In his lifetime of public service, state Rep. James Thibault of Franklin said he’s had “only one death threat.”
Rep. Thibault, 19 years old, is the youngest legislator in the United States.
Already, he’s had a death threat.
In June, Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered at their home in what the U.S. attorney called a “political assassination.” A state senator and his wife were shot but survived. And in September, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking on a college campus.
After these events, the Josiah Bartlett Center announced the revival of our Civil Discourses event series, designed to bring Granite Staters together for civil conversations on important political and cultural topics.
American political culture is decaying. Despite our robust civic culture and high political engagement, New Hampshire isn’t immune from the rot. It’s infected our culture, too.
Rep. Sam Farrington, a UNH senior in his first House term, says “the threats have increased over the past year.”
Like other young Granite Staters who’ve been elected to state office in the last few years, he’s more cautious in public now than when he first got involved.
“I certainly worry about violence becoming more prevalent throughout society,” he said. “I’m not a person to have anxiety about something I can’t control. If an evil person out there wanted to do harm to me, they could absolutely do it. That is the unfortunate reality for all of us. I’ve learned over the past few months to take extra precautions while in public.”
Rep. Jessica Grill, a young Democrat from Manchester, hasn’t received any death threats and said “angry/negative messages have been pretty rare, in my experience.” But still, she’s seen enough scary behavior directed at others that she takes precautions.
“I try not to let fear take over my life, but it definitely comes to mind, especially at large events or at Concord.”
Reps. Grill, Farrington, and Thibault, along with Democratic Rep. Jonah Wheeler from Peterborough, are the featured panelists at the relaunch of the Bartlett Center’s Civil Discourses series next Monday, Dec. 1, at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.
The event is free, and you can register here.
As the premier New Hampshire organization named after a Founding Father (who was a doctor), we felt a duty to see if we could do something to treat this cultural decay.
The individual acts of violence are representative of a growing disaffection with America’s political system and a growing sense that violence is justified as a political tool if the system isn’t producing desired results.
The day before Kirk’s murder, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression published a national campus survey showing that 71 percent of American college students think it’s OK to silence speakers by shouting them down, 54 percent think it’s OK to block other students from attending a campus speech, and 34 percent think it’s OK to use violence to stop a speech.
A Politico poll in early November found that most Americans (55 percent) expect political violence in America to increase, and nearly a quarter (24 percent) say political violence is sometimes justified.
“Younger Americans were significantly more likely than older ones to say violence can be justified. More than one in three Americans under the age of 45 agreed with that belief,” Politico reported.
A Gallup poll released last week found that 16 percent of Americans agreed that “it is sometimes OK for people to use violence as a way to achieve a political goal.”
Grill, who has organized a regular gathering at a Concord bar for legislators of both parties, is onto something when she says in-person socializing can build trust and reduce animosity.
“In our divisive climate, I think it’s important to seek out as many opportunities to connect in person as possible,” she said.
“Political discourse has largely shifted from something that takes place within communities to something that takes place online. This is coupled with digital algorithms favoring more divisive and negative content while mass-reaching mainstream channels try to compete and feed the 24-hour news cycle. Voters increasingly exist within their own online bubbles where their views are reinforced, anger towards opposing views is encouraged, and genuine discussion is pushed below the fold.”
Farrington agreed that isolation is a serious social and civic problem, even in New Hampshire.
“There is this very strange phenomenon in society where people don’t talk to others who are outside of their circles,” he said. “This is not exclusive to politics. I see it on a college campus all the time. People walk around with their AirPods in, their hood on, and their head pointed down. And then there’s the awkward silence in the elevator with a group of strangers. If you walk into the grocery store, everyone goes to the self-checkout because it seems that they want to avoid talking to other people. I would say that critical thinking has been washed away from society. We are afraid to challenge our perceptions. And so when people are forced to encounter an opposing viewpoint, they get tense and defensive.”
Gallup’s new poll found that feelings of isolation and disconnection from one’s community were strongly associated with a lack of faith in democracy.
The young state representatives we talk to all say that getting out of ideological bubbles fostered by social media and getting together with people of varying viewpoints can help lower the political temperature.
So we’re bringing four young state representatives of both parties together next Monday for an open and honest conversation about rebuilding our civic culture. And we’ll follow that up with more events in 2026. If you’d like to get involved, you can reach us at info@jbartlett.org.
The United States of America celebrates its 250th anniversary next year. Many of our Founders would be surprised it’s lasted this long.
“Democracy is always so horribly bloody that it is always short-lived,” John Adams wrote to Benjamin Rush in 1806.
Reinforcing the basic rules of our republican system — civility, conversation, compromise, to name a few — is a simple way to reduce the bloodshed.
As Charlie Kirk said, “When people stop talking, that’s when the violence happens.”
If we want to reduce the violence, we have to increase the talking.
You can help by joining the conversation next Monday.
