A year after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, The Federalist is arguing that left-wing political violence remains an unresolved and escalating threat to the American republic — and that the country failed to treat his killing as the turning point it should have been.
In a piece published Thursday, the outlet writes that there is “no silver lining” to Kirk’s death and that the shooting should have marked “the last incident of political violence in America forever.” Instead, the author contends, the months that followed brought a string of episodes — bomb plots, an alleged assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, and a Virginia candidate’s violent fantasies — that suggest nothing fundamental has changed.
Kirk was murdered on September 10 at a Utah college campus. The Federalist describes the assailant as a “left-winger obsessed with transgender ideology,” and frames the killing as the culmination of years of tolerated political violence rather than an isolated act.
What the polling showed
To support its argument that the left is more tolerant of violence, the outlet cites a YouGov survey fielded September 10–12, in the immediate aftermath of the killing, which asked respondents whether it is “ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals.”
According to the numbers cited in the piece, 25% of respondents who identified as “very liberal” said such violence can be justified, along with 17% of self-identified liberals. Among conservatives and very conservatives, the figure was 9%.
The article also points to a second snap poll taken the day after Kirk’s murder, which asked whether it is acceptable for someone to feel happy when a public figure they oppose dies. As The Federalist notes, The Hill reported that liberals were again more likely to say it is usually or always acceptable to be happy about a public figure’s death — 16% overall, including 24% of “very liberal” respondents and 10% of those who identify as liberal but not very liberal.
Arrests and alleged plots
The piece then walks through a series of incidents it presents as evidence that the threat did not fade after Kirk’s death.
A few weeks after the assassination, a 41-year-old man was arrested on bomb charges in late 2025 after showing up to a Mass that Supreme Court justices traditionally attend to mark the start of the term, according to the article. Shortly after that, Virginia Democrats elected Jay Jones as attorney general; he defeated incumbent Jason Miyares by roughly 6 percentage points even after it was revealed that Jones had fantasized about murdering former Republican colleague Todd Gilbert and having Gilbert’s children die in their mother’s arms.
Quoting The Federalist’s Breccan Thies, the article asserts that “everyday Democrats” — “neighbors, your friends, your coworkers” — “are embracing their political movement’s penchant for violence.”
About a month later, four leftist extremists were arrested for allegedly planning a series of New Year’s Eve bombings and an ambush targeting ICE officers in Los Angeles, the outlet writes.
Then, this past April, Trump was the target of another alleged assassination attempt, according to the account. A 31-year-old California resident, Cole Allen, reportedly rushed past a Secret Service checkpoint armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives, charging toward the ballroom at the Washington Hilton Hotel, where Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and other cabinet members were attending the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Law enforcement ultimately subdued him.
The article also cites Democrat Elliot Forhan, who ran on killing his opponents and promised to “legally” kill Trump if elected as Ohio’s attorney general. Forhan was defeated in the May primary. The Federalist argues that running openly on such a platform is only possible when a party has fostered a culture in which political violence is treated as justified or permissible.
The broader argument
The Federalist’s core claim is not simply that individual acts of violence have occurred, but that the political culture on the left has shifted in ways that make such acts more likely — and that the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, rather than uniting the country, has left the underlying conditions in place.
The piece closes by urging readers, as they reflect on Kirk’s legacy and absence, to also reckon with the reality it describes: that left-wing violence remains “very real and still very dangerous.”
The article appears in the context of a broader debate over political violence in the United States, in which outlets across the ideological spectrum have cited polling, arrests, and rhetoric to make competing arguments about which movements pose the greater danger. The Federalist’s framing places the blame squarely on the left and on Democratic institutions it says have normalized or excused violent impulses within their coalition.
Whether the country has drawn the appropriate lessons from Kirk’s death — or any of the episodes that followed — remains, by the outlet’s account, an open and urgent question.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/09/10/left-wing-violence-is-still-an-existential-threat-to-the-republic/