Republican lawmakers have had enough of the First Amendment in the aftermath of the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Representative Clay Higgins said Thursday that he planned to use his congressional seat to convince tech platforms to go after anyone who “belittled” Kirk’s death.

Kirk was fatally shot during a “Prove Me Wrong” table event at Utah Valley University, where he’d invited college students to debate him. Kirk’s final words were in a debate about gun violence in the United States. 

“If they ran their mouth with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution … those profiles must come down,” Higgins wrote on X. 

“So, I’m going to lean forward in this fight, demanding that big tech have zero tolerance for violent political hate content, the user to be banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER,” he continued. “I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked.

“I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” he said. “I’m starting that today. That is all.”

Ironically, Higgins was the subject of social media censorship in 2020 after he posted on Facebook threatening Black Lives Matter protesters, writing that he would shoot and “drop any 10 of you where you stand.” Higgins’s post was removed for inciting or facilitating “serious violence.” 

Kirk seemingly supported the free expression of political ideas—no matter how controversial.

Now lawmakers disturbed by his horrific death want not only to curb free speech on the internet but to punish it too. 

Already, the notorious hate account Libs of TikTok has launched a doxxing campaign targeting apparent Democrats who made callous comments celebrating Kirk’s death on the internet, as part of a newly declared “war” on liberals. 

Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna also called on social media platforms to remove the videos of the shooting, and Representative Lauren Boebert agreed. 

“He has a family, young children, and no one should be forced to relive this tragedy online,” Luna wrote on X. “These are not the only graphic videos of horrifying murders circulating—at some point, social media begins to desensitize humanity.”

Boebert replied, “Thank you!!! I agree completely! I NEVER want to see that again!! I hate that I saw it at all.”

Lily Tang Williams, a Republican congressional candidate from New Hampshire, also responded: “I respectively disagree. Freedom of speech includes content we don’t like or hate,” she said.  

“It hurts to watch the video, but we must defend free speech as the foundation of our Republic, no matter how horrible it is,” she wrote. “Where would you draw the line?  Who decides what people can see?  Censorship is one of the primary tools of authoritarians for a reason—always couched in terms of safety or sentiment. Censorship is not the answer.”

Williams wrote that Kirk “would want us to speak the truth, protect free speech and practice civil discourse which he did!”

Team Biden has struck back after former Vice President Kamala Harris offered scathing criticism of her former boss in an excerpt from her forthcoming book, 107 Days.

In the memoir, Harris called former president Joe Biden’s decision to remain in the race amid rampant health concerns “recklessness,” and decried his ego and ambition.

One former Biden administration member sounded off on Harris in comments made to Axios, arguing that the former vice president’s own deficiencies were the problem.

“Vice President Harris was simply not good at the job,” they said. “She had basically zero substantive role in any of the administration’s key work streams, and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth she was.”

“[President Biden was] not the reason she struggled in office or tanked her 2019 [presidential] campaign,” they continued. “Or lost the 2024 campaign, for that matter. The independent variable there is the vice president, not Biden or his aides.”

In the memoir excerpt, Harris wrote that although she thought it was clear that Biden shouldn’t run again, she never felt comfortable expressing that earlier in his campaign because she thought it would look bad.

Biden’s staff, however, wasn’t buying it.

“I’m not sure the very robust defense of not having the courage to speak up in the moment about Biden running is quite as persuasive as she thinks it is. If this is her attempt at political absolution: Lots of luck in your senior year,” an aide said. “If she had spent a fraction of the time and energy doing the work that she did on complaining, about how she was perceived, she would have been perceived a whole lot better.”

Not all of Biden’s former staffers felt the same contempt for Harris and her memoir, though.

“We all know that the Biden folks treated her and her team like shit. We never thought she would actually say anything,” another aide said, corroborating the claims Harris made in 107 Days. “The staffers across a range of ages and positions that I’m talking to are proud of her.”

Both sides of this conflict feel extremely unsatisfactory. It seems abundantly clear at this point that Biden should have dropped out earlier, and the chorus of staffers and party leaders that told everyone to shut up until it was undeniable should be held accountable.

At the same time, for Harris to come out with all this well after the fact, when she could have tried to make a difference in the actual moment, feels like too little and far too late.

“There were others on the Biden team, though, who really tried to help her thrive as VP. But she and her team did not seize that support and make the most of it,” yet another staffer told Axios. “It is all a tragedy.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered American flags to be flown at half-staff after the deadly shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk—something he did not do when Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, was assassinated months ago.

“In honor of Charlie Kirk, a truly Great American Patriot, I am ordering all American Flags throughout the United States lowered to Half Mast until Sunday evening at 6 P.M.,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after Kirk was shot and killed Wednesday, later issuing a proclamation to that effect. (Unless he was specifically referring to ships at sea, the term the president should have used was “half-staff.”) The president also announced Thursday that he would posthumously award Kirk the presidential medal of freedom.

Observers online noted that such commemorative measures were not extended to Hortman when she and her husband were fatally shot in June by a gunman who also targeted State Senator John Hoffman and his wife (both of whom survived).

On

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