death threat 2

this is current

bak 819

MERRI OK

EVEN RICH SENATORS CAVE ROMNEY JONI E ON HEGSETH TILLIS

sadly, we must add rape threats (tho hayes before)

:{SEE VIOLENCE see violent rhetoric

SEE POLITICAL VIOLENCE 5}:

SEE RULE OF LAW

SEE FASCISM

see misinfo/disinfo gubmint tyrant BS

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mitt r says gop MOC wd not vote consc b/c cd not afford pvt sec he has

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an 4 26

Federal judges have received more than 800 threats since Trump's rhetoric intensified — and retired members of the judiciary are now speaking out.

“According to the U.S. Marshals Service, there were 564 threats against federal judges in 2025 and there have been 275 already this year,” wrote USA Today’s Rex Huppke on Sunday. “The Marshals Service asked Congress for an additional $34 million in April, noting that ‘the threat environment’ is ‘unlikely to decrease in the foreseeable future.’”

Huppke attended a two-day symposium at the University of Washington called “Neither Sword Nor Purse,” which was convened to discuss Trump’s ongoing rhetoric attacking judges who do not rule in his favor. Describing him as “a threat to judicial independence,” one who “shows no hesitation to jackhammer the very foundation of our democracy.”

Former federal judge J. Michael Luttig told the event that Trump’s coup attempt on Jan. 6, 2021 “was a dark day in American history. On that day, the 45th president of the United States instigated a war on America's democracy, and forced upon this nation an unpeaceful transfer of power for the first time in almost 250 years. From that day until this day, he has persisted in the prosecution of that war, determined to prosecute that war to its catastrophic end, to this day presenting himself to America and to the world as a clear and present danger to American democracy.”

Elaborating on Luttig’s argument, Huppke opined that “the basic idea of the rule of law is that people, institutions and entities are held accountable to laws that are: publicly promulgated; equally enforced; independently adjudicated; and consistent with international human rights principles. When a president starts eroding that by not following court orders or denouncing any form of justice that doesn’t align with his desires, all of us are at risk of not being treated fairly under the law.”

He added, “Like many regular voters, I watch this kind of anti-democratic, unhinged behavior and worry about the country, wondering if there are any powerful people working behind the scenes to keep democracy intact.”

When former federal judge Robert Harlan Henry argued that “we’ve got to learn to love each other,” another judge argued that “that is a great idea that will never work. I would be satisfied if we would follow the law.”

“The law. The law, we can follow the law,” Henry agreed. “We can make everyone susceptible to the rule of law, the government primarily. Just like the government should be the model employer, the government should be the model follower of the rule of law. And somewhere along this way, I think we’re going to find that an independent judiciary is going to be essential to have this rule of law.”

The assembled judges also called for their members to show bravery in the face of Trump’s threats.

“There's a tremendous need for courage right now,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, explained. “We've seen some of that over the last 15 months. I so admire the federal district court judges who have shown great courage in the rulings, even if faced with the death threats, the threats to their families that we've heard about,” Chemerinsky said. “On the other hand, we have also seen, at times, a stunning lack of courage.”

He added, “We all learned on the playground that if we give in to bullies, it only makes it worse, and that's what those who capitulated have done.”

In March, a forum organized by Speak Up for Justice brought four judges together who denounced Trump’s rhetorical violence since the 2020 election.

“Judges are traditionally cautious about speaking publicly,” U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom, from the Southern District of Florida, said in an interview. “But this moment makes a strong case for why engagement is not only appropriate, but is necessary.”

In February, America’s top association for lawyers similarly spoke out against Trump’s attacks on judges.

“The recent remarks by the president of the United States, leveling personal criticisms against members of the U.S. Supreme Court, are not acceptable and cross a dangerous line that threatens the safety of the judiciary and our judicial process,” American Bar Association (ABA) President Michelle A. Behnke said in a statement.

Behnke added, “Vigorous debate over policy is a strength of our democracy, but attacks that demean the judiciary are not. Incendiary rhetoric has helped contribute to the alarming increase in attacks on and threats to our judges. It must stop.”

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gmail 1 26

Is MAGA Trying To Assassinate This Anti-Trump Author?

Award-winning novelist Don Winslow speaks to Mehdi about the far-right threats that canceled part of his book tour - and also sounds off on the Democratic Party leadership’s many failures.

Mehdi Hasan and Team Zeteo

Jan 31

Don Winslow is the award-winning author behind more than 20 books. He’s also an outspoken critic of Donald Trump – so much so that he’s become a target of the MAGA base.

From online smears to death threats, the MAGA hate has become so intense that he’s had to cancel all in-person appearances on his book tour for The Final Score.

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AN OCT 2026

Threats against federal judges in the United States have reached record levels this year, with the U.S. Marshals Service investigating more than 500 threats by September — a surge legal observers say reflects rising politicized hostility toward the judiciary.

In an article for the Guardianpublished Sunday, investigative journalist Jason Wilson argued that El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele is seeking to export his authoritarian playbook to the U.S. by calling on President Donald Trump to impeach “corrupt judges.”

Wilson noted that Bukele has made repeated public attacks on the US judiciary — including describing the country as “facing a judicial coup” — and that his latest call was amplified by pro‑MAGA figures such as tech billionaire Elon Musk.

He writes that the timing of this intervention is significant, as the U.S. judiciary is already under unprecedented pressure from threats, harassment, and rhetorical assaults tied to the current Trump administration. Wilson cites figures showing hundreds of threats to federal judges in 2025, plus numerous instances of attacks on judges at the local level.

The writer traced Bukele’s tactics back to actions his government took in 2021, when loyalist legislators dismissed constitutional court justices and the attorney general to install allies. He argued that although the U.S. system makes removal of judges difficult, the tactic being tested is not direct removal but delegitimisation and intimidation.

According to Wilson, the Trump administration is using sustained attacks on the judiciary, repeating claims that courts are not co‑equal branches and targeting judges who rule against it, as a tool to discourage judicial review. He warned that consistent threats and undermining of institutional legitimacy may lead judges to hesitate in decisions that conflict with the administration’s agenda, weakening one of democracy’s key checks.

The article quoted Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, who said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

"That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in several countries, including by Bukele," the article noted.

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NOTE TRUMP THREAT EXEVITE MARK KELLY ET AL VS

an 1 26

Nebraska mom Jamie Bonkiewicz filmed her interaction with Secret Service agents who came to her door because of a tweet.

"The Secret Service came to my door today because of a tweet. No threats. No violence. Just words. That’s where we are now," she wrote on X in a thread about the ordeal.

"For anyone doubting me. Here they are," Bonkiewicz said, posting a photo of a local police officer and the federal agent as she stood with her screen door open.

She was asked about the comments she made online, and she made it clear, "I want to see their trials."

He then asked if she goes to protests, which she refused to answer.

"Why do you want to know that?" Bonkiewicz asked.

"I'm just curious," he responded. "For certain questionnaires, we have to ask."

He asked if there were weapons in the house and she said there were not. Bonkiewicz was also asked if she "traveled to any Democratic functions or rallies."

"I just answered you," she said about the question he'd previously asked.

"Anything else you want to tell me? Any statements at all?" the agent asked.

Her husband, who was filming the incident, asked what is considered crossing the line on social media.

"Something like this, a veiled threat," he said, shrugging. "Is it a threatening nature? Now that I know you didn't mean anything by it, it's basically a non-issue."

He asked her again what she meant by the comment, and she made it clear she was talking about officials having Nuremberg-style tribunals for those who enabled unlawful behavior.

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an 10 25 ah

After the fatal shooting of Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other far-right MAGA Republicans claimed that the majority of political violence in the United States was coming from the left. But critics of the Trump administration, from Democrats to Never Trump conservatives like MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, were quick to cite numerous examples of far-right violence against Democrats — including a militia plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, an arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, an assault on Paul Pelosi (former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband) with a hammer and the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.

Now, a MAGA supporter and January 6 rioter is facing criminal charges for allegedly threatening to murder House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York).

CBS News' Scott MacFarlane reports that on Sunday, October 19, Christopher Moynihan was arrested and "faces a felony charge of making a terroristic threat." Along with other January 6 rioters, Moynihan received a presidential pardon nine months ago.

"According to a court filing by prosecutors in the New York State criminal case, Moynihan wrote, 'Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,'" MacFarlane reports. "Moynihan also allegedly stated: 'Even if I am hated, he must be eliminated, I will kill him for the future.'"

Moynihan, according to MacFarlane, is scheduled to appear in court this Thursday, October 23.

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"Moynihan was found guilty in August 2022 of obstructing an official proceeding, and pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges," MacFarlane notes. "He was sentenced, in February 2023, to 21 months in prison. Prosecutors described Moynihan as among the first rioters to breach police barricades and enter the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021."

The CBS News reporter adds, "Moynihan was also among a smaller group of riot defendants who were on the Senate floor during the siege. Prosecutors argued in Moynihan's sentencing memorandum: 'While inside, Moynihan rifled through a notebook on top of a Senator's desk, saying 'There's gotta be something in here we can f–– use against these scumbags.'"

*Read the full CBS News article at this link.

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AN 1025

In the wake of widespread outrage following a violent fire at a South Carolina judge's house that sent three people to the hospital, critics blamed MAGA, causing White House Deputy Chief of StaffStephen Miller to melt down, according to The Daily Beast.

South Carolina Judge Diane Goodstein, who ruled against the Trump administration in a high-profile voter registration case, was out walking her dogs Sunday when her beach house exploded in flames.

Judge Goodstein issued a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration’s Department of Justice from getting access to the South Carolina Election Commission’s voter registration data, The Daily Best says.

Reports say Goodstein was already receiving death threats before the fire, which is being investigated as arson. Her husband Arnold, a former Democratic state congressman and state senator, , was forced to jump from the first floor to escape the blaze and was hospitalized with multiple broken bones.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) posted on his X account pointing his finger at Miller, saying, "Stephen Miller and MAGA-world have been doxxing and threatening judges who rule against Trump, including Judge Goodstein. Today, someone committed arson on the Judge’s home, severely injuring her husband and son. Will Trump speak out against the extreme right that did this??”

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MIller immediately melted down on X, calling Goldman "deeply warped and vile," saying, “There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks."

Miller continued his rant, saying, “While the Trump Administration has launched the first-ever government-wide effort to combat and prosecute illegal doxing, sinister threats and political violence you continue to push despicable lies, demented smears, malicious defamation and foment unrest. Despicable."

But Goldman had the last word.

"If you are trying to combat political violence, why don’t you condemn the political violence against a judge who ruled against you and your admin? It’s pretty simple: do you condemn all political violence or only that against your supporters?”

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note miso

an 9 25

Four sitting female judges detailed Thursday the escalating threats they face over their rulings, including explicit intimidation that often targets them in ways their male colleagues rarely experience.

At an event organized by Speak Up for Justice, a nonpartisan movement to defend the courts, judges cited threats of sexual assault, violent messages and harassment of family members as part of a rise in attacks on the judiciary.

The U.S. Marshals Service has logged 543 threats against federal judges so far this year, already exceeding the total number in 2024. Threats against state judges, who preside over 95 percent of cases nationwide, are not systematically tracked.

Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez of the Colorado Supreme Court recounted the harassment that followed a 4-3 ruling to disqualify President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot (which was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court). She said all seven justices on the court were targeted, regardless of how they voted.

“We also quickly learned… that all of our personal information had been doxxed. As a result, many of us received very hateful phone calls and threatening text messages on our personal cell phones. Many of those messages in certain cases were overtly racist or overtly misogynistic, overtly referred to sexual violence, were overtly homophobic,” Márquez said.

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AN 9 25

After Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in Utah, countless Democrats—from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) to former President Joe Biden to California Gov. Gavin Newsom — wholeheartedly condemned the killing. But the Trump Administration and many of its MAGA allies conflated criticism of Kirk's politics with celebrating his murder.

In Pennsylvania, one of the people who is facing threats after disagreeing with Kirk's views — even though she never condoned his murder in any way — is Homer-Center School District board member Misty Hunt.

In an article published on September 23, The Guardian's Ramon Antonio Vargas reports, "A member of a Pennsylvania school board says she is stepping back from her duties — and has been grappling with threats to her safety — after a 'one down, hundreds to go' social media post about windblown milkweed seeds was misconstrued as celebrating the killing of far-right pundit Charlie Kirk. Homer-Center School District board member Misty Hunt uploaded the post in question on 10 September, the same day Kirk was shot to death by a sniper while speaking at Utah Valley University (UVU)."

Hunt, however, forcefully spoke out against Kirk's murder in a September 10 post on Facebook.

Hunt wrote, "To my community: I am sorry. Sorry that a post of mine was linked to a terrible situation. It was never my intention. For those who really know me, you know I can be wild at times but not like this. And for those who are calling for my undoing — you don’t know me or what is in my heart. But thank you for the assumption. And thank you for the witch hunt. You didn’t ask for clarification. And now you’re calling for me to resign and to be fired from a job where I constantly make kids smile. I am a human being too."

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AN 9 25

In an article for The Hill published Sunday, Kellye Y. Testy, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools, and Austen Parrish, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, argued that the U.S. judiciary faces a growing crisis of legitimacy, driven by increasingly intense threats, political attacks, and efforts to delegitimize judges.

They warned that these pressures aren’t just parties complaining about decisions, but rather a deeper assault on the independence of the courts — something essential to democracy.

"American judges are under attack. Approximately one-third of the federal judiciary have received threats over the last year, and the U.S. Marshals Service reports more than 500 threats were made against federal judges over the past 11 months, with a noticeable spike in recent months. The sheer number of threats, including to judges’ families, are unprecedented," they wrote.

Testy and Parrish argued that many of the attacks come from high‐ranking executive branch officials when courts rule against administration policy, and from Democrats and Republicans alike when they believe justices have acted beyond their preferred political lines. These attacks, they insisted, are not just garden‐variety political heat, but part of a darker escalation in rhetoric, public delegitimization, and disregard for constitutional limits.

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They further argued that the implications go far beyond the most visible federal or Supreme Court cases. They pointed out that tens of millions of cases are handled each year in state courts and family courts, contract and property disputes, criminal law, wills, insurance, traffic violations — matters that touch almost every American’s life.

The authors noted that when the judiciary is seen as politicized, under attack, or as lacking legitimacy, trust erodes even in those local and everyday contexts, with ripple effects for individuals, businesses, governments, and for social order more broadly.

To counter this trend, Testy and Parrish urged not just condemnation, but active defense of judicial independence. They called on lawyers, legal educators, bar associations, law firms, and legal organizations to more forcefully correct misinformation, reject ad hominem attacks and violent threats, emphasize competence and integrity rather than ideology in judicial appointments, and help law students and the public understand the importance of courts operating impartially under the rule of law.

The legal experts argued that ongoing attacks discourage qualified people from seeking the bench, worsening vacancies and undermining fairness of outcomes.

"Make no mistake: what’s occurring in high-profile cases risks having ripple effects in other federal, state and local courts. Our legal system depends on judicial independence and integrity, and it doesn’t function if judges are targets of crass political opportunism. Attempts to intimidate and undermine judges threatens a crisis of legitimacy even on issues that have nothing to do with national politics, jeopardizing well-functioning courts serving families, local governments, organizations and businesses of all sizes," they wrote.

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RWW

09/11/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Eric Levitz @ Vox: The right’s vicious, ironic response to Charlie Kirk’s death

They’re calling him a martyr for free speech as they demand a violent crackdown on progressive dissent.

Brett Wilkins @ AlterNet: Progressives — who reviled Charlie Kirk's politics — repudiate his murder

Tuesday’s assassination of far-right firebrand Charlie Kirk in Utah drew widespread condemnation from many of the same progressive figures who have previously decried his rampant bigotry, dismissal of gun deaths, and promotion of conspiracy theories including the “stolen” 2020 election.

Anna Merlan, Julianne McShane and Kiera Butler @ Mother Jones: “THIS IS WAR”: Some Right-Wing Figures Call for Retribution Following Kirk Killing

“More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.”

David Gilbert @ Wired: Right-Wing Activists Are Targeting People for Allegedly Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Death

Extremists and an anonymously run website are posting identifying details about people accused of celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder online. Some of those targeted are now getting death threats.

Arthur Delaney @ HuffPost: Nancy Mace Baselessly Blames Democrats For Charlie Kirk's Death

"Democrats own this," the South Carolina Republican claimed. Police say the shooting suspect is not in custody.

David Edwards @ Raw Story: GOP lawmaker calls for social media bans for all who 'belittle' Charlie Kirk

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) called for lifetime social media bans on all people who "belittle" the killing of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk.

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ann applebaum ref

## Top Maricopa county official quits as election looms: 'All I do is play ...

Feb 19, 2024For Clint Hickman, an official who helped lead Arizona's largest country through some of the most difficult moments of the pandemic and the 2020 election, the current moment in American life feels like the right one to quit.

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Top Arizona election official forced to resign as threats get 'worse ...

Feb 18, 2024Top Arizona election official forced to resign as threats get 'worse and worse': report Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman, Image via AZ Family/Arizona News.

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an 7 25

the normalization of political violence is taking root in public life in the United States. Once shocking near-assassinations are now becoming grimly accepted chapters in political campaigns. Experts warn this signals a dangerous shift in societal norms — and the consequences are already unfolding, The Hill reported Sunday.

The report notes that in the year following the first assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, public threats toward officials have not only persisted — they have escalated.

From the tragic killing of a Minnesota state legislator to last week’s firefight at a U.S. Border Patrol station in Texas, high-profile incidents are mounting.

Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told The Hill: “We continue to see a normalizing of political violence, a very casual acceptance that some elected officials may be legitimate targets for violence—based on conspiracies, based on disinformation—and unfortunately and tragically, we’ve seen that that has real-world consequences."

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He added: “When there is so much rhetoric…it’s only a matter of time before someone with a grievance and a gun finds that justification.”

This reflects a broader trend — federal arrests for threats against officials hit a 12-year high in 2024, according to Seamus Hughes of the University of Nebraska Omaha’s NCITE program, whose comments were also highlighted in the report.

Hughes pointed out that many cases now invigilated at the federal level would previously have been dropped or handled locally. “It’s clear law enforcement and prosecutors want to put their finger on the scale on such threats,” he said.

Last month, Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, told the Guardian: “We are in a historically high period of American political violence."

He added: “I call it our ‘era of violent populism’. It’s been about 50 years since we’ve seen something like this. And the situation is getting worse.”

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AN 2 25

Last month, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who has on rare occasions stood up to Donald Trump, cast the deciding—and, to some, unexpected—vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. Now, a report reveals that Tillis says the FBI had informed him of “credible” death threats before his vote. This revelation has led some to question whether he voted under duress, while others accuse him, and other Republicans, of caving to pressure.

“In private,” Vanity Fair‘s Gabriel Sherman reports, “Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions.”

“They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,” a former Trump official told Sherman.

“Tillis told people that the FBI warned him about ‘credible death threats’ when he was considering voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary,” Sherman reported. “According to the source, Tillis has said that if people want to understand Trump, they should read the 2006 book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. (When asked for comment for this story, a spokesperson for Tillis said it was false that the senator had recommended the book in that capacity. The FBI said it had no comment.)”

In his article at Vanity Fair, Sherman serves up numerous other examples detailing the threats of violence Republican lawmakers have allegedly been facing. On social media, he writes, “GOP Senators and House members are scared of being murdered by Trump supporters if they don’t support Trump. This is fascism in America.”

It’s not the first death threat Tillis received, and some critics say that if Senators can’t do the job they were elected to do, and swore an oath to perform, they should quit.

Some responded to this post from Sherman:

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“I was also scared for my life when I came forward with harassment allegations against Fox News’ Roger Ailes —- but I still did the right thing. Courage isn’t easy. Most Republicans still need to figure that out,” wrote former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, who became one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

John Jackson is a veteran and former Republican who says he fought in Ukraine for nine months, thanks in part from motivation he got from Ronald Reagan.

“There are millions of children in Ukraine who go to school under missile attacks, daily,” Jackson wrote, in response to Sherman’s social media post. “They are far braver than our politicians. If U.S. Senators aren’t willing to risk life and limb to perform their Constitutional duties, they should resign.”

“This is exactly what Trump was counting on when he pardoned everyone for the 6 January insurrection,” noted Jonathan Z. Ludwig, an Associate Professor of Russian at Oklahoma State University.

Others responded to the article in general.

Tim Marksman, an editor for Wired, writes that “there are a lot of legislators, academics, activists, journalists, medical workers etc. who follow their conscience in their work despite death threats and despite not having the protections afforded members of Congress.”

“I have long believed that not enough has been written about how GOP members have felt physically intimidated by Trump supporters,” noted attorney George Conway. “It doesn’t excuse their cowardice, but it still deserves more attention.”

Senator Tillis’s vote to confirm came after an event that had given Hegseth’s critics hope he would not be confirmed.

“Before Senator Thom Tillis voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, he worked with accusers to make the case against him in a bid to get G.O.P. leaders to scrap the vote altogether,” The New York Times reported last week, noting how Hegseth’s nomination had been “teetering on the brink of defeat on the Senate floor.”

“Turning to a group of North Carolina lawmakers who were flying with him to survey storm damage in their state, Mr. Trump noted Mr. Tillis’s impending defection and posed a question: Which of them wanted his endorsement for a primary challenge to the senator next year?” the Times added.

“Tillis personally assured Danielle Hegseth in a call on Jan. 19, witnessed by two other people, that if she signed the statement testifying that she believed her former brother-in-law Pete Hegseth has an alcohol abuse problem and was abusive to his second wife, it would carry weight, and potentially move three votes-his own, along with the votes of Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska),” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Tillis voted to confirm. Two weeks later, in a rare social media post, the Republican Senator from North Carolina proudly posted photos of his impending trip with the President aboard Air Force One:

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AN 2 25

:{Death threats follow Michigan Democratic lawmaker’s decision to have herself sterilized

===}:

the hill

At the end of January, President Trump issued executive orders that revoked security details for former National Security Advisor John Bolton, former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeoand Dr. Anthony Fauci— despite ongoing, credible threats against their lives.

“Do you want to have a large detail of people guarding people for the rest of their lives?” Trump asked. “I mean, there’s risks to everything.”

Asked if he would feel partially responsible if something happened to any of them, Trump replied, “Certainly I would not … They made a lot of money. They can hire their own security.” The president offered to give them the phone numbers of “some good security companies.”

A few days ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cancelled the security detail protecting retired Gen. Mark Milley and ordered an inquiry to determine if he should be demoted.

Combined with his pardons and commutations for Jan. 6 rioters and convicted seditious conspirators, and the cancellation of security clearances for dozens of his political adversaries, Trump’s actions have launched what could be called the “imperious presidency.”

The federal government has an obligation to protect its public servants from job-related threats. One can hope that all Americans will condemn putting these men in harm’s way because they corrected, criticized or condemned their former boss.

Think Tanks cashing in on dark money; orgs keep funding sources a secret: Interview

John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush, had a well-deserved reputation as a brutally candid, hard-to-like foreign policy hawk. He replaced Gen. H.R. McMaster as Trump’s National Security Advisor in 2018. At the time, Trump praised Bolton as a patriot, “well-respected and a tough cookie,” saying he “has strong views on things but that’s okay.”

Bolton helped craft the administration’s hard line on Iran, but he opposed what he regarded as Trump’s dovish overtures to North Korea and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nor was he a fan of the president’s “we’ll have to see response” to questions about whether the U.S. would recognize Russia’s territorial claims in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Trump fired Bolton in 2019. “He wasn’t liked at all and wasn’t respected very much,” Trump declared in 2020. “Personally, I thought he was crazy.”

By then, Bolton was casting doubt on Trump’s fitness to be president. He subsequently Trump “incapable of advanced thinking” and as a way of life.”

In 2022, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was charged with plotting to murder Bolton. An Iranian was subsequently charged (in absentia) for offering $300,000 to kill Bolton. Officials in two federal agencies recently informed Bolton that the threat level is just as strong now as it was then.

Mike Pompeo, a member of the House from 2011 to 2017, occupied high-level positions throughout Trump’s first administration. When Trump elevated Pompeo from CIA director to secretary of State, the president declared he had “earned the praise of members of both parties” and would “do a fantastic job.”

Pompeo briefly considered running for president in 2024, criticized Trump for mishandling classified documents and “staring into the rearview mirror, claiming victimhood,” and promised voters “solutions, not tweets.” He still went on to endorse the former president and called Trump “a great guy” on the eve of the 2024 election.

Iran has vowed retaliation against Pompeo for helping plan the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. Informed that Trump had revoked security details for members of his administration, a CIA officer predicted that “somebody is going to get killed.” Pompeo explained the order as “a reflection of Trump’s character or lack thereof.”

Anthony Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. President Bush awarded him the National Medal of Freedom in 2007 as the architect of the President’s Emerging Plan For AIDS Relief, which saved millions of lives by distributing drugs in Africa.

As a member of the Trump administration’s Coronavirus Task Force, Fauci was initially praised by Trump, who said, “He has become a major television star for all the right reasons.” But, while declaring that Trump’s briefings were “helpful,” Fauci corrected misstatements about, for example, the likelihood of COVID-19 disappearing with the onset of warmer weather, the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and a claim that 99 percent of cases were harmless.

As Trump Republicans and libertarians condemned mask mandates and lockdowns of public buildings, Trump asserted that “people are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.” Before the end of Trump’s term, Fauci had become the administration official whom COVID critics loved to hate.

In 2022, a West Virginia man was sentenced to three years in prison for threatening to drag Fauci, his wife and children into the street, beat them to death and set them on fire. Since then, the threats have kept on coming.

Trump appointed Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019. A year later, Milley apologized for inserting himself into domestic politics by accompanying Trump as he walked through Lafayette Square, ostensibly to clear racial justice protestors, in what turned out to be a photo op.

At his retirement ceremony, Milley declared that he had taken an oath to the Constitution, not “to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”

Trump has said that Milley committed treason and deserves the death penalty for supposedly going behind his back in dealing with Chinese officials at the end of his administration. And like Bolton and Pompeo, Milley has been threatened with death by Iran for his role in the killing of Soleimani.

Trump has often compared himself to Abraham Lincoln. But he clearly has not yet signed on to the 16th president’s call for “malice toward none” nor for “charity for all,” let alone tried “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

*Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Tags Anthony Fauci Anthony Fauci Donald Trump Iran John Bolton Mark Milley Mike Pompeo Mike Pompeo security protection

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AN 1 25

Despite Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's narrow confirmation in the U.S. Senate, MAGA could still harbor a grudge against the three Senate Republicans who voted down President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon.

Tiktock Vid Bak both her fellow colleagues and Hegseth's ex-wife have been the target of Trump supporters' rage. Duckworth — an Iraq War combat veteran — told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that Hegseth's opponents have come under a "torrent" and a "deluge" of attacks by the far right. While Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who is also a military veteran, signaled she may vote against Hegseth, she ultimately voted in favor of his confirmation.

"Joni Ernst received so many threats and attacks outright, you know, threatening her, saying that they would primary her all the way through to threats against her own security," Duckworth said.

"Pete Hegseth's second wife, you know, lives in fear. She has young children... She's under a [non-disclosure agreement]. She had to have a safe word because she was so afraid of him," she continued. "If you talk to sexual assault survivors, domestic violence survivors, they are terrified. And they're not going to speak out against their abusers."

While Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announced earlier this week they would be voting against the confirmation of the Fox News part-time weekend host, former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined his two Republican colleagues on Friday. Duckworth told Maddow that while she was glad there were "at least three Republicans who have put the well-being of our nation above themselves," she lamented that Hegseth was the first defense secretary in U.S. history to have needed a tie-breaking vote from the vice president to be confirmed.

"The last company that he ran... he so badly bungled their finances, they had to bring in a forensic accountant to figure out what he did with the $10 million budget, and now they're going to put him in charge of a $900 billion Pentagon budget," Duckworth said. "It's a sad day for our nation, I fear for the military. I fear for our national security."

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no lnx

'We're gonna come get you now:' Threats flood J6 committee members after Trump pardons

Matt Lasloand Raw Story January 23, 2025

WASHINGTON — The threats are back.

Since President Donald Trump issued sweeping pardons — along with 14 communications — on Monday for the roughly 1,500 people convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol and attacking law enforcement four years ago, there’s been an uptick in threats to the members who served on the January 6 Select Committee.

"Well, already the crazy calls have started coming back," a former member of the committee told Raw Story. The member is not being named due to safety concerns.

"Are you getting threats?" Raw Story asked.

ALSO READ: Inside the parade of right-wing world leaders flocking to D.C. for Trump's inauguration

"Oh yeah,” the member said. “Several members have indicated that since the pardon that they're getting, 'Hey, we're gonna come get you now' and that kind of thing."

"So has your office gotten them?" Raw Story inquired.

"Oh, yeah," they said.

"Does that worry you though?" Raw Story pressed.

"Personal safety is a concern, I think, for a lot of people," the committee member continued. "It puts the public at risk when you put people who have been convicted of assaulting law enforcement back on the streets and you kind of embolden the conduct that they did, like it was somehow okay? So you legitimize bad behavior by people who broke into the Capitol and did all kinds of crazy stuff."

While the former select committee member doesn’t think the threats are coming from those who’ve been pardoned, they’re bracing for what’s to come.

"Some of the folks that he pardoned are still a clear and present danger to the public, members of Congress, staff here on the Hill," the committee member said. "Some of them, as you know, have already publicly said that they're not going to change.”

That’s a far different tune than House Speaker Mike Johnson is singing this week.

Earlier Wednesday, the speaker unveiled a new Jan. 6 subcommittee intended to “uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people,” according to his statement.

“House Republicans are proud of our work so far in exposing the false narratives peddled by the politically motivated January 6 Select Committee during the 117th Congress, but there is still more work to be done,” Johnson’s office released in a statement.

While the speaker’s office didn’t expound on what they now term "false narratives," the former January 6 Select Committee member told Raw Story the only falsehoods they’ve heard this week have come out of the White House — and now Republicans in Congress.

"You know, we had 140 people get hurt. Obviously, some lost their lives. Now to pretend like that was nothing, that what you saw with your own eyes somehow didn't happen, I'll just say, it's a blot on this institution,” the committee alum said. “It's a blot on the people who support people like that being pardoned."

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an 12 24 the conv

Threats and harassment are pushing some politicians out of office, scaring off some would-be candidates and even compelling some elected officials to change their vote.

Those are some of the conclusions of a new study I led on political violence in Southern California.

Rising threats against public officials is a national problem.

Between 2013 and 2016, there were, on average, 38 federal charges involving threats to public officials per year, according to the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center, a research center. That average sharply increased between 2017 and 2022, when an average of 62 federal charges were brought annually for threats to public officials.

When elected officials worry for their safety, it has implications for all Americans. Democracy suffers when people are governed by fear.

‘Respectful discourse has been lost’

I am the founder and director of the Violence, Inequality and Power Lab, or VIP Lab, housed at the University of San Diego’s Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. Over the past two years, the VIP Lab has been collecting data to understand the frequency and severity of threats against local elected officials in Southern California.

Our research focused on California’s three southernmost counties – San Diego, Riverside and Imperial. Together, these counties have just under 6 million residents, or roughly 15% of California’s population.

To capture as complete a picture as possible, we did a survey and interviews, reviewed news coverage and social media accounts, and scoured literature nationwide.

The first year, we focused only on San Diego County, surveying 330 mayors, city councilors, county board of supervisor members and school board and community college board members. Over 25% of survey recipients responded. Of them, 75% reported being threatened or harassed at least once in the past five years. Roughly half said the abuse occurred at least monthly.

Respondents had found their name shared on the dark web and seen cars drive past their homes in an intimidating manner. They’d been followed after public meetings and blocked from leaving. In some cases, their families were harassed.

“As a parent, [I] feel vulnerable,” one city council member said, adding that he’s become “very guarded with [my] kid in public.”

Topics that were most likely to prompt threats and harassment included COVID-19, gun control, school curricula and LGBTQ+ rights.

“Since the pandemic, people have been mobilized into different silos or groups of people,” said a school board member interviewed in 2023. “[R]espectful discourse has been lost in all of this.”

In year two, we sent surveys to 785 elected officials in all three counties. Two-thirds of respondents reported having been threatened or harassed at least once in the previous five years. Roughly the same number said verbal attacks had become a routine part of public service.

These attacks come from the public, they told us, and from other elected officials. Officials have been accused of corruption, called idiots and told they should die. School board members face allegations that they “don’t care about kids.”

The threats “are verbal, at council meetings, outside of meetings, during breaks,” said one interviewee serving on a city council. “I’ve been harassed by city council members, staff members, the city manager and the city attorney.”

A troubling trend

In simple terms, our research suggests that at least two of every three people who serve in public office in Southern California will be threatened, intimidated or harassed during their tenure.

Survey results suggest the average female elected official who experiences abuse is threatened or harassed at least six times as often as her male peers. Men reported being on the receiving end of abuse about once a year, while women suffer abuse almost monthly.

The attacks against women are more likely to be personalized – referring to their looks or their family members – and have a sexual nature.

It was “slanderous stuff,” one school board member told us of abusive text messages that started in 2022 after many years of service. “Language of being evil … of not being a Christian woman.”

Her husband was also followed by a car, and her home was circled by the same vehicle. No one else on her board reported similar abuse.

We heard many accounts like this from female elected officials in Southern California. One city councilwoman filed two police reports against men who threatened, harassed and stalked her. A second was threatened throughout her campaign and time in office, including by a man who used a racial slur and threatened to “take care of” her with his AK-47.

Even so, our most recent survey revealed that male elected officials are most concerned about political violence. Sixty-four percent reported that things had become worse during their time in office, compared with 50% of women.

Counterintuitively, white, male, rural and conservative respondents all reported that threats and harassment had gotten worse more often than their nonwhite, female, urban and liberal counterparts – even though nonwhite, female, urban and liberal respondents reported more threats and harassment overall.

This finding may reflect a meaningful shift in how threats are used in politics. We believe that those responsible for abuse previously targeted the most vulnerable elected officials – namely women and other underrepresented groups.

But as it becomes more common to use threats and harassment as a means to influence decision-making, everyone is a target.

Most of the abuse we documented is, thankfully, not physical. But “hostile, aggressive or violent acts motivated by political objectives or a desire to directly or indirectly affect political change or change in governance” is, by definition, political violence.

And our research shows that this constant, low-level abuse is taking its toll on people and communities.

Fear-based governing

Our study results mirror findings from other research on growing political violence in the U.S.

The number of threats targeting members of Congress went up 88% between 2018 and 2021, from 5,206 in 2018 to 9,625 in 2021.

Meanwhile, a 2023 study on state legislators by the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice found that 89% had been threatened, harassed or insulted at some point over the previous three years. That means roughly 6,000 of the approximately 7,000 state legislators in the U.S. have been abused or intimidated since 2020.

The Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrated for many Americans the threat of political violence. Brent Stirton/Getty Images

Most Americans don’t need these data points: Three-quarters of Americans already believe political violence is a problem, according to the States United Democracy Center.

Constituents have a right, even an imperative, to make their opinions known to the individuals they elect. Accountability and representation are essential to democracy. But there is a line between expressing disagreement and using intimidation or violence to influence policy decisions. And the latter can have some distinctly undemocratic outcomes.

Six percent of the elected officials we interviewed said they had actually changed their vote on a specific issue due to the climate of fear. And 43% of our survey respondents said that threats and harassment have caused them to consider leaving their post.

“I don’t think it’s fair to have to fight so hard,” said one relatively new school board member. “I’m mad at myself for letting the bullies win.”

The climate of fear is also keeping people from serving. Nationwide, 69% of mayors surveyed by the Mayors Innovation Project said they knew someone who had decided not to run for office due to threats or fear of violence.

When fear – rather than the needs of community – becomes a driving force in politics, democracy loses. That’s rule by the powerful, not rule by the people.

Rachel Locke, Director, Violence, Inequality and Power Lab, Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice, *University of San Diego

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new 12 24 ymail

We get a lot of hate mail at Public Citizen.

Here are some recent examples:

“Get ready for me to kill you!”

“Kneel or die.”

“Scum like you sent this country into decline.”

“You people are disgusting traitors.”

“I hope you end up in jail.”

“You are either for America or you are dead. Your choice.”

“Confront us and see what happens.”

“You pieces of sh*t are the reason the American dream is dead.”

“Trump is going after your organization and you.”

“Die, traitor, die!”

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aha

SPIN ON DEATH THREAT god WILL GET YOU

violence precursors threat and prop damage, DIRTY TRICK notE no left equiv

an 11 24

In Kenosha, the local Democratic Party office has received calls about residents who put up yard signs supporting Vice President Kamala Harris receiving letters, warning of reprisal and biblical hell fire if they don’t vote for former President Donald Trump.

Lori Hawkins, chair of the Kenosha County Democratic Party, said that people have been reporting the letters to the Kenosha Police Department. “There’s a couple different versions of it, but most people I know have gotten both of them,” Hawkins told Wisconsin Examiner.

One of the letters, images of which were shared with Wisconsin Examiner, opens with the line, “We see that you have Democrat signs on your property.” The letter asks, “are you not aware that when you die that you will be held accountablebefore almighty God for voting for an open border that allows millions of illegal immigrants to freely enter, many of which are felons and evil people that have been doing deadly harm and will continue to do so [?]” The letter goes on to warn that voters will be held accountable by God “for voting for communism to take over America,” ending that “we don’t want anyone going to horrible hell, but you are on a fast path to it.”

After receiving multiple reports about the letters, Hawkins said that the Kenosha County Democratic Party decided to make a social media post, to ensure that people knew that they weren’t alone. The letters are typed and unsigned. “We know that the people who are putting these letters in mailboxes really believe the topics or the issues that are in the letters, and they’re probably doing it because they are fearful,” said Hawkins. “We know that it’s a bigger organization that’s fomenting this kind of fear, and playing to people’s anxieties and worries.”

Hawkins feels that the letters are “twisting the platform of Democrats who are on the ballot in a way that is, you know, pretty vile and false.” Hawkins has also received reports of Democratic yard and barn signs being slashed, defaced, driven over, or stolen. “And let’s be clear, I have heard and seen none of that happening with the large political signs belonging to Republican Party candidates,” said Hawkins. “So this is just an attempt to silence people, and make people fearful.”

Still, hundreds of people turned out for recent canvassing days held by the Kenosha County Democratic Party. Nancy Locante, a volunteer with the Kenosha County Democratic Party, received one of the letters, mailed to her with no return address. “America is at a crossroads,” one of the letters she received stated. The letter described “transgender ideology infecting our children’s schools,” high grocery bills, immigration, and persecution of “Christian values.” The letter urged Locante to vote for “biblical truths.” Locante said, “that’s quite a bit of intimidation, but of course they don’t have the guts to put their names on it. It can be a little unsettling knowing that they are watching you. But it’s unfortunate that these people’s beliefs are so misguided.” Locante hasn’t been deterred. “I’m walking around with all my buttons and merch on,” she said.

Locante plans to continue helping the Kenosha County Democratic Party canvass neighborhoods ahead of Nov. 5.

In Milwaukee, Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT)have knocked on over 600,000 doors urging people to get out and vote. LIT’s organizers said they have received reports of identical letters in communities between Milwaukee and Kenosha.

In early October, the Milwaukee suburban city of Wauwatosa experienced a string of sign vandalism, which targeted Democratic-endorsed yard signs. From Wauwatosa’s southeastern corner near 55th street and Wisconsin, all the way up to the northwestern corner of 81st street and Meinecke avenue, signs were defaced with red spray paint. The Republican Party of Milwaukee County denounced the vandalism in Wauwatosa, and said those responsible should be held accountable. In September, red spray paint was used to deface Democratic signs in Madison.

Both presidential campaigns continue to focus heavily on Wisconsin. Harris and Trump held competing rallies in Milwaukee Friday night ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and X.

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U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz Friday evening revealed the chilling details of an apparent potential assassination plot he says has endangered his life and his family. The Florida Democrat says police arrested a suspect who is a former felon, had body armor, a rifle, an antisemitic manifesto, with “only my name on the ‘target’ list.”

“The day before the election, I was notified by the Margate Police Department, located in my Congressional District, about a potential plot on my life,” Congressman Moskowitz said in a statement. “The individual in question was arrested not far from my home; he is a former felon who was in possession of a rifle, a suppressor, and body armor. Found with him was a manifesto that, among other things, included antisemitic rhetoric and only my name on the ‘target’ list. There are many other details that I will not disclose as I do not want to interfere with an ongoing investigation. I want to thank local law enforcement, the US Marshalls, the FBI, the US Capitol Police, and the US Attorney’s office.”

READ MORE: [‘Chief Shareholder in the Presidency’: Musk on Trump-Zelenskyy Mar-a-Lago Call Fuels Fears]

“As someone who was appointed to the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump, I understand the failures and importance of fixing the protection of our current and future Commander- In-Chief and Vice President.”

Rep. Moskowitz adds that, “At the same time, I am deeply worried about Congressional member security and the significant lack thereof when we are in the district. Regardless of our political affiliations or differences, we all have families we want to keep safe.”

In a post on social media, Moskowitz added, “Serving my constituents is a great honor, but it has put my family in danger.”

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On Thursday night, former President Donald Trump made a comment about former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) staring down multiple rifle barrels during a conversation with far-right pundit Tucker Carlson. That comment could result in a criminal indictment.

Phoenix-based NBC affiliate KPNX is now reporting that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) has opened a criminal investigation into whether the ex-president's remarks could be classified as a death threat. Mayes told local reporters that her office is taking Trump's comment seriously.

"I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analyzing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona's laws," Mayes said on Friday. "I'm not prepared now to say whether it was or it wasn't, but it is not helpful as we prepare for our election and as we try to make sure that we keep the peace at our polling places and in our state."

Arizona's state statute on death threats stipulates that anyone who "threatens or intimidates by word or conduct" can be prosecuted for a Class 1 misdemeanor or Class 6 felony. The former can carry a maximum fine of $2,500 and/or up to six months in prison. The latter can carry a sentence of anywhere from four months to 5.75 years in prison, along with fines and/or probation.

While speaking to Carlson in Glendale, Trump called Cheney a "radical war hawk," and envisioned a scenario in which the former House Republican Conference chair was being shot at.

"Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?" Trump said. "Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face."

The ex-president's supporters have insisted that his comments should be interpreted as a signal that he would embrace an anti-war agenda in a second term, and that he was criticizing Cheney's foreign policy stances. But CNN host Jim Acosta countered that narrative on Friday, saying the former president was plainly expressing an "execution fantasy."

"Donald Trump talking about executing Liz Cheney — and let's just be clear: when you talk about nine barrels, I'm sorry for all the folks out there who want to dance on the head of a pin, that is what he is talking about. An execution fantasy," Acosta said.

Cheney was voted out of office in 2022 following her public role in the January 6 Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. She has since become one of Vice President Kamala Harris' top Republican campaign surrogates. Despite her support of the Democratic nominee, Cheney was long considered to be one of the most conservative members of Congress, with FiveThirtyEight finding that she voted in line with Trump's policy positions nearly 93% of the time.

Click here to read KPNX's article in full.

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In Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania — a small town of roughly 4,000 people an hour outside of Pittsburgh — officials are loudly speaking out against a recent Halloween parade float over its depiction of Vice President Kamala Harris.

On Friday, Pittsburgh NBC affiliate WPXI reported on the local outrage over the float, which was a golf cart-style vehicle surrounded by men in suits meant to resemble Secret Service agents, with someone wearing a mask of former President Donald Trump riding on top with a sniper rifle. But Mount Pleasant Mayor Diane Bailey said the most offensive part was how it portrayed Harris.

"The worst part of it was that there was either a rope or a chain attached to the back of the vehicle, and there was a woman who was to resemble Kamala Harris in handcuffs and chained to the back of the vehicle as though they were dragging her," Bailey told WPXI.

Parade attendee Josh Huff told the outlet that the float was "probably not something I'd want at a children's parade," and that it looked like the float was "simulating a lynching."

"Somebody in power had to say hey, yeah, that’s fine. That’s okay," Huff said.

Bailey told reporters she wasn't sure how the float was approved to be displayed, and that she was planning to speak with the borough manager and the city council president to get to the bottom of the issue. The parade was organized by the local volunteer fire department, which almost immediately condemned the float in a post to its official Facebook page on Thursday night.

"We, the members of the Mount Pleasant Volunteer Fire Department, want to take a moment to sincerely apologize for allowing the offensive participants to take part in the Mount Pleasant Annual Halloween Parade last evening. We do not share in the values represented by those participants, and we understand how it may have hurt or offended members of our community," the post read. "We’re proud to have sponsored this parade for over 70 years and its goal has always been to support our community's children. We are committed to learning from this experience and ensuring that our future events celebrate the diversity and spirit of our community in a positive way."

Westmoreland County Democratic Party chair Michelle Milan McFall called the float "vile" in an interview with NBC News. And Westmoreland County Republican Committee chair Bill Bretz said the local GOP organization doesn't support "the simulation of political imprisonment or violence in any context."

"It’s heartbreaking. It’s concerning. And I think it’s also got an element of danger. Again, we’re living in this climate where people aren’t just thinking about hatred and feeling it in their guts and bones," McFall said. "They’re acting on it. We have to take down the temperature."

Click here to read WPXI's report in full, and click here to read NBC News' article.

READ MORE:['Execution fantasy': CNN host debunks GOP spin on Trump's violent anti-Cheney rhetoric*

mma 10 24

Misinformation about the responses to hurricanes Helene and Milton— ranging from accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is failing to mobilize resources to hard-hit areas to conspiracy theories that the government controls the weather — has surged across social media platforms in the past several weeks.

Media Matters found content on TikTok, Facebook, Telegram, and X where users expressed interest in traveling to instigate violence toward FEMA workers in North Carolina or said they supported others doing so.

The threats have forced FEMA to take safety precautions while distributing aid, and in one county, temporarily pause aid altogether. In Rutherford County, North Carolina, and Carter County, Tennessee, FEMA workers faced threats of violence from armed civilians.

Following online misinformation about the federal response to Hurricane Helene, FEMA faced threats of violence

According to The Washington Post, on October 12, North Carolina resident William Jacob Parsons was arrested after Rutherford County officials received a tip that “a white male had an assault rifle” and had made comments about going to harm FEMA employees.

There were initial reports that U.S. military personnel "had come across … trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA” but further investigation revealed that the threat was “more limited.” FEMA was operating in the area again as of October 13, but the Post reported that the agency was “working out of an abundance of caution” by stationing their operations at fixed locations instead of going door to door.

On October 15, a group of disaster relief workers said they came across a group of armed individuals confronting FEMA workers in Carter County, Tennessee.

“They were all armed, open carry not guns drawn, but they had surrounded them and there was a lady there that was yelling and threatening them,” said veteran volunteer Tracy Elder. WJHL reported that “During the confrontation, Elder did call 911 because she said they weren’t being rational,” but she was ultimately able to diffuse the situation.

Anxiety around potential encounters with armed civilians follows the proliferation of false claims on social media that FEMA has been “obstructing” or confiscating supplies or closing roads and bridges, preventing residents from leaving.

Social media users said they plan on forming armed convoys to go to North Carolina or support militias that are mobilizing against FEMA

Media Matters found social media content with significant engagement, including videos with tens of thousands of views, implying that armed civilians should confront FEMA. Some of these creators say they are part of active groups, though there aren’t currently reports of FEMA encountering armed militias.

Additionally, Media Matters found examples of users on alt-tech sites like Gab, Gettr, and Truth Social explicitly encouraging harming or killing FEMA workers.

One TikTok account with a username that seemingly implies violence against federal employees said — in a video with 322,000 views — that they are “part of a group that we are willing to get you through any and all roadblocks by any means necessary. Any means necessary. You know what I mean.” The original has been deleted, but as of this writing the video is still viewable on the app via repost.

On October 3, one TikTok user claimed without evidence in a video with over 60,000 views that “FEMA turned guns on people trying to help out.” He claimed that it was “confirmed by Newsmax.”

Another account appeared to be recruiting “special forces, SEAL teams, Rangers, Marines, anybody that has combat experience” to “build the team” prior to Hurricane Helene. The same account later began raising money for a 25-hour drive to North Carolina. In one video that has since been deleted, the TikTok user said that, “FEMA has no idea what’s coming” and that “we’re going to get our meat.”

Media Matters also previously found an October 5 video specifically calling for TikTok users to “organize” a convoy against FEMA, and another encouraging them to “stand by awaiting the rally point” to defend the country against “domestic enemies.” Both have been taken down from the app.

One TikTok user claimed on October 8 that a militia was going to Chimney Rock in Rutherford County, North Carolina to “stop the bulldozing and stop the mines.” He then said “y'all boys get started, give me a call. Let’s drain this fucking swamp.”

Accompanying support for armed militias in North Carolina were calls for sheriffs to arrest FEMA workers on X and Facebook. On X, Newsmax host Todd Starnes wrote, “It is only a matter of time until law enforcement in North Carolina physically remove FEMA and any other federl assets who are impending rescue efforts and relief deliveries. The government is playing a very dangerous game.”

A video of North Carolina Sheriff Tripp Kester “calling for local citizens to form militias to protect the Constitution” has been shared widely on Telegram, TikTok, Facebook, and X. The posts claim that he “calls for local citizens to form militias to protect the Constitution … either by voting, or God forbid, to use our 2nd amendment rights to protect ourselves from tyranny.” But the video is actually from 2020 when the sheriff was reacting to a proposed bill that was labeled as a “gun grab.”

In a video shared on Telegram, Jeremy Herrell, a host on the right-wing streaming network LFA TV, claimed that “the Sheriff departments are literally banning together with the fire departments and saying that they will arrest any federal employee that tries to impede on any rescue or relief by claiming jurisdiction.”

One TikTok user appears to be attempting to organize a gathering of some sort in Washington, D.C., from November 15-17 to “make your bullshit insurrection look like chump change.” The account previously posted at least one video promoting misinformation about the response to Hurricane Helene.

FEMA, the White House, and the media have been actively combatting pervasive misinformation about Hurricanes Helene and Milton

Fearing the exact scenario that is currently playing out in North Carolina and Tennessee, both FEMA and the White House made a point to push back against false claims about recovery efforts.

FEMA created a “Myth vs. Fact” page in an attempt to dispel rumors and President Joe Biden misinformation twice in televised appearances, triggering more backlash from right-wing media.

Several media outlets have debunked claims that FEMA is purposefully withholding aid and highlighted the agencies’ efforts.

Biden has urged House Speaker Mike Johnson to take action in Congress to approve additional aid for FEMA. Johnson has refused because “It would be premature to call everyone back now, because these storms are so large in their scope and magnitude, it's going to take a little bit of time to make those calculations.”

an 10 24

A progressive policy group in North Carolina was among those expressing alarm on Sunday as news spread that federal emergency workers were forced to evacuate an area hit hard by Hurricane Helene late last month after officials warned that "armed militias" were "hunting" hurricane response teams.

But the news didn't come as a shock to Carolina Forward, an independent think tank, considering that it came after weeks of lies from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump about the Biden administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) response to the hurricane.

"This is what MAGA does," said Carolina Forward on social media. "Eventually, their lies have real world consequences."

As The Washington PostreportedSunday evening, a U.S. Forest Service official sent an urgent message to other federal agencies involved in the recovery on Saturday afternoon, saying FEMA had advised all federal responders in Rutherford County, North Carolina "to stand down and evacuate the county immediately."

National Guard troops in the area, said the official, "had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA."

The message was verified by two federal officials.

"It's terrible because a lot of these folks who need assistance are refusing it because they believe the stuff people are saying about FEMA and the government... And it's sad because they are probably the ones who need the help the most."

Emergency responders moved to a "safe area" and paused their work in Rutherford County, where they had been delivering supplies and clearing trees from roads in order to help search-and-rescue crews.

"Let's be clear: Armed militia are terrorizing FEMA rescue workers and causing important work to stop because Donald Trump spread lies and disinformation about the hurricane. This is on the Republican candidate for president with help from Elon Musk," saidmedia critic Jennifer Schulze, referring to the billionaire owner of X who has used the social media platform to amplify Trump's lies. "Shameful and disqualifying."

The forced pause in the work is just the latest example of the measurable impact of statements made by Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), about FEMA in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned last Thursday that federal employees, thousands of whom have been deployed to states including North Carolina and Florida to help with the response to the devastating storms, have received threats in recent days. Meteorologists have received angry messages from people convinced that weather experts and government officials "are creating and directing hurricanes," The Guardianreportedlast week.

"I have had a bunch of people saying I created and steered the hurricane, there are people assuming we control the weather," Katie Nickolaou, a meteorologist in Michigan, toldThe Guardian. "I have had to point out that a hurricane has the energy of 10,000 nuclear bombs and we can't hope to control that. But it's taken a turn to more violent rhetoric, especially with people saying those who created Milton should be killed."

President Joe Biden was driven to address Trump's lies about the hurricane response last week, saying the disinformation was "undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken and will continue to be taken."

Since Helene swept through a number of states late last month, catching communities in western North Carolina off-guard with devastating flooding, Trump has baselessly claimed that:

Biden ignored a call for help from Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who denied Trump's claim;
He received unspecified "reports" that North Carolina officials were "going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas";
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, spent "all her FEMA money" on housing for undocumented immigrants; and
FEMA is providing only $750 to people who lost their homes.

Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service official in hard-hit Asheville, North Carolina, told the Postthat locals have told FEMA employees who have arrived with aid to to help with repairs, "We don't want your help here."

"It's terrible because a lot of these folks who need assistance are refusing it because they believe the stuff people are saying about FEMA and the government," Duncan told the newspaper. "And it's sad because they are probably the ones who need the help the most."

In the town of Chimney Rock in Rutherford County, FEMA has shifted to working in secure areas in fixed locations instead of going door to door to assess community needs, the Post reported, "out of an abundance of caution."

Matt Ortega, a web developer in Oakland, California, said the impact of Trump's baseless claims about the hurricane response mirror that of his earlier lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, where schools and government business ground to a halt in recent weeks due to bomb threats stemming from claims that Haitian people were stealing neighbors' pets and eating them.

"Trump and Republicans' FEMA lies [incur] a debt, just as they did in Springfield," said Ortega. "The people who pay it are children whose schools are closed due to bomb threats in Springfield and recovery aid workers when militias are 'out hunting FEMA.'"

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an 9 24

'You are the cancer': Swing state election official admits having PTSD from MAGA threats

an 9 24

Demands for investigation after NH Libertarian Party shares threatening Harris

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an 8 24

Countless Donald Trump foes, from special counsel Jack Smith to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. to former Elle Magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, have been inundated with death threats from the former president's MAGA supporters.

The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist, obtained a license to carry a concealed weapon because of the MAGA death threats he has received. And Paul Pelosi, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, was attacked by a hammer-wielding MAGA extremist who broke into their home in October 2022.

Many Trump critics fear the possibility of violence during the 2024 presidential election — a possibility that liberal economist Robert Reich, former labor secretary in the Clinton Administration, explores in his December 19 column for The Guardian.

POLL:Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Reich notes that death threats have been a disturbing reality for many of Trump's detractors, including Smith, Judge Tanya Chutkan and Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis. And Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, he adds, said she received "64 death threats" within three weeks after filing a lawsuit calling for Trump to be removed from the state's election ballot.

These are not isolated incidents, Reich warns, but rather, show a pattern of violence from the MAGA movement — and everyone from judges and prosecutors to members of Congress has been threatened and feared for their safety.

"In 2016, the Capitol Police recorded fewer than 900 threats against members of Congress," Reich explains. "In 2017, after Trump took office, that figure more than quadrupled, according to the Capitol Police. The numbers continued to rise every year of the Trump presidency, peaking at 9700 in 2021.… Data also shows extraordinarily high levels of threats against mayors, federal judges, election workers and administrators, public health officials, and even school board members. The threats have clearly intimidated some Republican lawmakers."

Reich continues, "The retiring Sen. Mitt Romney recounted, in McKay Coppins' biography of him, that during Trump's 23 January 2021 impeachment for incitement of insurrection, a member of the Republican Senate leadership was leaning toward voting to convict Trump. But after several other senators expressed concern about their personal safety and that of their children, the senator in question voted to acquit. Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney said that in that impeachment vote, 'there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives.'

"Political violence," Reich warns, "is an inherent part of fascism."

"America is not the Weimar Republic on the eve of 1933, and Trump is not Hitler," the economist/Guardian columnist argues. "But it is important to understand the parallels."

*Robert Reich's full Guardian column is available at this link.

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an 8 24

Mike Nellis, a veteran Democratic operative and former senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, on Wednesday shared that he was subpoenaed by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) — which Nellis says is another one of the GOP leader's "a baseless right-wing conspiracy" theories.

"BREAKING: We have just received a subpoena from Jim Jordan and the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee," Nellis wrote via X. "This is yet another abuse of power, aimed at promoting a baseless right-wing conspiracy theory that links our company, Authentic, to Donald Trump’s fraud trial. We are thoroughly reviewing the subpoena with our legal team and will provide updates as soon as we have more information."

He continued, "Let us be clear: these allegations against our company are completely false and purely politically motivated. This is a blatant attempt to intimidate us and divert attention from Donald Trump’s conviction. We refuse to be bullied, and we will not allow House Republicans or MAGA extremists to spread lies about our work. We remain steadfast in our mission and are deeply grateful for the unwavering support of our friends and family during this time."

Jordan's subpoena is connected to his belief that New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan — who presided over Donald Trump's hush money case — faced a conflict of interest due to his daughter's past work with Nellis' firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc.

The Associated Press reported earlier this month, that Loren Merchan "met Harris occasionally in 2019 but never 'developed an individual relationship' with her," according to Nellis.

The news outlet noted that Authentic Campaigns Inc. has not worked for Harris’ campaign during the 2024 election cycle.

MSNBC's Katie Phang replied to Nellis' post, writing: "Jim Jordan IGNORED a Congressional subpoena issued by the January 6th House Select Committee. But Jordan insists that others comply when it’s nothing but a baseless harassment campaign? In Jim Jordan’s world, it’s 'Rules for thee, but not for me.'"

READ MORE:[Merchan’s daughter got 'credible' death threats 'requiring intervention' after Trump attacks

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'Bragg will get assassinated': Jack Smith displays MAGA threats in new filing to Judge Cannon

an 6 24

===

aha/doh note social media is used to target ppl, esp by trump see fbi attacks i love trump 4 24

Bomb threats follow Libs of TikTok's campaign against Planet Fitness | Media Matters for America

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Bomb threats follow Libs of TikTok's campaign against Planet Fitness | Media Matters for America

bomb threats follow Libs of TikTok's campaign against Planet Fitness

Dozens of locations across the country have reported bomb threats since the gym began receiving viral attention

Special PROGRAMSLGBTQ

WRITTEN BY ALYSSA TIRRELL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MIA GINGERICH

PUBLISHED 04/05/24

UPDATED 05/13/24

Update (last updated 5/13/24): *This article has been updated to include additional examples.

In early March, the account Libs of TikTok initiated an ongoing campaign against Planet Fitness, demanding a boycott in retaliation for the gym's trans-inclusive locker room policy. Although the company’s share price appears to have largely recovered, at least 53 locations of Planet Fitness have reported hoax bomb threats in recent weeks, continuing what has become a trend of violent threats against institutions targeted by the account.

CitationAndrea Austria / Media Matters

LoTT's campaign against Planet Fitness began after a member of the gym's Fairbanks, Alaska, location “reached out” with a complaint about “a man shaving in a women's bathroom.”

March 11: LoTT shared a video of a customer complaining that there had been “a man shaving in a women's bathroom” of her Planet Fitness location. The post also included a photo of the person referenced in the video.
March 12: LoTT shared screenshots of an email exchange between the customer and Planet Fitness, in which the gym responded to the complaint by restating its trans-inclusive locker room policy.
March 14: LoTT posted a video of the same customer claiming that her membership had been revoked.
March 15: LoTT posted screenshots of Planet Fitness’ trans-inclusive changing room policy and called for a boycott of the gym.

As the posts gained viral traction, Planet Fitness released a statement reiterating the gym's trans-inclusive policy and urging staff to “address discomfort” and “foster a climate of understanding.” The gym also clarified that “the member who posted on social media violated our mobile device policy that prohibits taking photos of individuals in the locker room, which resulted in their membership being terminated.”

On March 20, LoTT cited a Daily Mail story to claim that the account's activism had resulted in a $400 million loss in value for the gym. Right-wing media took their cue from LoTT, peppering in further anti-trans rhetoric and sometimes invoking the backlash that followed Bud Light's partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney as they repeated the story across cable news, online outlets, and podcasts.

Video

CitationFrom the March 20, 2024 edition of Fox News' The Faulkner Focus

On Fox News, OutKick’s Charly Arnolt claimed that “if you identify as trans you must have something mentally wrong with you in the first place,” and stated that she “hope to see their stock plummet even more, all the way to zero perhaps.”

OutKick (a Fox Corp. outlet) also published an article titled “Americans Are Starting To 'Bud Light' Planet Fitness.” The article cited LoTT and claimed that “Bud Light learned where Americans stand on celebrating the appropriation of the female gender,” urging similar backlash against the gym.

Video

CitationFrom the March 21, 2024, edition of the Daily Wire's The Matt Walsh Show

The following day, in a segment dedicated to the “cancellation” of Planet Fitness, Matt Walsh argued that the gym's gender-inclusive policy was untenable because “nobody has a gender identity.” He compared the gym to Bud Light and referred to its policy as “indefensibly stupid, reckless, and dangerous.”

Experts maintain that the Planet Fitness brand is financially stable “despite controversy.” However, some investment litigation firms have begun encouraging shareholders to participate in an investigation of the gym, specifically referencing the backlash against Bud Light in their announcements.

In the subsequent weeks, LoTT has continued to post about the gym, attempting to generate outrage by accusing Planet Fitness of a range of offenses, including "discriminating against White people," "grooming kids," "putting a mentally ill man's delusions before women's safety," and allowing "people to act out their s*xual f*tishes in public." The account has published dozens of posts on the gym, garnered thousands of reposts, and seemingly caused both "#BoycottPlanetFitness" and “Planet Fitness” to trend.

A series of bomb threats have followed against Planet Fitness locations in at least five cities, continuing what has become a trend of violent threats against the institutions targeted by the account. In addition to the Fairbanks, Alaska, location that reported a threat on March 15, at least four locations in or around Providence, Rhode Island, four locations in or around Jackson, Mississippi, “many” locations in Connecticut — including East Haven and Hamden gyms — and six locations in Wayne County, Michigan, have investigated similar threats since the campaign began.

Update (last updated 5/13/24): Since Media Matters first published this article on April 5, at least 36 additional bomb threats against Planet Fitness have been reported:*

Three Planet Fitness locations in Fairhope, Daphne, and Mobile, Alabama, were targeted with bomb threats. AL.com, [4/6/24]
Seven Planet Fitness locations in or around Jacksonville, Florida, reported bomb threats. First Coast News, [4/8/24]
Planet Fitness locations in New Haven and Norwich, Connecticut, reported bomb threats. Hartford Courant, [4/7/24; NBC Connecticut, 4/5/24]
Four threats were reported against Planet Fitness locations on the Delmarva Peninsula, including three in Delaware and one in West Ocean City, Maryland. WRDE, [4/6/24; WMDT, 4/17/24; Cape Gazette, 4/19/24]
A Planet Fitness location received a bomb threat in Overland Park, Kansas. KCTV, [4/7/24]
Three locations in Fargo and Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, reported bomb threats. Lakes Area Radio, [4/9/24; Valley News Live, 4/9/24]
Seven Planet Fitness locations in Virginia reported bomb threats, including a threat on a gym in Charlottesville that caused two businesses to be evacuated and temporarily shut down. ALX Now, [4/8/24; Patch, 4/9/24; CBS19 NEWS, 4/10/24]
A Planet Fitness location in Kahului, Hawaii, reported a bomb threat. KITV, [4/11/24]
Three Planet Fitness locations in Shreveport, Louisiana, reported bomb threats. KTBS, [4/17/24]
At least four Planet Fitness locations in Vermont and northern New York reported bomb threats. NBC5, [4/18/24]
A Planet Fitness location in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, reported a bomb threat. News on 6, [3/28/24]

Some Planet Fitness locations that were previously targeted have now reportedly received additional bomb threats, including multiple gyms in or around Providence, Rhode Island, Jacksonville, Florida, West Ocean City, Maryland, Milford, Delaware, East Haven, Connecticut, and Charlottesville, Virginia.

Additionally, at least two shopping centers in New Jersey and a shopping center in Maine that include Planet Fitness locations have reported bomb threats, although police have yet to specify whether the gyms were the target of these threats.

According to The Advocate, local law enforcement agencies are investigating the threats, and an FBI spokesperson said, “We are aware of the recent bomb threats made in cities around the country, and we remain in touch with our law enforcement partners to provide assistance.”

Clarification (4/23/24): An initial report that seemingly misidentified bomb threats to two Planet Fitness locations in Prince George’s County, Maryland, has been removed. In fact, the threats were made in Prince William County, Virginia.

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m# itt Romney and the right's terrorist veto

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 09/14/23 3:01 PM EDT

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) believes that some GOP leaders fear their Republican constituents will physically harm them or their family members if they publicly defy former President Donald Trump.

“There are deranged people among us,” he told McKay Coppins for a forthcoming biography, an excerpt of which was published in The Atlantic on Wednesday, shortly after Romney announced that he would not seek reelection. “It only takes one really disturbed person.”

Those fears are sadly justified. Over the last several years, far-right extremists have committed a wave of terrorist acts against Trump’s perceived enemies and other targets of an increasingly bloodthirsty right-wing media apparatus that is dedicated to whipping its audience into a frenzy. The right is raising the price of dissent, in effect creating a terrorist’s veto on U.S. public policy and criminal justice.

Romney points to the January 6 insurrection — in which a violent mob, summoned to Washington, D.C., by Trump and fueled by the election fraud lies of Fox News hosts and his other media allies, stormed the U.S. Capitol and sent Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress assembled to certify Joe Biden’s election into hiding — as the trigger for “a new, more existential brand of cowardice,” in which members of Congress declined to support Trump’s impeachment out of fear for their lives.

Coppins writes of “the question” that Romney’s “confession begged: How long can a democracy last when its elected leaders live in fear of physical violence from their constituents?” But the threat to U.S. democracy is actually much deeper than the author and his subject describe. It is not only elected leaders but journalists, prosecutors, judges, election workers, bureaucrats, and random people who in recent years have faced threats of physical violence from right-wing extremists after becoming the targets of the right-wing media’s most dishonest and incendiary members.

The “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that Satan-worshiping Democratic politicians were concealing a child sex trafficking ring beneath the D.C. pizzeria Comet Ping Pong nearly had a body count. Shortly after Trump’s 2016 election, a heavily armed fan of radio host Alex Jones’ rants on the subject walked into the restaurant and discharged a firearm several times while searching for tunnels.

While there is a long history of right-wing terrorism, the incident launched a new era in which right-wing commentators seeking money and power used increasingly demagogic language to target their political enemies — and Romney’s “deranged people among us” followed through with threats and violence.

Fox hosts like Tucker Carlson devoted years to denouncing immigrants as invaders, mainstreaming the white nationalist conspiracy theory of a plot to use them to “replace” the current population, and urging viewers to take action while shooters in El Paso, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo unleashed massacres of American Hispanics, Jews, and Black people on the same premises.

Trump’s vicious attacks on the press were echoed and encouraged by right-wing commentators, even as people using similar language issued death threats to media outlets and individual journalists and reporters were subjected not only to anti-press jeers and chants of “lock them up,” but to physical assaults at his rallies.

Cesar Sayoc, a Trump superfan whose van was plastered with anti-media decals, mailed explosive devices to the offices of CNN, several Democratic officials, and other progressive leaders including George Soros, a frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theories, in October 2018. Sayoc pleaded guilty to an array of crimes and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.

After Trump baselessly claimed that he had won the 2020 election but the results had been rigged against him through widespread fraud, his media allies went into overdrive to help him subvert democracy. Their campaign targeted election workers like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who subsequently testified to how harassment from right-wing conspiracy theorists had “turned my life upside down.” Such treatment has since become commonplace — the Justice Department says it has charged more than a dozen people over death threats to election workers, while a recent poll found “nearly one in three election officials have been harassed, abused, or threatened because of their job” and “more than one in five are concerned about being physically assaulted on the job in future elections.”

Libraries, children’s hospitals, and teachers have received bomb threats and trans minors have been subjected to harassment after getting swept up in the right’s massive, bigoted, and despicable campaign to smear LGBTQ people as “grooming” children.

Each time violence followed the right’s invective, its propagandists responded by furiously defending their conduct, launching new “false flag” conspiracies to pin the blame elsewhere, or trying to sweep the mess under the rug.

The next year promises an escalation of right-wing rhetoric — and a potential for dire consequences — as criminal trials get underway for Trump and Biden’s son Hunter. Trump’s propagandists have described the investigations of his conduct and his four indictments in apocalyptic terms, comparing the FBI to the East German Stasi secret police, the United States to a “banana republic” or “fascist regime,” and Biden to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. They have warned their audiences that “you” are the true target of these actions, urged them to take action, and contemplated civil war. At the same time, they’ve denounced the investigation of Hunter Biden for purportedly giving him special treatment.

Amid this furor, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security warned about the prospect of violence against federal officials after the magistrate judge who signed off on the warrant to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, as well as FBI agents, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and FBI Director Christopher Wray all received an uptick in death threats; an armed Trump supporter who had called for the murder of federal agents following the search attacked the FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was later killed in a shoot-out with police; a woman was arrested and charged with threatening the judge overseeing one of Trump’s trials; and members of the grand jury that approved charges against Trump in Georgia received threats after their names and addresses were published online.

On Thursday morning, less than 24 hours after the publication of Romney’s remarks, NBC News reported that “prosecutors and FBI agents involved in the Hunter Biden investigation have been the targets of threats and harassment by people who think they haven’t been tough enough on the president’s son.”

As Romney noted, in the environment that Trump and his right-wing media allies have cultivated, “It only takes one really disturbed person.”

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E. Jean Carroll judge tells jurors to use assumed names and not tell family about service - Alternet.org

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ymail 12 23

We get so much hate mail at Public Citizen.

It seems to be getting worse — perhaps not surprisingly given the increasingly violent rhetoric coming from Donald Trump and his adherents.

Here are just a few examples:

“You all deserve a bullet.”

“I would rip you apart limb from limb if given the chance.”

“We hope and pray you die.”

“The real patriots will set things straight soon.”

“I hope Trump ends you all — in the literal sense of the word.”

“I will kill you without remorse.”

“What’s really sad is that no one has killed the twisted morons at Public Citizen.”

“You should die slowly, in horrible pain.”

“We will eradicate scum like Public Citizen.”

“The FBI should lock you up and anyone who supports you.”

“Get the f*** out of my country.”

“Your day is coming, sooner than you think.”

That’s all in addition to anti-Semitic remarks directed at me personally, like “Should have guessed you’re a f---ing Jew.” robt weissman prez

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an 12 23 no lnx

'Kill yourself now so we can save ammo!' How Trump's violent movement could conquer America

Thom Hartmann

December 29, 2023

How would you react if one day you were sitting at home and the phone rang and when you picked it up you heard a man shout:

“Kill yourself now so we can save ammo!”}:

Moments later, an email arrives that says:

“I hope the Federal government hangs you and your daughter from the Capitol dome, you treasonous piece of shit! I pray that I will be sitting close enough to hear your necks snap.”}:

This is what happened to “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman when Trump and Giuliani decided to blame Trump’s loss in Georgia on them, incorrectly claiming they were stuffing ballots for Biden. Just a few hours later, a mob with torches and a bullhorn showed up at Freeman’s house, although she’d already left after being warned by the FBI that she was on the “kill list” of a January 6th defendant they’d just arrested.

Mitt Romney, speaking with writer McKay Coppins for his book “Romney: A Reckoning,” told him the story of multiple Republican senators who were so terrified of violence at the hands of Trump’s fascist followers that they set aside their consciences and voted against convicting him of trying to blackmail Zelenskyy and, later, trying to overthrow the government of the United States.

“One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him — why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome?}:

“Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.”}:

I know liberals and regular reporters in the media who are quite happy trash-talking Biden but are frankly terrified of the possibility that Trump or one of his high-profile followers might sic Trump’s fascist fan boys on them. As a result, they self-censor.

Similarly, multiple judges in the past few months have been given the chance to take Trump off the ticket because of his clear violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment by inciting and supporting an insurrection. Each one whiffed, and their legal logic was so thin it’s reasonable to conclude they’re also unwilling to have their families suffer the death threats and harassment that comes with being an “enemy of Trump.”

When the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court finally found the spine to vote him off the ballot, within hours the threats began. Now they’re having to pay for security for themselves and their family members, and go to sleep every night dreading the possibility that a lone wolf Trump supporter — like the one who broke into Paul Pelosi’s home and attacked him with a hammer — may be looking for them, too.

As NBC News reported, Trump’s followers reacted to the Colorado justices with predictable ferocity:

“’This ends when we kill these f--kers,’ a user wrote on a pro-Trump forum that was used by several Jan. 6 rioters.}:

“’Kill judges. Behead judges. Roundhouse kick a judge into the concrete,’ read a post on a fringe website. ‘Slam dunk a judge’s baby into the trashcan.’”}:

NBC’s Ryan Reilly added:

“The threats fit into a predictable and familiar pattern, seen time and time again after legal developments against Trump.”}:

Thus, Jack Smith was unable to find even four Supreme Court justices who were willing to grant cert to hear his challenge to Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution; terrified, they left the case with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in the hope those judges will draw Trump’s ire — and his followers’ fire — thus diluting their own risk.

This is how fascism takes over a nation from within: with violence and the fear of violence.

I’ve been doing what is now the nation’s largest progressive radio/TV show for 20 years, reaching an estimated audience of 6 million a week. My writings here on HartmannReport.com are frequently reprinted by other progressive media.

The result is that I regularly get threats, although this is not a phenomenon shared by my rightwing colleagues. When I asked a couple of rightwing radio hosts I’ve known for years if they get threats of violence or death, each said, “No.”

There is no movement advocating political violence on either the American left or in the center. It is entirely confined to the American right, and the media needs to admit that and the FBI needs to recalibrate their efforts.

As fascism expert and historian Emilio Gentile noted about how fascist movements start and gain power:

“In the beginning there was violence.”}:

Violence and the threats of violence are the key to understanding fascists like Trump and the movements they inspire.

As any professional interrogator can tell you, deep down inside, all of us humans are really just scared little kids. The more we’re broken down by the circumstances of life or government policy, the less secure we feel, the harder it is to get by in life, and the more scared we become.

And, for many people, out of that fear comes the willingness — hell, the enthusiasm — to embrace “big daddy” in the form of a tough guy leader who promises to “restore” those who feel the fear back to their previous (or imagined future) positions of power, wealth, and authority.

This becomes particularly easy for fascist leaders when their followers are convinced that the nation’s government has become hopelessly corrupt, a project rightwing fossil fuel billionaires, rightwing media, and Republican politicians have been promoting here in the US for decades.

Ever since the Reagan Revolution, in their zeal to cut their own taxes and stop regulation of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries, they’ve been hammering the message that our government has been seized by “deep state socialists” bent on destroying our country.

Republicans and the billionaires who own them have repeated this conspiracy theory so often for the last few decades that an entire religion, Qanon, as arisen around it.

This belief, that much of what our government does is illegitimate or even malicious, makes it easy for low-information voters to bind themselves to a fascist “reform movement” that promises better times ahead.

As fascist followers act out their violent threats against their leaders’ perceived enemies, they get an inner sense of strength and the feeling that they’ve joined a community: that diminishes their own fear for a short while.

The more an “other” — political enemies; racial, religious, and gender minorities; women — are blamed for the ills of the nation, the more vigilante-style violence against them is justified and the more violent the future becomes.

When the state pushes back against that violence, as America did after January 6th, the calls for increased violence become even louder. Trump is practically shouting “kill them!” with a bullhorn and even our court system is afraid to stop him by throwing him into jail as they would have any other common criminal who encouraged such violence against judges, juries, witnesses, court officials, and their families.

Calling people to violence by denouncing those being scapegoated is central to fascist politics.

Mussolini used to feature Italian “whistleblowers” who, like Joe McCarthy here back in the day, would call out “corrupt” government officials whose only real crime was not supporting him. Hitler had every radio station in Germany play phone calls from local citizens who denounced their neighbors for sympathizing with Jews, socialists, or trade union organizers.

Once publicly targeted in these ways, mobs or lone-wolf assassins would descend on these people’s homes. After a few well-publicized beatings and killings, everybody from media figures to politicians to judges backed away from trying to stop fascists or even hold them accountable.

When he was rising to power in Hungary, for example, Victor Orbàn’s right-hand-man led a torchlight march into a Budapest Roma neighborhood threatening to burn the “gypsies” — who fled in terror — out of their homes. More recently, Orbán started arresting people who “defamed” him on social media.

Soon, nobody in or out of the government is willing to stand up to the fascists; it’s too dangerous and too exhausting. Being the object of regular threats of violence or death is not something anybody would volunteer for unless they saw the stakes as being very, very important.

This is what Trump and the GOP he’s captured are working toward: the silencing of dissent and accountability, replacing them with fear and a guilty complicity. Just take a look at the state of social media today, particularly Xitter and Facebook, which have dialed back on their content moderation and thus loosed the fascists on anybody who dares criticize Trump or the GOP.

As Michael Ebner wrote in his book “Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy”:

“The Fascist state ruled Italy violently, projecting its coercive power deeply and diffusely into society through confinement, imprisonment, low-level physical assaults, economic deprivations, intimidation, discrimination and other quotidian forms of coercion.

“Moreover, by promoting denunciatory practices, the regime cemented the loyalties of 'upstanding' citizens while suppressing opponents, dissenters and social outsiders.”

Trump is telling us right up right now that he intends to rule as a fascist if he’s able to either win or seize power through other means in 2024. Informally, his militia followers will be showing up at polling places next fall to intimidate voters; they see themselves as the shock troops of the new GOP.

Formally, he’s planning on ending your and my protections against state-sponsored police violence, which he openly intends to deploy against anybody who opposes him and his regime:

“I am also going to indemnify our police officers. This is a big thing, and it’s a brand-new thing, and I think it’s so important. I’m going to indemnify, through the federal government, all police officers and law enforcement officials throughout the United States from being destroyed by the radical left for taking strong actions against crime.”

When Trump says “crime,” of course, he’s using the same fascist-speak that Hitler, Mussolini, Putin, and Orbán use that means “minorities” and “political enemies.”

And his followers are listening and acting.

The Anti-Defamation League published a report finding there have been more than 170 murders committed by rightwing (and, I’d add, therefore probably Trump-aligned) extremists over the past five years; only 3 deaths could be attributed to people “on the left.” None of the victims were “criminals.”

So, how does a nation deal with an epidemic of violent rhetoric and actual violent attempts?

SEE OFFENSIVE:

Fascists are always a minority when they rise to power in a country. They’re experts at manipulating democratic systems — particularly through things like voter suppression, gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and voter intimidation — to seize power, and then corrupting the existing systems and laws in ways that keep them in power.

At the moment, the fascist movement in the US is very much confined within the GOP and aligned with fringe militia and fundamentalist religious factions.

Merrick Garland should have come down on them hard as soon as he assumed his job as Attorney General; because he dithered for two full years until he was shamed into appointing Jack Smith by the January 6th Committee, Trump’s fascist followers have gained considerable momentum.

By continuing to refuse to investigate or prosecute the people who are still in power and conspired with Trump to overthrow our government, Garland further empowers America’s homegrown fascist movement. This must stop, and news that the FBI has finally acquired some of the content of Congressman Scott Perry’s phone is a positive sign, albeit too little and too late.

But the ultimate victory over fascism in America has to be in the ballot box rather than the courthouse. Americans who believe in democracy and reject strongman oligarchy must turn out next November in overwhelming numbers and so shatter the GOP that the party will be forced to reinvent itself in a way that includes purging itself of its fascist-supporting members.

And we damn well better succeed, because fascists never give you a second chance to defeat them or hold them to account. If we try to stop them and fail, Trump has already told us he’ll have a nice cold cell waiting for you and me in the concentration camps he promises to build to hold “millions.”

There is pretty much nothing more important now than waking up our friends and neighbors to this threat…

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shots Fired into the Christy/Spencer Building at UAH

April 24th, 2017 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

A total of seven shots were fired into our National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) building here at UAH over the weekend.

All [nope] bullets hit the 4th floor, which is where John Christy’s office is (my office is in another part of the building).

Given that this was Earth Day weekend, with a March for Science passing right past our building on Saturday afternoon, I think this is more than coincidence. When some people cannot argue facts, they resort to violence to get their way. It doesn’t matter that we don’t “deny global warming”; the fact we disagree with its seriousness and the level of human involvment in warming is enough to send some radicals into a tizzy.

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2x? recall morano doxxed them?

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/05/hate-mail-climategate

US climate scientists receive hate mail barrage in wake of UEA scandal

This article is more than 11 years old

Vitriolic campaign targets American scientists following leak of climate unit emails

Read the hate emails sent to climate scientists

Hacked email climate scientists receive death threats

The Climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk.

Leo Hickman

Mon 5 Jul 2010

Climate scientists in the US say police inaction has left them defenceless in the face of a torrent of death threats and hate mail, leaving them fearing for their lives and one to contemplate arming himself with a handgun.

The scientists say the threats have increased since the furore over leaked emails from the University of East Anglia began last November, and a sample of the hate mail sent in recent months and seen by the Guardian reveals the scale and vitriolic tone of the abuse.

The scientists revealed they have been told to "go gargle razor blades" and have been described as "Nazi climate murderers". Some emails have been sent to them without any attempt by the sender to disguise their identity. Even though the scientists have received advice from the FBI, the local police say they are not able to act due to the near-total tolerance of "freedom of speech" in the US.

Hold the beef: McDonald’s avoids the bold step it must take to cut emissions

The problem appears less severe in the UK but, Professor Phil Jones, the UEA scientist at the centre of the hacked email controversy, revealed in February he had been receiving two death threats a week and had contemplated suicide. "People said I should go and kill myself," he said. "They said that they knew where I lived. They were coming from all over the world." The third and final independent review into the issues raised by the hacked UEA emails is due to be published on Wednesday when Sir Muir Russell presents his panel's conclusions.

Professor Stephen Schneider, a climatologist based at Stanford University in California, whose name features in the UEA emails, says he has received "hundreds" of violently abusive emails since last November. The peak came in December during the Copenhagen climate change summit, he said, but the number has picked up again in recent days since he co-authored a scientific paper last month which showed that 97%-98% of climate scientists agree that mankind's carbon emissions are causing global temperatures to increase.

Schneider described his attackers as "cowards" and said he had observed an "immediate, noticeable rise" in emails whenever climate scientists were attacked by prominent right-wing US commentators, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

"[The senders] are not courageous people," said Schneider. "Where are they getting their information from? They just listen to assertions made on blogs and rightwing talkshows. It's pathetic."

Schneider said the FBI had taken an interest earlier this year when his name appeared on a "death list" on a neo-Nazi website alongside other climate scientists with apparent Jewish ancestry. But, to date, no action has been taken.

"The effect on me has been tremendous," said Schneider. "Some of these people are mentally imbalanced. They are invariably gun-toting rightwingers. What do I do? Learn to shoot a Magnum? Wear a bullet-proof jacket? I have now had extra alarms fitted at my home and my address is unlisted. I get scared that we're now in a new Weimar republic where people are prepared to listen to what amounts to Hitlerian lies about climate scientists."

Dr Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said he has also been receiving similar emails since last November when a private email of his was released into the public domain in which he had said: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." Trenberth has gone on to repeatedly defend his email and explain its context, but says he has now sent a file of abusive emails totalling "19 pages of text at about 10pt font" to his university's security officials. He said the response of the US police had been "pathetic", but also blamed it on freedom-of-speech legislation.

Professor Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University and leading proponent of the "Hockey Stick graph", said his experiences of hate mail were "eerily similar" to those described by Schneider. "I'm not comfortable talking about the details, especially as some of these matters remain under police investigation," he said. "What I can say is that the emails come in bursts, and do seem to be timed with high-profile attack pieces on talk radio and other fringe media outlets."

Last month, Mann told ABC News in the US that the following message was typical of the emails he has been receiving: "Six feet under with the roots is where you should be. I was hoping I would see the news that you'd committed suicide. Do it, freak." Another climate scientist, who wished to remain anonymous, said he had had a dead animal dumped on his doorstep and now travels with bodyguards.

Dr Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and co-author of the RealClimate website, said he had chosen to adopt a different strategy and now largely ignores the abusive emails he receives. "I learned a while ago that there is no way to prevent people who have no idea who you are, or what you think, or what you do, using your name to project their problems onto," he said. "Should I be offended and get annoyed, or should I just look upon my interlocutor with bemusement and pity?"

UK-based climatologists working outside of UEA report they have received far fewer abusive emails compared to their US counterparts. Dr Myles Allen, head of the climate dynamics group at University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department, said he only tends to get such emails when he writes an article in the press and that they "tend to start off 'Dear Communists, know that you will fail.'"

"I suspect part of the reason people feel they have to attack climate scientists is that politicians and environmentalists have a tendency to hide behind the science," he said. "In the run-up to Copenhagen, we often heard the phrase 'the science dictates' - that we need a 40% cut in rich-country emissions by 2020, for example - when in fact only a very specific, and politically loaded, interpretation of the science implied any such thing. If people who claim to be on the side of the science use scientists as human shields, it is hardly surprising that the scientists end up getting shot at."

Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said he had had "mercifully few" abusive emails or letters compared to scientists in the US. "I do get letters and emails accusing me of being wrong and stupid, but I have received few really abusive ones. I got one accusing me of being a communist, but so far at the Met Office at least we haven't been on the receiving end of the types of hate mail the US scientists have apparently been getting. Also in Australia, I hear."

school bd attacked for masks, rx hosp workers attacked, election workers

1021

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hang doc

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/anti-vax/

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NEW

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an 521 me

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was left flustered on Monday when a mysterious package of white power was left at his doorstep. Almost immediately after the discovery, he sounded off and pointed the finger because he believed he knew who was behind it: 80s pop singer Richard Marx.

In a statement to Politico, Paul sounded off about the package as he described himself as a "repeated target of violence." He also slammed Marx, whom he described as "a C-list" celebrity who is encouraging violence against him. According to Paul, a tweet Marx shared on Saturday likely influenced whoever left the package at his home.

"As a repeated target of violence, it is reprehensible that Twitter allows C-list celebrities to encourage violence against me and my family," Paul said in the statement to the publication. "Just this weekend Richard Marx called for violence against me and now we receive this powder-filled letter."

However, Marx argues otherwise. The "Right Here Waiting" singer insists his tweet was nothing more than "a wise-crack about Rand Paul's neighbor."

When a critic asked Marx about Paul's accusatory remarks, he fired back with a sarcastic statement of his own. "I'm the only person on Twitter who's ever referenced Rand Paul's neighbor," Marx tweeted, adding, "Must have been me."

According to The Washington Post, the package also included an image of Paul weraring a neck brace and had a message that read, "I'll finish what your neighbor started." The message was in reference to Paul's physical altercation with his neighbor Rene Boucher. In 2017, Paul and Boucher had "an argument over yard waste from the neighboring home." The incident escalated to a physical fight that left Paul with six broken ribs.

The current incident involving the mysterious package is being investigated by Capitol Hill police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/texas-supreme-court/

truscott salon

they didn't bother with writing articles of secession this time. No, Ken Paxton, the disgraced attorney general of the state of Texas, did that for them when he filed a lawsuit directly with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the presidential election. On Wednesday, Missouri and 16 other states filed a brief with the court seeking to join the Texas lawsuit, which alleges that the four decisive swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia violated the Constitution by allowing mail-in voting in the November election. On Thursday, a majority of the Republican caucus in the House, 126 members of Congress, signed on to the lawsuit along with the instigator in chief, Donald Trump. Twenty-five states and territories signed a brief opposing the Texas lawsuit. Friday evening, the Supreme Court rejected the suit out of hand.

The 18 states and 126 members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise, are seceding from democracy.It amounts to nothing less than an act of sedition by the entire Republican Party, 70 percent of whom believe that Joe Biden's election was illegitimate, according to a Quinnipiac poll released on Thursday. In contrast, 98 percent of Democrats think Biden's victory was legitimate, along with 62 percent of independents.

The last time anything like this happened was in 1860, when the election of Abraham Lincoln led almost immediately to declarations of secession by seven states between Dec. 20, 1860 and Feb. 1, 1861. Two months later, on April 12, the bombardment of Fort Sumter began, and the Civil War was underway.

It's not a shooting war — yet — but Texas didn't just file a lawsuit this week, it set a match to the Constitution of the United States. It isn't just that these Republicans don't recognize Joe Biden as our next president. They don't want to be part of the democracy that this country was founded on. They don't respect the votes of their fellow citizens. They don't want what more than 80 million people wanted when they cast their votes in this election. They want what Donald Trump wants.

Thankfully, it's not the whole country. The Quinnipiac poll found that 60 percent of registered voters think that Biden's victory was legitimate. But it wasn't the whole country in 1860, either. It was only after the election of Lincoln that the Southern states seceded from the Union over the issue of slavery.

This time there isn't a single issue, there's a single man: Donald Trump. In this way, what's happening right now in this country is eerily similar to what happened in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s with Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Trump has identified and used the same sort of mass hysteria Hitler did — a sense of resentment among his supporters that somehow they have been left behind and misunderstood and humiliated, and that only he, Trump, understands them and is willing to stand up for them and will bring back their rightful way of life.

So far, Trump has only played around with the kind of violence that Hitler made use of to achieve power and then consolidate it. Trump used implied violence in the chants of "Lock her up" that energized supporters at his rallies in 2016 and throughout the campaign of 2020. By staying silent this year when armed protesters occupied the State Capitol in Michigan, Trump implied his support, and his exhortations to "liberate" states that were mandating lockdowns to fight COVID were taken by many as invitations to violence.

Now armed protesters have gathered outside the home of the Michigan secretary of state, and Georgia election officials report that they are receiving death threats and racist voice mails. The Republican Party of Arizona has retweeted exhortations from those who say, "I'm willing to give up my life for this fight," suggesting it's time to "die for something." The New York Times reported this week that the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission has said that "people on Twitter have posted photographs of my house." Another tweet mentioned her children and threatened "I've heard you'll have quite a crowd of patriots showing up at your door."

The conservative website The Bulwark reported this week that far-right websites have been posting addresses and other personal information about Republican elected officials in Georgia, superimposing target crosshairs over images of their faces.Right-wing Republicans are in full cheerleader mode trying to turn Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of murdering two people and wounding another at a Kenosha, Wisconsin, protest, into a hero of the Trump cause. A Democratic state representative in Pennsylvania told the New York Times that "we've been getting emails all the time, all hours of the day and night," and that "they're getting more angry, and a lot of calls are saying we won't be forgetting."

This kind of stuff is not a joke. The fantastic lie that has gripped the Republican Party started out with everyone going along with Trump's fantasy and kind of humoring him. But now it's taken a deadly turn. Trump has been calling Republican state representatives on the phone and pressuring them to go along with his demands that they ignore the votes that have taken place in swing states and appoint electors that will vote for him. If they step out of line, they're branded as traitors, cowards, RINOs. He's doing this kind of stuff to his own people, to loyal Republicans who have voted the party line since they were in short pants.

When you add in what's been happening in red states with COVID, it's jaw-dropping. Governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures are so intimidated that they won't pass mask mandates and bar closures, not to mention rules against mass gatherings. COVID cases and hospitalizations in red states are off the charts. They are lining up refrigerated trucks outside hospitals in states like North and South Dakota. Republicans are killing their own people in craven attempts to keep Donald Trump from attacking them on Twitter. God only knows what's going to happen in those states when the COVID vaccines become widely available, although we're getting some idea with reports of people standing up at meetings of county commissioners pledging not only that they won't wear masks, they'll also refuse to be vaccinated.

The Mason-Dixon line is psychological this time. These people have lost their minds. They have seceded from sanity and reason. This Civil War isn't being fought with rifles and pistols. It's a war fought with lies and delusions. This week it passed the number of Americans killed in World War II, and its victims are just as dead as the bodies buried at Anzio and Normandy. Americans are dying every time Mitch McConnell stands up and blocks a COVID relief bill. They are dying every time a Republican senator like Ron Johnson presents testimony from an anti-vaxxer as if it were a sane person instead of an outright idiot. They're dying by the thousands with their mask-less hubris. They're dying for Donald Trump, but at least for now, our democracy has not died with them.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/michigan-election/

hunter kos

the *Detroit Free Press* reports that the Michigan House and Senate buildings will be closed both to staffers and the public on Monday as the state's electors to the Electoral College meet to cast their votes for the state's presidential winner, Joe Biden. The Capitol was already expected to be closed to the public during the Electoral College meeting; this new, expanded closure also includes the building's legislative staff.

While neither Michigan State Police nor a spokesperson for the House Speaker's office would explain the reason for the closure, other than it being due to "security concerns," State Rep. Kevin Hertel tweeted that it was due to "credible threats" that "have been made as Michigan's electors" meet.

The state has been a hotspot of fascist militia activity. Michigan legislators has been the subject of armed protests by the far right and the Michigan governor, a Democrat, was the intended victim of a domestic terrorism plot in which members of a far-right group sought to kidnap and possibly execute her over the state's pandemic safety measures.

Only a week ago, armed rightwing protesters with the intellect of flatworms demonstrated at the house of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over rabid Republican conspiracy theories claiming Joe Biden's win over Donald Trump was fraudulent and/or a conspiracy.

There is no word on what security measures are in place as a response to the apparent "credible" threats aimed at disrupting the electors' official vote. Michigan state Republicans, however, have repeatedly encouraged the state's violent conspiracy theorists, most recently by inviting Trump "lawyers" Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis to present their election conspiracy claims to the Republican-led House.

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gov whitmer mich now blm WOMEN also Ilhan

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/marines/

Three Marine Corps veterans and their porn-star neo-Nazi guru, arrested last month on charges that they engaged in an interstate gun-running scheme, comprised a band of violent fascists who had recently moved to Idaho with the intent of making it a base of operations for their plans to engage in acts of domestic terrorism, federal prosecutors revealed this week.

According to the grand-jury indictment filed this week by prosecutors in North Carolina, the men's schemes went well beyond those with which they have been charged—namely, buying semiautomatic rifles, altering them into automatics, then shipping them from Idaho to North Carolina. The foursome not only engaged in paramilitary training in the Idaho desert, they surveilled two separate Black Lives Matters marches in Boise this summer and discussed killing participants. They also plotted to assassinate BLM founder Alicia Garza.

Three of the four men—Justin Hermanson, 21, who used the code name "Sandman"; Liam Collins, 21, aka "Disciple"; and Jordan Duncan, 25, aka "Soldier"—had met while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. The fourth—Paul Kryscuk, 35, whose nom de plume was "Deacon"—was a porn star (under the stage name "Pauly Harker") who had lived most of his life on Long Island, New York. He met the other men online in the now-defunct neo-Nazi message board Iron March, and was the group's general leader, though all they identified as members of the terrorist organization Atomwaffen Division....

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dems as ihan omar sec upped after send her back

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an 1120

Since Election Day, mobs of right-wing anti-Democracy groups have alternately been trying to "stop the count" and "count the votes" in a confusing cacophony of dumb. Led by some of the same faces that have brought you other bogus right-wing protests around the country, the Arizona mobs have been fueled by the entirely baseless claims of election fraud promoted by the Republican Party and Donald Trump.

As a result, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has been forced to repeatedly appear on television to refute the completely fabricated claims of election malfeasance. This has led to Hobbs, her family, and her staff to be targeted online by real cowardly faketriots who are threatening the lives of Hobbs and those around her. On Wednesday, Sec. Hobbs dropped a powerful statement about these threats and our Democracy and justice. In it, Hobbs says that while she is not surprised that people are angry and are striking out it does not excuse the perpetrators of violent threats meant to intimidate people trying to protect our Democracy. "Their continued intimidation tactics will not prevent me from performing the duties I swore an oath to do. Our democracy is tested constantly, it continues to prevail, and it will not falter under my watch."

She also calls out Trump and "members of Congress and other elected officials," who spread false information about the integrity of these elections, reminding them that their "words and actions have consequences."

Hobbs' statement is the kind of document that should be copied, and printed, and re-printed, and taught in classes across the country. It is about the integrity of our delicate democracy and a testament to the courage that our officials are meant to show when our Constitution truly is threatened by a minority of mobsters and well-funded bullies.

Here is the full statement from Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs:

The truth is, I was prepared for these threats of violence and vitriol I have been a social worker for many years and can anticipate this reaction when certain people feel powerless and angry. These actions are utterly abhorrent, especially when directed at my family and my staff. They are a symptom of a deeper problem in our state and country—the consistent and systematic undermining of trust in each other and our democratic process Arizonans deserve to know that elections are safe and secure.

This does not excuse the perpetrators. Their continued intimidation tactics will not prevent me from performing the duties I swore an oath to do. Our democracy is tested constantly, it continues to prevail, and it will not falter under my watch.

But there are those, including the president, members of Congress and other elected officials, who are perpetuating misinformation and are encouraging others to distrust the election results in a manner that violates the oath of office they took. It is well past time that they stop. Their words and actions have consequences.

Now, I am calling on other leaders in this state, including the governor whose deafening silence has contributed to the growing unrest, to stand up for the truth. When facing unimaginable challenges this election year, Arizonans stepped up. More people are registered to vote in our state than ever before, election participation has been at historic highs, thousands answered the call to work at voting locations during a pandemic, and people made their voices heard.

This should be a time for thanking voters and election workers for their incredible commitment during unprecedented challenges. In that spirit, I offer my gratitude and express my admiration for the Arizonans who inspire trust in our democracy.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Ohio man who said AOC ‘should be shot’ has been arrested on felony gun charges, interstate threats

Jen Hayden / Daily Kos

Kathy Griffin still gets death threats: ‘People want to kill me on stage’

Mary Elizabeth Williams / Salon

She’s been pushing buttons for three decades now as a comic, a reality star, an actress.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/threats-congress-john-kless.html

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trump re?-tweets

Rep. Ilhan Omar Sees Spike in Death Threats After Trump 9/11 Attack

daily caller fox news 43 sec video her interspersed with 911 images with quote out of context

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/rep-ilhan-omar-has-seen-an-increase-in-direct-threats-on-my-life-since-trumps-attack/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/advocacy-groups-warn-against-normalized-hate-speech-after-trump-continues-to-ridicule-rep-omar-despite-death-threats/

Advocacy groups, progressives, and politicians are warning about the dangers of “normalized hate speech” and Islamophobia after the latest round of threats targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee and one of the first Muslim congresswomen.

“The political environment, led by an Islamophobe in the White House, has normalized hate speech and emboldened bigots in their actions,” Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY), said Saturday.

“The rising threat of Islamophobia and white supremacy must be taken seriously,” he added. CAIR is the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.

Nasher expressed relief that law enforcement tracked down Patrick Carlineo, of Addison, New York, who was arrested and charged on Friday with threatening to assault and murder Omar, a Democrat who represents Minnesota.

In a phone call to Omar’s office last month, the 55-year-old allegedly told one of her staffers: “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s an (expletive) terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her (expletive) skull.”

While being questioned by the FBI after the incident, “Carlineo told the agents he is a patriot, that he loves President Trump, and hates radical Muslims in government,” the Elmira Star Gazette reported Friday, citing the complaint.

News of Carlineo’s arrest came after The Blast reported Wednesday that, according to court records, Omar was the target of an unrelated bomb threat in mid-March when she was the featured speaker for a CAIR event at a Los Angeles hotel.

A female caller, who dialed from a blocked number, reportedly left a voicemail saying: “What would you do if I told you your hotel was going to be bombed. That is exactly what’s going to happen if you allow the likes of Ilhan Omar into your hotel. She is a danger to American society and your hotel. You are not to allow her foot into there if you value your own safety. Do not allow her in there. Cancel the event.”

The newly reported threats provoked sympathy and support for Omar, including from activist Linda Sarsour and the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace:

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060094801

One scientist was called Climate Barbie.

Another was described as an "ugly fake scientist." A third had an erect penis drawn on her car window while she was in the field researching sea-level rise.

Such is the life of many female climate scientists in 2018.

All researchers face the risk of being criticized when speaking publicly about their findings. But women in the field describe being attacked based on their gender. They've endured insults, sexual taunts and degrading comments about their professional acumen. Most of their harassers use social media, email and the phone for their attacks. But there's a fear that it could become physical.

Threats of death, rape and other forms of violence have left a number of researchers feeling concerned for their safety. They worry about opening envelopes with handwritten addresses and answering phone calls from unfamiliar numbers. Anonymous emails that try to entice a response cause agitation.

"We get this additional layer of hate mail, and people, I think, find it easier to put us down because we are women, or feel like they have more right in telling us what is right or wrong despite our expertise, which is always frustrating," said Andrea Dutton, a geologist at the University of Florida and an expert on sea-level rise.

Dutton said she often hesitates to answer the phone after she's quoted in the media. The feeling can last for days, prompted by harassing attacks in the past from unfamiliar numbers.

One prominent researcher who has spoken about being harassed asked not to be quoted in this article. She worries it would trigger a new wave of trolling. Her concern goes beyond online attacks and hateful phone calls. She's worried for her safety.

The attacks aren't new. But some scientists say the harassment they're enduring is becoming more personal, increasingly sexist and less focused on their scientific conclusions. Some suggested that it coincides with rising societal tensions over gender and race, laid bare by President Trump's political rise.

"There is a huge underlying fear of change, and that's spawned the whole 'Make America Great Again,'" said Katharine Hayhoe,director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University.

"When was America great?" she added. "Back when women were in the kitchen and others knew their place, and so because of that, the whole climate change thing, the whole idea that humans could actually interfere with the planet's climate and that fossil fuels were the way that we got great way back in the day, that's what underlies all this, and that's why there is such a mix between gender and climate denial, because it's all coming from the same perceived threat to identity, and position and power and rights."

Online harassers have called her a "sad, little mediocrity," an "ugly fake scientist" and an "old thin-looking hag." They've gone after Hayhoe for sharing her climate research and for her outreach to the evangelical Christian community.

The verbal and written attacks derive mostly from men. That's probably not a coincidence. Studies show that climate skepticism is a male-dominated perspective. Men are less likely than women to accept scientific conclusions about people being responsible for rising temperatures. And they're more likely to overestimate their knowledge of the issue.

Threats aside, some of the most frustrating attacks experienced by Hayhoe are those that denigrate her professionally. Some men talk to her like she's a "certified, Grade-A idiot," she said.

"These same men who are sending me all this stuff and telling me I know nothing, that I'm not qualified and that I'm ignorant, if I were one of the top cancer surgeons in the country, at the same level that I'm a climate scientist and they had cancer, I am sure that most but not all of them would be happy to have me operate on them. They wouldn't be challenging my credentials; they wouldn't be saying, 'I know more about natural cycles than you do.'"

Someone on Twitter called her "Climate Barbie 2.0." There were repeated hang-ups on her voicemail, something she finds particularly disturbing because she's worried the caller might be unstable. Are they angrily dialing over and over again? Other "pseudo-engagers," as Cobb calls them, have written to ask seemingly sincere questions about climate change. One of them called her "stupider than a cow" after receiving her thoughtful response.Public appearances on national television outlets, in particular, bring waves of hatred for scientists. Kim Cobb, a professor of earth and atmospheric science at Georgia Tech, recently appeared on national news programs to talk about the dangers of climate change. Now she's being called a liar over email.

Cobb said this is the reality for female scientists. She has learned to take the nastiness as an indication that her message is reaching people.

"This is a sign of your effectiveness," she said. "You have to take it that way, and when you take it that way, it can push you forward and give you the armor that you need."

Still, she has noticed a shift in the tone of her critics. After she tweeted recently about a bedtime conversation about climate change with her 11-year-old daughter, she was accused of making it up. Some questioned the existence of her daughter and told her she was guilty of child abuse.

The attacks on her motherhood are representative of the vitriol in recent years, she said. In the past, climate deniers would at least try to convince her of their findings.

Now there's mostly rage.

"I do see a shift toward a lack of substance sharing," Cobb said. "So much of the flak from the climate-denial community, I think, was in the form of trying to share graphs to show their point, trying to question you on the validity of the science. And a lot of that was very misguided, of course, but it was still pretending to be substantive, on the data, on the issues themselves. But it seems much of it today has turned completely to ad hominem attacks, these stream of emotionally laden insults with no substance whatsoever behind them, just trying to land one below the belt."

Women who research climate change aren't only facing the threat of harassment from strangers on the internet. A recent report shows that female scientists in academia are among the most at risk to face sexual harassment from their colleagues and superiors.

An analysis this year by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine highlighted high rates of workplace harassment for female researchers in sciences, engineering and medicine at universities. The report's authors noted that 58 percent of female academic faculty and staff experienced sexual harassment, making academia second only to the military (with 69 percent) in rates of workplace sexual harassment. They pointed to a number of factors that create an environment ripe for harassment, including a reliance on advisers for career advancement and a "macho" work culture.

Climate scientists do have some legal recourse against the most serious threats.

The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund is designed to protect researchers who are victims of harassment. The defense fund also directs scientists to other resources for workplace sexual harassment and offers counseling to help scientists respond to incidents that may be troubling but not illegal. The fund's executive director, Lauren Kurtz, said laws addressing online harassment are "behind the times." They tend to focus on bullying of children, not adult victims.

Reports from women since the fund was created in 2011 fall into two main categories.

Some complaints are similar to the types of harassment faced by men, but "there is a sense of a lack of cooperation on the part of the institution or difficulty raising the issue with their supervisor," Kurtz said.

There's also sexual harassment. The group received a complaint a few months ago from a climate scientist who reported "really odious rape threats" on Twitter.

Sarah Myhre, a paleoceanographer at the University of Washington, blames polarization on climate change for disproportionate threats against scientists compared with other disciplines.

"When you ask people, 'Do you believe in climate change?' what you're asking isn't 'What is your topical knowledge?' it's 'What is your tribalism?'" Myhre said. "Because it has been so hijacked in this partisan dystopic narrative, it leads to misogyny being used to discredit climate science."

One of the most visible climate scientists in the country, Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, said he sees a difference in how female colleagues are treated. Mann said he has been targeted by people who reject climate change for two decades. He has received death threats, has been mailed white powder, and was targeted by fossil fuel and conservative interest groups to be fired or imprisoned. Still, he sees an extra element of vitriol in the way women in the field are treated.

"I can tell you that there is a very large overlap between those who harbor conspiracy theories about climate science and those who express unenlightened views when it comes to matters of ethnicity and gender," Mann said. "In short, yeah — a surprisingly large number of climate deniers are misogynists. And so our female colleagues are at the receiving end of a particularly toxic brew of denialism, conspiratorial ideation and misogyny. It is most unfortunate and most disturbing."

Still, there seems to be an increasing public awareness of the harassment directed at female scientists, observers say. Those who have been harassed say they want more of their colleagues, especially men, to speak out about the problem. That's happening more and more, said Dutton, the geologist at the University of Florida.

"That's what we really need; it can't all come from us," she said. "It shouldn't have to be the victims; that's how we're really going to have change, when it's the other people calling out the bad behaviors, and I have started to see some of that.

"That's heartening."

Abortion doctors have literally been targeted and killer,eg Tiller, often egged on by rightwing radio, who then distance themselves.

Gifford on Palin website under crosshairs.

In Australia, where significant legislation on carbon was passed, climate scientists were put into protective custody. One American climate scientist so depressed by threats he contemplated suicide (see also mirror strategy for example Jesse Ventura Consp Theory in which disguised scientist claimed he'd been denied tenure for opposing climate change).

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NPR 318

Jennifer Kabbany, editor of The College Fix, told NPR that the site's purpose is to train future journalists, not to foment hate. "The College Fix has publicly denounced any vile emails that a professor might get," she said. "I'm sorry if professors received that kind of backlash." In reference to Ponce, of Diablo Valley College, she added, "It appeared the lecture was not balanced and didn't do academic inquiry and debate justice."

The College Fix is run by the Student Free Press Association. The association has had Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' son listed on its board of directors and is funded by an anonymous conservative donor fund.

Campus Reform is a project the Leadership Institute, a conservative think tank. Professor Watchlist, which lists more than 250 professors who advance what it calls a "radical" left-wing agenda, is maintained by Turning Point USA, an on-campus group that has been labeled "alt-right."

Campus Reform and Professor Watchlist did not respond to requests for comment.

The Red Elephants is a pro-Trump "alt-right media collective" founded in November 2016. Founder Vincent James Foxx has reportedly denied the Holocaust and been accused of urging violence at rallies. The site posted an edited video of Ponce's talk on YouTube with commentary calling it "Marxist, Communist, disgusting rhetoric that they spew in these classrooms to indoctrinate these children." It used the video to kick off an initiative called "Film Your Marxist Professor."

The administrator of the "Film Your Marxist Professor" Facebook page, who gave his name as Aaron Burr, told NPR via Facebook message: "We receive around 10 submissions per day. Our goal is to stop the anti-white and anti-American rhetoric that is being spewed on college campuses all across the country."

From these specialized sites, content travels to alt-right media sources like Breitbart and Infowars and neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront, and then, sometimes, to Fox News and the New York Post, CNN and other outlets.

Meanwhile, harassment is coordinated out in the open on anonymous, uncensored forums like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, where self-identified "trolls" uncover and post people's personal information, known as doxing, and try out strategies of attack. Cuevas at the University of North Georgia obtained screenshots of the 4chan forum on which people were fabricating social media posts in an attempt to paint him as anti-Semitic and racist or, alternatively, as pushing anti-Trump views onto his students.

"Their stated goal was to get me fired," he says, but he fears that is not the worst of it: "Georgia had just passed the campus carry law [for firearms], and what worried me was a lone nut case."

Flyers for Ponce's talk about white supremacy in the United States sit next to a flyer for Identity Evropa, a white supremacist group.

Anya Kamenetz/NPR

Ponce says he sees a fresh wave of abusive calls and letters every time a new media story hits. He has gotten letters in the mail, emails and Facebook messages, and his colleagues and administrators have gotten calls and emails.He has found his personal information on a Hungarian right-wing websiteand gotten calls from South America. He, like other professors, has called the police, but the messages keep coming.

Most troubling, he says, are "the real threats against my family" and "pictures on the Web of my 9-year-old daughter."

He and his wife are trying not to park their cars in the same places every day, peek out into the street at night and warn their daughter not to touch the mail....

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Last week, a Michigan man named Brandon Griesemer was arrested for threatening to kill CNN’s “fake news” anchors. In December of 2016, North Carolina resident Edgar Maddison Welch burst into a pizza restaurant near Washington with a rifle and fired off three rounds, in part because Jones and his staff had spent hours telling their followers the place was the center of a global child-sex ring.

Following Welch’s guilty plea last March, Jones begrudgingly and partially retracted his support for the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. His actions since, however, suggest he has no legitimate intention of cleaning up his act.

People have mocked the idea that Trump could become a dictator. What's clear is that many people he likes are telling him to become one.

Matthew Sheffield

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/professor-forced-cancel-book-tour-after-fox-news-fans-threaten-lynch-her-ripping

A black professor was forced to cancel the rest of her book tour after a Fox News report prompted dozens of death threats against her — and she accuses the conservative network of inciting its viewers to violence.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor delivered the commencement address last month at Hampshire College, and Fox News aired a portion of the 20-minute speech Sunday that called attention to her criticism of President Donald Trump, reported *The Stranger*.

Taylor, a Princeton University professor of African-American studies, described the president as a “racist, sexist, megalomaniac,” and the Fox News report suggested that she was encouraging activists to lawlessly thwart the Trump agenda.

After the report on her “Anti-POTUS tirade” aired, Taylor said she has received more than 50 hateful and threatening emails — some of which were issued with such specificity that she canceled portions of a tour to promote her new book, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.”

“Shortly after the Fox story and video were published, my work email was inundated with vile and violent statements. I have been repeatedly called ‘n****r,’ ‘b*tch,’ ‘c*nt,’ ‘dyke,’ ‘she-male,’ and ‘coon’ — a clear reminder that racial violence is closely aligned with gender and sexual violence,” Taylor said. “I have been threatened with lynching and having the bullet from a .44 Magnum put in my head.”

She accused the conservative network of airing the report in an attempt to silence her and other Trump critics.

“I am not a newsworthy person,” Taylor said. “Fox did not run this story because it was ‘news,’ but to incite and unleash the mob-like mentality of its fringe audience, anticipating that they would respond with a deluge of hate-filled emails — or worse. The threat of violence, whether it is implied or acted on, is intended to intimidate and to silence.”

Taylor placed the threats into context with recent violent acts by white supremacists, including the fatal stabbings of two men on a commuter train in Portland, Oregon.

“Their side uses the threat of violence and intimidation because they cannot compete in the field of politics, ideas, and organizing,” she said. “The true strength of our side has not yet been expressed in its size and breadth, and so they believe they are winning. We have to change this dynamic and begin to build a massive movement against racism, sexism, and bigotry in this country. I remain undaunted in my commitment to that project.”

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/professor-who-criticized-trump-hiding-after-death-threats

11/15 note, no links or img

As delegates from 195 countries work diligently in Paris to hash out an international deal to tackle climate change, their work relies on the huge consensus of climate science that shows the world is headed for a dangerous future if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed. But back home in the United States, historically the biggest carbon emitter of all, climate science gets a much rockier reception. In fact, climate scientists find themselves and their work regularly under attack.

Not only are there organized efforts likeLamar Smith's House science committee issuing subpoenasand striving to discredit scientists, but harassment and hate mail arrives every day via the Internet. Their work has found itself in the crosshairs of a political ideology that has an ugly side.

InsideClimate News spoke to nearly a dozen climate scientists and communicators about the harassment they face. For them, death threats, sexist remarks, claims of fraud, bomb threats, letters laced with powdery substances, references to rape and Nazis have become almost standard. According to emails shared with ICN, messages range from derisive ("I hope your mental illness gets better") to downright threatening (“YOU ARE GOING TO HANG SOON!”).

Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, who does outreach with evangelical Christians, says she can receive up to 200 emails and letters a day following a media appearance, telling her she's a fraud and a liar, threatening her family and challenging her religious views. People have also shown up unannounced and agitated at her office to confront her about her scientific views.

"One email I got said something like, 'I hope your child sees your head in a basket after you've been guillotined for all the fraud you climate scientists have been committing,'" Hayhoe said.

"There are people who become dedicated to following you, who have Google alerts set up on your name, who stalk your Twitter and Facebook accounts, who essentially make a career out of ridiculing and vilifying you," Hayhoe said.

An example of a hate message directed at a climate scientist and obtained by ICN.

While fervent public mistrust of established science is not unique to climate change (the anti-vaccination movement is another prominent example), the level of cruelty of climate harassment is alarming, and is also largely a U.S. phenomenon.

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center shows that only 45 percent of Americans—compared to 54 percent of people worldwide (and nearly 100 percent of working U.S. climate scientists)—believe climate change is a serious problem. Among Republicans, that percentage falls to 20 percent.

Another recent study, by PNAS, showed that the campaigns funded by fossil fuel companies to sow doubt about climate science have been remarkably effective in shaping public opinion in the U.S.

"This is more like politics, with nasty ads that often tell lies or half-truths, distort records," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Co. But unlike many politicians, "scientists don't have a superPAC to fight the claims. This is the new reality for us. Scientists moving into the realm of climate science need to be aware of this. Unfortunately, this is the new world we have to live in."

An example of a hate message directed at a climate scientist and obtained by ICN.

This phenomenon isn't unique to scientists either. Journalist Seth Borenstein, who covers climate science for the Associated Press, frequently gets harassed on social media. "Why can't we put these dangerous eco-terrorists in prison, or better yet, just execute them!" one Twitter user wrote in September, tagging Borenstein in the post.

The harassment gets scarier when it isn't contained to the Internet.

A few weeks after a local California magazine published a story about Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the researcher got a knock on his front door at 10 p.m. By the time he answered it, there was a dead rat on his doormat and a yellow Hummer was speeding away from the house, its driver yelling profanity out the window. Santer's young son was upstairs at the time.

Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Penn State University, was left a suspicious looking package with a white powdery substance at his office. The FBI later determined it was cornmeal. Mann and nine other climate scientists also had their names, bios and for some pictures posted on the White Nationalist web forum Stormfront.org, a group whose members have been linked to the hate crime murders of nearly 100 people across the globe.

An example of a hate message directed at a climate scientist and obtained by ICN.

Harassment can be particularly jolting for young scientists, Trenberth said. Most science graduate programs offer some sort of media training, but they largely focus on how to effectively talk to journalists, not how to deal with a barrage of hate mail from the public that follows that interaction. For someone just a few years out of their PhD, an onslaught of personal threats and questions to their scientific credibility is disturbing and confidence-shaking. As a result, young scientists often retreat to the ivory tower to focus solely on research, rather than continue to engage with the public, said Trenberth.

Researchers told InsideClimate News that when they were dealing with the first wave of climate-related harassment in the 1990s and early 2000s, they found themselves ill-equipped to deal with the torrent of attacks. Over the years, however, they have set up informal support networks to fight back.

An example of a hate message directed at a climate scientist and obtained by ICN.

In 2011, Mann and other researchers set up the Climate Science Defense Fund, a nonprofit that helps scientists defend themselves against politically motivated legal actions. The organization helps scientists find pro bono representation and raises funds to assist with legal costs.

"When I find myself with younger climate scientists who are subject to similar harassment, nasty emails, letters to superiors, I try to convey...[that] there’s an infrastructure," Mann said.

Even with that help, hate mail and harassment takes a toll on scientists—and science. Researchers spend time and resources addressing denialists' debunked claims in a way the scientific community has never done before, according to a study published in May in the peer-reviewed journal Global Environmental Change. They also often downplay future climate risks to avoid being labeled an "alarmist" by climate contrarians, concluded the same study.

It can also take a toll on personal lives and relationships. And for some, the fear of being attacked, ridiculed or investigated remains years after the hate mail stops.

Hayhoe has found herself snapping at her son during particularly intense periods of attack. "That shouldn't be happening, it shouldn't be affecting my personal life," Hayhoe said. "As scientists we need to take a step back and ask, what toll is this having on me, on my professional work and on my personal life?"

Many of the researchers InsideClimate News spoke with said they have taken steps to protect themselves and their families from hate mail and harassment. Some have unlisted home addresses and phone numbers. Others have arranged that any mail or visitors get filtered through a central office at work, such as the headquarters of their university department.

"Some things are worth fighting for," said Santer, who has been the target of harassment since the mid-1990s. "A clear public understanding of the nature and causes of climate change is worth fighting for.

"If you are doing science that people care about, that is relevant, there will be pushback," he added. "You will receive not only justified or unjustified scientific criticism, but you will encounter attacks on your integrity, your character and your motives. You need to be prepared for them. They are the price of doing what we do. But it is important to remember they are just background noise."

The world needs more researchers talking about global warming right now, not less, climate scientists and communicators said.

"If you work in string theory or big bang cosmology, do great work inside the ivory tower. That's fine," said Hayhoe. "But when you are doing work on something like cancer, Ebola or climate change, there's an urgency. People are being harmed today. If we keep our results to ourselves, that's lives lost."

Ultimately, these attacks haven't stymied the flow of new climate research being published or the suring up of the scientific consensus for human-driven global warming. Many of the researchers InsideClimate News spoke with considered stepping out of the public eye at some point in their career, but in the end, none did.

"I am not looking back in anger," said Santer. "I really do think the main lesson I've learned through all this is wow, I get to come into work every day and learn something new about this incredible planet on which we live. That is an extraordinary privilege."

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/11122015/climate-change-global-warming-denial-ugly-side-scientists-hate-mail-hayhoe-mann

MIT Climate Scientist's Wife Threatened In A "Frenzy of Hate"

Kerry Emanuel's inbox was flooded with menacing emails after Climate Desk's video on Republican climate hawks.

By James West | Fri Jan. 13, 2012 7:00 AM EST

Kerry Emanuel began receiving four or five emails a day.: James West

Prominent MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel has been receiving an unprecedented "frenzy of hate" after a video [1] featuring an interview with him was published last week by Climate Desk.

Emails contained "veiled threats against my wife," and other "tangible threats," Emanuel, a highly regarded atmospheric scientist and director of MIT's Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate program, said in an interview. "They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive."

"What was a little bit new about it was dragging family members into it and feeling that my family might be under threat, so naturally I didn't feel very good about that at all," Emanuel said. "I thought it was low to drag somebody's spouse into arguments like this."

Climate Desk has seen a sample of the emails and can confirm they are laced with menacing language, expletives, and personal threats of violence.

Emanuel began receiving emails "almost immediately" after the video was posted on January 5, and the volume peaked at four or five emails a day. The threats have now petered off.

Threats are nothing new in the world of climate science. But Emanuel was surprised by the viciousness of the emails. "I think most of my colleagues and I have received a fair bit of email here and there that you might classify as hate mail, but nothing like what I've got in the last few days."

"This was a little more orchestrated this time," he said.

The video—"New Hampshire's GOP Climate Hawks"—documented a climate change conference run by a group of Republican voters upset by their party's anti-science rhetoric. Kerry Emanuel was a keynote speaker along with former Republican congressman Bob Inglis from South Carolina (who, incidentally, has not received any threats since the video).

In one clip, Kerry Emanuel says, "It makes me feel to some extent disgusted with politics and to some extent ashamed to be an American."

The comments were seized upon, Emanuel suspects, by "bloggers bent on distorting that message and amplifying it." One website, Climate Depot, posted Emanuel's email address.

Emanuel notes that in the full video he went on to explain that the Republican candidates "have either been misled in which case it's not great to be part of the political system where candidates for the president of the United States could be so misled on such an important issue, or they were dishonest, in which case equally bad in my view: How could we live in a country where candidates are being dishonest about an issue of such importance?"

Kerry Emanuel was featured in Climate Desk's story about Republican

Kerry Emanuel was featured in Climate Desk's story about Republican "climate hawks." James West

Another website, Junk Science, raised questions about his wife's anti-war feelings in the 1960s.

"Somebody came to the conclusion that back in the '60s she was a Marxist—which she was back then," Emanuel said. He notes that "conservative heroes of today like Norman Podhoretz [and] Jeane Kirkpatrick" were also socialists in the '60s. "So I don't quite know what the problem was there!"

In June 2011, top Australian climate scientists said they had been targeted by death threats [2] and menacing phone calls, including threats of sexual attacks on family members. Australian National University in Canberra reacted by tightening security, and the police began investigating. US researchers received a torrent of hate mail [3]in the wake of "Climategate," in which a trove of emails were stolen and released at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Emanuel decided not to alert police.

Emanuel says climate scientists are not used to the intensity of political debate around climate change: "We scientists are usually not in any kind of heated public debate as is the case in climate; we're not used to this, we're not trained for it."

"I've done a lot of public speaking, and I've spoken to many types of audiences, including audiences that are very conservative, and while I certainly have people push back—which is understandable and encouraged and people debate that's all part of that, that's fine—I've never ever encountered in direct contact with the public any behavior that I thought was bad or threatening or vile or anything like that. So I don't have any trouble communicating directly with the public. I think it's the distortions that occur sometimes in certain formats that are the root of the problem."

Kerry asked me to publish the full audio of our interview, which you can listen to below.

http://www.motherjones.com/print/156601

Climate News Network [1] / By Tim Radford [2]

Conservatives Don't Like the Message on Climate Change, So They Want to Shoot the Messenger

November 10, 2014 |

If you don’t like the message on climate change [3], it seems that the answer is to shoot the messenger.

According to a new book by veteran environmentalist George Marshall [4], thousands of abusive emails—including demands that he commit suicide or be “shot, quartered and fed to the pigs, along with your family”—were received by climate scientist Michael Mann [5], director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Centre, who drew and published the “hockey stick graph [6]” that charts a steep rise in global average temperatures.

Glenn Beck, a commentator on Fox TV, called on climate scientists to commit suicide. A climate denial blogger [7] called Marc Morano claimed that one group of climate scientists deserved “to be publicly flogged.” And the late Stephen Schneider found his name and that of other Jewish climate scientists on a “death list” maintained by an American neo-Nazi website.

Very Strange

As Marshall points out in his absorbing, all-embracing, immensely readable book, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, something very strange is going on.

Louis Pasteur’s revolutionary microbiology work on disease prevention never resulted in him having to think about how to use a gun. Jonas Salk never needed to fortify his house as result of working on the development of a polio vaccine.

Other scientists are trusted and respected. But the way climate scientists are now treated, Marshall argues, is without parallel in the history of science: “They have been set up to play that role in a climate storyline that, it would seem, cannot refute climate change without demonising the people who warn us about it.”

Forget, if you can, the people who seem to be whipping up these furious responses. Climate change can only be met or mitigated by action—and there are plenty of reasons why a very large number of people nod in agreement about what must be done and then fail to insist that it is done.

Dan Gilbert [8], a psychologist who won the Royal Society’s science book prize in 2007 with an examination of the puzzles of happiness, says that climate change is something unlikely to strike fear in the human heart anyway. It is impersonal, it is gradual, it is amoral and it isn’t—or doesn’t seem to be—happening now.

Other researchers have pointed out the alarming tendency, shared by all humans, to believe what they want to believe. Furthermore, climate change is not (death threats and public flogging fantasies aside) an immediate or an emotional issue. “A distant, abstract, and disputed threat just doesn’t have the necessary characteristics for seriously mobilising public opinion,” says the Nobel laureate, Daniel Kahneman [9].

There are other difficulties. When, for instance, will the awful things start to happen? How do you mobilise public opinion on an argument with uncertain timescales, imprecise outcomes and real puzzles about the costs and benefits of any actions? No one, Marshall says, is ever going to march under a banner of that says “100 months before the Odds Shift into a Greater Likelihood of Feedbacks.”

Marshall founded the Climate Outreach and Information Network [10] (COIN), based in Oxford, England. He is a veteran of Greenpeace and the Rainforest Foundation, and there isn’t much doubt about what he thinks and knows to be true.

But the appeal of this book is that he lets others talk. He examines the political doublethink that seems to infect some legislatures in the U.S. He listens to the skeptics [11], the worriers, the oil giants, the conspiracy theorists, the celebrity environmental campaigners and the other ones who invoke imagery of death, fever and smoking ruin.

And he refers to the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute [12], which polled academic experts on global risk, and found an estimate of a “19 percent probability that the human species will go extinct before the end of the century”.

Altruistic Behavior

The title, direction and burden of this book seem to augur almost apocalyptic failure to confront the coming crisis. But, of course, Marshall pulls out an ace near the end.

He concludes that while human brains may be hard-wired to not worry about what may or may not happen in two generations, they also have an immense capacity for pro-social, supportive and altruistic behavior.

“Climate change is entirely within our capacity for change,” he says, “It is challenging, but far from impossible.”

That is good to know. And the book ends with some serious advice about how to make the case for action—and instead of capital punishment, we get generously shouty advice in capital letters. CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING HERE AND NOW, he reminds us. And he urges campaigners to DROP THE ECO-STUFF, especially the polar bears.

Marshall suggests that we really do try to contain global average warming to 2°C. He quotes John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research [13], who told the Australians:“The difference between two and four degrees is human civilization.” And, yes, do think about it.

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http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/27/journalist_allan_nairn_threatened_for_exposing

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Attempts to intimidate Climate Scientists Link. Update: Death threats against Australian scientists 6/11). UPDATE: moved to secure locations. 10/11. Attempt thwarted by newspapers 5/10, defense of Michael Mann, famous for the "hockey-stick" graph. Here he is completely vindicated. Several different investigations have cleared everyonein so-called Climategate scandals. Related videos.

Newsweek article (editorial?) on better behavior in the debate. 2/10

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rfk2;

pork WU from goon followed rfk2, threatened

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There’s no police tape across Michael Mann’s office doorway this morning. “Always a good start,” he says, juggling a cup of coffee as he slides his key into the lock.

Mann, a paleoclimatologist, wears a sport coat over a turtleneck. As he takes a seat at his desk, a narrow sunbeam angles through the window, spotlighting a jumble of books, journals and correspondence. Behind him, a framed picture of his six-year-old daughter rests near a certificate for the Nobel Peace Prize he shared in 2007. Propped into a corner is a hockey stick, a post-lecture gift from Middlebury College, which Mann jokingly says he keeps “for self-defense.”

Mann directs Penn State University’s Earth System Science Center. Several months ago, he arrived at his office with an armload of mail. Sitting at his desk, he tore open a hand-addressed envelope and began to pull out a letter. He watched as a small mass of white powder cascaded out of the folds and onto his fingers. Mann jerked backward, letting the letter drop and holding his breath as a tiny plume of particles wafted up, sparkling in the sunlight. He rose quickly and left the office, pulling the door shut behind him. “I went down to the restroom and washed my hands,” he says. “Then I called the police.”

For someone describing an anthrax scare, Mann is surprisingly nonchalant. “I guess,” he says, “it’s so much a part of my life that I don’t even realize how weird it is.”

“Weird�� is perhaps the mildest way to describe the growing number of threats and acts of intimidation that climate scientists face. A climate modeler at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory answered a late-night knock to find a dead rat on his doorstep and a yellow Hummer speeding away. An MIT hurricane researcher found his inbox flooded daily for two weeks last January with hate mail and threats directed at him and his wife. And in Australia last year, officials relocated several climatologists to a secure facility after climate-change skeptics unleashed a barrage of vandalism, noose brandishing and threats of sexual attacks on the scientists’ children.

:{Those crude acts of harassment often come alongside more-sophisticated legal and political attacks. Organizations routinely file nuisance lawsuits and onerous :{Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to disrupt the work of climate scientists. In 2005, before dragging Mann and other climate researchers into congressional hearings, Texas congressman Joe Barton ordered the scientists to submit voluminous details of working procedures, computer programs and past funding—essentially demanding that they reproduce and defend their entire life’s work. In a move that hearkened back to darker times, Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, released a report in 2010 that named 17 prominent climate scientists, including Mann, who, he argued, may have engaged in “potentially criminal behavior.” Inhofe outlined three laws and four regulations that he said the scientists may have violated, including the Federal False Statements Act—which, the report noted, could be punishable with imprisonment of up to five years.}:

It’s late February when I visit Mann in his office, almost two years after Inhofe issued his “list of 17.” Though it’s still winter in central Pennsylvania, the temperature outside hangs in the upper 60s, crocus stems poke up from flower beds, and shopkeepers have thrown open their doors along College Avenue. Mann is home for three days between conferences in Milwaukee and Hawaii and West Coast stops on a promotional tour for his new book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

In the late 1990s, Mann developed a graph that demonstrated a recent and dramatic uptick in global mean surface temperatures. The hockey-stick-shaped curve has become emblematic to both sides of the climate debate. To the vast majority of climate scientists, it represents evidence, corroborated by decades of peer-reviewed research, of global warming. To climate-change skeptics, the hockey stick is the most grievous of many illusions fabricated by thousands of conspiring scientists to support an iniquitous political agenda.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included Mann’s graph in its Third Assessment Report in 2001. Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim then included it in their 2006 climate-change documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The film galvanized both the pro- and contra-climate-science camps, propelling the issue of human-caused global warming into the culture wars—and Mann along with it. ��Since then, my life has been crazy,” he says. “People have stolen my e-mails and bought billboards and newspaper ads to denounce me; they’ve staged bogus grassroots protests; they’ve threatened my family. I’ve been through eight investigations by everyone from the National Science Foundation to the British House of Commons. Every time, they find no evidence of fraud or misuse of information. Every time, they conclude that my methods are sound, my data replicable. And every time I’m exonerated, another investigation pops up.”

Mann has been called a “compulsive liar, a con man and an extraordinary psychological case.” Some critics accuse him of masterminding a cabal of scientists that aims to establish a new world order. Still others compare him to Hitler, Stalin and Satan.

At the time of our meeting, Mann was juggling several FOIA requests and two lawsuits��one of which would be resolved the following week, when the Virginia Supreme Court rejected the state attorney general’s demand that the University of Virginia (Mann’s former employer) turn over the researcher’s e-mails and other documents. The university spent nearly $600,000 to argue that releasing personal correspondence would chill academic research. “Yes, there’s been a toll on me and my family,” Mann says. “But it’s bigger than that. Look what it’s doing to science, when others see this and see what happens if they speak up about their research. These efforts to discredit science are well-organized. It’s not just a bunch of crazy people.”

Force of Nature: Michael Mann, a paleoclimatologist, has been the subject of lawsuits, congressional investigations and an anthrax scare. Tom Clynes

“There’s really only about 25 of us doing this,” Steve Milloy says, shortly after sitting down at Morton’s, a Washington, D.C., steakhouse favored by lawyers and lobbyists. “A core group of skeptics. It��s a ragtag bunch, very Continental Army.” Milloy, a Fox News commentator and former tobacco-industry advocate, runs a website called JunkScience.com that is an outlet for attacks on those he calls “global-warming alarmists.” Many of those who question mainstream climate science resent being called deniers; they say it unfairly equates them with Holocaust deniers. They prefer doubters, skeptics or realists. “Me, I just stick with denier,” Milloy says. “I’m happy to be a denier.”

Milloy is dressed in a striped pink button-down shirt and khaki pants, classic Potomac prep. He moved into climate denial in the 1990s as funding from the tobacco lobby began to dry up. At the time, conservative and libertarian think tanks were just starting to take aim at climate science. Milloy, who has received funding from entities controlled by oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, helps them get their message to the masses.

Milloy and other aggressive deniers practice a form of asymmetric warfare that is decentralized and largely immune to reasoned response. They launch what Aaron Huertas, a press secretary at the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls “information missiles,” anti-climate-change memes that get passed around on listservs, amplified in the blogosphere, and picked up by radio talk-show hosts or politicians. “Even if they don’t have much money, they are operating in a structure that allows them to punch above their weight,” Huertas says.

Scientists who speak up quickly become targets. Both Milloy and his counterpart Marc Morano, who runs the site ClimateDepot.com and once declared that climate scientists “deserve to be publicly flogged,” occasionally publish the e-mail addresses of climate researchers, a stunt that can result in scientists receiving a flood of vitriolic messages. A few weeks before our meeting, Milloy had offered a $500 bounty for a video of anyone who would heckle Mann with “an alarmism-debunking” question during the California leg of his book tour. The hecklers never materialized but, as with the white powder in Mann’s letter (which the FBI determined to be cornstarch), the threat made an impact.

Mann calls Milloy “a valueless, all-purpose denier for notorious industries who need a hired gun.” But Milloy, like others in the movement, says that he’s fighting an existential war with forces that would, without his intervention, steal the American way of life. “This whole green thing, the whole environmental scare industry, is really just an ingenious plan to exert government control over everything we do,�� Milloy says. “I have yet to see an environmental scare that is remotely true when it comes to human health. Secondhand smoke, air quality, ozone depletion, pesticides, superfund sites—you name it.”

* * *

The evidence to support the theory of anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change has been mounting since the mid-1950s, when atmospheric models predicted that growing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would add to the natural “greenhouse effect” and lead to warming. The data was crude at first, and opinions vacillated (skeptics like to recall a 1974 Time cover story that predicted an impending ice age). But by the mid-1990s, thousands of lines of independent inquiry supported the conclusion summarized in the 1995 IPCC report: ��The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”

Since then, the case for anthropogenic climate change has only strengthened; 98 percent of actively publishing climate scientists now say that it is undeniable. But several finer points remain unsettled. For instance, researchers still don’t completely understand the role of aerosols in the atmosphere, the variable effects of clouds at different heights, and the influence of feedback mechanisms such as the changing reflectivity of the Earth’s surface and the release of gases from permafrost or deep seabeds. Climate-change skeptics have been keen to capitalize on those gaps in knowledge. “They play up smaller debates,” says Francesca Grifo at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “and divert the dialogue by attacking particular aspects. They represent climate science as a house of cards, where you pull out one and it all falls apart.”

In 1998, following the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the American Petroleum Institute convened a task force to spend more than $5.9 million to discredit climate science and quash growing public support of curbing emissions. The group borrowed many of the methods and people, including Milloy, that had been used to mislead Congress and the public about the connection between smoking and cancer and heart disease. In a leaked memo titled the “Global Climate Science Communications Plan,” the task force laid out a strategy to “build a case against precipitous action on climate change based on the scientific uncertainty.” The memo details a plan to recruit, train and pay willing scientists to sow doubt about climate science among the media and the public. “Victory will be achieved,” the memo states, when “recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom’ �� and when “those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of the extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.”

In March 2001, George W. Bush’s administration declared that climate science was “too uncertain” to justify action (such as ratifying the Kyoto treaty) that might put the brakes on economic growth. That refrain would be echoed again and again, weakening or derailing successive international agreements and domestic policy. How had a small band of non-scientists managed to so quickly and thoroughly pursuade the nation’s leaders to reject an ever more coherent and definitive body of scientific evidence?

Stop Global Warming: A protester at a pro-climate-science rally in 2007. Reuters/Hyungwon Kang

“Multiple feet of sea level rising in the next few decades, that’s just fantasy,” says Myron Ebell, the director of energy and global-warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank. Ebell is in a taxi heading down K Street, Washington’s lobbyist row, talking to a reporter from the Naples Daily News in Florida. The journalist called to get his perspective on a new scientific study that warns of more frequent flooding along U.S. coastlines as higher temperatures accelerate rising sea levels. “The evidence is inconclusive,” Ebell says. “The [Antarctic] ice sheet is not shrinking but may in fact be expanding. The reality from the experts is . . . ”

Ebell does not claim to be a scientist. His background is in economics, and like Milloy, he was a member of the American Petroleum Institute task force in 1998. Yet his lack of scientific credentials has not deterred a stream of journalists from requesting his opinion of the newly released study. “Happens every time I get quoted in the New York Times,” he says. Ebell provides two things most scientists can’t: a skeptical view of climate science and clear, compelling sound bites ready for the evening news or the morning paper. For a deadline-pressured journalist covering “both sides” of a complex issue, Ebell might seem an ideal source. Yet by including unscientific opinions alongside scientific ones, that same journalist creates an illusion of equivalence that can tilt public opinion.

“It’s that false balance thing,�� Mann says. “You’re a reporter and you understand there’s an overwhelming consensus that evidence supports a particular hypothesis—let’s say, the Earth is an oblate spheroid. But you’ve got to get a comment from a holdout at the Flat Earth Society. People see the story and think there’s a serious scientific debate about the shape of the Earth.”

On the taxi’s radio, a weatherman forecasts that tomorrow will be Washington’s hottest March 15 in recorded history. Ebell glances out the window at the cherry trees, in full bloom two weeks earlier than usual, as he thumbs down to his next call. ��This one’s a producer at PBS NewsHour,” he says. “They’re interviewing one of those sea-level guys and they want to know how they should approach asking him a negative question.”

Ebell connects with the producer: “What they’re saying is, we’ve got to throw huge, scarce resources into what is essentially a nonproblem, that would be the point I’d make to him. The modelers will never admit that their models have no forecasting ability. They’re just saying that this could happen.” Then he winds up for his kicker. “Well, I’m sorry, a lot of things could happen. The Earth could be hit by an asteroid tomorrow.”

* * *

“When I get an e-mail that mentions my child and a guillotine, I want to pull a blanket over my head.”For the many scientists who consider themselves both political conservatives and supporters of the consensus position on anthropogenic climate change, ideology and party affiliation provide little shelter from attacks and harassment. Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, a political conservative and an evangelical Christian. In 2007, Terry Maple, the co-author of Newt Gingrich’s forthcoming book on environmental entrepreneurship, asked her to write a chapter reviewing the scientific facts surrounding climate change. For most of his political career, Gingrich championed the virtues of science, but last year, while campaigning in the Republican presidential primaries, he dropped Hayhoe’s chapter after Rush Limbaugh discovered her contribution and ridiculed her as a “climate babe.”

:{:{“Nice to hear that Gingrich is tossing my climate chapter in the trash,” Hayhoe tweeted on hearing the news. “100+ unpaid hours I could’ve spent playing w[ith] my baby . . .” The day after Hayhoe’s tweet, the American Tradition Institute (ATI), a conservative think tank, announced that it had filed a FOIA request with Texas Tech University “relating to collaboration on a book, using public time and resources.” The ATI’s paperwork referred to Hayhoe as a “climate activist.”}:

“I can delete the hate mail I got calling me a ‘Nazi bitch whore climatebecile,’” Hayhoe says, “but responding to nuisance lawsuits and investigations takes up enormous amounts of time that could be better spent teaching, mentoring, researching, doing my job.”

David Schnare heads the Environmental Law Center at the ATI, which since its inception in 2009 has sued the employers and former employers of a number of climate scientists, including Mann and James Hansen, the outspoken head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The ATI wants the researchers’ correspondence and research records. “We are not a venal organization,” Schnare says. “Our law center seeks to defend good science and proper governmental behavior and to expose the converse. Citizens have the right to know how government money is spent. Scientists who feel they shouldn’t have to respond to these requests shouldn’t be working in a government institution, because this is the price of entering.”

Richard Muller: Muller, a physicist, was one of the few prominent scientists skeptical of global warming. He reversed his position last year. Dan Tuffs

In 2006, Jeffrey Gleason and Charles Monnett, two government scientists working out of Alaska, published a report that described dead polar bears floating in the Arctic Ocean. The apparently drowned animals raised concerns about the effect of melting ice in the Arctic. As with Mann’s hockey-stick graph, the story of drowned polar bears made its way into An Inconvenient Truth and became a point of contention for climate skeptics. In 2010 both scientists came under investigation by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General for what it termed “integrity issues.”

Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, is providing Gleason and Monnett with legal representation. ��After more than two years of investigations, there have been no charges, no timelines, no requests for response,” Ruch says. “It’s Kafkaesque. We don’t know what started this and what’s keeping it going. But we do know that for both men, their lives have been hell.” Monnett, Ruch says, has vowed not to publish another scientific paper, and Gleason has left his job in Alaska. Neither scientist responded to our requests for comment.

The story of Monnett and Gleason is exceptional. Few scientists have actually left their field as a result of harassment, says Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA Goddard who is currently defending a case brought by the ATI. “But,” he says, “it does dissuade people from speaking out about their work. They see the harassment and intimidation and say, ‘It’s more stress than I need.’ ”

“When I get an e-mail that mentions my child and a guillotine,” Hayhoe says, “I sometimes want to pull a blanket over my head. The intent of all this is to discourage scientists. As a woman and a mother, I have to say that sometimes it does achieve its goal. There are many times when I wonder if it’s worth it.”

With scientists reluctant to speak out (and drowned out when they do), skeptics have had more room to attack climate-research programs. Last year, Republicans in the House of Representatives made a unanimous decision to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse-gas pollution threatens public health. Texas representative Ralph Hall, the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, along with 10 of his Republican colleagues, also called for budget cuts and program terminations that directly targeted climate-science research, efforts to curb emissions, and preparations for climate-change impact at the National Science Foundation, the EPA and the Department of Energy.

Although many of the cuts were undone in the Senate, funding for climate-related programs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did not fare as well. After launching an investigation into NOAA’s attempts to reorganize its climate services into a single unit, Hall successfully pushed through legislation to cut the agency’s climate-research funding by 20 percent, forcing it to cancel research grants.

“Now government agencies and researchers are doing anything to keep the word ‘climate’ out of their budgets and proposals,” says Rick Piltz, a former senior associate in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Office (in 2009, it was renamed the U.S. Global Change Research Program). “And this at a time when all agencies need to be thinking about how the nation will be affected by climate change and factor it into their planning.”

Worldwide, proposals for carbon taxes, cap-and-trade programs and meaningful CO2 reductions have foundered on a lack of political consensus. In December, Canada became the first country to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, citing the cost of compliance. The U.N.’s 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen yielded little actionable policy, and this June’s Earth Summit +20 in Brazil has been newsworthy mostly for the low expectations surrounding it.

In the U.S., local climate skeptics have been advancing their agendas. In Virginia, Tea Party–inspired residents recently derailed municipal preparations for sea-level rise around Hampton Roads, the body of water that borders Norfolk-Virginia Beach. They disrupted planning meetings and disputed as a plot NOAA’s findings that the area faces the second-highest risk from sea-level rise of any region of its size in the U.S. In April, Tennessee lawmakers passed a measure that allows teachers to question accepted theories on evolution and climate change in the classroom. Science advocates were also stunned by a recently disclosed initiative to design a school curriculum that questions climate science. Science educators say they’re increasingly worried that climate could become the same kind of flash point as evolution. The question science advocates ask now is, how do they turn the conversation back to the science?

Face of Denial: The Heartland Institute launched an anti-climate-science ad campaign in Chicago in May. The ad was pulled within a day, but other versions would have shown Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. Heartland Institute

Scientists are starting to fight back. Schmidt co-founded RealClimate.org, a forum for climate scientists to quickly respond to developing stories and “provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary.�� Several other scientists launched the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund last year to help scientists and institutions respond to nuisance lawsuits. “We have a responsibility to the scientific community to not allow those looking to discredit us to be successful,” Mann says. ��What they’re going to see is that they’ve awakened a sleeping bear. We will counterpunch.”

But playing the activist can be a slippery slope. In February, climate analyst and MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Peter Gleick admitted using a false identity to obtain and distribute files that provided a detailed picture of the finances and plans of the Heartland Institute, an anti-regulatory think tank that calls climate research “junk science.” The incident was a bizarre mirror of the 2009 “Climate Gate” scandal, in which hackers gained access to the e-mails of prominent climate scientists and distributed excerpts out of context. Although eight independent investigations later found that the scientists did nothing unethical, Climate Gate has become a rallying point for climate-change skeptics. Gleick was almost certainly aiming to incite a similar reaction among climate-science advocates. Instead many in the scientific community quickly condemned his tactics. Schmidt deemed them “completely irresponsible” and predicted that “public discussion on this issue will be much the poorer for this.”

Seated at a conference table in Heartland’s new downtown Chicago headquarters, Joe Bast, the organization��s president, is a bit more forceful. “Peter Gleick was so desperate and delusional that he was willing to break the law repeatedly and lie and deceive people. Once again, the most alarmist voices in the debate have been found to be behaving very badly.” Bast is compact and intense, with a well-trimmed beard and a raspy voice “from years of smoking,” he tells me. He says the documents, one of which appears to have been forged, don’t show a smoking gun. “Our enemies are calling it ‘Denial Gate,’ ” he says, leaning forward over the table. “We’re calling it ‘Fake Gate.’ Try to find anything in there that suggests we are anything other than sincere and above the table, and doing exactly what we say we’re doing.”

“We cannot allow those looking to discredit scientists to be successful. They’ve awakened a sleeping bear. We will counterpunch.”Probably the most surprising revelation is that Heartland’s climate work is funded primarily by one individual, referred to in the institute’s fundraising plan as the Anonymous Donor, who has contributed $12.7 million over the past five years. The organization’s climate programs include the school curriculum questioning widely accepted climate science and its annual International Conference on Climate Change, an event many scientists lampoon as “Denialpalooza.” Despite those programs, Bast says Heartland does not reject all of mainstream climate science. “Virtually everybody agrees,” he tells me, that “there has been warming in the second half of the 20th century [and] that there is probably a human role in that warming, that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that the increase in atmospheric concentrations can be attributed to human activity.” The organization, he says, argues primarily for “cost-effective solutions” to climate change. As our meeting is wrapping up, Bast says genuinely, “Don’t call us deniers. Skeptics is fine. Moderates, realists. But not deniers.”

But a few weeks later, Heartland would launch a new advertising campaign. As drivers crawled along Chicago’s busy Eisenhower Expressway, they were confronted with a large billboard that compared believers in global warming with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The text on the billboard read, “I still believe in global warming. Do you?” The advertisement was meant to be the first in a series. Others would liken climate-science advocates to mass murderers, including Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. Bast did not respond for comment following the launch of the campaign, but Heartland issued a press release: “The people who believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

“There are powerful voices of unreason,” says Ben Santer, who led the 1995 IPCC team, “but every year, the science becomes stronger and the data are telling an ever more consistent story.” As with tobacco, the more consistent the scientific story, the more difficult it will become for skeptics to reject anthropogenic climate change. That point was driven home after the Charles Koch Foundation donated $150,000 toward a study by Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley who was, at the time, a darling of the climate-skeptic community. Muller spent two years investigating claims by global-warming deniers that temperature rises verified by multiple studies were skewed because of flawed analysis, unreliable weather stations and the effect of urban heat islands. Muller and his research team (which included Saul Perlmutter, the joint winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics) compiled 1.6 billion readings at 39,000 sites and examined other historical data.

Muller’s conclusion was most likely not what the Koch brothers had in mind. Last October, his team announced that the global mean temperature on land had increased by 1.6 degrees since 1950, a result that matched the numbers accepted by the mainstream climate-science community. “The skeptics raised valid points, and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago,” Muller told me. “Now we have confidence that the temperature rises previously reported had been done without bias. Global warming is real.”

Some conservative think tanks have since begun to soften their positions. Jeff Kueter, the current president of the George C. Marshall Institute, which has been advocating against mainstream climate science since the 1980s, told me in his office in Virginia last month that “climate change is not a hoax” and that “human activities undoubtedly have an impact on climate change.”

Those who fund the denial machine are likewise reconsidering their positions. Exxon has scaled back its annual anti-climate-science funding by 78 percent, or $2.7 million, since 2006. Other publicly traded oil companies have followed suit. In response to Heartland’s billboard campaign, some of its biggest donors, including State Farm Insurance, the beverage giant Diageo, and the insurance and financial-services company USAA, announced that they were pulling their funding. In a message on Heartland’s website, Bast wrote, ��We do not apologize for running the ad, and we will continue to experiment with ways to communicate the ‘realist’ message on the climate.” The billboard, however, was gone a day after it was put up.

Public opinion in the U.S. about anthropogenic climate change is also changing. This spring, four major universities released polls showing that a clear majority of American citizens now say that the world is warming and that the country should take action. Jon Krosnick, a professor of communications at Stanford University, conducted one of the polls. He found that 83 percent of Americans say they believe that the Earth has been warming. One significant factor, he suggests, is that Americans can finally see and feel climate change happening.

“You no longer have to believe a scientist who is telling you that something is happening that you can’t see,” Krosnick says. “Now people are saying, ‘I can tell my plants are flowering much earlier, and I’m wearing shorts and T-shirts to the fall fair, when I used to wear jackets.’ ” Among those he polled, 71 percent support the U.S. taking action to reduce emissions regardless of whether other countries do so. “If the public does in fact support these views,” Krosnick asks, “why are politicians not taking action?”

Voice of Doubt: Myron Ebell educates the media about the “uncertainties” surrounding climate science. The brothers Charles and David Koch support a number of anti-climate-science programs. Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Newscom

On a summery afternoon in mid-March, Senator Inhofe dashes onto the stage at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., to introduce his new book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. “Why?” he asks the crowd. “Why, when the United Nations IPCC is totally refuted, when Al Gore is totally discredited, when man-made global warming is totally debunked, when passing a global-warming cap-and-trade bill is totally shot down, why is this book necessary?” He veers off-topic for several minutes to rail against “liberal Republicans” and “an unelected bureaucrat at the EPA.” Then, suddenly, he looks around and asks, “Am I going to be introduced?”

I scan the room. Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Marc Morano, the ClimateDepot.com blogger and former Inhofe aide who is widely considered to have ghostwritten most of his book, are there. So are about 150 others, a mostly older crowd that’s captivated by Inhofe’s folksy outrage and his PowerPoint presentation, which begins with his famous 2003 quote: “With all the hysteria, all the fear, all the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it is.”

It’s an entertaining ride. Inhofe doesn’t mention Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comment earlier that week referring to him as “Big Oil’s top call girl.” Instead he speaks of the current “war on fossil fuels” and about how the U.N.’s interest in climate is motivated by ��power, autonomy and control.” He boasts of how, in 2005, he called science-fiction novelist Michael Crichton to the Senate floor to testify as an “expert witness�� on climate change and about how in 2009 he flew to Copenhagen as “a one-man truth squad” to take the wind out of the U.N. Climate Change Conference. He shows a picture of the igloo his children built in front of their Washington, D.C., home in 2010 to mock Al Gore.

Throughout his presentation, Inhofe deftly manages to be simultaneously affable and outraged. “I love everybody,” he tells me after the crowd has departed, adding that he and Gore were “good friends” at one time. “I still am,” he says, “because I love everybody. That’s the difference between me and my adversaries.”

Just as in the rest of the country, belief in human-caused climate change in Oklahoma has been rising with the thermometer—according to Krosnick, a large majority of Inhofe’s constituents now believe that anthropogenic global warming is real. I ask Inhofe if he’s noticed any climate changes in his home state, such as last summer’s unprecedented heat and severe drought, withering crops, wild fires and dramatically expanded tornado season. “There’s not been any warming,” he snaps. “And there’s actually been a little bit of cooling. It’s all documented. Look at the Dust Bowl. Back then it was a lot hotter. Matter of fact, now they say the hottest time was actually during that time—1934, I guess.”

Actually, last summer’s average temperature of 86.9? was the highest ever recorded in Oklahoma. And last spring’s drought, when hundreds of farmers abandoned livestock they could no longer manage to feed or water, was the worst since 1921.

Many of the scientists I’ve spoken with say that no single act of harassment or intimidation has stung more than Inhofe’s “list of 17,” the call for the congressional investigation of prominent climate scientists. Mann, I tell Inhofe, said it “smacked of modern-day McCarthyism.��

“I’m not the guy that called for investigations, I don’t think,” Inhofe says. He quickly glances at his communications director, Matt Dempsey. “Did I ever call for investigations?” I study Inhofe’s face for a clue as to whether he’s joking—he brags about the episode in his book. It’s clear that he is not. Dempsey nods at his boss. “Okay,” Inhofe says. “Maybe right after Climate Gate, I said they need to be investigated.��

The room is nearly empty when I ask Inhofe, finally, if he could imagine the possibility, however remote, that science could provide any amount or type of evidence that could convince him that human-caused climate change could be real. The senator darts an impatient look at his watch, and his handlers rise. It’s clear that the interview is coming to an end. “When people like you ask that question,” Inhofe says, “I can tell you believe it.”

Tom Clynes is a contributing editor at Popular Science. His last story, in March, was The Boy Who Played with Fusion.

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When a tree-planting advocate receives threats of sexual assault and violence against her children, it is perhaps a red flag that the practice of healthy discussion has gone terribly awry.

In the heat of a carbon pollution tax debate, Australia’s top climate change scientists are facing an attack that has led some to go into hiding.

Over 30 researchers across Australia told The Canberra Times that they are being harassed with abusive emails. The violent threats haven't just targeted the scientists, but their families as well.

Why are people so angry? AFP explains that a debate is raging over Prime Minister Julia Gillard's plans to reduce pollution through a tax on carbon emissions. The goal is to tax polluters with a fixed price levy, and then move to an emissions trading scheme within the next five years. Reuters reports that Australia is the highest emitter per capita due to its reliance on coal (providing 80 percent of the nation’s power.)

The seemingly excessive anger towards scientists was fueled a few weeks ago when a new ad campaign featuring Cate Blanchett launched, advocating for the carbon tax. The ad suggests that big companies should pay for their pollution. The carbon tax proposal would result in more jobs, better health for children, and, as Blanchett says, “finally do something about climate change.” The ad appears to be rather understated (there is literally a singing birds sound cue), and yet the clip further enraged some people. As Grist writes, “Positivity + babies + gorgeous actresses seems like a pretty good recipe for getting people to, if not agree with you, at least not want to KILL YOU.”

The Guardian reports that Tony Abbott, the conservative opposition leader who once described man-made climate change as “crap,” critiqued the advertisement and actor, stating, "People who are worth $53m have a right to be heard – but their voice should not be heard ahead of the ordinary working people of this country.”

One recent poll found that 58 percent of the 500 voters questioned were against the tax. The proposal’s opposition argues that the carbon tax would damage the economy.

Meanwhile, Treasurer Wayne Swan argues "Our economy will continue to grow solidly while making deep cuts in carbon pollution," according to a speech excerpt provided by Reuters. According to Australia's ABC News, the debate comes on the heels of a new report commissioned by the Federal Government, predicting that by the end of the century, thousands of buildings could be destroyed with $226 billion worth of assets at risk due to climate change.

The problem is that this debate has in some cases materialized into serious anger.

According to The Canberra Times, The Australian National University moved high-profile climate scientists into secure buildings after they received explicit threats.

Scientists from other universities have been threatened as well. One scientist told The Canberra Times, ''If you want to find me, it's impossible unless you make an appointment, sign in with some form of photo identification, and are personally escorted to my door… That's directly as a result of threats made against me.''

One researcher told the paper of an instance where her photo appeared in an article promoting a community tree-planting day -- she then received threats of sexual assault and violence against her children. Another scientist received death threats and was advised by police to install a ''panic button'' in his office.

Many have changed their home security systems, deleted social media accounts, and switched to unlisted phone numbers after receiving threats to their homes.

Australia's new chief scientist, former ANU vice-chancellor Professor Ian Chubb, denounced the threats, stating, ''These hurtful attacks are intended to intimidate scientists, to scare them off and stop them from participating in public discussions on climate change. They are the antithesis of democratic debate.”

Christine Milne, Australian Greens deputy leader, said the emails were ''an orchestrated, extremist anti-science campaign attempting to threaten and intimidate people into silence.''

Professor David Koroly from the University of Melbourne tells Australia's ABC News that he receives threats every time the media interview him. Yet, he argues, "It is still very important that climate scientists present the best available information to the community, to the business community and to politicians and that we seek to protect our individual safety, but that we still provide the best available climate science."

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Australian climate scientists receive death threats

Universities move staff into safer accommodation after a large number of threatening emails and phone calls

Oliver Milman
The Guardian, Monday 6 June 2011 10.09 EDT

Australian marine scientists examine coral cores at Clerke Reef, Western Australia. Climate scientists have recently received death threats, universities say.

A number of Australia's leading climate scientists have been moved into safer accommodation after receiving death threats, in a further escalation of the country's increasingly febrile carbon price debate.

The revelation of the death threats follows a week of bitter exchanges between the government and the opposition in the wake of a pro-carbon price TV advert featuring actor Cate Blanchett.

The Australia National University (ANU) in Canberra said that it has moved a number of its climate scientists to a secure facility after they received a large number of threatening emails and phone calls.

Ian Young, ANU's vice-chancellor, told ABC national radio that the threats had worsened in recent weeks.

"Obviously climate research is an emotive issue at the present time," he said.

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"Green Fascism": Let The Facts Speak

If you can’t win an argument, you can always use force—or so some of the more fanatical climate change deniers out there appear to feel. I’ve always believed that the truth will out—but these folks either don’t believe that, or don’t have confidence that they are really on the side of verity.

Well—I must be fair here--so far it’s not actually force--just the threat of it. Ideological firebrands on the right, people of the ilk of Rush Limbaugh, have long applied violent and defamatory language to scientists concerned about climate change. For example, on his November 24, 2009 show, Limbaugh stated that scientists involved in the global warming “hoax” should be “named and fired, drawn and quartered, or whatever it is.” (Drawing and quartering was a particularly gruesome Medieval torture/execution/mutilation.)

The drawing of William de Marisco, 13th-century England. The first phase of drawing, hanging, and quartering. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In the blogosphere, the scientists have been reviled (not always coherently) as frauds, fascists, socialists, murderers, parasites, and worse. Things turned particularly bad in the wake of the so-called Climategate hack (in which emails were stolen from the servers of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.)

:{:{}:

Dr. Phil Jones, at the epicenter of the scandal, received over 200 threatening messages, according to Nature.com. The most troubling said things like “Someone, somewhere, will hunt you down,” or “Expect us at your door to say hello.” The result for Dr. Jones was depression, rapid weight loss, suicidal thoughts and a reliance on anti-anxiety medications—a decline that reportedly stunned his friends.}:

He wasn’t, however, the only one. A number of climate scientists reported this sort of harassment, and apparently some threats were deemed serious enough to merit police protection of one sort or another being put in place.

Attacks have also taken place in the print media: Dr. Rajendra Pachauri was falsely alleged to have profited from his position as head of the International Panel on Climate Change; and Dr. Andrew Weaver was similarly defamed by Canada’s National Post:

I asked the National Post to do the right thing, to retract a number of recent articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held. To my absolute astonishment, the newspaper refused.

Both cases were settled favorably to the scientists who had been libelled, and the defamatory statements were retracted.

Rajendra Pachauri.

Official intimidation has been forthcoming, too. For instance, Dr. Michael Mann—a frequent target of denialist ire as the architect of the so-called “hockey-stick” graph, has for over a year now been the target of investigation by the Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli.

In April 2010, Cuccinelli issued subpoenas for a lengthy list of Mann’s papers while at the University of Virginia, including years worth of emails to 39 named individuals. The rationale was that Mann had received a state grant while on faculty at the University of Virginia, and though the work specified in that grant had been satisfactorily completed, Mann had used his professional resume in applying for the grant—and since the “hockey stick graph” was false (according to Mr. Cuccinelli) that meant that Dr. Mann had fraudulently applied for the grant.

On August 30, a Virginia judge rejected this theory, writing:

"The nature of the conduct is not stated so that any reasonable person could glean what Dr. Mann did to violate the statute."

On September 29, Cuccinelli offered a slightly redrawn “Civil Investigative Demand.” Five days later the University of Virginia revealed that it had spent $350,000 to that date in legal expenses—more than the original grant had been worth. It is not known how much the Attorney General's office has spent on the investigation so far.

The matter of the original ruling is before the Virginia Supreme Court, and the new Demand is unresolved. Costs continue to mount, despite widespread denunciations of the witchhunt as both expensive and chilling to academic freedom.

Update: As of March 2012, Cuccinelli has lost at the state Supreme Court level; it is unclear whether any further options to continue the witch-hunt exist, though the willingness to do so apparently does. Direct costs to the taxpayer have reportedly exceeded $600,000.

Virginia Supreme Court tosses out AG Cuccinelli inquisition on Michael Mann | Climate Science Watch

Summary of Virginia Supreme Court decision and related facts. Links to related documents and stories.

Cuccinelli's $600,000 IOU to Virginia Taxpayers

Opinion piece on case. States that UVA spent $600,000 to defend the suit, though this was "raised from private funds." (Presumably since only a relatively small proportion of UVA funding is from the state.)

Political and fiscal intimidation is in play, too; the Republican majority in the House of Representatives has repeatedly tried to use the power of the purse against any hint of action that might help control carbon emissions. On February 18, for example, they voted to defund EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and in March attempted to defund the EPA completely.

Currently, they are attempting (absurd as it may sound) to defend the incandescent light bulb, having just passed a measure to defund any promotion of energy-saving lightbulbs. Apparently it is our inalienable right to spend more lighting our homes.

But it isn’t only the enforcement arm that’s under attack; the House voted in February to defund US support for the International Panel On Climate Change, and may well force cuts to NASA satellite missions that provide essential data in understanding climate.

(What could more clearly demonstrate the will NOT to know the truth than this? Perhaps the GOP emblem should be not the elephant but the ostrich.)

But turning back from the institutional to the personal, Australia has recently suffered a spate of death threats against climate scientists. The Canberra Times reported that:

Australia's leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats.

The Australian National University has confirmed it moved several high-profile climate scientists, economists and policy researchers into more secure buildings, following explicit threats to their personal safety.

June 17th saw the publication of a report in the Canberra Times that said:

Two of the most shocking cases involved young women who have had little media experience or exposure. One was invited to speak on climate change at a suburban library. Her brief was simple - talk about everyday things people can do to cut their carbon footprint, talk about climate books available at the library (list provided), leave time for questions, and mingle afterwards. The other woman was asked by a local newspaper to pose with her young children for a photograph to illustrate an article promoting a community tree-planting event. She was briefly quoted as saying planting trees could help mitigate climate change. Two days after the article appeared, she received emails containing threats of sexual assault and violence against her children.

As for the woman speaking at the library, her car windscreen was smeared with excrement - animal or human, does it matter? - and the words ''climate turd'' written (also in excrement) across the car bonnet. Proof perhaps, of a climate dissenter with a Freudian complex indicating arrested development.

June 20th saw a new incident, as reported in The Australian:

In the latest incident, Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies executive director Anna-Maria Arabia received an email today saying she would be "strung-up by the neck" and killed for her promotion of mainstream climate science.

The threat was emailed to her this morning before a "Respect the Science" campaign at Parliament House in Canberra today.

The most recent threat was caught on video—by the organization perpetrating it, the Australian LaRouchite group calling itself the Citizens Electoral Council. Their carefully placed video camera caught the incident and posted it to Youtube, along with an explanation that their target is a Fascist tool of the British Empire. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

Members crashed a talk being given at the University of Melbourne by physicist Hans Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, presenting a shocked Dr. Schellnhuber with a noose. Of course, they disavow any intent to threaten; they’d be fools—or bigger fools—not to do so. But there is no doubt that Dr. Schellnhuber read the implied message quite clearly. The Australian quoted him:

"I was confronted with a death threat when I gave my public lecture," Professor Schellnhuber said. "Somebody got to his feet and showed me a rope with a noose. He showed me this hangman's rope and he said: 'Mr Schellnhuber, welcome to Australia'.

"As I tell my colleagues from time to time, 'Some day some madman will draw a pistol and shoot you'. It will happen -- to me or somebody else. I'm pretty sure about that."

Let’s hope that Dr. Schellnhuber is wrong about that. There’s a right and a wrong way to win a debate—or ‘debate,’ as it’s questionable that the climate controversy really merits that term. Subtle or not-so-subtle intimidation and overt threats are not the right way to win. And they are more than bad enough. I’m hoping it doesn’t get worse.

It’s ironic that Dr. Schellnhuber, Dr. Jones and others have been branded by some of the extreme ideologues opposing the mainstream science as being “green fascists,” “eco-Nazis,” proponents of “the Big Lie” and so on. What does Wikipedia say about Fascism?

"Fascists promote violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality. Fascists view conflict as a fact of life that is responsible for all human progress. Fascists exalt militarism as providing positive transformation in society, in providing spiritual renovation, education, instilling of a will to dominate in people's character, and creating national comradeship through military service. Fascists commonly utilize paramilitary organizations for violent attacks on political opponents, people whom they oppose, or overthrowing a political system."

Doesn’t sound much like Drs. Schnellnhuber, Jones, Weaver or Pachauri—nor even like Dr. James Hansen, who was arrested June 23, 2009, for trespassing as part of a non-violent protest against mountain-top removal for coal-mining.

Perhaps that description sounds like someone else altogether? Someone who presents speakers with nooses, who smears excrement on cars, who threatens children with rape?

Note: Ironically, the mine Dr. Hansen trespassed upon belonged to Massey Energy, later to become famous for its callous disregard of miner safety in the aftermath of the Upper Big Branch disaster.

Interestingly, Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia AG investigating Dr. Mann, is alleged to have received $10,000 worth of campaign contributions from Massey; he has not only declined to investigate Massey’s activities in his state—it is headqurtered there and operates one Virginia mine--he has allegedly worked cooperatively with Massey on a lawsuit against the EPA!

UPDATE

Unfortunately, events compel an update—Anders Breivik, as the world now knows, bombed and shot 77 people to death on July 22, 2011. Breivik serves admirably as a poster child for the facets of fascism described above, which may be summarized as a systematic glorification of violence, domination and force.

Although climate change was not Breivik’s primary focus—islamophobia and anti-Marxism provided that--his manifesto reveals that he, too, believes that ‘greens’ are a threat to Western civilization, and that climate change is a hoax they have invented to further their sinister political agenda:

You might know them as environmentalists, enviro-communists, eco-Marxists, neo-Communists or eco-fanatics. They all claim they want to save the world from global warming but their true agenda is to contribute to create a world government lead by the UN or in other ways increase the transfer of resources (redistribute resources) from the developed Western world to the third world. They are using our trust and faith in science to spread lies and hysteria that will allow Marxists to implement socialist --solutions to a problem that never actually existed.

And:

. . . top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change.

Prominent climate change denialists echoed, quoted or linked by Breivik include James Dellingpole, Steve McIntyre (by way of Alex Jones), and Lord Monckton.

For more on this aspect of Breivik's views, see:

http://www.desmogblog.com/norwegian-terrorist-anders-breivik-reveals-climate-denial-influences

Second Update--9/15/2011

Another incident of harassment and intimidation has come to light.

Dr. Charles Monnett, who had been under investigation with respect to his 2006 paper documenting polar bear mortality and with his administration of a cooperative study of polar bears carried out jointly with the University of Alberta, appears to have been un officially vindicated. Yesterday, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), who have been representing Monnett, released emails showing that he had not acted improperly in any way.

They also noted that, unfortunately:

Finally, the fact of the investigation has subjected Dr. Monnett’s family to harassment, especially from climate-change skeptics who have, for example, posted his wife’s work email address on the web and invited readers to flood her inbox at her workplace which lead to a number of hateful and threatening messages.

Sadly, they are correct. I personally verified on 9/15/2011 that Climate Depot website had indeed done just that. Their post, date-stamped August 1, 2011, repeated the false claim that Dr. Monnett's wife (a respected scientist in her own right) had served as peer reviewer to her husband's paper, and publicly posted her work email address.

The post also commanded readers to:

Contact Monnett's wife [name redacted] with questions/comments about the Polar Bear paper: [email redacted.]

The reaction of some climate change denialists was apparently as predictable as it was regrettable, but PEER has drawn a merciful veil over the specific threats and insults that were hurled.

Third update--1/6/2012

The latest victim of anti-science repression is Katharine Hayhoe, an Evangelical Christian who is also a climate researcher at Texas Tech University.

Dr. Hayhoe had been tasked in 2007 with writing a chapter on climate change for a forthcoming book by Newt Gingrich on environmental issues. She is well-known for engaging with the public, and particularly with religious conservatives, on the issue of climate change. She told the UK paper, The Guardian:

I really, really deplore the politicisation and polarisation of this issue. There are these increasingly unprincipled attempts to polarise the science when the science is fact – like the sky is blue, the grass is green and the temperature of our planet is increasing.

With the Iowa caucus in full swing, that represented a juicy target for anti-Gingrich partisans. Predictably, this 'scandal' was leaked to Rush Limbaugh, who waded in in his usual style:

Katharine Hayhoe is one of Newt's experts, and is a person who, when asked if the science was settled regarding global warming, she said, "Among climate scientists, people who spend their lives researching our world, there's no debate regarding the reality of climate change and the fact that humans are the primary cause." This woman is writing Newt's chapter on climate change in the new book. She says, "It is primarily laypeople like talk show hosts who are perpetuating the idea that there is no scientific consensus." Marc Morano, our man in Washington, claims that Newt's new book has a chapter written by a babe named Hayhoe -- no offense, Reverend Jackson -- that man-made global warming is happening, caused by man.

Gingrich quickly went into damage control mode, throwing Dr. Hayhoe under the bus:

That's not going to be in the book. We didn't know that they were doing that and we told them to kill it.

It is not known whether Dr. Hayhoe will be compensated for her wasted work in writing the chapter, which she had been told on December 7 would be accepted without major changes. It is known that she found out otherwise from a reporter, who was seeking her reaction. In a later Tweet she expanded upon her initial phlegmatic resonse:

. . .so much 'spare' time wasted I cd've spent w family, & 2. what an ungracious way to find out, eh?

However, the Gingrich chapter does not represent the end of Dr. Hayhoe's troubles. The Guardian reported that she has become a target for harassment:

. . .in the past six months or so, Hayhoe's growing prominence has also made her a target of opinion makers like Limbaugh, and of the shadowy network of well-funded thinktanks. In addition, "the hate mail has gone off the charts", she said.

Such thinktanks – though registered as non-profits – are often funded by the oil industry and conservative billionaires, such as the Koch brothers.

One such group, the American Tradition Institute, has been waging a legal battle to force the University of Virginia to hand over all emails from climate scientist Michael Mann, who used to work there.

Now the American Tradition Institute is coming after Hayhoe. On 10 December the organisation wrote to Texas Tech asking the university to turn over all Hayhoe's emails with even the most glancing reference to Gingrich or Maple.

Katherine Hayhoe Interview

Katharine Hayhoe Q&A: Climate change science in the USA | RTCC

Katharine Hayhoe speaks to RTCC about the state of climate science in the USA, the daily attacks she and colleagues suffer and her efforts to clean up the climate debate.

Source for the Hayhoe story

Climate scientist disowned by Newt Gingrich speaks out over book spat | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Katharine Hayhoe says the dumping of her chapter from Gingrich's book following rightwing pressure came as a surprise

Fourth Update: 2/5/2012

One of the less-spectacular, but perhaps most socially-corrosive tactics of Fascism is the Big Lie technique. As reported in the New York Times, that is now being directed at Dr. Michael Mann.

A planned speech at Pennsylvania State University by Dr. Mann has become the object of a multi-media smear campaign. Deriding him as a "disgraced academic" of "questionable ethics and motives" who is guilty of "extreme political activism, disguised as academics," two groups urge the University to "disinvite" him.

The reality is, of course, that Dr. Mann is anything but disgraced: despite severe (and in some cases malicious) criticism his research has held up, and continues to be widely cited today. Moreover, investigations into allegations against him stemming from the so-called Climategate email hack have repeatedly exonerated him of any wrong-doing.

It is true, of course, that some continue to cry "whitewash," and continue to impugn Dr. Mann; but being subject to hysterical accusations unbacked by any real substance does not amount to 'disgrace.'

The groups themselves appear to be Astroturf groups fronting for the Bituminous Coal Operator's Association. They claim to be for those poor, down-trodden coal miners, and for America's energy security. Noble aims, no doubt--but do they really have to resort to slanderous disinformation to make their case?

Story Links

A Shameful Attack on Free Speech by a Group Claiming to Speak for Coal-Dependent Workers - NYTimes.c

A coal-backed group pushes for the cancellation of a lecture by a Pennsylvania climate scientist.

Coal-Powered PAC Runs Harassment Campaign Against Climate Scientist Michael Mann | ThinkProgress

Fifth update: 2/15/2012

Another instance of intimidation came last month, when Dr. Kerry Emanuel of MIT suffered a spate of particularly virulent hate mail after addressing a meeting of Republicans who have the courage to believe that climate change is real. As reported in The Guardian, the emails "are laced with menacing language, expletives and contain personal threats of violence." Particularly contemptible is the fact that threats extended to Dr. Emanuel's wife:

Emails contained "veiled threats against my wife," and other "tangible threats," Emanuel, a highly-regarded atmospheric scientist and director of M.I.T.'s Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate program, said in an interview. "They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive."

As in the Monnett case, which also involved the wife of a scientist, the website The Climate Depot was responsible for publicizing emails for the convenience of hatemailers.

US climate scientist's wife suffers email 'frenzy of hate' | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Inbox of MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel's wife was flooded with menacing emails after he appeared in a video featuring Republicans who believe in man-made climate change

Sixth update: 5/15/2012

The Australian leg of this story has a new development: climate 'skeptic' (ie., denialist) websites worldwide are hailing the 'debunking' of the story of death threats at Australian National University. (Hat tip to "Charlie," a reader who brought this to my attention--though I rather think he takes this more at face value than I do.)

There is, however, less to this 'debunking' than might appear at first glance. A Freedom Of Information request to see ANU correspondence and documents relevant to this topic from January to June of 2011 eventually resulted in the publication of 11 emails. Only one contained an actual threat, and that was second-hand, and implied rather than explicit. Rather weak beer, one would be inclined to agree.

However, note that the original stories were not limited to ANU--the threats to the anonymous women in the incidents described above, to Ms. Arabia, to Dr. Schellnhuber, and in fact to "at least 30 climate scientists at institutions across [Australia]" were quite real. Moreover, the threats at ANU were not limited to a six-month period in 2011; in fact, the Climate Unit's "move to more secure quarters" came in the spring of 2010, roughly a year before the period specified in the FOI request.

Ironically, this 'debunking' is a pretty good example of denialist technique: minimize the seriousness of one thing, ignore a bunch of other stuff completely, and then claim that since the result doesn't add up to the original any more, one's opponent is deceitful.

Mature debate, not abuse, the only way forward

Rosslyn Beeby, of the Canberra Times, comments on the ANU emails.

May 2012; Graham Readfearn

Blogger comments on the ANU 'non-threatening' emails.

Seventh update: 7/6/2012

A selection of obscene and threatening emails sent to Dr. Jone has been released as a PDF file. Don't read these unless you are prepared for a flood of crude language!

They are interesting, however, for the insights that they afford into the motivations of the writers. In particular, several mention the idea that efforts to address climate change have had severe impacts on national economies and consequently upon the lives of everyday people--one writer believes, indeed, that many people have died as a result of these efforts. Another states that climate science and related policy efforts have been responsible for lack of development in what used to be called the "Third World."

(Needless to say, perhaps, this last idea is wrong in just about every possible way, as not only is there little evidence to suggest that climate change policy has had any great macroeconomic effect on any national economy, and not only were developing nations specifically exempted from Kyoto, but it's a matter of public record that the developing world has made great strides during the early years of the twenty-first century--witness public health statistics, economic statistics, and the popularity of the so-called "BRIC" nations as destinations for foreign investment dollars, just to name a few indicators. But the fervor with which an idea is held has never been a reliable indicator of that idea's soundness.)

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/116404/response/288373/attach/4/Appendix%20A%20Data%20file%200

Emails sent to Dr. Phil Jones in 2009 and 2010, following the 'Climategate' hack and data theft, and during the associated smear campaign against selected climate scientists.

Afterword

Of the 39 Hubs I have published to date, this has been by far the toughest to write—not in the sense of effort or time, but emotionally. The topic leaves me with a metaphorical bad taste in my mouth, literally with a physical sensation of heaviness in the pit of my stomach, and intellectually with doubts about whether addressing this issue so forthrightly is the right thing to do, and about whether I have done so fairly and appropriately. Let me address some of those doubts.

Some will feel that I am ignoring extreme speech on the other side of the issue—and there has been some, though I am not aware of any specific threats to, say, Marc Morano, Roy Spencer or Lord Monckton. It does not appear to me that the use of intimidation is anything like symmetrical in the climate ‘debate,’ which makes sense given the style and content of commentators such as Limbaugh, for which there is no functional equivalent on the side of the mainstream science.

Others will object to my mentions of the US House of Representatives: clearly, they are operating within the bounds of the law and their constitutional duty when they undertake to set funding priorities. Why, then, it might be asked, do I implicitly associate their actions with those of fringe groups and (to put it plainly) nuts? Yet the public statements of a number of the Representatives make abundantly clear that, not only do they not understand the science they are in effect attempting to suppress, but they have not made the most elementary attempt to understand it. In that, they are (in my opinion) derelict in their duty, and they fall under the rubric of attempting to settle by force—fiscal force, in this instance—what they are unwilling to attempt to settle by reason.

Still others may feel that by mentioning threats and intimidation, I encourage them. They may be right; terrorists issue press releases for the good reason that their outrages are most effective in intimidating a populace when that populace actually knows about said outrages. But will ignoring this issue help the situation? I feel deeply that we must name what is happening. This, too, is a form of responsibility to the truth.

Lastly, I must acknowledge that as an individual I do not have the capacity directly to verify the information which I transmit in this Hub. I believe it to be accurate, but I am forced to rely on my sources. Some of those sources are named at the very bottom of this Hub; others, more widely reported, I consider to be well-established in public discourse.

Additional information from readers is welcomed.

Other Climate Change Hubs by Doc Snow

Global Warming Science And The Wars: Guy Callendar

The story of the man who brought CO2 theory into the 20th century, and latest in a series on 'classic' climate change science. "Nearly everybody likes to be right, and scientists perhaps more so than the rest of us..."

"Keeping Our Cool": A Summary Review

Dr. Andrew Weaver tells us what it's like to be an IPCC lead author. A Canadian perspective on global warming.

Through A Glass Darkly: Equinox Reflections On Sea Ice--2010 And Onwards

As of this writing, no-one is talking in mainstream media about the continuing 'death spiral' of the Arctic sea ice. But it's not for lack of things to say. Here's the set-up to the stories not (currently) being told.

Water Is A Dancer: Climate Science And The Element Of Change

Water vapor is, in some ways, the most important greenhouse gas. Here's why.

Global Warming Science: A Thumbnail History

A history of global warming science, and specifically how and why it was NOT invented in 1992--astronaut Walter Cunningham to the contrary!

This Hub was last updated on July 6, 2012

http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/Green-Fascism-Let-The-Facts-Speak