A new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies concludes that far‑left terrorist plots and attacks outnumbered far‑right incidents in the United States from Jan. 1 to July 4, 2025 — a first in more than three decades — prompting counterterrorism researchers to question the small sample and coding choices that underlie the finding.
The release of the CSIS assessment comes amid renewed focus on political violence after the Sept. 10 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a Utah Valley University event. A 22‑year‑old suspect, Tyler James Robinson, has since been arrested and charged with aggravated murder and related offenses; authorities have not publicly linked him to any organization and have not established a definitive ideological motive. The Kirk killing falls outside the period CSIS studied. President Donald Trump, in an Oval Office address hours after the shooting, condemned the attack, blamed “radical left” rhetoric, and ordered flags flown at half‑staff through Sept. 14. (reuters.com)
Federal assessments and a long record of deadly attacks have for years identified far‑right violence as the most lethal domestic terrorism threat, citing massacres in Charleston (2015), Pittsburgh (2018), El Paso (2019) and Buffalo (2022). Those episodes remain central reference points in the debate over current risks. (justice.gov)
CSIS’s brief, authored by Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe, compiles 750 U.S. attacks and plots from 1994 through July 4, 2025, drawing on sources including the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, the Anti‑Defamation League and media reports. For the first half of 2025, the authors counted five far‑left incidents versus one far‑right — the latter being the June assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the shootings that wounded State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. A federal complaint charges a suspect in those attacks. (csis.org)
Byman urged caution in interpreting the numbers. “Even the five [left‑wing terrorist incidents] we get for the first half of 2025 — let’s say that pace continues and it’s 10 — that’s a small number compared to right‑wing terrorism when it was at its peak in recent years,” he said, adding that a sharper 2025 decline in right‑wing incidents may reflect grievances being channeled through current administration policies, such as stricter immigration enforcement. (cfpublic.org)
Several experts criticized the report’s small sample and subjective judgments. “Five is a really low case number to try to make any kind of inference from,” said Amy Cooter of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism. Jacob Ware of the Council on Foreign Relations pointed to inconsistencies, noting the study excluded the May killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum and a spate of Tesla‑related arsons, while including an arson attack that torched 11 NYPD vehicles in June. (opb.org)
The CSIS brief does not include the Kirk assassination because it occurred after July 4. Byman has since described it as a likely instance of left‑wing terrorism, a coding that Cooter says is premature pending more evidence. As of now, authorities have not presented public evidence tying the charged suspect to a left‑wing group. (cfpublic.org)
Beyond left‑right categories, researchers warn about hybrid motivations and actors who defy tidy labels — what former FBI Director Christopher Wray has called a “salad bar” of ideologies. NPR’s reporting also notes the FBI’s creation of a coding bucket for “nihilistic violent extremism” to capture non‑programmatic offenders. (csis.org)
The broader landscape of political violence in 2025 has included attacks outside the left‑right spectrum. On Jan. 1, a driver inspired by the Islamic State killed 14 people in a vehicle‑ramming on New Orleans’s Bourbon Street, according to federal and local authorities — an Islamist terrorism case not captured by left‑versus‑right tallies. (reuters.com)
The study’s reception has also been shaped by a shifting data environment. In March, the Department of Homeland Security terminated funding for the University of Maryland’s Terrorism and Targeted Violence (T2V) database, which had been the only public national dataset tracking U.S. terrorism and targeted‑violence incidents, according to START, the university consortium that ran it, and contemporaneous news reports. And in mid‑September, news outlets reported that the Justice Department removed from its website an NIJ summary concluding far‑right extremists have committed “far more” ideologically motivated homicides than far‑left or jihadist actors since 1990; DOJ has cited a broader web‑content review. Researchers say such moves complicate efforts to track and compare threats consistently. (start.umd.edu)
Whatever the precise ideological breakdown in early 2025, Byman and his critics agree on two points: left‑wing incidents have risen from historically low levels, and definitive judgments require care given small‑N data and contested coding. As debates continue, law enforcement and scholars warn that selective readings of incomplete data risk distorting the policy response. (csis.org)