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stephen miller
Hiding Behind Kirk, Team Trump Launches 'Biggest Assault on the First Amendment' in Modern US History
"This is the time where every American must stand proudly for free speech and our freedoms," said Rep. Ro Khanna.
Sep 16, 2025
US President Donald Trump and his administration have been signaling that they are planning to use the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk as a justification to launch a broad campaign targeting their political opponents.
Trump adviser Stephen Miller on Monday singled out left-wing organizations that he baselessly alleged were promoting violence in the United States and he said that the full weight of the federal government would soon come down on them.
"We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people," said Miller.
Shortly after this, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on the podcast hosted by Miller's wife, Katie Miller, and vowed that the Justice Department would "go after" people who engage in "hate speech" against conservatives.
"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," Bondi said. "We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech."
While many prominent conservatives denounced Bondi's remarks and reiterated that hate speech is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Trump himself appeared to give her views his endorsement.
When asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl about Bondi's comments on Tuesday, the president signaled that he would favor prosecuting journalists on "hate speech" charges.
"We'll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly," Trump said in response to Karl's question. "You have a lot of hate in your heart."
Trump then pointed to the $16 million defamation settlement he agreed to with Disney after ABC News host George Stephanopoulos said on air last year that Trump had been found liable for raping journalist E. Jean Carroll, when in fact the jury had technically only found Trump liable for sexually abusing her.
"ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech," Trump said. "Your company paid me $16 million for a former a hate speech, right? So maybe they'll have to go after you."
These development have caused widespread alarm among some Democratic politicians.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) posted a video on social media in which he warned that Trump and his administration were engaging in "the biggest assault on the First Amendment in our country's modern history."
He then pointed to statements made by Vice President JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and Bondi, and he encouraged his supporters to be willing to confront dangers to American liberty.
"This is the time where every American must stand proudly for free speech and our freedoms," he said.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), after posting the video of Trump threatening to "go after" ABC News' Karl, argued that Trump's actions made it impossible for him to vote in favor of continuing to fund the federal government.
"How can we fund this?" he asked. "I am being asked this week to fund a government that locks up a reporter Trump doesn’t like. This isn’t a close call folks."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has become the target of a censure resolution by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) amid false claims that she did not condemn the Kirk assassination, hit back at Republicans for being hypocrites on free speech.
"Nancy Mace is trying to censure me over comments I never said," she said. "Her [resolution] does not contain a single quote from me because she couldn’t find any. Unlike her, I have routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology. This is all an attempt to push a false story so she can fundraise and boost her run for governor."
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Trump Threatens to Jail CodePink Protesters Who Disrupted His Dinner With Chants for Gaza
"It is all very reminiscent of McCarthyism," a CodePink spokesperson said.
Sep 16, 2025
President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to jail the peace activists who disrupted his dinner with pro-Palestinian chants last week, referring to their behavior as "subversive."
Last Tuesday, members of CodePink, a women-led antiwar group, verbally confronted the president and several top members of his administration—including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—as they dined on steak and seafood at a swanky DC eatery.
The small group of activists castigated the president for his support for Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and its blockade on humanitarian aid, which has caused mass starvation throughout the strip.
The activists chanted, "They feast while Gaza starves," and called Trump "the Hitler of our time" for supporting the military campaign, which an Israeli general recently admitted has resulted in over 220,000 people being killed or wounded.
On Monday, as Trump and his administration continued to map out a sweeping crackdown against left-wing speech following the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, the president suggested that the women of CodePink should also be punished for their peaceful display of dissent, referring to them as "professional agitators" and "total phonies."
"They started to scream when I got into the restaurant," he said, "'Ohhh'...Something with Palestine. And I said, 'Well, I'm doing a great job for peace in the Middle East, I should get lots of awards for that, right, with the Abraham Accords and everything else.' But the woman just stood up and started screaming. And she got booed out of the place."
Trump called the protester a "mouthpiece" and a "paid agitator," before saying that he'd "asked [Attorney General Pam Bondi] to look into that in terms of RICO, bringing RICO cases against them. Criminal RICO. Because they should be put in jail, what they're doing to this country is really subversive."
RICO refers to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which the government has traditionally used to prosecute organized crime groups. But following Kirk's shooting, Trump has suggested it be used to carry out what his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on Friday would be an effort to "dismantle" left-wing organizations in the United States.
Trump has threatened to use RICO charges against liberal nonprofits, including the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation, which Vance referred to on Monday as "terrorist networks." The vice president claimed that these groups push "messaging designed to trigger and incite violence," with his leading example being an article published in The Nation that harshly criticized Kirk's political views following his assassination.
Melissa Garriga, a spokesperson for CodePink, told Common Dreams that Trump's allegations against her antiwar group are untrue.
"CodePink has a very small staff," Garriga said. "A majority of our work is done by CodePink volunteers, who are not paid. They represent the majority of the American public and are not 'mouthpieces' of any foreign government or political party. They are workers, veterans, artists, and peace activists from across the country. We are committed to peaceful, nonviolent means of protest when executing our actions."
"This is not new for us," Garriga added. "Over the past few years, elected officials, more often Republican elected officials, have constantly called for investigations into progressive organizations such as ours. They've launched baseless congressional investigations over CodePink's funding sources that their Democrat colleagues often parrot."
Earlier this year, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) claimed that the group was funded by "Communist China" after a retired Army colonel working with the group disrupted a committee hearing with chants of "Stop funding Israel!" CodePink filed an ethics complaint against Cotton in response, calling his accusation "untrue and libelous."
In 2024, when CodePink was castigating the Biden administration's unwavering support for Israel, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made a similar suggestion that the group should be investigated by the FBI because, "when they advocate for a ceasefire, it's Putin's agenda at play." Prior to that, when a member of the group confronted Pelosi, the congresswoman responded, "Go back to China."
CodePink strenuously denied having received any funding from the Chinese government or any other foreign governments following calls from several Republicans for the group to be investigated over its campaign against military escalation with China.
"Our financial records are transparent and audited, and any suggestion that external governments or political entities influence us is ludicrous," Garriga reiterated to Common Dreams. "As we have officially stated multiple times, CodePink receives no money from any foreign government, and we are funded by thousands of individual donors and US-based foundations."
"President Trump is trying to intimidate people who speak up for peace and justice, and we won’t be intimidated," she continued. "We represent the popular opinion in the United States: the majority who are against war and genocide."
According to a Quinnipiac poll released at the end of August, 60% of voters across all parties said they opposed sending more military aid to Israel, compared to just 32% who said they supported it. Half of the respondents said they agreed with the international community's growing consensus that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.
"It is all very reminiscent of McCarthyism," Garriga said of Trump's threats to crack down on left-wing speech. "It's a critical moment for other organizations to stand in solidarity, loud and clear solidarity with organizations facing repression."
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White House Working to Criminalize Left-Wing Dissent as 'Domestic Terror' in Wake of Kirk Murder
"We must end any form of political violence—and reject those who try to exploit it," one Democratic congresswoman asserted.
Sep 15, 2025
Senior Trump administration officials on Monday made fresh threats to crack down on a nonexistent left-wing "domestic terror movement" following last week's assassination of Charlie Kirk—a move that critics called an attempt to exploit the far-right firebrand's murder to advance an authoritarian agenda targeting nonviolent opposition.
Even as investigators work to determine the motive of Kirk's killer, members of Trump's inner circle and supporters have amplified an unfounded narrative of a coordinated leftist movement targeting conservatives.
According to The New York Times:
On Monday, two senior administration officials, who spoke anonymously to describe the internal planning, said that Cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. The goal, they said, was 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.
Appearing on the latest episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show" podcast—which was guest hosted by US Vice President JD Vance—White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said that "we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people."
"It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name," Miller vowed.
Vance said during the podcast that he wanted to explore “all of the ways that we’re trying to figure out how to prevent this festering violence that you see on the far left from becoming even more and more mainstream."
“You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech,'” the vice president said. “We’re going to go after the network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence."
Vance, who like Trump and numerous supporters claim to champion free speech, also took aim at "people who are celebrating" Kirk's killing.
Another unnamed administration official told the Times Monday that government agencies would be investigating people, including those accused of vandalizing Tesla electric vehicles and dealerships and allegedly assaulting federal immigration agents, in an effort to implicate US leftists in political violence.
Vance and Miller's threats ignored right-wing violence—which statistically outpaces left-wing attacks—including the recent assassinations of Democratic Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, who were murdered in June by a right-wing masked gunman disguised as a police officer.
Investigative reporter Jason Paladino reported last week that the US Department of Justice apparently removed an academic study previously published on the National Institute for Justice's online library showing that "since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives" versus "42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives" committed by "far-left extremists."
“Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”The Trump DOJ scrubbed this study from their website.
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— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan.bsky.social) September 12, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Responding to Miller's remarks, New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent noted on social media that "Stephen Miller was directly involved in one of the largest acts of organized domestic political violence the United States has seen in modern times, the January 6 [2021] insurrection."
Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) weighed in Monday on Miller's attempt to exploit Kirk's murder, writing on the social media site Bluesky that "it's never acceptable to kill someone for their political beliefs. But the Trump [administration] exploiting the shooting of Charlie Kirk to follow their authoritarian instincts and crack down on the left is incredibly disturbing."
"We must end any form of political violence—and reject those who try to exploit it," she added.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom noted Monday on social media that Miller "has already publicly labeled the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization."
"This isn’t about crime and safety," Newsom added. "It’s about dismantling our democratic institutions. We cannot allow acts of political violence to be weaponized and used to threaten tens of millions of Americans."
The progressive Working Families Party (WFP) said Monday on social media that "JD Vance and Stephen Miller want to use the horrifying murder of Charlie Kirk to target and dismantle pro-democracy groups."
"Their comments call to mind some of the darkest periods in US history," WFP continued. "They're dividing people based on what box we ticked on our voter registration."
Vance and Miller "want to stoke fear and resentment to justify their un-American crackdowns on free speech, mass abductions of working people, and military takeovers of our cities," WFP added. "This isn't going to fly. We’ve survived crises like this before as a country, and we can choose to live in a place where our political freedoms are protected, where we settle disagreements with words not weapons, and where no one has to fear losing a loved one to gun violence."
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