Never in the United States has the present been so worrying, so unpredictable. The coincidence in time of a series of factors, something like a perfect storm, has made the authorities expect an increase in extremist violence in the coming months. Therefore, the latest bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of the Biden Government is a warning.
The document mentions those elements that in a casual but incredible way will coincide in the coming months. Are the recent shootings massive, the ruling of the Supreme Court on the right to abortion and the midterm elections of November, known as mid-term. Thus, the threat would last until November 30.
“In the coming months, we expect the threat environment to become more dynamic as several high-profile events could be exploited to justify acts of violence against a range of potential targets,” the DHS bulletin reads. The document suggests that future targets of extremist violence could include more people of color and religious minorities, members of government, and journalists.
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The bulletin says that those allegedly responsible for that threat are closer to violent action by “factors such as personal grievances, reactions to current events, and their adherence to violent extremist ideologies, including racially or ethnically motivated or anti-government/anti-authority violent extremism”.
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The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have already warned on other occasions that white supremacists and other domestic extremists they pose as great a threat to the nation as the Islamic State.
The DHS warning comes after Juneau County Circuit Court Judge John Roemer was found dead in his home with gunshot wounds. The suspect, Douglas Uhde, is believed to have had a hit list that included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
To that context we must add the latest mass shootings. A few weeks ago, an 18-year-old man killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Just weeks earlier, a white supremacist in Buffalo, New York, walked into a neighborhood grocery store and killed 10 people, most of whom were older black residents.
These are the main keys of the immediate presentat least until November, which will face the United States.
Trump’s shadow
The committee investigating the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 has considered that the event was the “culmination” of a coup attempt by then-President Donald Trumpwho was supported on the ground by the Proud Boys group.
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The researchers detailed in this committee that this far-right collective could have planned the attack in advance and they could be a key piece to know why the assault on the Capitol took place, the researchers pointed out. On the day of the assault, Trump gave a midday speech outside the White House, in which he urged his supporters to march to Congress and “fight” for his presidency.
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Trump and two of his children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., have been summoned to testify by the New York State Attorney General on July 15. The Attorney General’s Office tries to determine by civil means If Trump’s company inflated the value of its assets in order to obtain bank loanss and at the same time reduced that same value with the intention of paying less taxes, while the Manhattan district attorney’s office has a parallel criminal investigation open.
Mid-term elections
Regardless of what the judges may say, Trump is determined to seek his return to the White House in 2024. In May he suffered a blow in the Republican primary for governor of Georgia, where he lost the candidate he supported. Nevertheless, some of his supporters won candidacies in other states.
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Primaries, in which parties elect their candidates for mid-term electionsmid-term) from November 8serve as a thermometer to measure the support reaped by the former president, who does not rule out seeking the presidency in 2024. In these elections, the Congress in which the Democrats now have a meager majority will be renewed.
Aside from the mid-term to Congress, Governor races are held in November in 36 states. Right now, there are 28 states with a Republican governor and 22 states with a Democratic governor.
The figure of governor is very important. They are in charge of managing fundamental matters such as tax, economic, social, educational policies and also supervise electoral integrity.
The Supreme Court’s decision on abortion
Biden predicted a “mini revolution” in the mid-term if the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent, which enshrined access to abortion as a constitutional right. The court’s decision has come this June 24, annulling the protection of this right in force in this country since 1973, in a historic decision that will allow each state to decide whether to maintain or prohibit this reproductive right.
The ruling states that the Constitution “does not grant” this right and returns the authority to legislate on abortion to the elected representatives of the states.
On May 3, a draft of the sentence had already been leaked and that it would withdraw the protection of abortion. That document had the support of at least five magistrates of the Supreme Court of the nine that compose it. Immediately, Biden warned that she was preparing a “response” to defend the right to abortion. After this Friday’s decision, Biden has shown his rejection and disappointment in him.
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Just a few days later, Senate Democrats failed to get enough votes to push through a bill intended to protect abortion at the federal level. Meanwhile, Oklahoma passed a new law that prohibits abortion from the moment of fertilization. This State, like Texas, already prohibits abortions from the first six weeks of pregnancy.
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Abortion has been legal in the US since the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that the State has no right to intervene in a woman’s decision about her pregnancy. In the past decade, numerous conservative-led states have passed rules that blatantly violate those parameters, with the stated goal of getting the Supreme Court to review and overturn the precedent set nearly half a century ago.
The violence that doesn’t stop
The numbers illustrate the tragedy of guns in the US. So far in 2022 there have already been at least 250 mass shootings in the US. The data is from Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a non-profit organization that portrays with numbers the scourge of weapons in the country. According to their data, in 2022 in the US 8,579 people have already died by firearm.
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The GVA defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are injured or killed, not including the shooter. In 2021 there were 693. Statistics show unstoppable growth. In 2014 in the US there were 272 mass shootings; in 2015, 336; in 2016 it reached 382; in 2017 there were 348; in 2018 it was lowered to 336; in 2019, there were 417 mass shootings; in 2020, the figure increased to 611; and in 2021, 693.
Another fact that gives us an idea of the dimension of the problem. Every day at least 200 people are injured by firearms in the United States.según Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project.
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Since the Uvalde massacre, the deadliest school shooting in state history, Texas Republican officials have expressed little interest in enforcing tougher gun laws. In April 2021, 59% of Texans surveyed in a poll said they disagreed that elected officials were doing enough to prevent mass shootings. Only 38% of those surveyed agreed.
a polarized society
The background and at the same time the essence of a large part of the events described is the polarization of North American society. America is split in two. And it is no longer just America that votes Democrat versus America that votes Republican, as has been the case for decades. It’s more.
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It’s the America you want curb the arms trade against those who consider the right to own a firearm to be sacred (who remind us over and over again how the Second Amendment of the 1787 Constitution upholds it).
The United States faces, perhaps more than ever since 1865, the risk of a Civil War
It’s the America you want to preserve women’s right to abortion, against those who put before the so-called right to life of the fetus from the moment of its conception. That of the big cities on the East and West coasts versus those who live in the farm states of the Midwest. Biden/Harris vs. Trump.
¿Prospects of civil war?
In 1994, Hans Magnus Enzensberger published his essay Civil war prospects. In that book, in the shadow of the war that dismembered Yugoslavia, the German intellectual spoke of the molecular civil war had also broken out in the metropolises.
In the book Enzensberger warned: “We deceive ourselves if we believe that peace reigns only because we can go buy bread without a sniper blowing our heads off… Every subway car is a miniature Bosnia.” The United States today faces that risk perhaps more than ever since 1865.the date the Civil War between North and South ended.
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