‘Very dangerous spot’: Report concedes left-wing violence rising to 30-year high

Violence among domestic left-wing groups is surging, surpassing so-called right-wing violence last year, according to a report from the non-partisan Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Although the report was issued in September, it is receiving fresh attention after a left-wing suspect was charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Sunday.

The report marks one of the first times in decades a mainstream institution has acknowledged left-wing political violence as a growing issue.

The center analyzed 750 domestic terrorist attacks and plots between 1994 and July 4, 2025, and found left-wing incidents are on pace to reach their highest levels in more than 30 years.

For the first time since the early 1990s, left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right, according to the report.

“This elevated number of left-wing incidents is even more striking when compared with the number of incidents classified under other ideological orientations,” the CSIS analysis said. “Left-wing terrorist attacks and plots as a percentage of all terrorist attacks and plots were at a record high in the first half of 2025, although the decline of other forms of terrorism plays a significant role in this relative increase.”

The report’s release follows a Reuters investigation finding the United States experienced roughly 150 politically motivated attacks in the first six months of 2025. That is nearly twice the number recorded over the same period in 2024, according to Michael Jensen, a researcher at the University of Maryland who has tracked such violence since 1970.

“I think we are in a very, very dangerous spot right now that could quite easily escalate into more widespread civil unrest if we don’t get a hold of it,” Jensen told Reuters, which described the assassination of Charlie Kirk as a “watershed.”

The surge has been driven in part by attacks targeting federal immigration enforcement.

In one such attack in July 2025, a group of at least 11 people dressed in black, military-style clothing attacked an immigration detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, near Dallas.

The group fired on a responding police officer and sprayed gunfire at unarmed detention guards, according to the Justice Department.

Altogether, 16 defendants were charged in connection with the attack, The Lion reported.

Institutional credibility problems

The CSIS findings come amid mounting credibility issues for institutions that have historically shaped domestic terrorism threat assessments.

For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center – whose threat data has been cited in federal court proceedings, congressional testimony and academic research for decades – was indicted in April 2026 on federal fraud charges.

The Justice Department alleged the organization secretly funneled more than $3 million to leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups while publicly representing it was working to dismantle them.

The SPLC is one of the primary organizations tracking so-called “right-wing extremism.”

Downplaying left-leaning violence

Critics have noted institutions often neglect tracking left-wing violence, such as that associated with the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots nationwide.

A related May 2023 hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee noted that antifascist and anarchist groups “use sophisticated tactics to assault law enforcement officers, destroy property, and spread fear and disorder,” and that participants “travel across the country to targeted locations.”

The hearing documented that 21 of 23 people arrested following a coordinated left-wing attack in Atlanta came from outside Georgia.

“These groups are sophisticated,” committee Chairman Dan Bishop, R-North Carolina, said. “They are well-trained and financed. They have extensive logistical support. And they are extremely clever in masking their activities.”

Still, CSIS characterizes such left-wing violence as “disorganized.”

The 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, which produced an estimated $2 billion in property damage according to congressional testimony, do not appear in the CSIS dataset.

Nor does the wave of pro-Palestinian campus violence that preceded the Michigan synagogue attack or the killing of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington, D.C., by an attacker, nor violence targeting Tesla.

In fact, the report notes many of the most high-profile violent events in 2025 were excluded from the dataset because of the “definition of terrorism used.”

“Although excluded from this dataset, these highly publicized incidents attracted significant attention and reinforced the perception of escalating left-wing violence in 2025,” the analysis said.

Still, the report’s findings, despite what critics describe as institutional hedging, are significant.

Language such as “Nazi” and “ICE = KKK,” combined with partisan extremism, “creates a dangerous environment where extremists can more easily rationalize using violence,” the CSIS report said.