The unprovoked deadly attack on two West Virginia National Guard members in downtown Washington, D.C. the day before Thanksgiving was both tragic and horrific. One National Guard member was just 20 when she died of her extensive injuries.  Her compatriot, 24, is fighting for his life.  The attacker is a 29-year-old Afghan national who was granted asylum in April 2025 after assisting American forces in the war against the Taliban, and remains in a local hospital. Three young people, all under 30 years of age, whose futures were forever changed on a city street corner. 

The shock was magnified by a premature statement from West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey who announced that both victims had died.  That error was quickly walked back, but demonstrates that, in today’s haste to be the “first” with a news scoop, incorrect information, rumors, and outright lies get a jump start on facts and truth.  Retired Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, who has overseen many critical incidents in the National Capital Region, pointed out that part of any law enforcement leader’s job is to ensure that information is verified and the victim’s family notified before any news is released to the public. That’s crucial to maintaining community trust in law enforcement.

Trust is not something we can expect from the Trump Administration.  Using the attack to order 500 more unneeded National Guard troops into Washington, D.C., Mr. Trump doubled-down by ordering a pause on any Afghani immigration applications and went even further by directing a re-examination of thousands of green-card holders from 19 different countries.  He threatened to “de-naturalize” American citizens and used the incident to reinstate his demand that Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and others be thrown out of the country.  Collective punishment of an entire group because of the actions of one person was occasional in my parochial school education but holding hundreds of thousands of people hostage because of their national origin is antithetical to the values of this nation.  

Sadly, it’s happened many times around the world and continues to this day. An egregious example is the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Before that, a congressional “investigating” committee was established in 1930 by Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-NY) to identify subversives and root out communism.  Fiorella LaGuardia, a House member before he became Mayor of New York City, protested that “anyone who had a grudge would send in anonymous communications or make complaints against their neighbors, charging them with disloyalty or being “Un-American.”  He was right – years later the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) destroyed lives and careers and captivated the nation in the 1950s with the Army-McCarthy hearings.  In the 1930s, the committee characterized poor Americans and immigrants as “subversive plotters.”  When the investigating committee became HUAC in 1938, racial equality movements were designated subversive.  Antisemitism and the Ku Klux Klan were seen as good old American traditions, according to an ardent Georgia segregationist.  By the 1950s, Joe McCarthy’s accusations of communists in the federal government were built on the foundation established 15 years earlier.  He was aided in his hatred and insinuations by his chief counsel Roy Cohn, who later spent 13 years as Donald Trump’s personal attorney in New York before being disbarred. 

Comparing this to the jigsaw puzzle I worked on during the Thanksgiving holiday, dozens of pieces would fit together.  What the picture those pieces would make still is a puzzle, but the through-line might begin in the economically-challenged 1930s, move to WWII, the HUAC hearings, the cultural upheavals of the 60s and 70s, a more diverse population strengthened by immigration, 9/11 and the “see something, say something” admonition, the growth of social media and AI, and wind up in economically-challenged 2025.  If, as Shakespeare wrote, “What’s past is prologue,” we must pay attention, work against abuses of constitutional rights, and reclaim respect for our democratic values through words and actions.