Political Violence In The U.S.

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

The time is 1.22 p.m.

Eastern on Monday, June 16th.

I'm Elena Moore.

I cover politics.

I'm Odette Youssef.

I cover domestic extremism.

And I'm Domenico Montana, our senior political editor and correspondent.

And today on the show, we're going to look at the increase in political violence in the U.S.

Over the weekend, two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota were targeted and shot.

One, former Speaker of the House, Melissa Hortman, was killed along with her husband.

The second, state Senator John Hoffman, was severely wounded, along with his wife.

The suspect in these shootings is in custody.

Odette, these events are the latest in politically motivated violence.

And obviously, that topic is one you've been following for a really long time.

And studies have suggested politically motivated violence like this is only increasing in frequency, right?

Yeah, I mean, Elena, you I'm sure recall the discussions that we've had on this podcast and elsewhere about election officials experiencing an increase in harassment and abuse.

We've talked about members of Congress.

We've seen, you know, reporting from the Capitol Police about increases in harassment and targeting of public officials.

For this one,

the people that we know to have been targeted so far, these were state legislators and their families.

And so I was able to speak with someone at the Brennan Center for Justice.

They did a survey back in 2023 of hundreds of state legislators to ask if they were experiencing this kind of harassment and abuse.

And they found that across both parties, there was a reported increase in threats and intimidation and harassment.

This is something that I think has just gotten kind of woven, unfortunately, into the political fabric of America right now.

The baseline level of threats and harassment that local officials, federal officials, and state officials have been experiencing in recent years has been really elevated.

Is this something that kind of neatly fits into party lines, along party lines, or is it more nuanced or did?

I mean, like, what are the political leanings broadly of the folks who have been targeted compared to the people who are suspected of these violent acts?

You know, when I spoke with folks at the Brendan Center, they said that there was no distinction in party when it came to people who were receiving this abuse.

Both Republican and Democratic legislators were on the receiving end.

But there was was some really interesting nuance when it came to the source of those threats and the source of those insults.

When I asked Gauri Ramachandran, she's the director of elections and security in the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

I asked her who was directing this harassment and abuse at those state legislators.

And here's some of what she told me.

We definitely, from Republican legislators in particular, heard about a lot of sort of intra-party abuse.

So, you know, we talked to some folks who, you know, pretty much expressed like, you know, I got into this because I want to cut red tape for businesses.

I wasn't really planning on sort of addressing these really hot button issues or that that wasn't really the core thing that drove me into public service.

But we did hear about this in particular from a number of members of the Republican Party, as there's been some really more extreme elements, extreme positions on issues like reproductive rights or gun control, gun safety.

Then, you know, sometimes some of these more traditional Republicans really found themselves being subject to abuse.

And so I think, you know, we don't typically think of political violence that way.

You know, we usually think of it like, you know, one side being targeted by the other side.

But, you know, as Ramachandran's saying here, actually, a lot of it is happening just within the Republican Party.

Yeah, and we've seen this for a while now with Trump in particular.

This is 10 years that Trump has been on the political scene.

He's done a full takeover of the Republican Party.

He's really fractured the party in a lot of ways.

And with social media, with the sort of anonymity that comes with that sometimes, we've seen a lot more bullying in general in trying to sort of purify the party's views and to really target and go after people who are seen as rhinos, those Republicans in name only, which now are really kind of, maybe should be tino or something because they're Trump in name only, because they really feel like there are a lot of people on the right who are standing in the way of what the MAGA movement wants to do.

Odette, you've also reported on kind of how a lot of recent political violence, including allegedly what we've seen in Minnesota, has religious undertones.

I mean, what's the connection there?

Yeah, so I think we have to look at what happened specifically in Minnesota over the weekend.

You know, what we've been hearing from Senator Amy Klobuchar from federal law enforcement today indicate that there was a wider number of people that were supposed targets of this suspect.

And that this included people who were reproductive rights advocates and some women's health clinics.

And so we really ought to be thinking of this within the context of the extreme militant anti-abortion movement in this country, which has always been very closely linked to sort of a far-right Christian militancy.

And so, what's been a very interesting thing to be learning about the suspect who's been arrested with respect to these shootings is that he appears to have been influenced by something that we refer to now as the New Apostolic Reformation.

And this is a network, sort of a decentralized network of neo-charismatic churches across the country and even across the world.

It's very fast-growing right now across the world.

And it has been very closely linked as well with President Trump, some of his innermost circle of advisors come from within this network.

But this is a network that really was on the fringe of the Christian right up until Trump ran for president.

Because they embraced him early, he embraced them and brought them sort of into the center of gravity of the Christian right.

Some of what we have seen with videos of this suspect delivering sermons on mission work in Africa suggests that this is the kind of theology that he is part of.

And this really represents, you know, a concerning development in terms of real-world violence by somebody who may be affiliated with that network.

Another figure that has ties to this group is Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, right?

Can you explain that?

Sure, yeah.

I mean, you'll remember, Elena, there was reporting soon after Mike Johnson was selected as House Speaker about the flag that was flying outside his House office, this white flag with a green pine tree on it called the Appeal to Heaven flag, which really has become sort of a symbol of the Christian nationalist right.

He has said that it was a gift given to him by Dutch Sheets.

Now, Dutch Sheets is a name that is very well known within the new Apostolic Reformation.

He's a leading voice within the NAR.

And the fact that you now have the Speaker of the House who claims to have a a close friendship with Dutch Sheets is quite significant in terms of that network's proximity to power.

One of the people that is in Trump's inner circle, really, is Pastor Paula White-Kaine, who is part of the fabric of these NAR leaders.

And she was appointed earlier this year to be part of the White House Faith Office.

And so we're seeing both with House Speaker Johnson and in the White House itself, very close proximity of leaders within the NAR network to federal leadership.

Okay, time for a break.

More in a moment.

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And we're back.

And I guess, Dominico, I want to get your take.

What does it mean for U.S.

politics when prominent political figures, I mean, Odette mentioned, House Speaker Mike Johnson, are associated with what would have been at one time considered to be far from mainstream views.

Yeah, I think that's the big thing here.

You know, it really normalizes the abnormal, you know, to borrow a phrase that people have been using quite a bit.

You know, there were, like you said, times when these kinds of associations would be really flashing red warning signs for politicians to stay away from extreme folks, not bring them on camera or make them your spiritual advisor.

You know, Trump has gladly brought them into the tent, though, under this sort of false banner of being wrongly persecuted.

And when you've undermined good sources of information, then followers will sort of believe anything and almost allow for anything.

And we've certainly seen that here with these connections and having these, what we're seeing as extreme views and are extreme views really kind of brought into the mainstream.

Yeah.

And Odette, zoom out for a moment for us again.

And just going back to that 2023 survey about politically motivated violence, is there anything else that you've learned that we should talk about?

Yeah, I mean, this survey, it was similar to surveys that we've seen of local officials as well that are periodically done by the Bridging Divides Initiative over at Princeton, which, you know, find that people who are receiving these threats, the nature of the threats also changes depending on the identity of the person that they're directed at.

So you know, women tend to experience these threats at a high level.

And we also see that people of color are receiving threats in a different way, right?

They're receiving an elevated number of threats.

And so this is something that I think has been constant across the surveys that have been done on political violence that's experienced by public officials.

And

the problem with this is that this survey of state legislators also asked them,

what does this mean in terms of your likelihood to run again for office or to run for higher office?

And respondents said that they were less likely to do those things.

Wow.

They said they were less likely to hold public meetings with constituents because of this.

And so this directly impacts the health of our democracy.

And Dominico, I mean, that being the case, I want to also talk about just how politicians react to some of this information and respond to these acts of violence.

And polarization in this country is increasing.

The data shows that.

And the way political leaders decide to act and response has kind of shifted too, right?

Yeah, I mean, you know, we've seen them be very quick to imply or explicitly blame the other side.

We saw that with J.D.

Vance right after the Trump assassination attempts, you know, now Vice President Vance.

So much of what we're seeing is because of the dehumanization of the other side.

Social media certainly plays a part of that.

Anonymity, you know, kind of makes you tough.

There's a lot of things people will say to each other online that they certainly wouldn't say to your face.

People say that they want civility also and compromise, but we're really giving mixed signals.

There was a poll for Georgetown conducted by the Terrence group on civility, and 71% said that it's okay to compromise, even if it means giving a little.

But the exact same survey also found that three-quarters of people said that their side is compromised enough.

And the problem is, people feel their values are under attack.

And when you feel like your values are under attack, then it's something that's deeper than just something that's politics and we can get over that.

That's saying fundamentally, these people are bad people who disagree with me.

When we're that highly sorted, we don't know a lot of neighbors who think differently.

It's a lot easier to devalue them as human beings, and it's easier to accept what should be intolerable acts.

I think there's also something very specific about the dehumanizing rhetoric that exists within the anti-abortion discussion.

And, you know, I've spoken about this with Carol Mason, who is a professor at the University of Kentucky, who's studied the rise of the right since the 60s with a focus on anti-abortion violence.

And she said that there has been a shift over the last several decades.

Opposing abortion used to be seen as a sin, like adultery or blasphemy, but over time it became not just a sin, it became evil.

And to some, it became the worst evil.

You hear that language very commonplace right now in anti-abortion circles on the far right that characterize abortion as sort of a genocidal industry that is about ritual child sacrifice to demons.

This is not uncommon to hear.

And so that kind of shift in the rhetoric around abortion specifically has been itself sort of a radicalized ideology.

And so you get, you know, more potential for people to

say they're going to take it upon themselves to stop what you see to be an unchristian thing that's occurring.

And I wonder how you see that kind of thing differently than, for example, you'll hear a lot of people on the right talk about some of the Democratic lawmakers'

rhetoric in talking about, for example, a Congressman Mfume who had earlier this year called for street fights to be able to push back against Doge, which he was describing as the Department of Government evil.

So it's the same term, but is that, do we see this differently as that just being words as opposed to deeply felt beliefs

on this more radical extreme right?

So, I think what is important to look at is data around the violence itself.

And former director of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has said this in testimony before Congress.

The most persistent and lethal threat has come from the right.

And so, you know, we've been hearing, especially in recent weeks, about

anti-Semitism and how embedded it is on the far right and on the far left as well.

well.

But the fact is, you know, recent attacks notwithstanding, the most lethal attack on Jews in the United States happened at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

And that was somebody that was on the far right, who was motivated by anti-immigrant rhetoric that was happening at the time.

And so, you know, it is absolutely true that you can see political violence from both sides.

You can see dehumanizing rhetoric from both sides, but the body count is disproportionately a result of far-right violence.

I want to just end here a little bit broader.

You know, you're talking about this shift that we've seen in some of these views, and it's very serious, but is there a way back, I guess?

Like, I mean, is there a way to lower the temperature, so to speak, or stem the tide of misinformation that's fueling a lot of this violence.

Well, I think what's really important when it comes to this kind of thing is leadership.

And you need people who are going to say, this is not appropriate, violence is never appropriate, and to really mean it, right?

And to kind of continue to be able to spread that message.

You know, we've seen different points of leadership on the campaign trail in the past where people will stand up to their base and say, no, that's not appropriate, but we really haven't seen it in the last decade.

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's important that we did see President Trump condemn this violence after these shootings in Minnesota.

We saw this actually across the political spectrum that political leaders were doing that.

I think, though, that, you know, one of the tricky things about this particular example of political violence is that, you know, you referred to it, Elena, as religious extremism.

This more specifically could be referred to as Christian extremism.

And so I think that we need to look to the religious community that this suspect was tied in with and see what condemnation they are issuing around this particular violence.

And, you know, if there's any reflection about whether or how

the views espoused within that community may have caused it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, let's leave it there for today.

I'm Elena Moore.

I cover politics.

I'm Odette Youssef.

I cover domestic extremism.

And I'm Domenico Montanero, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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