ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The assassination of Charlie Kirk set off a chain of events, and now President Trump and his allies are cracking down on those they perceive as Kirk's critics. Prominent members of the administration are using their official roles to threaten investigations, court cases and other forms of retribution for comments that people make in public and online. To take a broad look at the fight over free speech in this moment, NPR senior White House correspondent, Tamara Keith and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro are both here in the studio. Good to have you here.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good to be here.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Ari.
SHAPIRO: At the end of this busy week, let's just take a step back. How does Jimmy Kimmel's suspension fit into the larger political moment we're in?
KEITH: This week started with Vance guest hosting Charlie Kirk's podcast. And he concluded with this line. He says, when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer. We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.
MONTANARO: Yeah, I mean, it really mirrors the social pressure movement that progressives were undertaking online to regulate hate speech years ago. You know, some people got fired, went after them publicly, naming and shaming them. But that was a diffuse, popular culture, you know, push, not something that's coming directly from the vice president of the United States.
SHAPIRO: So what are the implications of that shift from a popular grassroots bottom-up movement to a top-down campaign from the most powerful individuals in the government?
KEITH: Right. And so Vance was really just amplifying something that had been happening online at a grassroots level all weekend long. High-profile MAGA influencers and an army of keyboard warriors were online naming people who they said were out of line and criticizing Kirk or celebrating his death, and they literally were sending emails and messages to those people's employers.
MONTANARO: Yeah. And Vance's appearance on the Charlie Kirk podcast is where things really shifted from being an online social pressure campaign to being a concerted effort by the White House to use the full weight of the federal government against people that they determined who are not good-faith players as they see it, and now they're operationalizing that.
SHAPIRO: Give us some examples of how the full weight of the federal government is being used in this official government push.
KEITH: So Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, quote, "America will not host foreigners who celebrate the death of our fellow citizens." He said, visas would be revoked on the basis of people's comments. Attorney General Pam Bondi went on a podcast hosted by Katie Miller. Katie Miller is the wife of Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff and architect of many things in the Trump White House. And Bondi said that she would absolutely target protesters engaging in hate speech. She said there's free speech, and then there's hate speech. She ended up walking that back.
MONTANARO: Yeah. And she walked that back because of conservative pushback, but enter FCC chairman Brendan Carr, he went on another right-wing podcast and took aim at late night host Jimmy Kimmel's comments about Charlie Kirk. Carr said, quote, "we can do this the easy way or the hard way," threatening that the FCC would go after local stations that air Kimmel, or parent companies like ABC could do something about it themselves. After pressure campaigns from companies that own a lot of those local stations, ABC then went on to suspend Kimmel. So Trump and Vance and others in the administration made this promise, and now his administration's following through on that threat.
SHAPIRO: So there's the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the chairman of the FCC. But all of this comes down to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which guarantees free speech and a free press. These are bedrock principles. How does everything that happened this week fit with the Trump administration's approach to First Amendment rights?
KEITH: Right. And Charlie Kirk himself said there's no difference between free speech and hate speech. Ilya Somin is a constitutional law expert at the Libertarian Cato Institute. I called him up, and he was very matter-of-fact about it. He told me that government power is very obviously being weaponized against speech. Even as the White House says, free speech is alive and well.
ILYA SOMIN: The very simple answer here is that these people are lying. Their real approach is that they're fine with free speech for those who support them, but not for those who oppose them. If you look at their actual policies, that is the clear pattern that emerges.
KEITH: And the First Amendment applies to the government using its power to suppress speech. It doesn't entitle you to a job, but it does protect you from the government using its power to punish you for saying something it doesn't like.
SHAPIRO: If the First Amendment is ironclad, why is the Trump administration able to do all of these things and what does it imply about the future?
KEITH: Yeah. I mean, there is something that has been going on well beyond this week, which is the Trump administration using its power to crack down on or otherwise punish organizations, institutions that it disagrees with. So you see this with universities, you see this with law firms that did work for democratic causes, and you see it a lot with President Trump using the courts to go after journalists and journalism organizations. And even if he doesn't win those cases, he's gotten settlements in a couple of them, financial settlements, agreements to make changes. You know, the mere prospect of a lengthy and expensive legal fight has a chilling effect, as do threats from the FCC, even if the FCC chairman doesn't act on them.
MONTANARO: You know, look, despite a lot of conservatives campaigning against cancel culture for years, many are turning the other cheek when it comes to the Trump administration now turning the screws on a lot of media organizations and other people in society 'cause they see it as comeuppance, frankly, for what they've seen as liberal bias through the years. They've been upset with that liberal bias across the media, not just news, but many others see what Trump is doing as an abuse of power and endangering American democracy by weakening dissent.
KEITH: And one really interesting thing here is there has been some dissent from conservatives. Ted Cruz, the Republican Senator, said that the FCC commissioner's threats were dangerous as hell and like something right out of "Goodfellas," the mob movie. You know, when the FCC chairman says we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, it's not hard to tell what he wants to happen.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Tamara Keith and Domenico Montanaro. Thank you both.
KEITH: You're welcome.
MONTANARO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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