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.


US President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Sep 16, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

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.”

'That law school failed': Sonia Sotomayor takes swipe at Pam Bondi

Tom Boggioni
September 16, 2025 

RAW STORY

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi attends a House Appropriations Justice Subcommittee hearing on U.S. President Donald Trump's budget request for the Department of Justice, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 23, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Less than 24 hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi attempted to make the case that the First Amendment has a carve-out that makes “hate speech” subject to prosecution, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor took a not-too-veiled shot at the Donald Trump appointee.

According to a report from Politico, with the next Supreme Court term just around the corner at the beginning of October, Sotomayor took the stage Tuesday morning for questions on a panel hosted by New York Law School.

Late Monday, Bondi told podcaster Katie Miller, the wife of extreme rightwing Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie [Kirk], in our society."

She added, "We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech — and that’s across the aisle.”

As Politico’s Erica Orden wrote, the Yale Law School-trained Sotomayor never mentioned Bondi by name, but it was clear who she was talking about.

“Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself, that law school failed,” Sotomayor pointed out.

Bondi is a graduate of Stetson University College of Law in Deland, Florida, which is housed in a historic 1920s resort hotel.

Stomayor later added, “Think about all the things that you see in the world that are wrong, starting with two world wars — two wars and regional conflicts. But think of everything that’s happening in the United States, and you have to pause and say, we adults have really messed this up.

'It’s a crime!' Pam Bondi's hate speech remark gets pushback even from MAGA senator​

Nicole Charky-Chami
September 16, 2025 

RAW STORY

U.S. President Donald Trump listens as U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during an event to sign a memorandum to send federal resources to Memphis, Tennessee, for a surge against local crime, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 15, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Attorney General Pam Bondi's statements over prosecuting hate speech in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing have prompted some conservatives, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), to respond and defend Constitutional protections on Tuesday.

It's also prompted Bondi to walk back her initial statements. Bondi appeared on the Katie Miller podcast on Monday, saying the Department of Justice will “absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Cruz said Tuesday that her comments were "misconstrued."

“The First Amendment absolutely protects speech,” Cruz said at Politico's AI & Tech Summit on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. “It absolutely protects hate speech. It protects vile speech. It protects horrible speech. What does that mean? It means you cannot be prosecuted for speech, even if it is evil and bigoted and wrong.”

“We have seen, as you noted, across the country, people on the left — not everybody, but far too many people — celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder,” Cruz said. “We’ve seen teachers in high schools and elementary schools posting online, celebrating. We’ve seen university professors posting. In my view, they should absolutely face the consequences for celebrating murder.”

Cruz praised Kirk, sharing that he had a friendship with the right-wing influencer.

Bondi posted on social media Tuesday, clarifying that "hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment."

"It’s a crime," she wrote, continuing to double down on her attack of the "radical left."

"For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over," Bondi said.

In another interview later Monday with Fox News' Sean Hannity, she called on employers to fire their employees who have said "horrible things" or criticized Kirk's past rhetoric, NBC News reports.

"It’s free speech, but you shouldn’t be employed anywhere if you’re going to say that. And employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people. You need to look at people who are saying horrible things, and they shouldn’t be working with you," she said.

Some MAGA supporters have called for Bondi to resign.

Several people have been targeted for comments they shared in the aftermath of Kirk's assassination, including educators and journalists.

How Donald Trump is making America politically violent again

Gregg Barak
September 16, 2025 

RAW STORY


Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno


The assassination of ultra-right, racist influencer Charlie Kirk may not have been the “shot heard around the world.” But before the videos of his shooting death were taken down, at least 10 million views had been logged on platforms like X, Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram, You Tube, and Truth Social.

However, this commentary does not focus on the assassination of the 31-year-old Kirk, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024 and was a highly valued member of Donald Trump’s inner circles. Nor do I talk about his 22-year-old accused killer, Tyler Robinson, or the possible political motivations behind engravings on four bullet casings, suggesting a mixture of “leftish” and “rightist” leanings.

I want to focus on polarized reactions to Kirk’s death by the two major parties, in relation to threats and incidences of political violence that have been surging since the MAGA base violently assaulted the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

What the data tell us

Before October 2020 — with the exception of November 2019, the month before Trump’s first impeachment, when Republican support for violence spiked — support for violence and dehumanization were in single digits with voters of both parties.


Of course, the political elephant in the room is the criminal-instigator-in-chief. To put it unequivocally, Trump hogs the blame for most politically motivated violent behavior plaguing this nation.




As Rachel Kleinfeld, founding CEO of the Truman National Security Project who serves on the National Task Force On Election Crises, notes in a recent article in the Journal of Democracy, as far back as January 2020, one year before Jan. 6, 41 percent of Republicans agreed that “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.” After the failed insurrection, 56 percent of Republicans agreed that “if elected leaders will not protect Americans, the people must do it themselves even if it requires taking violent action.”

Moral disengagement or lack of civil discourse has also been spiking. By February 2021, Kleinfeld notes, “more than two-thirds of Republicans (and half of Democrats) saw the other party as ‘downright evil,’ while 12 percent more Republicans believed Democrats were less than human than the other way around.”


Kleinfeld writes:

“The false narrative of a stolen 2020 election clearly increased support for political violence. Those who believed the election was fraudulent were far more likely to endorse coups and armed citizen rebellion; by February 2021, a quarter of Republicans felt that it was as least “a little justified to take over state government buildings with violence to advance their political goals.” This politically driven false narrative points to the role of politicians since 2016 in fueling the difference in violence between the right and left. As has been found in Israel and Germany, domestic terrorists are emboldened by the belief that politicians encourage violence or that authorities will tolerate it.”

In 2022, according to the Institute for Responsive Government and a New York Times review of threats leading to indictments, one third of such threats were made by Republican or pro-Trump individuals against Democrats or Republicans deemed “insufficiently” loyal. One quarter of indicted threats were made by pro-Democrats against Republicans.


More recent data also tells us that high-volume threats against members of Congress, their families, and staff investigated by U.S. Capitol Police rose from 8,008 in 2023 to 9,474 in 2024.

Also, a 2024 poll of nearly 300 former members of Congress found that 49 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of Democrats frequently received threats in office, alongside a higher incidence of threats against female lawmakers and those from racial minorities, with 69 percent of such respondents reporting frequent threats.

According to Mike Jensen, a researcher at the University of Maryland who since 1970 has been tracking this kind of violence, in the first six months of the second Trump administration, the U.S. “experienced about 150 politically-motivated attacks — nearly twice as many as over the same period last year.”


After the assassination of Kirk, Jensen said: “I think we are in a very, very dangerous spot right now that could easily escalate into more widespread civil unrest … This could absolutely serve as a kind of flashpoint that inspires more” racially motivated violence.

Within 24 hours of Kirk’s death, Black students and colleges across the US were targeted “by coordinated racist death threats, forcing at least seven historically Black colleges into emergency lockdowns.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were voicing what The Hill called “fresh concerns that the polarization of American politics is radicalizing the fringes and fueling extremism.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said: “People are scared to death in this building. I mean, not many of them will say it publicly, but they’re running to the Speaker talking about security — and that’s a lot of Republicans.”
Lack of civil discourse

Both Republicans and Democrats urged, in The Hill’s words, “a national shift in rhetoric – on and off of Capitol Hill – away from the knee-jerk partisan attacks that practically define the country’s political debate.”

Comparatively speaking, however, the partisan social discourse of Republicans, from the top down, was as hateful as it has been since Joe Biden beat Trump in November 2020.

Following the assassination of Kirk, the pot once again called the kettle black. As reported by the New York Times, Trump “released a four-minute video from the Oval Office in which he condemned the killing as ‘the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day’.”

During a Fox News interview, Trump blamed political violence on one of his favorite scapegoats, the ”lunatic” radical left supposedly supported by billionaire social justice philanthropist George Soros. Without missing a beat, absent any conscience, the sociopathic president defended political violence on the “radical right” as a matter of patriotic justice.

As the Times put it, “instead of calling for Americans of all political stripes to lower the temperature,” the fueling agent of chaos and mistrust was as usual rattling off a list of political violence targeting Republicans or perpetrated by those he views as on the left.


These included the two “assassination attempts against him; attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers; the assassination of a health care executive in New York; and the mass shooting of Republicans at a congressional baseball practice that nearly killed Representative Seve Scalise of Louisiana.”

Trump also told reporters on Thursday, “We just have to beat the hell out” of the radical left.

Missing once again from the insurrectionist-in-chief was any reference to violence encouraged by himself and his allies, for example, by Rudy Giuliani, who Trump plans to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or by a corrupted Justice Department, targeting Democrats and Republicans because the president does not like them.


Conversely, as the Times reported, Trump “made no mention of the recent killings in Minnesota of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband, who were on a hit list of dozens of left-wing figures; the arson attack on the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, while he and his family slept; a shooter’s attack on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a hammer assault on the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi; the shootings at an Arizona campaign office of Kamala Harris; or the Jan. 6 pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol that injured roughly 150 police officers.”

In short, rather than condemning violence on both sides and “calling for unity,” the Atlantic reported, “the president of the United States accused his political opposition of being accessories to murder.”

Here is how Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian summed up what Trump’s cheerleaders are saying:

“'We’re gonna avenge Charlie’s death,' promised Fox News host Jesse Watters. Elon Musk declared that 'The Left is the party of murder.' A legion of other rightwing influencers have already taken this talk to its logical conclusion, announcing, as one put it, that 'THIS IS WAR.' Could the message being sent to a furious and well-armed support base be any clearer?

During the same period, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) made comments to Mehdi Hasan, expressing both condolences for Charlie Kirk’s family and criticism of his positions. Immediately thereafter, on social media and elsewhere, rightwing influencers and Republican legislators called for Omar’s resignation from Congress and deportation to Somalia.

In response, Omar posted: “Right-wing accounts trying to spin a false story when I condemned [Kirk’s] murder multiple times is fitting for their agenda to villainize the left to hide from the fact that Donald Trump gins up hate on a daily basis.”



Paul PelosiNancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi, seen in 2017. (Shutterstock.com)

As Trump was exploiting and weaponizing the murder of his young friend, some Republicans “seemed preoccupied with proving that ‘the left’ was celebrating the attack,” Jonathan Chait wrote in the Atlantic.

Trump has been doing that since the attack on Paul Pelosi, in December 2022.

‘Fanaticism on the left’?

Unlike Republican leaders or Fox News, Democratic leaders and liberal outlets like MSNBC were united in revulsion and condemnation of the attack on Kirk and political violence. Nor did they call for vengeance.

California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote, “The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.”

New York City mayoral candidate Zorhan Mamdani said: “I’m horrified by the shooting of Charlie Kirk at a college event in Utah. Political violence has no place in our country.”

And yet, as Chait wrote, “the Republican Party’s fanatical devotion to Trump requires an insistence that it is responding to a greater and more insidious form of fanaticism on the left.”

Like Boss Trump, the GOP posits that “a totalitarian and violent left-wing threat is necessary to justify Trump’s” emerging police state and excuse the president’s criminality, past and present — as the MAGA Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling did in Trump v. United States, granting presidents criminal immunity.

Asked about bringing the country together, the Outlaw-in-Chief told Fox News he “couldn’t care less.” Naturally, because he desires more violence, not less. That is why he is sending troops into Democratic-run cities — so he can ratchet up the violence and declare some kind of emergency, in order to suspend elections.

Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and the author of several award-winning books, including Criminology on Trump (2022) and its sequel, Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy (2024). The third book in Barak’s trilogy, Regime Change, Authoritarian Treason, and the Outlaw-in-Chief: President Donald Trump’s Struggle to Kill U.S. Democracy & Realign American Global Power, will be published after the 2026 midterm election.

MAGA family values, locked and loaded

Nick Anderson. 

Raw Story
September 15, 2025 

Nick Anderson/Raw Story

Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.

Trump DOJ erases report showing far-right violence outpaces 'all other types of terrorism'

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks about Javelin anti-tank missiles next to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi during a press conference about deploying federal law enforcement agents in Washington to bolster the local police presence, in the Press Briefing Room at the White House, in Washington D.C., U.S., August 11, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Adam Lynch

September 16, 2025

ALTERNET

404 Media reports the Department of Justice has taken down a study showing white supremacist and far-right violence outpaces “all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States.

The DOJ website hosted the study, conducted by the National Institute of Justice, until September 12, 2025.

In its place is the message: “The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance. During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

The report What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism revealed “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 document reports “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists,” since 1990, “including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.”

In this same period, the report claimed, “far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”

“We don’t know why the study about far-right extremist violence was removed recently,” writes 404 Media reporter Emanuel Maiberg, “but it comes immediately after the assassination of conservative personality Charlie Kirk, accusations from the administration that the left is responsible for most of the political violence in the country, and a renewed commitment from the administration to crack down on the ‘radical left.’”

The DOJ did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.

Read the 404 Media report at this link.

Washington Post Union Speaks Out Against Columnist’s Firing Over Charlie Kirk Comments

“The Post not only flagrantly disregarded standard disciplinary processes, it also undermined its own mandate to be a champion of free speech,” said the Post Guild.


The building of the Washington Post newspaper headquarter is seen on K Street in Washington DC on May 16, 2019.
(Photo by Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Sep 15, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The union representing employees at The Washington Post on Monday condemned the paper for firing columnist Karen Attiah for comments she made about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

In a statement, the Washington Post Guild said that firing Attiah betrayed the paper’s mission to defend free speech in the United States.

“The Post not only flagrantly disregarded standard disciplinary processes, it also undermined its own mandate to be a champion of free speech,” the union said. “The right to speak freely is the ultimate personal liberty and the foundation of Karen’s 11-year career at the Post.”

The union also said it was “proud to call Karen a colleague and a longtime union sibling” and that it “stands with her and will continue to support her and defend her rights.”

Attiah announced on Monday morning that she had been fired from the Post over social media posts in the wake of Kirk’s murder that were critical of his legacy but in no way endorsed or celebrated any form of political violence.

“The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable,’ ‘gross misconduct,’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues—charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false,” she explained. “They rushed to fire me without even a conversation. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.”

Attiah only directly referenced Kirk once in her posts and said she had condemned the deadly attack on him “without engaging in excessive, false mourning for a man who routinely attacked Black women as a group, put academics in danger by putting them on watch lists, claimed falsely that Black people were better off in the era of Jim Crow, said that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, and favorably reviewed a book that called liberals ‘Unhumans.‘”

Independent progressive news site Drop Site News has published a running list on X documenting dozens of people who so far have been fired, suspended, or placed under investigation for their social media posts related to Kirk in the wake of his death. So far, says Drop Site News, over half of those targeted have been educators.

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.

THE ISSUE IS GUN CONTROL NOT IDEOLOGY


Stephen Miller speaks at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Novi, Michigan on October 26, 2024.
(Photo by Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
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.


‘Something Dark Might Be Coming’: Senator Rebukes Right’s Weaponization of Kirk Murder to ‘Destroy Dissent’


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.”

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.”

Trump exploiting Kirk's murder to spread his 'political religion' of division: historian

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024. REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo

Carl Gibson

September 16, 2025

   ALTERNET

Last week's murder of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk has prompted President Donald Trump to use him as a "symbol" to promote his own "political religion," according to a historian and journalist.

In a Tuesday essay for Religion News Service (RNS), former Harvard University professor Mark Silk lamented that Trump was using the shocking public killing of Kirk as an excuse to crack down on his ideological opponents, and accused the president of creating a "political religion" centered around hate and division. He contextualized Trump's response to Kirk's murder in former President Abraham Lincoln's reflection that in the wake of tragedies, presidents should speak "with malice toward none, with charity for all ... to bind up the nation’s wounds."

"Trump has, unsurprisingly, done nothing of the sort in this time of crisis, transgressing civil religious norms with utter self-awareness," Silk wrote.

READ MORE: 'Something is wrong': MAGA pundits say Trump is 'lying to us' about Charlie Kirk shooting

In his RNS essay, Silk reminded readers that during an interview with Fox & Friends, Trump passed up an opportunity to be a uniter and instead said he "couldn't care less" about bringing the country together. Silk contrasted Trump's approach with that of Italian historian Emilio Gentile, who said that government should seek to create a "civil religion" that is built on "a plurality of ideas, free competition in the exercise of power and the ability of the governed to dismiss their governments through peaceful and constitutional methods."

"In place of a civil religion that sacralizes the political system to include those with whom we disagree, Trump has embraced a political religion that excludes them — one that, as Gentile put it, 'is intolerant, invasive, and fundamentalist, and ... wishes to permeate every aspect of an individual’s life and of a society’s collective life,'" Silk wrote.

Silk also drew a parallel between Trump's response to Kirk's death with the 1930 death of far-right German paramilitary leader Horst Wessel. After Wessel was shot, his death became a rallying cry for the far-right movement in Germany that led to World War II. Silk worried that Trump's actions were making Charlie Kirk into an American Horst Wessel, to be propagandized for today's far-right movement in the United States.

"Today, the canonization of Charlie Kirk proceeds apace. Tributes to him as a stalwart of free speech rights have come from expected and unexpected quarters, even as some are fired from their jobs for daring to criticize him. There are songs celebrating him as a martyr to a great cause," Silk wrote. "He is fast becoming the Horst Wessel of Trump’s political religion."


Click here to read Silk's essay in full.

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.



A side-by-side photo shows a CodePink activist (l) as she and her fellow activists chant against President Donald Trump at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab restaurant in Washington, DC on Tuesday, September 9, 2025.
(Photo: Screengrab / CodePink via YouTube)

Stephen Prager
Sep 16, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

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.”

'You have a lot of hate': Trump threatens reporter after hate speech question

U.S. President Donald Trump listens to a reporter before boarding Air Force One to depart for Washington, at Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, New Jersey, U.S., September 14, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

David Badash

September 16, 2025

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump is facing a barrage of criticism after threatening a well-known veteran reporter who asked about his Attorney General saying that she would target people who engage in hate speech, which is largely seen by experts as a constitutionally-protected right.

“We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart,” the President told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.

Asked if that was “appropriate,” Trump replied, “Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech. So maybe they’ll have to go after you.”

After claiming, “we want everything to be fair,” Trump went on to say that “the radical left has done tremendous damage to the country, but we’re fixing it.”

Critics blasted the President.

“Donald Trump says he will send the DOJ after the press if they say things he doesn’t like,” declared California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.

“Totally normal behavior from a president and not at all a sign of some kind of emotional issue,” charged The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and expert on Russia and national security.

“The logical and obvious companion to turning the government loose to harass and criminalize political opposition is doing the same thing to the free press,” warned Aaron Fritschner, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA). “People will doubt his intentions, as they somehow always do, but once again Trump is just coming out and saying it here.”

READ MORE: Greene Says Kirk Killing Sparked ‘Spiritual Revival’ for Christ — Urges ‘National Divorce’

“Trump is overtly saying that DOJ is going to use Charlie Kirk’s assassination to silence anyone he perceives as an enemy,” observed former Obama official Tommy Vietor.

“He isn’t even pretending not to play dictator. This is third world s– and I’m so tired of the MAGA excusing,” lamented “On Democracy” podcaster Fred Wellman.

“This First Amendment is under attack, and it has never been a scarier time,” warned attorney Aaron Parnas.

@2025 - AlterNet Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. - "Poynter" fonts provided by fontsempire.com.

'Maybe they'll go after you': Trump makes direct threat to reporter

Travis Gettys
September 16, 2025

 ALTERNET

Donald Trump and Jonathan Karl (CNN)

President Donald Trump directly threatened a reporter with prosecution when he asked about similar comments made Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The attorney general has promised to crack down on what she calls "hate speech" against conservatives following the assassination of right-wing influence Charlie Kirk, and the president reacted ominously when veteran ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl asked about Bondi's threats.

"They should probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly," Trump said. "It's hate, you have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they'll come after ABC. Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech. So maybe they'll have to go after you."

ABC agreed in December to settle a libel complaint with Trump for $16 million after a trial judge found that viewers could have been misled by on-air statements made by correspondent George Stephanopoulos, who said that he had been found liable for rape, when in fact another judge found him liable for the sexual assault of writer E. Jean Carroll decades ago.

"Look, we want everything to be fair," Trump added. "It hasn't been fair, and the radical left has done tremendous damage to the country. But we're fixing it. We have right now the hottest country anywhere in the world. And remember, one year ago, our country was dead, and now Washington, D.C., is fixed and I fixed it. The mayor was fine, the mayor was just fine, okay, the mayor had the city for many years. She's been mayor for many years. The one that fixed it was me and my people, and it is so safe."

"You should take your beautiful wife tonight and have dinner down there," he added. "You won't be shot, you won't be accosted, you won't even be looked at incorrectly by anybody. Washington, D.C. is safe now."

1,000+ Experts Rip EPA for ‘Reckless Dismissal of Established Climate Science’

Repealing the endangerment finding, they wrote, “is contrary to science and the public interest.”


US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin speaks at EPA Headquarters on February 18, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 16, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

More than 1,000 scientists and other experts on Tuesday sent a letter to US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin explaining why they “strenuously object” to his effort to repeal the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” which has enabled federal climate regulations over the past 15 years.

Amid mounting fears that he would take such action, Zeldin in late July unveiled the rule to rescind the landmark legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people—part of Republican President Donald Trump’s broader pro-polluter agenda.

“As climate scientists, public health experts, and economists, we can attest to the indisputable scientific evidence of human-caused climate change, its harmful impacts on people’s health and well-being, and the devastating costs it is imposing on communities across the nation and around the world,” states the new letter, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This explicit attempt to undermine or weaken these findings, as well as the critical regulations linked to them, is contrary to science and the public interest.”

“We also strongly oppose the EPA’s reckless dismissal of established climate science as part of its proposal to repeal the endangerment finding, including the agency’s heavy reliance on an unscientific study commissioned by the Department of Energy. This report is rife with inaccuracies, deliberately cherry-picks and mischaracterizes data, and has not undergone a rigorous scientific review process,” the letter continues, echoing an expert review of the government report from earlier this month.

Citing major US and global analyses, along with thousands of independent, peer-reviewed scientific studies, the letter stresses that “the scientific evidence on human-caused climate change and its consequences was unequivocal in 2009 and, since that time, has become even more dire and compelling.”

It says that “based on the best available science,” scientists know:Climate change poses severe harms to human health and well-being;
Climate change is clearly increasing the likelihood of extreme events; and
The economic toll of climate change is rising.

Harms to human health and well-being include higher rates of heat-related deaths, increased spread of some infectious diseases, and decreased food and water safety due to climate-fueled extreme weather events, the letter says. It also highlights that, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “billion-dollar disasters in the United States are on the rise, driven by a combination of climate factors and increased development in disaster-prone areas.”

Despite such findings, the Trump administration is making various moves to boost the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry and the president withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement—again—when he returned to office in January. Parties to the 2015 climate agreement aim to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

“The world stands on the cusp of breaching the 1.5°C (2.7°F) mark on a long-term basis, the global average temperature increase above preindustrial levels that scientists have long warned about,” the experts noted Tuesday. “Communities across the nation are already dealing with devastating and costly climate impacts, that are set to worsen as global warming accelerates. Humanity’s window to act to stave off some of the worst impacts of climate change is fast closing; any further delay is harmful and costly.”

“We urge you to stop dismantling critical climate regulations and evading EPA’s responsibility by pushing disinformation about climate science and impacts,” they concluded. “Instead, we call on you to act with urgency to help address this pressing challenge by limiting heat-trapping emissions. People across the nation are relying on the EPA to fulfill its mission to protect public health and the environment.”

WTO fishing deal: the net results


By AFP
September 14, 2025


A fisherman pulls his net from the Mediterranean Sea on a trawler off Dbayeh near Lebanon's capital Beirut - Copyright AFP JOSEPH EID

Agnès PEDRERO

The World Trade Organization’s agreement on fisheries subsidies — its first environmentally focused accord — enters into force on Monday after years of thorny negotiations at a time of heightened international trade tensions.

Agreed by more than 100 WTO members, including the United States, the European Union and China, the agreement sets binding rules requiring governments to consider the legality and sustainability of the fishing activities they subsidise.

The discussions towards the deal began all the way back in 2001, with WTO members finally reaching an agreement by consensus in June 2022.

Below are the main points of the agreement, which will be celebrated with a ceremony at the WTO’s Geneva headquarters Monday after being ratified by two-thirds of the membership.

Broader rules regarding subsidies for activities that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing remain under negotiation.



– Bans –



The deal bans subsidies to any vessel or operator engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, or the fishing of overexploited stocks.

However, a country can grant or maintain subsidies implemented “to rebuild the stock to a biologically sustainable level”.

The agreement also prohibits subsidies for unregulated fishing on the high seas, including areas outside the jurisdiction of coastal countries, thus providing protection in cases where stock management measures are lacking.

According to a widely cited study in the Marine Policy journal, global fisheries subsidies totalled $35.4 billion in 2018, of which $22 billion contributed to increased fishing fleet capacity.



– Notification and dispute settlement –



The agreement says countries must “take special care and exercise due restraint” when granting subsidies to vessels not flying their own flag, and when granting them to fishing or related activities if the status of the stocks concerned is unknown.

Besides regular notifications of subsidies, WTO members are required to update the organisation on how the agreement is being implemented.

This includes, for example, the status of fish stocks, information on vessels receiving subsidies, and a list of vessels and operators that the country has determined to be engaged in IUU fishing.

In the event of disagreements, countries can refer matters to the WTO’s dispute settlement body.



– Developing countries –



The agreement provides a “peace clause” to the world’s least-developed countries (LDCs) and developing countries, exempting them from subsidy bans within their own exclusive economic zones for two years.

Furthermore, developing countries and LDCs whose annual share of the global fish catch does not exceed 0.8 percent can submit their fisheries notifications to the WTO every four years instead of every two years.

They will also benefit from technical assistance, and the WTO has set up a special fund to support them, which to date has received $18 million in voluntary contributions.



– Agreement could be thrown overboard –



If the second agreement outlining comprehensive rules on overcapacity and overfishing is not adopted within four years, the first agreement will be “immediately terminated”, unless WTO members decide otherwise.

Brazil’s Amazon lost area the size of Spain in 40 years: study


By AFP
September 15, 2025


The Amazon forest nears a 'point of no return' after losing 13 percent of its area in Brazil in the past 40 years - Copyright Government of Papua New Guinea/AFP Handout

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has shrunk by an area as big as Spain over four decades and is nearing a dangerous tipping point, according to monitoring data released Monday.

The Amazon was approaching a “point of no return” of 20 to 25 percent vegetation loss at which it “ceases to sustain itself as a rainforest,” said Bruno Ferreira, a researcher at the MapBiomas monitoring platform.

“When too much vegetation is lost, the rain cycle is disrupted, and large areas tend to transform into drier savannas.”

Brazil, which will host the UN COP30 climate conference in the Amazonian city of Belem in November, is home to 60 percent of the rainforest which spans nine countries.

Satellite images studied by MapBiomas showed the loss of 49.1 million hectares (121 million acres) of rainforest between 1985 and 2024.

If other types of plant life are included, the Amazon has lost 13 percent of its native vegetation in that time, the data showed.

MapBiomas said that livestock farming had increased almost fivefold in the period studied.

Deforestation had slowed after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to office in 2023.

However, a historic drought fueled forest fires in the region, leading to a four-percent increase in deforestation between August 2024 and July 2025.

Austria hit with fresh spy claims after govt promises law change


By AFP
September 16, 2025


The IIASA was founded during the Cold War to promote scientific exchanges between East and West - Copyright AFP VALENTINO DARIELL DE SOUSA
Blaise GAUQUELIN

Austria has long seen itself as a bridge between Moscow and the West — remaining constitutionally neutral since 1955 and hosting numerous UN and other international institutions.

But in recent years it has had to deal with a slew of allegations concerning Russian espionage.

In the latest, researcher Dmitry Erokhin was accused of having links to Pravfond, a sovereign wealth fund which is under EU sanctions. It was set up by Moscow and is believed to have funded disinformation projects and defended espionage suspects.

Erokhin works at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) near Vienna and since 2019 has written on Arctic navigation, Chinese investment in Eastern Europe, misinformation and conspiracy theories.

He has collaborated with three other IIASA researchers, who all trained in Russia, according to information they shared on social media.

A recent investigation by Austrian daily Der Standard published in May alleged that he headed an association from 2022 until 2024 dedicated to “promoting cultural, legal, and human values in general”, headquartered at the same address as the Russian Cultural Institute in Vienna.

Erokhin used this association to operate a contact point for legal aid for the Russian diaspora in Austria and Pravfond paid him, the paper alleged citing internal emails and documents.

The claims were part of a wider probe by journalist consortium the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

That investigation led to the arrest of a Russian national linked to Pravfond in Denmark in June.



– ‘No evidence’ –



The IIASA, which was founded during the Cold War to promote scientific exchanges between East and West, said it conducted an internal inquiry into the claims.

“IIASA found no evidence of wrongdoing on Mr. Erokhin’s part,” a spokeswoman told AFP. “He is currently still employed by IIASA,” she added.

The researcher “has denied involvement” with Pravfond and “intends to pursue legal action”, the spokeswoman said.

Der Standard said it had received a lawyer’s letter demanding Erokhin’s name be removed from its online article but “no formal complaint”.

“We see no reason to modify our report,” the daily told AFP.

Erokhin himself did not respond to AFP requests for comment.

Austria’s foreign ministry confirmed Erokhin “still holds a valid visa” as the government “has no further information from police” incriminating him.



– EU funds –



The case has demonstrated the difficulties in prosecuting suspected spying cases under Austrian law when they are not “to Austria’s detriment”.

The conservative-led government, which came to power this year, has vowed “to widen” the scope of spying offences.

But so far it has not given any further details.

According to its 2024 report, the IIASA received more than 19 million euros ($22 million) in contracts and subsidies, some of which came from the European Union.

In April, the European Union’s Court of Auditors criticised the lack of oversight to ensure that entities funded with European money adhered to EU values.

A group of members of the European Parliament has been tasked to scrutinise NGO-awarded contracts to produce a report.

Its first meeting is due next month but it is not expected to probe IIASA — for now.

The IIASA’s more than 500 researchers come from all over the world, including Ukraine, Russia, Israel and Iran.

Its state members include countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. IIASA can no longer collect Russia’s participation fees, even though the country remains a member, due to sanctions imposed on it.