Pam Bondi Is Clueless About the First Amendment

"It was quite alarming last week when President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office and tried to indict "the radical left" - his usual term for the Democratic Party and all his other opponents - for his friend Charlie Kirk's assassination. This was well before any information about the identity or motives of the suspected killer was publicly available."

"In some respects, it's more alarming that Attorney General Pam Bondi, the country's top law-enforcement officer and someone who should be offering the president sound legal advice rather than inflaming his prejudices, has doubled down on the idea that the government should prosecute anyone who said mean things about Kirk or perhaps even the causes he cherished. On Monday, Bondi went on the latest hot MAGA communications channel, Katie Miller's podcast, and expressed a take on the First Amendment that would have earned her a failing grade in a first-year constitutional-law class: Attorney General Pam Bondi: "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...We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech." pic.twitter.com/Bqj6TQOGwP- The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) September 16, 2025"

President Donald Trump publicly accused 'the radical left' of responsibility for Charlie Kirk's assassination before any facts about the suspect's identity or motive were known. The attribution of collective blame for an individual's violence is illegal and incendiary. Attorney General Pam Bondi supported criminalizing and targeting people who expressed criticism or 'hate speech' about Kirk, endorsing employer firings and suggesting civil-rights enforcement against critics. Bondi characterized some speech as outside First Amendment protection and promised prosecutions. The statements risk conflating political dissent with criminal conduct and erode constitutional free-speech safeguards by invoking state power against critics.

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