Republicans are honoring Charlie Kirk’s memory by declaring war on the First Amendment

A preliminary commitment to the first amendment is a challenge. However, it was worrying to watch the Republican Party-which spent years in demanding a legal cover to send emails via random mail, sabotage public health, and avoid moderate social media-a wide-ranging width against it during the past week.

The authorities have just started analyzing what Utah’s man motivated his accusation of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk – an act, clearly, unjustified violence. But its heels were an unusual political campaign. Within a few days, Donald Trump had blamed the feet of the people who criticized the brand of Kirk from the extreme right -wing policy of inflammatory and said that “each of those who contributed to this atrocities and another political violence, including the organizations that funded and support it.” Republican lawmakers immediately suggested a committee to investigate “money, influence and power behind the radical left attack on America and the rule of law.”

The fever stadium is still building, as it reaches levels of explicit absurdity. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who boasted in X in 2019 as “signed a law that protects freedom of expression on the campus of universities”, used a platform on Sunday to celebrate the arrest and expulsion of Texas Technology student who was registered to celebrate Kirk’s death on the campus “Freedom of Expression.”

Kirk put very famous in his first absolute position in the first amendment, confirming in the 2024 × publication that “hate speech does not exist legally in America. There is an ugly speech. There is a big speech. There is a evil speech. All this is protected by the first amendment.” He highlighted the attacks on other victims of violence, including George Floyd and Paul Pelosi, indicating his legal right to do so.

This morning, Prosecutor Pam Bondi honored Kirk’s memory by appearing completely contradictory to him. Bondi said on Katie Miller Podcast. When I was asked if the law enforcement would take action, it seemed to agree to this: “We will target you completely, follow you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Bondi has since published X that it would follow “hate speech that crosses the line to threats of violence” and violates the laws against concrete threats. It was somewhat clarified by Trump’s narrow response to a correspondent who asked about the statement. “You will likely pursue people like you, because you treat me unfairly, she hates,” he told ABC News.

Others make the line targeting them, not speech. White House spokesman Abeel Jackson said freedom Trump’s statement simply means “the perpetrator or perpetrators of this horrific act will pay for what they did.” Vice President JD Vance acquired the Podcast Kirk alongside the Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to announce that “we will go to pursue the network of non -governmental organizations that facilitate and participate in violence”, but we mocked “madness on the far left” to fear that they will target the constitutional protected speech. Miller determined that they will attack “organized overcoming campaigns, organized riots, organized violence in the streets, organizing campaigns to coordinate from humanity, distortion, spread people’s headlines, combine those and messages designed to operate them, incite violence in actual organized cells that transmit and facilitate violence.”

But given the context, it is naive to believe that these data means anything except for the media, non -profit groups, and political organizations for their speech and collecting donations – especially because the administration was doing this exactly before Kerk. We have not seen any indication that the murderer, Tyler Robinson, is linked to an organized political group, not to mention those who planned a violent attack. (There is no indication yet that it was extremist through a legal letter from a specific person or port, the way the racist collective shooter Dylan Rove was to find a white web site that is superior and a right -wing ethnic detonator Sizar Siuk said that he was inspired by Trump.)

Anyone who follows American policy will have witnessed this next. Trump has stored his administration with people who had a blatant ignorance of the traditions of American speech, including Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Federal Communications President Brendan Car – although the latter believes that this latter is very far away, even for him. Trump has filed many trivial cases against news methods that covered him unabated or covered his opponents in ways that I think were very positive – including a new lawsuit against New York Times This week-you win them strong in settlements.

Kirk was right that hate speech in the United States, external narrow exceptions including real threats and incitement, He is In fact, legal. We also saw women and gay control, and the white supremacy rhetoric is spread over the Internet and in the real world in recent years, this was sometimes a painful principle of anyone who opposes Actual hate speech For contract. Sometimes an academic appearance to continue to warn that the wicked rhetoric that is swinging in violence may cause more damage than it might occur.

But America is closer than it was decades ago to abandon the first amendment, and this does not happen to fight groups directly related to violence or communities via the Internet that exist to a large existence to encourage hatred for vulnerable people or critics with an uninterrupted and destroyed ignorance. It is done to prevent Americans from talking about one general political figure, one of the clearest examples of what the strong speech law is supposed to protect.

The inevitable claim is that the “left” abandoned the first amendment first, and that this justifies revenge. If this is aside, even the border examples that can be said to the democratic government speech police-such as the Biden administration that screams on social media platforms-compared to Trump’s issues to combat talk or people disappear to write an editorial, this does not work principles.

Is ugly discourse so dangerous that the law should treat it like work? Or does its ban prevent people from expressing themselves in fruitful ways? If this is the first, can anyone reasonably believe that someone makes Charlie Kerk joke more dangerous than Lipps than the continuous Tijook branch of schools and hospitals that inevitably receive bombs threats, or from Trump’s encouragement to try to attack on January 6 on the American Capitol?

And for the people who Do They have preceded, long-term criticism of the first amendment-none of them chanted these bad attacks, so their glory to that. But we are getting a crashing course at all risks to opening the door for speech restrictions. Will there be a future that anyone can apply these lessons? I am not sure.