"Attorney General Pam Bondi, America's highest-ranking law-enforcement official, declared in an interview posted to YouTube yesterday that federal law enforcement will "go after" Americans for hate speech. "There's free speech, and then there's hate speech," she said. In fact, there is no hate-speech exception to the First Amendment. In a post on X this morning, Bondi tried to qualify her comments."
"When ABC News's Jonathan Karl asked the president this morning what he made of Bondi's hate-speech comments, Trump responded, "She'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." Let's be clear about what's happening: At a moment of polarization and political violence, the president and his attorney general are attacking a constitutional right that protects all Americans from abusive majorities."
"Several minutes into the conversation, Katie Miller claimed that universities are complicit in Kirk's death because they allow conservatives to be harassed on campus. Bondi agreed, and added that anti-Semitism on college campuses is "disgusting." She went on, "We've been fighting these universities left and right, and we're not going to stop. There's free speech, and then there's hate speech.""
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that federal law enforcement will "go after" Americans for hate speech and asserted a distinction between free speech and hate speech. Existing First Amendment law contains no hate-speech exception. Bondi later sought to qualify her remarks on X. President Donald Trump echoed confrontational rhetoric and suggested critics could be targeted. Bondi's statements occurred on The Katie Miller Podcast amid discussion of Charlie Kirk's assassination and accusations that universities allow harassment of conservatives. Observers warned these statements threaten constitutional speech protections during heightened political polarization and violence.
Read at The Atlantic
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