The assassination of a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes are just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States.
The list, in the past two months alone: the killing of two staffers in Washington, the calling for the release of Israeli hostages, and the firebombing of the of Pennsylvania鈥檚 governor 鈥 on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside.
And here鈥檚 just a sampling of some other attacks before that 鈥 the killing of a on the streets of New York late last year, the of in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game.
鈥淲e鈥檝e entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,鈥 said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University who studies extremism. 鈥淎 lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.鈥
Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres
Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshippers at a in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino in 2019 and 10 Black people at a in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews were trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right who support Trump鈥檚 push to limit immigration.
The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a before being fatally shot by police.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,鈥 said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. 鈥淚t feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.鈥
The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, from presidential assassinations dating back to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln, lynching and violence aimed at Black people in the South, the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the past few years, however, have most likely reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when icons like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.
Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has shuttered units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally.
鈥淲e鈥檙e at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,鈥 Ware said.
Of course, one of Trump鈥檚 first acts in office was to in the largest act of domestic political violence this century 鈥 the , assault on the U.S. Capitol, intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump鈥檚 2020 election loss.
Those pardons to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: 鈥淭hey sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you鈥檙e a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded.”
Ideologies aren’t always aligned 鈥 or coherent
Often, those who engage in political violence don鈥檛 have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country鈥檚 partisan divides. A man who died after he outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called 鈥渘ihilistic ideations.鈥
But, like clockwork, each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as flyers for the day鈥檚 anti-Trump parades.
Conservatives online seized on the flyers 鈥 and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz 鈥 to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 鈥淭he far left is murderously violent,鈥 billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X.
It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker鈥檚 then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: 鈥淲here is Nancy?!鈥
On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. 鈥淎ll of us must remember that it鈥檚 not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,鈥 she wrote.
Trump had mocked the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, but on Saturday he joined in the official bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them 鈥渉orrific violence.鈥 The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric towards his political opponents, whom he routinely calls 鈥渟ick鈥 and 鈥渆vil,鈥 and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests.
The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration’s immigration operations in Los Angeles during the past week, when he disrespectful protesters and warned of a 鈥渕igrant invasion鈥 of the city.
Dallek said Trump has been 鈥渂oth a victim and an accelerant鈥 of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country.
鈥淚t feels as if the extremists are in the saddle,” he said, 鈥渁nd the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.鈥
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This story has been corrected to reflect that Matt Dallek is a professor at George Washington University, not Georgetown.
