Pete Buttigieg’s Ordeal Is a Frightening New Form of Political Harassment; The Atlantic, July 2, 2026

Quinta Jurecic, The Atlantic; Pete Buttigieg’s Ordeal Is a Frightening New Form of Political Harassment

"The news that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was investigated by Child Protective Services for a false allegation of child abuse was surprising. Not that an accuser would attempt such a cruel form of harassment—this, unfortunately, is not shocking at all—but because nobody seems to have aimed this particular tactic at a prominent politician before. Even in these unimaginative days, Americans are still capable of new innovations in cruelty.

“Someone decided to hurt our family this week,” Buttigieg wrote in a Substack post last week. Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member and a likely Democratic presidential contender, wrote that state police and a CPS worker arrived at his home in the last week of June to investigate an anonymous report that Buttigieg may have harmed his 4-year-old twins. The matter was quickly resolved, but only after Buttigieg was separated from his children for 24 hours and CPS had interviewed them. State investigators in Michigan, where Buttigieg lives, determined that the tip had been false.

Life as a public servant in America requires an escalating tolerance for danger. Politicians, judges, election workers, school-board members, and librarians face online abuse, threats, true risk of physical violence, and bullying—persistent, creative torment that emerges from unexpected corners and darts back and forth across the line of physical and psychological peril. Now people considering a role in public life have a new nightmare to consider: the possibility that a malicious hoax will lead the state to take away their children."

The terror of swatting: how the law is tracking down high-tech prank callers; Guardian, 4/15/16

Dan Tynan, Guardian; The terror of swatting: how the law is tracking down high-tech prank callers:

"The first 911 call came at 4.30pm. The caller told dispatchers that a man, woman, and boy had been shot and another child was being held hostage. Police responded in force, sending more than half a dozen cruisers and emergency vehicles to a sprawling house in the affluent Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek.

But when they arrived there were no signs of a shooting; inside, police found a nanny with two small children. When the mother returned from shopping she found her home surrounded by emergency vehicles. The father, who had been on a plane, landed at Atlanta’s international airport to see his house on TV, with news reports declaring that his wife and children had been shot.

They were victims of a swatting attack, a malicious form of hoax where special weapons and tactics (Swat) teams are called to a victim’s home under false pretenses, with potentially deadly results...

In November 2015, around the same time that reports about Obnoxious became public, congresswoman Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced a bill that made swatting a federal crime. (The bill has been referred to the House subcommittee on crime, terrorism, homeland security, and investigations.)...

In March, Clark addressed the second part of the problem – the lack of law enforcement expertise – by introducing the Cybercrime Enforcement Training Assistance Act, which would allocate $20m a year to train local police departments on how to investigate and prosecute cybercrime."