Lawmakers describe more threats related to House speaker race, Israel-Hamas conflict

WASHINGTON — The Capitol Police have faced an increase in reports of threats against members of Congress and their families this month, at a time when the chief has already told lawmakers the department is stretched to capacity on those types of investigations.

Several lawmakers have gone public with threats sparked by tensions from both the Republican search for a speaker and the IsraeliHamas conflict, which has prompted other lawmakers to point out how common those threats have become.

“I can show you where the people have made horrible accusations and things they were going to do to members of my family, and I couldn’t even get Capitol Hill police to respond to my phone calls about it,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said Friday on CNN when discussing a voicemail left for another member’s wife.

The Capitol Police have proposed a “significant increase” in its fiscal 2024 budget for more special agents to vet such threats, but spending bills to do so are stuck in some of the same political undercurrents that led to the vacancy of the speaker spot.

The department has increased its briefings to Congress and has expressed concern about a potential lone-wolf-style attack on a lawmaker, according to a Democratic aide familiar with the briefings.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and other progressive lawmakers critical of Israel received a security briefing, NBC News reported Friday. Omar’s office shared with NBC the threats in the past 10 days that have been worse than ever. and discovered 14% of adults and 12% of children displayed signs of being addicted to ultra-processed foods, as defined by the Yale Food Addiction Scale.

Those addictions were on the same levels as the ones for alcohol and tobacco, the study found.

“There is converging and consistent support for the validity and clinical relevance of ultra-processed food addiction,” Ashley Gearhardt, lead researcher and a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, said in a press release. “By acknowledging that certain types of processed foods have the properties of addictive substances, we may be able to help improve global health.”

According to co-author Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech University, “Most foods that we think of as natural, or minimally processed, provide energy in the form of carbohydrate or fat — but not both.”

DiFeliceantonio also pointed out that while you can give up smoking, drinking or gambling, you can’t stop eating.

New Jersey-based dietician Erin Palinski-Wade told Fox News Digital she is skeptical of the findings.

“Although foods rich in added sugar may stimulate the feel-good chemicals in the brain and become habitforming, sugar itself is not addictive in the way cocaine or another drug may be,” she told Fox.