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The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
US elected officials face wave of violent threats prompting calls for security
A fresh wave of violent threats and incidents targeting elected officials broke out in the US this week, prompting more urgent calls for increased security measures just days after the killing of a Minnesota state legislator and the shooting of another. Amid a series of attacks involving federal and local officials, the latest incidents included death threats against Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayoral candidate, a purported road rage attack on Max Miller, the Ohio congressman, and an alleged kidnapping attempt targeting Paul Young, the mayor of Memphis. The New York police department (NYPD) hate crimes task force is investigating multiple death threats against Mamdani, a Muslim democratic socialist candidate in the final stretch of his campaign and endorsed by national figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The intimidation included threats to blow up his car and Islamophobic voicemails left at Mamdani's office in the city's Queens borough. 'The violent and specific language of what appears to be a repeat caller is alarming and we are taking every precaution,' his campaign said Thursday, blaming the threats on 'dehumanizing, Islamophobic rhetoric designed to stoke division and hate'. Miller contacted the US Capitol Police after being 'run off the road' by a man displaying a Palestinian flag who allegedly yelled 'death to Israel'. Miller, who is Jewish and on the US Holocaust Memorial Council, said the incident occurred while driving in his congressional district and that he knows the identity of his alleged assailant, who also threatened to kill his family. Early on Friday afternoon, a man was arrested in connection with the incident. The suspect was named as Feras Hamdan, 36, of Westlake, near Cleveland, and authorities said he turned himself in to police and is due to appear in court, according to local media reports. Meanwhile, Memphis police arrested 25-year-old Trenton Abston on charges including stalking and attempted kidnapping after he allegedly scaled a wall at Young's residence in Tennessee with what police described as a 'nervous demeanor'. Officers recovered 'a taser, gloves, rope and duct tape' from the suspect's vehicle. The string of incidents came just days after the killing of Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota Democratic state representative, and her husband Mark, with John Hoffman, a state senator, and his wife seriously wounded in a separate attack by the same gunman last Saturday as anti-Trump 'No Kings' protests were getting underway for millions across the country. The suspect, Vance Boelter, 57, was captured after a large manhunt and faces murder charges, amid reports that he is an extremist and was pro-Trump and anti-abortion. The discovery of a hit list containing 'dozens and dozens' of Democratic politicians' names in Boelter's car has sent new shockwaves through the political community. Hillary Scholten, a member of Congress from Michigan, cancelled a public town hall, citing safety concerns. The escalating threats have left congressmembers from both parties demanding additional security funding and enhanced protection measures in recent days, as fears grow that political violence is becoming normalized across American politics. The Capitol Police requested nearly $1bn in funding for next year, while Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, posted that 'the violence and threats against elected officials has drastically increased' and called for more money to protect lawmakers. Capitol Police investigated 9,474 threats to lawmakers and their families last year, an increase of nearly 1,500 compared with 2023, which have escalated over the last five years but peaked in 2021. Only eight convictions were made over the threats in 2024, according to a bipartisan letter from Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin representative, and Joseph Morelle, a New York representative, sent Tuesday to the Department of Justice. Mike Johnson linked the violence to broader political rhetoric. 'What happened to Max [Miller] this morning is yet another outrageous example of unhinged rhetoric inspiring unstable people to threaten and attack elected officials,' the House speaker said. 'We must turn down the temperature in this country.'
Daily Mail
42 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE SCOTT JENNINGS: I know why Trump has decided to destroy Iran's genocidal threat... but the MAGA idiots defending Tehran never will get it
I am safely back on US soil after a harrowing trip to the Middle East last week, when I witnessed the first days of Israel 's justified war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the wellspring of worldwide terrorism. The experience solidified my belief, more than ever before, that President Donald J Trump's commitment to preventing the mullahs of Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is not only critical for peace in the region but for the preservation of Western Civilization. We win… or else. From Tiberias on the shore of the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem, I watched dozens of Iranian missiles in Israeli skies, triggering the Iron Dome missile defense system, which picked off and destroyed many of the missiles before they could strike their targets. But a few bombs did get through, killing at least 24 people and wounding many more. This week, an Iranian missile struck a hospital in southern Israel that had, thankfully, largely been evacuated. Iran's response to Israel's strikes on its nuclear facilities, military and leadership is sinister in one telling way: Israel targets Tehran's military. Tehran targets Israel's civilians. And with every Iranian missile I saw, I thought: 'Boy, I'm glad that thing doesn't have a nuclear warhead on it.' In those observations lie the great question for President Trump: Should the United States allow a radical dictatorship that seeks to kill innocents, fund terrorism and lead its followers in chants of 'Death to America' possess a nuclear weapon? The answer is quite obviously 'Hell no!' Does any sane person doubt that the Iranian regime, which refers to Israel as the 'Little Satan' and the US as the 'Great Satan,' would kill Americans? Indeed, they have for decades, targeting US soldiers and citizens through their various terrorist proxies. Over one thousand American deaths, in fact, are attributable to the brutal regime. And we must never forget that while the Iranian nuclear weapons program is clandestine, their intercontinental ballistic missile program is not. The regime parades these long-range weapons through their streets, and these missiles are designed to reach the American homeland. 'For 40 years they've been saying death to America, death to Israel, death to anybody else that they didn't like,' President Trump said on Wednesday, 'They were schoolyard bullies… This is just not a threat you can have, and we've been threatened by Iran for many years.' Amen. President Trump has long held this position, consistently and unequivocally – and it's one of the many reasons that I voted for him three times. Now, I am of course aware of the voices on the right arguing against any intervention. The sentiments range from pure isolationism to some bizarre sympathy for Iran and hate for Israel. Many have exposed their ignorance by asking: 'What has Iran ever done to us?' proving that there is such a thing as a stupid question. But Trump, and Trump alone, decides what it means to be 'America First.' And the vast majority of the MAGA movement will support the president if he decides to move against Iran, which does not have to include putting 'boots on the ground' in Iran. Trump is not an isolationist, despite some of his supporters trying to impute this idea to him in desperate social media posts. The president has always been for smart engagement, but that doesn't mean no engagement. What's more, public opinion firmly supports Trump intervening in this situation. Polling explored by CNN this week tells the tale: 83 percent of Republicans and 79 percent of Democrats oppose Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans support U.S. airstrikes to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions. For decades, Western leaders have tried to bribe (looking at you, President Obama), coax, or flatter the Iranian mullahs into abandoning their nuclear ambitions. All that failed, because they are fundamentalist radicals who aren't motivated by conventional diplomacy. What did work? Israel's ruthless post-October 7 dismantling of Iran's terrorist infrastructure in the Middle East. Today, the Iranian terror network — from Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houthis — has been decimated. This provides the opportunity to confront Iran without having to simultaneously fight a multi-front war against its terrorist proxies. And President Trump's strategic posture has made this moment possible. Let's be honest – he was cheated out of the Nobel Peace Prize following the signing of the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. And in the five years since, America has courted Saudi Arabia to join the agreement. It was the most significant step towards defusing the Middle East powder keg in decades. Just imagine today's conflict without such alliances? Also in 2020, President Trump ordered the US military to kill the 'Butcher of Iran' Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, which is responsible for operating their terrorist minions. President Trump reinstated sanctions on Iran when others begged for lenience. And he has backed Israel unequivocally while social media's keyboard warriors argued for him to abandon our special partner (we'll have to explore the thinly veiled hatred for Israel and the Jewish people in another column but my goodness is it ugly). Trump's 'America First' foreign policy rests on a simple moral premise: peace through strength, deterrence through certainty. This is now a once-in-a-generation chance to finish this fight by striking Iran's Fordow nuclear enrichment facility, which is a fortress buried deep in the mountains, designed precisely to survive such a strike while enriching uranium to weapons-grade. Destroying Fordow would not be an unprovoked escalation — it is self-defense, a clear signal that there is a price for threatening the civilized world and plotting genocide while crying victim to journalists. It is a righteous act that would protect millions of innocent lives from future war and weaken every tentacle of Iran's terror empire. This is a chance not just to make the region safer, but to restore true American deterrence — the kind that makes bad actors think twice before threatening our citizens and our friends. But whatever and however Trump decides to meet this objective, as a Trump voter and supporter, I say – let him cook. We voted for his judgment. He has more access to information than any of us. And he has a clear-eyed view of what a nuclear-armed Iran means for the world. Trump is leading the fight to preserve and protect Western Civilization from Iran and an axis of autocracies that are actively trying to destroy it. The president is now on the cusp of another historic action. The only issue now is how to proceed best.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Emmett Till memorial in Mississippi could be removed as part of DOGE-recommended $1 billion cuts to national parks
Moves made by Donald Trump 's administration could pave the way for the removal of a national monument honoring Emmett Till, an icon of the civil rights movement, risking a public outcry. Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formerly led by tech boss Elon Musk, has recommended slashing the budget of the National Park Service by nearly $1 billion. Meanwhile, a Justice Department opinion released earlier this month grants presidents the right to revoke the status of national monuments for the first time since the 1930s. Together, the two steps could mean the demise of the Till memorial as part of Trump's drive to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) values from public institutions, a culture war that has seen him attack the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., for promoting 'improper, divisive or anti-American ideology' and attempt to remould the Kennedy Center according to his own tastes, among other targets. 'We are seeing this effort to erase and reverse history and historic preservation,' historian Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources and government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, told CBS News. 'This is turning quickly into a dream deferred.' Till, a Black Chicagoan, was just 14 when he was kidnapped in Mississippi on the night of August 28, 1955, by two white men who accused him of behaving disrespectfully towards a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her grocery store earlier in the day as he visited family in the town of Money. The assailants were Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half-brother, John W Milam, who beat, tortured, and eventually murdered Till, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River, from which it was recovered three days later. He was buried in Chicago, with his mother, Mamie, insisting on an open casket funeral while his killers went on to be acquitted by an all-white jury. Remembered as a martyr to racial prejudice in America by the civil rights marchers of the 1960s and immortalised in song by Bob Dylan, Till was finally awarded a monument dedicated to his memory and that of his mother by Joe Biden in 2023. The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument covers three sites: Graball Landing in Mississippi, where Emmett's body was found; Sumner in the same state, where Bryant and Miliam were tried in the local courthouse; and Chicago's Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Illinois, where the boy's funeral service was held. Spears and his colleagues were influential voices in seeking federal protection for those sites, which was granted by Biden and could now be stripped away by Trump. 'Let's make sure it doesn't happen to anybody else's son ever again,' the historian said in appealing for their upkeep. He likened the proposed DOGE cuts to the National Parks Service to 'amputating an arm for a hangnail.' Former National Park Service director Chuck Sams, who left his role earlier this year, said the loss of the Till memorial would be 'very sad and egregious.' 'People don't like to look at their past when it shows a negative light of who we are, and I can understand that nobody likes to look at their own personal past that may have a negative light, but we also know that in order to learn from our own history, we also have to learn from our past mistakes,' Sams said. 'And we, as Americans, have never been actually scared to do so, and I don't think we should be now. We look at our past, and we know that from our past mistakes that we have become stronger.' Other sites reportedly being considered for removal include the Chuckwalla and Sattitla Highlands national monuments in California, and the Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona, the latter due to its reputed uranium resources. White House spokesperson Anne Kelly responded to the threat to the monuments in a statement in which she said: 'Under President Trump's leadership, [Interior] Secretary [Doug] Burgum is keeping our parks ready for peak season, ensuring they are in pristine condition for visitors, and restoring truth and sanity to depictions of American history in line with the president's executive order. 'The president is simultaneously following through on his promise to 'Drill, Baby, Drill' and restore American energy dominance.'
