U.S. President Donald Trump's recent moves are drawing accusations that he and his allies are using Charlie Kirk’s death as a pretext to crack down on dissent.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump is vowing to have left-wing activist groups investigated as criminal organizations in the wake of the assassination of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk.
Members of his administration and right-wing activists, meanwhile, are working to identify people who criticized Mr. Kirk online after his killing and have them fired from their jobs.
Mr. Trump is also launching a US$15-billion libel suit against the New York Times and several of its staffers whose critical coverage of him has long irked him.
The moves are drawing accusations that Mr. Trump and his allies are using Mr. Kirk’s death as a pretext to crack down on dissent.
Mr. Trump on Monday said he had asked Attorney-General Pam Bondi to bring Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, charges against organizations involved in protests against his policies.
“We have some pretty radical groups and they got away with murder,” the President told reporters in the Oval Office. “They should be put in jail. What they’re doing to this country is really subversive.”
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Mr. Trump accused these groups of “putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation,” including protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles and a group of pro-Palestinian protesters who heckled him during a visit to a Washington steakhouse earlier this month.
The President presented no evidence that either protest was backed by large amounts of money. He did not specify which groups he wanted investigated but said he was open to designating antifa, a broad left-wing anti-fascist movement, as a domestic terror organization.
Racketeering laws are typically used to prosecute members of the mafia, Hells Angels and other accused gangsters. Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were the subject of a state-level RICO prosecution in Georgia, which is still unresolved.
On Tuesday, he suggested he might also target media organizations. Asked by an ABC reporter about the line between freedom of speech and hate speech, Mr. Trump replied: “We’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll come after ABC.”
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said groups behind Black Lives Matter protests would be targeted. He said that, the day before his death, Mr. Kirk had told him: “We need to have an organized strategy to go after the left-wing organizations that are promoting violence in this country.”
Attendees take flyers and buttons during a vigil in memory of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Tempe, Ariz., on Monday.CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/Getty Images
Speaking on a Monday podcast episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, hosted by Vice-President JD Vance, Mr. Miller alleged that there was an “organized campaign” that led to Mr. Kirk’s assassination and a “vast domestic terror movement” behind protests and efforts to “dox” conservatives, the practice of publishing someone’s personal information, such as address, contact information or employer.
Mr. Vance said the administration would crack down on “radical left lunatics” in NGOs. He did not specify which groups would be targeted, but suggested they could include charities the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations, the latter of which was founded by liberal billionaire George Soros.
In a statement, the Open Society Foundations said: “We oppose all forms of violence and condemn the outrageous accusations to the contrary. Our work is entirely peaceful and lawful.”
So far, police have indicated that the suspect in the shooting, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, acted alone. They have not said whether he was part of any political group.
California Governor Gavin Newsom accused the Trump administration of trying to silence critical voices under the guise of responding to Mr. Kirk’s assassination.
“This isn’t about crime and safety. It’s about dismantling our democratic institutions,” he wrote on X. “We cannot allow acts of political violence to be weaponized and used to threaten tens of millions of Americans.”
Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, warned that “something dark might be coming.”
“The murder of Charlie Kirk could have united Americans to confront political violence. Instead, Trump and his anti-democratic radicals look to be readying a campaign to destroy dissent,” he wrote.
MAGA influencers and some government officials, for their part, are running a campaign to ensure people who said negative things about Mr. Kirk after his death are punished.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell and Navy Secretary John Phelan have both warned that service members or civilian employees celebrating the killing would face consequences. Activists such as Laura Loomer are naming people who have made anti-Kirk comments and alerting their employers.
Some conservatives are targeting people and organizations they believe disparaged Charlie Kirk after his killing.
The Associated Press
So far, dozens if not hundreds of people have been fired or suspended for social media posts on Mr. Kirk. Some had celebrated or made light of the assassination, while others appear only to have criticized him.
Karen Attiah, an opinion columnist for the Washington Post, said she was fired for writing on the Bluesky platform that she did not believe “white America” would take any action to prevent similar assassinations or mass shootings in the future.
In another post, she highlighted Mr. Kirk’s 2023 comment that Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and other powerful Black women “do not have the brain processing power” to succeed without affirmative action.
In a Substack post, Ms. Attiah wrote that the newspaper told her that her posts were “gross misconduct” and had endangered her colleagues’ safety.
Olivia Petersen, a spokesperson for the Washington Post, declined to comment on “personnel matters.”
Other high-profile people fired over Kirk-related commentary include MSNBC pundit Matthew Dowd, who said that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions”; Laura Sosh-Lightsy, at Middle Tennessee State University, who posted that she had “ZERO sympathy” for Mr. Kirk; and DC Comics writer Gretchen Felker-Martin, who posted: “Hope the bullet’s okay after touching Charlie Kirk.”
Regular Americans faced firings, too, including a Secret Service agent, a Marine, a video game developer, airline employees, a social media staffer for the Carolina Panthers and a manager at Freddy’s Frozen Custard.
Mr. Trump also took action against the New York Times late on Monday with a libel suit filed in Florida. Among other things, he complains about the paper describing him as “unworthy” of the presidency in its endorsement of Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
The campaign against Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Kirk’s detractors follows years of his supporters accusing the left of engaging in “cancel culture” for shaming conservatives online.
Ms. Bondi on Monday, however, argued that there must be limits to free speech.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech. And there’s no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” she said on The Katie Miller Podcast. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
The man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah university has been charged with aggravated murder. Tyler Robinson could face the death penalty if convicted.
The Associated Press