The white powder letters sent to dozens of lawmakers contained nothing harmful, officials say, and the hunt for the sender goes on

The powder was not poison. That is the good news in a mail scare that has now touched Congress and the election system in the last two weeks before the midterms.\n\n“The House sergeant at arms continues to monitor incidents of letters containing a white powder that have been mailed to several Congressional offices,” Sergeant at Arms William McFarland wrote in a notice sent to congressional offices and shared on Monday. “None of the letters received by Congressional offices have been determined to contain hazardous substances.” Around 40 members of Congress in both parties had reported receiving the suspicious mail as of Monday morning. The named targets cross the aisle: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senators Lisa Blunt Rochester, Alex Padilla and Chris Murphy on the Democratic side, and Senators Ted Cruz, Pete Ricketts and Mike Rounds on the Republican side, among others. Rounds said his Sioux Falls office was evacuated and closed on Friday after a letter arrived.\n\nThe campaign did not stop at the Capitol. “The FBI and US Postal Inspection Service are investigating a series of suspicious mailings sent to various addresses nationwide, including Secretary of State offices and their related election offices,” an FBI spokesperson said. Election offices in at least 15 states had reported receiving or being targeted by the mail by Thursday evening, according to federal authorities cited in reporting. Law enforcement sources told ABC News that more than 100 letters suspected of containing white powder are circulating in the mail system, most of them intercepted by postal inspectors and screening facilities before reaching their destinations.\n\nInvestigators say the letters share common features. They were processed through a mail facility in north Texas, arrived in plain white envelopes, and carried a “Thinking of You” postmark, and staff have been warned to watch for those markings. On Monday the Leesburg, Virginia, district office of Representative Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat, was evacuated after an envelope containing a suspicious substance arrived. Preliminary testing indicated the powder was not hazardous, his office said, and the office was cleared quickly. “Acts of political intimidation have no place in our country,” Subramanyam said. In California, a staffer in Representative Jimmy Panetta’s Santa Cruz office opened one envelope, cleared the room and called 911. Five staffers left Representative Seth Moulton’s Salem, Massachusetts, office after a letter arrived there. Three Arizona House Democrats reported similar letters on Monday, in a state where the Secretary of State’s office was evacuated over white powder on October 15.\n\nNo one has been injured, no suspect has been named, and federal authorities have not released a confirmed total of letters, as of October 20. Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois called on the FBI to “apprehend and prosecute those responsible.” A hoax powder campaign does its damage without any poison at all: every envelope closes an office, pulls police and hazardous materials crews away from real work, and reminds the people who run American elections, two weeks before a national vote, that the mail cannot be trusted. Whoever is sending them knows that.