Right-wing extremist violence is more frequent and more deadly than left-wing violence − what the data shows

 By Art Jipson & Paul J. Becker 

 

After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the U.S., and “they should be put in jail.”

“The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.

Top presidential adviser Stephen Miller also weighed in after Kirk’s killing, saying that left-wing political organizations constitute “a vast domestic terror movement.”

“We are going to use every resource we have … throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” Miller said.

But policymakers and the public need reliable evidence and actual data to understand the reality of politically motivated violence. From our research on extremism, it’s clear that the president’s and Miller’s assertions about political violence from the left are not based on actual facts.

Based on our own research and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.

 

Political violence rising

The understanding of political violence is complicated by differences in definitions and the recent Department of Justice removal of an important government-sponsored study of domestic terrorists.

Political violence in the U.S. has risen in recent months and takes forms that go unrecognized. During the 2024 election cycle, nearly half of all states reported threats against election workers, including social media death threats, intimidation and doxing.

Kirk’s assassination illustrates the growing threat. The man charged with the murder, Tyler Robinson, allegedly planned the attack in writing and online.

This follows other politically motivated killings, including the June assassination of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. and former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.

These incidents reflect a normalization of political violence. Threats and violence are increasingly treated as acceptable for achieving political goals, posing serious risks to democracy and society.

Defining ‘political violence’

This article relies on some of our research on extremism, other academic research, federal reports, academic datasets and other monitoring to assess what is known about political violence.

Support for political violence in the U.S. is spreading from extremist fringes into the mainstream, making violent actions seem normal. Threats can move from online rhetoric to actual violence, posing serious risks to democratic practices.

But different agencies and researchers use different definitions of political violence, making comparisons difficult.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security define domestic violent extremism as threats involving actual violence. They do not investigate people in the U.S. for constitutionally protected speech, activism or ideological beliefs.

Domestic violent extremism is defined by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as violence or credible threats of violence intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes. This general framing, which includes diverse activities under a single category, guides investigations and prosecutions.

Datasets compiled by academic researchers use narrower and more operational definitions. The Global Terrorism Database counts incidents that involve intentional violence with political, social or religious motivation.

These differences mean that the same incident may or may not appear in a dataset, depending on the rules applied.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security emphasize that these distinctions are not merely academic. Labeling an event “terrorism” rather than a “hate crime” can change who is responsible for investigating an incident and how many resources they have to investigate it.

For example, a politically motivated shooting might be coded as terrorism in federal reporting, cataloged as political violence by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and prosecuted as homicide or a hate crime at the state level.

Patterns in incidents and fatalities

Despite differences in definitions, several consistent patterns emerge from available evidence.

Politically motivated violence is a small fraction of total violent crime, but its impact is magnified by symbolic targets, timing and media coverage.

In the first half of 2025, 35% of violent events tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted U.S. government personnel or facilities – more than twice the rate in 2024.

Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence in recent years.

Based on government and independent analyses, right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities, amounting to approximately 75% to 80% of U.S. domestic terrorism deaths since 2001.

Illustrative cases include the 2015 Charleston church shooting, when white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine Black parishioners; the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue attack in Pittsburgh, where 11 worshippers were murdered; the 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre, in which an anti-immigrant gunman killed 23 people. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an earlier but still notable example, killed 168 in the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history.

By contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those tied to anarchist or environmental movements, have made up about 10% to 15% of incidents and less than 5% of fatalities.

Examples include the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front arson and vandalism campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s, which were more likely to target property rather than people.

Violence occurred during Seattle May Day protests in 2016, with anarchist groups and other demonstrators clashing with police. The clashes resulted in multiple injuries and arrests. In 2016, five Dallas police officers were murdered by a heavily armed sniper who was targeting white police officers.

 

Hard to count

There’s another reason it’s hard to account for and characterize certain kinds of political violence and those who perpetrate it.

The U.S. focuses on prosecuting criminal acts rather than formally designating organizations as terrorist, relying on existing statutes such as conspiracy, weapons violations, RICO provisions and hate crime laws to pursue individuals for specific acts of violence.

Unlike foreign terrorism, the federal government does not have a mechanism to formally charge an individual with domestic terrorism. That makes it difficult to characterize someone as a domestic terrorist.

The State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list applies only to groups outside of the United States. By contrast, U.S. law bars the government from labeling domestic political organizations as terrorist entities because of First Amendment free speech protections.

Rhetoric is not evidence

Without harmonized reporting and uniform definitions, the data will not provide an accurate overview of political violence in the U.S.

But we can make some important conclusions.

Politically motivated violence in the U.S. is rare compared with overall violent crime. Political violence has a disproportionate impact because even rare incidents can amplify fear, influence policy and deepen societal polarization.

Right-wing extremist violence has been more frequent and more lethal than left-wing violence. The number of extremist groups is substantial and skewed toward the right, although a count of organizations does not necessarily reflect incidents of violence.

High-profile political violence often brings heightened rhetoric and pressure for sweeping responses. Yet the empirical record shows that political violence remains concentrated within specific movements and networks rather than spread evenly across the ideological spectrum. Distinguishing between rhetoric and evidence is essential for democracy.

Trump and members of his administration are threatening to target whole organizations and movements and the people who work in them with aggressive legal measures – to jail them or scrutinize their favorable tax status. But research shows that the majority of political violence comes from people following right-wing ideologies.

Fact Check: RFK Jr. said he met Charlie Kirk in 2001. That's impossible by William Kramer

 Claim:

In mid-September 2025, a video circulated online authentically showing U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying that he went on conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s podcast in 2001, and they became “soulmates.”

 The video was authentic and showed Kennedy making the comments during a funeral prayer vigil held for Kirk at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15, 2025. Kirk, whose podcast launched in 2019, would have been 7 years old in July 2001 and therefore could not have spoken to Kennedy on "The Charlie Kirk Show" at that time. Snopes contacted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, headed by Kennedy, for clarification on the secretary's comments.

 

In September 2025, a video circulated online purportedly showing U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying that he met Charlie Kirk on the latter's podcast, "The Charlie Kirk Show," in July 2001, and that by the end of recording they had become "soulmates" and "spiritual brothers."

The video appeared on X (archived) and Instagram (archived), where users shared their confusion about the claim, given that Kirk would have been a child in 2001. Snopes readers also searched our website for information about the rumor.

 The video was authentic and was not the product of artificial intelligence. Multiple credible news outlets, such as CBS News (archived) and C-SPAN (archived), posted longer versions of the footage confirming that Kennedy made the comment on Sept. 15, 2025, during a prayer vigil held at the Kennedy Center, Washington D.C., for the late Charlie Kirk, the co-founder and CEO of Turning

 Point USA, who was fatally shot in Utah five days earlier at a speaking event on Sept. 10.

 

It would have been impossible for Kennedy and Kirk to have met on the latter's podcast in July 2001, as Kirk would have been just 7 years old at the time. Additionally, "The Charlie Kirk Show" didn't launch until nearly two decades later, on May 1, 2019.

Social media users speculated that Kennedy misspoke and meant to say 2021. He did appear on Kirk's podcast (archived) in July 2021, therefore it is possible he misspoke. Snopes contacted HHS for clarification on Kennedy's comments and will update this story if we receive a response.

In the clip, Kennedy explained how his relationship with Kirk developed (emphasis in bold ours):

I met Charlie for the first time in July of 2001. I went on his podcast, and I think we approached each other with a lot of trepidation at that time, but by the end of that podcast we were soulmates, we were spiritual brothers and we were friends. And over the next couple of years our friendship blossomed. He ended up being the primary architect of my unification with President Trump, which I did my endorsement at his rally, at the Turning Point rally in Scottsdale, and he was the one who put the sparklers on the stage when I showed up.

The comment "over the next couple of years" suggested that the pair's meeting occurred close to when Kennedy was picked by U.S. President Donald Trump in 2024 to be head of HHS, giving credence to the possibility that Kennedy misspoke.

 

American Democracy Might Be Stronger Than Donald Trump By Jonathan Schlefer

 

For the last 10 years, we’ve been hearing that President Donald Trump will preside over the end of democracy in America. In liberal circles, that assertion is often accepted as fact. For many, the proof is in the evidence from other countries’ democratic declines.

A whole genre of American political writing is issuing this warning. Perhaps the best known entrant is How Democracies Die, by the Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. The authors mention a few democracies that fought off authoritarianism but overwhelmingly recount just what the title says: how democracies die. There are many other examples of the genre. “I Watched It Happen in Hungary. Now It’s Happening Here,” announces a former U.S. ambassador. Having shaken hands with “democracy killers” from Thailand to Zambia, Brian Klaas warns in The Atlantic, “American democracy is dying.”

 But the United States is different from many of the countries that feature prominently in the “death of democracy” literature. And for Americans concerned about what Trump will do in his second term, the ways other democracies have died isn’t the central concern. Those accounts are a bit like detailing how Covid can kill people but not assessing the chances, depending on age and risk factors, that the disease will kill you.

The real question is whether U.S. democracy will survive or not. The genre hardly asks that question, let alone answers it.

To be sure, Trump does all the same things as the authoritarians Levitsky and Ziblatt studied: He has refused to accept electoral defeats; called political opponents criminals and tried to jail them even while backing his own violent supporters; and lashed out at opponents and the media as “enemies of the people” — a chilling phrase that echoes Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

 

But Trump’s authoritarianism also resembles that of dangerous populists who failed to kill democracy. Careful studies that never seem to get much press find that only about a fifth of dangerous populists actually kill democracy, including in different regions and across different time spans. If you’re serious about weighing the Trump threat, you should be asking what makes the difference between countries where democracy died and countries where it survives.

A significant difficulty in answering this question arises from the structure of the political science discipline itself. When I got my doctorate some 23 years ago, American politics occupied one subfield and comparative politics (the study of all other nations, often via comparison) occupied another — and never the twain should meet. Levitsky and Ziblatt are comparativists. This division has only begun to soften. It’s difficult to apply lessons from elsewhere to Trump’s America because the U.S. political system does differ starkly from others, but this disciplinary divide has made that problem even harder.

I’m also a comparativist, but where Levitsky and Ziblatt focused on Latin America and pre-World War II Europe (plenty of failed democracies in both), I have looked further and wider, from the old Mexican ruling party to the Greek financial crisis, from how economists think to the divisions splitting American liberals. I have found research outside of the literature on dying democracies that asks relevant and important questions. What can we learn, for instance, from the advanced capitalist democracies that survived the brutal 20th century — two world wars, the Great Depression in the 1930s, stagflation in the 1970s, Soviet and Chinese threats? Only two fell to internal authoritarian threats: Italy and Germany between the world wars

 

This is a dire moment for U.S. democracy. To make it worse, the assassination of Charlie Kirk threatens to ratchet up not only the recent surge of political violence but to reanimate the poisonous tradition of political assassination that runs through Martin Luther King., Jr., President John F. Kennedy, the many Black leaders murdered during Jim Crow, and the Civil War. Deranged individuals perpetrated the recent attacks, but shared fear that U.S. politics is at an existential moment as the 2026 and 2028 elections approach surely portends more widespread and equally damaging threats of violence.

What if Americans didn’t see the dangers to our democracy as existential? If we had more faith that our democracy would survive Trump 2.0, it might take some venom out of this political atmosphere. It might provide some institutions more confidence to fight unconstitutional Trump demands — to be more like the law firm Perkins Coie, which fought back and not cave like another law firm, Paul, Weiss. It might make ABC and its affiliates more willing to stand up to threats from the administration to police what comedians like Jimmy Kimmel say on the air. The Democratic Party might pay more attention to what they can do for voters instead of harping on the Trump menace — a theme that obviously didn’t work for them in 2024. All Americans might better see beyond this fraught moment to focus more on solving the problems of a democracy that was already in grave need of repair before Trump made the situation far worse.

A careful comparison with countries that fought off autocratic attempts, as well as those that succumbed, suggests that American democracy might be more resilient than you think. At a minimum, it has crucial advantages over democracies that failed. Three main things stand out: None was nearly so rich. None was nearly so long-lived. And none had a legal establishment tracing its genealogy back to the Magna Carta in 1215.

 Rich democracies rarely die. As the political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset wrote in 1959, “The more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy.” In fact, he added, the idea goes back to Aristotle. Whether high per capita income can make a nation democratic is not so clear, and definitions of democracy, let alone calculations of income, can be squishy, but the general claim that wealth sustains democracy has repeatedly held up.

 

The prominent democracy theorist Adam Przeworski of New York University, born in Poland under the Nazis and raised under the Communists, famously observed in 2005 that while democracy had fallen again and again in developing nations, economies richer than Argentina when the military seized control in 1976 had survived a thousand years all told. None had failed, despite “wars, riots, scandals, economic and governmental crises, hell or high water.”

Turkey and Hungary have since broken the “Argentina 1976” threshold. Still, a 2020 study identified only three types of states where per capita income topped $36,000: democracies, petrostates and the wealthy trading hub of Singapore. Longevity matters, too. A 2005 statistical tour de force found that if a presidency survived more than 50 years and had a per capita income more than $23,000, it had a zero percent chance of failing. (Those studies used different base years for the income levels; I have adjusted them for inflation to approximate 2025 equivalents. By comparison, current U.S. GDP per capita is about $86,000.) Statistical studies do not guarantee there will never be outliers, as Przeworski learned. Still, such broad agreement over so many years is powerful.

Why rich, long-lived democracies are strong is actually puzzling, and despite a large literature on why nations democratize and (lately) why they fail, incredibly little has been written on it. Since the result holds for both parliamentary and presidential regimes, political scientists assume it arises less from the structure of political systems than it does from the underlying civil society.

Przeworski suggested that while lower-income societies can erupt in all-or-nothing struggle over scarce resources, wealthy societies develop an existential fear of losing the rule of law, dreading that fate as worse than any particular electoral loss. In fact, a commitment to the rule of law binds sectors of society in advanced capitalist democracies that might otherwise be in conflict. Educated workers are rewarded in those systems, so it makes sense that they want to protect it. But they are often seconded by those who hope they or their children can join this group. Recent immigrants find in developed democracies what their own nations may lack: a credible legal system, better schools, even drinkable water.

We’ve seen plenty of serious damage to democracy lately. But mostly such backsliding doesn’t kill democracy. Using the V-Dem database, which provides literally hundreds of indicators of governance on a scale from democratic to autocratic, researchers at the University of Texas find that in 30 instances of backsliding between 2000 and 2019 (including Trump 1.0), only eight led to democratic breakdown. That’s a failure rate, even once backsliding has occurred, of about 25 percent.

 Civil society — big business, law firms, nonprofits, universities, media — fights backsliding. When Orban’s government creates businesses by showering them with contracts and keeps friendly media outlets afloat as the largest advertiser in the nation, they either submit or face ruin. A wealthy society provides such plentiful resources to independent institutions of civil society, and they span so far and wide across the political landscape, that they are effectively impossible to quash. Longevity surely contributes here, too, because the longer those institutions have to mature, the more established they become.

 

U.S. democracy has another strength: It’s presidential. The conventional wisdom used to suggest the opposite. Concerned more with the emergence and consolidation of democracy than its survival, theorists saw parliamentary systems as more secure. That’s because prime ministers often lead coalitions of multiple parties, giving diverse voices some say, and when things go wrong, they can be ousted in a vote of no confidence far more easily than a president can be impeached. Also, a few decades ago, presidencies looked unstable partly because the military routinely overthrew them in Latin America.

 

Recently, military coups are mostly out as ways to seize power. Instead, the current challenge to democracy has been autocrats who win election and try to grab authoritarian power from within to stay in office, and this is easier in parliamentary systems. Prime ministers by definition command a majority vote of parliament, so the opposition can’t even hope to check them by controlling an upper or lower legislative chamber like in the U.S. Congress. And when multiple parties split the vote, a small majority or even a plurality can sometimes win a supermajority in parliament. Notably, in 2010, with just 53 percent of the vote, Viktor Orban won a two-thirds majority in Hungary’s Assembly. It allowed him to gain domination over the Constitutional Court, rewrite the Constitution, and wily step by wily step, cinch autocratic control without even flaunting the letter of the law.

Presidential checks and balances also complicate the lives of aspiring authoritarians by making it harder to replace judges. Kurt Weyland of the University of Texas identifies 17 dangerous populists since 1980 in presidencies of at least middling strength, such as Argentina or Brazil. Only two succeeded in killing democracy, and those two had an important thing in common.

 Trump’s support may dismay his opponents, but it’s far lower than he needs to kill off democracy. In presidential systems of at least middling strength, populists who defeated democracy since 1980 had approval ratings of 80 percent or more — nearly twice Trump’s approval rating, which has been stuck in the 40s both in his first term and so far in his second.

 

The two presidents who in succeeded in killing Weyland’s democracies were Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Both rose to power by solving major crises that helped them rack up public approval ratings of 80 to 90 percent. When a leader is that popular, centers that might check his power — the military, the courts, congress — may support him (they’re comprised of people too) or at least hesitate to coordinate in opposition.

In Fujimori’s case, one crisis was 10,000 percent inflation; the money that had bought a luxurious house five years earlier could purchase a tube of toothpaste when he took office in 1990. He drastically brought the rate down to much more normal levels. He also halted a civil war waged by Shining Path guerrillas, in which tens of thousands of Peruvians had died.

For his part, Bukele won El Salvador’s presidency in 2019 as a populist outsider who pledged to crack down on gangs that had overrun the county. Covid gave him that chance. He locked the nation down, which held the pandemic death rate to less than a fifth that of Mexico or the United States and also suppressed the homicide rate to a fifth of its 2015 peak. Securing a supermajority in Congress, he purged the judiciary, and that was pretty much that.

 While Fujimori stars in the death-of-democracy literature as a cautionary example, President Jorge Serrano of Guatemala barely gets a mention. But Serrano’s experience is more common. Having accomplished little and seen his approval rating drop to 20 percent, in 1993 he tried copying Fujimori, closing Congress and the courts. Massive protests erupted, the Constitutional Court declared his coup illegal, he lost military support and he fled the country. Something similar happened last year in South Korea when an unpopular president’s attempt to impose martial law was thwarted dramatically by parliament and protesters.

 

The United States isn’t supplying the kind of crisis that could generate for Trump a Fujimori-style level of popular support. Advanced nations rarely do. And it’s doubtful the distractable Trump could solve a good crisis if he lucked into one. After all, he didn’t manage Covid particularly well in his first term, ending his presidency with an approval rating of just 34 percent. His attempts to manufacture crises in his second term, such as by sending troops into Los Angeles or Washington, so far seem more likely to hurt him.

Trump is also failing to expand his base of support. While competent autocrats built alliances with supporters, he keeps alienating them, from Elon Musk, still the richest man in the world, to Ileana Garcia, co-founder of Latinas for Trump. Pardoning Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted the police might fire up Trump’s base but is opposed by two thirds of Americans. Likewise, attacking officials his fertile paranoia imagines to be plotting against him; loosing new tariffs daily; passing a budget bill that will kick many of his supporters off Medicaid while cutting taxes for the wealthy — none of this is likely to help him build support. As job creation stagnates and inflation slowly rises, the very issues Trump campaigned on could weaken him. With around 8 percent more Americans disapproving than approving him, there’s little sign he is on track to reach the soaring level of popularity of successful populists-turned-autocrats

 

Experience shows that, if all else fails, the judiciary is the last bulwark of democracy. So far, lower courts have repeatedly blocked Trump’s excesses. Still, the Supreme Court has the last say, and Trump is openly counting on its justices to endorse his expansions of presidential power. Granted, it is dominated by conservative Federalist Society justices who have long been committed to the idea of the “unitary executive.” That idea has led them to issue some awful emergency decisions: letting Trump replace agency heads with sycophants, fire government officials by the hundred thousand and block billions of dollars for programs Congress approved.

 

But it remains a Federalist Society Court, not a Trumpist Court. In his first term, Trump had the worst record at the Supreme Court in the modern era. Federalist Society judges threw out his ridiculous challenges to the 2020 election again and again. The acting U.S. attorney who recently resigned rather than obey orders to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams belongs to the Federalist Society. Federalist Society lawyers fired from the Justice Department are hanging out shingles to accept clients suing him.

There’s also less than meets the eye to some of the court’s pro-Trump decisions. Trump v. United States, which grants presidents immunity for any acts within their core responsibilities, would let a president order Navy Seals to assassinate a political rival, Justice Sonia Sotomayor charged in her dissent. But that decision does not immunize the Seals. Assassinating a Trump rival would still be murder one for anyone who took part. Or suppose Trump tried to assemble fake electors. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett pointed out in her concurring opinion, managing elections is not a core presidential responsibility — actually, not a responsibility at all — so Trump could well be prosecuted for that.

And the administration has lost some key substantive cases in this term, as well. On March 15, Trump violated a district court order by sending 137 supposed members of a Venezuelan gang under the pretext of the Alien Enemies Act, along with 101 others under normal deportation procedures, to one of Bukele’s notorious jails. But when the administration tried to repeat that trick, the Supreme Court ruled nine to zero — without a single dissent — that the ancient right of habeas corpus requires that all of them be allowed to challenge in court both the constitutionality of the charges and their status as a gang member.

The bottom line is that, unlike Republicans in Congress who fear being primaried by the Trump political machine, federal judges hold life tenure and care how they’re seen by history. Even regarding that Trump v. United States decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch insisted, “We’re writing a rule for the ages.” And for all the court’s seeming willingness to strengthen Trump’s hand over the executive branch, the president’s chances of completely replacing all the justices, as Bukele did, or rewriting the Constitution, as Fujimori did, would seem to be close to zero.

Finally, violating a Supreme Court ruling would generate massive opposition. A Times/Siena College poll found that only 6 percent of Americans would support such a thing. As the examples of Guatemala and South Korea show, aspiring autocrats who grab for power as their popularity wanes are the ones who tend to land in jail or exile.

 

To be sure, U.S. democracy has some vulnerabilities most other advanced democracies do not. Inequality is a big one, contributing in no small measure to political polarization and democratic erosion.

High school graduates’ real wages rose a grand 27 cents over the past half century, and workers with less than four years of college did only slightly better. The United States is at the bad end of what political economists call the Great Gatsby Curve, where worse income inequality goes hand-in-hand with worse social mobility. Advanced firms abandoned flyover country for metropolitan areas, robbing public schools of funds, while deaths of despair — from drugs, alcohol and suicide — surged. The Biden administration’s immigration fiasco badly exacerbated existing racial tensions.

 

However, inequality need not lead to a democratic collapse. Latin American nations that foiled authoritarian bids — such as by Fernando Collor and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or by a small handful of Peruvian presidents since 2000 — struggle with equal or worse income inequalities, fierce racial and social divides, ideological antagonism from neoliberalism to reckless Marxism (sometimes alternately espoused by the same famous zealot), and weaponized social media. It’s hard to see why the United States should do worse than these nations.

Along with American democracy’s wealth, longevity and legal tradition, the people are its bulwark. Authoritarians don’t have to be political scientists to know that if they lose public support, they can fall — sometimes ousted at a sudden tipping point, as in Eastern Europe in 1989. To try to manufacture an appearance of strength, Trump exaggerates his support, broadcasts favorable lies, attacks critical media and tries to cow opponents.

This might help explain why Trump is unnerved by public protests. Drawing on a comprehensive database of civil disobedience, Erica Chenoweth of the Harvard Kennedy School has estimated that when 3.5 percent of the population has risen in nonviolent protest against autocrats, almost 90 percent of them have fallen. It’s a rule of thumb that mostly worked in the past, Chenoweth cautions, not a guarantee that a 3.5 percent protest rate will work now. Most of the protests in the database occurred before widespread social media, so the more sustained efforts needed to organize them might have been crucial.

Still, Chenoweth underlines citizens’ vital role in democracy. In fact, her analysis is that even 1 percent protests took down almost half of the autocrats they were directed against. Some 5 million Americans — 1.5 percent — joined the No Kings protest against Trump in July, according to organizers, which would make it the third largest protest in U.S. history.

Massive protests matter in part because they signal wider agreement. The drivers who passed No Kings protests across the nation honking in support weren’t among the 5 million, but they count too, as do those feeling discontent but taking notice as they were cleaning their kitchens or mowing their lawns. Living individual lives, citizens may not be aware of others’ thinking. Protest makes known resistance that would otherwise remain merely private and implicit.

Large, peaceful protests also signal to powerful elites in the military, business, courts, legislature, even the ruling coalition, that the current state of affairs is going badly. Elites are citizens, too, and often divided, even in military governments. Protests give some permission to powerful elites and allies to at least remain neutral, if not abandon support for a regime. Other coalition members, strategically calculating odds based on what they see, may keep an eye out for signs they should desert so as not to be caught on a sinking ship.

Despite his bluster, Trump is probably worried. He should be. American democracy is wounded. But, however awful its deterioration feels, it’s a long way from dead.

Johnson weighs in on Bondi’s ‘hate speech’ comments: ‘We do not censor and silence disfavored viewpoints byFilip Timotija

 

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) weighed in on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “hate speech” comments on Tuesday, saying the U.S. does not “censor and silence disfavored viewpoints.”

Bondi clarified her comment made on Katie Miller’s podcast, where she indicated that hate speech could be prosecuted under the law.

“Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime,” Bondi said on the social platform X.

 

“For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence,” she continued. “That era is over.”

The clarification came after she received criticism, including from some GOP lawmakers and political commentators, over remarks she made on the podcast, hosted by the wife of White House adviser Stephen Miller, about free expression.

“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” Bondi said in an episode released on Monday.

When asked on Tuesday at the Capitol about Bondi’s comments and where the line is with free speech, Johnson said he approaches the issue as a “former litigator who defended free speech in the courts.”

 

“For a couple [of] decades, we defended religious freedom and speech that some people deemed to be inappropriate,” Johnson told reporters. “Look, in America, it’s a very important part of our tradition that we do not — this is a conservative principle and certainly an American principle — we do not censor and silence disfavored viewpoints.”

“People in America are allowed to say crazy things. Now, that said, if I’m an employer or I’m a government agency, and I have someone in my employee who is online celebrating the heinous murder of an innocent person, a young husband and father, I can make the decision that they don’t deserve to work for me,” he said, referring to last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah.

“They shouldn’t represent my company or my agency, and I have every right to do that, and I think that’s appropriate,” the Speaker added.

Along with the criticism, some of the conservative influencers and commentators have called on Bondi to resign. The attorney general has previously faced blowback over the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein documents.

 “That’s not the government censoring speech, that’s personal behavior and decorum, and you have a right to enforce that,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “So, I don’t think it’s a violation of core principles for people to have appropriate measures taken when they act like crazy people online.”

 He added, “And that’s up to the employers and these private businesses and these, you know, the people who make those decisions.”

DOJ Quietly Deletes Study After Charlie Kirk's Death That Says Right-Wing Extremists Engage in 'Far More' Political Violence

 Angel Saunders

 "Far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists," an archived version of the study reads

 

• A study on the growing frequency of “far-right attacks” was removed from the Department of Justice’s website

• The removal happened after right-wing political commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on a college campus in Utah

• An archived version of the study is still available online, and states that “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides” than the left

The U.S. Department of Justice appears to have quietly removed information online regarding right-wing violence following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

As of Friday, Sept. 12, a 2024 study titled “What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism” no longer appears on the DOJ website under President Donald Trump's administration. However, it is still viewable as an archived post on Wayback Machine.

 “Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism,” the first two lines of the study read.

 

The study went on to say, “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.”

Kirk was shot and killed on Thursday, Sept. 10, during a speaking event at Utah Valley University that was part of the right-wing political commentator’s nationwide American Comeback Tour.

The 31-year-old was struck from 200 yards away while inviting critics to "prove me wrong" on various political subjects.

 

Utah Valley University student Hunter Kozak was the last person to speak with Kirk, who had been taking questions from the crowd at the time of his death.

"Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” Kozak asked Kirk.

 Kozak told Kirk that only five transgender Americans have been involved in mass shootings over the last decade.

Kozak then asked Kirk if he knew how many mass shooters America had seen in the last 10 years.

"Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk replied. He was then fatally shot.

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old charged with killing Kirk, allegedly confessed to his roommate and romantic partner that he carried out the crime because he “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred.”

 Robinson also described his own father as a "pretty diehard maga" member.

 During a Sept. 12 appearance on Fox & Friends, Trump, 79, responded to a question about how to "come back together" amid political division following Kirk’s death by saying, “I couldn’t care less.”

"The radicals on the left are the problem,” he added. “They’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”

Trump’s comments come after the Democratic leader of the Minnesota House, Melissa Hortman, was killed alongside her husband at their home in June in what Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz considered a "politically motivated assassination." 

 

The couple and their dog were killed at their house on June 14 by a gunman who pretended to be law enforcement, according to authorities.

Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot in their home — allegedly by the same gunman — but recovered from their injuries.

The Minnesota and Utah attacks were the latest high-profile examples of political violence targeting figures on both sides of the aisle.

On Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump rioters breached the U.S. Capitol in search of lawmakers; in 2022, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked with a hammer by a home intruder; on the 2024 campaign trail, Trump survived two apparent assassination attempts; and earlier in 2025, Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's home was set ablaze while he and his family were asleep inside.

Read the original article on People

Poorer Americans hit hardest as tariffs fuel price rises by Danielle Kaye

 

There's a divide in the US economy between the haves and the have-nots. And accelerating inflation, driven in part by tariffs, could make it worse.

Government data points to the early stages of businesses passing on the costs of US President Donald Trump's sweeping import tariffs to consumers.

Still, inflation remains well below its peak, and a debate continues over the extent to which tariffs will lead to a sustained rise in the pace of price hikes.

But Americans like Yanique Clarke are feeling the pinch.

Yanique, a nursing student in Manhattan who identifies as lower-income, said while shopping for groceries at a Target store this week that "prices are really drastically high" for meat, vegetables and fruit.

"It's quite a while now, but it's getting higher," she said.

And it's not just groceries. When she was recently back-to-school shopping for her 13-year-old daughter, Yanique found those prices to be "very much higher compared to previous years".

 

What Yanique sees in the grocery and clothing aisles aligns with data from the Labor Department, released on Thursday. In August, prices for several tariff-exposed products ticked up: clothing prices, for instance, rose 0.5% from the previous month.

Grocery prices also increased 0.6% in the month to August, with particularly strong gains for coffee, a product that is sensitive to tariffs.

Economists noted that the growth in food prices, which tend to be volatile, might also be driven by the Trump administration's immigration policies, as mass deportations suppress the workforce in the food and agriculture sectors and boost labour costs.

But how Americans experience the rising prices for everyday goods is far from uniform.

"Lower-income households are almost tailor-made to be exposed to tariffs," said Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab. Mr Tedeschi was previously an economist in the Biden administration.

Those with less disposable income tend to spend more of their budget on imports, Mr Tedeschi said. Moreover, the type of imports that have disproportionately borne the burden of tariffs so far this year, such as imports from China, tend to be lower-priced goods, he added.

A report from the Yale Budget Lab released earlier this month found that, as of June, core goods prices were 1.9% above pre-2025 trends, suggesting that tariffs are raising prices for window coverings, appliances and electronics, among other basic products.

Corporate executives are taking note of the consumer divide. McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski warned earlier this month that higher-income Americans are still able to spend freely while everyone else falters. It is part of why the chain is expanding its value menu, to entice price-conscious customers.

"Particularly, with middle and lower-income consumers, they're feeling under a lot of pressure right now," Mr Kempczinski said.

"It's really kind of a two-tier economy," he added.

 

Back at the Manhattan Target store, Nancy Garcia glanced at price tags in the clothing section.

"Now I'm doing more price comparison," she said. "I'm comparing, is this on sale at the supermarket?

"But even the supermarket has gotten really expensive."

Nancy, who works in the publishing and gifts industry, said she considers herself to be middle-income. Through her work, she has heard small retailers raise concerns about tariffs affecting their bottom line.

But she said it is unclear whether the supermarkets and chains where she tends to shop are raising prices because of tariffs, or if "people are taking advantage".

Sylvia Sealy, who lives in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, was looking at the clothing racks at a discount department store in Manhattan this week, lamenting what she viewed as skyrocketing prices for everything from groceries and clothes to building materials.

"Since tariffs started, I check around for prices," said Sylvia, a part-time nurse who also identified as middle-income.

"If there's something in this store for $15, you could get it somewhere probably for $12. So you shop in that way more now. Before, you just go and you buy."

Recent reports show emerging signs of strain on less affluent Americans.

Data from the Census Bureau showed inflation-adjusted household income rose last year only for the highest earning households. Those in the low and middle-income brackets, on the other hand, did not see statistically significant changes.

And a study from the Boston Federal Reserve last month found that low and middle-income consumers are facing higher levels of credit card debt than they did before the coronavirus pandemic. It is wealthier Americans who are increasingly propping up the consumer economy, the study showed.

Overall, the consumer is doing reasonably well, said Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics. But those with less of a savings cushion are poised to be hit particularly hard by tariffs, he added.

"When you peel back the layers of the onion, it's clear that we have a very bifurcated consumer," he said.

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US Catholic bishops decry Trump’s immigration raids upending church life by By LUIS ANDRES HENAO

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — A group of top U.S. Catholic bishops and nuns on the front lines of the country’s immigration conflict have decried the Trump administration’s hard-line policies for tearing apart families, inciting fear and upending American church life.

While criticizing the federal government, the Catholic leaders also explained at a Thursday panel discussion at Georgetown University how they are supporting worried immigrants. With President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda and ramped up immigration enforcement, they said, many families are wary of taking their children to school, going to work or church for fear of being detained and deported.

“The way that the immigration policies are enforced these days are not only destabilizing the life of the particular immigrant, but whole families, businesses, the life of children, whole communities, neighborhoods,” said Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, of Washington, D.C. “What I’m seeing in people’s eyes, is pain and a deep confusion. … Where do we go from here if we’re not welcome.” 

 Adding to those fears is a change made at the start of Trump’s second term that gave immigration officers more leeway to make arrests at schools and houses of worship — long considered off limits. This is being challenged in court by teachers and faith groups. 

 “For me, it’s very personal because I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” said Menjivar-Ayala. He crossed the U.S. border illegally in 1990 after leaving his native El Salvador during the country’s civil war. Now a U.S. citizen, he became the first Salvadoran bishop in the United States.

Helping keep hope alive in struggling families is a critical part of providing support, said Sister Norma Pimentel, a leading migrant-rights activist along the U.S.-Mexico border who spoke on the panel. She runs Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, a respite center for beleaguered migrants in McAllen, Texas.

 

She recalled visiting immigrant families at a detention center in a “terrible condition,” and being moved to tears.

“I saw Border Patrol agents looking at us, and they, too, were moved and were crying,” she said. “When I walked out of there, the officer turned to me and said, ‘Thank you, sister, for helping us realize they’re human beings.’”

Department of Homeland Security officials have maintained there will be no safe spaces for those who are in the country illegally, have committed crimes, or tried to undermine immigration enforcement. They have consistently said their efforts are intended to safeguard public safety and national security.

 

Catholic leaders at odds with Trump over immigration

Catholic leaders follow the church’s core doctrine against abortion and same-sex marriage, priorities they share with many political conservatives. But they’ve been at odds with the Trump administration on immigration.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced the end of a half-century of partnerships with the federal government to serve refugees and migrant children, saying the “heartbreaking” decision followed the Trump administration’s abrupt halt to funding.

 

In February, the late Pope Francis also issued a major rebuke to the administration’s plans for mass deportations of migrants, warning that the forceful removal of people purely because of their illegal status deprives them of their inherent dignity.

At the panel, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski highlighted the contributions of immigrants to the country’s economy.

“If you ask people in agriculture, you ask in the service industry, you ask people in health care, you ask the people in the construction field, and they’ll tell you that some of their best workers are immigrants,” said Wenski, who has served on the USCCB’s migration committee. “Enforcement is always going to be part of any immigration policy, but we have to rationalize it and humanize it.”

Wenski joined the “Knights on Bikes” ministry, an initiative led by the Knights of Columbus that draws attention to the spiritual needs of people held at immigration detention centers, including the one in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” He recalled praying a rosary with the bikers in the scorching heat outside its walls. Days later, he got permission to celebrate Mass inside the facility.

“The fact that we invite these detainees to pray, even in this very dehumanizing situation, is a way of emphasizing and invoking their dignity,” he said. “More importantly that God has not forgotten them.”

 

Los Angeles archdiocese suffers after immigration raids

In Los Angeles County, the Trump administration’s ramped up arrests of people suspected of living in the country illegally has upended life for tens of thousands of people. About a third of the county’s 10 million residents are foreign-born, and many are now trying to live without being noticed.

Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez said on the panel that the fear-inducing effect of immigration raids lowered attendance at Mass, and affected valuable church programs that mostly serve immigrants. The archdiocese is helping those being detained and facing deportation with legal and financial assistance.

“People are really afraid of going out of their homes,” said Gomez, the first Latino to serve as USCCB president. “A lot of the priests are telling me here in the archdiocese that at least 30% of the people attending Mass are not coming anymore.”

 

Panelists warn of fallout from immigration crackdown

The panel, which included academics and legal experts, lamented the suffering of children separated from their parents. Legal expert Ashley Feasley, who is with Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law, noted the millions of children who are U.S. citizens and have parents and other family members in the country illegally.

“When we think about the level of enforcement that is starting, occurring, and will intensify … we have to think about these families. What will they do? How will they handle it if a parent gets detained?” Feasley said.

Trump has portrayed his federal law enforcement surge in Washington as focused on tackling crime. But data from the federal operation, analyzed by The Associated Press, shows that more than 40% of the arrests made over the monthlong operation were in fact related to immigration.

“The president says that he’s enforcing these policies to make our cities safer, but if immigrants, if people are afraid of interacting with law enforcement, with police, reporting crimes, obviously they’re going to become targets of crimes,” said Menjivar-Ayala.

“This is not going to help to make our streets, our communities safer.”

Ministering to immigrants at the border

Mark Seitz, the bishop of El Paso, Texas, said it is crucial to continue informing immigrant communities about their rights

“We don’t stop at praying,” Seitz, chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration, told the panel.

“Prayer moves us to action, and that’s what we ought to be doing — to abide by our support, our love, our accompaniment, by being present to people who’ve been terrorized by the actions of the government.”

At end of the panel, Gomez said it’s important to remember that the United States is a country of immigrants.

“I think we’ll have immigrant reform very soon. That’s my prayer and my dream -- that we can get something done, finally, as a solution of these challenges,” he said.