J.D. Tuccille: Left-wing violence on the rise in the U.S., but it’s a trend across factions

Reports identify California engineer and computer scientist Cole Thomas Allen, 31, shown here in an image shared to social media by U.S. President Donald Trump, as the suspect in the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Photo by CHRIS DELMAS /AFP via Getty Images

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The weekend attack at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was at least the third attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump. It also threatened administration officials, journalists, and the people assigned to protect them — a Secret Service agent was injured. Unfortunately, it was just the latest incident in a rising tide of shootings, fire-bombings, and other politically motivated acts of violence that currently plagues the United States.

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Americans don’t trust each other to exercise power, and too many are willing to hurt or kill to make their point. The U.S. desperately needs a government that matters less and can safely be ignored.

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The people of the U.S. agree on little these days, other than that supporters of opposing factions are terrible people who can’t be trusted.

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“Democrats and Republicans are increasingly likely to dislike each other and to feel hostile toward members of the other political party,” YouGov’s Eli McKown-Dawson wrote of results of the firm’s polls leading into the last presidential election.

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In the case of Cole Tomas Allen, who is accused of staging the weekend attack, that hostility led to “rage thinking about everything this administration has done” as he put it in his manifesto. Such rage may be inevitable in a politics dominated by loathing at a time when the state reaches into all areas of life.

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“If in this country law has always been king, its empire has never been so expansive,” U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch and co-author Jane Nitze cautioned in a 2024 essay adapted by The Atlantic from their book Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law. “More than ever, we turn to the law to address any problem we perceive. More than ever, we are inclined to use national authorities to dictate a single answer for the whole country. More than ever, we are willing to criminalize conduct with which we disagree.”

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“When we turn to law to solve every problem and answer humanity’s age-old debates about how we should live, raise our children, and pray, we invite a Leviathan into our lives,” they added.

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That Leviathan is inherently dangerous in the hands of officials who despise their opponents. We’ve seen that over and over in the form of government agents who surveil, audit, harass, and sometimes kill critics of the powers that be. And partisans really do hate those with different political loyalties.

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For her part, Democratic New York Governor Hochul instructed Republicans to “just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong… Because you don’t represent our values. You are not New Yorkers.”

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She made that suggestion around the time then-President Joe Biden told the country that “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution.”