(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A climate scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania is under fire after seemingly threatening to invoke the Second Amendment against President Donald Trump.
UPenn professor Michael Mann made the controversial call to action in a now-deleted Bluesky post responding to an NPR article about a judge blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to shut down the Education Department.
“If Trump doesn’t comply, we’re in a second amendment territory,” Mann wrote, without elaborating on what he meant.
Headline USA reached out to Mann via email but received only an automatic reply: “Due to the high volume of emails received, however, I cannot promise that it will be read or replied to.”
Neither UPenn executive assistant Vanessa Barrett-Pearsall nor Hachette Book Group spokesperson Brooke Parsons responded by the deadline.
On X, critics took Mann’s comments as threats against Trump, who survived two assassination attempts before winning the 2024 presidential election.
The account LibsOfTikTok tagged the FBI, accusing Mann of “calling to Kill Trump and Trump officials.”
Meanwhile, Journalist Paul D. Thacker suggested Mann “appears to be calling for armed resistance,” adding: “So much craziness on Bluesky.”
Hi @FBI, this climate scientist and professor at @Penn appears to be calling to kiII Trump and Trump officials https://t.co/NOFnEhmYN6 pic.twitter.com/slJ4REEzel
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 23, 2025
Mann deleted the post amid the backlash and “out of fear that it might be misconstrued by someone.”
Quoting the Constitution, Mann said, “The second amendment refers to the right of the people to rise up and defend democracy… To argue this is a threat against Trump is very dishonest.”
In a follow-up post, he said his comment was “meant as a rhetorical statement about the need to rise up and defend ‘the security of a free State’, not any sort of incitement to violence (something of which I couldn’t more strongly disapprove).”
An FBI spokesperson could not be reached immediately for comment. However, Mann has faced legal trouble before.
In 2025, D.C. Superior Court Judge Alfred S. Irving Jr. sanctioned him and his legal team after finding they provided misleading information during a defamation suit against bloggers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn.
Mann had accused Simberg, a former adjunct fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Steyn, a National Review contributor, of attempting to discredit his climate change research in 2012.
The judge later ordered Mann to pay nearly $530,820.21 in attorneys’ fees and costs to National Review.
