It’s been another violent year in America. There’s been a renewed focus on political violence following the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the attacks on Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota.

Jacob Ware studies terrorism for the Council on Foreign Relations and is the co-author of God, Guns, and Sedition: Far Right Terrorism in America.

In an interview with Detroit Public Radio, Ware says these latest acts of violence have done nothing to quell the potential for more.

Ware says it’s concerning that some of the safeguards to monitor extremism are gone.

Cuts to counterterrorism

“Our counterterrorism infrastructure has been largely eroded, if not destroyed, by the Trump administration, and in particular, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) cuts in places like the FBI and DHS,” Ware said.

Under the Trump administration, efforts of federal law enforcement have been reassigned to immigration enforcement. Ware says undocumented immigrants are not a threat of political violence or terrorism.

“Undocumented immigrants can be a source of a variety of challenges, including crime, including drugs, but it typically has not had a relationship with with terrorism,” Ware said. “In fact, in a study I conducted last year, I found that the number of terrorist fatalities caused by undocumented immigrants in US history is actually zero.”

Ware believes law enforcement’s focus on immigration enforcement is one factor in a rise in terrorism. Another is a lack of deterrence.

“When President Trump pardoned 1,500 people who committed an attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he began to erode that deterrence,” Ware said. “People in America no longer feel like acts of violence perpetrators on behalf of political ideologies are going to be punished.”

The federal government also uses community outreach programs to stop radicalization.

“Prevention is basically federal grants that go to local organizations—grassroots organizations—that work to build resilience against radicalization in their own communities,” Ware said. “That grant making ability has been built up over several administrations, including the first Trump administration… and that work has now largely been been canceled through through the DOGE cuts.”

Response to latest political violence

The Trump Administration has used the killing of Charlie Kirk to blame left-wing groups, even though there’s been no evidence the alleged shooter was aligned with any.

President Trump wants to designate Antifa —the loose collective of left-wing individuals that oppose fascism—as a terrorist organization. Antifa has no leadership structure.

Ware says that’s not the only reason there’s little chance of Trump succeeding.

“It’s important to note that we actually don’t even have domestic terrorism laws, let alone domestic terrorism lists, in this country,” Ware said.

“So in theory, these are really empty threats. There is no way to designate a domestic group as a terrorist organization.

Political violence has been in the news so much, it can sometimes feel exhausting. Last week, the conservative activist, Charlie Kirk, was killed.

But there’s good reason the incident has gotten so much coverage. It’s an indicator of something much bigger and more devastating than the act alone — it’s a signal that our democracy is in a fragile state. 

That’s in part because political violence has been on the rise.

President Donald Trump was shot while on the campaign trail in 2024. An arsonist set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion in April. In June, a former Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband were assassinated. An insurrection took place at the capitol well before all that. 

And that’s all outside of Michigan. 

Here, a capital riot took place in 2020. A kidnapping was attempted on our governor, Gretchen Whitmer, that same year, in part with hopes of starting a civil war. Just last week, vandalism hit a mosque in Warren. 

But what’s troubling experts about this violence is not just these events. It’s also the reactions to them. 

Comments about Charlie Kirk’s death on social media were often ferocious. Conservatives were calling for war against liberals. Liberals were happy with Kirk’s death. 

To be sure, these are the loudest voices. That’s the way social media algorithms work. The most extreme voices get the most attention because they translate to more advertising revenue. 

But people are still choosing to express views of hate and vitriol. 

How did we get here? And how do we get to a place where our democracy is stronger — where disagreement, and the bodies that contain those various perspectives, can live side by side?

Shikha Dalmia studies authoritarianism in an effort to stop it, and make us a freer society. She’s the president of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and the Founder and Editor of the Substack, The UnPopulist. She spoke with Robyn Vincent.

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