The assassination in September of activist Charlie Kirk has renewed concerns about rising political violence in the US as the Trump administration escalates its rhetoric against opponents and deploys the military to certain cities.

Kirk, the 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA and an ally of President Donald Trump, was addressing a college audience in Utah when he was shot by a sniper 130 metres away. A 22-year-old man was arrested in connection with the killing and faces multiple charges.

Rather than seeking to unify the country, President Trump – who himself has been targeted in assassination attempts – declared that ‘radical-left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.’ Vice-President JD Vance, guest-hosting Kirk’s popular podcast, referred to an ‘incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism.’ White House officials promised a government-wide crackdown.

‘The violence is just going up on both sides which is a very scary thing. We’re in very dire, uncharted territory in this country right now,’ says Tiffani Brownley-Meijer, an officer of the IBA Human Rights Law Committee. She and others see the US entering an acute phase of democratic and social instability, with the risk of political violence escalating on both sides. ‘We have to really look at what [it means] to stave off political violence’ because following Kirk’s death, there has been a ‘new rhetoric from the White House,’ says Brownley-Meijer, who’s a legal consultant in Washington, DC.

In the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, hundreds were dismissed from their jobs for posting flippant or unfavourable comments about the assassination. Late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air by The Walt Disney Company, owner of the ABC television network, after suggesting in a monologue that the ‘MAGA gang’ was ‘desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them’. He accused President Trump of trying to ‘score political points.’

Several days later, Kimmel was reinstated after Disney faced a backlash and boycott calls. Kimmel apologised and said that ‘[Kirk’s killer] was a sick person who believed violence was a solution. And it isn’t […] ever.’ In a statement, Disney said Kimmel’s remarks had been ‘insensitive’ and he had been suspended ‘to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.’ The company said it decided to reinstate Kimmel’s show after several days of ’thoughtful conversations with Jimmy.’

Barbara Walter, a professor of political science at the University of California San Diego and author of How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them warns in a recent blog post that the US is probably entering ‘a 10- to 20-year period of sustained instability and violence.’

A watershed moment was the 6 January 2021 assault on the US Capitol by rioters. Winning re-election in 2024, President Trump granted clemency to approximately 1,500 people who’d either been convicted or criminally charged in the Capitol attack. One of the pardoned rioters has recently been arrested for threatening to kill Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives.

Now, warns Hafetz – who’s a professor of law at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, New Jersey – an authoritarian pattern is emerging in President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and militarised police. ‘One of the goals of Trump’s use of the military – calling out National Guard, using ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] – is to try to provoke more violence so that they can come in with a more heavy-handed response,’ he says. ‘That’s a classic move from the authoritarian playbook. It is anathema to a democratic society and US norms.’

Reports of ICE officers aggressively arresting migrants without due process are leading to protests. President Trump has defended his use of the military and ICE tactics, saying they are needed as his administration targets ‘dangerous criminals’, while condemning those protesting against ICE raids as ‘violent, insurrectionist mobs’ who are ‘swarming and attacking our Federal Agents.’

After Kirk’s assassination, White House adviser Stephen Miller labelled left-wing political groups as ‘a vast domestic terror movement’. Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, described the Democrat party’s ‘main constituency’ as being ‘made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.’ Critics called the remarks dangerous.

In June, Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, was shot dead at home alongside her husband by an extremist with a history of harassing officials online. And while the administration and its allies in Congress portray Democrats as a threat, a National Institute of Justice report issued shortly before President Trump took office in January highlighted that ‘militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.’ The report – which assessed the period from 1990 – was removed from the Department of Justice website shortly after Kirk’s killing.

Steven Richman, Chair of the IBA Bar Issues Commission, sees the rising violence as being fuelled by polarisation, a breakdown of civil discourse and digital echo chambers. Legal solutions, he adds, are limited because of the perennial ‘slippery slope’ dilemma between protecting free speech and curbing that which leads to intimidation or violence. ‘I’ve always believed in the marketplace of ideas, but when it starts to get violent, there are limits to what the law tolerates,’ says Richman, who speaks in a personal capacity.

To reverse the country’s dangerous trajectory, he argues, Americans must reaffirm shared values and civility. ‘We used to have a sense of unity, of common values, around which we could still have robust, honest and passionate debate,’ Richman says. ‘I fear that is lost.’

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