Terror strikes the US shortly before Trump’s return to the White House

The United States began 2025 in shock over the country’s deadliest ever attack involving a vehicle as a weapon, which left at least 15 dead in New Orleans; added to this was the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, where one person was killed and at least seven injured. Authorities are investigating both events as potential acts of terrorism, and President Joe Biden indicated that a possible connection between the two episodes is being investigated. “There’s nothing to report on that score at this time,” he said on Wednesday. The two vehicles involved were rented through the same car-sharing application, Turo, but it is not yet known if there is a direct connection between the two events, which have taken place with less than three weeks to go before Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The provisional death toll of 15 makes the New Orleans incident the deadliest attack in the United States since a 40-year-old mentally ill man killed 18 people in Maine with a semi-automatic rifle in October 2023, many of them at a bowling alley in Lewiston. However, unlike that shooting, the mass attack in New Orleans has special connotations. The perpetrator, identified as U.S. army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was carrying an Islamic State (ISIS) flag on the truck with which he plowed into the crowd, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He used a procedure that has become standard in Islamist terrorism.

The FBI is investigating the attacker’s possible affiliations with terrorist organizations. Authorities are also actively seeking any possible associates he might have had, said Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, at a news conference Wednesday, where she asked for public assistance in pursuing leads. Investigators are reviewing video footage showing three men and a woman apparently placing a homemade explosive device related to the attack, according to a Louisiana State Police bulletin obtained by the Associated Press.

Biden noted in his testimony on Wednesday that Jabbar posted videos on social media hours before the attack in which he expressed his desire to kill and indicating that he was “inspired by ISIS.” Nevertheless, the president stressed that the investigation is in a preliminary phase and that no one should jump to conclusions.

The president also alluded to the explosion of a Cybertruck in Las Vegas. The fact that it was a car manufactured by Tesla, the company owned by Elon Musk, Trump’s main ally, and that the explosion took place at the door of the Trump International Hotel, seems to indicate that it was not an accident. Biden said that law enforcement and the intelligence community are investigating this event, as well as any potential ties to the New Orleans truck attack.

Authorities are also investigating that explosion as a possible act of terrorism. Elon Musk ruled out the possibility that it was an accidental explosion. The tycoon also assured that the strength of the vehicle prevented greater damage: “The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards. Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken,” he wrote on X.

The gravity of the two events is very different. The truck attack in New Orleans left at least 15 dead and dozens injured and caused panic on Bourbon Street, the busiest street in New Orleans and one of the reference points for New Year’s celebrations and, in general, for the city’s nightlife. The explosion in Las Vegas had fewer consequences. However, if both events are connected (beyond the fact that the vehicles were rented on the same platform) or even if they have no direct relationship with each other but are both termed as terrorist acts, they will take on special significance in the midst of the transition of power in the United States.

Trump will take office at noon on January 20, as required by the Constitution. The president-elect did not comment on social media about the explosion outside his hotel. He did comment on the attack in New Orleans, but he did so prematurely, when the identity of the perpetrator had not yet been revealed and he suggested that an immigrant was responsible.

“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” the president-elect wrote on his social network, Truth. However, he remained silent when it emerged that the perpetrator was an American citizen born in Texas and when it emerged that he was carrying an ISIS flag on his electric pickup truck, a Ford F-150 Lighting.

The definition of terrorism is broad in the United States, both from a legal and conventional point of view. New York, for example, has brought terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione, the man arrested for murdering the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Hate crimes and similar crimes are also often included under the label of domestic terrorism. The incident in New Orleans would be the terrorist attack with the most fatalities since the massacre at Walmart in El Paso (Texas) in August 2019, with 23 dead (including one who died in 2020 from complications arising from that act). If the Islamic nature of the attack is confirmed, it would also be the deadliest of its kind since Omar Siddique Mateen, an American citizen born to Afghan parents, killed 49 people in June 2016 in an Orlando nightclub popular with the gay community. After that, it would be the second largest terrorist attack since September 11, 2001.

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