Violence has become an increasingly common feature of American political life, particularly during election years. Unfortunately, there are few reasons to believe the Nov. 3 midterm election will prove an exception to this new violent normal. In fact, numerous warning signs suggest this election provides particularly dangerous conditions for American citizens to turn to violence. A growing culture of assassination, coupled with the Trump administration’s progressive dismantling of much of the country’s post-9/11 counterterrorism architecture, significantly raises the likelihood of violence before, during, and after the election.
With the election a week away, there is little to be done to change the current environment, but political violence is not inevitable. Political leaders and policymakers are doing little to prevent it and, in some cases, are openly stoking it. If it could muster the political will, there are several obvious, if not easy, steps that Congress could take to make it safer for candidates, election officials, and voters to participate in the American democratic system.
Political Violence Enters the Chat
Political violence has, of course, long provided a thorn in the side of American elections. And although it is difficult to timestamp the current era in election or at least political violence in the country, my research indicates that it began when President Barack Obama arrived on the national scene. Simply put, a portion of the country could not accept the possibility of a Black president of the United States and decided to oppose it illiberally, including through violence. Threats against Obama were so severe that he was granted Secret Service protection earlier than any other presidential candidate in history, and both his electoral victories, in 2008 and 2012, were met with widespread racist hate crimes. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory inspired a similar racist mobilization, this time in support of the candidate, to include a May 2017 stabbing attack on a Portland train perpetrated by a white supremacist gunman who had pondered whether Trump might be a “new Hitler.” Trump’s presidency was also met with a furious reaction from a nascent anarchist network calling itself “Antifa.” The last two elections, in 2022 and 2024, featured high-profile and very-nearly catastrophic assassination attempts on U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Trump as he ran for president a second time, alongside more widespread plotting of attacks.
The rise in domestic terrorism in the United States over the past 15 years has been driven by several factors. Immigration has emerged as a prominent political issue in the United States and in Europe, driving the rise of a populist, anti-immigrant far-right that has inspired acts of violence against immigrant communities. Social media has catalyzed stronger political entrenchment, as users are fed streams of extreme, shocking content that demonizes outsiders and breeds radicalization. And American gun culture has facilitated domestic terrorism, allowing for even the most poorly trained extremists to conduct attacks that nevertheless cause tremendous damage. Meanwhile, the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol epitomized the mainstreaming of terrorism, as a dubious conspiracy theory drove thousands of Trump supporters to engage in political violence against the U.S. government, only for their unlawful actions to be lionized by Trump and his supporters in Congress. In this chaotic environment, the 2026 midterm election provides a timely opportunity for extremists possessing both the motive and capability to conduct acts of violence.
The 2026 Midterms
The year to date has been characterized by a drumbeat of violence and intimidation. In January, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was assaulted at a rally by a man spraying vinegar at her. In April, a lone gunman attempted to assassinate Trump and several Cabinet members at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In May, there was a deadly white supremacist attack at a mosque in San Diego, where two teenagers killed three people. The country also suffered four terrorist attacks in the first days after the start of the war against Iran in March. The violence took on a more obviously electoral theme in September, when several people were injured by a man attempting to rush Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton. And congressional and election offices in 32 states have been targeted by letters containing a white powder, which does not appear to be toxic.
In addition to an already violent landscape, there are at least three additional reasons why the dangers of election violence are heightened this year, with the first being precedent. In 2018, the last time Trump presided over a midterm election, the United States was struck by no fewer than four terrorist attacks in the 10 days leading up to the election. Most notably, in late October 2018, a Trump supporter named Cesar Sayoc sent pipe bombs in the mail to prominent Democratic Party officials and other well-known liberals. Fortunately, most of the bombs were intercepted and did not detonate. More seriously, the United States suffered the deadliest antisemitic terrorist attack in its history, when a white supremacist opened fire at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, and killed 11 congregants. The shooter falsely linked a Jewish refugee resettlement organization to a “migrant caravan” from Central America, believing Jews were attempting to replace white Americans. Interestingly, according to the FBI, October 2018 marked the second-worst month of the decade to that point for hate crimes. The only worse month was November 2016, when Trump was first elected.
The vicious partisanship that has defined the Trump era plays a significant role in driving such violence. In particular, Trump’s proclivity for casting doubt over election results before voting commences heightens the possibility of violent extremism. “Pre-bunking” of legitimate outcomes creates doubts among voters, who eventually interpret electoral defeats as evidence of fraud. Trump has also engaged in racist rhetoric and targeted specific candidates with attacks based on false information. But even more significantly, the threat is aggravated by the use of existential language employed by politicians in both parties—such as Trump when he recently warned that a midterm defeat would make him “the last Republican president.” Politicians employ such language to frighten their base into turning out to vote, but terrorism research warns that political actors also deploy violence when they feel they have no other option. Terrorism is, in other words, a last resort for those who have lost all political avenues. Social scientists Kathleen Klaus and Megan Turnbull similarly find that the main factor behind electoral violence in democracies is “salient and resonant narratives – especially around threat and victimhood – that authorize and justify violence.” Existential rhetoric serves only to raise the political temperature and demonize an outgroup, painting them not as disagreeing fellow Americans, but as enemies to be hated and eradicated.
Secondly, and relatedly, the threat is heightened by the rising culture of assassination, which has resulted in a significant threat to political candidates on the campaign trail. According to researchers at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, 2026 has already set a record for federal cases of threats to public officials (2025, 2024, and 2023 also set new records). The past two years have seen several high-profile assassinations in the United States, most notably the killings of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, former Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives Melissa Hortman, and conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
Threats to public officials are directly related to a growing tolerance for political violence across the political spectrum. A recent survey from the Center for Strategic Politics, for instance, found that 32 percent of Democrats would feel very positive or somewhat positive if Trump was assassinated while speaking at a rally — a number comparable to the same point in the Biden administration, when a 2022 survey showed “higher percentages of Republicans (from 35.3 percent to 49.5 percent) than Democrats considered violence to be usually or always justified to advance [some] specific political objectives.” University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape has referred to this ominous trend as “violent populism.” Americans, at an unprecedented scale, appear willing to use violence to resolve political disagreements, even (and perhaps especially) when the ballot box is also available.
And thirdly, against this elevated threat environment, the Trump administration has weakened many of the guardrails erected over the 25 years since 9/11 to protect the American people from terrorism. Immediately after his inauguration, Trump oversaw the firings of counterterrorism professionals across the government, both through the DOGE cuts as well as through a more narrow culling of FBI agents and Department of Justice lawyers who had worked on the January 6 case. Concurrently, the administration worked to redefine much of the country’s immigration and narcotics workload as “terrorism,” siphoning resources that had typically been devoted to preventing homegrown and domestic threats (the raid to capture Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, for instance, was billed as a counterterrorism operation). The Trump administration at one point even attempted to withhold Federal Emergency Management Agency counterterrorism funds from states and localities if they refused to accept a set of controversial electoral reforms. Together, these efforts have gravely crippled the U.S. counterterrorism architecture, at precisely the moment that “The Terrorism Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again,” as Graham Allison and Michael Morell warned in Foreign Affairs in June 2024.
Preparing and Overcoming
The nature of the threat differs depending on the stage of the election season. Prior to the election, the first and most urgent threat involves assassination threats against campaigning political candidates. The threat during this period also extends to campaign staff as well as supporters who might gather at campaign events. During voting, intimidation at polling places or against workers becomes the more urgent scenario. Throughout the past several years, armed militant groups have threatened to “observe” polling places, and the administration has also floated deploying federalized National Guard troops, or even ICE agents, to “protect” voting sites or search for alleged “noncitizen voters.” This type of activity would certainly raise tensions and increase the chance of violence. Once election day passes, potential targets could change to election infrastructure, including local officials, working to count ballots. In 2020, plots targeted several election officials in swing states, particularly states where “red mirages” had suggested a Republican victory before early, mail, and absentee ballots were counted. The threat of violence will persist up to and after the Jan. 3 Inauguration of the new Congress, with government or party buildings the more likely targets—as was seen on January 6.
Unfortunately, many of the long-term measures necessary to reduce domestic terrorism and political violence in the United States—chiefly social media regulation, a more robust prevention infrastructure, and certain forms of gun control—cannot be implemented in time for Nov. 3. Instead, lawmakers, the private sector, and the public should focus on last-minute measures that could help prevent violence.
Candidates and those campaigning on their behalf, most notably the president, can employ positive and nonviolent political rhetoric and avoid existential language. On social media, the public can choose to amplify those messages and not promote hateful and racist messages, especially against Muslim candidates like Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. In 2023, Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox, as the new Chair of the National Governors Association, launched the Disagree Better initiative, hoping “to model how to disagree better, setting an example and creating the permission structure and template for other public officials at every level to follow.” Avoiding a focus on narrow political differences and instead celebrating shared values such as nonviolence and trust and faith in neighbors might help turn down the temperature over the coming weeks. Candidates, meanwhile, should commit to accepting election results and the will of the people, rather than pushing conspiracy theories about electoral fraud.
Secondly, media organizations should avoid covering the election, and especially vote tallying, as a spectator sport. By waiting to announce results until they are confirmed and finalized, media organizations can undercut the “red mirage” forecasting that fueled such dangerous conspiracy theories in 2020. Social media platforms should also moderate plainly false conspiracy theories, and work with law enforcement to disrupt extremist cells and flag calls to violence. Deepfake technology, which can falsely portray politicians and supercharge disinformation about election integrity, should be monitored closely by social media companies, who bear the ultimate responsibility to ensure false narratives online do not translate to offline radicalization and mobilization.
Once it takes its place in January, the new Congress should immediately work to both pass the legal reforms necessary to tackle domestic terrorism in the United States and model healthier and more prosocial democratic norms. For instance, Congress could look to take up and amend the Kids Online Safety Act, an ambitious but maligned bipartisan bill to better protect young Americans from online harms including radicalization. Congress could also attempt to work with Trump to pass common sense gun reform, building on the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (Trump, a gun violence survivor, controversially indicated some openness to gun reform after an ICE killing of a U.S. citizen in January, saying “You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns.”). And, perhaps most importantly, Congress should also work to promote a healthier and less vicious democratic debate by marginalizing voices that platform more extreme, or even violent, opinions. To offer one example, in 2019, Republican House leaders voted to strip then-Iowa Republican congressman Steve King of his committee assignments after he indicated support for the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist.” To the contrary, in 2026, Republicans have continued to support Mike Collins (R-GA) in his run for Senate despite revelations that he has hosted white supremacists in his home and employed them in his office and that he joked that Pelosi should be pushed out of an airplane.
One final point: election violence is likely to be significantly worse should the election results be close or disputed. A clear victory in either direction, as was achieved by the Republicans in 2024, can dampen divisive voices and conspiracy theories. Voters of both parties, accordingly, should participate in the election, making their voices heard and proudly participating in the peaceful exercise of democracy. A successful seating of the 120th Congress in January will rely on millions of American voters engaging in their country’s most important tradition and marginalizing those who wish to undermine it.
