IDENTITY: Black

In order to provide key partners with a snapshot of state and local dynamics ahead of the 2020 election, Princeton Bridging Divides initiative prepared a series of state-specific "In Brief" summaries. Analysis draws on multiple public data sources, including the US Crisis Monitor, Mapping Police Violence project, ADL HEAT Map, SPLC Hate Map, and a variety of local news sources in order to present a state and county-level description of recent trends and actors of concern.

BDI produces regular state-focused situation reports (SitReps) on key risk trends and activity to help partners identify early warning signs of political or election violence in North Carolina.

Local monitoring is essential for identifying early warning signs. BDI produces regular national situation reports (SitReps) on key risk trends at the national and state level, disseminated to a vetted list of community leaders and organizations.

BDI produces regular state-focused situation reports (SitReps) on key risk trends and activity to help partners identify early warning signs of political or election violence in Wisconsin.

BDI produces regular state-focused situation reports (SitReps) on key risk trends and activity to help partners identify early warning signs of political or election violence in Wisconsin.

Starting on November 6, numerous predominantly Black organizers, activists, and students across multiple states began receiving text messages with racist content telling them to report to their “nearest plantation” site. The texts came from various area codes, and were sent to recipients in at least Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Virginia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Ohio, and Alabama at the time of this report. These texts have since been widely reported to law enforcement. The VA Attorney General’s office has publicly confirmed they, and the FBI, are aware of the incidents. The language in the text messages appears to have originated from racist right-wing imageboards, including 4chan, as well as shared on a subreddit that has since been removed by Reddit moderators. An individual or individuals likely copy-pasted the text and used virtual phone numbers to send out the texts, selecting recipients based on their demographic profile. The recipient phone numbers could have been obtained via a data broker or a pre-existing data breach. We assess the security risk to individuals receiving the text messages is low, given the absence of additional personally identifiable information (PII) – such as recipients’ addresses – contained in the messages.

Local monitoring is essential for identifying early warning signs. BDI produces regular national situation reports (SitReps) on key risk trends at the national and state level, disseminated to a vetted list of community leaders and organizations.

BDI collected data on 117 bomb threats across 25 Georgia counties from June 1, 2023 to June 1, 2025. From this two-year pilot study, BDI finds three key findings: (1) Bomb threats in Georgia surged during the 2024 election cycle disproportionately impacting Black voting precincts, (2) Bomb threat patterns revealed several trends in demographic vulnerability, namely for Black cities within white and multiracial counties, and (3) The number of threats in 2025 is currently outpacing previous years.