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In the week since conservative activist was at a Utah university event, comments from some of his critics have ignited a battle over free speech in an increasingly polarized nation.

Kirk, who routinely debated progressive students at his Turning Point USA events and espoused controversial opinions on his podcast, was a stalwart proponent of the First Amendment. 

"Hate speech does not exist legally in America," he last year. "There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment."

But over the last several days, the administration he supported and the president he helped reelect have vowed to crack down on some speech about his death. 

Last week, Pentagon promised to "address" federal employees who mock or celebrate Kirk's death. On Monday, the State Department said it will  over social posts that "celebrate" Kirk's death.

That same day, Vice President JD Vance and to call the employers of anyone "celebrating Charlie's murder."

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday said people who post "hate speech" should be "shut down" and suggested that the Trump administration would pursue people who engage in hate speech. 

"There's free speech, and then there's hate speech," Bondi said in an . "We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech." The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld free speech rights, even if it is hate speech. She later said on X that "hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected." The Justice Department referred Autos News to Bondi's comments when asked whether the administration considers celebrations of Kirk's assassination as threats of violence. 

"Democrat critics are lying about the Administration's actions — this effort will target those committing criminal acts and hold them accountable," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Autos News.

Asked about Bondi's remarks, President Trump told ABC News' Jonathan Karl on Tuesday: "We'll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly; it's hate."

Late Wednesday, ABC announced it would after Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr said the network should "take action" for the comedian's suggestion that Kirk's alleged killer is a Trump supporter. ABC's move came after station owners Nexstar and Sinclair said they were pulling the show indefinitely. Carr and for taking action. 

Nexstar has , a smaller rival, for $6.2 billion, and needs the FCC to approve it. Nexstar told Autos News in a statement it made the decision to pre-empt Kimmel "unilaterally" and did not consult with the FCC beforehand.

On Truth Social, Mr. Trump referred to it as a cancellation and congratulated ABC for "finally having the courage to do what had to be done," and added: "That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!"

Anna Gomez, one of two FCC commissioners working with Carr and the lone Democrat on the commission, called Kimmel's penalty a dangerous new precedent.

"This administration is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression, not because it glorifies violence or breaks the law, but because it challenges those in power and reflects views they oppose," she said on CNN Wednesday.

In a statement on Thursday, she added: "This FCC does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes. … Free speech is the foundation of our democracy, and we must push back against any attempt to erode it."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, also criticized the move. 

"When the head of the FCC is talking openly about taking away the broadcast license, then that is the government trying to exercise censorship. It's not a question of whether you agree with Mr. Kimmel or disagree with Mr. Kimmel. The point is one of the government not coming in and making decisions about whose speech gets heard," she said, adding, "Everyone should care, no matter what your political view is."

In general, the First Amendment — which bars the government from "abridging the freedom of speech" — protects most forms of hateful speech, aside from a narrow set of exceptions that include threats of violence and incitement.

Bondi's initial comments about hate speech stood out among those made by administration officials because of her position as the nation's top prosecutor, said Adam Goldstein, vice president of strategic initiatives at the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. 

"I especially don't want to see an attorney in charge of the Justice Department saying that," he said. "It's the kind of thing that would get you a bad grade in your constitutional law class."

Jenin Younes, a First Amendment attorney who a case accusing the Biden administration of social media censorship, told Autos News, "These are all the same people who were railing against cancel culture and the idea of hate speech just a few years ago, when it was the left doing it."

"The worry is that lawmakers will just define hate speech to mean anything the opposite party says, and so that's why the court has said it's not up to the government to decide what's within the bounds of acceptable discourse and what's not," Genevieve Lakier, a University of Chicago law professor, told Autos News. "There's no definition of hate speech, because the whole point is there's no neutral definition of hate speech."

In most cases, Lakier said, "simply saying 'he had it coming' … does not fit the very, very, very narrow definition of incitement that is available in the case law."

First Amendment legal scholar Eugene Volokh told Autos News that, in most circumstances, the government cannot go after ordinary people for making insensitive or offensive public comments about Kirk's killing.

"It may be in bad taste. It may be bad for the country when people are trying to normalize political violence. But it is protected by the First Amendment," said Volokh, a professor emeritus of law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"I would say it's basically prohibited for the government to say you can't mock or make fun of or even celebrate his death," said Younes, who currently serves as national legal director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Volokh says comments like Bondi's "are likely to further confuse people, whether citizens or law enforcement or others, about what's protected and what's not protected."

"I think they may also kind of send a message that we are going to try to find a way of punishing this speech," Volokh added.

Bondi also said Monday the Justice Department could prosecute businesses that refuse to print photos of Kirk for customers, citing a worker at an Office Depot who declined to print flyers for a Kirk vigil. Office Depot the incident "completely unacceptable" and said the staff member no longer works for the company.

"There is no federal law that prohibits copy shops or print shops from discriminating based on the content of the message," Volokh said. 

A Justice Department spokesperson said Bondi was solely referencing the Office Depot incident, which the department's civil rights division looked into.

Less clear, according to legal experts, is whether the federal government can deport non-citizens or revoke their visas over their views on Kirk, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio . Volokh says the laws around this are "unsettled."

"While it is true that the executive's power when it comes to immigration is very vast, I think the First Amendment constrains it," Younes said. She pointed to the Trump administration's attempts to remove students for participating in pro-Palestinian protests, which have been met with at the district court level.

The First Amendment doesn't stop private employers from for speech, though .

However, in some cases, it can be illegal for the government to use its power to pressure a private company into firing a staff member — a concept known as "jawboning."

Government officials can try to private companies to take a certain action, according to Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, but they cannot coerce companies by making threats.

Volokh said it likely doesn't qualify as jawboning if elected officials merely express the view that people should be fired, as long as they don't cross the line into threatening to take action. For example, on Vance's call for people to contact the employers of anybody who celebrates Kirk's death, Volokh said, "it's hard to see that as unconstitutional."

"You would have to show the private employer didn't want to fire you, but they were just acting because they were afraid of some kind of repercussions from the government," noted Younes.

There's a fine line between broadly encouraging companies to fire employees who praised Kirk's assassination, and giving instructions to specific firms, according to Goldstein. He pointed to a contrast between Vance's comments advising podcasts listeners to call people's employers, and a tweet by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

Duffy praised American Airlines, United and Delta for suspending employees, and wrote, "The next step should be to fire them."

"A rational airline who sees this message might feel some coercive effect on their decision making," said Goldstein, noting Duffy's power over the airline industry.

Lakier said it's not a violation of the First Amendment if a company fires an employee of their own volition. But, she said, "the problem is, in many of these cases, it's going to be because of political sympathy."

"The employers who are firing them, maybe implicitly fear that if they don't, they're going to face the government's wrath or they want to curry favor by firing," she said.

In general, however, "If we're talking about private companies and you are an at-will employee, then that means exactly as it sounds like, which is that an employer can fire you at will," Autos News legal contributor Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. 

In many cases, Trump allies have spotlighted public employees who criticize Kirk. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth celebrations of Kirk's death by service members or civilian workers "unacceptable" last week, and said the Pentagon is "tracking" them. Since then, at least one Marine officer has been relieved of his recruiting duties pending an investigation into his post about Kirk, and two Army officers have been suspended pending a review into their posts, according to a Marine official and an Army official. 

A Secret Service agent who expressed negative opinions about Kirk on Facebook last week.

At the state level, Oklahoma's top education official teachers who celebrate Kirk's assassination "will be banned from teaching," and teachers in have been investigated or placed on leave over their comments. Others have against employees at public colleges like Clemson University.

People who work for the government have some free speech protections, especially for speech that they make while off the clock, legal experts say. 

"Government employees do have First Amendment rights of freedom of speech," said Calvert. "However, those rights are not unlimited and may be restricted if the employee's speech somehow interferes with the ability of the employer … to effectively and efficiently deliver its services to the public."

Calvert said "every case is going to be unique." 

Prior court rulings have established several factors for assessing the speech rights of government employees, according to Calvert and Volokh. Those include whether the worker spoke in their personal capacity, whether it relates to a matter of public concern and whether the worker's right to speak out outweighs in delivering its services.

But the military is a slightly separate case, according to Volokh, because "there are more restrictions that are permissible on service members' speech."

Volokh said the military is different "in part because of a sense that … this is an environment where discipline is really important, where self-discipline is really important, where unit cohesion is really important, where commitment to the right ideas is very important."

Some First Amendment advocates are uncomfortable with vocal calls for people to be fired — even if they don't run afoul of the Constitution.

"It's going very, very far. This is not being limited to people saying, 'I'm glad Charlie Kirk is dead and I wish everyone like him was dead, too,'" Younes said. "It's being applied to people who just are saying they didn't like Charlie Kirk."

Goldstein said that some officials may be understandably lashing out after the death of their friend, but particularly in the context of Kirk's career as free speech advocate, the reaction has gone too far.

"What a weird way to react in memory of Charlie Kirk, who was known for listening to people and disagreeing with them, and moving on," Goldstein said.