The Attack on Josh Shapiro Endangers Democratic Norms

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family are lucky to have survived the arson attack on his official residence in Harrisburg early Sunday. It was the second act of violence in the state against a high-profile politician in less than a year; last July in Butler, a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed Donald Trump’s ear during a campaign rally—the first of two attempts on his life in 2024.

Researchers who study political violence indicate that no uptick is yet evident in data about the phenomenon. Public support for using violent means to influence political outcomes remains low. President Trump described the perpetrator as “probably just a wack job.” None of this is reassuring, though, because nobody knows what makes an unstable person fixate specifically on the idea of assassinating a governor or a president. Every attack on a well-known political figure undermines our norms. By the time political violence shows up in statistics, the damage to society is done.  

The security failure at the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg is startling. Shapiro, a Democrat, had hosted a Passover seder on Saturday night. He and his family were sleeping when a man scaled a fence, used a hammer to smash a window, threw in a homemade incendiary device, and made his way to the other side of the building, where he broke in and ignited another fire before escaping. A state trooper awakened the Shapiro family, but police did not find the perpetrator; the suspect, identified by authorities as Cody Balmer, later turned himself in. Investigators say Balmer intended to hurt Shapiro, but they have not spelled out what his specific motives might have been.

[Read: What the Josh Shapiro attack reveals]

Some people who attempt to kill political leaders have clear ideologicies. In 2022, a mentally troubled man who disagreed with Brett Kavanaugh’s conservative views went to the Supreme Court justice’s Maryland home with a pistol, a knife, zip ties, and other gear. A man reportedly steeped in right-wing conspiracy theories broke into then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home. (She was in Washington at the time, but the attacker badly injured her husband.)  

Other assailants’ political views have proved more difficult to discern. Shapiro’s attacker wasn’t wearing a MAGA hat or yelling anti-Semitic epithets. The man who shot Trump in the ear did not have a clear ideological outlook. Some attackers might well have political motives—but ones that defy conventional categories and make sense only to the perpetrators themselves.

Democracy requires a strong shared belief that our political differences must be settled through peaceful means. As I have previously argued, Trump has used his megaphone and his official powers in dangerous ways: embracing far-right groups, casually threatening to jail his political enemies, egging on the January 6 riot at the Capitol, pardoning the insurrectionists who were convicted of crimes. No other major American political leader in recent memory—and certainly no other president—has so publicly entertained the idea of getting his way by force.

Trump’s statement yesterday, in reference to the attack on Shapiro, that “a thing like this cannot be allowed to happen,” was a healthy sign. Then again, the president had waited a day and a half to condemn the incident. And he’d asserted, unprompted, that he’d heard Balmer was “not a fan of Trump”—as if to insist that no one in his camp could have done such a thing.

Precisely because no one can predict which disgruntled person might feel emboldened to kill a politician, Americans have every reason to be anxious about the Shapiro attack as part of a baleful trend. What’s clear is that, in the past several years, some of the most heavily protected people in American civic life have been subjected to violence, and even unsuccessful attacks contribute to an aura of vulnerability that now permeates our politics.