Donald Trump’s second term has been met with a sustained, low-level campaign of domestic terrorism.

It has mostly involved relatively minor property damage amid much more consequential acts, but the pattern of violence meant to achieve anti-Trump political goals has been unmistakable.

I thought Trump’s second election would be met with rioting in the streets and serious threats against cabinet officials. Instead, we got the “vibe shift,” with the initial political reaction against Trump relatively muted compared to that in 2016.

Once the administration got underway, though, the violent resistance began.

First, it was the campaign against Tesla. Anti-Elon Musk agitators torched and otherwise vandalized vehicles, fired shots and threw Molotov cocktails at dealerships, and damaged charging stations. This wasn’t terrorism on the level of ISIS — not even close — but it clearly met the textbook definition of terrorism as violence in furtherance of a political or social objective.

Then, the anti-ICE assaults ramped up. There have been riots outside ICE facilities, as well as incendiary attacks and shootings.

In the craziest incident prior to the Sept. 24 sniper attack in Dallas, a group of agitators dressed in black military-style clothing began shooting fireworks and spraying graffiti at an ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, in July. According to officials, this was a ploy meant to draw ICE officers out of the facility to be ambushed. One attacker hiding in the woods shot a responding police officer in the neck (he survived), while another assailant fired 20 or more rounds at correctional officers who had strayed outside the building.

When they were arrested, some of agitators were wearing body armor and had two-way radios. The attack emanated from a Dallas-area anti-fascist network.

Less than a week later, an armed man tried to shoot his way into a Border Patrol annex in McAllen, Texas, before getting shot dead.

The waves of anti-Tesla and anti-ICE violence were precipitated, respectively, by a libertarian billionaire trying to reduce the number of federal workers and cut foreign aid, and a federal agency detaining immigrants who are living and working in the country illegally, some of whom have committed other serious crimes. If these activities can evoke a violent response, just imagine if the country experiences a true crisis.

In both cases — regarding DOGE at its height and ICE now — Democratic officeholders and progressive opinion-makers whipped up an apocalyptic frenzy. The fevered rhetoric has been accompanied by peaceful protests, civil disobedience (think of Democratic officials getting arrested protesting immigration enforcement) and, at the margins, zealots and the disaffected lashing out violently.

When these events are put against the context of the assassination of a MAGA leader, Charlie Kirk, and last year’s two assassination attempts against Donald Trump himself, the picture is stark — a persistent, if wholly unorganized. effort to use violence to frustrate Trump’s policy goals and, in the extreme instance, to end the project entirely by killing him.

What is to be done? Since none of the violence is directed from above and the perpetrators don’t know each other and have divergent motivations, it’s hard to see how it stops. It’d certainly help if the Democrats acknowledged the legitimacy of Trump and what he’s trying to do, even if they strenuously oppose him and his policies, but they are never going to cease believing that we are on the cusp of a fascist dystopia.

The legacy media should also acknowledge what we are experiencing. If a Kamala Harris presidency had been met with attacks against Mark Cuban businesses and arson and shootings at abortion clinics — as well as the ideologically-motivated murder of a top Harris supporter — we’d be at a DEFCON 1-type national emergency in terms of the press coverage.

“There’s nothing like getting used to things,” Abraham Lincoln said of the threatening letters he received once he rose to prominence. But we shouldn’t have to get used to violence as a means of influencing our politics.

© 2025 by King Features Syndicate