A Weekend of Hope, and a Minnesota Hit List

No Kings Day showed who we are. Minnesota revealed what we’re up against. The next move is ours.

“Love, not hate. That’s what makes America great!” From San Francisco’s Ocean Beach human banner to marchers splashing through New York City rain to my amazing community of Alexandria, Virginia, the June 14 No Kings Day protests turned the country into one vast, jubilant shout against authoritarianism and repression. Organizers estimate more than five million people filled streets in some 2,000 locations, making it one of the largest single-day protests in U.S. history. Handmade signs mocked Trump’s birthday parade vanity, toddlers waved cardboard crowns with slashes through them, and conservatives for the Constitution signs made me proud. The right-wing media and Trump playbook was familiar: magnify isolated scuffles, ignore millions chanting non-violence.

Yet before dawn on Saturday, violence struck far from the parade route: in Minnesota, a gunman posing as law enforcement assassinated Democratic State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and critically wounded Democratic State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. Investigators recovered a “manifesto” and a “hit list” of 45 officials, all Democrats, as well as businesses including Planned Parenthood clinics, eerily echoing similar extremist creeds and manifestos.

This wasn’t a random flare-up; it was meticulously planned. The suspect didn’t just act out in a moment of rage, he went to the homes of at least four different Minnesota politicians while carrying out the attack, and all signs point to an ideological attack, threaded through a movement that feeds on grievances.

​​Radicalization and extremist ideology are fueling a growing wave of politically motivated violence. We need to call this what it is: domestic terrorism. Today, the most significant threats inside the United States come from two categories identified by our own domestic law enforcement and homeland security agencies: Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism and Anti-Government/Anti-Authority Violent Extremism. That’s not a partisan claim; it’s the formal assessment shared by career professionals across the homeland and intelligence communities. 

We’ve seen the pattern before, one I know all too well. In the town I grew up in El Paso, where 23 people were murdered by a white supremacist targeting Latinos. In Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where worshippers were gunned down in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. In Poway, California where a shooter opened fire on a Chabad congregation after posting a hate-filled manifesto. In each of these cases, the attackers published manifestos filled with racism, conspiracy theories, and ideological justification for mass murder, designed to radicalize others and stoke fear. In Charlottesville, white nationalists chanted “Jews will not replace us” and killed a young woman with a car. In Buffalo, a supermarket became a massacre site for Black Americans. In Colorado Springs, five people were murdered at Club Q amid rising anti-LGBTQ hate. Just weeks earlier, a young Israeli couple, employees of the embassy, were shot outside a Jewish museum in D.C. after the gunman targeted the site during a Jewish community event. The names change. The targets shift. But the extremist ideology driving the violence remains consistent and increasingly collectively unchallenged.

These are not isolated tragedies. They’re the logical outcome of a country where hate is platformed, amplified, and rarely checked. Where manifestos echo campaign talking points. Where violence is rewarded with silence, or worse, praise. Even our protests aren’t safe. From Salt Lake City to San Francisco, to Austin, peaceful demonstrations faced deadly force, vehicle attacks, and credible threats against lawmakers. The message is clear: dissent is being targeted, and political violence is not fringe, it’s normalized and walking through the front door.

Donald Trump has no intention of changing course. His response to the Minnesota tragedy? A vague statement about violence, then a political jab at Governor Tim Walz. He still hasn’t even called him. His most recent comment on violence? A hat tip to the January 6 insurrectionists. A pardon on day one of his second term.

Trump’s blanket pardon of January 6 rioters wasn’t just an insult to justice, it was a signal. It told extremists: if it’s for him, you’ll walk. That signal is being heard.

Take Senator Mike Lee, who thought the right response to a political assassination was to post “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” mocking not mourning.

This is the same Mike Lee whose January 6 texts show him scrambling to help Trump overturn the election, until it became inconvenient. He smirked when Mike Pence’s life was in danger. He’s smirking now. 

What’s worse? He probably didn’t even write his post. Like many in Trump’s orbit, Lee approves, staffers execute. Somewhere, an aide, the next generation, thought this was clever. That’s how normalization works: not just silence, but smirking succession. And perhaps what’s most grotesque is the spin. Instead of acknowledging the horror, Lee and others on the right like U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno labeled the suspect a “Marxist.” Others floated conspiracy theories to blame the left. When the violence hits too close to their rhetoric, they deflect and re-radicalize. For the record: the shooter was a white evangelical Christian with far-right views, not a Marxist.

Let me be unequivocal: all political violence is wrong. You don’t have to agree with someone to grieve their loss. You just have to be human. If we only condemn violence when it’s convenient, we’ve already surrendered the moral high ground. This is what metastasized political violence looks like: not just lone actors, but officials laughing about it, platforms laundering it, institutions enabling it.

Violent extremist attacks on government officials have tripled in five years. And yet, the FBI has scaled back staffing and resources devoted to domestic terrorism investigations. According to a Reuters report, priorities have shifted. White nationalist threats no longer align with the agenda. So they’re stepping back, even as the violence escalates.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post confirms what many of us warned about: Trump’s team is interrogating civil servants, enforcing loyalty tests, and replacing nonpartisan expertise across the federal government with partisan hacks and MAGA loyalists. These aren’t reforms. The goal isn’t efficiency. It’s obedience. At the helm?

• The Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, once a key Department of Homeland Security office that I worked closely with, is now run by a 22-year-old political loyalist with no national security background, Thomas Fugate III.

• Sebastian Gorka, a far-right media commentator who cosplays as a security expert, is back at the National Security Council as the Senior Director for Counterterrorism.

• Kash Patel, still pushing conspiracy theories, is now FBI Director.

• Schedule F has returned, letting Trump replace career experts with yes-men.

From where I once sat in the Vice President’s West Wing office during Trump 1.0, I can tell you: this is not incompetence. It’s deliberate. The machinery that should spot threats, counter hate, and prevent violence is asleep at the switch–by design.

When a manifesto surfaces that mirrors their own rhetoric, this group doesn’t investigate the root causes and the strategic picture of what it really means. They ignore. They deny. They joke. And Americans suffer the consequences.

So the question now isn’t what Trump will do. We know.

The question is what the rest of our leaders will do. 

If Trump won’t actually condemn this, Republicans with a conscience must make him own it. And they must call out their colleagues who continue to downplay this threat. Democrats cannot face this alone. State and local officials of both parties must say: enough. Speak with one voice. Act before another synagogue falls silent. Before another judge buries a child. Before another elected official’s family is left grieving.

Congress must act. Hold hearings. Shine a light on the appointees running DHS and FBI. Restore expertise. Bar political operatives from intel roles. Reinvest in community prevention, whether or not Washington leads.

And the media, especially the right-wing machine, must ask: are your best-performing talking points worth the bodies in the aftermath?

We are not helpless. But we are in danger.

Let No Kings Day be a model. Show up. Speak out. Stay disciplined.

Because while Trump’s inner circle rewards violence, the rest of us must stop it.

P.S. I was out there too, marching alongside 5,000 of my neighbors in Alexandria, Virginia and joined

Don Lemon

Joy-Ann Reid

and

Jim Acosta

in covering everything live. Here’s the link in case you missed it: No Kings Day Live.

To everyone who showed up across the country: thank you. Your voices mattered. Your presence mattered. You reminded us that the majority still believes in democracy, and isn’t afraid to defend it.

Tell me where you marched. Let’s keep each other going,

-Olivia

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