Tag: free speech

The “Charlie Kirk Act”, Free Speech, Propaganda, And A Censorship Nightmare

As of the date of this writing, September 17th, 2025, it is Constitution Day. Despite this, in 2025 America, the Constitution is being eroded more than ever before. Just read any of constitutional attorney and founder of The Rutherford Institute, John W. Whitehead’s essays on the matter.

The infringements are endless, with masked agents running amok, disappearing people off the streets, extrajudicial executions at sea, military deployed domestically as law enforcement, unconstitutional wars waged, illegal mass surveillance on every American, warrantless search and seizure, debt-based Fiat currency, and so much more.

This isn’t happening in a vacuum. The only way for Americans to sit by and allow their freedoms to die at such a magnitude is to keep them perpetually distracted and apathetic. This is why 5th-generation warfare comes in so handy for the ruling class. Keep the entire population besieged from all sides at all times, economically, biologically, informationally, neurologically, so utterly saturated, so deep in the trenches, they don’t even realize they’re in a war.

When the average tax cattle are so exhausted from capitalist exploitation just to meet the bear standards for survival, so psychologically fatigued from the constant influx of doom porn, and the various other ways that the rat race is designed to keep us exhausted and unfulfilled while being simultaneously bombarded with socially engineered algorithms feeding into echo chambers it’s easy to keep the masses focused on manufactured outrage and fake culture wars, or shallow celebrity gossiping and rigged sports-ball entertainment. Blissfully unaware or uncaring of how their rights are being stripped away every day

The most fundamental of these freedoms is guaranteed to us in the 1st amendment — freedom of speech, freedom of expression, among others. That simple principle is the litmus test of a free society: Can you speak your mind freely without reprisal from the state? For believers in America’s founding ideals, the answer should be a resounding yes. And yet politicians and citizens alike oftentimes seem all too keen on allowing their principles to be pulled by puppet strings, ethically ambiguous and logically inconsistent.

Last week’s heinous murder of controversial conservative pundit Charlie Kirk has brought these issues to the forefront of our current discourse. Kirk based his entire brand on exercising the First Amendment, engaging in public debates with individuals whose ideological position opposed his own until he was ultimately gunned down last week.

Already, there are numerous discrepancies in the official story of the assassination, and much in line with the old adage of not letting a good crisis go to waste, the usual suspects have wasted no time in exploiting his death to ramp up the divide and conquer rhetoric. On the heels of attempting to make him a martyr, many on the right who previously grandstanded for free speech are now openly demanding the erasure of the rights that Charlie himself embodied.

But let’s not mince words here and call a spade a spade; none of this being said is to put him on a pedestal. Charlie Kirk was a professional liar, a propagandist of the highest degree who promulgated blatantly false, oftentimes bigoted, authoritarian rhetoric. He built a career off of perpetuating the fake left versus right dichotomy, exploiting the base he cultivated by inflaming the fears, anger, hatred, sadness, and anxieties of conservatives. While this was probably not Kirk’s intention, as he himself was likely just as much a victim of government propaganda that ultimately fomented his views, it was most definitely the result. Yet despite all of this, anyone who claims to actually support free speech should still support his right to express his ideas, no matter how much one may disagree with them.

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We Are Not Going To Have A Debate About Free Speech

he national conversation we need to have right now is not about free speech.

The conversation we need to have is about the normalization of political violence on the left. We need to be talking about left-wing Antifa/trans terrorists gunning down Christians in broad daylight while Democrats and the corporate press justify it and the online left celebrates it.

That’s the only conversation that matters right now. The manufactured outrage over ABC canceling Jimmy Kimmel’s show is an attempt to change the conversation, to flip the script so that instead of talking about the first major political assassination in America in sixty years, instead of talking about the mainstream left’s embrace of political violence and the institutional ecosystem that foments and funds that violence, we can talk about whether President Trump is using Kirk’s murder as a pretext to crack down on free speech and silence his enemies.

What nonsense — and what a tell. It speaks volumes that Democrats, liberal media, and online leftists are so desperate to pivot away from talking about Kirk’s assassination that they have chosen to take up the transparently stupid cause of Kimmel’s free speech rights. Remember, these are people who don’t care at all about free speech. Some of those rending their garments this week over Kimmel’s cancellation were the same people who cheered on government censorship during Covid. They love censorship, so long as it’s their side doing the censoring.

And it hardly needs to be said that nothing about the Kimmel story implicates free speech in any way. Kimmel didn’t just mock MAGA or criticize Kirk, he patently lied about the ideology of Kirk’s alleged assassin, and by allowing his comments to air, ABC arguably violated the terms of its FCC license.

During his Monday show, Kimmel said this: “The MAGA gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”

Anyone with an internet connection and half a brain cell knows that Kirk’s alleged killer was deeply into Antifa and transgender ideologies, and that he specifically targeted Kirk for speaking out against these things. He was a creature wholly of the left, and to declare otherwise, as Kimmel did, is a deliberate falsification of the facts surrounding the most high-profile political assassination of our time.

That means Kimmel blatantly violated FCC regulations. Public broadcasters like ABC are prohibited from spreading false information about a crime or catastrophe, and they can lose their licensure if they don’t adhere to the relevant federal regulations.

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The Media’s Appeal To ‘Free Speech’ Over Jimmy Kimmel Is Fake And Won’t Work Anymore

Panel after panel Wednesday night on CNN pretended to have a debate over “free speech,” with every anchor and Democrat talking head asking whichever present right-winger or Republican guest why the principle didn’t apply to ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel. Yeah, going forward, they can miss me with the “free speech” and other appeals to American principles that I and everyone else know they only fake concern for when their money and power are threatened.

ABC announced Wednesday evening it was yanking Kimmel’s late-night talk therapy sessions — known by some as Jimmy Kimmel Live! — for an indefinite period from the airwaves. That move came after Kimmel delivered what he intended to be a comedic monologue centered on the public execution of Charlie Kirk, an innocent man, less than a week prior. It also came after, as Democrats on CNN hysterically repeated over and over, the Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said on a podcast in relation to that monologue that TV stations relying on broadcast licenses should recommit themselves to the public interest, as required by existing law, or otherwise potentially face government action.

Because Carr, a Trump appointee, suggested his agencies might do their job and ensure compliance with public broadcasting rules, Democrats are calling the Kimmel suspension a violation of the First Amendment. There’s no reason to take them seriously for it. That party has done nothing in the past five years to hint it cares about the Bill of Rights or any other American ideal. They don’t. It’s the opposite.

Unless it’s to watch pornography, consume recreational drugs, or get an abortion, Democrats hate individual freedoms, including and especially free speech. They cheer government-led censorship on science, health, elections, and foreign affairs. So we know their appeals to the First Amendment are fraudulent. If they weren’t, they would be demanding answers from ABC for its own, voluntary decision to sideline its nightly TV host. And if that answer were, “Because we’ve been unlawfully intimidated by the government,” then they should file a dozen lawsuits against the administration immediately.

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Damning Report Card: California Schools Get An ‘F’

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Free Speech Rankings crowned California’s Claremont McKenna College with a grade of B- as the best college in the U.S. for free speech, while a string of other California schools received F grades amid anti-free speech environments across campuses.

FIRE released its sixth annual College Free Speech Rankings, which pulled responses on free-speech topics from 68,510 students attending 257 American colleges. The survey highlighted a decline in support for free speech among all students. 

Students on both sides of the political aisle are showing a deep “unwillingness” to face controversial ideas, the press releases stated. 

“This year, students largely opposed allowing any controversial campus speaker, no matter that speaker’s politics,” said FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff. “Rather than hearing out and then responding to an ideological opponent, both liberal and conservative college students are retreating from the encounter entirely … We must champion free speech on campus as a remedy to our culture’s deep polarization.”

According to the FIRE survey, Claremont McKenna College is ranked in the top 10 best schools for free speech on  “Comfort Expressing Ideas,” “Openness” and “Self-Censorship,” among other categories. 

Shortly after the horrific assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk at a Utah college campus event, Claremont Independent, the college newspaper, wrote a story on how CMC students reacted to the killing of Kirk.

“Even those who despise Kirk and everything he stood for should mourn the damage his assassination will do to America’s fragile architecture of free speech and civil discourse. There can be no picking and choosing in the world of free expression. It’s free speech for all, or free speech for none,” the editorial board wrote.

Out of the 257 schools surveyed, 166 of them received an F for their free speech climate. Only 10 schools received a free speech grade of C. Claremont McKenna was the only college to get a better grade than a C.

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AG Pam Bondi Clarifies Her Stance on First Amendment Following Backlash — Says Her Office Won’t Prosecute “Hate Speech”

Attorney General Pam Bondi is scrambling to clarify her comments after a firestorm erupted over her suggestion that the Department of Justice would target so-called “hate speech.”

The controversy follows an outrageous incident at an Office Depot in Michigan, where three teenage boys were denied service after pre-paying for posters meant for a Charlie Kirk memorial vigil.

The smug employees—one identifying as a supervisor, another as a “manager”—flatly refused to print the order, dismissing the vigil posters as “propaganda.”

Office Depot corporate quickly issued an apology, announced an internal review, and confirmed the employee had been terminated.

But rather than directly addressing the broader climate of hate fueling these incidents, Bondi used her Fox interview to focus on discrimination claims against Office Depot:

“Employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people. You need to look at people who are saying horrible things, and they shouldn’t be working with you. Businesses cannot discriminate. If you want to go in and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that. I have Harmeet Dhillon right now in our civil rights unit looking at that immediately. That Office Depot had done that—we’re looking at it.”

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh wasted no time unloading on Bondi for what he called a “gratuitous and pointless” use of DOJ resources:

“Get rid of her. Today. This is insane. Conservatives have fought for decades for the right to refuse service to anyone. We won that fight. Now Pam Bondi wants to roll it all back for no reason. This stuff is being handled successfully through free speech and free markets. We need the AG focused on bringing down the left wing terror cells, not prosecuting Office Depot for God’s sake.”

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Pam Bondi Says Government Will “Go After” Hate Speech, Drawing First Amendment Criticism

US Attorney General Pam Bondi has stirred controversy with recent comments seeming to suggest that certain forms of speech could fall outside First Amendment protections, a stance that is fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution.

During an appearance on The Katie Miller Podcast following last week’s assassination of conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk, Bondi stated, “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society…” She added, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Her remarks immediately drew sharp responses from across the political spectrum, with many warning that her approach opens the door to dangerous government overreach.

Bondi later attempted to narrow the scope of her original statements in a post on X, writing, “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime.”

She continued, “For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE), a civil liberties group focused on free speech, fired back, stating, “There is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment.”

The Supreme Court has long protected even offensive or unpopular speech, with the Court’s view being that the “proudest boast” of America’s free speech legacy is “freedom for the thought that we hate.”

Conservatives who typically align with Bondi’s broader political positions also voiced concern.

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DOJ Declares School Dissent Protected Under First Amendment

Attorney General Pamela Bondi issued a memorandum to all United States Attorneys highlighting the Department of Justice’s policy to prevent and act upon violations of parental rights and First Amendment liberties in educational settings. 

Bondi directed United States Attorneys to work with federal, state, and local partners to identify and respond to credible threats against parents whose federal rights have been violated.

“The First Amendment guarantees the right of every citizen to speak freely, assemble peaceably, and petition the government for redress of grievances-including at public school board meetings,” the memo said. “These rights do not yield to political trends or bureaucratic convenience. While schools must maintain order, such authority cannot be used as a pretext to silence dissent or punish parents for expressing their views. 

The new memo says it will protect the right of parents to dissent during school board meetings. 

“Let me be clear: when school board members, administrators, and other government officials threaten law-abiding parents, they can and will be held accountable,” the letter said. 

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The Standard for ‘Vicious’ Speech Trump Laid Out After Kirk’s Murder Would Implicate Trump Himself

In a video released on Wednesday night, President Donald Trump said “radical left” rhetoric “is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today,” including this week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a college in Utah, and “it must stop right now.” Trump vowed that “my administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”

Trump also expressed devotion to “the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died,” including “free speech.” Yet that value seems inconsistent with Trump’s claim that hateful rhetoric “directly” causes violence and his promise to “find” anyone who “contribute[s]” to that problem, apparently including “radical left” people who make inflammatory statements about their political opponents. As Trump put it on Fox News this morning, “The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”

The solution that Trump is contemplating seems to go beyond urging self-restraint. The Trump administration is developing a “comprehensive plan on violence in America,” including “ways that you can address” what “can only be called hate groups,” which “may breed this kind of behavior,” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said on Thursday. “It will not be easy. There’s layer upon layer upon layer, and some of this hate-filled rhetoric is multigenerational, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

Like Trump, Wiles noted “the importance of free speech.” But it is impossible to reconcile that principle with any government plan that entails targeting “hate groups” because they are “vicious” and “horrible” or because they engage in “hate-filled rhetoric.”

What sort of rhetoric does Trump have in mind? “It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree,” he said in the video. “Day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible for years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.”

Such rhetoric is indeed “hateful” and “despicable,” but it is also constitutionally protected. It is hard to imagine how the government, consistent with the First Amendment, could try to suppress the speech that Wiles says “may breed” political violence.

This is not to say there is no connection between the sort of demonization that Trump describes and appalling crimes such as Kirk’s murder. Spencer Cox, Utah’s Republican governor, says Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old man police have identified as Kirk’s killer, inscribed his rifle cartridges with messages such as “Hey fascists! Catch!” But while demonization may be a necessary condition for such violence, it is obviously not sufficient. If it were, we would see a lot more political murders.

First Amendment law recognizes that distinction between words and actions. Hyperbolic analogies like the ones that Trump cited clearly fall into the former category. And under the test established by the Supreme Court’s 1969 ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio, even advocacy of illegal conduct is protected by the First Amendment unless it is both “directed” at inciting “imminent lawless action” and “likely” to have that effect. Comparing your political opponents to Nazis, however “hateful” and “despicable” that may be, plainly does not meet that test.

Trump himself has relied on the Brandenburg test in arguing that he should not be held civilly liable for his role in provoking the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. He insisted that he did not intend to cause a riot, noting that he never explicitly advocated anything more extreme than peaceful protest. Yet his pre-riot speech, which was full of invective against the “radical-left Democrats” who supposedly had rigged an election and dark warnings about what would happen if an alleged usurper were allowed to take office, easily meets the standard that Trump applies when he says anti-conservative rhetoric is “directly responsible” for “terrorism.”

So does the demonizing rhetoric that Trump routinely deploys against people who irk him. As he tells it, his political opponents are not merely wrong. They are “sick, sinister, and evil people” who are “trying to destroy our country” because they “hate our country.” They are “communists,” “Marxists,” “fascists,” “radical left lunatics,” “sick people,” and “vermin.” They are “the enemy from within.”

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GOP lawmaker wants lifelong social media ban for leftists gloating over Charlie Kirk’s death

Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins has vowed to get those leftist ghouls who’re celebrating Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination permanently banned from social media and cancelled from public life.

“I’m going to 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,” he announced in a post published to X on Thursday.

“If they ran their mouth with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution… those profiles must come down,” he added.

Higgins continued by vowing to permanently “cancel” from public life the hooligans and miscreants who’ve been celebrating Kirk’s death.

“So, I’m going to lean forward in this fight, demanding that big tech have zero tolerance for violent political hate content, the user to be banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER,” he wrote.

“I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I’m starting that today. That is all,” he concluded.

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The Motive for Nepal’s Revolution

The final straw for the revolution in Nepal was the government’s attempt to stifle free speech by banning social media platforms. These events did not take place because a few kids had their tablets taken away. Extreme government corruption ran rampant for years while the elite lived luxurious lifestyles in spite of the people they ruled over. The Nepalese government attempted to prevent the people from freely voicing their growing discontent, and then, when the people attempted to protest, the government murdered over 20 school-aged children in cold blood.

The media has poorly portrayed the cause of events by calling it the “Gen Z” revolution, sparked by a social media ban, which is entirely misleading, as the culprit was corruption and poverty. One in four citizens lives below the poverty line, with the average Nepali earning $1,400 USD annually. The poorest 20% spend around 67% of their income on food, and, much like most nations, in 2025, the majority is struggling to maintain the cost of living.

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