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Rep. Jahana Hayes of Waterbury put her name on a letter that treats a cluster of hanging deaths as a national outbreak of racial terror. Fifty-nine House Democrats, led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, told Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel that Black Americans found hanging from trees raise “significant suspicion of foul play given the role of lynching in our nation’s history.” They called federal inaction “tantamount to complicity.”

That is a grave charge. It is also a charge the official record does not support.

Hayes is a former history teacher. History requires distinguishing what is documented from what is inferred. This letter does the opposite. It takes real grief, real suicides, and one interpersonal homicide, then folds them into a story of modern-day lynchings and a federal cover-up that would make Jussie Smollett proud.

Yes, there have been multiple 2025 and 2026 cases in which Black people were found hanging—some outdoors, some after being reported missing. Families have questioned the police. Activists have aggregated the cases online. That much is true.

A list of deaths, however, is not a lynching epidemic. Most of the named cases have been investigated by local police and medical examiners, who found no evidence another person was involved:

• Kyle Bassinga, 21, was found hanging in a Cobb County, Georgia park. Investigators said surveillance showed him walking into the woods alone. Officials reported no signs of foul play.

• Juliana Nzita, 16, was found hanging on church grounds in Charlotte. Police said a physical examination found no defensive wounds and no signs of assault. The medical examiner ruled it a suicide. While the absence of a full autopsy is a fair criticism of the investigation, it is not proof she was lynched.

• To’Nea Nicole Miller in Miami and Jerard “Jay” Jackson in Michigan were both treated as apparent suicides. Michigan State Police said there was no indication of foul play in Jackson’s death.

• Demartravion “Trey” Reed, the Delta State student whose 2025 death became a national rallying cry, was ruled a hanging suicide by Mississippi’s state medical examiner. The autopsy found no evidence of foul play.

The Democrat coalition letter treats these official findings as if they were the problem. The implication is that police and coroners across multiple states independently chose to launder racial murders. That is an extraordinary claim, and the letter offers no evidence to support it.

The case that most clearly is not a suicide is Tasia Fortune, 29, who was found hanging behind a vacant house in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 3. The state medical examiner ruled her death a homicide. Jackson police arrested Jarques Ratliff, 51. He is Black. Police said he had an “association” with Fortune, and court papers allege she was hanged with a black cable cord. Ratliff pleaded not guilty this week and was denied bond. Police say more arrests may follow, though they have not alleged a racial motive.

Using Mississippi’s lynching history as a substitute for the facts of this case lacks moral seriousness and ignores the suspect in custody.

The letter further leans on JULIAN’s Crimson Record, which claims more than 70 “modern-day lynchings” took place in seven Southern states from 2000 to 2025. The group is explicit about its method: it reinterprets deaths already ruled suicides, accidents, jail deaths, or homicides without a proven bias motive.

One key omission should embarrass Hayes, who has served on Congress’s Emergency Task Force on Black Youth Suicide and Mental Health.

Suicide among Black Americans has risen sharply over the last decade, faster than among White Americans. Among Black youth, hanging and suffocation have long been a leading method. New CDC-linked reporting shows young Black men dying by suicide at historic rates—in some age bands now exceeding young White men.

That is an actual public-health emergency.

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