WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO RELY ON REPUBLICANS TO FIGHT OUR BATTLES WITH TRUMP

Apparently there are limits to how far the right will go in order to punish speech critical of Charlie Kirk:

Attorney General Pam Bondi provoked a broad backlash this week after announcing she would “absolutely target” protesters engaging in “hate speech” ...

Ms. Bondi was roundly pilloried for her initial remarks by a slew of conservative pundits, authors and lawmakers on social media within minutes of delivering them....

Among the critics:

The National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke wagered that the Supreme Court would reject Bondi’s view 9-0.

“She should know this,” Fox News analyst Brit Hume said about hate speech being protected by the Constitution.

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson wagered that such a standard could lead to prosecutions of preachers for opposing gay marriage.

And the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote:

Is a basic understanding of the First Amendment too much to expect from the nation’s Attorney General? ...

“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,” the country’s top law enforcer told a podcast. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Kirk would want a word. “My position is that even hate speech should be completely and totally allowed in our country. The most disgusting speech should absolutely be protected,” he once told a crowd....

Why? “As soon as you use the word ‘hate,’ that is a very subjective term,” Kirk said, in a video posted by his group in 2020. “Then all of a sudden it is in the eyes, or it is in the implementation, of whomever has the power.”

Bondi has backtracked:

The pushback was apparently enough that Bondi attempted to clarify her remarks later Tuesday, telling Axios that the Justice Department isn’t prosecuting alleged hate speech and will only prosecute statements that incite violence.

“Freedom of speech is sacred in our country, and we will never impede upon that right,” she said in her statement to Axios.

This is good news -- but do you notice who's absolutely silent on this issue, as on most issues? The leadership of the Democratic Party in Washington. I can't find any defenses of free speech from Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries. I know they're focused on the budget, but Republicans always seem to have the bandwidth to focus on more than one subject at a time. If they can do it, why can't Democrats?

Almost as disappointing to me is the fact that most congressional progressives aren't talking about this either. Nor are outsider progressives who are running for the House or Senate. I see what progressives are focusing on, and I understand: Gaza, the ICE crackdown, the unaffordability of healthcare in America. But if establishment Democrats won't defend basic civil liberties, progressive candidates and memnbers of Congress need to step up.

Because the administration may no longer be on the verge of prosecuting Americans for online hate speech, but it may still be preparing to prosecute in-person protesters under organized-crime statutes.

The Justice Department’s No. 2 official said Tuesday that people noisily protesting President Donald Trump could face investigation if they’re part of broader networks organizing such activities.

“Is it ... sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner in Washington, D.C., and accost him with vile words and vile anger?” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Tuesday on CNN. “Does it mean it’s just completely random that they showed up? Maybe, maybe, but to the extent that it’s part of an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States, there’s potential, potential investigations there.”

Deputy AG Blanche: RICO is available to all kinds of organizations committing crimes and committing wrongful acts… So is it sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner and accost him with vile words?

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 9:36 PM

He's talking about potentially threatening these people with committing an act of terrorism:

During a rare outing to a local restaurant in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump came face to face with protesters holding Palestinian flags and chanting, “Free D.C., free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time.” The activist group Code Pink claimed credit for the protests.

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— NBC News (@nbcnews.com) September 10, 2025 at 11:20 AM

Someone needs to stand up for the notion that people have the right to say rude things about the president, or about the president's allies, and that if the protest is limited to words, even impolite words, it's un-American to treat it as the legal equivalent of Al Qaeda flying planes into a building. (As Collins says to Blanche in the clip, "RICO has been used to go after, like, al Qaeda, MS-13, the Gambino family.")

During the Biden years, no Democrat attempted to prosecute drivers who decorated their truck beds with an image of the president of the United States tied up in the trunk, not even when then-opposition candidate Donald Trump posted a video featuring the image on social media.

No one argued that the sellers of these decals were part of a terror network. And that was appropriate. This is America. People have the legal right to be rude about the president.

It would be good if some Democrat were making an affirmative case for free speech, the way, earlier this year, Chris Van Hollen made an affirmative case for due process after Kilmar Abrego Garcia was renditioned to El Salvador. We can't wait for Republicans to overreach, or wait for our ideological enemies to make the arguments we should be making. We need to defend basic civil liberties before we lose them.