Political Violence in the U.S. in the 21st Century
What happened to Gabby Giffords in 2011?
Who was targeted in the 2017 baseball practice shooting?
What was the outcome of the 2020 plot against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer?
What political spouse was attacked in a 2022 incident?
What occurred at Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home in 2025?
News •
Political violence often translates to assassination, and when we think about political assassinations and assassination attempts, we often think of presidents or presidential candidates: Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy. Certainly other leaders such as Huey Long and leaders of movements, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, have been the victims of assassins. But in 21st-century America, the targets of political violence have included senators and representatives, state legislators and governors, and, perhaps most disturbingly, the family members of elected and appointed officials.
Here is a look at some of the politically motivated violence, which has been directed at public servants on both sides of the aisle, in the United States in the 21st century.
2011: Gabby Giffords shooting
On January 8, 2011, U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, a Democrat representing Arizona, was meeting with constituents in the parking lot of a Tucson grocery store when an armed gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun. Giffords was shot in the head; 18 others were shot and 6 people, including one of Giffords’s aides and a nine-year-old girl, were killed.
The gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, was initially determined to be mentally unfit to stand trial; ultimately, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. He had met Giffords previously at a similar meet and greet, but it was never established whether the shooting was politically motivated. However Giffords’s 2010 reelection campaign had been met with inflammatory rhetoric and her offices had been vandalized after she voted for the Affordable Care Act.
Giffords underwent extensive rehabilitative therapy but resigned from her House seat in January 2012. She and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly (later a U.S. senator from Arizona), formed an organization devoted to tightening gun control laws.
2017: Baseball practice shooting of Steve Scalise
The annual congressional baseball game has been a Washington, D.C., institution for more than a century. Although the game is meant to be a friendly affair to raise money for charity, the reality is that the competitive spirit is real and the desire to beat colleagues from across the aisle is strong. Which is why on the morning of June 14, 2017, Republican lawmakers were gathered to practice their baseball skills at a park in Alexandria, Virginia.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, was one of five victims of the shooting, including two police officers who exchanged gunfire with the shooter, who was identified as James T. Hodgkinson. He had approached several members of Congress to ask if the team was made up of Republicans or Democrats. They told him it was a Republican team and he thanked them. The shooting started moments later. Hodgkinson, who was known to be a critic of Pres. Donald Trump, was killed in a shoot-out with police.
2020: Killing of judge’s son
On the evening of July 19, 2020, federal judge Esther Salas, her husband, Mark Anderl, and their 20-year-old son, Daniel, were in their New Jersey home when the doorbell rang. A shooter dressed as a FedEx delivery driver opened fire, killing Daniel Anderl and seriously wounding his father.
The shooter, Roy Den Hollander, was a lawyer who had appeared before Salas. He had described himself as “anti-feminist” and Salas as “a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama.” Hollander killed himself after the shooting.
In 2025 Salas reported that other judges and their relatives had pizzas delivered to their homes with Daniel Anderl’s name on the delivery receipt in what she described as a clear attempt to intimidate members of the bench.
2020: Attempt to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
In October 2020, just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the FBI arrested members of an anti-government group known as the Wolverine Watchmen and charged them with a daring plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.
The plan was to target Whitmer at her vacation home in northern Michigan, and some of those arrested had done reconnaissance missions to determine that she would be most vulnerable to kidnapping while entering the home. The group, which objected to government restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, used code words to try to avoid detection of their plot by law enforcement, calling bombs “cupcakes” and referencing the need for a “baker,” or bomb manufacturer.
Arrests were made before any attempt could be carried out, and Whitmer was unharmed. In the end 14 people were charged in connection with the plot, and nine, including the two ringleaders, were convicted; five others were acquitted.
2022: Attack on Paul Pelosi
Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, was brutally assaulted in their San Francisco home in the early morning hours of October 28, 2022, by a man who asked, “Where’s Nancy?”
David DePape, who pummeled Paul Pelosi with a hammer and fractured his skull, said at his trial that he went to the home seeking Nancy Pelosi to question her about government corruption. “If she lied, I would break her kneecaps,” he told jurors in his 2023 trial. “The choice is on her.” He was convicted in state and federal trials and received sentences of 30 years and life in prison, respectively.
2024: Attempts on Donald Trump’s life
Former president Donald J. Trump was the victim of an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July 2024 and another apparent assassination attempt two months later, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
On a sweltering July evening, just days before he would officially become his party’s nominee for the third time, Trump greeted a large, enthusiastic crowd in a field in Butler, Pennsylvania. About 150 yards away, Thomas Matthew Crooks took aim from a rooftop overlooking the field. Using his father’s assault rifle, Crooks fired several shots toward the stage. Trump reached up to his ear, then ducked. Within seconds, the Secret Service’s countersnipers returned fire and killed Crooks.
Trump, his face streaked with blood, pumped his fist defiantly as he was pushed by agents toward safety. Two improvised explosives were found in Crooks’s car and another at his family’s home, where officials also found more than a dozen guns. Crooks was a member of a local shooting club. The FBI stated that he likely acted alone.
Weeks later the FBI announced that it was investigating an apparent attempted assassination of Trump while he was golfing with a friend at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump was not injured.
2025: Arson at Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home
“This is unacceptable—we all have a responsibility to stand up and work to defeat the political violence that is tearing through our country. America is better than this.”
—Josh Shapiro, after the Minnesota attacks
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, his wife and their children were asleep in the early morning hours of April 13, 2025, when security officers jolted them awake with the news that the governor’s residence was on fire and they needed to evacuate. Hours earlier, the home had been the scene of a Passover seder for family.
In the immediate aftermath, Shapiro, a Democrat, wondered if a candle left burning from the dinner had sparked the fire. Soon, he would be told instead that a would-be assassin had scaled the seven-foot fence around the property, broken in and set off Molotov cocktails. Police arrested Cody Balmer and charged him with attempted homicide. Balmer told officers that he “harbored hatred” for Shapiro and had intended to bludgeon him to death with a sledgehammer. He also referenced the Israel-Hamas War as motivation for his attack against Shapiro, who is Jewish.
2025: Assassination of Minnesota legislator
In the early morning hours of June 14, 2025, a man impersonating a police officer showed up at the home of Minnesota Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and shot him and his wife, Yvette, multiple times. Police called to the scene by the Hoffmans’ adult daughter then went to the nearby home of state Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman. As they arrived, the suspect was shooting Hortman’s husband, Mark.
Police exchanged gunfire with the suspect, whom officials later identified as Vance Boelter, but he escaped. Inside the house Melissa and Mark Hortman were dead. The Hoffmans were gravely wounded but survived. In the fake police car the suspect had abandoned at the Hortman home, police discovered a list of prominent Minnesota politicians as well as abortion rights activists.
For almost two days, police staged a manhunt for the suspect before arresting him late on June 15. While police have not offered a motive, friends have said that Boelter attended Trump rallies and was a devout Christian who opposed abortion. Boelter faces state and federal murder charges.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called Hortman a dear friend, telling reporters: “She was a formidable public servant. A fixture and giant in Minnesota. She woke up every day determined to make this state a better place.”