Opinion | Trump Loves to Play With Fire

To be a Republican politician in the age of Trump is to live under the threat of violence from his most fanatical and aggressive followers.

Senator Mitt Romney of Utah hired personal security for himself and his family at a cost of $5,000 a day to guard against threats on their lives after he voted to convict the former president and remove him from office for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. After he voted to impeach President Donald Trump in the House of Representatives in the same case, the former representative Peter Meijer of Michigan purchased body armor as a precaution against the threats on his life. Republicans who voted against Representative Jim Jordan — a staunch Trump ally — for House speaker during last year’s leadership standoff received death threats targeting both themselves and their families.

It’s not only Republicans in Congress, either. Republican lawmakers and election officials in critical swing states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin have received threats on their lives for following the law and rejecting Trump’s demands to find or throw out votes in the last presidential election. And there have been more recent threats as well, leveled against those officials in the political, legal and criminal justice system who have tried to hold Trump accountable for his actions.

On Sunday, an unknown provocateur filed a false report to police of a shooting at the home of Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the Jan. 6-related criminal case against the former president. The goal of this tactic, called “swatting,” is for police to react with force on the assumption that someone’s life might be in danger. Jack Smith, the federal special counsel who is leading multiple criminal investigations into Trump, was also the victim of swatting. So was Shenna Bellows, the Maine secretary of state who removed the former president from the state primary ballot.