February 3, 2026

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonpartisan, independent research organization released a new report showing that violent threats targeting U.S. lawmakers are surging—increasing more than threefold between 2021 and 2025.

Online threats targeting Democrats increased by 124 percent over the study period, while threats targeting Republicans rose by 364 percent, largely driving the recent increase in violent  rhetoric. Republicans, President Donald Trump in particular, received 33 percent more violent threats within ISD’s dataset drawn from hundreds of thousands of posts taken from across X, Reddit, BlueSky, YouTube and thousands of forums. 

“Our findings show a dramatic escalation in threats targeting public officials, with violent rhetoric online having more than tripled in just four years. Moreover, threatening language against leading Republicans, especially President Trump, significantly outpaced threats against Democrats within our dataset,” said Sasha Havlicek, CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “This trajectory represents not just a danger to individuals in office, but to democratic participation at large.

This reflects what is being recorded offline as shown by Capitol Police reporting their number of threat assessment cases has climbed for the third year in a row—jumping from 9,474 “concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed against Members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol Complex” in 2024 to 14,938 in 2025.  

 The gap between parties emerged after the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump, as threats against Republicans began surging while threats against Democrats grew at a comparatively slower pace. This divergence persisted through the election, presidential transition and has continued well after.   

Key findings: 

• These findings are based on analysis of roughly 800,000 posts collected between October 2021 and September 2025, representing a 5 percent sample of available data.  
• Violent rhetoric targeting public officials increased 241 percent when comparing October 2021–September 2022 with October 2024–September 2025, reflecting a median monthly increase of 5 percent. 
• Republican leaders, particularly President Trump, were disproportionately targeted. 
• The violent threats stemmed primarily from partisan individuals, rather than members of, or sympathizers with, extremist movements. 
• Social media platforms host substantial volumes of violent threats against officials that remain accessible despite clear policy violations. 
• Public officials themselves often catalyzed violent rhetoric against their opponents or others.

You can read the full report here. This research is being provided to US Administration officials, Congressional leaders, and law enforcement officials at federal, state, and local levels. Please find a copy of the research attached. If you have any questions or would like to interview one of the analysts, please reach out to [email protected].