{"id":208405,"date":"2025-06-23T19:11:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T19:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/208405\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T19:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T19:11:11","slug":"political-violence-spreads-fear-in-the-united-states-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/208405\/","title":{"rendered":"Political violence spreads fear in the United States | U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

An attack on two Minnesota state legislators cost the life of former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Democrat Melissa Hortman<\/a>, and her husband; a man set fire to the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, while he was sleeping; two employees of the Israeli Embassy were shot and killed<\/a> in Washington; a Molotov bomb attack left eight injured during a march in Colorado calling for the release of Israeli hostages; a Tesla Cybertruck exploded<\/a> \u2014 with the driver inside \u2014 at the entrance of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. These are just incidents from 2025, but the year before, President Donald Trump was the target of two assassination attempts<\/a> on the campaign trail. Political violence in the United States, which at first might bring to mind 1963 and John F. Kennedy riding in a limousine in Dallas, is now a terrifying reality for the entire national political class.<\/p>\n

The Department of Homeland Security identified political violence as one of its top concerns for 2025 last year. And a Reuters investigation, which began after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, concluded that the current rise in political violence is the highest since the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Just a week after the attack that claimed Congresswoman Hortman\u2019s life in Minnesota, three states have announced the arrest of several individuals for threats against politicians. The country is on alert, and only now \u2014 when political violence has become commonplace \u2014 are answers beginning to be sought in a nation as polarized as it is divided.<\/p>\n

That January 6, 2021, is a good place to start. One of Trump\u2019s first actions as president was to pardon the more than 1,500 individuals<\/a> prosecuted for the assault on the Capitol. It was his way of honoring what has gone down in history as one of the darkest days for U.S. democracy \u2014 an event he described as an act \u201cof love and peace.\u201d That Wednesday in January, thousands of Trump supporters, incited by his calls for insurrection and false claims of election fraud, stormed the Capitol in a violent attack that lasted for hours and left five people dead. Trump\u2019s pardon, four years later, of those convicted or charged, sent a clear message to extremists: violence is acceptable if you\u2019re on the right side of history \u2014 his side.<\/p>\n

The activity of ideological groups prone to violence, such as militias and neo-Nazi organizations, had been declining for years, according to the Princeton University study Key Political Violence and Resilience Trends From 2024<\/a>. But the reports warns that that has now changed: \u201cThe pardons signal a return to the more permissive environment established during President Trump\u2019s first term.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was the beginning of a presidency that, with near-militaristic rhetoric, identified two clear internal enemies. The Democrats, whom Trump has labeled \u201cevil\u201d and \u201cdangerous\u201d: \u201cthey\u2019re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they\u2019re sick.\u201d And undocumented immigrants, whom he baselessly claims are \u201cdangerous criminals.\u201d Yet in a political climate that at times borders on the hysterical, threats and attacks on politicians are emerging from both sides of the ideological divide.<\/p>\n

Putting a face to a supposed enemy fuels the actions of so-called vigilantes. \u201cThat\u2019s really the kind of language that can make it seem like someone feels like they have to take action, they\u2019re compelled to take what they think is heroic action or patriotic action,\u201d said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University, in during a PBS panel discussion<\/a>. The most high-profile vigilante is Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering Brian Thompson, CEO of the health insurance company UnitedHealthcare Group, last year in New York.<\/p>\n

The Princeton report, however, identifies Black, Jewish, Arab, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ communities as the main targets of vigilantes and warns that in 2025, anti-immigrant rhetoric could lead to an increase in attacks against the Latino community. Wendy Via, president and founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), told EL PA\u00cdS that \u201cthe rise in political violence is fueled by the dehumanizing and, at times, violent rhetoric of our elected leaders and other politically powerful actors.\u201d She warned: \u201cThe constant vitriol puts entire communities, our nation, and our democracy at risk.\u201d <\/p>\n

The risk at the local political level<\/p>\n

Beyond Trump and far from the Capitol, there are more than 7,000 public legislators across the 50 states living in fear. \u201cI don\u2019t want to think that I have to a personal security detail everywhere I go, but I think we really have to look at the situation that we\u2019re in,\u201d said Minnesota Democratic Senator Tina Smith last week. Data from the Princeton report recorded more than 600 incidents of threats and harassment against local officials nationwide in 2024, representing a 10% increase compared to 2023. The number of cases is expected to rise this year. Fellow Minnesota legislator Amy Klobuchar summed up the situation: \u201cThis is a very bad environment, and we need to bring the tone down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tone escalated rapidly during the presidential campaign. Among all the moments sparked by Elon Musk\u2019s brief and scandalous political adventure, one episode last September forced him to do something he rarely does: backtrack. A second assassination attempt on Donald Trump had just been revealed, this one at his golf course in Florida. The country was still reeling from the gunshot that grazed Trump\u2019s ear a few months earlier during a rally.<\/p>\n

In his personal campaign to cozy up to the Republican, Musk posted on social media: \u201cNo one is even trying to assassinate Biden\/Kamala\u201d The backlash forced him to delete the post and offer something resembling an apology. But it didn\u2019t last. Months later, he again claimed it would be \u201cpointless\u201d to assassinate Harris because they\u2019d \u201cjust get another puppet\u201d to replace her.<\/p>\n

The incendiary language \u2014 of which Musk is a master \u2014 spreads from the heated rhetoric of rallies and White House briefings, echoing across social media, television, and every outlet where information and disinformation collide. The clearest case came during a campaign stop in Springfield, Ohio, where a false claim spread by Trump \u2014 that \u201cHaitians are eating our pets<\/a>\u201d \u2014 unleashed a wave of threats against the city.<\/p>\n

Even before the two assassination attempts on the president during the campaign, 45% of Americans considered political violence a major problem for the country, and 66% felt it was on the rise, according to a report by the States United Democracy Center<\/a> published in August 2024. Two years earlier, a man had planned to attack then-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with a hammer, but ended up striking and injuring her husband.<\/p>\n

The United States has a long and grim history of political violence since its founding. Four of its 46 presidents have been assassinated \u2014 Lincoln (1865), Garfield (1881), McKinley (1901), and Kennedy (1963) \u2014 but now the paranoia is spreading to every corner of the country. The \u201cus versus them\u201d narrative has become a constant feature of the political landscape. Just days apart, California Senator Alex Padilla was handcuffed after interrupting a press conference held by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in Los Angeles, and Democratic candidate for New York City mayor Brad Lander was arrested in an immigration court in Manhattan for trying to defend an immigrant.<\/p>\n

When that bullet grazed Trump\u2019s ear last summer, the now-president raised his fist and delivered a phrase for the history books: \u201cFight, fight, fight!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An attack on two Minnesota state legislators cost the life of former speaker of the Minnesota House of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[6207,32,295,83519,8697,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-208405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-elon-musk","11":"tag-john-fitzgerald-kennedy","12":"tag-minnesota","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114734267375921731","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}