‘It’s a Really Scary Time’

On Friday night at a bar in Park City, Utah, a man approached Representative Maxwell Frost and said to him, “We are going to deport you and your kind.” The 28-year-old man then yelled a racial slur and punched Frost in the face before running away, according to court documents reported by KUTV and a social-media post by Frost.

Just a few days into the second year of Trump’s second term as president, his incendiary comments and actions, and the fact that they come from the president of the United States, seem to be inspiring some Americans to act in line with their worst intentions and their darkest passions, Frost told me. “Trump has brought out the worst in everybody,” Frost said when I reached him by phone on Saturday evening. “People are just really emboldened and it’s a really scary time.”

Frost’s alleged assailant was arrested soon after the incident, with the help of security at the venue, and booked on suspicion of aggravated burglary, assaulting an elected official, and assault. The attack took place at a party for the talent agency CAA, celebrating the Sundance Film Festival’s final year in Park City.

Frost told me that he tries to “live a normal life,” not typically bringing security to bars or other small gatherings. Now, he feels like he’ll have to bring security everywhere he goes in public. According to Frost, the Capitol Police are now involved in the investigation.

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Frost told me it wasn’t entirely clear that his assailant knew who the congressman was. “My friends think he did, but I don’t want to say for sure. He came right to me, but he was also drinking,” he told me. “He was being a normal drunk guy at a bar and just being belligerent. Out of nowhere, completely, he got very racist.” Frost is Black and Latino and grew up in Central Florida, the region he now represents in Congress. In 2022, at age 25, he became the first member of Gen Z to be elected to the U.S. House, and now at age 29, he remains the youngest member of Congress.

In recent years, politicians on both sides of the aisle have been subjected not just to threats, but also to violent attacks. As such incidents mount, it’s growing harder for elected officials to interact with the public—and less appealing to run for office. As a result, it’s not just the politicians who are victimized by violence, but the democratic system itself.