Barely over a week after right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s public killing at a Utah campus, speech attacks in the name of the self-proclaimed free speech advocate are piling up.
Law enforcement officials have custody of suspected shooter Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah who prosecutors allege was in a relationship with a transgender woman and opposed Kirk’s “hatred.” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said last week that officials believe Robinson acted alone and that they didn’t anticipate further arrests.
But to many of Kirk’s friends and defenders, any past or present critic of him — or anyone on the left in general — is implicated in the act. Leaders all the way up to President Donald Trump have suggested, without evidence, that there are entire groups funding a movement of political violence against figures like the Turning Point USA cofounder. These charges have manifested in a government-led pressure campaign for social media companies to ban users for their speech, demands for broadcasters to deplatform comedians or face regulatory oversight, and a coordinated effort to purge public- and private-sector workers for less-than-effusive comments about Kirk’s life and death, even when they also condemn political violence.
“There are societal limits to the freedom of speech,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) posted on X on Sunday. “We the People are reminding our fellow citizens that some speech will not be tolerated, and operating freely within the construct of our society requires some modicum of decent behavior, as determined by our traditional values.” Days earlier, he’d promised he would “use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk.”
“People are reminding our fellow citizens that some speech will not be tolerated”
Earlier this week, Disney and ABC indefinitely pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air after Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr threatened local broadcasters’ licenses if they didn’t “take action” on a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it late-night riff about the ideology of Kirk’s killer. According to Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president, the First Amendment “does not protect entertainers who say crass or thoughtless things,” and that “private employers have every right to dismiss employees” who violate their standards.
Employers do have the right to fire their employees for conduct violations — but the government threatening them is something else. Trump suggested the tactic might apply beyond Kimmel’s show, saying that licensed broadcast networks that run mostly negative news stories about him should potentially have their licenses stripped.
Even before this latest incident, the Trump administration had already taken unusual steps to pressure private businesses — such as media companies it disagreed with — including forcing a $16 million settlement with Paramount before approving a major merger. Under Carr, the FCC has opened investigations into several major broadcasters over their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, which some legal experts say could trample on those companies’ First Amendment rights. This week, Trump filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, accusing it of being a “virtual mouthpiece” for Democrats, which a Times spokesperson told CNN, “lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting.” A judge rejected the lawsuit on Friday as “decidedly improper and impermissible.”
JD Vance brushed off concerns from what he called “the crazies on the far left”
There are ominous signs this campaign will only expand. Earlier in the week, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a podcast interview that the Justice Department would “go after” people “targeting anyone with hate speech,” even though Kirk himself had said, “Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” and that even “evil speech” is protected under the First Amendment. (Bondi later clarified, “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.”)
Hosting Kirk’s podcast on Monday, Vice President JD Vance brushed off concerns from what he called “the crazies on the far left,” who fear the administration wants to target constitutionally protected speech. “No, no, no,” he insisted, “we’re going to go after the NGO [non-governmental organization] network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.”
Though public figures on both sides of the aisle have become the targets of political violence in recent years — including a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker, the husband of the former Democratic speaker of the House, and a Republican House lawmaker — Vance said the issue “is not a both-sides problem. If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth we must be told.” Trump denied calling political violence an issue on one side of the ideological spectrum, but said, “The radical left causes tremendous violence, and they seem to do it in a bigger way,” CBS reported. A study that used to be on the Justice Department’s website found that the “number of far-right attacks” surpasses “all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” — but reporters noticed this month that it was taken down.
Trump said this week that he plans to designate antifa — an unstructured anti-fascist movement — as a terrorist organization. On top of the danger of targeting a nebulous group of individuals based on shared general beliefs, legal experts note that stringent sanctions are historically reserved for foreign, not domestic, entities — if Trump attempts to impose serious punishments on his enemies for “membership,” he would break that precedent.
Republicans have positioned their actions as a tit-for-tat revenge on liberals who engaged in “cancel culture” — or nongovernmental public shaming campaigns — while blurring or demolishing the line between criticism and government censorship. But the Trump administration has painted an ominous picture of the future — and it shows no sign of letting up.
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