2024 Kicks Off With Insane Number of Bomb Threats at State Capitols

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling
·1 min read
2

Six states received bomb threats to their state capitols on Wednesday morning, forcing them to stall their newly opened legislative sessions and evacuate their capitol complexes.

Those states included Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Connecticut, and Montana. No evidence of dangerous items were immediately found, officials said.

“There have been multiple bomb threats to state capitols around the nation. So far Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan & Montana,” said Georgia’s Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling in a statement on X. “Do not jump to conclusions as to who is responsible. There will be chaos agents sowing discord for 2024. They want to increase tensions. Don’t let them.”

While the mass threat against elected officials is certainly a shocking way to begin the year, it’s actually a part of a growing trend. Data reported by the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education, or NCITE, Center indicates that violent threats against public officials have been on the rise since they began collecting data in 2013.

In the last decade, 501 threats against public officials have resulted in federal charges, with 80 percent of those ending in convictions, according to NCITE.

“We have had an astounding number of threats against public servants for the last several years,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland told a Republican-controlled congressional committee in September.

“When they are singled out, this can lead to threats of violence and actual violence,” Garland said, referring to the armed attacker who attempted to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati office shortly after the federal law enforcement agency seized documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.

“We must not allow that to happen in this country,” he added.