Congresswoman Who Exposed Trump's Upsetting Call With Soldier's Widow Deluged With Racist Threats

Welcome to WHAT NOW, a morning round-up of the news/fresh horrors that await you today.

The Florida congresswoman who dared to call out President Donald Trump’s upsetting call with a military widow has been forced to stay away from votes in Washington and hire security after “racist and rude” threats.

After Representative Frederica Wilson recounted Trump’s insensitive call to the pregnant wife of La David Johnson, a soldier recently killed in Niger—where the widow said the president couldn’t even remember his name when offering condolences—threatening calls began coming into Wilson’s office. Her spokeswoman, Joyce Jones, told The Washington Post that they ran the gamut “from racist and rude to outright menacing.”

As a result, Jones said Wilson spent the week in her district “because of concerns about her safety in the aftermath of the feud that President Trump started with her” instead of voting in the House.

According to Jones, Capitol police are monitoring Wilson’s office in Washington and said she has a security detail in Miami. (A Capitol police spokesman said the law enforcement agency doesn’t comment on open investigations.)

Wilson is far from the first national Democrat to be targeted with bigoted, threatening messages after going toe-to-toe with the president. Early last summer, Representative Al Green, of Texas, who’s repeatedly called for impeachment proceedings against Trump, played some of the threatening messages he received at a town hall in Houston in May, including caller a threatening to “hang your nigger ass.”

WHAT ELSE?

• More allegations against political journalist Mark Halperin are coming to light. A woman told The Washington Post that the Game Change author asked her to sit on his lap when she was a young researcher at ABC News. She didn’t want to, but alleges that Halperin insisted.
• In The Guardian, former New York Times top editor Jill Abramson seemed to tease another bombshell about widespread sexual harassment at an unnamed media company.
• The big JFK files dump that Trump has tried to take credit for has been pretty meh so far.

WHAT FRESH HELL?

• God, this is sad.

For more news and opinions that get under your skin, follow Splinter on Facebook.