Watch Your Words

May 1, 2025

By Tal Fortgang

On the night of April 13, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family hosted a Passover seder in their official residence in Harrisburg. Hours later, as they slept, a man snuck past security, threw Molotov cocktails into the house, and lit it on fire.

Fortunately, the fire was extinguished. Though there was substantial property damage, the governor and his family escaped unharmed. What is striking, however, is the relative quiet that has followed—the absence of widespread condemnation or any sustained national conversation about what this incident might tell us about our civic condition.

Authorities arrested Cody Balmer, a 38-year-old with an extensive criminal record and a history of mental instability, shortly after he apparently confessed and submitted to law enforcement. He had recently been arrested for assault against multiple members of his family but was out on bail. His family had tried, unsuccessfully, to have him committed. Balmer was reportedly upfront about his motives, telling the police he opposed what Shapiro would “do to the Palestinian people.”

That is a strange, terrifying sentence. Josh Shapiro is a state governor, not a federal official with foreign policy authority. But he is also Jewish and has expressed his steadfast support for Israel and its right to wage war against Hamas, even as that has become a divisive issue within his Democratic Party. In a moment of global tension, that was apparently enough to make him a target. The man who targeted him – not only prepared to murder an entire family, but to bash Shapiro to death with a hammer if it came to that – is admittedly mentally ill. Does that mean his violence should be written off as just the erratic behavior of one deranged man?

Under similar circumstances, or perhaps in an earlier era, an attack like this might have provoked an immediate national reckoning. The firebombing of a sitting governor’s home, with his family inside, based on his perceived ethnic identity and his middle-of-the-road ideology, is no small deal. One would think at least that Democrats and moderate Republicans would rush to associate with a popular, likable governor. Some, like President Biden and Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick (a Republican), did. But the public reaction was muted. There were no urgent cable news panels and certainly no prolonged investigations from major newspapers. As an example of how this is being treated differently from similar acts of political violence, consider that the New York Times editorial board ran no fewer than six pieces condemning the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords but has published none about the attempt on Gov. Shapiro’s life.

Some conspicuous silences are especially perplexing. President Obama has not shied away from commenting on public affairs recently. Indeed, he took to social media the day after the assassination attempt -- to applaud Harvard’s defiance of President Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris, who considered Gov. Shapiro as a running mate and for whom Mr. Shapiro campaigned, has not said anything publicly about the near disaster.  

The silence may speak to the complexity of this case. We often talk about political violence in one of two ways. Either it appears out of nowhere, defying prediction or prevention, or it is a direct outcome of overheated political rhetoric. But Balmer’s case fits comfortably into neither of these categories, because it shares so many elements – but not all – common to mundane crime.

Public figures may worry that even treating this as a major story rather than a one-off, may be seen as taking the wrong side of a hot-button issue. Was this a failure of the criminal justice system? A mental health crisis? An act of antisemitic terror? The answer, uncomfortably, may be: all the above.

Balmer’s profile is familiar. He was disturbed, erratic, and adrift in a system that struggles to know when and how to intervene. He was out on bail despite having recently committed assault. His criminal record spans several years and offenses. His family reportedly asked the police for help in having him evaluated for involuntary commitment. But under Pennsylvania law, he didn’t meet the threshold. The police told his family he “hadn’t made threats to himself or others” and therefore their hands were tied. The system could only kick into action as Balmer tried to kill a governor and his family.

The assassination attempt was many things, but unpredictable was not one of them. Danger announced its presence a mile away. Balmer had a violent record. And his family was begging for help. We’ve become accustomed to learning those accused of violent crimes have established patterns of lawbreaking, or were on law enforcement’s radar but did not meet the standard for incapacitation through incarceration or involuntary commitment. It is now something of a rite to read after the fact that someone who committed an act of random violence was out on bail after a string of previous offenses. But these are dangerous norms that we need not take for granted. One of the best-replicated findings in criminology is that a small percentage of violent individuals commit most violent crimes. Yet we are culturally reluctant to incapacitate people who have proved themselves capable of behaving violently towards others.

Balancing our need to prevent violence with the presumption of liberty does not lend itself to soundbites. Nor can public figures simply say that they are for “freedom” or “order” to explain why reform is necessary. The governance issues implicated instead require arguments about adjustments on the margins and the prudential balance between two cherished, yet competing, values.

Overheated rhetoric about the ongoing war in Gaza did not help. While activists who peddle the falsehood that Israel is committing genocide may believe they are drawing needed attention to a dire situation, they should also know how their words strike the ear of individuals who do not have full control of their emotions or their actions. Calling to “globalize the Intifada,” which guerrilla campaign that centered on bombing Jews, has a specific meaning even if activists who chant it disclaim it when pressed. They, like the people who lionize Luigi Mangione for allegedly murdering health-insurance executive Brian Thompson–as if such assassinations are justified by the victim’s unpopularity–create the conditions that increase the likelihood that unstable individuals like Balmer convince themselves that violence is necessary, if not heroic. The term “stochastic terrorism”–putting incendiary messages into the discourse on the understanding that someone out there would act on them–was briefly popular as an explanation for this phenomenon. One need not hold the rhetoricians ultimately responsible for some lunatic’s actions to recognize that healthy political discourse should not drive anyone to light himself, or others, on fire.

Yet this, too, requires some discussion of tradeoffs and competing values, this time between free speech and the very real dangers speech can pose. Perhaps no one wants to say anything about non-legal limitations on what Americans ought to say because doing so invites scorn for free-speech hypocrisy. Worse, it could draw accusations that the condemnation only came because one supports or denounces the underlying cause. 

There’s also a temptation, especially in liberal circles, to explain political violence as a symptom of “hate.” It’s a neat diagnosis: the perpetrator was full of hate, the act was hateful, and the cure is more love. But hate, as an explanatory framework, often obscures more than it reveals. It doesn’t help us predict who will act violently, or when. And it doesn’t suggest policies that might prevent tragedy. In fact, it suggests a kind of dead end. If the problem is hate, deep-seated in people’s minds and hearts, the solutions are basically limited to reeducating the hateful or incapacitating them due to their wrongthink. Neither is acceptable. Politicians may be left with a durable and unimpeachable talking point, but the public is left no better off. 

It's clear Balmer hated Shapiro for his support of Israel. But we would be better off focusing on what drove him to action. So, what are the elements of the toxic brew that caused Balmer to turn to violence? His mental instability? His belief, based on the information he had about the cause he cared about, that violence was necessary? The fact that he was free, on bail, despite a record that suggested danger?

Acknowledging that political violence rarely emerges from a single cause is one place to start. It grows in the overlap between ideology and instability, grievance and opportunity. It is helped along by systems that err on the side of inaction even when alarm bells are ringing. A public narrative that focuses on mass incarceration and destigmatizing mental illness, with minimal regard for the presence of dangerous and unstable individuals, keeps those systems from changing.

But we can’t simply point to policy inadequacies given how we have seen this story disappear. There’s a certain shock when any story doesn’t become a cudgel these days. Is this really not even important enough to be integrated into our breathless debates about the “real issues”? Surely it is. And it should be no surprise that the policies that come out of our democratic processes are not up to snuff when our discourse features systemic impediments to feedback and correctives.

That is itself a failure. Political violence shows no sign of abating, yet we are ill-prepared to even confront it if doing so would require starting our analysis with anything other than, “well, as I’ve been saying…”. It may be a cliché to say something is “not a partisan issue,” but when it comes to political violence it is especially true. No one knows who may be targeted next. What are we doing to make sure that next time never comes?

Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.