Minnesota assassinations: How we got to this awful point

Donald Trump sounded the right notes in reacting to the horrific assassination of a Democratic farm-labor leader in Minnesota. His comments about the killing of former state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband is worth quoting in full from Truth Social: 'I have been briefed on the terrible shooting that took place in Minnesota, which appears to be a targeted attack against State Lawmakers. Our Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and the FBI, are investigating the situation, and they will be prosecuting anyone involved to the fullest extent of the law. Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place!'
It must have been hard for Trump to call a place that voted for Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton 'a great place,' but Trump shouldn't get points for doing the basics. A normal president would be on the phone to the other state lawmakers who survived an assassination attempt apparently by the same alleged gunman captured by police Sunday night. A normal president would travel to Minnesota to show compassion for a community whose peace has been so brutally shattered.
The issue of political violence in American politics should be near to Trump's heart. He is after all the survivor of two assassination attempts, including one that left him wounded. The difference between Donald Trump (bloodied), Gabby Giffords (injured for life) and John F. Kennedy (dead) can probably be measured in millimeters.
As The New York Times reported on Sunday, American politics has long been plagued by violence, but in recent years violence has become commonplace and threats nearly ubiquitous, reaching a record last year.
In 2017 a shocking attack on the bipartisan congressional Baseball game left 4 wounded including Republican leader Steve Scalise and a capital policeman.In 2020, a plot to Kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was foiled.In 2022, a crazed intruder attacked Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband with a hammer.In 2024, there were two assassination attempts on Trump.In 2025, an arsonist tried to set Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's state mansion ablaze.
Those were the individual attacks on figures with a national profile that gathered the most attention. Between the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol in 2020 and last October, Reuters had counted 300 lower-level political attacks, including such sickening local events as the man in Northern Michigan who 'enraged by his hatred of Donald Trump used an all-terrain vehicle to run over an 81-year-old man who putting up a (Trump) yard sign.'
Offices firebombed, Teslas set on fire
It is no longer uncommon for bullets to pierce the windows of the politically active, or for vocal political advocates to be assaulted and political offices to be firebombed. When Tesla became a lightning rod in Elon Musks's rise to power, a rash of attempts to burn Telsas, their dealers and their chargers swept the nation, in one case involving a college student in Kansas City.
Both Democrats and Republicans have supporters who are eager for violence. They can be seen in the burning Waymos of Los Angles and the storming of the Capitol in D.C. in 2021.
Both parties speak in such extreme language, and it isn't hard to see violence as part of the predictable product of those words. During one election, Joe Biden, often described as a moderate, told a Black audience that Republicans wanted to see them back in 'chains.' Barack Obama talked of bringing guns to knife fights. Republicans have blamed Democrats' claim that Trump is a 'threat to democracy' for spurring his attempted assassins.
Trump is on a whole other level in terms of the violence in his language and perhaps prompted by it. He has plainly called for assaults on reporters and protesters alike, threatening 'heavy force' against those who planned to protest his birthday military parade. His false claims that the 2020 election was stolen fired the imaginations of thousands who stormed the United States Capitol while Congress was counting votes. Among their violent threats were calls to hang Mike Pence, Trump's own handpicked vice president.
Insurance, abortion and gun control
But for all the power of violent and threatening rhetoric, I don't think that is what is triggering this frightening turn in our politics. Rather I think it is the all-or-nothing, no-compromises approach to policy at the federal, state and local levels that turns politics from a matter of friendly disagreement to a cause of violence.
I first noticed this during the Obama administration with the battle over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The fact that it barely passed did not cause those tasked with turning congressional words into regulatory reality to seek accommodation with those upset by the law. Instead they set out to impose it the way Roman legions imposed Roman law on the conquered.
That moment climaxed with a Supreme Court case in which the Obama administration fought tooth and nail to have anti-abortion Catholic nuns buy insurance plans for their employees that covered what the nuns thought of as murder. An administration that sought comity with those on the other side would never have gone so far.
Republicans are no different. It would be one thing to use their congressional and Supreme Court majorities to end Democratic hopes of gun control for a generation or more, but that is not enough. In their new One Big Beautiful Bill, they plan to remove restrictions and taxes on sound suppressors, what liberals and gun-control advocates call 'silencers,' They've been regulated since 1934.
National Guard, Marines to LA
In a time of political violence, such an extreme move literally activates the fight or flight response of those who fear that the the next targeted assassination won't come with a window-shaking BANG, but instead a softer sound for slaughter. A Congress that sought comity with those on the other side would never have gone so far.
For all his posturing as a man changed by the grace of God on the day a nerdy community college student turned gunman nearly killed him (and did kill his supporter), Trump is still perhaps the greatest avatar of the kind of all-or-nothing politics that I believe fuels this river of violence flooding the fields of our democracy.
You can see it in the fact that calling out the National Guard in Los Angeles was not enough; he needed to call in the Marines. You can see it in a DOGE that killed lifesaving programs for millions right along with frivolous efforts to export drag culture to Latin America. And most sickeningly, you can see it in Trump's decision to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, even those who assaulted the police officers for whom Trump proclaims such respect.
As we look upon those grieving two more lives taken from us in political violence, there are no clean hands. For this to end, we don't just need to change our rhetoric. We need to turn to a politics with a humble understanding that we all might be wrong and respect for our neighbors and family who disagree with us. It isn't just a matter of decency; it can literally mean the difference between life and death.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Washington Post

6 minutes ago

• Washington Post

Democrats are at odds over the Israel-Iran war as Trump considers intervening

After nearly two years of stark divisions over the war in Gaza and support for Israel, Democrats are now finding themselves at odds over U.S. policy toward Iran as progressives demand unified opposition to President Donald Trump's consideration of a strike against Tehran's nuclear program while party leaders tread more cautiously.

Politico

6 minutes ago

• Politico

‘Great American battle' commemorated on 250th anniversary

NEW YORK — As the U.S. marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, it might take a moment — or more — to remember why. Start with the very name. 'There's something percussive about it: Battle of Bunker Hill,' says prize-winning historian Nathaniel Philbrick, whose 'Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution' was published in 2013. 'What actually happened probably gets hazy for people outside of the Boston area, but it's part of our collective memory and imagination.' 'Few 'ordinary' Americans could tell you that Freeman's Farm, or Germantown, or Guilford Court House were battles,' says Paul Lockhart, a professor of history at Wright University and author of a Bunker Hill book, 'The Whites of Their Eyes,' which came out in 2011. 'But they can say that Gettysburg,D-Day, and Bunker Hill were battles.' Bunker Hill, Lockhart adds, 'is the great American battle, if there is such a thing.' Much of the world looks to the Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought in Massachusetts on April 19, 1775, as the start of the American Revolution. But Philbrick, Lockhart and others cite Bunker Hill and June 17 as the real beginning, the first time British and rebel forces faced off in sustained conflict over a specific piece of territory. A day-long reenactment of the battle got underway Saturday morning with the seaside city of Gloucester standing in for Charlestown. Organizers chose a state park some 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Boston to stage the battle because such activity is prohibited at the actual site. Hundreds of onlookers watched as sharpshooters positioned on a rocky outcropping fired upon red-coated British sailors landing in the harbor. During the actual battle, British soldiers responded by setting a fire to drive them off and used the smoke to mask their movements. Bunker Hill was an early showcase for two long-running themes in American history — improvisation and how an inspired band of militias could hold their own against an army of professionals. 'It was a horrific bloodletting, and provided the British high command with proof that the Americans were going to be a lot more difficult to subdue than had been hoped,' says the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson, whose second volume of a planned trilogy on the Revolution, 'The Fate of the Day,' was published in April. The battle was born in part out of error; rebels were seeking to hold off a possible British attack by fortifying Bunker Hill, a 110-foot-high (34-meter-high) peak in Charlestown across the Charles River from British-occupied Boston. But for reasons still unclear, they instead armed a smaller and more vulnerable ridge known as Breed's Hill, 'within cannon shot of Boston,' Philbrick says. 'The British felt they had no choice but to attack and seize the American fort.' Abigail Adams, wife of future President John Adams, and son John Quincy Adams, also a future president, were among thousands in the Boston area who looked on from rooftops, steeples and trees as the two sides fought with primal rage. A British officer would write home about the 'shocking carnage' left behind, a sight 'that never will be erased out of my mind 'till the day of my death.' The rebels were often undisciplined and disorganized and they were running out of gunpowder. The battle ended with them in retreat, but not before the British had lost more than 200 soldiers and sustained more than 1,000 casualties, compared to some 450 colonial casualties and the destruction of hundreds of homes, businesses and other buildings in Charlestown. Bunker Hill would become characteristic of so much of the Revolutionary War: a technical defeat that was a victory because the British needed to win decisively and the rebels needed only not to lose decisively. 'Nobody now entertains a doubt but that we are able to cope with the whole force of Great Britain, if we are but willing to exert ourselves,' Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend in early July. 'As our enemies have found we can reason like men, now let us show them we can fight like men also.'

Associated Press

8 minutes ago

• Associated Press

GOP's food stamp plan is found to violate Senate rules. It's the latest setback for Trump's big bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — In another blow to the Republicans' tax and spending cut bill, the Senate parliamentarian has advised that a proposal to shift some food stamps costs from the federal government to states — a centerpiece of GOP savings efforts — would violate the chamber's rules. While the parliamentarian's rulings are advisory, they are rarely, if ever, ignored. The Republican leadership was scrambling on Saturday, days before voting is expected to begin on President Donald Trump's package that he wants to be passed into law by the Fourth of July. The loss is expected to be costly to Republicans. They have been counting on some tens of billions of potential savings from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, to help offset the costs of the $4.5 trillion tax breaks plan. The parliamentarian let stand for now a provision that would impose new work requirements for older Americans, up to age 65, to receive food stamp aid. 'We will keep fighting to protect families in need,' said Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, which handles the SNAP program. 'The Parliamentarian has made clear that Senate Republicans cannot use their partisan budget to shift major nutrition assistance costs to the states that would have inevitably led to major cuts,' she said. The parliamentarian's ruling is the latest in a series of setbacks as staff works through the weekend, often toward midnight, to assess the 1,000-page proposal. It all points to serious trouble ahead for the bill, which was approved by the House on a party-line vote last month over unified opposition from Democrats and is now undergoing revisions in the Senate. At its core, the goal of the multitrillion-dollar package is to extend tax cuts from Trump's first term that would otherwise expire if Congress fails to act. It also adds new ones, including no taxes on tips and or overtime pay. To help offset the costs of lost tax revenue, the Republicans are proposing cutbacks to federal Medicaid, health care and food programs — some $1 trillion. Additionally, the package boosts national security spending by about $350 billion, including to pay for Trump's mass deportations, which are running into protests nationwide. Trump has implored Republicans, who have the majority in Congress, to deliver on his top domestic priority, but the details of the package, with its hodge-podge of priorities, is drawing deeper scrutiny. All told, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package, as approved by the House, would add at least $2.4 trillion to the nation's red ink over the decade and leave 10.9 million more people without health care coverage. Additionally, it would reduce or eliminate food stamps for more than 3 million people. The parliamentarian's office is tasked with scrutinizing the bill to ensure it complies with the so-called Byrd Rule, which is named after the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, and bars many policy matters in the budget reconciliation process now being used. Late Friday, the parliamentarian issued its latest findings. It determined that Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee's proposal to have the states pick up more of the tab for covering food stamps — what Republicans call a new cost-sharing arrangement — would be in violation of the Byrd Rule. Many lawmakers said the states would not be able to absorb the new requirement on food aid, which has long been provided by the federal government. They warned many would lose access to SNAP benefits used by more than 40 million people. Initially, the CBO had estimated about $128 billion in savings under the House's proposal to shift SNAP food aid costs to the states. Cost estimates for the Senate's version, which made changes to the House approach, have not yet been made publicly available. The parliamentarian's office rulings leave GOP leaders with several options. They can revise the proposals to try to comply with Senate rules or strip them from the package altogether. They can also risk a challenge during floor voting, which would require the 60-vote threshold to overcome. That would be unlikely in the split chamber with Democrats opposing the overall package. The parliamentarian's latest advice also said the committee's provision to make certain immigrants ineligible for food stamps would violate the rule. It found several provisions from the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which is led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to be in violation. They include one to provide $250 million to Coast Guard stations damaged by fire in 2025, namely one on South Padre Island in Texas. Still to come are some of the most important rulings from the parliamentarian. One will assess the GOP's approach that relies on 'current policy' rather than 'current law' as the baseline for determining whether the bill will add to the nation's deficits. Already, the parliamentarian delivered a serious setback Thursday, finding that the GOP plan to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was a core proposal coming from the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, would be in violation of the Byrd Rule. The parliamentarian has also advised of violations over provisions from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that would rollback Environmental Protection Agency emissions standards on certain vehicles and from the Senate Armed Services Committee to require the defense secretary to provide a plan on how the Pentagon intends to spend the tens of billions of new funds. The new work requirements in the package would require many of those receiving SNAP or Medicaid benefits to work 80 hours a month or engage in other community or educational services.