In the days following the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump and others in his circle have portrayed political violence as a problem exclusively or mostly on the left, which has then been used as justification for proposals that seek to crack down on left-leaning groups. While there is evidence of a rise in left-wing violence in recent years, data show that political violence in America spans the ideological spectrum.
Indeed, until this past year, data from multiple sources show that political violence in the U.S. had mostly been driven by right-wing extremism — white supremacy in particular.
According to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies released on Sept. 25, “In recent years, the United States has seen an increase in the number of left-wing terrorism attacks and plots. … So far, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing terrorist attacks outnumber those from the violent far right.”
But CSIS did not find – as some in the Trump administration have claimed recently – that political violence can be stemmed by focusing on left-leaning groups. To the contrary, CSIS cautioned that “fighting terrorism effectively” requires “counterterrorism efforts against both right- and left-wing terrorism.” The analysis notes that the terms “left-wing” and “right-wing” terrorism “do not correspond to mainstream political parties in the United States … nor do they correspond to the overwhelming majority of political liberals and conservatives in the United States.”
In recent weeks, Trump and others in his administration have wrongly framed political violence as a one-sided issue.
In a video message on the day Kirk was shot and killed, Trump blamed Kirk’s death on “radical left” rhetoric and listed incidents he attributed to “radical left political violence,” not mentioning recent violence targeting Democrats. In a Fox News interview two days later, Trump said, “The radicals on the right, oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. … The radicals on the left are the problem.”
And at Kirk’s memorial on Sept. 21, Trump said, “The violence comes largely from the left.”
The next day, he signed an executive order designating the anti-fascist movement antifa a domestic terror organization, something he also tried during his first administration, although there is no such designation in U.S. law. Then on Sept. 25, Trump issued a memorandum directing federal agencies to crack down on “Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” At the signing event, Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, described it as “an all of government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism.”
And the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Sept. 11: “The violence only goes one way. It only goes one way. We have seen that now, whether it’s the assassination attempts on my father’s life, whether it’s Charlie Kirk, whether it’s the threatening of a Supreme Court justice or doxing ICE agents, that goes one way. It is entirely owned by the left.”
In addition to those examples of violence aimed at conservative figures, there have, of course, been several high-profile examples of political violence against prominent Democrats in recent years. They include the June killing of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and the shooting of Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife; the April arson at the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro; the 2022 break-in at then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home that ended with her husband being attacked with a hammer; and the 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The Trump administration has used its one-sided narrative to justify calls to target liberal organizations.
“We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence,” Vice President J.D. Vance said while hosting Kirk’s podcast on Sept. 15, in conversation with Miller.
Asked to explain further, Miller didn’t give details, but said, “We need to have an organized strategy to go after left-wing organizations that are promoting violence in this country.”
“We’re going to look into Soros because I think it’s a RICO case against him,” Trump said in an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Sept. 12, referring to George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who funds democratic causes through his Open Society Foundations and has been the subject of conspiracy theories and right-wing narratives aimed at bringing down liberal groups for more than a decade. The federal RICO statute, or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, targets organized criminal enterprises.
The president also had said something similar in August, before Kirk was shot. On his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump said that Soros and his son “should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America.”
In a statement at the time, the Open Society Foundations said, “We do not pay people to protest or directly train or coordinate protestors. All Open Society grantees are required to comply with the law and we expect our grantees to uphold our shared commitment to human rights, dignity, and nonviolence. The Open Society Foundations oppose all forms of violence, including violent protests.”
What Have Studies Found?
Researchers who study extremism and political violence use different criteria for measuring its prevalence — some include riots and the police response to them, some measure the ideology of the perpetrator, and others count the ideology of the target — so it’s hard to compare the findings. And there has been very little published research since Trump took office earlier this year.
The most recent data comes from the CSIS brief, which measured domestic “terrorist attacks and plots” from the beginning of 2025 through July 4, when an armed group attacked an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas. It found that there had been a steep decline in right-wing incidents (there was one in that time frame, which killed two people) and an increase in left-wing incidents (there were five in that time frame, which killed nobody). The data did not include Kirk’s death.
“Indeed, left-wing violence has risen in the last 10 years, particularly since President Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence in 2016, although it has risen from very low levels and remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers,” the report stated. “More contentious politics in the United States and the expansion of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement appear to have reenergized violent left-wing extremists.”
At the same time, “attacks from right-wing perpetrators have sharply declined in 2025. This decline is striking, and explanations are speculative. One possibility is that many traditional grievances that violent right-wing extremists have espoused in the past—opposition to abortion, hostility to immigration, and suspicions of government agencies, among others—are now embraced by President Trump and his administration.”
“The rise in left-wing attacks merits increased attention, but the fall in right-wing attacks is probably temporary, and it too requires a government response,” the CSIS authors wrote. “In any case, many of the prescriptions for fighting terrorism effectively apply to violence from both the left and right. These include ensuring proper counterterrorism resourcing, avoiding overreactions, and having leadership unequivocally condemn such attacks.”
The CSIS analysis defines “left-wing terrorism” as violence “motivated by an opposition to capitalism, imperialism, or colonialism; black nationalism; support for LGBTQ+ rights; support for environmental causes or animal rights; adherence to pro-communist, pro-socialist beliefs or ‘anti-fascist’ rhetoric”; as well as a belief that government causes social injustices and support for anarchism or “partisan extremism.” The term “right-wing terrorism” pertains to violence “motivated by ideas of racial or ethnic supremacy; opposition to government authority, believing it is tyrannical and illegitimate; misogyny, including incels; hatred based on sexuality or gender identity; belief in the QAnon conspiracy theory; opposition to abortion; or partisan extremism.”
CSIS and other researchers of political violence have also concluded that – 2025 notwithstanding – political violence has largely been driven by right-wing extremism.
- A 2024 National Institute of Justice report found that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.” The Department of Justice removed that study from its website on Sept. 12, according to snapshots captured by the Internet Archive. A department spokeswoman did not comment when we asked why.
- Congressionally mandated reports from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security that have assessed domestic terrorism since 2017 have said every year, so far, that white supremacists have been the most lethal threat of domestic terror. The most recent report was issued in 2023 and covered data from the prior year.
- Similarly, in 2020, CSIS reported that, “[b]ased on a CSIS data set of terrorist incidents, the most significant threat likely comes from white supremacists, though anarchists and religious extremists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda could present a potential threat as well.”
- A study published in 2022 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at data from the 70 years between 1948 and 2018 and identified political violence committed by about 1,500 people — about 90% of whom were male. The study “found that among radicalized individuals in the United States, those adhering to a left-wing ideology were markedly less likely to engage in violent ideologically motivated acts when compared to right-wing individuals.”
- The results of a nationally representative survey conducted by the University of California, Davis’ Centers for Violence Prevention to be published in November found that “[r]acism, hostile sexism, homonegativity, transphobia, xenophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia were each strongly associated with support for and willingness to commit political violence in the United States.” The survey was expanded to investigate the associations between several phobias and willingness to commit violence after the researchers found in an earlier survey that, “[e]ndorsement of racist beliefs, support for violence to effect social change, and approval of extreme right-wing political organizations and movements are associated with support for political violence.”
- In a Sept. 11 post, the libertarian Cato Institute found that, since 2020, right-wing ideology has been the leading cause of political murders, accounting for 54%. Left-wing ideology is second, accounting for 22%, and Islamic ideology is third, accounting for 21%. The institute said that political violence is “rare” and that there have been 79 people killed in politically motivated terrorist attacks since 2020.
- Data from the Prosecution Project, which catalogs incidents of political violence by the ideological affiliation that is determined through court proceedings that resulted in a guilty verdict, show that political violence in the last decade has been dominated by right-wing ideology. The Economist used the project’s data to create a graph on Sept. 12.
Roudabeh Kishi, chief research officer at Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative, which tracks political violence, told us that it’s hard to say whether or not there’s been an increase in political violence in 2025. She didn’t have access to current data for the year. But, she said, “the Kirk shooting is a clear escalation,” noting also that it followed the shootings of Minnesota state representatives and the assassination attempt against Trump in 2024.
Meanwhile, threats against members of Congress are on the rise this year. U.S. Capitol Police told us “[o]ur agents are on track to work through roughly 14,000 Threat Assessment Cases by the end of the 2025.” (For reference, the highest number of annual threat cases investigated by the Capitol Police had been 9,625 in 2021.)
“Although we don’t break down the numbers publicly by party, Members of Congress of both political parties receive a wide range of threats and concerning statements that are sent through the mail, email, telephone, social media, and the internet,” a Capitol Police spokesperson told us.
“The uptick in violence against legislators is not confined to just one party or one nation,” House Speaker Mike Johnson noted during an address at the G7 meeting on Sept. 5. “It’s a common challenge for all of us.”
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