Kansas Man Accused of Threatening to Attack Nashville Pride Event

A Kansas man has been indicted on charges of threatening to commit violent attacks at a Pride event in Nashville this month, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The man, Joshua Hensley, 25, commented on a sponsored Facebook post for Nashville Pride on April 26 and threatened to “make shrapnel pressure cooker bombs for this event” and to “commit a mass shooting,” the indictment said.

F.B.I. agents arrested Mr. Hensley, who the authorities say also uses the name Josh Echo, at his home in Hoisington, Kan., on June 15, the Justice Department said in a news release.

A grand jury indicted Mr. Hensley on two counts of transmitting an interstate threat to kidnap or injure, each of which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is scheduled to appear at a detention hearing in Wichita, Kan., on Friday. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We will not tolerate hate-based, threats of violence designed to intimidate Tennesseans,” Henry C. Leventis, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said in a statement.

The F.B.I. said in March that hate crimes increased nearly 12 percent from 2020 to 2021, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Of the 12,411 known victims of hate crimes in 2021, 15.9 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ sexual orientation bias and 3.2 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ gender identity bias, the F.B.I. said.

Nashville Pride, which will take place on Saturday and Sunday, includes a parade and a festival with food vendors, market stalls and concerts. Organizers said in a statement on Wednesday that there had been no credible threat against the event and that they looked “forward to creating a safe and secure space for the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community to be authentically and vulnerably themselves this weekend.”

“Safety and security has, is, and will always be a top priority for Nashville Pride,” the statement said. “While no credible threat existed, Nashville Pride is thankful for the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office for their proactive efforts and response.”

The festival works with a private security company as well as local, state and federal agencies to design and enforce safety measures, the statement said.

Nashville Pride began in 1988 with a march attended by 125 people and grew to attract thousands of people in the early 2000s, according to the festival website. In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, more than 75,000 people attended, WTVF-TV reported.

This year’s event coincides with a push by Republicans in Tennessee, and across the country, to enact laws that target L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. The Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group, said that state legislatures had introduced more than 520 bills this year that attack L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

In March, Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee, a Republican, signed a bill into law that restricts drag shows and bans gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. A federal judge ruled this month that the drag law was unconstitutional, preventing it from being enforced in Shelby County, which includes Memphis. Tennessee’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, said he expected to appeal the decision and maintained that the ruling did not affect the law’s application in the rest of the state.

The Justice Department has asked a federal court to stop the medical care ban from going into effect on July 1.