We've covered this story a few times here at Hot Air. David wrote about it last month and we just published a column by Larry Elder on the topic a few days ago. Today, John McWhorter devoted his newsletter to the topic.
If you've missed this until now, this is being pushed by a whole group of Democrats led by Ayanna Pressley. Earlier this month, they sent a letter to the DOJ and the FBI alerting them to this alleged crisis.
Dear Attorney General Blanche and Director Patel,
We are extremely alarmed by reports of Black people found hanging from trees in numerous states throughout our country. The series of deaths raise significant suspicion of foul play given the role of lynching in our nation’s history. Therefore, we write to urgently demand a thorough, transparent, and comprehensive federal investigation into every hanging death of a Black individual across the United States.
The growing number of Black people found hanging in public is a national crisis. A recent report documented more than 70 modern-day lynchings in the United States between 2000 and 2025. In 2026 alone, there have already been at least 10 reported hangings of Black people. They were as young as 18 years old and lived in different parts of the country, including Mississippi, Michigan, and New York. Each of their deaths should be treated with the utmost seriousness and investigated without bias by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
...Inaction by the federal government is tantamount to complicity. This is part of the legacy of racial terror in the United States, and this neglect has long-term consequences. Not only are innocent lives lost, but lynching inflicts deep traumatic and psychological wounds on family members, neighbors, and the entire Black community.
I included that just to make it clear that Pressley and 58 other Democrats who signed the letter aren't just asking for an investigation. They are strongly pushing the idea that this is a wave of lynchings connected to a "legacy of racial terror" in the US. On Facebook, Pressley was even more blunt.
Black folks are being found hanged in America.
This is a national crisis and we CANNOT stand by while strange fruit hangs from trees across the country.
We're demanding a federal investigation NOW so we can stop modern-day lynchings.
She's claiming these are "modern-day lynchings." But as has been pointed out many times now, the evidence supporting her claim is extremely thin.
I dearly hope that the 10 cases that are generating so much suspicion were not lynchings. And though it’s impossible to know for sure what happened in every case, I also think it highly unlikely that they represent a wave of lynchings, given the evidence presented so far by the authorities, and I expect any federal investigation to confirm that. But mainly, I hope that those raising the alarm of widespread racial terrorism would be in a position to accept such a verdict — rather than falling for the idea that assuming the worst is a form of higher awareness...
...what Pressley and others are suggesting is different: that today, white people are hanging Black people for the purpose of terrorizing Black communities, and that local authorities are consistently overlooking it or covering it up.
In the cases Pressley’s letter cites, there is often good reason to think otherwise. Consider a few examples:
In 2024, Javion Magee, a 21-year-old Black truck driver, was found dead in North Carolina with a rope around his neck, dangling from a tree. There is surveillance video of Magee buying the rope.
In 2025, Demartravion Reed, a 21-year-old Black student at Delta State University in Mississippi, was discovered hanged from a tree on campus. Reed had sent his girlfriend suicidal text messages the night before.
In the case of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old woman who was found hanged from a tree in Mississippi last month, two people have now been arrested in connection with her death — but they are both Black men, which runs counter to the idea that these cases are reanimations of old-school racism.
The bottom line is that Pressley's letter mentions 10 cases, and eight of those have been ruled suicides at this point. Only two, including the Fortune case mentioned above, are still under investigation as something else.
McWhorter points out that there is a belief among black people that hanging is just something black people don't do to themselves. But it does happen.
“It is very uncommon for young Black men to commit suicide, let alone by hanging,” Raymond Winbush, a psychologist who has treated hundreds of Black men and boys, told The Washington Post.
“That’s not the way we do” is how Black Americans often put it in conversation. But we must ask, with all due compassion: Suppose it is? The cases in question are few in number. To say something is uncommon is to grant that it does happen sometimes.
Here's what Larry Elder said about it a few days ago:
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, more white Americans than black Americans die by suicide by hanging, and whites do so at a higher per-capita rate. In 2020, 10,573 white Americans and 916 black Americans died by suicide by hanging, strangulation or suffocation. The age-adjusted rates were 4.6 per 100,000 for whites and 2.0 for blacks.
So it's true that suicide by hanging is less common among black people, but also true that it still happens hundreds of times per year.
No one is saying that these cases shouldn't be investigated, but it's wrong to suggest this is about racial terror when the truth seems to be a lot more mundane (but still tragic). As with the alleged "trans genocide" that I wrote about this week, the national crisis of lynchings isn't happening. People who say otherwise are doing so to push an agenda, not because it's true.
Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.
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