Keith Self spent 25 years in the U.S. Army. He has represented Texas's 3rd Congressional District, north of Dallas, since 2023. He's become one of the loudest voices in Congress against radical Islam, backing legislation that denounces Sharia law and opposes any attempt to bring it into American life.
This month, federal investigators say, a 17-year-old in his own district planned to kill him for ISIS.
According to federal law enforcement sources, FBI agents had been watching the teenager, a resident of McKinney, a fast-growing suburb in Collin County. On October 5, after he got his hands on a gun, they arrested him.
Investigators believe he was planning an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack, with Self as the target. The place, they say, was a veterans' chili cook-off fundraiser at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in McKinney on October 17, where Self was scheduled to serve as a judge. Law enforcement told Self the teen had planned to "perhaps try to shoot at me," along with a broader attack.
That would have meant a sitting congressman surrounded by veterans and their families, at an event raising money for the people who served.
The teen hasn't been named because he's a minor, and no charges have been made public. Federal cases involving juveniles are confidential by law, which is why the public didn't learn about the arrest until more than two weeks later. It isn't yet clear whether he'll be tried as an adult.
What investigators do say is how it happened. They believe the teenager had recently been radicalized by ISIS material he found online.
ISIS no longer controls territory the way it did a decade ago. But it never stopped producing propaganda, and that propaganda doesn't need a training camp. It travels through social media feeds, encrypted chat apps, and video sites, and it finds lonely, angry young people who are looking for a cause. A teenager in a Dallas suburb can be recruited without ever leaving his bedroom.
He also wouldn't be the first. On New Year's Day 2025, an ISIS-inspired attacker drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and killed 14 people. Police found an ISIS flag in his truck. In 2024, the FBI arrested an 18-year-old in Idaho who was planning an ISIS-inspired attack on churches. That same year, agents stopped an Afghan national in Oklahoma who was plotting an Election Day attack for the group.
So ISIS is still trying to kill Americans on American soil, and more and more of the people it reaches are young.
Investigators haven't said why the teen allegedly chose Self. But Self has spent his time in Congress warning about exactly this kind of threat, and he isn't backing off. "I am grateful to the FBI and law enforcement for stopping this threat," he said. "My family and I are safe, and I remain focused on serving the people of Texas' 3rd District. This only strengthens my resolve. I will not back down."
Gov. Greg Abbott was blunter. "The FBI stopped this radical Islamic terrorist before he could strike," he said, vowing to combat radical Islam in all its forms.
Self's Democratic opponent, Evan Hunt, also condemned the plot. "There is no place for violence in our politics," Hunt said. "We must settle our differences through debate and at the ballot box." It's a fine sentiment. But it describes a generic act of political violence, and this was an alleged ISIS plot to kill a Republican congressman two and a half weeks before an election.
Imagine the coverage if the target had been a Democrat. Republicans remember 2017, when a gunman opened fire on GOP lawmakers at a congressional baseball practice and nearly killed House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. The national conversation moved on within days.
On October 17, the chili cook-off went ahead as planned. Self showed up and judged the chili, and nothing happened, because the FBI got to a radicalized 17-year-old with a gun 12 days before he could reach the event.