Why has political violence become so common?

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We are in a heightened threat environment and public office today

comes with a degree of danger and risk.

Authorities deem last weekend shooting an assassination attempt on the president.

What's feeling political violence in this country?

It's Tuesday, April 28th and this is here and now any time from NPR and WBUR Boston.

I'm Shiko Thudi.

Today on the show Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to redraw the state's

congressional map, a move that could give Republicans four extra seats,

but it raises some legal questions.

The Florida Constitution does have that ban on redrawing a district

with a political party in mind, with political favor in mind.

And a CNN investigation unveils a vast underground network of men

drugging and raping their wives.

Photos or videos of your wife or partner are treated as currency.

This is a way of making sure you can trust the other person that is like minded.

So it's like, hey, can I trust you?

Send me a picture of your wife.

But first, we're learning new details about a California man,

Cole Allen, who has been charged with trying to assassinate the president

at the White House correspondence dinner.

He also faces federal gun charges after attempting to storm the event

with multiple weapons.

In the days since the shooting, the White House Press Secretary

has blamed Democrats and journalists for what she calls divisive rhetoric

that she says is fueling political violence in the US.

Is this something new or part of a much longer story in American politics?

Jacob Ware has some thoughts.

He studies domestic terrorism and political violence

and teaches at Georgetown University.

He's also the co-author of God, Guns, and Sedition.

Here's his conversation with Indira Lakshmanon.

So when something like this happens,

it can feel like things are getting worse,

especially on the back of two other attempted assassinations

against President Trump since the 2024 campaign.

But the US has a long history of political violence

with assassinations dating back to the early 1800s.

So is this moment actually different?

I would say yes and no.

I mean, first of all, of course, our country has a long history

of domestic terrorism and we've felt that very strongly

over the last 15 years or so.

At the same time, we're in a heightened threat environment.

That much is clear.

I'll quote some data that comes out of the University of Nebraska.

Omaha, which says that in 2024,

we had a record number of federal charges for threats

against public officials.

We broke a record again in 2025

and we're on track to break that record once again in 2026.

So obviously there is a growing drumbeat of violence

and I expect that to get more serious as we approach

the midterms.

Political violence is always more likely in politically polarized moments.

Well, some American politicians are saying that the risk to their safety

may not be worth it.

Is there a bigger risk that comes with running

for office or holding office right now?

Absolutely.

And that's one of the really unfortunate things about this moment.

I'm actually always really eager to dismantle

what I see as a mischaracterization that there have now been

three assassination attempts on President Trump

because the reality is there have been many more plots against him

alongside repeated assassination plots against democratic leaders.

Usually those get stopped at an early moment.

There have been three times where the government has actually showed up on scene.

We are in a heightened threat environment

and public office today comes with a degree of danger and risk

I'll remind the listeners of just a few months ago

there was an assault on Congressman Ilhan Omar

that was quickly of course forgotten about in last year

of course there were multiple assassinations

of prominent political figures.

The really sad reality, the really unfortunate part of this is that

we know there have been multiple political leaders

that have been actually pushed out of the system

that have determined that this is not worth the risk to me and my family

and this is no longer a safe job.

It's no longer something that I can do

and look my family in the eye and say that I can guarantee their safety

and that is a real, it's causing a real brain drain in our political system.

What role does heated rhetoric from Republicans, Democrats, or even the President play?

I think it's creating a more polarized and divisive moment.

One of the key risk factors for violence especially around elections

is existential language.

So when you have politicians who say things like

if we don't win this election you won't have another election in this country

that dramatically raises the risk of violence

because terrorism and assassination tend to come

when people feel that they can no longer exercise their views

through the legitimate political system

and that's certainly what we saw in the manifesto red

by this government who attacked the White House

correspondence dinner.

It's incumbent on both Democrats and Republicans to turn that temperature down

but what I do not accept is rhetoric that says

that Democrats are somehow more to blame for this.

I'll remind you just a few months ago

President Trump posting on truth social that it was good

that former FBI director Robert Mueller had died

because he could no longer hurt people.

I mean that is glorifying death and celebrating the death of a perceived political rival

that is totally antithetical to our democracy

and to our system and to a more peaceful and prosperous society.

Jacob as we head into the midterms

there will necessarily be more heated rhetoric

based on the pattern we see in this country

what should authorities be doing to prevent an uptick in political violence?

Well I think the real challenge is that politicians

and public speakers unfortunately need to assume

that there are assassination threats all around them

so as you are preparing for an event

as you are preparing for the World Cup

as we're preparing for 250th anniversary celebrations

we need to assume that there is a level of risk and danger

and law enforcement needs to adjust to that reality

and not hope that things will be okay

that is just the simple reality of our situation

so I think larger parameters

stronger scanning

vetting of individuals who are planning to attend

but also we need to dramatically scale up our counterterrorism

investigative power

and unfortunately that was largely eroded

in the first year of the Trump administration

through cuts at various agencies

as well as firings over January 6th

that needs to be reversed in order to build a stronger capacity

to counter these forms of violence.

Jacob Ware studies American political violence

and he's the co-author of God, Guns and Sedition

thank you so much Jacob.

Thank you for having me.

Coming up next, a number of states are redrawing congressional maps.

Florida's governor wants to do the same

but it may be more complicated for the sunshine state

learn why after the break.

Hey it's Ben Brock Johnson from WBUR Podcasts

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Today in Florida state lawmakers begin a special session

to consider new congressional maps

just unveiled by Republican governor Ron DeSantis.

It would give Republicans up to four extra seats

in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Roe Me Allen-Bogan is a reporter with the Tampa Bay Times

and she joined Scott Tongue from the state capital in Tallahassee.

So right now, Republicans control 20 out of 28

congressional seats in Florida.

How would these new proposed maps change that?

So the proposal from governor DeSantis' office

would have 24 seats for Republicans compared to the current

20 leaving only four seats for Democrats, you know.

If things play out based on 2024 voting trends.

Now the governor Ron DeSantis is pushing lawmakers

to approve these maps.

Are the lawmakers, especially the Republicans,

are they on board or no?

So it's an interesting question.

Sort of your everyday lawmaker has been pretty quiet

about answering questions about redistricting.

They've been warned by legislative leaders

about the long history of litigation when it comes to redistricting.

So a lot of them have stayed mum.

But the legislative leaders, the House Speaker,

has said he's interested in redistricting

and the Senate president has also seemed open

to accepting the governor's map.

And both of those should hold committee meetings today

where they'll first hear the plan presented by the governor's office.

You mentioned litigation.

Roe Me, we should note that the state constitution

in Florida was changed years ago.

And that it bans maps that have the intent

to favor a political party.

Can you talk more about the constitution and the questions it raises?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, the Florida constitution does have that ban

on redrawing a district with a political party in mind,

with political favor in mind.

That same provision, which was adopted by voters in 2010,

also says you can't redraw districts

to disfavor, you know, a racial minority, a language minority.

Interestingly, you know, a lot of people have pointed

obviously to that partisan part

and said, well, these maps are blatantly unconstitutional, right?

Look at the Florida constitution bans,

partisan gerrymandering.

But the governor's office, the governor's general counsel

in a letter to lawmakers sent yesterday

essentially argued that the whole amendment

in the constitution that bars that can't stand

because, you know, their theory is that drawing a map

based on race is unconstitutional

and that the US Supreme Court will soon affirm that.

And if one part of that language around redistricting

is unconstitutional, the whole thing has to go.

So the argument has something to do with

there are court actions that have happened.

There are court rulings.

There's a non-going court case at the Supreme Court.

And we, the state of Florida, are reacting

to something happening in the judicial system

rather than partisanship.

Is that the argument?

Yes, exactly.

They're saying we essentially know

how the Supreme Court is going to rule in this case.

We've looked at our own court ruling.

That is what's motivating us,

not politics, not the president.

Now, some analysts I read suggest these maps

might backfire on Republicans

that they could dilute safely red districts.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah, I think that was definitely a conversation

before the maps were released.

We saw on some special elections

in March, Democrats, Flip, Republicans, seats in Florida.

But some of these districts have been drawn

to get more red.

Some of the places that I think

representative Jeffries were eyeing

might not be as easy to flip as they were before.

On the other hand,

some of these newly drawn districts

are read by much slimmer margins.

In Tampa Bay, Congressional District 14 is one of those.

The 14th district has long been held

by Representative Kathy Kaster,

and that's now a Republican seat.

But in a good year for Democrats,

they would be able to flip that.

It does make it more competitive for Republicans.

Yeah, understand.

And so then from the perspective of the Democrats,

right now they hold eight seats

if these maps go through,

they might have four or five or six.

That's kind of the early picture here.

Yeah, so, you know, ultimately it sort of brings Florida,

right, if Democrats really perform much better

than they have previously,

it could bring Florida back to where we are now,

you know, prior to redistricting.

And as far as this legislative session,

what are you going to be paying attention to,

what are you anticipating?

Yeah, I mean, one of the things I'm eager to hear today,

right, is that lawmakers have so far

not offered their insight, their opinion

on what they think of redistricting.

Today will really be the first time

that they acknowledge, right,

if they think these maps are appropriate,

if these think these maps are fair,

if they're, you know, eager to go ahead,

if they have qualms,

it also will be the first time

that the governor's office answers questions

about how they drafted these maps,

how, you know, they came up with these boundaries.

And I think understanding how they drew it

better helps us understand, right,

this final product that we're looking at.

We've been talking to Romi Ellen Vogan,

Tallahassee Correspondent with a Tampa Bay Times.

Romi, thanks very much.

Thank you.

Romi Ellen Vogan, Tallahassee Correspondent

Coming up, a CNN investigation found

men across the globe exchanging photos of their wives

and sharing advice on how to drug and rape them.

That's after the break.

This next story is about the difficult topic

of sexual assault,

in cases where men drug their partners

and commit sex acts.

Two years ago, a high-profile case in France

convicted Dominique Pelico of drugging his wife repeatedly

and letting more than 70 men assault her.

A new investigation from CNN finds more cases,

including that of Zoe Watts in the United Kingdom.

He reeled off a list of his wrongdoings to me

as if it was a shopping list.

I've done this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this.

I've been using our son's CPU medication

to put in your last cup of tea at night

to tie you down, take photographs and rape you.

CNN's team uncovered an online world

where men post and sell these videos

and share advice on how to carry this out.

Sasuke Van Dorn is CNN's Paris correspondent.

Here's her conversation with Scott.

Your team started this investigation

on a pornography site where men are posting videos

having sex with partners who are drug

to appear unconscious.

It led you to a chat group as I understand it.

Tell me about that chat group.

Yeah, so, you know, our investigation began

when we created this male persona

and we got onto this porn site called

Motherless, it's a very popular porn site

that has over 80 million visits, you know,

a month last month in March.

And whose core audience happens to be in the US.

And we began seeing what was entitled sleep content.

And essentially, these are videos

where women appear asleep or unconscious

while men carry out sex acts on them.

And there are lots of different hashtags,

lots of different categories to find this kind of material.

One popular hashtag we found was called iCheck.

And it's a way of proving a woman is asleep.

So in these videos, a man will lift up the woman's eyelid

to show that she's unresponsive and sedated.

And then he'll carry out sex acts on her.

And so we were on this one profile

which had a link to a private telegram group.

And when we entered, there were a thousand members.

And that was a space where everything was happening

in real time and men from around the world

were exchanging tips on how to drug and rape their partners.

And you, your team had an online profile

and I understand you started chatting with a man in Poland.

What were the exchanges like?

Yeah, it's important to understand that

not only on Motherless on this porn site,

but also on the telegram group,

that photos or videos of your wife or partner

are treated as currency.

This is a way of making sure you can trust the other person,

that the other person is like minded.

So it's like, hey, can I trust you?

Send me a picture of your wife.

And we couldn't go that far

because of course we weren't going to create a fake picture.

So we stayed in our as journalists.

And so conversations were quickly go cold,

but then there was this Polish user called Piotr.

And he would send me messages showing me pictures

of his wife, videos of his wife.

And it felt like he was just very happy showing her off

and not getting much in return.

And then he told me that he had been drugging her

and raping her so he would tell me the types of drugs

that he was using to put her to sleep,

what he wanted to do to her once she was sedated.

And we felt that it was very important as part of the investigation

to be able to confirm that this man was real

because all of these users are hiding behind pseudonyms.

And so we wanted to go to Poland and see him in the flesh.

And so at first using my undercover persona,

I tried to get him to agree to meet me in a bar.

He said no.

And then he let slip that he was going to be at a party.

And so we arrived there and he came with his wife.

I recognized them both instantly.

It was a very difficult moment.

We'd of course had many conversations

with the editorial team before to discuss how we would react.

You know, were we going to confront him?

Were we going to speak to her?

And in the end, we felt that we didn't

want to put her life in danger.

We didn't know how he was going to react.

So once we confirmed his identity,

we passed off findings on to the Polish police.

Wow.

And on the other side, your team's reporting

led you to multiple wives, victims,

including a woman Zoe Watts in England.

Can you tell us her story?

Yes.

So one of the survivors we spoke to Zoe Watts,

she had been married for 16 years.

And one day after church, he comes home

and he confesses to her and says,

I have been using our son's sleeping medication

to put in your cup of tea at night.

And once you were asleep, I tie you down.

I rape you and I take pictures of you.

And she told us how hard it was to grasp what he had been

doing to her because she loved him.

She trusted him implicitly.

She had had four children with him.

She thought they were going to grow old together.

So it was really hard for her to accept

that not only had he betrayed her,

but he also committed a crime against her.

And of course, she knew that by pressing charges,

it would mean he would be locked up for a long time.

The children would lose their father.

They would grow up with a reputation.

They would know what he had done to their mother.

And that was just this emotional context

that she was wrestling with

that made it very difficult for her

to first grow and press charges.

But of course, eventually she did with the help of her family.

And he's now, he's been sentenced to 11 years in prison.

I've now been covering this for quite some time.

And since the investigation aired,

many survivors have been in touch.

And some of them have said, have admitted,

I think this is happening,

but I just can't bring myself to even confront it

because I know what this will mean for the family.

I know what this will mean for the future.

And I'm just not ready.

I'm just not ready to do that yet.

And this, you're describing this very understandable reluctance.

What does that mean then for the possibility

of revealing this activity,

shutting down these websites and check groups?

Is that a realistic aspiration here?

The outpouring has been incredible

since this investigation has aired.

And I think there are a lot of people out there

who are shocked and horrified

that this has been taking place.

And it's not on the dark web,

but the porn site I mentioned to you,

anybody can access it.

And I think it has just been proven that these tech companies

are essentially turning a blind eye

to the scale of non-concentral images

and videos that are being shared on their platforms.

And we're not the first Scott to have reported on this.

There are journalists in Germany,

in Canada and elsewhere,

and yet this website has continued to operate.

But since our investigation was published,

we did meet with some UK lawmakers

who are now actively examining the role of platforms like this

and whether current laws are strong enough

to hold them accountable.

I know that there's now a wider question

about the role of algorithms.

There are lawmakers that are looking into that.

How can algorithms amplify extreme material?

And then finally, there are several petitions

that are calling for motherless to-be-tee platforms.

But I think that perennial problem of these platforms

will argue that they are not responsible

for the content that is being published

and that when they are alerted to it, they'll take it down.

But I think in the case of motherless of this website,

we did see some efforts, for example,

in the search bar, at one point,

you could no longer search sleeping.

And yet, sleep was still very much searchable.

I check you could still find tens of thousands of videos.

Saskia, you told us a core user group

of one of these websites, motherless.com,

is in the United States.

Are US authorities doing anything about this?

I know that there are several representatives

who have tweeted about it.

So they have seen the investigation.

I think that they are curious to see how motherless operates.

I know that, for example, on this telegram group,

there was one user who told me that he was running a business

selling liquid sedative around the world.

And when I asked him to approve this to me,

he sent me screenshots of all these parcels

that he had been sending through UPS with the addresses.

And I could see from what he had sent to me

that there was some going ahead into Germany,

some that were heading to New York,

some that were heading to France.

And I know that UPS are taking this very seriously

and looking into whether, if they can raise.

I mean, even if these websites do for whatever reason,

shut down, what's to stop them from just starting up

another one with another name.

And that is exactly what we saw in the case of Dominic Pelico.

This was the mass rape trial of Jacelle Pelico in France.

And that's where really it all began

because I was in the courtroom when Jacelle Pelico's lawyer

spoke about Coco, and that was the platform

that Dominic Pelico used to recruit over 80 men

to rape his sedated wife.

And the lawyer described Coco as the weapon of the crime.

Because Pelico had gone on there to find like-minded people.

And that's how we first started exploring these places

is that we knew that there were other websites out there,

like Coco, that were still operating

with complete and utter impunity.

And so Coco was shut down after this case,

but in recent weeks, another platform has just emerged

with the same name.

And it's got exactly the same interface.

So again, as you say, it's kind of this whack-a-mole issue

where one goes down and then several others pop up.

And so what can be done?

Well, if you listen to Jacelle Pelico,

she says it all starts with education,

meaning to understand what consent means.

So I do think there are several things

that can be done to try and fight this problem.

Yeah.

Difficult story, very important story.

Sasuke Vendorn is CNN's correspondent

in Paris, part of an investigative team

on this story.

Sasuke, thank you very much.

Thank you, Scott.

We reached out for comment to the social messaging platform

Telegram and to kick online entertainment,

which operates the porn website, motherless.com.

We did not hear back from either.

Here and now, any time comes from NPR and WB War Boston.

Today's stories were produced by Jenea Williams,

Will Waukey and Wilder Fleming.

Today's editors were Mark Naven, Michael Scotto, and Cat Welch.

Technical direction from Caleb Green and Andre Puglia.

Here and now, any time comes from NPR and WB War Boston.

Today's stories were produced by Jenea Williams,

Will Waukey and Wilder Fleming.

Today's editors were Mark Naven, Michael Scotto, and Cat Welch.

Technical direction from Caleb Green and Andre Puglia.

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