Turns out Republicans don't care about free speech after all
When you have power, your commitment to principle is tested. Trumpers are failing.
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We have some shocking news: The Trump administration and the American right may not be quite as committed to freedom of speech as they led us to believe.
But why did anyone believe them in the first place?
It wasn’t hard to see that the right’s commitment to free expression was lightly held, to say the least. But in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, they are initiating a crackdown on the speech of their opponents — one so sudden, sweeping, and aggressive that it’s hard not to conclude that they were just waiting for the opportunity that has now presented itself.
Conservatives are collecting names of ordinary people who said the wrong thing about Kirk to target them for harassment. The attorney general is threatening prosecutions for various Kirk-related speech sins. Her number two at the Justice Department says people who say mean things about the president could face racketeering charges.
Stephen Miller, the de facto prime minister, vowed to his political enemies that “the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you’ve broken the law to take away your freedom.” According to a report in the New York Times, high-ranking administration officials are exploring ways to “categorize left-wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism, an escalation that critics said could lay the groundwork for crushing anti-conservative dissent more broadly.”
Into that situation waltzed Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, who stands out for his cultish devotion to President Trump even in an administration stocked with sycophants.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said last week in an appearance on a right-wing podcast, expressing his outrage that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about the right caring less about Kirk than about scoring political points from his murder. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
They chose the easy way.
First, two large companies that own ABC affiliate stations (one of which is seeking approval from Carr for a merger) said they’d preempt Kimmel’s show, then ABC took him off the air. Fresh from this victory, Carr now wants the FCC to look into “The View” to see if the government might need to step in and shut those ladies down, too.
That sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. For his part, Trump told reporters that since “the networks were 97 percent against me,” then “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”
Almost no Republicans have the courage to criticize Trump, but in Carr’s statements a few of them finally found a place to draw a line. The prevailing view, however, is that wielding the power of the government to punish dissent is troubling less because it is just wrong than because it could set a precedent that would be applied against the right, which is where the real harm would emerge.
“I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed” for this kind of transgression, said Ben Shapiro. “Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot.”
Sen. Ted Cruz agreed.
“They will silence us,” the full-time podcaster and part-time senator said. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly.” (One might ask why, if Democrats are so ruthless, they didn’t use the FCC to silence conservatives when Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton was president. But if the actual Democrats were as cutthroat as the Democrats who live in the imagination of Republicans, the political world would be very different.)
There was another Trump official who got over their skis: Attorney General Pam Bondi, who despite being the nation’s chief law enforcement officer seems to have only a passing acquaintance with the law.
Bondi made a big mistake when she said this: “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech … We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
What Bondi failed to realize is that while the term “hate speech” may have a variety of meanings, to conservatives it has one very specific meaning: “Hate speech” means liberals punishing conservatives for expressing conservative opinions, particularly on race.
The only appropriate time to invoke “hate speech” is when attacking liberals for being censorious. Somehow Bondi didn’t understand that, and she got smacked down by conservatives for going too far.
Things look different from the inside
Here, then, is where the American right has landed (except for Trump himself, whose own statements are treated as though they need not be seriously considered): The government probably shouldn’t prosecute people just for their tweets, or be too explicit about punishing private companies for their speech (even if that’s what the administration is doing). But the government should use whatever means it has to harass and punish “the left” writ large.
Charlie Kirk’s murder should be exploited to make the insane claim that everyone from the Ford Foundation to the pair of retirees who put up a table at your local supermarket with an “Impeach Trump!” petition are part of a conspiracy to foment violence, and therefore should be in Stephen Miller’s sights. Furthermore, left-leaning citizens should be singled out, targeted, and terrorized if they say the wrong things about Charlie Kirk. Not only is it fine to mobilize angry mobs against an ordinary teacher, nurse, or barista, it’s important to do that so everyone on the left lives in fear.
Oh, and when we said the government shouldn’t retaliate against individuals for their speech? We didn’t really mean that. Sometimes — for instance, the state of Texas punishing students for what they say about Charlie Kirk, or the federal government moving to deport a green card holder for objecting to Israeli government policy — punishing people for speech is terrific and we should do more of it.
Just like “hate speech” means “conservatives being unfairly punished for their speech,” it’s not “cancel culture” when liberals are punished for what they say; that’s only something that happens to conservatives.
Does that seem confusing? Like there are no coherent principles guiding the right’s approach to this issue at all? Now you’re getting it.
Calling this “hypocrisy” is too banal and oversimplified. To understand it in full, you have to be attuned to how power operates and how the right thinks about it.
When the right doesn't have power (or believes they don't), they turn to appeals on principle. Ideas such as “everyone should be able to say what they want without fear” or “due process is vital to a free society” or “the power of prosecution should not be misused for political ends” or “public officials shouldn’t use their offices to enrich themselves” are important to conservatives when they’re in the opposition, because those principles will protect them and constrain their opponents.
But when they do have power, those principles become an impediment, so they are discarded. How many Republicans have you heard talking about corruption or an independent justice system or due process lately? Not too many. That’s especially true when perhaps the most fundamental belief of the second Trump administration is that power should be exercised without limit — legal, practical, or philosophical.
The lines are fuzzy — and that’s the whole point
Part of what makes the conservative movement so effective is the way it integrates power and influence at all levels, blurring the lines between official and unofficial action.
The Trump administration is in constant communication with right-wing organizations, media figures, and influencers, and power travels in both directions. (Democratic administrations attempt to coordinate with the broader left too, but cooperation is always hampered by mutual suspicion — or even contempt — and progressives’ congenital unwillingness to have people in authority tell them what to do.)
On one hand, Trump can mobilize an online army with a Truth Social post. On the other, an extremist like Laura Loomer is literally deciding who in the White House will get to keep their job. Administration officials appear so often on Fox News that it resembles official state television, and the executive branch is packed with nincompoops who got their jobs because they were Fox News personalities, including the secretary of defense, the secretary of transportation and the US attorney for the District of Columbia. Charlie Kirk himself was a constant presence in the Trump White House.
That means that while there is still an important difference between formal government censorship and retaliation by private companies or online mobs, the distinction can begin to blur when there is such tight coordination between the inside and outside components of the conservative movement. That movement is now best understood as a single unified entity that encompasses political organizations, media outlets, informal influencer networks, and the federal and red state governments.
So when we see the vice president guest-hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast from the White House, and he instructs his supporters to root out and destroy the careers of those who engage in wrongthink, is that government action? The answer is: yes and no. Those who act at his urging will not be wearing badges, but their efforts are encouraged and amplified by the government. Charlie Kirk, who started a “Professor Watch List” to target liberal faculty for harassment and death threats, would certainly have approved.
This dark period is a reminder that liberal democracy isn’t supposed to be easy. Free speech means you have to tolerate speech you abhor, just as free elections means that sometimes the other side will win. You can claim a commitment to democratic principles, but it’s when you have power that your commitment is tested. With just a few narrow exceptions, conservatives are failing that test.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading, and for your support.
Thank you for this great piece.
As someone who writes on behavioral economics and incentive design, I’ve explored how authoritarian systems often mask coercion as order, and how speech control is rarely about safety, but about power. This crackdown isn’t a deviation from the playbook. It’s the playbook itself.
What we’re seeing now is the domestic counterpart: a government that treats dissent as deviance and uses institutional muscle to punish emotional tone. The behavioral signal is clear—speak carefully, or be made an example.
This isn’t just about free speech. It’s about cognitive control. When jokes become threats and silence becomes survival, the system isn’t protecting the public. It’s conditioning it. Thanks again for naming what others are still trying to euphemize.
“That movement is now best understood as a single unified entity that encompasses political organizations, media outlets, informal influencer networks, and the federal and red state governments.” Add to this list: some members of the federal and state judiciary, as well as some members of the Supreme Court.