How two New York tragedies exposed the failure of politics in a fraught American moment

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) — Two New York tragedies gripping America show how politics is failing to address some of the most fundamental economic and societal problems and reflect the nation’s mood ahead of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, captured on surveillance footage, became a shared moment of national horror. But it was soon overtaken by a wider debate about the complicity of major executives in America’s high health care costs and perceived injustices of the industry. Online trolls celebrated his murder, and some people empathized with the alleged goals of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged in the case, instead of expressing dismay for a gunned down husband and father of two children.

In another high-profile case, a Manhattan jury Monday acquitted Daniel Penny of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a street artist who struggled with homelessness, mental illness and drugs, on a New York City subway last year. The jury agreed with Penny, who is also 26, that he restrained Neely because he was trying to ensure people in the subway didn’t get hurt, or worse, from what witnesses said was Neely’s erratic behavior. The “chokehold” case is also politicized: Penny has been lionized as a hero good Samaritan on conservative media, where commentators accuse liberal prosecutors of hounding Trump but ignoring public safety. Protests after the verdict portrayed Neely as a victim of racial injustice and the scourge of homelessness.

Fury percolating on social media isn’t necessarily a faithful snapshot of all Americans. But chatter about these cases comes at a rare shared cultural moment for a tense nation after a bitter election year and as a new presidency looms.

In some ways, the context of each case highlights social and economic questions that national, state and city leaders are failing to address – like exorbitant health care costs and homelessness. The cases have captured public imagination following an election in which millions of Americans registered anger at political institutions and so-called elites who are failing to address their deepest concerns and gravest threats.

But for all the concern stirred in the aftermath of the deaths of Thompson and Neely, it would be rash to think much will change soon.

Does Trump’s incoming Cabinet of billionaires and millionaires have any clue that for many Americans — even those with good health insurance — the fear of an accident or new diagnosis is compounded by the dread of how they’ll be able to pay for treatment?

Democrats often cited falling violent crime statistics on the campaign trail. But do the party’s Washington leaders really get the palpable sense among many Americans that cities are getting more dangerous amid pervasive homelessness and drug addiction? And does Trump have any real plans to address these issues, beyond a desire to demagogue them as examples of “woke” Democratic policies?

‘Unacceptable’

The thought that Thompson’s death could be welcomed, even in the swamp of social media, is abhorrent. And the notion that there could be any justification for violence in a democratic society raises questions about the viability and endurance of that society.

“This is horrific,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “Violence to combat any sort of corporate greed is unacceptable.”

Mangione’s lawyer has said his client will plead not guilty to charges in Pennsylvania related to a fake ID and gun and will likely do the same to the murder charge in New York.

But if the suspect had a political motive — a question police are still probing — he may have succeeded.

Within hours of the killing, social media sites like TikTok and X brimmed with posts from people who said they’d been denied coverage by United and other health insurers or who’d endured the misery of hours on the phone, trying to pre-clear procedures or understand surprise bills.

Celebration of Thompson’s killing is shocking, but it speaks to deeper frustrations, in a nation where a 2022 KFF survey found that 41% of Americans have some kind of health care debt. Even for people with health insurance, high premiums, pricey co-pays and rulings and denials of care, on what often appear to be an arbitrary basis, can be devastating to those facing the most stressful moments of their lives. Misunderstandings or confusion about what has been covered can often get a patient sucked into the thriving industry of credit collection firms.

Not all rising costs can be blamed on a drive for profits. Revolutionary new treatments are often expensive. Providers also sometimes push charges beyond what health insurers argue is reasonable. But in a politically fraught moment like this, there is a glaring juxtaposition between the multi-billion-dollar earnings of UnitedHealthcare and its competitors and the agony of someone needing to pay for lifesaving care.

As Mangione was taken into custody and had his first court appearances this week, empathy for him online seemed to grow. Community members and police officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where he was arrested, received death threats. And the McDonald’s where he was spotted got a flood of negative online reviews. In Baltimore, close to Mangione’s home town, a sign reading “Deny, Defend, Depose” and “Health Care 4 All” appeared over I-83, the Baltimore Banner news site reported. The slogan matches words scrawled on ammunition recovered by detectives near the Thompson shooting site, the NYPD said last week, and echoes language used by critics of the health insurance industry.

The circumstances of Thompson’s murder and the anti-insurance backlash have provided a challenge for politicians. Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore said on Wednesday that as a three-year-old, he’d watched his father die because he couldn’t get the treatment he needed. The “brokenness of the health care system is something that I have lived with, and something that still very much sits with me to this day,” he said. “I also know that the way we solve things is not killing people in cold blood,” Moore said in Baltimore. He called for justice for Thompson and his family, adding, “There are two teenagers right now in Minnesota who are growing up like I did: Fatherless.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, condemned those celebrating Mangione. “He is no hero,” Shapiro said. “In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint.” He added: “In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.”

But Mangione may become a cause célèbre as his case proceeds to trial, potentially highlighting grievances many Americans have with their insurance providers. In that sense, the Thompson killing has revealed one of the most critical policy issues that governors, state and federal lawmakers and presidents have consistently failed to solve and that is undoubtably contributing to angst over the country’s governing institutions.

JD Vance: ‘Thank God justice was done’

Penny, the Marine veteran acquitted in the Neely case, gave his first interview to Fox News. In an advance clip aired Tuesday, he said he didn’t want any “attention or praise, and I still don’t.” And he said he would have felt guilty if someone had been hurt after the threats that witnesses testified Neely made on the train. “I’ll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt, or killed,” Penny said.

For many conservatives, the case was a disgrace. “Thank God justice was done in this case. It was a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place,” Vice President-elect JD Vance wrote on X on Monday.

The idea of a citizen acting in the defense of others – and then the perception of them being persecuted by what critics regard as the overreach of liberal prosecutors – is catnip for right-wing media. Fox News host Sean Hannity, for instance, said in his monologue Tuesday night that for “so many on the left,” the case was “not about truth, not about justice, or even life. For them it is one political game.”

Ironically, many writers in right-wing publications are cheering the same jury system in New York that they argued was hopelessly biased when Trump was convicted in a hush money case in Manhattan earlier this year. (Trump pleaded not guilty in the case in which his sentencing was paused after the November election.)

But there has also been strong condemnation of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat who brought the case that resulted in Trump becoming the first-ever ex-president to be criminally convicted and whose office also prosecuted the Penny case.

In his interview with Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, Penny criticized New York officials, whom he claimed were politically motivated and committed to policies that “have clearly not worked.” He complained about policies “that the people, the general population, are not in support of, yet their egos are too big just to admit that they’re wrong.”

But outside court on Monday, Neely’s father and a family attorney said the jury verdict reflected poorly on the criminal justice system. “I miss my son. My son didn’t have to go through this. I didn’t have to go through this either,” Andre Zachary said. “It hurts, it really, really hurts. What are we going to do, people? What’s going to happen to us now? I’ve had enough of this. The system is rigged.”

Critics of the verdict questioned whether it might have been the same if the tables were turned and Penny were Black and Neely were White. This is far from the first case where people question whether justice was done because of race. And while the criminal case against Penny is over, he faces a civil lawsuit from Neely’s father alleging he caused Neely’s death.

The jury’s decision means Penny is considered vindicated in the eyes of the law, but the media coverage around the case highlighted another example of how perception of a tragedy can be influenced by political views or media diet.

One question now is whether conservative critics who assailed the prosecution will reflect on issues like mental health, homelessness and conditions that can lead to drug use and social dislocation, which don’t justify violence and threats but can be contributing factors. Those should also be concerns for Democratic mayors and governors after an election where Trump made gains even in blue states amid a perception that the party in the White House was out of touch with the problems facing most Americans.

Meanwhile, the only response to the backlash against health giants after Thompson’s murder seems to be CEOs panicking about their own security rather than considering the grievances many Americans have about insurance companies.

In five-and-a-half weeks, it will fall to Trump and his administration to address the thorniest issues facing Americans after the president-elect cited crime in cities and the high cost of health care in his rallies.

It’s fair to ask whether a new president with only a “concept” of a plan for replacing Obamacare and who has often used racial rhetoric to demonize cities has real interest in results.

But it’s not on Trump alone. Two distinct episodes in New York created political aftershocks that show how fundamentally the US political system is failing to fix some of society’s deepest problems. And what can unfold as a result.

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