Politics

A sign of a dangerous new normal: Americans are getting numb to political violence

Published

10 months ago

September 14, 2025

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has raised new fears that the country is entering another era of political violence.

One worrying sign: Americans’ attention has moved on faster and faster as incidents have become more frequent, data suggest, indicating the public may be becoming rapidly desensitized to it.

When an arsonist set the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion on fire in April, the incident did not make most national newspapers’ front pages. When two Democratic lawmakers were shot, with one killed alongside her husband, in Minnesota in June, it took only a few days for Google search traffic for the incident to drop to almost zero.

It shook the nation when Trump was shot last summer; but when another would-be gunman targeted the then-candidate on a golf course a few weeks later, it was just a blip in the news cycle.

Each attack may seem shocking, but the incidents are leaving less of a mark on the national consciousness. A Blue Light News review of Google search data and newspaper front pages found individual attacks are getting less attention than they did in the past, and Americans are moving on even quicker. The news cycles for incidents of political violence this year are typically measured in a few weeks, if not just days.

“There’s a whole bunch of studies on violence in the news, documenting the fact that people’s emotional cognitive reactions early on are high, and then as time goes on, the more you are exposed, those cognitive emotional reactions lessen,” said Karyn Riddle, a communications professor at University of Wisconsin who studies violence in media.

And while definitions of political violence vary, it’s clear that it has been increasing in the U.S., by any metric. Targets in recent incidents include Trump, a Supreme Court justice, multiple governors, a former speaker of the House, and state lawmakers.

Threats against members of Congress have surged, according to the U.S. Capitol Police, with recorded threats more than doubling from 3,939 in 2017 to 9,474 in 2024.

“You’d have to go back to the pre-Civil War era to find a similar level of threat and acts of physical violence against lawmakers,” said Matt Dallek, a political historian at The George Washington University.

There was a time when such political violence, shocking the nation, drew prolonged national attention: When then-Rep. Gabby Giffords was grievously injured in a mass shooting in 2011, and six others killed, it was on the front page of The New York Times for more than a week.

It was in some ways the first of an era, and Giffords became an advocate for preventing gun violence. The Giffords attack has continued to get interest online after mass shootings and other incidents of political violence, Blue Light News’s review found.

But that has largely not been the case for the growing number of later events. Google searches have surged after each event of violence — an indicator of the spike in public interest in the news topic — but quickly returned to normal levels.

That is happening even faster for recent acts of violence, Blue Light News found.

Incidents of political violence over the past decade — such as the 2017 congressional baseball shooting that targeted Republican lawmakers including Rep. Steve Scalise, or the 2022 assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi — received relatively little search interest after the first rush of news.

The drop-off in public attention matches the pattern of news coverage: A Blue Light News review of newspaper articles from LexisNexis found that recent events of political violence have tended to disappear from most newspaper front pages within just a week.

The Blue Light News review focused on incidents where individual political figures were targeted for violence. That does not encompass the full scope of political violence in the U.S., which has also included shootings targeting campaign offices and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The review also found that despite the overall trend toward desensitization, many factors influenced the level of attention various incidents received, including the extent of injuries and how quickly the attacker was apprehended.

That’s why Kirk’s death — and the gruesome videos of it that quickly circulated across social media — may register with Americans in a different way than past incidents, Riddle said.

“The graphicness of violence matters,” the University of Wisconsin professor said. “[Kirk’s death] was caught live on camera, it was very bloody and graphic. Are people desensitized to exactly what they saw on Wednesday? Have we seen that a lot? I don’t feel like we have.”

Politics

The weekend of Andy Burnham’s life

Published

55 seconds ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Andy Burnham is set to become Labour leader on Friday, July 17 and British Prime Minister on Monday, July 20. In between, on Sunday, July 19, England could win the World Cup (no, really).

For Burnham, a lifelong soccer fan, it would be quite the weekend.

Some commentators — including IPSOS pollster Keiran Pedley — have even suggested that, in such circumstances, Burnham should call a snap election to ride a wave of national euphoria and secure his own political mandate.

Given Labour’s commanding majority in Parliament, that is unlikely to happen. But the suggestion hints at soccer’s extraordinary power to shape the national mood — something politicians, and especially new prime ministers, ignore at their peril.

Coming up next week on POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast, host Patrick Baker asks how soccer shapes our politics, and examines what politicians should — and should not — do in order to use soccer to their advantage.

Sometimes it is about timing. Former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, buoyed by memories of watching England win in 1966, called an election four years later during the Mexico World Cup of 1970. He was banking on England’s dominance boosting the public mood and, in turn, his election chances. But England crashed out of the tournament to West Germany days before the poll and Wilson lost the election.

Other times it is about authenticity. While there’s never been any doubt that Keir Starmer is a genuine Arsenal fan or that Andy Burnham is a devoted Everton supporter, the enthusiasm of some politicians for their club teams has appeared less convincing. Aston Villa fan David Cameron famously said he supported West Ham in a speech during the 2015 election campaign, which he won despite the flub.

For politicians seeking to speak for the whole U.K., remembering Scotland (on the brink of crashing out of the World Cup), Wales and Northern Ireland (neither made it to the tournament) matters too.

And in a sport capable of both uniting and dividing, ministers and prime ministers alike have often discovered that criticizing players, managers or fans can carry political risks of its own.

Politics and soccer: How to play the game. Listen to Westminster Insider next Friday, July 3.

Politics

It’s getting real in a New Jersey parking lot

Published

1 hour ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey — Before the World Cup began, New York and New Jersey unveiled competing transportation plans.

After several matches, $20 shuttle buses subsidized by New York keep selling out, but $98 New Jersey Transit train trips don’t.

Now New Jersey Transit is poised to lose millions during the tournament, blaming the revenue shortfall on lower-than-expected demand caused in part by the cheaper options. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has suggested maybe that is because of the sticker shock fans face to get on New Jersey trains and buses — an observation sure to rub salt in Jersey’s wounds.

The tensions are just the latest manifestation of a dysfunctional relationship between the two jurisdictions that comprise what FIFA calls “New York New Jersey,” where England and Panama will face off today in their final group-stage match.

After the tournament’s first game New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium — between Brazil and Morocco on June 13 — lines swelled in the parking lot for New York-run buses back to Manhattan. Worried about a crowd stuck at MetLife, the New Jersey State Police asked New Jersey’s state-run transit agency to carry some of the waiting fans instead.

New Jersey Transit had room for 40,000 people but only about 22,000 customers that night. It had spent months on a plan that was moving people quickly and did not want to suddenly upend it with an unexpected surge in passengers on its trains and buses. The agency fears a repeat of the 2014 Super Bowl, in which overcrowding left fans in the same stadium’s parking lot for hours and stained the agency’s reputation for years.

Kris Kolluri, the head of New Jersey Transit, said the bistate host committee, the New Jersey governor’s office and the State Police all decided that the transit agency would move thousands of people after 90 minutes, if needed. By then, however, the lines had calmed on their own.

The asphalt standoff stemmed in part from the cross-Hudson divide over pricing.

The border states separated by the Hudson River are symbiotic — New York companies depend on workers commuting from New Jersey suburbs — and also apt to squabble over everything from how to deal with the mob and fight wildfires to what state Ellis Island is in.

Perhaps over no issue do they bicker more than transportation. Unlike other regions that have a unified transit system, the New York City metropolitan area has three public transit agencies. The states have fought over tolls (a New Jersey governor once threatened a “nuclear option” when New York created new ones), how to split the check for big infrastructure projects and how to staff their bistate Port Authority.

“Transportation is too important for any mayor or governor to give up power to any other mayor or governor,” said Mitchell Moss, a longtime New York City urban planning adviser who is also a professor at New York University.

Things went more smoothly at MetLife following a French win over Senegal and despite a deluge before and after another Senegal loss at MetLife to Norway. After the Norway win, the first New Jersey Transit train got to Penn Station in 35 minutes. The average shuttle bus back to Manhattan took 45 minutes or less.

But there continued to be a behind-the-scenes back and forth over whether New Jersey Transit should lower its prices to get more people aboard.

For fans from the world who don’t immediately come to the region and begin following local politicians, transit planners or local gadflies on X, much of the back and forth is invisible. Yet consequences of two states that don’t see eye to eye are affecting how they come and go from the eight matches, including the July 19 final.

As soon as New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration in April unveiled plans to charge fans $150 for a roundtrip ticket to the World Cup, Hochul worried it would throw “cold water” on the tournament and helped create a competing $20 shuttle bus.

Sherrill cut the price to $98, but that’s still higher than any other public transit system, and now New Jersey Transit trains are only two-thirds full. Her administration quietly blames the low-cost shuttle buses for siphoning away customers.

Allies of both governors have framed the opposite approaches as affordability-minded: Hochul wants a low price to signal that New York is welcoming the world. Sherrill wants the high price to cover the cost of providing a special service, and to prevent her voters from subsidizing trips for out-of-town fans to an event few locals can afford to attend.

In the real world, the cheaper bus tickets are selling out, while New York officials remain concerned New Jersey Transit’s high prices mean it isn’t carrying its load. New Jersey Transit, on the other hand, is proud of a smooth-running operation, which Sherrill has described as “the best option” for getting to matches.

Bistate tensions over transportation planning predate Sherrill and Hochul, but aren’t inevitable. Both Democrats only a few months ago worked together to restart construction on a new train tunnel between the states that President Donald Trump cut off funding for. But ongoing fighting could represent challenges for other bistate ventures, like a long-awaited overhaul of New York’s Penn Station on which the states will be asked to cooperate.

Politics

The feds are coming for illegal World Cup streams

Published

2 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Justice Department said Friday it has seized nearly 400 internet domains that were illegally streaming FIFA World Cup matches, marking one of the largest anti-piracy enforcement actions tied to the tournament as the U.S., Canada and Mexico host the competition.

Authorities said the websites were offering unauthorized real-time broadcasts of matches in violation of U.S. copyright law.

The domains were identified with assistance from FIFA and several major media companies, including NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. According to a DOJ press release, Homeland Security Investigations agents confirmed the sites were actively broadcasting live World Cup matches without an authorization before obtaining seizure warrants in federal court in Virginia.

The takedowns were part of “Operation Offsides,” a coordinated international effort targeting online piracy networks. U.S. officials said authorities also targeted servers and domains in Peru and Bulgaria, while additional enforcement actions took place in Croatia, Romania, Poland and Colombia with the assistance of international partners.

“We have seized hundreds of domains, used to illegally stream World Cup matches for profit, to disrupt the international networks that profit from the global popularity of the World Cup,” Assistant Attorney General Tysen Duva said in a statement.