New Data Suggests Threats Against Public Servants on the Rise

New data finds that violent threats directed toward public servants across the United States “have increased sharply” since 2015.

According to The Security Map Dashboard, threats against public servants have increased substantially across all levels of government and political affiliations during that 10-year span.

Threatening statements have emerged as the predominant form of threat, “and a disproportionate concentration of incidents in battleground states and targeted at federal government personnel, judges, law enforcement, military personnel and election workers,” according to the Dashboard, which derived insights from the Impact Project’s analysis of more than 1,100 news reports published between 2015 and 2025.

The data also shows that, whereas media reports from 2015 found threats were largely being directed at federal government employees, “threats now impact those serving at every level of government.”

Threatening statements occurred at nearly nine times the rate of physical attacks in the past 10 years, the analysis found. Such statements aimed at public servants, even if they are not acted on physically, “create fear and intimidation, undermine democratic processes,” according to the analysis, which also suggested that one form of threat often precipitates another. For example, verbal harassment can escalate into doxxing.

While federal officials accounted for more than half (52%) of the incidents the researchers reviewed between 2015 and 2025, local public servants received nearly one-third of reviewed violent threats.

This finding represents “an alarming share,” according to the analysis, and “underscores the need for further research to understand the underlying causal factors of threats to public servants and to determine whether these ratios persist in a larger or more representative dataset.

“We’re seeing not only an increase in volume, but also an expansion in who’s being targeted,” Abby André, executive director and co-founder of The Impact Project, said in a statement. “A decade ago, threats were concentrated at the federal level. Today, school board members, county clerks and even mail carriers face similar dangers.”