By Jonathan Katz, Renée Rippberger, and Eric Urby

he assassinations of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, as well as the attempted murders of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, are disturbing examples of the rise in political violence in the United States. Political violence includes “[t]he use of physical force, coercion, or intimidation to achieve political goals” ranging “from violent acts against individuals or groups, to state-sponsored violence, and to physical violence and intimidation used by both state and non-state actors.” To protect the health of our democracy and safety of our communities, Americans—especially political leaders—must consistently and loudly denounce such violence and take steps to address this growing threat, while remaining cautious not to restrict civic freedoms.

Politically motivated violence is a major concern for a vast majority of Americans, regardless of political identification. The impacts of political violence on a democratic society are far-reaching. In addition to the devastating effects on victims, their families, and their communities, political violence can also stifle critical forms of public engagement—such as voting, community organizing, and running for office—and chill free expression. Due to its harmful effects, and the troubling uptick following the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, we highlighted the urgent need to swiftly and “vigorously oppose” political violence or harassment in all forms in the Brookings Democracy Playbook 2025.

Election officials, judges, and lawmakers from across the political spectrum have faced increasing threats of political violence. There were assassination attempts against President Donald Trump in 2024 and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro in April 2025. More recently, a bomb threat was made at an Illinois hotel where several Texas lawmakers were staying—quickly followed by a second. This rise in intimidation and violence is dangerous not only for the safety of Americans, but for the health of U.S. democracy. This deeply concerning trend is linked to inflammatory rhetoric and policy by leaders and their supporters, the spread of disinformation online, and other factors. 

There are short- and long-term strategies that federal, state, and local officials—as well as other stakeholders—can implement to mitigate the risk of violence and harassment. These strategies include consistently enforcing relevant laws to address immediate threats, speaking out against agitators regardless of political affiliation, and tackling the root causes of political violence, both physical and psychological.  

Amid the federal government’s recent cuts to programs aimed at reducing violent extremism, it is especially important for subnational and nongovernmental actors to provide funding, tools, and other resources to address the risks and counter the impacts of political violence. This includes the private sector, specifically the technology industry, which can do more to redesign social media features that are exploited by hostile actors, implement high-quality standards for threat assessment, and otherwise guard against political violence. 

While implementing these strategies, it is essential that government, civil society, community leaders, and citizens at every level of society—regardless of political affiliation or ideology—cooperate to swiftly and unequivocally condemn political violence. Government and civil society leaders should champion nonviolent methods of conflict resolution and reaffirm democratic principles such as freedom of speech, assembly, and expression. 

Political leaders’ immediate reactions to the Minnesota assassinations included both appropriate and concerning responses. On the former, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed bipartisan resolutions that condemned political violence and called for reconciliation of differences through civic dialogue and debate. Similar responses emerged from state legislatures and lawmakers across the country, from Georgia to Washington. In contrast, we saw troubling responses from some lawmakers and other actors.

It is extremely important to caution U.S. policymakers in this heated environment to act responsibly and not use the specter of political violence as an excuse to suppress nonviolent movements, curb freedoms of assembly and expression, encourage retaliation, or otherwise close civic spaces. Weaponizing calls for stability and peace in response to political violence is a real threat in democratic and nondemocratic countries globally

By Mikaela Rabinowitz, Vaughn Crandall, and Shantay Jackson. 

Community gun violence in US cities is both rare and highly concentrated. Decades of research and practice show that shootings cluster within a very small number of people, places, and social networks. Effective violence reduction therefore requires identifying and engaging the individuals at very high risk of being involved in gun violence in the immediate future (i.e., very high-risk individuals, or VHRI).

This new brief is designed to support jurisdictions working to implement community violence intervention approaches by improving their ability to identify VHRI. The brief provides 1) a concise synthesis of the research evidence on risk for involvement in community gun violence, and 2) guidance on how to implement structured processes to identify the people driving violence within their communities.

By Senzikile Bengu, Harsha Dayal, Gwen Dereymaeker, et al.

Violence in South Africa has an enormous cost on individuals, health and social protection systems, and the economy. There is growing evidence about the substantial return on investment that violence prevention can deliver, and about what works to prevent violence. Now is the time to invest in evidence-based interventions to prevent all forms of violence. This policy brief summarises lessons learnt from research, policy and practice over the past three years. Key findings Violence costs the economy, companies, and health and social systems. There is evidence for a positive return on investments when violence is prevented. This means it is cheaper to fund effective violence prevention than a criminal justice system, which reacts to violent crime. There is a growing body of research and practicebased knowledge of what works to prevent violence in South Africa. There is a strong association between violence and inequality, unemployment, food insecurity and poverty. Parenting and community-based interventions show significant effects on preventing or reducing intimate partner violence and violence against children. With regard to violence against women: The chances of getting justice for a murdered woman are low and decreasing. Police fail to make arrests despite an intimate partner or family member being involved in more than 70% of cases. Experience of trauma and poor mental health increase the chances of women students in higher education institutions being targeted for sexual violence. Circumstances that lead male students to perpetrate violence include abuse during childhood, and cultural norms equating masculinity with dominance over women. Burnout and exhaustion in frontline workers significantly hamper violence prevention efforts 

By Everytown for Gun Safety, Everytown Research & Policy

For centuries, self-defense laws have given people the right to protect themselves. Shoot First laws, also known as Stand Your Ground laws, go beyond these long-standing principles, aggressively altering criminal law to shield a person who claims self-defense from being arrested, prosecuted, or convicted for using deadly force. In 2005, Florida enacted the first modern Shoot First law, an effort backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), during a time when they were making concerted efforts to reverse declining gun sales.2 Working with the gun lobby, the American Legislative Exchange Council pushed to turn Florida’s law into a template for a national campaign.3 Now in 29 states,4 these laws change the nature of self-defense, turning everyday disputes into deadly confrontations. Far from empowering victims, Shoot First laws lower the threshold for justifiable homicide, encouraging the escalation of petty arguments and armed vigilantism. 

Although the gun lobby created these laws under the pretense of empowering and protecting victims of crime, the data overwhelmingly shows that the statutes have failed at this. Research on Shoot First laws indicates that they increase gun deaths, leading to hundreds of deaths every year that would not have occurred otherwise. These laws also consistently fail to protect vulnerable communities; in addition to increased risk of victimization in Shoot First states, convictions are unfairly skewed against people of color and women. 

In the decades since the first Shoot First law was enacted, no research shows that these laws lead to better outcomes for anyone. Shoot First was created to solve a problem that does not exist—and Americans are paying the price. 

Public Report on Chicago Police Training on the Use of Force

From the introduction; This Report from community representatives of Chicago’s Use of Force Community Working Group offers our feedback on the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) training on de-escalation and the use of force. The Working Group was first convened in the summer of 2020 in response to the requirements of the federal civil rights Consent Decree designed to bring an end to the CPD’s pattern of police brutality and racial discrimination. Over the course of two years, the Working Group persuaded the CPD to make transformative changes to its policies governing police use of force. 1 Last fall, we issued a Public Report on CPD’s new policies, including areas still in need of change. 2 The new policies, if implemented and enforced on the ground, have the potential to dramatically reduce unnecessary CPD violence and improve public safety.

Second Report of the Community Representatives of Chicago’s Use of Force Working Group. 2023March 2023. 24p.

Author(s): Dante BC Hoek, Ard J Barends, Esther FJC van Ginneken
Focus: This explorative qualitative research on prison violence investigates how, and why, potentially violent situations between incarcerated men occur. Through in-depth interviews with imprisoned and formerly imprisoned men, the research explores the situational circumstances of prison violence.
Conclusion: The article identifies three distinct categories of situations where violence can occur: when incarcerated individuals perceive threats to their (1) status, (2) safety and (3) shared interests (or goals). The findings show how these particular threats impact participants’ interactions and interpretations of situations and subsequent potentially violent behaviour. 

Editors: John K. Roman, Philip Cook

One of the great policy successes of the last decade is the increasing role of rigorous, objective, and transparent data and research in policymaking. Developing and implementing a data-driven government in which valid and reliable evidence informs solutions to our nation’s most pressing health and safety challenges is more critical than ever as those challenges are ever more complex. Nowhere is that data foundation more needed than in the realm of firearms violence. Trustworthy data is a much-needed bridge to effective policymaking that can reduce the number of firearm accidents, suicides, homicides, and assaults. In an age of intense partisanship, shared facts are the cornerstone for building a shared purpose. The shared purpose of modernizing firearms data infrastructure is to improve public safety by reducing gun violence. In the fall of 2020, Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy dedicated to maximizing opportunity and minimizing injustice, and NORC at University of Chicago, an objective nonpartisan research institution, released the Blueprint for a US Firearms Infrastructure (Roman, 2020)1 . The Blueprint is the consensus report of an expert panel of distinguished academics, trailblazing practitioners, and government leaders. It describes 17 critical reforms required to modernize how data about firearms violence of all types (intentional, accidental, and self-inflicted) are collected, integrated and disseminated. This project, which is also supported by Arnold Ventures, takes the conceptual priorities described in the Blueprint and proposes specific new steps for implementation. The first step in building a better firearms data infrastructure is to acknowledge where we currently stand. In The State of Firearm Data in 2019 (Roman, 2019)2 , the expert panel found that while there are a substantial number of data sources that collect data on firearms violence, existing datasets and data collections are limited, particularly around intentional injuries. There is some surveillance data, but health data on firearms injuries are kept separately from data on crimes, and there are few straightforward ways to link those data. Data that provide context for a shooting—where the event took place, and what the relationship was between victim and shooter—are not available alongside data on the nature of injuries. Valuable data collections have been discontinued, data are restricted by policy, important data are not collected, data are often difficult to access, and contemporary data are often not released in a timely fashion or not available outside of specialized settings. As a result, researchers face vast gaps in knowledge and are unable to leverage existing data to build the evidence base necessary to adequately answer key policy questions and inform firearms policymaking.

By Victor Weedn , Alon Steinberg , Pete Speth 

We postulate that most atraumatic deaths during police restraint of subjects in the prone position are due to prone restraint cardiac arrest (PRCA), rather than from restraint asphyxia or a stress‐induced cardiac condition, such as excited delirium. The prone position restricts ventilation and diminishes pulmonary perfusion. In the setting of a police encounter, metabolic demand will be high from anxiety, stress, excitement, physical struggle, and/or stimulant drugs, leading to metabolic acidosis and requiring significant hyperventilation. Although oxygen levels may be maintained, prolonged restraint in the prone position may result in an inability to adequately blow off CO2, causing blood pCO2 levels to rise rapidly. The uncompensated metabolic acidosis (low pH) will eventually result in loss of myocyte contractility. The initial electrocardiogram rhythm will generally be either pulseless electrical activity (PEA) or asystole, indicating a noncardiac etiology, more consistent with PRCA and inconsistent with a primary role of any underlying cardiac pathology or stress‐induced cardiac etiology. We point to two animal models: in one model rats unable to breathe deeply due to an external restraint die when their metabolic demand is increased, and in the other model, pressure on the chest of rats results in decreased venous return and cardiac arrest rather than death from asphyxia. We present two cases of subjects restrained in the prone position who went into cardiac arrest and had low pHs and initial PEA cardiac rhythms. Our cases demonstrate the danger of prone restraint and serve as examples of PRCA.

By ALISSA SKOG AND JOHANNA LACOE 

Research series examining second look policies in California The five policy briefs and overview report in this series describe the characteristics and recidivism rates of individuals affected by second look policies in California. Committee on Revision of the Penal Code Before 2019, people who participated in certain felonies that resulted in a death could be convicted of murder, even if the person had neither committed the killing nor intended for it to occur. These convictions were based under the felony murder rule or the “natural and probable consequences” doctrine, which both allowed for broad liability. To address concerns about fairness and excessive punishment, Senate Bill 1437 (2018) narrowed or eliminated the application of these doctrines and allowed individuals convicted under them to petition for resentencing. In recognition that other serious convictions were similarly affected, Senate Bill 775 (2021) expanded eligibility to include those convicted of manslaughter or attempted murder under these legal theories. This brief examines who was resentenced under felony murder reform, the offenses for which they were originally convicted, and their recidivism rates following release. Key findings • Nearly 1,200 people were resentenced after these changes to the felony murder rule. As of December 2024, 1,172 people initially convicted under the felony murder rule have had those charges vacated, and were resentenced based on the remaining charges in their cases. Of those resentenced, 78% have since been released from prison. • Most people convicted of felony murder were young at the time of the offense, and for many, it was their first admission to prison. The median age at the time of the offense was just over 21, and for 75% of those resentenced, that conviction was their only prison sentence. • Women made up a larger share of those resentenced under felony murder reform (9%) than the share of all people released from prison in fiscal year 2018–19 (7%). • Recidivism rates for those resentenced under felony murder reform (9%) than the share of all people released from prison in fiscal year 2018–19 (7%). • Recidivism rates for those resentenced under felony murder reform were notably low. New conviction rates were consistently lower than the total releases (3% within one year, 7% within two years, and 10% within three years, compared to 21%, 33%, and 42%). Of those resentenced and released, most new convictions were misdemeanors. • Very few people were convicted of a new serious or violent felony after resentencing under felony murder reform. Fewer than five people were convicted within one- and two- years, and only 2% (n=5) were convicted within three years. However, we can only assess full three-year outcomes for 25% of people who have been released (n=274).