While Donald Trump deploys the National Guard in Chicago to intensify the anti-immigration raids which, according to the president, the state of Illinois (Democratic) is not carrying out with sufficient speed, a substantial part of the American public opinion welcomes the blow to the Republican’s table. They are not the majority, but they are close to a third (32.2%), the Americans who think Trump should use law enforcement and the Army to guarantee compliance with its public policies.
“In the United States, the president sees the Army as something that works for him, not for the country, and that is a cause for great concern,” he explains to EL PERIÓDICO. Garen J. Wintemute, director of the Research Program for University of California Violence Prevention in Davis and lead author of the study.
The report also warns of a deterioration in democratic perception. between the 14% and 19% of respondents states that he agrees, at least in part, that the Government arrests citizens and journalists critical of its policies or the president. The researcher explains that the evolution of public opinion on these issues cannot be compared, since until now he has not seen the need to ask such questions.
“We are seeing how the Army is used to enforce policies, repressing dissent, something that was not on the table in previous administrations,” he points out, a new ban that was opened in Los Angeles and has been spreading to other large cities governed by Democrats. The line that separates national security from political control, he warns, “has become blurred”.
Police clash with activists during a demonstration outside the ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois, USA, on October 10, 2025. / CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH / EFE
Trump against data
Threats to national security have also mutated: they are no longer foreign. “We are seeing a very clear change: from jihadist terrorism towards domestic extremists”explains to this newspaper Riley McCaberesearcher of the prestigious Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)from Washington DC. Another big difference is that even though these attacks are classified as ““partisan extremism”the perpetrators are individuals radicalized in the digital environment, with diffuse ideological motivations. Nor do they belong to organized social movements. “They rarely belong to a group with clear objectives or a chain of command,” he notes.
Contrary to what CSIS data indicates, the Trump Administration “is using what it perceives as a rise in left-wing terrorism to toughen its offensive against anti-fascist groupsespecially Antifa,” McCabe notes. “Our data shows that Antifa is not highly organized. Quite the contrary, it is a dispersed political movement, to which some perpetrators resort to justify their violence,” he clarifies.
More attacks from the right than from the left
Although the two most notable recent attacks have been against right-wing figures – the murder of Charlie Kirk and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump during the campaign– The UC Davis team has found clear evidence that 80% of politically motivated violence comes from the far right and not from the left.
The comparison of violence carried out by both sides of the political spectrum responds more to an official narrative than to reality, according to Wintemute. “This year, the Department of Homeland Security is talking equally about violence from the right and the left. But I trust that assessment as much as I would trust the Department of Health on vaccines: which is to say, not at all. I don’t believe it“, he ironically, about the lack of rigor of the Trump Administration.
The data handled by his team are conclusive: violent radicalization continues to be concentrated in movements ultraconservadores y supremacistsoften encouraged by political rhetoric or by conspiracy theories about electoral fraud and immigration. “I expected to see an increase in violence on the left this year, but there is no evidence of that. It remains fundamentally a problem on the right,” and he argues that there have simply been more visible acts against Republicans because they are in government and the political attacks are mostly anti-government.
Calculated risk
Still, the vast majority of Americans are not willing to take up arms. “I see a society that does not want to participate in political violence, but that is being provoked by extremists on both sidesand by an Administration that sees violence as a means to achieve its ends,” Wintemute diagnoses.
Although unlikely, “a civil war in the US It is not a zero probability scenario,” he reasons, since “the Administration is interested in widespread political violence to justify a authoritarian government”he argues. “By applying certain policies in a provocative way, you could be seeking just that: a social outbreak that justifies military deployment“.
McCabe shares his concern. “It only takes one tiny fraction of people willing to use violence and it only takes them being successful once for the consequences to be devastating.
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