Why has political violence become so common?

0:00Support for here and now any time comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at MathWorks.com. WBUR Podcasts. Faster. We are in a heightened threat environment and public office today comes with a degree of danger and risk. Authorities deem last weekend shooting an assassination attempt on the president. What's feeling political violence in this country? It's Tuesday, April 28th and this is here and now any time from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Shiko Thudi. Today on the show Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to redraw the state's

1:01congressional map, a move that could give Republicans four extra seats, but it raises some legal questions. The Florida Constitution does have that ban on redrawing a district with a political party in mind, with political favor in mind. And a CNN investigation unveils a vast underground network of men drugging and raping their wives. Photos or videos of your wife or partner are treated as currency. This is a way of making sure you can trust the other person that is like minded. So it's like, hey, can I trust you? Send me a picture of your wife. But first, we're learning new details about a California man, Cole Allen, who has been charged with trying to assassinate the president at the White House correspondence dinner. He also faces federal gun charges after attempting to storm the event with multiple weapons. In the days since the shooting, the White House Press Secretary has blamed Democrats and journalists for what she calls divisive rhetoric that she says is fueling political violence in the US.

2:04Is this something new or part of a much longer story in American politics? Jacob Ware has some thoughts. He studies domestic terrorism and political violence and teaches at Georgetown University. He's also the co-author of God, Guns, and Sedition. Here's his conversation with Indira Lakshmanon. So when something like this happens, it can feel like things are getting worse, especially on the back of two other attempted assassinations against President Trump since the 2024 campaign. But the US has a long history of political violence with assassinations dating back to the early 1800s. So is this moment actually different? I would say yes and no. I mean, first of all, of course, our country has a long history of domestic terrorism and we've felt that very strongly over the last 15 years or so. At the same time, we're in a heightened threat environment. That much is clear. I'll quote some data that comes out of the University of Nebraska. Omaha, which says that in 2024,

3:06we had a record number of federal charges for threats against public officials. We broke a record again in 2025 and we're on track to break that record once again in 2026. So obviously there is a growing drumbeat of violence and I expect that to get more serious as we approach the midterms. Political violence is always more likely in politically polarized moments. Well, some American politicians are saying that the risk to their safety may not be worth it. Is there a bigger risk that comes with running for office or holding office right now? Absolutely. And that's one of the really unfortunate things about this moment. I'm actually always really eager to dismantle what I see as a mischaracterization that there have now been three assassination attempts on President Trump because the reality is there have been many more plots against him alongside repeated assassination plots against democratic leaders. Usually those get stopped at an early moment. There have been three times where the government has actually showed up on scene.

4:08We are in a heightened threat environment and public office today comes with a degree of danger and risk I'll remind the listeners of just a few months ago there was an assault on Congressman Ilhan Omar that was quickly of course forgotten about in last year of course there were multiple assassinations of prominent political figures. The really sad reality, the really unfortunate part of this is that we know there have been multiple political leaders that have been actually pushed out of the system that have determined that this is not worth the risk to me and my family and this is no longer a safe job. It's no longer something that I can do and look my family in the eye and say that I can guarantee their safety and that is a real, it's causing a real brain drain in our political system. What role does heated rhetoric from Republicans, Democrats, or even the President play? I think it's creating a more polarized and divisive moment. One of the key risk factors for violence especially around elections is existential language.

5:08So when you have politicians who say things like if we don't win this election you won't have another election in this country that dramatically raises the risk of violence because terrorism and assassination tend to come when people feel that they can no longer exercise their views through the legitimate political system and that's certainly what we saw in the manifesto red by this government who attacked the White House correspondence dinner. It's incumbent on both Democrats and Republicans to turn that temperature down but what I do not accept is rhetoric that says that Democrats are somehow more to blame for this. I'll remind you just a few months ago President Trump posting on truth social that it was good that former FBI director Robert Mueller had died because he could no longer hurt people. I mean that is glorifying death and celebrating the death of a perceived political rival that is totally antithetical to our democracy and to our system and to a more peaceful and prosperous society. Jacob as we head into the midterms there will necessarily be more heated rhetoric

6:11based on the pattern we see in this country what should authorities be doing to prevent an uptick in political violence? Well I think the real challenge is that politicians and public speakers unfortunately need to assume that there are assassination threats all around them so as you are preparing for an event as you are preparing for the World Cup as we're preparing for 250th anniversary celebrations we need to assume that there is a level of risk and danger and law enforcement needs to adjust to that reality and not hope that things will be okay that is just the simple reality of our situation so I think larger parameters stronger scanning vetting of individuals who are planning to attend but also we need to dramatically scale up our counterterrorism investigative power and unfortunately that was largely eroded in the first year of the Trump administration through cuts at various agencies

7:13as well as firings over January 6th that needs to be reversed in order to build a stronger capacity to counter these forms of violence. Jacob Ware studies American political violence and he's the co-author of God, Guns and Sedition thank you so much Jacob. Thank you for having me. Coming up next, a number of states are redrawing congressional maps. Florida's governor wants to do the same but it may be more complicated for the sunshine state learn why after the break. Hey it's Ben Brock Johnson from WBUR Podcasts as a dad I will say that climate change feels overwhelming but my kids they meet every challenge with so much imagination. That's why we made the Midnight Rebellion a podcast for our whole family where we can put our heads together because every choice we make can help save the planet.

8:16Find and listen to the Midnight Rebellion in your podcast feed right now. Today in Florida state lawmakers begin a special session to consider new congressional maps just unveiled by Republican governor Ron DeSantis. It would give Republicans up to four extra seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Roe Me Allen-Bogan is a reporter with the Tampa Bay Times and she joined Scott Tongue from the state capital in Tallahassee. So right now, Republicans control 20 out of 28 congressional seats in Florida. How would these new proposed maps change that? So the proposal from governor DeSantis' office would have 24 seats for Republicans compared to the current 20 leaving only four seats for Democrats, you know. If things play out based on 2024 voting trends. Now the governor Ron DeSantis is pushing lawmakers to approve these maps.

9:16Are the lawmakers, especially the Republicans, are they on board or no? So it's an interesting question. Sort of your everyday lawmaker has been pretty quiet about answering questions about redistricting. They've been warned by legislative leaders about the long history of litigation when it comes to redistricting. So a lot of them have stayed mum. But the legislative leaders, the House Speaker, has said he's interested in redistricting and the Senate president has also seemed open to accepting the governor's map. And both of those should hold committee meetings today where they'll first hear the plan presented by the governor's office. You mentioned litigation. Roe Me, we should note that the state constitution in Florida was changed years ago. And that it bans maps that have the intent to favor a political party. Can you talk more about the constitution and the questions it raises? Yeah, absolutely. You know, the Florida constitution does have that ban on redrawing a district with a political party in mind,

10:19with political favor in mind. That same provision, which was adopted by voters in 2010, also says you can't redraw districts to disfavor, you know, a racial minority, a language minority. Interestingly, you know, a lot of people have pointed obviously to that partisan part and said, well, these maps are blatantly unconstitutional, right? Look at the Florida constitution bans, partisan gerrymandering. But the governor's office, the governor's general counsel in a letter to lawmakers sent yesterday essentially argued that the whole amendment in the constitution that bars that can't stand because, you know, their theory is that drawing a map based on race is unconstitutional and that the US Supreme Court will soon affirm that. And if one part of that language around redistricting is unconstitutional, the whole thing has to go. So the argument has something to do with there are court actions that have happened. There are court rulings.

11:20There's a non-going court case at the Supreme Court. And we, the state of Florida, are reacting to something happening in the judicial system rather than partisanship. Is that the argument? Yes, exactly. They're saying we essentially know how the Supreme Court is going to rule in this case. We've looked at our own court ruling. That is what's motivating us, not politics, not the president. Now, some analysts I read suggest these maps might backfire on Republicans that they could dilute safely red districts. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I think that was definitely a conversation before the maps were released. We saw on some special elections in March, Democrats, Flip, Republicans, seats in Florida. But some of these districts have been drawn to get more red. Some of the places that I think representative Jeffries were eyeing might not be as easy to flip as they were before. On the other hand, some of these newly drawn districts are read by much slimmer margins. In Tampa Bay, Congressional District 14 is one of those.

12:22The 14th district has long been held by Representative Kathy Kaster, and that's now a Republican seat. But in a good year for Democrats, they would be able to flip that. It does make it more competitive for Republicans. Yeah, understand. And so then from the perspective of the Democrats, right now they hold eight seats if these maps go through, they might have four or five or six. That's kind of the early picture here. Yeah, so, you know, ultimately it sort of brings Florida, right, if Democrats really perform much better than they have previously, it could bring Florida back to where we are now, you know, prior to redistricting. And as far as this legislative session, what are you going to be paying attention to, what are you anticipating? Yeah, I mean, one of the things I'm eager to hear today, right, is that lawmakers have so far not offered their insight, their opinion on what they think of redistricting. Today will really be the first time that they acknowledge, right, if they think these maps are appropriate,

13:23if these think these maps are fair, if they're, you know, eager to go ahead, if they have qualms, it also will be the first time that the governor's office answers questions about how they drafted these maps, how, you know, they came up with these boundaries. And I think understanding how they drew it better helps us understand, right, this final product that we're looking at. We've been talking to Romi Ellen Vogan, Tallahassee Correspondent with a Tampa Bay Times. Romi, thanks very much. Thank you. Romi Ellen Vogan, Tallahassee Correspondent Coming up, a CNN investigation found men across the globe exchanging photos of their wives and sharing advice on how to drug and rape them. That's after the break. This next story is about the difficult topic of sexual assault, in cases where men drug their partners and commit sex acts. Two years ago, a high-profile case in France convicted Dominique Pelico of drugging his wife repeatedly

14:26and letting more than 70 men assault her. A new investigation from CNN finds more cases, including that of Zoe Watts in the United Kingdom. He reeled off a list of his wrongdoings to me as if it was a shopping list. I've done this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. I've been using our son's CPU medication to put in your last cup of tea at night to tie you down, take photographs and rape you. CNN's team uncovered an online world where men post and sell these videos and share advice on how to carry this out. Sasuke Van Dorn is CNN's Paris correspondent. Here's her conversation with Scott. Your team started this investigation on a pornography site where men are posting videos having sex with partners who are drug to appear unconscious. It led you to a chat group as I understand it. Tell me about that chat group. Yeah, so, you know, our investigation began when we created this male persona

15:27and we got onto this porn site called Motherless, it's a very popular porn site that has over 80 million visits, you know, a month last month in March. And whose core audience happens to be in the US. And we began seeing what was entitled sleep content. And essentially, these are videos where women appear asleep or unconscious while men carry out sex acts on them. And there are lots of different hashtags, lots of different categories to find this kind of material. One popular hashtag we found was called iCheck. And it's a way of proving a woman is asleep. So in these videos, a man will lift up the woman's eyelid to show that she's unresponsive and sedated. And then he'll carry out sex acts on her. And so we were on this one profile which had a link to a private telegram group. And when we entered, there were a thousand members. And that was a space where everything was happening

16:29in real time and men from around the world were exchanging tips on how to drug and rape their partners. And you, your team had an online profile and I understand you started chatting with a man in Poland. What were the exchanges like? Yeah, it's important to understand that not only on Motherless on this porn site, but also on the telegram group, that photos or videos of your wife or partner are treated as currency. This is a way of making sure you can trust the other person, that the other person is like minded. So it's like, hey, can I trust you? Send me a picture of your wife. And we couldn't go that far because of course we weren't going to create a fake picture. So we stayed in our as journalists. And so conversations were quickly go cold, but then there was this Polish user called Piotr. And he would send me messages showing me pictures of his wife, videos of his wife. And it felt like he was just very happy showing her off

17:30and not getting much in return. And then he told me that he had been drugging her and raping her so he would tell me the types of drugs that he was using to put her to sleep, what he wanted to do to her once she was sedated. And we felt that it was very important as part of the investigation to be able to confirm that this man was real because all of these users are hiding behind pseudonyms. And so we wanted to go to Poland and see him in the flesh. And so at first using my undercover persona, I tried to get him to agree to meet me in a bar. He said no. And then he let slip that he was going to be at a party. And so we arrived there and he came with his wife. I recognized them both instantly. It was a very difficult moment. We'd of course had many conversations with the editorial team before to discuss how we would react. You know, were we going to confront him?

18:31Were we going to speak to her? And in the end, we felt that we didn't want to put her life in danger. We didn't know how he was going to react. So once we confirmed his identity, we passed off findings on to the Polish police. Wow. And on the other side, your team's reporting led you to multiple wives, victims, including a woman Zoe Watts in England. Can you tell us her story? Yes. So one of the survivors we spoke to Zoe Watts, she had been married for 16 years. And one day after church, he comes home and he confesses to her and says, I have been using our son's sleeping medication to put in your cup of tea at night. And once you were asleep, I tie you down. I rape you and I take pictures of you. And she told us how hard it was to grasp what he had been doing to her because she loved him. She trusted him implicitly. She had had four children with him.

19:31She thought they were going to grow old together. So it was really hard for her to accept that not only had he betrayed her, but he also committed a crime against her. And of course, she knew that by pressing charges, it would mean he would be locked up for a long time. The children would lose their father. They would grow up with a reputation. They would know what he had done to their mother. And that was just this emotional context that she was wrestling with that made it very difficult for her to first grow and press charges. But of course, eventually she did with the help of her family. And he's now, he's been sentenced to 11 years in prison. I've now been covering this for quite some time. And since the investigation aired, many survivors have been in touch. And some of them have said, have admitted, I think this is happening, but I just can't bring myself to even confront it because I know what this will mean for the family. I know what this will mean for the future.

20:33And I'm just not ready. I'm just not ready to do that yet. And this, you're describing this very understandable reluctance. What does that mean then for the possibility of revealing this activity, shutting down these websites and check groups? Is that a realistic aspiration here? The outpouring has been incredible since this investigation has aired. And I think there are a lot of people out there who are shocked and horrified that this has been taking place. And it's not on the dark web, but the porn site I mentioned to you, anybody can access it. And I think it has just been proven that these tech companies are essentially turning a blind eye to the scale of non-concentral images and videos that are being shared on their platforms. And we're not the first Scott to have reported on this. There are journalists in Germany, in Canada and elsewhere,

21:34and yet this website has continued to operate. But since our investigation was published, we did meet with some UK lawmakers who are now actively examining the role of platforms like this and whether current laws are strong enough to hold them accountable. I know that there's now a wider question about the role of algorithms. There are lawmakers that are looking into that. How can algorithms amplify extreme material? And then finally, there are several petitions that are calling for motherless to-be-tee platforms. But I think that perennial problem of these platforms will argue that they are not responsible for the content that is being published and that when they are alerted to it, they'll take it down. But I think in the case of motherless of this website, we did see some efforts, for example, in the search bar, at one point, you could no longer search sleeping. And yet, sleep was still very much searchable. I check you could still find tens of thousands of videos.

22:38Saskia, you told us a core user group of one of these websites, motherless.com, is in the United States. Are US authorities doing anything about this? I know that there are several representatives who have tweeted about it. So they have seen the investigation. I think that they are curious to see how motherless operates. I know that, for example, on this telegram group, there was one user who told me that he was running a business selling liquid sedative around the world. And when I asked him to approve this to me, he sent me screenshots of all these parcels that he had been sending through UPS with the addresses. And I could see from what he had sent to me that there was some going ahead into Germany, some that were heading to New York, some that were heading to France. And I know that UPS are taking this very seriously and looking into whether, if they can raise.

23:38I mean, even if these websites do for whatever reason, shut down, what's to stop them from just starting up another one with another name. And that is exactly what we saw in the case of Dominic Pelico. This was the mass rape trial of Jacelle Pelico in France. And that's where really it all began because I was in the courtroom when Jacelle Pelico's lawyer spoke about Coco, and that was the platform that Dominic Pelico used to recruit over 80 men to rape his sedated wife. And the lawyer described Coco as the weapon of the crime. Because Pelico had gone on there to find like-minded people. And that's how we first started exploring these places is that we knew that there were other websites out there, like Coco, that were still operating with complete and utter impunity. And so Coco was shut down after this case, but in recent weeks, another platform has just emerged with the same name.

24:40And it's got exactly the same interface. So again, as you say, it's kind of this whack-a-mole issue where one goes down and then several others pop up. And so what can be done? Well, if you listen to Jacelle Pelico, she says it all starts with education, meaning to understand what consent means. So I do think there are several things that can be done to try and fight this problem. Yeah. Difficult story, very important story. Sasuke Vendorn is CNN's correspondent in Paris, part of an investigative team on this story. Sasuke, thank you very much. Thank you, Scott. We reached out for comment to the social messaging platform Telegram and to kick online entertainment, which operates the porn website, motherless.com. We did not hear back from either. Here and now, any time comes from NPR and WB War Boston. Today's stories were produced by Jenea Williams, Will Waukey and Wilder Fleming. Today's editors were Mark Naven, Michael Scotto, and Cat Welch. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Andre Puglia.

25:44Here and now, any time comes from NPR and WB War Boston. Today's stories were produced by Jenea Williams, Will Waukey and Wilder Fleming. Today's editors were Mark Naven, Michael Scotto, and Cat Welch. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Andre Puglia. Our theme music is by Mike Misketto, Max Liebman, and Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And the executive producer of Here and Now is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.