Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks at a press conference on May 24, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Top Republicans have claimed that calling Trump “fascist” or “authoritarian” is an incitement to “terrorism.” But party leaders have said nothing about an explicit call for violence from one of their own.
It has now been almost a full week since a Republican Arizona state representative called for the execution of Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal. But top Republicans in Congress and the White House have remained silent, even as they blame the left for escalating “political violence.”
On Wednesday, in response to an out-of-context clip from Jayapal’s (D-Wash.) YouTube channel posted to social media, state Rep. John Gillette (R-30) wrote that the Washington state Democrat—who discussed how protesters could become “strike ready or street ready”—was calling for the overthrow of the federal government.
“Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried convicted and hanged… it will continue,” he wrote on X.
But when the full video, published in March and titled “The Resistance Lab,” was unearthed by the Arizona Mirror, it showed that Jayapal was discussing how to plan “nonviolent resistance actions.” In fact, over the course of the hour-and-a-half training video, the words “nonviolent” and “nonviolence” were said a total of at least 18 times by Jayapal and other speakers.
“Getting strike ready,” meanwhile, was a call for labor union members to prepare for work stoppages, which are legal.
Gillette has not apologized for his call to hang Jayapal. In fact, he doubled down, referring to the Mirror‘s reporting that he called for Jayapal’s execution as “fake news,” and reiterating the false claim that Jayapal “openly advocates for the violent overthrow of the US government.”
I called Rep. Gillette, he said he was on a Zoom call after I said who I was and hung up. I called again a few hours later and his quote to me before he hung up is included in the story. I texted him my questions after he hung up. https://t.co/hmpea1dEtipic.twitter.com/u2XZsRHn5O
On Friday, Jayapal issued a statement calling Gillette’s comments “appalling, unacceptable, and dangerous from anyone, but particularly from an elected official.”
Other Democratic lawmakers were quick to condemn the comments. Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.) said Gillette “must be held accountable for inciting violence against a member of Congress.” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Gillette’s incitement “puts [Jayapal] and all active participants in our democracy in danger.” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called the comments “sick and wrong” and said that “Republican leaders need to condemn this heinous call for violence, and there needs to be real accountability.”
As of Tuesday, not a single Republican in Congress appears to have publicly condemned Gillette’s comments—a deafening silence at a time when top members of the party, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, have attempted to blame Democrats’ rhetoric for recent acts of violence, like the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and last week’s shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Dallas.
This is the same rhetoric behind two assassination attempts on @POTUS and the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
On Friday, as part of a new strategy to combat what it calls “left-wing domestic terrorism,” Donald Trump directed law enforcement to “disrupt” individuals and groups “that foment political violence,” including “before they result in violent political acts.” Possible “indicators” of terrorism, the memo says, include “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” and “hostility” toward traditional views on family or “morality.”
Top Trump ally Steve Bannon told the New Republic that he expects the government will begin to criminally investigate and prosecute groups and individuals that describe ICE as “authoritarian,” agreeing with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller that such First Amendment-protected criticism “incites violence and terrorism.”
Following Kirk’s assassination and the ICE shooting, liberal and leftist politicians, journalists, and activists across the board rushed to unequivocallycondemnbothacts of political violence, even while stating their disagreements with Kirk and with Trump’s immigration policies.
Political differences are inevitable. But here in America, violence is never, ever the answer.⁰⁰Everyone should be able to condemn the deadly attack against the ICE facility in Dallas. https://t.co/JTcor0FWIT
Common Dreams contacted the offices of both Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) to ask if they would publicly condemn Gillette’s comments and urge others in their caucus to do the same. At press time, neither had responded.
No public condemnations appear to have come from Trump, Vance, or any other members of the Trump administration.
The local news network Arizona’s Family (3TV/CBS5)said it reached out to the office of Arizona’s House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-21) to ask if Gillette would face any discipline over his comments. The office did not respond.
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) harshly criticized their silence.
“Patriots don’t cower and meekly hide from condemning their political allies when they do stuff like this,” he said. “Everybody should be condemning this call for violence. Period.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Photojournalist Vural Elibol is being hospitalized after falling and hitting his head on the ground during a harsh intervention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, in New York on September 30, 2025. (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The shoving incident marked at least the second physical altercation involving an ICE official at the US federal court in New York in the last week.
A photojournalist at the US Federal Court in New York on Tuesday had to be taken to a hospital on a stretcher on Tuesday after an immigration enforcement official shoved another person into him, causing him to fall and hit his head on the floor at a US federal courthouse in New York City.
Gothamistreports that photojournalist Vural Elibol of the Turkish-based Anadolu Agency had to be hospitalized on Tuesday morning after a confrontation involving multiple masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
Video of the incident posted on social media by photographer Stephanie Keith showed several people in the courthouse, along with at least three masked ICE agents, attempting to enter an elevator.
When an unidentified man attempted to get in the elevator with the ICE agents, one of them grabbed him and shoved him outside. At the same time, another ICE agent shoved a woman, identified by the New York Daily News as freelance photographer Olga Fedorova, away from the elevator, where she fell into Elibol and knocked him over.
Elibol was then seen writhing in pain on the ground while grabbing his head. Medical professionals subsequently showed up on the scene, placed him in a neck brace, put him on a stretcher, and took him to Downtown Hospital, according to the New York Daily News.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) so far has not responded to multiple publications’ requests for comment.
The shoving incident marked at least the second physical altercation involving an ICE official at the US federal court in New York in the last week. This past Friday, an ICE agent was caught on camera throwing an Ecuadorian asylum-seeker, Monica Moreta-Galarza, to the ground after she tearfully demanded the return of her husband, who had just been dragged away from her by masked agents.
Although DHS suspended the ICE officer in the immediate wake of the incident, CBS Newsreported on Monday that he had already been reinstated after a “preliminary review” of his actions.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
So disjointed is Labour’s annual meet, the messaging differs from room to room. Attendees agree only on fear of Reform
Demonstrators outside the Labour Party Conference get creative | Seth Thévoz
I’ve been attending political party conferences in the UK for over 20 years, but I’ve never seen anything like the Labour conference currently taking place in Liverpool.
The governing party is a broad coalition at the best of times. But this year’s event has been a series of “bubbles” that don’t – and won’t – interact with one another. You can experience a completely different reality from the people 50 feet away, just by going to different events.
That’s why, all week, when people have asked me, “What’s the feeling like at Labour conference?” I’ve replied that it depends on which Labour conference you’re attending. The real conference takes place not on the carefully choreographed main stage, but in a hundred meeting rooms dotted across the city, where fringe events are put on by members, activists and lobbyists – and it’s in those rooms that the party’s deep internal rifts can be seen.
On day one, in the space of four meetings, I was told, firstly, of the importance of immigrants being treated with dignity and respect; secondly, of the need for Labour to go further in cutting immigration as the only way to stop Reform UK; thirdly, of the desperate need for more immigration if we were serious about growing the economy; and fourthly, what a brilliant job the government was already doing of cutting immigration.
As an immigrant, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. But then, Labour conferences have always been a performance art – it’s an essential way to square the circle.
Exaggerated patriotism and mockney accents
You learn a lot by watching people at conference. A lot of play-acting goes on at Labour conference.
Take sharp-suited trade secretary Peter Kyle. Introduced to a rally organised by Labour First, a network representing those on the right of the party, Kyle spent a full minute explaining how he didn’t really like wearing suits, and protested: “I don’t own moccasins!”
Kyle isn’t alone. Elsewhere, well-spoken, public school-educated special advisers from the south-east suddenly put on mockney accents, deeply aware of the shame attached to sounding posh in Labour circles. And the party’s traumatised politicians, long nervous about having their patriotism questioned, try to take on the mantle of the keenest flag-shaggers, with fringe venues, exhibition stands, corridors and merchandise all draped in Union flags.
‘Flag-shaggers’: Labour is eager to prove its patriotism and rival Reform’s use of flags | Seth Thévoz
You soon pick up where the centres of power are around the conference hotel, its bar and its private business suites, as key party personnel are bundled away for hush-hush meetings with donors and diplomats. But for the people-watcher, there is a golden rule to observe: doughnutting.
VIPs make up the hole of a doughnut, and they’re surrounded by a gaggle of hangers-on. The more important you are, the bigger the doughnut: a backbench MP merits just one young diary secretary by their side, while a cabinet minister or a city mayor can have half a dozen staff flocking around them at all times. No one wants to be Billy No Mates.
I mention this because it was striking to see Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, shuttling around the lobby of the Pullman hotel at least eight times – always alone. Whether he prefers to work in isolation or is just being avoided, I don’t know. But I wasn’t the only seasoned conference-goer to observe, “That’s really weird.”
McSweeney has had a tough September. First, he’s synonymous with Starmer’s many resets and changes of strategy, which have seen Labour plummet in the polls. Second, he came under fire for having advocated for Peter Mandelson to be appointed as the UK’s Washington ambassador despite his known friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and despite concerns raised by the security services during the vetting process (Mandelson was fired after emails he sent to Epstein following his conviction emerged earlier this month). And now, thanks to a new book from investigative journalist Paul Holden, the peculiar tale of how more than £700,000 of donations to Labour Together went undeclared on McSweeney’s watch has resurfaced, heaping further pressure on the man many believe to be the architect of Starmerism.
But it was the sight of him hurrying around the conference on his own, not the many op-eds published questioning his political judgment in recent weeks, that made me realise McSweeney may be in deep trouble. I’ve never seen such a senior government figure alone at a party conference, let alone over and over again.
Reform agenda
Sienna Rodgers of The House magazine wasn’t wrong when she wrote, “the motivation for those targeting McSweeney is clear: Starmer, it is widely believed, is finished without him.” McSweeney has become a lightning rod because he is seen as the cause of so many of Starmer’s changes of direction.
Many of the Labour members who voted for Starmer in the party’s 2020 leadership election expected a more radical figure. Instead, they have been baffled by a series of policy U-turns and an increasingly socially conservative approach to policy, aimed at wooing Reform UK voters. McSweeney is seen as being behind this shift.
The dilemma over the rise and rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform party has hit Labour hard. It’s not just obvious in ministers’ speeches; all around the conference, you can hear the chatter of endless conversations along the same lines. “We’re quite fearful, to be honest,” activists tell one another. “It’s all about how to beat Reform, basically.”
Labour has historically taken its working-class voter base for granted, while it wins or loses elections on the back of middle-class voters. To suddenly find another party, claiming the mantle of being more working class, accusing Labour of being a party of southern elites, has really knocked people’s confidence. It goes to the heart of how Labour politicians see themselves: “Are we the baddies?”
And so activists seek solace in comfortable old certainties. In the conference’s ‘Labour shop’, a whole range of nostalgia merchandise has been launched this year, from mugs to T-shirts, commemorating 80 years since the Labour government of 1945. If Labour in 2025 can’t offer members a better future, it can at least offer up a better yesterday.
The Good Old Days: Labour is flogging a range of 1945 nostalgia merchandise | Seth Thévoz
Ad-libbing policies
This does not feel like a party that won a landslide only 14 months ago. Its conference has had a level of exhaustion normally seen only in parties that have been in power for over a decade. At fringe event after fringe event, the most interesting or lively guest speaker was usually the person brought in from outside the party: a social worker, an economist, or a local imam.
MPs and councillors, by contrast, often sounded shell-shocked and afraid to say too much. Part of this stems from how Starmer led Labour in opposition. The party’s strategists congratulated themselves on a brilliant wheeze, through the years of 2020 to 2024, of not being tied down to anything too specific. They were the textbook opposition, they believed: attacking the Tories in government, without having policies of their own that could be counter-attacked. They had learned from the Corbyn years, when lengthy manifestos were a hostage to fortune. No one wanted a repeat of Labour’s mammoth 1983 policy manifesto under Michael Foot, famously dubbed “The longest suicide note in history.” Policies could be left to the very end of the last Parliament, before being hammered out.
Unfortunately, Rishi Sunak’s call for an early election in May 2024 surprised many people, not least those strategists. And a lot of vital work never happened, from scheduled briefings with civil servants to agreeing on detailed policy proposals. Labour accidentally found itself in power several months too early and has been making up policy as it goes ever since.
This is how the government ended up quietly ditching several of its established policies, such as proportional representation and an elected House of Lords, while spending political capital on major new policies that weren’t even in its manifesto and which often divide people across political lines, such as last week’s new digital ID cards proposal.
Incidentally, a popular topic of conference gossip has been to speculate about which companies might get the lucrative government contract for ID cards, estimated by Labour Together as being worth up to £400m.
‘A ghastly job’
But the existential ennui has not stopped the glad-handing. There are plenty of lobbyists in town to do business, and Labour is in the middle of an election for a new deputy leader.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has been pushed by the party machine for that position at every stage, being unveiled at several rallies with slick leaflets promoting her campaign handed out by the entrance. In one flyer, Phillipson promises, “I won’t defend our mistakes” – a bold pitch, since being wheeled out to apologise for the party is basically the deputy leader’s job description. Indeed, earlier this month the role was described as “a terrible job, really ghastly” by Labour peer Margaret Beckett, who held the title in the 1990s.
At the rally by campaign group Labour to Win, Luke Akehurst MP put on a brave face, admitting the party has had “a couple of weeks where things have not gone well for us, and we need to put a stop to them not going well for us”. He pleaded with delegates not to go leaking stories to the press, with “a story of division and chaos and in-fighting”, and “taking the people at the top of the party out in front and critiquing them.”
And he lashed out at hints that Manchester’s Mayor Andy Burnham might challenge Keir Starmer: “Most of the cameras are following someone who isn’t even qualified to run!”
Akehurst – a veteran fixer on the Labour right – knows a thing or two about winning internal Labour elections. At the Labour First rally the next day, he boasted of how he was able to “completely confound” journalists with floor votes still favourable for the leadership, because of “organising all year”, electing “speaker after speaker after speaker” as delegates, “which is like bloody herding cats, trying to get people, just, oooh trust us, here’s seven really obscure topics that would be really quite ideal for us to debate. We got about 67% of the vote or something on that.”
There were theatrical pledges of support, as cabinet ministers at rallies lined up to praise the prime minister.
Health secretary Wes Streeting is an ambitious political operator, whom I’ve known since he was my student union’s president 20 years ago. Even back then, he was clearly already running to be prime minister; like Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, he often “has a lean and hungry look.” Yet at the Labour rally, he was doing his best to channel the manner of a North Korean MP theatrically clapping the Dear Leader, not wanting to be seen as half-hearted in his applause.
Health secretary Wes Streeting is among those keen to be seen loyally applauding | Seth Thévoz
But the mood of delegates was far less chipper. When chancellor Rachel Reeves told the rally, “It’s great to see Keir come out fighting this week!”, the Labour member next to me – who had been loyally applauding up until this point – muttered, “Yeah, too late!”
Ultimately, the Labour conference in Liverpool reminded me of grief. And grief has five stages. I saw plenty of denial, anger, bargaining and depression. I saw little of the last stage, acceptance. But then again, even some of the bargaining was surreal. One delegate I overheard in the café was musing on whether the coming England match might help the government’s popularity. He earnestly predicted, “When England do well, the whole community do well, so maybe if we, er, hope…?”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
