Citing “an alarming increase in political violence,” one Lehigh Valley lawmaker is aiming to increase the penalty for acts of political terrorism.
State Rep. Josh Siegel, a Democrat who represents District 22, which covers most of Allentown, introduced the Zero Tolerance for Political Violence Act in April. The bill, if passed, would increase the maximum sentence for anyone convicted of terrorism in the first degree in Pennsylvania from not more than 40 years to a life sentence.
“The failure to hold accountable and adequately punish acts of terrorism against our government and its officials risks normalizing and encouraging future violence,” Siegel wrote in a memo to fellow state House members.
His memo cites several recent acts of political violence, including the fatal shooting of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark; the attempted assassination of now-President Donald Trump at a 2024 Pennsylvania campaign rally; and the arson attack at Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion in April.
“I view this as a significant act of legislation … this moment really calls for moral clarity and a clear and definitive stance against how destructive and corrosive [political violence] is,” Siegel, who is running for Lehigh County executive this year, said in an interview.
The recent attacks Siegel cited were among at least 300 cases of political violence identified by Reuters since early 2021, which it said is a rate of political violence not seen since the 1970s.
Despite the 40-year maximum sentence for terrorism, people convicted of such a charge usually spend more than that in prison. Often, prosecutors pursue and add additional charges like homicide or assault on top of a terrorism charge, so that when a defendant is convicted, the resulting sentence leads to what is effectively a life sentence.
But allowing up to a life sentence, which Siegel also refers to as “death by incarceration,” for a terrorism charge alone is about taking a moral stance against political violence. He called that crucial because of how he sees political violence being normalized — for example, via Trump’s pardon of Jan. 6 rioters, some of whom assaulted police officers.
“Across the board we have got to stop with the toxic political rhetoric of any member of any party being an enemy to the nation,” Siegel said. “For me it was really the pardoning of hundreds of violent Jan. 6 offenders that assaulted capitol police officers, that is an instance where those folks should be behind bars for the rest of their life, what they did warrants a life rotting in a jail cell.”
None of the rioters in the Jan. 6 faced federal terrorism charges, although a judge issued a terrorism-enhanced, 18-year sentence to Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers. Rhodes’ sentence was later commuted by Trump as part of a series of pardons or sentence commutations issued to rioters.
Siegel said he opposes the death penalty, which is why he opted not to propose death as a consequence for terrorism in his bill. Capital punishment is legal in Pennsylvania, but there have been no executions in the commonwealth since 1999 and Gov. Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on executions in 2015 that is still in effect today.
“Death by incarceration is essentially a penalty that will confine you to prison for the rest of your life, you will never be able to walk freely again, walk in the sun in your own yard, you will spend the rest of your life in a cell, the minimal freedom you get within the walls of a jail,” Siegel said. “It is an appropriate balance to the toughest possible punishment, but keeping with what I believe is the immorality of the death penalty itself.”
Joe Welsh, executive director of the progressive organization Lehigh Valley Justice Institute, said it is “certain that we are in an epidemic of political violence.” He, too, cited Trump’s pardoning of Jan. 6 rioters, which he said sent the “wrong message” to people with a proclivity for violence.
Although Welsh called political violence “indefensible,” he said a punitive approach to political violence is not enough to solve the problem.
“I’m not sure that just raising the penalty is the only way to send that message, it’s like so many problems with society, we can’t imprison our way out of that. We have got to take them on, and I think the biggest need is we’ve got to start talking to each other. We can’t sit in our siloes,” Welsh said.
Siegel concurred, but said that taking a strong stance against political violence can act as an important “buttress” against it, as opposed to rhetoric that normalizes and encourages the violence.
“We have to tone down the rhetoric across the board. We should never be referring to people as enemies of the state, or arguing they are so out of touch, that they are evil or they are vile, that leads people to commit acts of violence,” Siegel said.
Roger MacLean, Siegel’s Republican opponent for the Lehigh County executive seat, said if he were a state lawmaker, he would oppose Siegel’s bill.
“Personally, I think this bill its unnecessary, it is up to the judges. They take into consideration the facts of the case,” MacLean said.
However, he said he believes political violence should be “condemned.”
“[Violent rhetoric] does no good, and there are people in this world who take some of that stuff to heart, we’ve seen it. I condemn violence of any sort, I spent a career doing that,” he said, referring to his eight years as Allentown’s police chief.
Attacks on political figures have come from extremists on both the right and left, Siegel said; in his memo, he also referred to the shooting of U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, in 2017 by a former Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer who espoused leftist views online.
Research has pointed to increasing political polarization and online misinformation as possible reasons for the increase in political violence. Online radicalization, which is when individuals develop extreme political ideologies via exposure to online content, has also been pointed to as the cause for some specific acts of political violence such as the Jan. 6 capitol attacks.
However, according to reporting by NPR, increasingly the motives of some perpetrators of political violence are not clearly partisan but are rather unclear. Often the perpetrators are killed while committing the act — for example, Thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump’s would-be assassin, was killed by responding law enforcement, and investigators have been unable to identify his specific motive.
The increasingly murky reasons for political violence, on top of its rise in general, is why Siegel said it is important for lawmakers to respond. In addition to introducing the bill, he said the state Legislature met in the wake of Hortman’s assassination and that members were “shaken” by the killing.
“I did not go to the [June 14] No Kings Rally that day, because I was concerned for my own safety, and what might happen in general. A lot of us have realized these are really tumultuous times,” Siegel said.
Pennsylvania state lawmakers also recently increased security measures, including auto-locking office doors and panic buttons — they have also been given permission to use campaign funds to hire private security, Siegel said.
The bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee in July, and Siegel said he is hopeful the bill could receive a vote on the House floor in the fall. Several Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors, but no Republicans.
He called on his colleagues, both Republican and Democrat, to take a stance against political violence and violent rhetoric with their vote.
“There is a huge individual responsibility on any elected official right now to call out and condemn the sort of things that we are seeing, and speak out unapologetically about it,” Siegel said.
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.