With the 2026 midterm election just eight days away, Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson spoke with Maju Varghese — who is co-founder and executive director of the Democracy Security Project (DSP) — to discuss the threat of political violence. Varghese, who ran former President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration just weeks after the January 6 insurrection, co-founded the DSP in 2024 as a nonpartisan nonprofit to equip candidates, staffers, volunteers and voters with practical tools to stay safe. Gibson and Varghese covered multiple topics, including:
Envelopes containing a suspicious white powder mailed to more than three dozen congressional offices
How constant threats and harassment are driving both experienced election workers and promising candidates out of public service
The fine line between constitutionally protected protest and threatening violence against elected officials
How Varghese’s organization responded to the June 2025 assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark
The Trump administration’s deletion of a DOJ report on the unique threat of far-right political violence
What public officials can do in the face of threats and doxxing
Donald Trump’s January 6 pardons and his rhetoric toward political opponents
Several structural reforms that could help lower the national political temperature
What voters should do if they encounter ICE agents or other federal law enforcement agencies at the polls on November 3
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Gibson began the conversation by asking Varghese about the envelopes containing a suspicious white powder that were recently mailed to more than three dozen members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike. Varghese said while Capitol Hill offices rely on sophisticated screening processes that can intercept a package before it ever arrives, state and local campaign offices, field offices and advocacy groups — which often handle their own mail — were at a much higher risk of being exposed to the powder.
“You have often junior staff opening mail, operations staff, and they’re doing it at a high pace,” Varghese said. “And they don’t always have the right protocols in place.”
Varghese’s group responded to the mailings by assembling safety tips on how to best handle mail and packages, along with informing potential recipients of several telltale characteristics of suspicious mail. He noted that the Democracy Security Project has trained more than 20,000 people across civil society since it was founded in 2024, and Varghese said the mailings are now just the latest item on a long list of dangers that campaign and office staffers and volunteers face.
Gibson then referenced an October New York Times report finding that at least 44 governors, close to 70 of the nation’s 100 U.S. senators and at least 185 House members — nearly half the body — have faced a wave of violent threats in just the last two years alone. In addition to federal elected officials, more than half of the secretaries of state who oversee elections in their respective states have also received an uptick in threats. He asked Varghese about the long-term impact to democracy in when seasoned professionals are consistently driven out of the field, as many were in the months after the January 6 insurrection.
Varghese said one of his group’s primary goals is keeping talented people in public service. He noted that he constantly hears from younger state and local legislators who are wondering whether the job is worth running for another term. Just this past weekend, Varghese noted the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, said she was no longer seeking reelection due to a wave of threats and harassment. He also pointed to a survey by his group’s partner organization, the Bridging Divides Initiative, which found that 76 percent of officials reported a reduced willingness to engage in at least one activity because of threats against them.
Varghese laid out three ways threats of violece harm democracy: they determine who is willing to serve, they change how elected officials engage with constituents both online and in person and they influence how officials vote on contentious issues.
“Voting your conscience, there’s a security element to it that they have to think about,” Varghese said. “When you add it all up, it can have a real chilling and detrimental effect, and it’ll chase good people out of public life.”
Varghese recalled running Biden’s inauguration in early 2021 while the National Guard stood watch all so the country could have a peaceful transfer of power. He cited that experience as one main reason he co-founded the Democracy Security Project.
“When I first started 20-some-odd years ago, they sent you out to knock on doors. Best of luck,” Varghese said. “We owe the staffers, the volunteers and the candidates more than that, and that’s why we’re here.”
Gibson observed that many of the threats against the mayor of Madison came in response to her handling of the city department’s response to the July killing of 38 year-old Corey Ruiz, which led to massive protests across the city. He noted there is a clear line between constitutionally protected First Amendment activity like protesting in the streets and voting, and actively threatening the lives of public officials.
Varghese agreed “100 percent” with thar assessment, pointing out that the Democracy Security Project works hand-in-hand with groups organizing protests so they can safely exercise their First Amendment rights. He reminded viewers that what tends to drive people out of public life is illegal activity like leaving threatening emails, insinuating that there could be violence at a public event and making threats against elected officials’ families and children. He described what candidates and elected officials tell him and his group all the time.
“I signed up for a level of scrutiny here. I get it. When I host a city council meeting, someone’s going to stand up and have something to say to me that is going to be uncomfortable,” Varghese said, relaying their words. “But what I want is to be in a world when I leave that meeting, there’s not a letter waiting for me in my mailbox. There’s not that strange car that keeps circling the block.”
“Yes, we should protect people’s right to protest,” he added, “but we should also protect an elected official’s right to live their lives and to do it safely, free of threats and violence.”
Gibson turned to one of the most horrific recent examples of political violence: the June 2025 assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were shot on their doorstep. He asked how the Democracy Security Project responded.
“As much as we have a sober view of the world, when these events happen, it shakes us too,” Varghese said. Many people in the organization knew Hortman or worked with people in her network, and co-founder Jess O’Connell spent years helping women run for office at EMILY’s List and the DNC. “I think we all felt it very personally.”
The group stood up emergency trainings and invited lawmakers from across the country, covering physical and home security and practical steps to scrub personal information from the internet. Varghese said they trained hundreds of elected officials that week alone and fielded requests for one-on-one consultations, many from part-time state legislators who spend most of the year working day jobs in their communities.
“A lot of people were just like, ‘How do I keep myself safe when I’m at home, when I’m away from my home and I’m at the state capitol, and my family’s here by themselves?’” Varghese said.
The same thing happened after Charlie Kirk was killed, with people from all sides telling the group they were afraid to hold events. “These moments have created a spike of concern,” he said, “and I don’t blame them.”
Gibson pointed to a 2024 National Institute of Justice study, later deleted by the Trump administration’s Justice Department, which he said found that right-wing domestic terrorism accounted for 75% to 80% of political violence in the United States since 9/11. Citing the arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence and the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, he asked whether the administration was trying to paper over a legitimate threat.
Varghese called it “regrettable” that such a report would be chilled or shelved, and argued the healthiest response is a universal one.
“Everybody denounces political violence, no matter who the victim is and no matter who the perpetrator is,” he said. “Violence in and of itself just is not acceptable, and safety is core to democracy, and we all agree on that, and we move forward.”
He acknowledged that isn’t the world we live in, and noted that Republican lawmakers at the state and local level also endure their share of harassment. The task, he said, is closing the permission structure that tells people violence is acceptable.
“As an American, as a father, I want a world and a democracy where it’s a battle of ideas, not a war of attrition to see who can stick this out the longest,” Varghese said. “If their constituents decide they haven’t delivered and vote them out, so be it. But that should be where we decide these things, just like we will over the course of the next eight days.”
Gibson raised the case of former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who faced multiple threats against her life every day after she broke with the Trump administration over tariffs, the war in Iran and expansionism, before ultimately giving up her seat. He asked whether the Democracy Security Project had been able to track down any of the people making such threats, or at least press law enforcement to follow up.
Varghese explained that the group’s role is support, not investigation. It helps people who have been threatened, or who want to get ahead of threats, figure out how to report them and which details to share with authorities to get a good response. He described a lawmaker he spoke with last week who had reported threats to both the Capitol Police and local law enforcement, and then asked what else she could do.
“I had to have the honest conversation: Well, you’ve done everything you can do, everything that’s within your control,” Varghese said. “The landscape of threats is so complex in the moment we live in right now, and that’s the reality. But I always lean in and say, control what you can control.”
Whether someone is an average voter or a candidate, he said, the answer is a safety plan built around who they are and where they live. “If we try to boil the ocean on this issue for everybody,” he said, “I think we would just never keep anyone in public life.”
Gibson asked whether the group’s work has gotten harder as the president has seemed to tacitly endorse political violence, from pardoning roughly 1,500 people who attacked the Capitol on January 6, many of whom were later arrested for other violent crimes, to posting attacks on opponents like the Indiana Republican lawmakers who resisted mid-decade gerrymandering and then received threats.
“Look, this environment is difficult,” Varghese said, noting that Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski recently spoke about the quiet conversations Republicans have among themselves about political violence. But he wanted to make a point about what he is seeing on the ground.
“I am heartened, as somebody who has been involved in this process for a long time, that millions of people have voted and are still voting, that thousands of people are still running for office, that people are volunteering on campaigns,” Varghese said. “That tells me that there is a budding resilience in our democracy.”
Some states are giving lawmakers more resources for security, and candidates can use campaign funds for security cameras and similar measures. But Varghese said far more is possible.
“There’s so much more we could be doing by just creating a structure that made political violence the outlier that it needs to be, and created the space for people to go out there and make a case for themselves and the causes they care about,” he said. “They’re not asking for much.”
Gibson asked what structural reforms could meaningfully lower the temperature in the next few years, both among ordinary Americans and at the legislative level, noting the Times had raised whether anonymous online comments are emboldening people to make threats.
Varghese said political violence has long been a reality in America, especially for women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community and anyone who has pushed for expanded civil rights. What makes it harder now is the internet.
“I don’t have to leave the comfort of this desk to make someone’s life miserable today,” he said. “I can dox them. I can find their home address online.”
He described a former civil servant his group supported whose harassers posted not only her address but a photo of her house, mocking the “lovely home” she supposedly lived in on taxpayer dollars. Varghese said the country needs stronger deterrence against online harassment and doxing, and a reckoning with a combination of factors: the proliferation of guns, a national mental health crisis, technology and the tone of political rhetoric.
“I’ve been around a few blocks in my day, but the rhetoric and the tone and the way we speak to one another and about one another doesn’t help,” Varghese said. “It’s a wholesale conversation. I worry sometimes if we’re in a position to have that conversation, but I wish we would, because it would really create space for us to have the kind of thriving democracy that we deserve.”
Finally, Gibson asked about fears that the administration could send ICE agents or the National Guard to patrol near polling places on November 3, particularly in predominantly immigrant communities, and whether the group was helping voters prepare.
Varghese said the Democracy Security Project is working with several election protection coalitions on safety and security, alongside the lawyers working to protect voters’ rights. His advice for the average voter starts with a plan: check your registration status, know your polling place, and do the same for family and friends. “There is not only joy in voting together,” he said, “but safety as well.”
If you see law enforcement at a polling place that you don’t recognize as local, Varghese said, don’t act alone. Tell an election worker what you’re seeing and call the Election Protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE.
“Don’t interfere. Don’t get in the way. Keep yourself safe,” he said. “Have a plan, know who to contact, trust your instincts, and put your safety first from the time you go cast a ballot till the time you get home.”
He closed with a warning about misinformation and disinformation, which spread fast in an era of distrust and a thousand apps on every phone. Before passing along a rumor about your polling place, he said, verify it with other sources, trusted organizations or the hotline.
“Imagine the chilling effect,” Varghese said. “Just starting a rumor of federal law enforcement around a polling place, that in and of itself can be weaponized, and we want to make sure that we’r…