June 14, 2017

A leftist assailant attempted a mass assassination of Republican members of Congress at a baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. The shooter nearly murdered Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), then the House majority whip, whose security detail is likely the only reason multiple lawmakers weren’t killed. The perpetrator was found to be steeped in left-wing ideology, went out of his way to confirm the politicians were Republicans before opening fire, and had a list of GOP figures on his person at the time of the shooting. After a bizarre and inexplicable delay, the FBI finally and correctly classified the attack as politically motivated domestic terrorism.

June 8, 2022

A leftist plotted to break into conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home and murder him. The would-be assassin traveled across the country from California, heavily armed, to carry out the killing, which was explicitly motivated by opposition to Supreme Court jurisprudence on issues including abortion and guns. The person arrived at Kavanaugh’s in the middle of the night, dressed in black, carrying “a black tactical chest rig and tactical knife, a pistol with two magazines and ammunition, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, a screwdriver, a nail punch, a crowbar, a pistol light and duct tape,” according to a New York Times description of a federal affidavit.

July 13, 2024

A man shot Donald Trump, then days away from becoming the Republican presidential nominee for a third time, at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump turned his head just before multiple shots were fired at him, one of which struck his ear, and another of which killed a rallygoer. The shooter, who was killed by authorities at the scene, was a young man with a thin public paper trail. He initially registered to vote as a Republican, but donated to a leftist group on the day of former President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration. His precise motive remains a mystery, though it seems a rather safe bet that a progressive donor who tried to shoot Trump on the campaign trail was likely not acting upon a right-wing agenda.

Sept. 15, 2024

Weeks after the Butler shooting, another man tried to take Trump’s life. The assassination attempt at a golf course in South Florida was thwarted by a sharp-eyed Secret Service agent who spotted the assailant’s rifle barrel protruding from a fence. The would-be assassin, who spent hours lying in wait for Trump, hiding a makeshift sniper’s nest, was an ardent Trump critic with a history of leftist views, Democratic donations, and support for Democratic candidates. Prosecutors said the man wrote a note detailing his hatred for Trump, whom he wanted to prevent from winning the election.

April 13, 2025

A man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion as Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), a Jew, and his family slept inside. Significant damage was done to the home. The perpetrator, who committed the arson attack on the first night of Passover, said he also intended to attack the governor with a sledgehammer. The mentally unstable arsonist was a “globalize the intifada” zealot. Officials said he planned his assault as a response to “perceived injustices toward the people of Palestine.” Prosecutors said he’d called Shapiro a “monster” over his “plans for Palestinians” and “expressed concern about the war in Gaza and somehow saw the attack as a response to deaths in that conflict.” He pleaded guilty to a slew of charges, including attempted murder.

June 14, 2025

An intruder murdered a Minnesota Democratic lawmaker at her home after shooting and seriously wounding another Democratic legislator hours earlier. Melissa Hortman, the speaker of the state House of Representatives, was killed along with her husband, Mark. Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife survived a separate but related attack at their house. The perpetrator was caught with a lengthy list of possible targets in his possession, including Democratic politicians, advocates, and providers of abortion. The shooter, who held a number of right-wing views but was also an appointee of Democratic Govs. Mark Dayton and Tim Walz, confessed to the killings. He told police about his delusion that he was acting under orders from Walz, claiming that the governor had instructed him to kill a number of political figures, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), in order to clear Walz’s path to a Senate seat.

Aug. 10, 2025

A leftist allegedly stalked the Virginia home of conservative White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, as part of an assassination plot. The suspect was identified and eventually arrested in February 2026. He was charged with attempted murder, along with being “charged with criminal solicitation to commit murder, carrying a concealed weapon, and wearing a mask in public to conceal identity,” per a local news account. A witness “told police at the time they saw a man wearing a surgical mask and rubber gloves, carrying a backpack and a firearm under his shirt.” The suspect “then asked the person about the victim, Vought, before leaving the scene.” Once arrested, the suspect told authorities he planned the killing to help prevent “a fascist takeover” under the Trump administration.

Sept. 10, 2025

Conservative online personality and grassroots organizer Charlie Kirk was assassinated during a speaking engagement on a Utah college campus. The killer shot Kirk in the neck, then fled. Evidence quickly emerged that the charged assassin had become a radicalized leftist who decided to kill Kirk as a means of ending what he described as Kirk’s “evil” spreading of “hate.” Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) confirmed the suspect appears to have been captured by “leftist ideology,” with officials revealing that he’d texted his roommate and lover to say he’d “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

Side note: In the early, chaotic moments after Kirk was shot, a bystander falsely confessed to the shooting, telling authorities he “was glad he said he shot [Kirk] so the real suspect could get away.” This individual made the snap decision to become an on-the-fly, unplanned assassination accomplice. He later faced additional charges after police found images of child sexual abuse on his phone.

April 25

A leftist allegedly attempted an assassination at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where multiple dignitaries were present, including the president and Vice President JD Vance. In a manifesto, the suspect stated an intention to kill members of the Trump administration, referring to the president as a “rapist,” “pedophile,” and “traitor.” The man, a teacher who traveled to Washington from California by train, was reportedly involved in various forms of left-wing activism, including the ‘No Kings’ movement. Officials say he barged through a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton, shooting a Secret Service officer in his protective vest as he ran toward the main ballroom. He was apprehended before reaching his intended targets. CNN reported that the suspect’s public postings reveal that he is among the many American leftists, 46%, according to one survey, who believe the July 2024 assassination attempt on Trump was staged for Trump’s political benefit — a demented and baseless conspiracy theory. He evidently traversed many miles to try to finish a job that he believes others had “faked.”

The following are additional significant examples of political violence, which may not fit easily into the assassination or assassination attempt framework, yet merit related attention.

Oct. 7, 2020

Federal officials announced the arrests of 13 men involved in a kidnapping plot against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI). The case resulted in a combination of plea deals, guilty verdicts, hung juries, and acquittals. The accused were part of far-right militia groups. Critics have alleged, and defense attorneys argued, with partial success, that this particular plot was an elaborate case of entrapment, in which federal informants effectively drove the whole thing. In a lengthy essay about the case in Reason magazine, journalist C.J. Ciaramella argued that “in the Whitmer case and others, the feds weren’t stopping terror: They were helping bumbling defendants plan and enact it. … This was the crux of the defense’s argument, that the FBI and their informants ginned up a conspiracy that never really existed beyond vague bull sessions and which the individual members of the group never agreed to carry out.” Given a number of convictions and the plotters’ undeniable, seething, and violent hatred of the governor, however, the episode deserves a mention on this list.

Jan. 6, 2021

A mob unlawfully forced its way into the Capitol to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. Numerous rioters assaulted law enforcement officers and damaged property during the melee. They did so in service of a false claim, promoted most prominently by Trump himself, that the election had been stolen. Trump’s lawyers never came close to substantiating their election trutherism and actually declined to even try on some key occasions. While there’s no evidence that the assembled mob planned to assassinate anyone — Trump had urged a peaceful march at a preceding rally — audible chants of “hang Mike Pence,” Trump’s vice president, who presided over the certification, as was his duty, and the erection of a makeshift gallows on the Capitol grounds infused the violent and lawless episode with murderous imagery. Relatedly, a suspect charged with placing pipe bombs outside both the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters that same day said, “I really don’t like either party at this point.” The suspect adhered to the unfounded belief that the 2020 election had been stolen and also told investigators he “was going to a protest in support of Trump” that day.

Oct. 28, 2022

Paul Pelosi, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband, was bludgeoned with a hammer inside his home by a late-night intruder who later confessed that his plan was to kidnap the then-House speaker and interrogate her. A Canadian immigrant, the assailant had a history of mental health problems and was found to have espoused an incoherent and conspiratorial mix of right-wing and left-wing views, with deranged conspiracy being the major common thread. The New Yorker, a left-leaning publication, described various efforts to pin down his political ideology as incomplete and ultimately “futile.”

Jan. 5

A man was arrested and charged with smashing windows and destroying property at the Ohio home of Vice President JD Vance, whose family was out of town at the time of the attack. The subject, who demanded to be called “Julia,” had previous run-ins with the law and a documented history of mental health breaks. His parents are prominent Democratic donors.

Feb. 22

A 21-year-old man was shot and killed by security after he breached Mar-a-Lago’s perimeter while armed with a shotgun in the early hours of the morning. He was confronted by authorities, who shot him after he raised his firearm “into shooting position.” The deceased subject came from a Trump-supporting family in North Carolina, but was said not to have been outspoken about his own personal politics. Family members described him as being “generally opposed to guns,” according to a local media story, and his digital footprint showed that he’d become fixated on the Epstein files.

The preponderance of the above examples is left-wing in nature. Jan. 6 was a right-wing riot, as was the Whitmer plot, regardless of entrapment allegations. The other incidents can perhaps best be described or categorized as ideologically murky, despite some partisans’ efforts to paint them, and even some of the obviously left-wing attacks, as somehow “right-wing.” Certain unreliable and biased data sets are also frequently cited to promote the notion that recent political violence remains primarily a phenomenon on the Right. These studies have been exposed, deconstructed, and debunked repeatedly, including, most recently, in this column by Batya Ungar-Sargon. Her partial summary:

“An example of how they cook the books to absolve the Left of violence in the [Wall Street Journal] … a graph it published that seems to show near parity between left and right-wing political violence is sourced to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which by its own admission reclassified pro-Palestinian violence as ‘ethnonationalist’. It classifies all antisemitism as right-wing, and all pro-Palestinian ‘attacks on Jewish individuals or institutions’ as ‘ethnonationalist.’ This is just nakedly partisan propaganda presented as ‘data’ and then mainstreamed in the American press.”

Yes, declining to classify left-wing violence as such, and classifying neutral or even left-wing violence as “right-wing” will indeed yield “evidence” and “data” that have been manufactured to conclude that right-wing violence is more prevalent. It’s notable that the study quoted in the Wall Street Journal piece “The Year of the Molotov Cocktail” this week, illustrating how left-wing violence has overtaken right-wing violence, still vastly understates the true gap, for reasons exposed by Ungar-Sargon. The Wall Street Journal story includes this example of “anti-government” violence: “Justice Department charged two men with attempting to carry out an attack near New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s residence.” In fact, the episode in question was not an “attempted” attack; it was an actual bombing carried out by screaming jihadi terrorists. Fortunately, the explosive devices didn’t detonate. It was also not directed at the government or Mamdani, as may be inferred — it targeted a peaceful anti-Mamdani protest. This sort of casual sloppiness or sleight of hand is not uncommon in media coverage of political violence.

Perhaps the most powerful evidence that America is in the midst of a disproportionately left-wing violence crisis is a series of public opinion surveys and related research demonstrating that leftists are far more willing to tolerate, justify, and even celebrate political violence than their right-wing counterparts. A YouGov survey published in September 2025, post-Kirk assassination, found that 25% of self-identified “very liberal” Americans believed citizens can be justified in resorting to violence “in order to achieve political goals.” Seventeen percent of “liberals” said the same. This view was shared by only 6% of self-identified “conservatives” and just 3% of those who call themselves “very conservative.” Pro-political violence conservatives and right-wingers are a fringe. Pro-political violence leftists are far more prevalent, with “very liberal” respondents outpacing “very conservative” respondents by more than an 8-to-1 margin on this question.

A Politico poll released in the fall of 2025 measured 24% of respondents saying political violence could be justified, with the violence-rationalizing view skewing dramatically by age: “Younger Americans were significantly more likely than older ones to say violence can be justified. More than one in three Americans under the age of 45 agreed with that belief.” The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal also chronicled an April 2025 study from the Network Contagion Research Institute, in conjunction with Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab, the summary of which speaks for itself (emphasis added):

“Our research, based on nationally representative surveys and analyses of online activity, demonstrates the existence of online subcultures that support the murder of public figures like Trump and Musk. This ‘assassination culture,’ incubated on social media, has migrated from the margins of public life into the mainstream. We found that nearly one-third of Americans surveyed—and around half of those identifying as left-of-center — believe that the murder of certain public figures is at least somewhat justified. The figures are startling: 38 percent of respondents, and 55 percent of those left of center, said assassinating President Trump would be at least somewhat justified; 31 percent of respondents, and 48 percent of those left of center, said the same about Musk. Forty percent of respondents, and 58 percent of those left of center, deem it at least somewhat acceptable to ‘destroy a Tesla dealership’ in protest. Our report also discovered an online ‘assassination culture,’ found in predominantly left-leaning digital spaces, such as Bluesky and Reddit.”

In a fallen world in which evil exists, there will always be kooks and malicious actors who decide to harm others. This applies to people across the political spectrum — again, neither “side” has a monopoly on violence or evil, and many figures on both sides engage in vitriolic rhetoric and demonization. The most important distinguishing factor right now, perhaps even more so than the tilt of the assassination attempts documented in this column, is the leftward slant of attitudes ranging from indulgence to endorsement of violent acts. Taken together, the case is compelling.

SUSPECT IN CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER SHOOTING DONATED TO KAMALA HARRIS CAMPAIGN

Leftists who wish to deny the reality of deeply antisocial and literally dangerous-to-deadly strains growing increasingly normalized and “mainstreamed” within their tribal coalition will cherry-pick or misconstrue some of the examples dealt with above, cite the woefully incomplete and fatally flawed data mentioned earlier, or simply fail to grapple with the logical conclusion that their fellow partisan tribe members wouldn’t express this alarming degree of tolerance for, or embrace of, political violence if they believed the Right were heavily responsible for it. These public opinion data points offer further confirmation that the country’s political violence problem resides disproportionately on the Left in our current moment.

Rather than engage in denialism and delusion, anti-violence leftists should work aggressively to marginalize and eradicate this sort of poisonous mindset — not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because escalating contagions rarely remain contained within one ideological camp. It should distress leftists of goodwill that a plurality of their fellow partisans believe a presidential assassination attempt that killed a bystander was “faked” for political gain. This is the stuff of broken brains and broken cultures. It’s a path that leads to madness and destruction. We must all reject it, as a matter of basic morality, as a matter of civic hygiene, and as a matter of both societal and literal life and death.

Guy Benson (@guypbenson) is a senior columnist for the Washington Examiner.