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When Attorney General Pam Bondi told a podcast audience that the Department of Justice would “absolutely target you” for what she called “hate speech” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, she crossed a constitutional line that should alarm every liberty-minded American. There is no doubt every decent person recoils at people celebrating a man’s death, but the remedy for bad speech is not the heavy hand of the federal government policing thought and insult.
Conservative commentators and grassroots activists erupted for good reason: Charlie Kirk himself argued that the law recognizes no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, and millions of Americans rightly believe government must not be allowed to pick winners and losers in public debate. The MAGA movement is not defending vile commentary; it is defending the principle that the state cannot be turned into a speech police whenever an administration is offended.
Bondi did the right thing by later clarifying she meant to single out threats of violence and direct incitements that are already crimes — but that clarification is cold comfort after the initial pledge to “target” people for speech. The damage is done: once the attorney general implies prosecutions for disfavored speech, trust evaporates and partisan knives come out on every street corner. Americans deserve better from their top law enforcement official.
Worse, the aftermath of Kirk’s murder has already seen a wave of firings and suspensions for people who made idiotic or cruel posts, and conservatives rightly worry those social and professional punishments are metastasizing into something like enforced orthodoxy. Employers and federal officials acting as arbiters of acceptable opinion — pressured by the promise of DOJ scrutiny — will chill speech across the board and hand the Left a weapon it will never stop using. If we want a free country, we must resist that erosion now.
Make no mistake: calling out those who celebrate violence or threaten people is lawful and necessary, and law-and-order conservatives want perpetrators punished to the fullest extent. But conflating that with a program to prosecute “hate speech” invites the same censorship playbook conservatives fought against for years. That’s why even some on the right pushed back hard — because preserving the First Amendment is not a partisan hobby, it’s the foundation of every other fight we care about.
The right response is straightforward and patriotic: go after real threats, prosecute doxxers and those who encourage violence, but refuse to let the DOJ become a ministry of thought policing. Conservatives should defend victims and demand accountability for violent rhetoric, while also holding our own leaders to the Constitution when they stray — because protecting free speech is how we protect every other American freedom.
