Saturday at sundown was the beginning of Passover. I know this not as a Jew, but as a Christian who, like Salena Zito, has watched The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner every year since I was a little kid. To my Jewish friends, may the holiday bring you the reminder of what God did and can still do for you if you seek Him.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family started Passover with a traditional Seder like most Jewish families.
From the Shapiro family’s Seder table to yours, happy Passover and Chag Pesach Sameach! pic.twitter.com/2II1Id1W23
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) April 12, 2025
The evening continued as expected, and the Shapiro family turned in for the evening. Then, the ancient evil reared its ugly head.
Last night at about 2AM, my family and I woke up to bangs on the door from the Pennsylvania State Police after an arsonist set fire to the Governor’s Residence in Harrisburg.
The Harrisburg Bureau of Fire was on the scene and while they worked to put out the fire, we were…
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) April 13, 2025
Thank God, no one in either Shapiro’s family or staff at the governor’s mansion were hurt in the attack. By Sunday, the images from the damage inside were disgusting to behold.
This is what’s left of the Pennsylvania Governor’s mansion after a psycho arsonist broke in and set it ablaze with Josh Shapiro and his entire family sleeping inside at 2 am this morning.pic.twitter.com/hPssPCLyxs
— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) April 14, 2025
Vice-President J.D. Vance struck the appropriate tone a few hours later.
Thanks be to God that Governor Shapiro and his family were unharmed in this attack.
Really disgusting violence, and I hope whoever did it is brought swiftly to justice.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) April 14, 2025
A few hours after the attack, 38-year-old Cody Balmer was arrested and charged on a number of aggravated counts.
Authorities said the suspect hopped over a nearly 7-foot-high (2.1-meter-high) iron security fence surrounding the property, eluded officers who became aware of the breach and forcibly entered the residence before setting it on fire.
Lt. Col. George Bivens said Balmer had a homemade incendiary device — he would not describe what kind — and appeared to have carefully planned the attack. He was inside the residence for about a minute before he escaped, Bivens said.
Bivens said Balmer was later arrested in the area. Authorities did not say whether Balmer has a lawyer or where he was being held and calls to people believed to be relatives went unanswered or unreturned. One recent listed residence in Harrisburg was condemned in 2022.
Balmer has faced criminal charges over the past decade including simple assault, theft and forgery, according to online criminal court records.
First, Pennsylvania State Police have not exactly had themselves a banner 12 months, and it’s not just the attack on the governor’s mansion, burning after an intruder gained access and carrying an explosive device. This comes on the heels of the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt on Donald Trump late last year. Pennsylvania State Police were one of four local departments involved in assisting Secret Service, but they operated on a radio frequency that did not allow for them to monitor communications from the other local agencies, which in retrospect is asinine. A task force conducted a hot wash on the debacle, and made the obvious recommendation. All departments have to be able to communicate with each other. The Secret Service still bears most of the blame for Butler, to be certain, but the local agencies, Pennsylvania State Police included, did not do anyone any favors that day. But there’s no blame to be shifted after Saturday night. There’s no excuse for someone hopping a fence and making it into a high-value target like a governor’s residence undetected.
Online, the hot takes began before the fire was even put out. The fever swamp on the left instantly speculated that the suspect had to be a MAGA type, and taunted conservatives for not instantly condemning an apparent anti-Semitic attack when the target happens to a Democrat.
Naturally, with a little time, probing began once the name of the suspect was released and authorities could not offer a motive. That’s usually a telltale sign on the right whenever there’s a violent mass casualty or other high-profile incident. If no motive can be determined, it tends to be a crazy on the left who is responsible. If there is a motive released immediately, then you know it’s a far-right person who’s behind it. As of Sunday night, no motive seemed apparent.
Governor Shapiro, visibly shaken by the attack, spoke to media on Sunday.
Last night at the Governor’s Residence, we experienced an attack not just on our family, but on the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
This kind of violence has become far too common in our society, and it has to stop. pic.twitter.com/5HP5JSvgfc
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) April 13, 2025
I agree with Governor Shapiro. Anti-Semitic violence has become far too common, and it has to stop. He also went on to both sides the issue. That’s where I take issue.
Yes, there are a handful of crazies on the far right that are anti-Semitic nuts. Fortunately, they have no place or standing in the party, and are treated as the pariahs they are, for the most part. Any religious persecution, whether it be against Jews, Christians, or Muslims, simply for the sake of religion, is not something anyone on the right should ever allow. It should be and must be condemned whenever it occurs.
On the left, however, well, that’s a different story entirely. We have seen another round of collegiate anti-Semitism of late, chiefly at Columbia University, but also in far too many other formerly elite campuses as well, and this Jewish hatred is coming from the progressive left. I say another round, because this anti-Semitism was happening on campuses during the last couple years of the Biden-Harris administration coast-to-coast. At UCLA in Westwood, California, there were actual Jew hunts occurring last spring.
When Joe Biden was kicked to the curb by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party bosses and Kamala Harris quickly became the presidential nominee, the party struggled all down the stretch with the anti-Semitic faction of their political base, which includes more than a few members of the Squad in the House of Representatives. Their polling never showed Harris with a comfortable lead over Trump, as the campaign expose book, Fight by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes reports, so they couldn’t afford to alienate any potential Democratic voter, if if they had a problem with Jews. They played footsie and coddled them instead of condemning and repelling them from the party.
As for Shapiro himself, he was the obvious smart choice for the Democrats to be the vice-presidential nominee for Kamala Harris. Everyone in politics knew he wasn’t just the best part of the Democratic Party bench, Shapiro was the bench. The Democratic bench was actually more of a chair. But the speculation now is that Shapiro didn’t want to be the nominee, because he knew Harris was going to lose, and he wanted to remain viable in the future for his own presidential run. But the disgusting side of the Democratic base voiced their opinion in the process, saying that a Shapiro selection was a non-starter in many precincts in the swing state of Michigan, which sports a large Muslim-American population. Tim Walz was chosen instead as the safe pick.
What little is known about Balmer, the suspected Jew-hating arsonist, paints the picture that he isn’t a resident of either side of the political aisle. He seems to be A) a nut, and B) an anarchist, which if you look up the definition of an anarchist, it’ll say see A). He once proclaimed on social media that he was a socialist, but there’s not much other evidence out there to back up that claim. What is there is that he hated everybody on both sides.
I hope that Kash Patel at FBI gets to the bottom quickly of what made this person snap, and I hope that Attorney General Pam Bondi, if he did it out of religious bigotry, throws the book at him, despite whatever political affiliation, if any, he currently espouses.
I am grateful that Governor Shapiro and his family are safe. As for the Governor’s ‘both sidesism’, we all have eyes and ears, and functioning brainstems. It’s not hard to see where the bulk of the outbreaks of anti-Semitism are falling on the ideological spectrum recently. It’s not on the right. It’s on the left. Using moral equivalence to downplay the explosion of hate against Jews on the Democratic side isn’t going to make the problem go away. Putting political expediency over morality reduces the spotlight on the true offenders of evil instead of shining the light brightly on these cockroaches wherever they surface.
I want to help dig a giant pit and assist the rest of the country in dropping every anti-Semite into it, regardless of whom they voted for in the last few cycles. If this latest fire outbreak of hate is happening mostly on the left, however, perhaps that’s the direction where we should be applying the most water.
