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Shooting outside Jewish museum raises questions about shifts in political violence

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Shooting outside Jewish museum raises questions about shifts in political violence

Flowers and stones are left outside the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum on May 23 in Washington, D.C.

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Last week’s fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., is raising fresh concern about an increase in far-left militancy in the U.S. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram were killed as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21. The suspect arrested in the shooting, 31-year old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago, has been charged with several counts, including two of first degree murder and murder of foreign officials.

According to an FBI special agent’s affidavit in the case, Rodriguez told an officer upon arrest, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”

Jeanine Pirro, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has said federal authorities are investigating the killings as a hate crime and a crime of terrorism. President Trump has said they were rooted in antisemitism. If, indeed, the suspect planned to kill people because of their Jewish faith, this would represent a major anomaly in lethal, antisemitic violence.

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“[It] has typically been the violent far right that has conducted attacks against synagogues, mosques, Black churches,” said Seth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “To have someone from the violent far left conduct an attack against individuals based on their Jewish faith is … relatively new in the United States.”

Rising militancy tied to the Israeli-Palestinian War

Since Hamas led an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, at least five known fatalities in the U.S. have been tied to the conflict. The first was a six-year old Palestinian-American child in Illinois who was stabbed to death by his landlord. Another involved a California college professor accused of involuntary manslaughter and battery of a 69-year old Jewish counterprotester. A third instance involved a woman who was shot dead by off-duty officers after she opened fire at a Houston church with a rifle that police said had a “Palestine” sticker on it. And two men died after self-immolating in protest of the war; one was a U.S. Air Force member outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., and the other was an anti-war activist outside the Boston Israeli Consulate.

But the conflict in Gaza has spurred many more cases of political violence.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, a nonprofit that tracks political violence and protest events around the world, there have been more than 100 instances of physical conflict at U.S. demonstrations related to the war. Additionally, there have been at least 30 cases of substantial property damage. The ACLED data include only cases where Israel or Palestine were mentioned, potentially excluding many other antisemitic, anti-Arab or anti-Muslim incidents that may have been motivated by the conflict, but where those terms were not explicitly invoked.

Over the nearly 20 months since the hostilities began, Colin Clarke said there has been a radicalization effect in the U.S., particularly of the political left. Clarke is director of research at the Soufan Group, a consultancy that focuses on security and intelligence.

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“Only really since October 7th, the war in Gaza, the Israeli military campaign in the Middle East, have we seen this kind of uptick in what I would call far left militancy, far-left extremism surrounding the issue of Gaza,” Clarke said. “And not just pro-Palestinian, but actually pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah, pro-actual terrorist organizations.”

A social media account believed to belong to Rodriguez included posts of videos featuring Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah, a militant anti-Israel group based in Lebanon. Clarke also said that “a very small slice” of college campus protests have also featured evidence of support for U.S. designated foreign terrorist organizations. But he noted that terrorism is a “small numbers game,” where just a few actors can significantly impact public discourse and perceptions of safety.

Political violence trends in the U.S. are changing

During the last five years, federal authorities have emphasized that the most “lethal and persistent” threat, when it comes to domestic terrorism, has come from violent white supremacists. Examples of this violence include the killing of 11 people at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; the 2019 killing of 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, by a shooter who reportedly said he was targeting “Mexicans;” and the murder of 10 Black people at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket by a white male whose apparent writings expressed racist and antisemitic beliefs.

“What the research has shown is that when it comes to – and I don’t think there’s any other more direct way to say it than the death count – incidents that are typically affiliated with issues or ideologies that might fit in a more far-right bucket have been more lethal,” said Katherine Keneally, director of Threat Analysis and Prevention at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that focuses on extremism and terrorism.

“The most dominant tactics used by the left are … typically aimed at property. So arson, vandalism, graffiti, those sorts of activities,” said Keneally. “The targeting and outright murder of two people is very much an escalation from those types of tactics.”

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However, Keneally said that in recent years there has been a shift in political violence. Some recent incidents have not shown clear evidence of motivation by a clear ideology on the right or the left. She said this was true with both men believed to have attempted assassination of Trump. In the first of these, in Butler, Pa., the shooter had reportedly also researched events where then-President Biden would be present. The other, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, involved an individual that Keneally said was deep into conspiratorial content.

Even the case of Luigi Mangione, the accused shooter of the United Healthcare CEO, has not been clear-cut – despite his embrace by some on the far left.

“What he was particularly motivated by was anger at the U.S. healthcare system more broadly,” she said. “When you look at the materials that he posted online and his motivation, it was very much motivated by this single issue, more so than anything else.”

Many who track political violence and terrorism say the ongoing conflict in Gaza continues to pose a threat within the U.S.

“I think the longer this war persists, the more concern I have that it will trigger extremist activity in the United States,” said Jones, of CSIS. He said the possibility that someone on the political left targeted Milgram and Lischinsky because of their religious background represents a disturbing development.

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“Frankly, it’s an anomaly,” he said. “And I think the hard thing for us to know is whether this is just an outlier or whether we’re likely to see more of these in the future.”

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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