Friday, March 29, 2024

Pelosi attack shocks country on edge about democracy threats

WASHINGTON (AP) — An America that may already really feel prefer it’s hurtling towards political disintegration has been jolted but once more, this time by the violent attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lower than two weeks earlier than Election Day.

Seizing a hammer and leaving a path of damaged glass, an intruder broke into the couple’s San Francisco dwelling early Friday and repeatedly struck Paul Pelosi, 82, with a hammer. Paul Pelosi had surgical procedure to restore a cranium fracture and severe accidents to his proper arm and fingers, and his docs count on a full restoration, the speaker’s workplace mentioned.

The assailant confronted Paul Pelosi by shouting, “Where is Nancy,” in keeping with one other individual conversant in the scenario who was granted anonymity to debate it. The Democratic congresswoman was in Washington on the time.

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The calling out of her title was an indication that the assault might have focused the lawmaker, who as speaker is second in line to the presidency. The ambush was a very savage reminder of the extremism that has coursed by means of American politics lately, including to a way of foreboding with the Nov. 8 election practically at hand.

Armed watchers are staking out poll drop containers in Arizona to protect in opposition to false conspiracies about voter fraud. Threats in opposition to members of Congress have risen to historic ranges. Public opinion surveys present fears for a fragile democracy and even of a civil warfare. Former President Donald Trump continues to disclaim that he misplaced the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, and his acolytes are trying to consolidate their energy over future elections.

A brand new home intelligence evaluation from the Department of Homeland Security and different companies mentioned extremists fueled by election falsehoods “pose a heightened threat” to the upcoming midterms.

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The evaluation, dated Friday, mentioned the best hazard was “posed by lone offenders who leverage election-related issues to justify violence.”

“It is worse than it’s ever been,” mentioned Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster. “This is uncharted waters.” Belcher blamed “the mainstreaming of behavior in politics that was, once upon a time, left or right, abhorrent.”

Police haven’t recognized a motive for the attack on Pelosi’s husband. Judging by social media posts, the suspect seems to have been stewing in a mixture of conspiracy theories about elections and the coronavirus pandemic.

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“It’s bad regardless of the reasons, but if it’s politically motivated, it’s just another example of political violence and irresponsibility of folks who are opening the door to that type of violence against other elected officials,” Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, chairman of the Senate Democrats’ marketing campaign arm, mentioned in an interview. “It’s a very sad time for our country right now.”

Politicians from each events expressed outrage about the assault.

“This attack is shocking, and Americans should worry because it is becoming more common,” mentioned Joe O’Dea, a Republican candidate for Senate in Colorado. “Partisanship and polarization are tearing the country apart.”

Some responses, nonetheless, mirrored a pointy sense of partisanship.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., labored the incident into his remarks at a marketing campaign cease for a congressional candidate as he known as for Democrats to lose energy in Congress.

“There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California,” Youngkin mentioned. “That’s what we’re going to go do.”

From the Civil War and assaults on Black voters throughout Jim Crow to the assassination of elected leaders like John and Robert Kennedy, the United States has skilled spasms of political violence. No occasion or ideology has a monopoly on it.

Five years in the past, a left-wing activist opened hearth on Republicans as they practiced for an annual charity baseball recreation. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana was critically wounded. In 2011, then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot within the head at an occasion exterior a Tucson grocery retailer.

Today, violent rhetoric and imagery have develop into a staple of proper wing politics within the United States, and it escalated throughout Donald Trump’s presidency. Democrats seen the intrusion into Pelosi’s dwelling as an extension of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters interrupted the peaceable transition of energy to Biden.

On that day, protesters looked for Pelosi and chanted that they wished to hold then-Vice President Mike Pence, who had defied Trump’s calls for to overturn the election outcomes.

Less than two years later, solely 9% of U.S. adults suppose democracy is working “extremely” or “very well,” in keeping with this month’s ballot from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack have obtained a gentle stream of threats for his or her work.

“If we do not stop the big lie, perpetuated by those who seek to win at any cost, our democracy will cease to exist,” Rep. Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat who was assigned a safety element in current months due to her work on the committee, mentioned in an interview. “Then nothing else we do will have mattered.”

Nowhere has the temperature been hotter than in Arizona, a cauldron for election conspiracy theories. People impressed by unsupported claims that poll drop containers perpetuate election fraud have camped exterior these containers, photographing voters and their license plates as they flip in ballots.

Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone mentioned on Monday that he’s patrolling round drop containers and devoting unprecedented manpower to election safety after two individuals armed with pistols and carrying tactical gear had been seen retaining watch on a poll drop field exterior Phoenix. The incident sparked fears of voter intimidation and the potential for confrontations that might escalate into violence.

“It goes very quickly from well-intended to poorly executed, and then bad things happen,” Penzone mentioned.

Penzone, a Democrat, mentioned there’s “a growing toxic problem where individuals feel that it is appropriate to use forms of intimidation and threats to try to influence political outcomes.”

Left-leaning teams have filed two lawsuits in opposition to teams organizing watch events, together with one with ties to the Oath Keepers militia. A federal decide on Friday declined to order one group to cease its actions.

A 36-year-old man was arrested this previous week for allegedly breaking into the marketing campaign headquarters of Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor and the present secretary of state. There’s no indication the housebreaking was politically motivated, nevertheless it alarmed her employees, which is consistently on guard for threats.

Federal prosecutors have charged three individuals with threatening to hurt Arizona election officers, together with Hobbs, for the reason that final election.

Earlier within the week, three males had been convicted of supporting a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after a trial that raised fears about paramilitary coaching and anti-government extremism.

And on Friday, a person pleaded responsible to threatening to kill Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. Also, a Kansas man is dealing with a felony cost of threatening to kill one of many state’s congressmen, Republican Jake LaTurner.

Rep. Val Demings, a Florida Democrat who’s working for Senate, has campaigned with a big personal safety element for a lot of the 12 months. It is a needed precaution, she mentioned in an interview, given an uptick in violent threats within the months since she served as a House supervisor in Trump’s first impeachment trial.

“I never thought that I would have my worst moment, feeling like I was really going to die, in the Capitol on Jan. 6,” mentioned Demings, a former Orlando police chief. “When I had been in back alleys and bar fights and arresting people who killed other people, and never did I have the feeling on the streets like I had that day. And it was all in politics, and I’m like, ‘What is going on?’”

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Cooper reported from Phoenix and Peoples from New York. Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas and Farnoush Amiri and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s protection of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to be taught extra about the problems and components at play within the 2022 midterm elections.



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