NYT:

Scarcely 24 hours after a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota was assassinated in her home, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, posted a pair of politically charged messages mocking the attack.

“This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way,” Mr. Lee wrote on Sunday on his personal X account, a message accompanied by photographs of the suspect released by law enforcement officials.

An hour later, in a second post showing the suspect, Mr. Lee wrote: “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” in an apparent reference the Democratic governor of the state, Tim Walz.

By the afternoon, amid outraged responses to his postings, Mr. Lee issued a very different message on his official Senate account in which he hit all of the sober notes one would expect from an elected official reacting to a political assassination.

“These hateful attacks have no place in Utah, Minnesota, or anywhere in America,” Mr. Lee wrote on X. “Please join me in condemning this senseless violence, and praying for the victims and their families.”

But that standard-issue statement came long after his initial derisive posts, in which he appeared to lay responsibility for the shooting at the feet of Democrats and the political left.

While the political affiliation of the suspect is not clear — he was listed in some recent state records as “other” or “no party preference” — people who know him have said he is a religious conservative who supports President Trump and is passionately opposed to abortion….

NYT:

In the past three months alone, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence while Mr. Shapiro and his family were asleep inside; another man gunned down a pair of workers from the Israeli Embassy outside an event in Washington; protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colo., were set on fire; and the Republican Party headquarters in New Mexico and a Tesla dealership near Albuquerque were firebombed.

And those were just the incidents that resulted in death or destruction.

Against that backdrop, it might have been shocking, but it was not really so surprising, when on Saturday morning, a Democratic state representative in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home, and a Democratic state senator, John A. Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, were shot and wounded.

Slowly but surely, political violence has moved from the fringes to an inescapable reality. Violent threats and even assassinations, attempted or successful, have become part of the political landscape — a steady undercurrent of American life….

See also my earlier post: My Statement: Thoughts on the Despicable Assassination (and Attempted Assassination) of Minnesota Legislators, the Rise in Political Violence in the United States, and the Threats to Free and Fair Elections.