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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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Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin.
And the executive producer of Here and Now is Alan Price.
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