Democrats are coming perilously close to normalizing domestic terrorism, warn Missouri’s two U.S. senators in separate exclusive interviews with The Heartlander.
“Well, it sure seems like it,” says Sen. Josh Hawley.
Federal authorities this week announced charges against a 12th suspect in the well-armed ambush of law enforcement agents at an ICE facility in Texas July 4.
“Nearly a dozen violent assailants equipped with tactical gear and weapons attacked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4, shooting a local law enforcement officer in the process,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a press release.
ICE has called the attack “coordinated.”
It came just days after Democrat Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington, posted that ICE is “acting like a terrorist force,” and after repeated exhortations by leading Democrats to resist federal authorities.
“I see that attacks on law enforcement, particularly immigration law enforcement – so, we’re talking Border Patrol, we’re talking ICE – is up 700% over the last year; 700%! And this is being egged on, encouraged actively by the Democrat Party. I mean, let’s not pretend otherwise. You saw the riots in Los Angeles.
“You’ve got prominent Democrats out there saying, ‘Yeah, keep going. This is awesome. This is wonderful. This is justice.’ This isn’t justice. This is madness. This is crime. This is terrorism.
“People who assault law enforcement officers ought to be locked up and the key thrown away. We ought to increase the penalties for these deliberate attacks on law enforcement.
“I cannot believe Democrats are out there cheering this on, and in some cases, actively doxxing immigration law enforcement, revealing their identities, revealing their names, trying to reveal their homes, put their families in danger.
“This is crazy, crazy stuff. It needs to stop.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt agrees.
“I think [Democrats’] language is very dangerous in the sense that they’ve created the dynamic where ICE agents are part of a nefarious action that needs to be stopped,” Schmitt told The Heartlander. “The fact is, these are law enforcement officers who are carrying out and executing the laws of the United States of America.
“Nobody has an inherent right to be here illegally. And so, you’re going to see more and more mass deportations.
“I think this is sort of, unfortunately for the left, a natural progression. They lost at the ballot box. They’ve lost in the courts no. They’ve lost in the [realm of] public opinion. And you have too many people normalizing political violence here, and it’s wrong.
“I think that we ought to stand up against it, and we ought to make sure that these individuals are protected. And I wish there were more Democrats saying the same thing.”
The left’s rhetoric and imagery has become increasingly provocative and triggering in recent years. In June 2024, The New Republic magazine published a cover featuring Donald Trump morphed into Hitler, with the title “American fascism.”
In 2023, Democrat Rep. Daniel Goldman of New York told an interviewer that Trump “is destructive to our democracy, and he has to be, he has to be eliminated.”
Last fall, after the second attempt to assassinate Trump, Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise warned of escalating, inciting, Democrat rhetoric – citing, among other things, Kamala Harris’ repeated claim that “Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”
She said it just days before the second assassination attempt.
“And then the second shooter, attempted shooter,” Scalise said, “he was regurgitating the same language as Kamala. So this is no longer a dog whistle, which it’s been on the left. It’s now being received by some unhinged people as a call to action when Democrats say this.”
Scalise has personal experience in such matters, having been shot and nearly killed at the 2017 Congressional Baseball Game by a deranged gunman “had a list of Republicans he planned to target.”
More recently, the National Education Association (NEA) produced resolutions pledging “to defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism.”
