Florida man sentenced for making violent threats to Pelosi and AOC

Details: In a March 2019 call, Hoeffer threatened to come a "long, long way" to rattle Pelosi's head with bullets.

• Around that time, he called Foxx, who is Black, and used a racial slur to convey that bullets were going to "rattle her brain."
• In November 2020, he left a recording for Ocasio-Cortez telling her to sleep with one eye open and that she "should have been aborted."
• Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 3.5 years in prison, but Hoeffer's defense requested leniency, citing his recent diagnosis with an aggressive form of cancer, per Politico

The big picture: Congress members have faced increasing threats in recent years, especially after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

• The Capitol Police reported 4,135 threats against members of Congress in the first three months of 2021.
• Women politicians are particularly vulnerable. Researchers have found that they face more personal online attacks compared to their male counterparts, and it's worse if they're also from racial, ethnic, religious or other minority groups.
• Many lawmakers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds on personal security.