![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-18-at-10.06.20-AM.png\")
The administration\u2019s use of a violent crime as a justification to suppress domestic political dissent, curtail free expression, and crack down on political opposition in an attempt to consolidate power not only raises serious concerns but violates the First Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zack Beauchamp<\/strong> calls the campaign to police speech The third Red Scare<\/a>. The right\u2019s new assault on free speech isn\u2019t cancel culture. It\u2019s worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Em Luetkemeyer<\/strong>\u00a0looks at a\u00a0campaign to identify and punish those who mocked or spoke out against Kirk after his death\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Pen America<\/strong> on how Charlie Kirk\u2019s Murder Spurs McCarthy-Esque Crackdown On Free Expression<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe First Amendment is really hard for everyone the first few times they encounter it. Everyone likes it on paper. Everyone struggles with it in practice. It\u2019s much tougher when the speech you have to tolerate is something you really, really dislike,\u201d says Adam Goldstein<\/strong>, a vice president at the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in this article about Republican\u2019s wavering support for free speech<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n David Graham<\/strong> shows the The Irony of Using Charlie Kirk\u2019s Murder to Silence Debate<\/a>. The conservative activist couldn\u2019t have risen to prominence without robust free speech<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spencer Ackerman<\/strong> looks at how the Trump administration is using The War on Terror Template for the Post-Charlie Kirk Crackdown<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n David Roth<\/strong> on how private citizens and businesses are targeted in this campaign and how the \u201cbombast and frantic bullying is doing real and unjust damage in actual people’s lives\u201d in his article The United States of Snitches<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In an attempt to blame \u201cthe left\u201d for the assassination, Republicans have engaged in a campaign of lies to rewrite Kirk\u2019s work and rhetoric as Aaron Regunberg<\/strong> writes in his piece The Right\u2019s Scary Quick Campaign to Exploit Charlie Kirk\u2019s Death.<\/a> Republicans are organizing around the idea that fiction is reality\u2014and too many liberals are playing along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Ta-Nehesi Coates<\/strong> on how pundits and politicians are whitewashing Charlie Kirks\u2019s record: Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The wholesale defamation of everything and everyone liberally inclined or left of center as the source of violence, the attacks on conservative politicians, and the murder of Charlie Kirk, does not reflect reality. \u00a0A study by the National Institute of Justice found that \u201cwhite supremacist and far-right violence \u2018 continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism\u2019 in the United States.\u201d \u00a0The study\u2019s finding were featured on the website of the Department of Justice until recently, and has since been deleted, Emanuel Maiberg\u00a0writes in 404media<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to trying to sanitize Charlie Kirk\u2019s legacy, the Trump administration is attempting to rewrite history and ignoring ugly chapters of American history. According to the Washington Post<\/a>, the National Park Service had been ordered to stop using the photo of a formerly enslaved man whose back is heavily scarred by whippings in its displays. The 1863 photo of a man named Peter, known as the “Scourged Back<\/a>” image, has long been used to show the horrors of slavery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In contrast, the congregation of King\u2019s Chapel, a historic site on the Freedom Trail, which is a walking tour through downtown Boston leading to more than a dozen sites of significance to the American revolution and later historic events, decided to confront the church\u2019s history. \u00a0Visitors to the site will now see an\u00a0over 4 meter tall statue of a black woman in a white dress, releasing birds from a cage. \u00a0The statue \u201cUnbound\u201d is to honor the\u00a0219 people who were enslaved by the church\u2019s forebears.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THIS WEEK IN… FREE SPEECH CRACKDOWN The fallout of the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk is a coordinated campaign by administration officials and right-wing figures to vilify everyone perceived as liberal or left of center as a danger to the country. It has led to the doxxing, firing, or suspension of teachers, private sector workers, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","item_id":"","pf_source_link":"","item_date":"","item_author":"","item_link":"","item_feat_img":"","item_wp_date":"","item_tags":"","source_publication_name":"","source_publication_url":"","nomination_count":"","sortable_item_date":"","item_description":"","pf_word_count":"","pf_forward_to_origin":"no-forward","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13,7,12],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-politics","tag-crackdown","tag-democracy","tag-free-speech"],"nominators":[],"archiveOrgStatus":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"attributes":{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true},"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"attributes":{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true},"href":"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}…In Other News<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Scourged_back_by_McPherson__Oliver_1863_retouched-2.jpg\")
An 1863 photograph entitled “Scourged Back,” depicts an enslaved man named Peter with prominent whip scars.
McPherson and Oliver circa 1863<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.halatomat.com\/thisweek\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-18-at-10.38.35-AM-1.png\")