Trump administration joins Republicans’ campaign to police speech in reaction to Kirk’s murder

Vice President JD Vance, right, Second Lady Usha Vance, center, and Erika Kirk, holding a cross on a chain, deplane Air Force Two, carrying the body of Charlie Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA who was shot and killed, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Vice President JD Vance on Monday jumped onto the conservative movement demanding consequences for those who have cheered Charlie Kirk’s killing, calling on the public to turn in anyone who says distasteful things about the assassination of his friend and political ally.

“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out,” Vance urged listeners on the slain activist’s podcast Monday. “And hell, call their employer.”

Vance’s call also included a vow to target some of the biggest funders of liberal causes as conservatives stepped up their targeting of private individuals for their comments about the killing. It marked an escalation in a campaign that some warned invoked some of the darkest chapters of American history.

“The government involvement in this does inch this closer to looking like McCarthyism,” said Adam Goldstein of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, referring to the 1950s campaign to root out communists that led to false allegations and ruined careers. “It was not a shining moment for free expression.”

Campaign broadens to those who quote Kirk critically

Republican-controlled states such as Florida, Oklahoma and Texas have launched investigations of teachers accused of inappropriate statements after last week’s assassination. The U.S. military has invited members of the public to report those who “celebrate or mock” the killing and said some troops have already been removed for their comments.

At the same time, the Trump administration has vowed to target what it contends is a “vast” liberal network that inspired the shooter, even as authorities maintain it appears he acted alone and the investigation is ongoing.

The campaign has broadened to include even those whose statements were critical of Kirk without celebrating his assassination.

The Washington Post fired Karen Attiah, an opinion columnist, for posts on the day of the shooting that lamented how “white America” was not ready to solve gun violence and that quoted Kirk denigrating the intelligence of prominent Black women such as Michelle Obama.

PEN America, a press freedom group, warned in a statement that firings like Attiah’s “risk creating a chilling effect.”

Goldstein worried there were many cases like Attiah’s of people targeted for simply quoting Kirk or failing to mourn his passing adequately: “That’s one of the key symptoms of cancel culture,” he said. “Trying to paint everyone with the same brush.”

Conservatives coined the term cancel culture for what they claimed was persecution of those on the right for their views, especially related to the COVID-19 pandemic and Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, leading to campaigns to get regular people fired.

It was a significant cause for U.S. President Donald Trum p, who pledged to end it during his campaign last year. But after the Kirk killing, he and his administration have instead leaned into it from the right.

A hero to conservatives, a provocateur to many Democrats

A father of two and Christian conservative, Kirk was a hero to many Trump Republicans for his fiery warnings about the dangers of Democrats and ability to organize young voters. But Kirk also was a provocateur and supporter of Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss who left a long record of partisan quips that enraged many on the left.

“According to Kirk, empathy is a made-up new-age term, so keep the jokes coming. It’s what he would have wanted,” read one post on X that Melvin Villaver Jr., a Clemson University music professor, re-posted the day of the killing, according to a screenshot circulated by college Republicans demanding his firing. Clemson eventually fired one staffer and suspended Villaver and another professor after intense pressure from elected South Carolina Republican officials.

Other targeted posters, such as Army Lt. Col. Christopher Ladnier, simply quoted Kirk on the day of his assassination. These included Kirk calling the Civil Rights Act a “beast” that “has now turned into an anti-white weapon,” his criticism of Martin Luther King Jr. and his statement that some gun deaths are the cost of a robust Second Amendment.

Ladnier, who has been targeted by conservative activists online, said in a Facebook message to The Associated Press that he would respond “when/if” his chain of command takes action.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott approvingly posted a video of Texas Tech University student who was arrested Friday after a confrontation at a campus vigil for Kirk, writing: “This is what happened to the person who was mocking Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Texas Tech.”

A school district in rural Elkhorn, Wisconsin reported receiving more than 800 messages after one conservative influencer mistakenly identified an associate principal at an elementary as celebrating Kirk’s death.

Top Republicans vow to go after ‘domestic terrorist network’

Authorities say Kirk was shot by 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who grew up in a conservative household in southern Utah but was enmeshed in “leftist ideology,” according to the state’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox.

Cox said investigators may reveal more about what motivated the attack after Robinson’s initial court appearance, scheduled for Tuesday. The governor said the suspect, who allegedly carved memes onto his bullet casings, appeared radicalized by the “dark corners of the internet.”

On Monday, Vance was joined on Kirk’s podcast by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, who vowed to crack down on what he called the “vast domestic terrorist network” he blamed for Kirk’s death.

Alluding to free speech concerns, Vance said: “You have the crazies on the far left that say, ’Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech.’”

But he added: “No no no! We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence,” — a reference to non-governmental organizations.

The White House did not immediately return a request seeking clarity on the remarks, including which groups might be targeted.

The idea of a retribution campaign against individuals or groups for expressing a particular viewpoint has alarmed many.

“Just having that ideology, just believing differently than some other American is not illegal,” Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said on CNN on Sunday.

Instead, he said any groups that have been involved in illegal or violent acts should be targeted.

Killing as a pretext to go after political rivals

On Kirk’s show, Vance talked about the need for unity after the assassination, but then dismissed it as impossible given what he described as the left’s embrace of political violence. Naming two foundations that fund a wide range of liberal causes, Vance said: “There is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers.”

Democratic officials have roundly condemned Kirk’s murder. Democrats also have been victims of political violence recently, including the June assassination of the speaker of the Minnesota House and her husband, and the 2022 beating of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their San Francisco home.

Caitlin Legacki of Stop Government Censorship, formed to fight the Trump administration’s use of government against its political rivals, said it was one thing for people making abhorrent statements to face consequences.

“When we get concerned is when there appears to be a concerted effort in the government to use this tragedy to punish political opponents,” she said.

___

Associated Press writers Collin Binkley and Chris Megerian in Washington, D.C., Meg Kinnard in Chapin, South Carolina, Juan Lozano in Houston and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

Nicholas Riccardi And Konstantin Toropin, The Associated Press