just for doing their jobs.

Examples came from lawmakers serving in local and state governments, all the way up to the halls of Congress:

In January, a caller began leaving threats in the voice mail inboxes of members of Congress: “I want to see their throat cut from ear to ear.”

Another caller left a blunt threat for a U.S. senator: “I’m going to murder you, and I’m going to start with your children.”

A state attorney general received this three-word missive: “Bang, bang, bang.”

“Serving in public office in the United States is dangerous,” the Times declared, “And it’s getting worse, officeholders said in dozens of interviews.”

For the piece, Times reporter Nick Corasaniti examined “hundreds of records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents and law enforcement logs.”

He found that at least 44 governors, their staff, and families, have received violent threats since 2024.

“That’s also true of at least 70 of the nation’s 100 senators, and at least 185 members of the House of Representatives — nearly half the body,” Corasaniti wrote. “More than half of the country’s secretaries of state, most of whom serve as their states’ chief election officers, have received threats of violence.”

Corasaniti wrote that actual violent attacks against political figures has also increased.

“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’s 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’s democratic institutions.”

Corasaniti called this “the new normal” for politicians, and explained why so few prosecutions occur in these cases — only 53 individuals were charged with threatening public officials other than the president in the last two years.

“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,” he wrote.

Read The New York Times article here.

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