YAMHILL COUNTY, OR – Top Oregon Republican lawmakers are pushing back against criticism from Democratic leaders following a recent federal law enforcement operation in Portland involving suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Senate Republican Leader Bruce Starr of Dundee and House Republican Leader Lucetta Elmer of McMinnville issued a joint statement responding to the incident, which federal authorities have described as a targeted operation involving a transnational criminal organization linked to drug trafficking, sex trafficking and violent crime.
According to the statement, federal officials said the encounter escalated when the driver of a vehicle allegedly used it as a weapon after agents identified themselves, forcing an officer to make what Republicans characterized as a split-second, defensive decision.
Republican Oregon state lawmakers Bruce Starr of Dundee.
“That is not ‘federal violence against Portlanders,’ as legislative Democrats have suggested,” Starr and Elmer said in the statement. “That is law enforcement attempting to remove dangerous gang members from our streets, turned into a life-threatening situation.”
The Republican leaders said they support law enforcement at all levels and accused Democratic officials of politicizing an active investigation. They criticized rhetoric suggesting federal agents were acting as “secret police,” calling such language “reckless and dangerous.”
“It is deeply irresponsible for elected officials to immediately politicize an active investigation, delegitimize law enforcement, and inflame fear at a moment when clarity and calm are needed most,” according to the statement.
Starr and Elmer acknowledged that an investigation into the incident is ongoing and said transparency is important, but emphasized that officers acting in defense of life deserve public support.
Oregon House Republican Leader Lucetta Elmer of McMinnville.
“Violent criminal organizations do not stop at city limits, state lines, or political narratives,” they said. “When officers are forced to act in defense of life, they deserve support, not condemnation.”
The statement concluded with a warning to organized criminal groups operating in Oregon and a call for elected officials to lower the political temperature surrounding the incident.
“Criminals operating in Oregon should be on notice: the days of freely exploiting our communities are over,” the leaders said, urging politicians to start standing with law enforcement instead of siding with violent criminals for political gain.
The Independent Party of Oregon pushed back on the statement by the two Republican leaders, calling it a misleading and incomplete frame that does a disservice to the public, to law enforcement, and to the rule of law in America.
“No one disputes that law enforcement work is dangerous or that violent criminal organizations exist,” said IPO Secretary Sal Peralta. “The issue is whether the use of force by federal agents is being held to the same standards that govern local police and sheriffs across the country.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump rocked American politics at the outset of his first campaign when he first labeled his rivals as enemies of the American people. But the rhetoric of his top confidantes has grown more extreme in recent days.
Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff, declared over the weekend that “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country” is fueling an historic national schism, “shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general.”
“The only remedy,” Miller said, “is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”
It was a maxim from an unelected presidential advisor who is already unleashing the federal government in unprecedented ways, overseeing the federalization of police forces and a sweeping deportation campaign challenging basic tenets of civil liberty.
Miller’s rhetoric comes amid a federal crackdown on Portland, Ore., where he says the president has unchecked authority to protect federal lives and property — and as another controversial Trump advisor harnesses an ongoing government shutdown as pretext for the mass firing of federal workers.
Russ Vought, the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, plays the grim reaper in an AI video shared by the president, featuring him roving Washington for bureaucrats to cut from the deep state during the shutdown.
His goal, Trump has said, is to specifically target Democrats.
As of Monday afternoon, it was unclear exactly how many federal workers or what federal agencies would be targeted.
“We don’t want to see people laid off, but unfortunately, if this shutdown continues layoffs are going to be an unfortunate consequence of that,” White House press secretary Karoline Levitt said during a news briefing.
‘A nation of Constitutional law’
Karin Immergut, a federal judge appointed by Trump, said this weekend that the administration’s justification for deploying California National Guard troops in Portland was “simply untethered to the facts.”
“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote, chiding the Trump administration for attempting to circumvent a prior order from her against a federal deployment to the city.
“This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition,” she added: “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”
The administration is expected to appeal the judge’s decision, Leavitt said, while calling the judge’s ruling “untethered in reality and in the law.”
“We’re very confident in the president’s legal authority to do this, and we are very confident we will win on the merits of the law,” Leavitt said.
If the courts were to side with the administration, Leavitt said local leaders — most of whom are Democrats — should not be concerned about the possibility of long-term plans to have their cities occupied by the military.
“Why should they be concerned about the federal government offering help to make their cities a safer place?” Leavitt said. “They should be concerned about the fact that people in their cities right now are being gunned down every single night and the president, all he is trying to do, is fix it.”
Moments later, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he does not believe it is necessary yet, he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act “if courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up.”
“Sure, I’d do that,” Trump said. “We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”
The Insurrection Act gives the president sweeping emergency power to deploy military forces within the United States if the president deems it is needed to quell civil unrest. The last time this occurred was in 1992, when California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to send federal troops to help stop the Los Angeles riots that occurred after police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.
Subsequent posts from Miller on social media over the weekend escalated the stakes to existential heights, accusing Democrats of allying themselves with “domestic terrorists” seeking to overturn the will of the people reflected in Trump’s election win last year.
On Monday, in an interview with CNN, Miller suggested that the administration would continue working to sidestep Immergut’s orders.
“The administration will abide by the ruling insofar as it affects the covered parties,” he said, “but there are also many options the president has to deploy federal resources under the U.S. military to Portland.”
Other Republicans have used similar rhetoric since the slaying of Charlie Kirk, a conservative youth activist, in Utah last month.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) wrote that posts from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office have reached “the threshold of domestic terrorism,” after the Democratic governor referred to Miller on social media as a fascist. And Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said Monday that Democrats demanding an extension of healthcare benefits as a condition for reopening the government were equivalent to terrorists.
“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Fine told Newsmax, “and what we’re learned in whether it’s dealing with Muslim terrorists or Democrats, you’ve gotta stand and you’ve gotta do the right thing.”
Investigating donor networks
Republicans’ keenness to label Democrats as terrorists comes two weeks after Trump signed an executive order declaring a left-wing antifascist movement, known as antifa, as a “domestic terrorist organization” — a designation that does not exist under U.S. law.
The order, which opened a new front in Trump’s battle against his political foes, also threatened to investigate and prosecute individuals who funded “any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of antifa.”
Leavitt told reporters Monday the administration is “aggressively” looking into who is financially backing these operations.
Trump has floated the possibility of going after people such as George Soros, a billionaire who has supported many left-leaning causes around the world.
“If you look at Soros, he is at the top of everything,” Trump said during an Oval Office appearance last month.
The White House has not yet made public any details about a formal investigation into a donors, but Leavitt said the administration’s efforts are under way.
“We will continue to get to the bottom of who is funding these organizations and this organized anarchy against our country and our government,” Leavitt said. “We are committed to uncovering it.”
Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, has vowed to continue her husband’s mission after he was shot and killed at an event in Utah, with police arresting 22-year-old Tyler Robinson for the murder.”If you thought my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea, you just have no idea what you have unleashed across this entire country,” Erika Kirk said. Vigils were held across the country last night in honor of the late conservative activist. The FBI has been searching Robinson’s home for evidence and clues. Investigators say Robinson fired a single round from a bolt-action rifle, leaving behind the weapon and bullet casings engraved with messages like, “Hey fascist, catch.” Authorities say Robinson had grown increasingly political in recent years, telling family members he knew Kirk would be on the Utah Valley University campus and criticizing the conservative activist.Police say it was Robinson’s father who recognized his son as the suspect after the FBI released photos. He encouraged Robinson to turn himself in. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said, “A family member of Tyler Robinson reached out to a family friend who contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s Office with information that Robinson had confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident.”Robinson is due in court Tuesday on murder charges. Both President Trump and Utah’s governor have expressed their desire for prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.Voter registration records show that Robinson is registered to vote unaffiliated with any party, although he is listed as an “inactive” voter, meaning he hasn’t voted in at least the most recent two general elections.Kentucky Rep. James Comer said people feel safer now that the suspect is in custody, but there are still concerns from lawmakers about the rise of political violence. Some lawmakers have changed or canceled their political events. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are calling for calmer rhetoric and more security, something that is being considered on Capitol Hill.
WASHINGTON —
Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, has vowed to continue her husband’s mission after he was shot and killed at an event in Utah, with police arresting 22-year-old Tyler Robinson for the murder.
“If you thought my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea, you just have no idea what you have unleashed across this entire country,” Erika Kirk said.
Vigils were held across the country last night in honor of the late conservative activist.
The FBI has been searching Robinson’s home for evidence and clues. Investigators say Robinson fired a single round from a bolt-action rifle, leaving behind the weapon and bullet casings engraved with messages like, “Hey fascist, catch.”
Authorities say Robinson had grown increasingly political in recent years, telling family members he knew Kirk would be on the Utah Valley University campus and criticizing the conservative activist.
Police say it was Robinson’s father who recognized his son as the suspect after the FBI released photos. He encouraged Robinson to turn himself in.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said, “A family member of Tyler Robinson reached out to a family friend who contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s Office with information that Robinson had confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident.”
Robinson is due in court Tuesday on murder charges. Both President Trump and Utah’s governor have expressed their desire for prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.
Voter registration records show that Robinson is registered to vote unaffiliated with any party, although he is listed as an “inactive” voter, meaning he hasn’t voted in at least the most recent two general elections.
Kentucky Rep. James Comer said people feel safer now that the suspect is in custody, but there are still concerns from lawmakers about the rise of political violence. Some lawmakers have changed or canceled their political events. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are calling for calmer rhetoric and more security, something that is being considered on Capitol Hill.
A few hours after Charlie Kirk was killed, Sean Feucht, an influential right-wing Christian worship leader, filmed a selfie video from his home in California, his eyes brimming with tears.
The shooting of one of the nation’s most prominent conservative activists, Feucht declared, was no less than “a line in the sand” in a country descending into a spiritual darkness.
“The enemy thinks that he won, that there was a battle that was won today,” he said, referencing Satan. “No, man, there’s going to be millions of bold voices raised up out of the sacrifice and the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.”
Soon afterward, Pastor Matt Tuggle, who leads the Salt Lake City campus of the San Diego-based Awaken megachurch, posted a video of Kirk’s killing on Instagram, adding the caption: “If your pastor isn’t telling you the left believes a evil demonic belief system you are in the wrong church!”
People place lighted candles below a photo of Charlie Kirk at a vigil in his memory in Orem, Utah.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
Kirk’s death has triggered a range of reaction, much of it mournful sympathy for the 31-year-old activist and his family. But it also has sparked conspiracy theories, hot-take presumptions the left was responsible and calls for vengeance against Kirk’s perceived enemies.
At a vigil for Kirk in Huntington Beach this week, some attendees waved white flags depicting a red cross and the word “Jesus,” while some chanted, “White men, fight back!” Kirk spread a philosophy that liberals sought to disempower men, and some of his male supporters see his killing as an attack against them.
Whether the calls for vengeance will ebb or intensify remains to be seen, especially with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s announcement Friday that a suspect in the fatal shooting, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, had been arrested after a family member turned him in.
In life, Kirk spoke of what he called a “spiritual battle” being waged in the United States between Christians and a Democratic Party that “supports everything that God hates.”
In death, Kirk, one of the Republican Party’s most influential power brokers, is being hailed by conservative evangelical pastors and GOP politicians as a Christian killed for his religious beliefs.
President Trump called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom,” and ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in his honor. He blamed Kirk’s death on the rhetoric of the “radical left.” Vice President JD Vance, who helped carry Kirk’s casket to Air Force Two, retweeted a post Kirk wrote on X last month reading, “It’s all about Jesus.” And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, quoting Jesus, wrote on X: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
A woman lays her head down on a seat during a vigil at CenterPoint Church for Charlie Kirk in Orem, Utah.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
Experts on faith and far-right extremism say they are troubled by the religious glorification of Kirk in this era of increased political violence — and the potential vengeance that may spring from it. The activist’s death, they say, seems to have ignited various factions on the right, ranging from white supremacists to hard-core Christian nationalists.
“The ‘spiritual warfare’ rhetoric will only increase,” and Kirk is now being lifted up as “a physical manifestation” of a religious battle, said Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia who has written a forthcoming book about Christian nationalism that prominently features Kirk.
“Spiritual warfare rhetoric was a big part of Jan. 6,” he said of the deadly 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. “Making a martyr out of Charlie Kirk will change our nation in severe ways.”
Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma and expert on Christian nationalism, said he is a Christian himself but that religion, cynically used, “has the potential to amplify what would otherwise be very secular political conflicts between Democrats and Republicans.”
“What if those are amplified with a cosmic and ultimate significance?” he said. “It becomes, ‘This is God vs. Satan. This is angels vs. demons — and if we lose this next election, we plunge the nation into a thousand years of darkness.’ … It basically provokes extremism.”
Kirk — who rallied his millions of online followers to vote for Trump in the 2024 election — declared that God was on the side of American conservatives and that there was “no separation of church and state.” He was also known for his vitriol against racial and religious minorities, LGBTQ+ people, childless women, progressives and others who disagreed with him.
Kirk called transgender people “a throbbing middle finger to God.” He said the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was “a huge mistake” and called the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “awful.” On his podcast, he called with a smirk for “some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area [who] wants to really be a midterm hero” to bail out of jail the man who attacked then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer in their home in 2022.
A memorial is set up for Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
In 2023, Kirk sat on the stage of Awaken Church in Salt Lake City and said: “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Two days before his death, Kirk retweeted a video of himself saying that a “spiritual battle is coming for the West,” with “wokeism or marxism combining with Islamism” to go after “the American way of life, which is, by the way, Christendom.”
Perry said, “There’s no need to whitewash the legacy of Charlie Kirk.”
“This is a tragedy, and no one deserves to die this way,” Perry said. “Yet, at the same time, Charlie Kirk is very much part of this polarization story in the U.S. who used quite divisive rhetoric, ‘us vs. them, the left is evil.’”
Perry noted that Kirk’s Turning Point USA had placed him on its Professor Watchlist, a website that says it aims to expose professors “who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda.” The entry on Perry flags him for “Anti-Judeo-Christian Values.”
Some on the right say their recent fiery words are only a response to the hateful rhetoric of the left. One widely shared example: Two days before Kirk’s killing, the feminist website Jezebel published an article titled, “We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk.” It has since been removed and replaced by a letter from the site’s editor saying it had been “intended as satire and made it absolutely clear that we wished no physical harm.”
Kirk was killed by a single sniper-style shot to the neck Wednesday during an outdoor speaking event at Utah Valley University.
After announcing the suspect’s arrest Friday, Gov. Cox said he had prayed that the shooter was not from Utah, “that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country.” But that prayer, he said, “was not answered the way I hoped for.”
He then said that political violence “metastasizes because we can always point the finger at the other side” and that, “at some point, we have to find an offramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.”
Some of Kirk’s most prominent evangelical followers have said that his death represents an attack on conservative Christian values and that he was gunned down for speaking “the truth.”
Jon Fleischman, Orange County-based conservative blogger and former executive director of the California Republican Party, who started out as a conservative college activist, knew Kirk and said “there is one hell of a martyr situation going on.”
“A lot of people are getting activated and are going to walk the walk, talk the talk, and give money as their way of trying to process and deal with losing someone they care about,” he told The Times.
In recent years, Kirk had become more outspoken about his Christian faith. He founded the nonprofit Turning Point USA in 2012 as an avowedly secular youth organization and became known for his college campus tours, with videos of his debates with liberal college students racking up tens of millions of views.
But in 2020, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, college campuses closed. Kirk started speaking at churches that stayed open in violation of local lockdown and mask orders, including Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Ventura County, which was led by Pastor Rob McCoy, a former Thousand Oaks mayor.
McCoy is now the co-chair of Turning Point USA Faith, which encourages pastors to become more politically outspoken. McCoy, who could not be reached for comment, wrote in a statement Friday: “For those who rejoiced over his murder, you are instruments of evil and I implore you to repent. For those of you who mock prayer, you would do well to reconsider. Prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us toward a more peaceful and civil life.”
Professor Boedy said McCoy turned Kirk toward Christian nationalism, specifically the Seven Mountains Mandate — the idea that Christians should try to hold sway over the seven pillars of cultural influence: arts and entertainment, business, education, family, government, media and religion.
Christian nationalism, which is rejected by mainline Christians, holds that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that the faith should have primacy in government and law.
Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and a professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino, said, “the more violent fringes of Christian nationalism have disturbing aspects that are eliminationist and antidemocratic.”
He noted that some of the same Christian nationalists and white supremacists who are now calling Kirk a martyr already deified Trump, especially after he survived two assassination attempts on the campaign trail last year and said he had been “saved by God to make America great again.”
Levin said many Christian nationalists portray Trump as “an armed Christian warrior protecting America from a disturbing assortment of immigrants, religious minorities, genders and sexual orientations.” And so, when he uses martyr language to describe Kirk, his adherents latch on.
“Where do martyrs come from? From violent conflicts and wars,” Levin said. “The fact of the matter is that this is a moment that Trump could have more effectively seized, but he veered into divisive territory.”
California Senate Minority Leader Brian W. Jones (R-Santee) also called Kirk “a modern day martyr.” In a statement, Jones quoted Thomas Jefferson, who said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Jones wrote: “Let us take care that we allow that tree to grow and blossom as it feeds on the lifeblood of Charles J. Kirk in the years to come.”
Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
Two assassination attempts on President Trump. The assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the wounding of others. The shooting death of a top healthcare executive. The killing of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington. The storming of the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob intent on forcing the nation’s political leaders to their will.
And, on Wednesday, the fatal shooting of one of the nation’s most prominent conservative political activists — close Trump ally Charlie Kirk — as he spoke at a public event on a university campus.
If it wasn’t already clear from all those other incidents, Kirk’s killing put it in sharp relief: The U.S. is in a new era of political violence, one that is starker and more visceral than any other in decades — perhaps, experts said, since the fraught days of 1968, when two of the most prominent figures in the civil rights movement, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, were both assassinated in a matter of months.
“We’re very clearly in a moment where the temperature of our political discourse is extremely high,” said Ruth Braunstein, an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University who has studied religion and the far right in modern politics. “Part of what we see when that happens are these outbursts of political violence — where people come to believe that violence is the only solution.”
While the exact motives of the person who shot Kirk are still unknown, Braunstein and other experts on political violence said the factors shaping the current moment are clear — and similar to those that shaped past periods of political violence.
Intense economic discomfort and inequity. Sharp divisions between political camps. Hyperbolic political rhetoric. Political leaders who lack civility and constantly work to demonize their opponents. A democratic system that many see as broken, and a hopelessness about where things are headed.
“There are these moments of great democratic despair, and we don’t think the political system is sufficiently responsive, sufficiently legitimate, sufficiently attentive, and that’s certainly going on in this particular moment,” said Jon Michaels, a UCLA law professor who teaches about the separation of powers and co-authored “Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy.”
“If we think there are no political solutions, there are no legal solutions, people are going to resort to forms of self help that are really, really deeply troubling.”
Michaels said the country has been here before, but also that he worries such cycles of violence are occurring faster today and with shorter breaks in between — that while “we’ve been bitterly divided” for years, those divisions have now “completely left the arena of ideas and debate and contestation, and become much more kinetic.”
Michaels said he is still shaken by all the “defenses or explanations or rationalizations” that swirled around the country after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December — which some people argued was somehow justified by their displeasure with UnitedHealthcare’s policies or frustration with the American healthcare system.
That the suspect, Luigi Mangione, would attract almost cult-like adoration in some circles seemed like an alarming shift in an already polarized nation, Michaels said.
“I understand it is not the beliefs of the typical person walking down the street, but it’s seeping into our culture slowly but surely,” he said — and in a way that makes him wonder, “Where are we going to be in four or five years?”
People across America were asking similar questions about Wednesday’s shooting, wondering in which direction it might thrust the nation’s political discourse in the days ahead.
How will Kirk’s many conservative fans — including legions of young people — respond? How will leaders, including Trump, react? Will there be a shared recognition that such violence does no good, or fresh attempts at retaliation and violence?
Leaders from both parties seemed interested in averting the latter. One after another, they denounced political violence and defended Kirk’s right — everyone’s right — to speak on politics in safety, regardless of whether their message is uplifting or odious.
Democrats were particularly effusive in their denunciations, with Gov. Gavin Newsom — a chief Trump antagonist — calling the shooting “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible.” Former President Obama also weighed in, writing, “We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.”
Many seemed dismissive of such messages. In the comments on Obama’s post, many blamed Obama and other Democrats for rhetoric demonizing Republicans — and Trump and his followers in particular — as Nazis or racists or fascists, suggesting that the violence against Kirk was a predictable outcome of such pitched condemnations.
Trump echoed those thoughts himself Wednesday night, blaming the “radical left” for disparaging Kirk and other conservatives and bringing on such violence.
Others seemed to celebrate Kirk’s killing or suggest it was justified in some way given his own hyperbolic remarks from the past. They dug up interviews where the conservative provocateur demonized those on the left, suggested liberal ideas constituted a threat to Western civilization, and even said that some gun violence in the country was “worth it” if it meant the freedom to bear arms.
Experts said it is important to contextualize this moment within American history, but with an awareness of the modern factors shaping it in unique ways. It’s also important to understand that there are ways to combat such violence from spreading, they said.
Peter Mancall, a history professor at USC, has delved into major moments of political violence in early American history, and said a lot of it stemmed from “some perception of grievance.”
The same appears to be true today, he said. “There are moments when people do things that they know are violating their own sense of right or wrong, and something has pushed them to it, “ he said. “The trick is figuring out what it is that made them snap.”
Braunstein said that the robust debate online Wednesday about the rhetoric of leaders was a legitimate one to have, because it has always been true that “the way our political leaders message about political violence — consistently, in public, to their followers and to those that don’t support them — really matters.”
If Americans and American political leaders truly want to know how we got here, she said, “part of the answer is the intensification of violent political rhetoric — and political rhetoric that casts the moment in terms of an emergency or catastrophe that requires extreme measures to address it.”
Democrats today are talking about the threats they believe Trump poses to democracy and the rule of law and to immigrants and LGBTQ+ people and others in extremely dire terms. Republicans — including Kirk — have used similarly charged rhetoric to suggest that Democrats and some of those same groups, especially immigrants, are a grave threat to average Americans.
“Charlie Kirk was one of many political figures who used that kind of discourse to mobilize people,” Braunstein said. “He’s not the only one, but he regularly spoke about the fact that we were in a moment where it was possible that we were going to see the decline of Western civilization, the end of American society as we know it. He used very strong us-vs.-them language.”
Particularly given the wave of recent violence, it will be important moving forward for politicians and other leaders to reanalyze how they speak about their political disagreements, Braunstein said.
That’s especially true of Trump, she said, because “one of the most dangerous things that can happen in a moment like this is for a political leader to call for violence in response to an act of violence,” and Trump has appeared to stoke violence in the past, including on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol and during racist marches through Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
Charlie Kirk speaks during a town hall meeting in March in Oconomowoc, Wis.
(Jeffrey Phelps / Associated Press)
Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Centers for Violence Prevention at UC Davis, agreed messaging is key — not just for responding to political violence, but for preventing it.
Since 2022, Wintemute and his team have surveyed Americans on how they feel about political violence, including whether it is ever justified and, if so, whether they would personally get involved in it.
Throughout that time frame, a strong majority of Americans — about two-thirds — have said it is not justified, with about a third saying it was or could be.
An even smaller minority said they’d be willing to personally engage in such violence, Wintemute said. And many of those people said that they could be dissuaded from participating if their family members, friends, religious or political leaders urged them not to.
Wintemute said the data give him “room for hope and optimism,” because they show that “the vast majority of Americans reject political violence altogether.”
“So when somebody on a day like today asks, ‘Is this who we are?’ we know the answer,” he said. “The answer is, ‘No!’”
The job of all Americans now is to reject political violence “out loud over and over and over again,” Wintemute said, and to realize that, if they are deeply opposed to political policies or the Trump administration and “looking for a model of how to resist,” it isn’t the American Revolution but the civil rights movement.
“People did not paint over how terrible things were,” he said. “People said, ‘I will resist, but I will resist without violence. Violence may be done to me, I may die, but I will not use violence.’”
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After decades of gains in public acceptance, the LGBTQ community is confronting a climate in which political leaders are once again calling them weirdos and predators. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has directed the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate the parents of transgender children; Governor Ron DeSantis has tried to purge Florida classrooms of books that acknowledge the reality that some people aren’t straight or cisgender; Missouri has imposed rules that limit access to gender-affirming care for trans people of all ages. Donald Trump is promising to nationalize such efforts. He doesn’t just want to surveil, miseducate, and repress children who are exploring their emerging identities. He wants to interfere in the private lives of millions of adults, revoking freedoms that any pluralistic society should protect.
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During his 2016 campaign, Trump seemed to think that feigning sympathy for queer people was good PR. “I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens,” he promised. Then, while in office, he oversaw a broad rollback of LGBTQ protections, removing gender identity and sexuality from federal nondiscrimination provisions regarding health care, employment, and housing. His Defense Department restricted soldiers’ right to transition and banned trans people from enlisting; his State Department refused to issue visas to the same-sex domestic partners of diplomats. Yet when seeking reelection in 2020, Trump still made a show of throwing a Pride-themed rally.
Now, recognizing that red-state voters have been energized by anti-queer demagoguery, he’s not even pretending to be tolerant. “These people are sick; they are deranged,” Trump said during a speech, amid a rant about transgender athletes in June. When the audience cheered at his mention of “transgender insanity,” he marveled, “It’s amazing how strongly people feel about that. You see, I’m talking about cutting taxes, people go like that.” He pantomimed weak applause. “But you mention transgender, everyone goes crazy.” The rhetoric has become a fixture of his rallies.
Trump is now running on a 10-point “Plan to Protect Children From Left-Wing Gender Insanity.” Its aim is not simply to interfere with parents’ rights to shape their kids’ health and education in consultation with doctors and teachers; it’s to effectively end trans people’s existence in the eyes of the government. Trump will call on Congress to establish a national definition of gender as being strictly binary and immutable from birth. He also wants to use executive action to cease all federal “programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.” If enacted, those measures could open the door to all sorts of administrative cruelties—making it impossible, for example, for someone to change their gender on their passport. Low-income trans adults could be blocked from using Medicaid to pay for treatment that doctors have deemed vital to their well-being.
The Biden administration reinstated many of the protections Trump had eliminated, and the judiciary has thus far curbed the most extreme aspects of the conservative anti-trans agenda. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that, contrary to the assertions of Trump’s Justice Department, the Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQ people from employment discrimination. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing the investigations that Governor Abbott had ordered in Texas. But in a second term, Trump would surely seek to appoint more judges opposed to queer causes. He would also resume his first-term efforts to promote an interpretation of religious freedom that allows for unequal treatment of minorities. In May 2019, his Housing and Urban Development Department proposed a measure that would have permitted federally funded homeless shelters to turn away transgender individuals on the basis of religious freedom. A 2023 Supreme Court decision affirming a Christian graphic designer’s refusal to work with gay couples will invite more attempts to narrow the spaces and services to which queer people are guaranteed access.
The social impact of Trump’s reelection would only further encourage such discrimination. He has long espoused old-fashioned ideas about what it means to look and act male and female. Now the leader of the Republican Party is using his platform to push the notion that people who depart from those ideas deserve punishment. As some Republicans have engaged in queer-bashing rhetoric in recent years—including the libel that queerness is pedophilia by another name—hate crimes motivated by gender identity and sexuality have risen, terrifying a population that was never able to take its safety for granted. Victims of violence have included people who were merely suspected of nonconformity, such as the 59-year-old woman in Indiana who was killed in 2023 by a neighbor who believed her to be “a man acting like a woman.”
If Trump’s stoking of gender panic proves to be a winning national strategy, everyday deviation from outmoded and rigid norms could invite scorn or worse. And children will grow up in a more repressive and dangerous America than has existed in a long time.
This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “Trump Will Stoke a Gender Panic.”
