Trump uses Charlie Kirk’s murder as an excuse to crack down further on free speech

Donald Trump and the MAGA right wasted little time in capitalizing on the gruesome September 10 assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Before authorities in Utah, where Kirk was killed, had even located a suspect, Trump and the MAGAverse were blaming Kirk’s death on an amorphous “left.” Within days, leading right-wingers—not just MAGA “influencers” but Trump officials up to the vice president—were calling for repression against the left.

Vice President Vance led the charge, encouraging right-wingers to monitor social media and to report to employers anyone who made light of Kirk’s assassination. Within short order, the target shifted. Because so few people really made light of Kirk’s assassination, the dragnet changed to sweep in people who were insufficiently deferential to MAGA’s desire to turn Kirk into a martyr. The Washington Post fired award-winning journalist Karen Attiah when she simply criticized Kirk’s legacy by quoting him in his own words.

The government-orchestrated attack on free speech reached a crescendo when Trumpite Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr suggested that the broadcast network ABC, a subsidiary of the Disney Co., could save itself regulatory problems if it removed late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show from the air. ABC dutifully complied, announcing the “indefinite” suspension of Kimmel’s program on September 18.

Kimmel’s offense, according to Carr and the MAGA right, was to imply that Kirk’s assassin was “one of theirs.” Subsequent information—revealed after Kimmel’s monologue—cast doubt on that assertion. But no matter. Carr had achieved his purpose. It put media corporations on notice that the government would be policing their speech—in direct violation of the letter of the law that created the FCC in 1934. The ever-oafish Trump then said he’d like other networks to fire their late-night comedians, for whom the president provides an endless supply of comedic material.

What MAGA didn’t anticipate was the push-back the Kimmel cancellation received. Most Democrats and even a few Republicans criticized Carr’s move. Boycotts and cancellations of Disney streaming service subscriptions increased. The unions representing writers, actors and musicians who worked on Kimmel’s show mounted protests. More than 400 well-known actors and performers issued a statement condemning ABC, and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani pulled out of an ABC sponsored event in protest.

Within a few days, Disney had reversed itself and announced that Kimmel’s show would return to the air. Liberals felt relieved. But they shouldn’t think that the battle for free speech is won.

First, there’s no guarantee that ABC/Disney’s decision will return Kimmel to the air in large parts of the country. That’s because the key pressure on ABC was from two networks of local ABC affiliates, Nexstar and Sinclair. Both announced their networks were dropping Kimmel before ABC did. At the time of writing, neither said they would run his show. Each network has its reasons. Sinclair’s ownership is outspokenly right-wing. It has demanded that Kimmel donate money to Turning Point U.S.A., the organization Kirk led, as a condition for it carrying Kimmel’s show. And Nexstar, which positions itself as “centrist” and “nonpartisan”, is looking to the FCC to approve a $6.2 billion merger with Tegna, another media chain. So, it has a financial incentive not to cross Carr.

This situation, where government pressure on private entities accomplishes the same result as government censorship, has been the Trump administration’s modus operandi since it returned to office in January. It has cut billions in research grants to universities, leading many to discipline students or faculty who had protested Israel’s war in Gaza, or to scrap university programs that met with administration disapproval. It announced it would deny security clearances to law firms who would think of representing clients suing the administration. Trump filed frivolous lawsuits against CBS’s and ABC’s news operations—which Trump certainly would have lost if they had gone to trial—leading their parent companies to make multimillion dollar settlements.

Second, the success of a wealthy, well-known and nonpolitical entertainer like Kimmel can obscure the larger attack on free speech and the left that MAGA will continue to prosecute. More than 100 people have been fired or disciplined for their speech after the Kirk assassination. That includes Dr. Tom Alter, a tenured professor at Texas State University, fired after a right-wing troll with documented fascist and antisemitic sympathies, reported Alter’s First Amendment protected speech in a socialist conference to his employer.

Trump issued an executive order declaring “antifa” (short for “antifascist”) a domestic terrorist organization. Although there is no provision in U.S. law that permits Trump to do this, his action is a signal to federal law enforcement. Federal agencies like the FBI could conduct investigations, infiltration of organizations and arrests of people on the left—which, in Trump world, means just about anyone who opposes the administration’s policies. Given that “antifa” is not an organization nor even a coherent ideology, the vagueness of the target is a weapon in hands of law enforcement.

Another way that the administration will attack liberal and activist organizations is by weaponizing the tax code. U.S. tax law allows educational, charitable, religious, and social organizations an exemption from federal taxes if they do not engage in partisan politics or electioneering. The administration has also supported legislation that would allow the U.S. treasury secretary to simply designate any organization as “terror-supporting” without any proof or due process. The feds can revoke tax-exempt status and compel organizations to pay millions in fines. Merely the threat of those penalties could lead organizations, such as immigrant rights groups, who are mounting opposition to Trump’s deportation regime, to curtail their activities.

One final, but by no means less important, aftershock of the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric since Kirk’s assassination is the license it gives to right-wing elements to wreak violence on their opponents. Trump’s and Vance’s claims that “the left” is a uniquely violent force in U.S. politics is the exact opposite of the truth, according to the libertarian Cato Institute—hardly a friend to the left. The “permission structure” that Trump, Vance and others in the administration are creating will make right-wing violence like the 2017 murder of antifascist protester Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va., the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, or Kyle Rittenhouse’s 2020 vigilante murders of Black Lives Matters activists more likely, not less.

Developments since Kirk’s death should clarify some points amid the noise and social media vitriol. They have exposed the lie that conservatives and the far right are somehow champions of “free speech” against a censorious left “cancel culture.” When billionaires like X’s Elon Musk and Fox’s Rupert Murdoch own massive communications platforms from which they spread conservative and far-right ideology into the body politic, it’s hard to take the claim seriously. With few exceptions, the right’s pretensions to “free speech” were always phony and mostly raised when others used their free speech to criticize the right’s bigotry.

But observing that the right’s free speech rhetoric is disingenuous shouldn’t let mainstream liberals off the hook. Let’s not forget that the attack on university activists protesting the war in Gaza didn’t begin with Trump. It started under the Biden administration, with the support of the White House and most Democrats. And the liberal MSNBC network fired commentator Matthew Dowd for comments he made on live TV only a few minutes after Kirk’s killing.

In contrast, championing free speech has always been central to the left. From the abolitionist press in the antebellum era to the IWW’s free speech fights in the early 1900s to opposition to McCarthyism in the 1950s to the Free Speech Movement at the University of California in 1964, the best part of the left and workers movement has always defended free speech.

Free speech and freedom of organization and assembly are crucial to defending and extending rights. The first nine months of the Trump administration has demonstrated that elite institutions like universities and the corporate media are willing to “bend the knee” to an increasingly authoritarian government if they think their profits, endowments or investments will be served. On the other hand, ordinary people, organized to push back on the Trump administration’s predations, have shown a far greater willingness to defend our rights.

The actions of thousands of ordinary people across the country have impeded the administration’s efforts to kidnap our immigrant neighbors off the street. And ordinary people sitting on grand juries in Los Angeles and Washington, DC have refused federal prosecutors’ attempts to criminally indict people arrested for protesting immigration authorities or the administration’s military deployments. The real defenders of democracy in the U.S. are much more likely to be found at street demonstrations or at “know your rights” trainings than in the halls of Congress, the courts, or in corporate boardrooms.