Amid growing threats of political violence, leaders are hoping that a cooling-down of heated rhetoric could help to reverse that trend.
The issue has taken center stage on multiple occasions in recent weeks, including on Thursday in Chicago when a man jumped over the fence near the FBI’s field office in the city and began to throw rocks at the building.
“Federal Protective Service agents detained the individual, and Chicago police have taken the individual to a local hospital for evaluation,” officials said in a statement.
The incident occurred just weeks after a Columbus man was killed after trying to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati office.
That suspect had said he was outraged after federal agents searched the Florida estate of former President Donald Trump earlier this month, an action that sparked a tsunami of criticism and heated rhetoric from Republican elected officials, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who have called for the government to “defund the FBI.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said that Republicans plan to investigate the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland if they retake the chamber in the 2022 midterms.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, says the growing trend of threatening violence on social media has him worried.
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“I’m very concerned about the rise in political violence because of heated political rhetoric by folks, especially on social media,” he said.
Krishnamoorthi believes rhetoric has been leading to political violence often in recent years, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the United States Capitol.
He says that the tone of discourse in the United States needs to change, and to do so quickly before others are injured or even killed.
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“It’s almost a certainty that someone will act on what they see online,” he said.
Those threats have also targeted the Internal Revenue Service after a recent inflation-control bill passed by Congress authorized the hiring of additional agents to investigate tax fraud.
In a letter to employees, the IRS commissioner informed workers that he’s ordering a comprehensive review of safety measures at facilities nationwide.
“In recent days, there has been an abundance of misinformation and false social media postings, some of them with threats directed at the IRS and its employees,” he said.
In Chicago, the president of the IRS’ workers union has told employees to hide their badges as they walk in and out of their building.
“Words have power, and consequences, and they’re putting people in anger,” Lorie McCann said. “We are a target. It’s really unfortunate because we are public servants.”
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly mischaracterized the new employees as “87,000 armed IRS agents,” when in reality, the agency is expected to add approximately 40,000 new employees over the course of the next 10 years, aiming to restore its workforce to the size it was in the early 1990’s, according to a Washington Post editorial.
According to the publication, an IRS job posting that has been cited by a variety of officials, including Florida Sen. Rick Scott, was aimed at a position that would hire agents to pursue charges against drug rings, and would represent a minimal number of new employees.
