Two alarming new studies show the left is not only considerably less empathetic to people on the right than vice versa, but also frighteningly open to political assassination.

“Political violence targeting President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser is ‘becoming increasingly normalized,’” writes The Federalist, in an article headlined “SURVEY: 55% Of Self-Identified Leftists Say Killing Trump Is Justifiable.”

The article cites a study by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) that, as summarized by The Federalist, says “political violence targeting President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser is ‘becoming increasingly normalized.’”

The study, which also involves the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab, is titled “Assassination Culture: How Burning Teslas and Killing Billionaires Became a Meme Aesthetic for Political Violence.”

As the Federalist notes, the study “finds a broader ‘assassination culture’ appears to be ‘emerging within segments of the U.S. public on the extreme left, with expanding targets now including figures such as Donald Trump.’”

Most alarming, the study finds that such homicidal sentiments aren’t contained to just the far-left wing of the Democrat Party – as evidenced by the 55% number who are open to and sometimes even applaud political violence, as well as Democrat leaders’ unwillingness to denounce it.

“These attitudes are not fringe – they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse,” the study says.

The study looked at “how viral social media narratives were legitimizing political violence, particularly in the aftermath of the United Healthcare CEO’s assassination” – though the embrace of murderous fury also follows one assassination attempt and a second plot against President Donald Trump last year.

In the wake of the assassination-style murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, NCRI says it found “widespread justification for lethal violence — including assassination — among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users.”

Yet, the report notes, Democrat lawmakers in California actually named a bill after Thompson’s alleged killer, calling it the “Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act.”

The Federalist notes that “a California man reportedly “angry with pharmacies” was arrested on charges of murdering a Walgreens employee just days after the Luigi Mangione Act was filed with the state.”

Meanwhile, a separate new study says liberals demonstrate substantially less empathy for political opponents than do conservatives.

The study “Empathic Conservatives and Moralizing Liberals” by James P. Casey and colleagues, published in Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, looked at “how political ideology shapes intergroup empathy bias and why such differences arise,” as PsyPost.org puts it.

“Liberals exhibited significantly less empathy for conservatives than conservatives showed for liberals,” reports PsyPost.

“This asymmetry was driven by liberals’ stronger negative judgments of conservatives’ morality and likability. Conservatives’ empathic responses remained relatively stable regardless of the target’s political affiliation,” the study says.

The results were replicated in the United Kingdom, with the report noting “British liberals also exhibited stronger empathy bias against conservatives. …

“[E]ven after the shift to a Democratic administration in the U.S., liberals continued to judge conservatives as more harmful and immoral, leading to reduced empathy.”

In each of several studies on the subject, writes PsyPost, “participants read a short scenario describing a person undergoing a mild hardship (e.g., a sprained ankle). The person was identified as politically conservative, liberal, or neutral. Participants then rated their emotional responses using several scales: empathic concern (e.g., sympathy), perspective-taking, empathic intentions (e.g., willingness to help), and empathic avoidance.”

While the new studies are fresh, the sinister sentiments from the left are not: As reported by The Heartlander, a survey last fall showed that a shocking 28% of Democrats believe the country would’ve been better off if former President Trump had been assassinated.