Dallas shooting was a political act

Although we are still learning the details of the lethal assault on the ICE facility in Dallas, we already know some important things, thanks to transparency from the Dallas police and the FBI. We know the shooter’s name; we know he committed suicide as police closed in; we know he fired indiscriminately at the ICE facility, killing at least one detainee but no ICE officers; and we know the assassin had a political motive, encoded on unfired rifle shells. He hated ICE.

We also know exactly what politicians from each side will say. They’ve said it so many times before. The Republicans have a much stronger, more convincing message here than Democrats.

Republicans will say, “This targeted violence against law enforcement and immigration officers has to stop. We have to do more than condemn it. We need to understand that the violence is not just a series a unconnected incidents. We have to name the sources behind it. If the violence is organized, we have to find and prosecute the organizers and the funding sources. We think it is fueled by vile rhetoric, a lot of it from elected Democrats and still more from their media allies. Their fulminations inflame passions and fuel violent demonstrations and deadly attacks. We know that some of this violence is organized. We need the FBI to find out who is doing that and who is funding it. And we need the Department of Justice to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”

Democrats will respond, “This is just more senseless gun violence. We need to talk with each other, not shoot at each other. All of us condemn this violence. Of course, we bear no responsibility for any of it. So, both sides need to calm down.”

Democrats are losing this argument. Polls show voters strong favor Republicans on both law-and-order and immigration enforcement. Democrats’ response rings hollow with voters because it ignores their reasonable demand for closed borders, strict immigration enforcement and better protection against urban violence. Democrats are seen as opposing all those.

If voters support those positions, why do Democratic politicians find it so hard to fall in line? Because the party’s activist base and its left-wing donors would crush them in the primaries, before they reach the wider electorate in November. They would also face the obvious question: why are you changing your positions now, after years of saying just the opposite?

The Democrats’ milk toast calls for “public calm” and “civil discourse” ring hollow because they come after the party’s leaders lacerated Trump’s border policy and ICE enforcement, after “blue” cities and states have declared themselves sanctuaries, unwilling to cooperate with ICE, after Gov. Gavin Newsom demanded “no masks” on ICE agents (“What are they afraid of?” The answer came in Dallas.), after Democratic leaders repeatedly condemn President Trump as a fascist and dictator, and after their party commits itself to an open-borders, anti-deportation movement. Their cry of “don’t blame us” comes after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson called “jails and incarceration and law enforcement… a sickness.” They come after months of nightly violence against ICE and federal government facilities in Portland, Oregon, with the city leaders refusing to send police to quell the violence or punish the perpetrators. They come after Senator Chris Van Hollen sat down for drinks with a deported illegal immigrant who is charged with a long string of despicable criminal acts. This week, Van Hollen used a Senate hearing to excoriate Secretary of State Marco Rubio for enforcing a strict visa policy and screamed over Rubio when he tried to answer.

This deep political divide cannot explain why the shooter in Dallas acted as he did. It doesn’t mean politicians in Washington helped him pull the trigger. But it did shape the context in which he acted and will shape how the public interprets it. They will see the killing, correctly, as a deliberate attack on law enforcement. They will see it, correctly, as a political act, something the gunman made clear by writing anti-ICE messages on his shells. They will connect the latest shooting to other recent acts with political motives, like the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the conviction of President Trump’s would-be assassin in Florida.

Republicans will emphasize that these recent assaults have come from the left and need to be quashed – firmly and immediately. For now, the Democrats are left with bland platitude, torn between their angry base and the voting public. All they can say is, “Give peace a chance.”

It’s not a winning message. In a time of political violence, the public is demanding order. The Republican challenge is to deliver on that demand without crashing through the constitutional boundaries.