AMERICAN TINDERBOX

By stoking fear and division and undermining every check on his power, Trump has brought the US to the brink of major civil disorder. As democratic norms erode and polarisation deepens, political violence could surge ahead of the 2026 midterms and reach crisis levels by 2028

- Alex Hinton

“Bomb threat! You need to exit — now,” a security officer shouted at me as I observed the Principles First conference, a gathering of moderate Republicans in Washington, on 22 February. Moments later, we learned that the threat had come from an untraceable email claiming that four pipe bombs had been planted “to honor the J6 hostages recently released by Emperor Trump.”

Sadly, I wasn’t surprised. Just days earlier, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and other insurrectionists pardoned by President Donald Trump for crimes related to the 6 January, 2021, attack on the US Capitol had been celebrated as heroes at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAO), a major gathering of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement. As one of them boasted at the event, “Were like gods.”

During the conference, Tarrio led a group back to the US Capitol, where they chanted, “Whose house? Our house!” He was later arrested for assaulting a protester. After his release, Tarrio traveled to the Principles First venue, where he verbally harassed Michael Fanone, the former Washington police officer who was severely injured while defending the Capitol during the insurrection.

As an anthropologist who studies political violence, I see these events as a sign that the United States is in serious trouble. In my 2021 book It Can Happen Here, I argued that bad actors are increasingly emboldened, heightening the risk of politically motivated violence. That threat became even more apparent on 14 June, when Trump supporter Vance Boelter shot two Minnesota state Democrats and their spouses, killing State House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband. Authorities later discovered a hit list with the names of 45 Democratic officials in Boelter’s car.