At first the negative feedback was fairly standard – Gloninger came to Iowa with more than 15 years of experience in TV meteorology and had launched a weekly series on climate change which ran in Boston and won a regional Emmy.

“It was, stuff like ‘I don’t need to hear your liberal conspiracy theories on our air. Take the politics out of your forecast,’” Gloninger recalled. “‘You’re politicizing the weather, you’re a puppet to the left.’”

But in summer 2022, Gloninger started receiving a steady flow of harassing emails.

In one, the sender asked for his address and said, “We conservative Iowans would like to give you an Iowan welcome you will never forget.”

That message referenced an incident that targeted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanuagh, where police arrested a man carrying a gun, a knife and zipties near Kavanaugh’s house.