I urge everyone to read this interview with Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz on how his name was found on a kill list full of other Jewish targets. The story is harrowing but there are lessons here we must take to heart if we want to stop American politics from becoming a nightmarishly real version of the Most Dangerous Game.
Near Moskowitz’s family home in late 2024, the sound of gunfire encouraged someone to call 9-1-1. Authorities ended up at John Kevin Lipinski’s house and arrested him. “Inside the home,” Roll Call reports, “prosecutors said authorities discovered an arsenal of weapons and a panoply of tactical gear. Among the findings: body armor, smoke grenades, gun belts, silencers, a camouflage suit and about 3,000 rounds of ammunition. They also found firearms, including at least one rifle and multiple shotguns, according to court documents.”
They also found a hit list. Moskowitz was on it. So were “bar mitzvah halls,” a Jewish cemetery, a “Jewish sub shop,” a synagogue, and other targets. The last item on the list said, simply: “stalk Jewish parks.”
Unlike as in other cases of political violence, the suspect here wasn’t “known to authorities”—code for a human ticking time bomb. Instead, Lipinski “was a complete ghost,” Moskowitz said. “And that was the scary part for myself and my family, is to one day get a call out of the blue, randomly, from the Margate Police Department.”
The guy had no beef with Moskowitz other than Moskowitz’s being Jewish. The congressman is also outspoken against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. It made him a target.
Among the important implications of this story is how such incidents change the behavior of people who are made to feel hunted. Police are stationed outside the home Moskowitz shares with his wife and children. He won’t appear in parades or staged outdoor events. He is accompanied by private security and his indoor events feature metal detectors.
Prosecutors believe Lipinski also fired into a local Jewish woman’s house and car at night a few months before his arrest. A bullet is still apparently lodged in the wall mere feet from where her husband sleeps. She, too, has kids in the house. That attack had the same effect on the woman. “She didn’t like to leave the house alone anymore and, outside of certain major holidays, loud noises at night could send her into a mini panic attack.”
The recent uptick in political assassination attempts does not discriminate by party nor has it been limited to Jewish figures. There was the nearly successful attempt on President Trump’s life at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the attempt to burn down Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home with his family inside it, the execution of Minnesota statehouse speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Still, coming amid an explosion in anti-Semitic violence with part of a political movement calling for a “global Intifada,” and given Moskowitz’s Jewishness and outspokenness on anti-Semitism, there are a couple points to make.
The first is that it isn’t censorship to criticize the hate preachers becoming increasingly popular in the modern political landscape. The Tucker Carlsons and Hasan Pikers of America have done much to normalize and popularize dangerous rhetoric, and the politicians who embrace them are insulating them from the norms that might otherwise cause society to shun them, as any healthy society would.
As it happens, in today’s Wall Street Journal, Third Way officials Jonathan Cowan and Lily Cohen have an excellent piece hammering Democrats for their embrace of Piker and their unwillingness, more broadly, to do what Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton did recently: publicly excoriate their own party and political movement for its tolerance of anti-Semitism.
The seeds for Cowan and Cohen’s column were sown last week when Cohen posted a tweet with a similar message. Cohen named Piker, Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani as prominent leftward figures staining the Democratic Party with anti-Semitism. In response, Ro Khanna, a popular progressive member of Congress and likely 2028 presidential candidate, dismissed Cohen on X: “I am proud to stand with @grahamformaine @ZohranKMamdani & join @hasanthehun feed,” he posted.
Khanna is a big part of the problem facing our politics today, and he is clearly just getting started. It is a mark of our current political crisis that Khanna is so proud of his role boosting anti-Semites as violence continues to rise.
And the second point is closely related: Moskowitz puts himself in danger for calling out anti-Semitism. Where are all the other Democrats? Shouldn’t they have his back? Anti-Semites and so-called anti-Zionists have been trying to assassinate the party’s prominent Jews. Major Democratic officeholders ought to be scrambling to make a public address about the violent Jew-hatred in their party and the politicians supporting it. It does not let Republicans off the hook just because of what Cruz and Cotton have done, but it does highlight just how isolated Democrats have let folks like Moskowitz become. That needs to end now.
