For the second time this year, the State House in Augusta had to be evacuated for threats likely from extremist MAGA and associated Christian nationalists, neo-Nazi groups, and other hate groups targeting progressive lawmakers. On March 8, a bomb threat was directed at two Democratic representatives sponsoring L.D.227, a “shield” law indemnifying Maine clinicians providing gender-affirming care to patients who may no longer receive such care in their home red states and who are tracked and surveilled upon traveling to blue states to receive care.

Republican disinformation groups disseminated the false narrative that children were being “trafficked” to get gender-affirming care. I was unaware that Gov. Janet Mills and George Soros were engaging in unsavory activities in a secret underground State House pizzeria dungeon. The emailed bomb threat promised “death to pedophiles.” It charmingly ended with an expletive. The capper is that 16 red states’ attorneys general are suing Maine, where the bill is still in committee.

There has been a national uptick in such threats to lawmakers, elections officials, minorities of color, Muslims, Jews, you name it, authored by the disparate aforementioned groups. What strange bedfellows, this motley crew of pro-life Evangelicals, armed insurrectionists, homophobes and transphobes, phobophobes, white and Christian nationalists, antisemites – all embracing violence and hate in a common cause: naively welcoming an autocratic dictator.

Jon St. Laurent
North Windham

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