Violent rhetoric toward public officials increased by over 200 percent when comparing posts from 2021 to 2022 to 2024 to 2025, according to ISD’s recent Dispatch. 

ISD CEO Sasha Havlicek spoke to POLITICO about ISD’s findings in an exclusive interview. 

“There’s a real problem here,” Sasha said. “People feel emboldened to speak in certain ways because of the anonymity of online environments that perhaps wouldn’t mirror the way that they behave in their daily lives.” 

Sasha also noted that real-world acts of violence–such as Trump’s assassination attempt—are not resulting in decreases in this online violent rhetoric.  

“Instead of inspiring some sense of compassion or a deescalation, they do the opposite,” Sasha explained. “Those acts of violence in the real world really push much much more [online] activity in this violent direction, which is quite depressing.” 

Fox News and The Daily Beast also covered ISD’s findings.

The full articles are available on POLITICO, Fox News, The Daily Beast and POLITICO’s podcast Playbook.