The killing of political commentator Charlie Kirk on 10 September 2025 marked the latest in a run of politically motivated attacks in the US, including two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump in the past 18 months.
These incidents have both reflected and excited tensions in American society, and imply potentially ratcheting instability in the near future. While the US remains a crucial operational base for many organisations, as do its markets for many companies, those continuing American engagements must consider the spectrum of risk factors arising from these conditions. These already affect reputation and physical security, and are likely to bear increasingly on the insurance, contracting, and investment landscapes.
Trends of hostility
In recent years, scholars of democracy and political violence have highlighted the increasing prevalence of preconditions for such violence in US society, through intensifying polarisation and in changes to the group dynamics and compositions of the two main Congressional parties. Moreover, threats and acts of violence increasingly derive from both sides of the political spectrum. Amid the most sustained increase in politically motivated attacks since the 1970s, 2025 has been assessed as the first year since that period in which left-wing perpetrators of terror attacks in the US have outnumbered their right-wing counterparts.
A sharp rise in threats against members of Congress since 2017 has seen both Democrats and Republicans targeted equally. This phenomenon has recently been underscored as acutely dangerous, due to heightened risks of cycling emulation and reprisal.
Events such as Kirk's assassination intersect with longer trends of polarisation and radicalisation in US society, and with decreased faith in democratic processes. While the September shooting drew bipartisan expressions of condemnation, its wider aftermath has included recriminations, calls for retribution, and propagandisation, both by political elites and on social media. Politicised reactions to the June 2025 killing of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, likewise demonstrate the attempted weaponisation of such events in current discourse, as well as willingness to reason its justification - more broadly indicating its potential normalisation.
While a large majority of Americans polled in 2025 expressed continued strong opposition to political violence, some studies have indicated growth in conditional support for it. Almost one third of respondents in a poll co-conducted by NPR agreed that political violence may be necessary to "get the country back on track". More than one quarter of self-identified Democrats and Republicans respectively agreed, in a September 2025 study conducted at the University of Chicago, that violence would be justified to end or defend President Trump's agenda - three times as many as in 2024.
In addition to these discursive trends and their impacts, proliferating political violence carries attendant risks to the quality of democracy and civil liberties. Ideological tendencies among some lawmakers, and a possible security mandate from American constituencies, could result in curtailment of civil liberties and suppression of nonviolent activity. Similarly, the continued intractability of debates around US gun control legislation, and widespread access to firearms, is highly likely to continue providing the ground for acts of coordinated or stochastic terrorism in the near term.
Staying in the game
While the current state of US political violence does not pose generalised physical security risks or prohibitive obstacles to conducting business, some substantial near- and medium-term risks must be taken into consideration for those continuing American engagements or operations.
Some of the most immediate risks are fundamentally reputational: any company perceived as partisan, or as holding politically sensitive associations, will be more susceptible to political stakeholder or shareholder pressures, ideologically motivated cyberattacks or doxxing.
Challenges are also likely to arise in relation to employment law, particularly around retaliation and workplace freedom of expression. Internal frictions and corporate crises can arise from employee reactions to instances of political violence - a trend already reportedly in evidence in the aftermath of Kirk's assassination. Firms may be exposed to legal actions around claims of wrongful termination or discriminatory discipline following from mishandled responses. Sensitivity in the conduct of public and investor relations, and in understanding employee sensibilities, will be crucial.
With further escalations in tension and instability, economic forces - such as bond market and country risk repricing - may also come to bear on US operations. US markets may experience volatility with heightened investor sensitivity, entailing broad exposure for publicly traded companies.
Changes in security and indemnity exposure will need to be anticipated through judicious modelling of events-focused contracts and the financial impact of, (for example), increasing required rates of return on investment, as well as boycott scenarios. Effective communication of projections and decisions to stakeholders, as well as active policy monitoring, will be key to operational continuity.
Similarly, insurance modelling must trace the evolving threat landscape as well as the market. Premiums for political violence/terrorism (or PVT) policies have already reportedly risen in the US, with new coverage wordings and specialised products emerging in response to risks - such as active-assailant scenarios - which have recently tested existing policies. Especially where any public pressure gives rise to legislation aimed at mitigation of political violence, companies and organisations would likewise need to remain alive to shifts in compliance and reporting obligations.
It can be hoped that responsible policy and public discourse will keep physical security risks relatively low. However, plans for crisis management and communication must be updated to account for the political dimensions of potential security incidents, with an emphasis on mitigating any internal escalation or sudden risk exposure, as well as robust business continuity planning and training for liaison with law enforcement.
In summary, the evolving landscape of political violence demands a more nuanced and proactive approach to risk management. Organisations must not only monitor the immediate security environment but also anticipate the broader reputational, legal, and operational challenges that may arise. Ultimately, staying responsive and informed will be key to maintaining resilience and sustaining long-term interests in an increasingly unpredictable political climate.