Ten years since the Pulse massacre

Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos marked that last Friday was the tenth anniversary of the gay Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. The gunman killed 49 people and wounded 58 others. At the time it was the worst mass shooting in the country and was passed by the Las Vegas shooting the following year. It was, of course, a hate crime and an act of terrorism. In 2023 the city of Orlando bought the property. Just three months ago the building was torn down and the location is being turned into a memorial park, to open in 2027. The Wikipedia entry on the shooting likely has much more detail than most people would want to know. As a war is in urgent need of diplomats Max Burns of Kos discussed the current condition of the State Department. Since the nasty guy retook the Oval Office more than 2,000 career diplomats have left, either retired (sometimes early), voluntary departures, or fired for perceived disloyalty. That includes 195 people with skills in crisis management and important language skills. Secretary Mark Rubio seems very good at not showing up at important times, such as for talks to end the war in Ukraine hosted by Britain. Naturally, morale is low. These departures mean there are a lot of places where the US is not responding to economic and security threats. And China is stepping in to fill the void. This is happening in Latin America and in Africa. When US diplomacy is reduced trade deals are too. American companies and farmers lose out. Iran is enjoying that there are no confirmed ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Iraq, or Kuwait, countries that are the war’s front lines. A crippled State Department also means Iran can easily surprise Rubio and the nasty guy.

Trump’s mismanagement and Rubio’s yes-man complicity will take more than a generation to repair—if it can ever be fully repaired at all. In the meantime, the United States will continue its accelerating decline into a second-tier power less likely to control events and more likely to be controlled by them. Our adversaries couldn’t ask for more.

Clytemnestra of the Kos community went out quite early this morning to get a prime viewing spot to see workers come to the Kennedy Center and take the nasty guy’s name off the side of the building. A judge had ruled since Congress had named the Center only Congress could change its name and his name had to come off yesterday. A lot of people wanted to witness the name coming off. But before the workmen began their work heavy tarps went up, blocking view of the removal. The crew was all done by 3:15am. But at 11:48am the tarps were still in place. So if no one can see that the letters came down how can we verify the judge’s order was followed? Was the tarp put up to spare the nasty guy’s feeling? This all gets so old. Joey Garrison, Susan Page, Michael Loria, and Aysha Bagchi of USA TODAY posted a full article about the removal at 3:00pm today. They did not include a photo of the wall with the name gone and without the tarp. Emily Singer of Kos reported:

President Donald Trump is reportedly trying to expunge his two impeachments—his latest attempt to rewrite history from his disastrous first term. “It should be done because I did nothing wrong,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal. “It was a rigged deal—it was a whole rigged situation.” But forcing Republicans to pass a meaningless resolution just to soothe Dear Leader’s fragile ego would be politically disastrous for the GOP. First, the majority of Americans want Trump to be impeached again—not see his first two impeachments erased.

Second, voting to expunge would remind voters why he was impeached the first two times and that Republicans failed to convict him then. That would not be good for Republicans in November. Now that Bill Pulte has been replaced with Jay Clayton to be Director of National Intelligence please do not assume we dodged a problem. Lisa Needham of Kos reported he’s just as vile and still doesn’t have Intelligence experience as required by law. To get appointed to big jobs by the nasty guy a candidate must audition. Clayton passed the audition by hopping on TV to spread election conspiracy theories about the California primary election. He has no experience in election law either and the new gig is supposed to prohibit him from participating in domestic affairs (not that such a thing stopped Tulsi Gabbard, his predecessor – see Fulton County, Georgia).

So, Clayton’s pick violates the law just as much as Pulte’s would have, but enforcing that law requires a Congress willing to do so. GOP senators have the power to force Trump to pick someone who meets the legal requirements for the job. But if they won’t, then it is going to be Jay Clayton—and it is going to be just as bad as you think.

Despised like nobody has ever been despised before

I have an out of town handbell event this weekend. I probably won’t post again until Wednesday. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that while the US Agency for International Development, USAID, was shuttered, some of its aid to other countries was transferred to the State Department as a method of extortion. This was revealed in a State memorandum prepared for Secretary Marco Rubio. Here are some of the ideas proposed or some of the agreements already forced on African countries. Zambia was told to give the US better access to their copper, lithium, and cobalt or the US will withhold funds for HIV treatment for 1.3 million people. Several countries were forced to give patient data in exchange for health care funding. That is so Americans can detect disease outbreaks sooner and to give US companies first chance to develop vaccines. Nigeria was told they must address the alleged persecution of Christians.

These “deals” are not really deals, as none of the countries that are being pressed into this can effectively negotiate when their health care funding needs are so dire.

Kos of Kos wrote about why opening the Strait of Hormuz will be so difficult. While the Strait is 21 miles wide at its narrowest, the actual shipping channel is only 4 miles wide. Ships must go single file with no room to maneuver. Ships, and any escorts, are easy targets – they move at a predictable pace and can be reached by missiles from shore in seconds. Iran has put mines in the Strait, but minesweepers are slow and easy targets. Planes to protect shipping would also be easy targets. The US could have some great anti-drone equipment and tactics. Ukraine has been developing it over the last four years. But the nasty guy has refused Ukrainian offers.

What’s his problem? Acknowledging Ukrainian expertise would require acknowledging that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy actually does hold some cards—a fact Trump has spent over a year denying out of sheer personal pettiness and bizarre fealty to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing for his Substack:

A stunning poll from Politico — just released, but taken last month — confirms what I and other observers strongly suspected: America is now widely despised, despised like nobody has ever been despised before. ... Why has America’s global reputation fallen so far, so fast? It’s not a mystery. After all, why would anyone consider America a trustworthy ally when Trump keeps insulting our neighbor and former closest ally, Canada, by insisting that it must become the 51st state and repeatedly calling its Prime Minister “governor”? Why trust us when Trump tried to bully NATO member Denmark into handing over Greenland? Beyond that, Trump’s tariffs aren’t just economically damaging. They aren’t just, as the Supreme Court finally ruled, illegal under our own laws. They are also in clear, overwhelming violation of international trade agreements solemnly signed by previous presidents. Given the way the current administration has casually ignored those agreements, why would anyone expect America to honor any future deals?

Beth Mole of Ars Technica reported on a ruling from a US District Court that blocked a lot of harm Robert Kennedy Jr. has been doing. The ruling says Kennedy illegally fired the vaccine advisors board. The replacement board, all of whom hold anti-vax views, did not go through standard vetting. So all of their changes to the vaccine guidance must be undone. In the comments exlrrp posted a meme of the nasty guy speaking, showing why we’re despised.

Then: NATO sucks! Canada sucks! UK leadership is stupid! Denmark sucks! Zelensky sucks! Now: I DEMAND these countries help us secure the Straits! They SHOULD BE HELPING! A voice in the corner: Guess he never heard, “What goes around...!

Globe Observer tweeted: “Trump calls on U.S. media to stop reporting on damage and losses caused by Iran, saying it harms the United States.” Proud Socialist responded: “This is how you know the U.S. isn’t winning the war.” Clay Bennett posted a cartoon of Uncle Sam in a War Room gazing up at the Exit door in the ceiling. Naked Pastor posted a cartoon of Jesus talking to a group of people holding Bibles:

The difference between you and me is you use scripture to determine what love means and I use love to determine what scripture means.

In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Jonathan Last of The Bulwark, appropriate with the comment above about minesweepers.

Mining the Strait of Hormuz is the single biggest danger America faced heading into any conflict with Iran. How did our commander-in-chief plan to deal with it? Six months ago the Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweepers that had been stationed in Bahrain precisely to deal with Iranian mines. It gets dumber: Those four final American minesweepers left the theater in mid-January—while war planning for the current operation must already have been underway. But wait, it gets even dumberer! Our minesweeping capability in the Gulf now relies on Littoral Combat Ships, whose abilities have never been tested in combat. Will the LCS be a suitable replacement for the Avenger-class ships? According to the Navy, um, no?

From NOTUS:

Six months before the Trump administration started bombing Iran, the Department of State fired its oil and gas experts. As the war in Iran stretches into its third week, and the Strait of Hormuz — through which 20% of the world’s oil supply usually flows — remains effectively closed, the U.S. government is without the resources it once had to handle such crises, former State Department employees tell NOTUS.

In the comments Jesse Duquette created a cartoon of Washington crossing the Delaware while an airport signalman guides it ashore. The caption is something the nasty guy apparently said. “Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports.” Duquette added:

Whenever I screw up, I think of the time Trump opined about Revolutionary War airports and the brave patriots who gave their lives at the Battle of Baggage Claim and I’m like “sure I’m dumb but at least I’m not, like, Trump dumb”

Steven Camley posted a cartoon of the nasty guy sitting in a rowboat in the Strait of Hormuz. A sign labels the water, “Shi-ite Creek” and a paddle labeled “NATO” is out of reach. A meme posted by exlrrp shows a way of getting ships in and out of the Persian Gulf without going through the Strait – let godzilla carry the ships across the United Arab Emirates peninsula. In today’s roundup Kev quoted Adam Serwer of The Atlantic discussing the nasty guy’s comment, after being rebuffed by NATO, that America doesn’t need anybody.

This fantasy of complete independence is a long-standing part of American culture. Thomas Jefferson, himself a relatively soft-handed gentleman farmer who left the hard labor to the people he had enslaved, extolled the virtues of the yeoman farmer. The political scientist Richard Hofstadter described this mythic figure as “the incarnation of the simple, honest, independent, healthy, happy human being.” The irony, Hofstadter noted, was that it was really rich, educated men such as Jefferson who romanticized this extremely difficult lifestyle. The typical yeoman farmer wanted to be integrated into the market so that he could sell his crops at a profit and escape his hardscrabble circumstances. That romantic “self-sufficiency” was in fact “usually forced upon him by a lack of transportation or markets, or by the necessity to save cash.” [...] Too many Americans believed that Trump’s mass deportation could occur without forcing families into hiding, cutting into businesses’ profits, or shooting people dead in the street. They believed that tariffs could replace global trade and revive the manufacturing industry, making the U.S. self-sufficient, when instead the burden has fallen on American farms and firms. They couldn’t see that when people lose their jobs, or go sick or hungry, it becomes everyone’s problem eventually. This desire to be severed from others culminates in the trad fantasy of a wife who keeps the homestead clean while her husband runs a self-sufficient ranch, the whole family secure with their MREs, AR-15, and safe full of gold collectibles when the apocalypse comes.

In the comments is another cartoon by Naked Pastor. Jesus tells a crowd:

I was never recorded and never wrote a book. So when someone says, “Jesus said this!” they should mean “Someone said Jesus said this!”

BioGeneticsGirl of the Kos community asked the community to come up with slogans for the third No Kings protest, which is in a bit more than a week (I’m sure there’s one near you). Some of what they came up with: knowdaboom: “Top 0.1%’s wealth has doubled in the last 5 years. How’s your family doing?” karmsysback: “Can’t we fast-forward to where he takes cyanide in his bunker?” Sally DeLurks: “Whatever happened to ‘No more wars?’” slowthought: “Regime Change Begins At Home” Albion1 posted a few from a local Indivisible Facebook page. One of them: “Hey, Trump, nobody paid us, we all hate you for free!” Progressive Muse suggests we borrow from Bad Bunny’s Superbowl Halftime Show, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

Stand in Arlington when you make your pitch for war

My Sunday “movie” was the Oscar ceremony. It was sufficiently entertaining – Conan O’Brien did a decent job and there was some good banter by the presenters. But there were only two performances of the nominated songs and I haven’t watched and don’t intend to watch most of the films nominated for Best Picture, especially Sinners and One Battle After Another, both of which got several awards (I did see and enjoy Hamnet and pleased Jessie Buckley won Best Actress). I did enjoy seeing Koreans take the Best Song, though I pay little attention to K-Pop. In all, a decent evening. Jessica Kutz, in an article for The 19th posted on Daily Kos, discussed several ways women are pushing the movie industry to be more sustainable. Sheila Morovati is pushing the studios to modify scripts to promote sustainable behaviors, such as having characters carrying reusable water bottles, taking reusable bags into a store, having characters walk or carpool instead of drive alone, have characters eat a vegan meal, or just put a vegan restaurant in the background. Morovati has worked through Universal to do such things as use hybrid and electric vehicles to transport cast and crew (and show EVs on screen) and donate materials, such as wood and costume fabric, when shooting is done. Allison Begalman started the Hollywood Climate Summit to help the industry learn how to be part of the climate crisis solution. The inaugural program took place online and attracted 15,000 people. The summit is now a place where climate people and entertainment people can mix. One result is a Grey’s Anatomy episode that demonstrated how extreme heat could strain a hospital. Idea placement has worked before, such s Mothers Against Drunk Driving getting shows to feature designated drivers, which was credited with reducing traffic fatalities in the 1990s. Hillary Cohen was shocked at the food waste at some shows, so created an organization to take unused food to organizations that help people facing food insecurity. Last year they moved 140,000 of food. She has added picking up things like furniture and kitchen appliances bought for commercial shoots but not needed after two or three days. The war in Iran rages on. Hannah Allam, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported on the civilian casualties of the war, especially the bombing of the elementary school in Minab where the death toll has passed 165. And...

[Air Force combat veteran Wes J.] Bryant, a former special operations targeting specialist, said he couldn’t help but think of what-ifs as he monitored fallout from the Feb. 28 attack. Just over a year ago, he had been a senior adviser in an ambitious new Defense Department program aimed at reducing civilian harm during operations. Finally, Bryant said, the military was getting serious about reforms. He worked out of a newly opened Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, where his supervisor was a veteran strike-team targeter who had served as a United Nations war crimes investigator. Today, that momentum is gone. Bryant was forced out of government in cuts last spring. The civilian protection mission was dissolved as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority. And the world has witnessed a tragedy in Minab that, if U.S. responsibility is confirmed, would be the most civilians killed by the military in a single attack in decades.

Threadreader has a thread by Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut on four current crises: First, The nasty guy believed Iran would not close the Strait of Hormuz, stopping the flow of oil, though Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told him the closure was possible. Second, a conventional war might destroy all of Iran’s missiles, but this is a drone war and there is no way to destroy all of those. The drones are quite effective. Third, Iranian proxies are attacking Israel. This has prompted Israel to attack Lebanon. An attack on Syria could cause it to explode again. Four, the nasty guy has no endgame. Escalate and there will be thousands of dead Americans. Declare victory and go home and the Iranian hardliners simply rebuild. NPR host Mary Louise Kelly spoke to NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre and White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez. The nasty guy has been calling on other countries to help the US to open the Strait of Hormuz and get oil flowing again. They are declining to assist, giving a blend of reasons: It’s not their war. It is a dangerous mission. The nasty guy didn’t consult with them before he started the war. European leaders are concentrating on the war in Ukraine. And he has been insulting them regularly. Back in the 1980s the US did escort ships out through the Strait of Hormuz. But warfare is different now, mostly because of drones. Escort ships just become another target. Also, 20 US ships would need a long time to escort the more than 1,000 ships in the Gulf. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted ABC News:

Oil is a leading cause of modern-day war—with between one-quarter and one-half of interstate wars between 1973 and 2007 linked to oil, an analysis published in the journal International Security said.

I don’t know why the report stopped at 2007. A lot of wars since then have also been over oil. More of the quote:

The war with Iran, and the disruption to energy markets caused by the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, should trigger nations to a swifter exit from fossil fuel dependence, Simon ⁠Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told Reuters in an interview on Monday. "If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, ​breaking dependencies which have shackled economies, this is the time," Stiell said.

In last Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer discussing the North Vietnamese taking over Saigon, ending a war that had caused 58,000 American troop deaths.

The legendary then-NBC newsman David Brinkley wrote a commentary on what had just happened, and then went with a camera crew to the rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery where so many of the war dead were buried. “When some future politician, for some reason, feels the need to drag this country into a war, he might come out to Arlington and stand right over there somewhere to make his announcement and to tell what he has in mind,” Brinkley said. “If he can attract public support speaking from a place like this, then his reasons for starting a new war would have to be good ones.”

The nasty guy didn’t bother with public support. For my friend and debate partner is a little bit from Quanta magazine. Georg Cantor is famous for an 1874 paper discussing different sizes of infinity. It seems in the year before Cantor had corresponded with Richard Dedekind who had helped Cantor understand infinity. So did Cantor plagiarize Dedekind? In the comments is a cartoon by Drew Sheneman showing a military ops room where a soldier tells a superior, “We tried recruiting ICE agents to fight in Iran but all 20,000 came down with a wicked case of sudden onset bone spurs.” Another reason I heard is that Iran shoots back. A cartoon by Clay Bennett shows a man filling up his gas tank and glancing at the sign by the street that says, “Prices Don’t Ask.” In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted a tweet by First Squawk:

TRUMP SAYS ON IRANIAN SLEEPER CELLS: THERE COULD BE MORE THAN 1,700

Jon Aguiar responded:

We spent the last 9 months raiding Home Depot parking lots instead of arresting anyone from the massive network of Iranian terrorist cells?

Daniel Dale of CNN discussed a Republican release of an AI deepfake of Texas Democratic candidate for Senate James Talarico that is quite good.

The use of AI deepfakes in campaign advertising raises a host of ethical questions. It has also prompted some bipartisan calls for federal legislation or regulation on the practice, though those ideas have also faced pushback on First Amendment grounds.

An article on Reuters reported that Pope Leo has been calling for an end to the violence in Iran and also saying Christians who start wars should go to confession. Leo didn’t name anyone, but several in the nasty guy’s administration, including the vice nasty and Sec. of State Marco Rubio, are Catholic. In the comments is a cartoon by Toonerman:

Sen. Lindsey Graham: “I go back to South Carolina, I’m askin’ them to sen their sons and daughters to the Mideast.” Make Trump Proud! A woman: Or, Lindsey, why don’t you and the rest of the Washington War Pigs go and fight your own damn war.

The Wolfpack posted a meme showing a lion, elephant, giraffe, zebra, and two green skin aliens watching planes shoot missiles at buildings. One of the aliens says, “Humans are really stupid.” In the comments of Monday’s roundup exlrrp posted a tweet by BBC Breaking News:

US President Donald Trump urges UK and other nations to send ships to help secure key Strait of Hormuz oil trade route

Jamie Carroll of Canada responded:

The owner of the largest Navy in the history of the world would like sailors from other countries to die in a war he started without consulting anyone. Pass, thanks.

A story that’s been going around and getting a lot of lampooning is of the nasty guy giving many of the men of his administration a pair of his favorite Florsheim shoes – without asking for shoe size. Rubio has been seen wearing shoes too big for him because none of them men want to displease the nasty guy by not wearing his gift. In among the created images spoofing Rubio’s shoes and clothes is one posted by exlrrp. It is an AI generated meme of Rubio steering a pirate ship that looks like a shoe. The caption says, “Breaking News. Captain Marco Littlefoot volunteers to lead oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Convoys instructed to maintain heel-to-toe formation.” Emily Singer of Kos reported on Monday that the nasty guy is realizing the Iran war won’t be the quick venture he had assumed and is now lashing out. This post has details of his request to NATO for assistance and being rebuffed. There are also details of the nasty guy’s attempts to silence any media that doesn’t report on the war in glowing terms. Perhaps media companies learned from extensive reporting of Bush II lies for invading Iraq? Now many outlets are reporting the nasty guy’s miscalculations.

Running at warp speed into government censorship

I finished the book Gaslighting; Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People – and Break Free, by Stephanie Moulton Sarkis, PhD. She’s a therapist working in Tampa and a specialist in gaslighting. I bought the book thinking it would describe gaslighting in great detail while standing a ways away and discussing well known gaslighters. But it is much more up close and personal – how to deal with a gaslighter in your life. The term comes from a 1938 play and 1944 movie in which a man convinces a woman she is going crazy because she is told and begins to believe things that are clearly not true. Some of the traits: A gaslighter can be charming, but is overly controlling and abusive. They pit people against each other, they don’t accept responsibility, they mistreat people with less power and use their weakness against them, they obsess over their accomplishments and image, they want you to fawn over them, they con people, they lie, they isolate others as a way to control, the few compliments they give out are more like insults, they require loyalty but don’t give it, and more. Many gaslighters have suffered a narcissistic injury a profound and deep threat to their self-worth or self-esteem. Yeah, that very much sounds like the guy sitting in the Oval Office. And I’m not the first to make that connection. It is one reason why I bought the book. People who have lived with a gaslighter for a long time may not recognize what a healthy relationship looks like. That’s one reason they stay in it. The other is they keep hoping the gaslighter will change, as he says he will do and never does. So most of the book is about what to do when in a relationship with a gaslighter. Short answer: leave. He’s not going to change. The relationship will only get worse. Sarkis describes how to leave and how complete the break needs to be. But sometimes complete separation isn’t possible. Such as when the gaslighter is a coworker, neighbor, your sibling and your parent will try to keep the connection, your ex and you still have to co-parent, or your ex’s new partner. Sarkis then provides a lot of help in how to treat the gaslighter to maintain your own sanity, the sanity of your children, and your reputation. There is also a chapter on what to do when the gaslighter is a politician. The last chapter is if you realize you might be a gaslighter. Sarkis makes a distinction between a gaslighter and one who has learned gaslighting behavior because that’s all they’ve known. A gaslighter will not see they have a problem and will not seek counseling. So if you do recognize such behaviors in yourself you’re not a gaslighter and there is hope to learn how to build healthy relationships. In that chapter Sarkis describes various methods of counseling so that a person can choose what is right for them. Sarkis also lists resources for therapists, attorneys, employee rights, and help for minors, coparenting, domestic violence, and suicide. Thankfully, no one I’m directly involved with is a gaslighter, so this book isn’t directly useful to me. However, it is a necessary and important resource to those who have to deal with one. I will donate this book to a young man I know. Last Saturday on NPR host Alisa Chang spoke to Jude Joffe-Block and Huo Jingnan, also of NPR, about those who criticized Charlie Kirk after his assassinated last week and are losing their jobs. This is three days after Kirk died. Joffe-Block said:

Kirk's supporters and high-profile, right-wing influencers, along with some elected officials, have been mobilizing to get people fired for posting in a celebratory way about Kirk's murder.

Those celebratory comments seem, to me, rather mild, such as saying: hate begets hate, zero sympathy. A reminder, Kirk had made incendiary remarks about races, immigrants, transgender people, and others. The types of people being fired include “teachers, civil servants, nurses, doctors” and I’m sure many others. Whether their firings violate Free Speech depends on the job and what was said, but in many cases no laws were violated. This effort is troubling in an important way. Conservative influencers on social media highlight cases and, the troubling part, Republican officials then call for their firing. One of those was Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn and another was Republican Rep. Clay Higgins from Louisiana. Rebekah Tromble, a First Amendment expert said:

We are running at essentially warp speed directly into maybe an even worse moment of government repression and censorship than we witnessed during the McCarthy era.

Joffe-Block again:

You know, the internet is definitely built for these kinds of crowdsourcing projects. You know, Charlie Kirk himself rose to fame for creating a watch list, encouraging students to report professors they consider to be radical left.

On Sunday NPR host Scott Detrow spoke to reporter Luke Garrett. They started with a comment by Utah Governor Spencer Cox:

We can confirm that his roommate was indeed a boyfriend who is transitioning from male to female.

That seems to fuel the Republican claim that Tyler Robinson, the shooter, was under the influence of the radical Left. Did Robinson shoot Kirk because of Kirk’s criticism of transgender rights? While the roommate and the rest of the Robinson family are cooperating with authorities, Tyler is not. His motives remain unknown. Cox, even before the shooting, has been a leading voice for peace and calm. He made the rounds of Sunday talk shows asking whether we want to be a nation of civility or violence. He also called people to get off their devices and have real relationships. Republicans have taken up booing him. Garrett said:

So members of Congress have less security than the president and are often in very public spaces, similar to the one where Kirk was in right before he died. And Oklahoma Senator James Lankford said, something has really changed on Capitol Hill. He told CNN that lawmakers have received 14,000 threats in 2025 alone. That's around 50 threats every day.

Lankford called for the temperature to be turned down on Capitol Hill and the White House. On Monday Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Stephen Miller, the guy behind making sure White House policy is as racist as possible, gave his response to Kirk’s assassination. I won’t quote his nasty words, only that, as Einenkel wrote, the nasty guy administration “would harness the anger over Kirk’s death to dismantle what he described as a coordinated ‘terrorist’ left.” And he’ll do it in Charlie’s name. From what little I know of Kirk and his willingness to debate opponents he would not want the destruction of the Left be done in his name. Then again, he did say some vile things about the left. On Tuesday Emily Singer of Kos reported that AG Pam Bondi declared she will bring the full force of the Department of Justice down on those who spouted “hate speech” against Kirk or any conservative activist. She has no understanding of Free Speech and that any words, except those that defame or that threaten or incite violence, cannot be made illegal. But Bondi contradicts Kirk:

"Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment," Kirk wrote in May 2024 in a post on X. "Keep America free."

Even when conservative commentators quickly schooled Bondi on Free Speech, she still didn’t get it. I don’t want to find out how loosely Bondi defines “hate speech.” On Monday Einenkel quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

Once a society loses the ability of people with strong disagreements to engage in discourse, then the only option you're left with is either silence or violence. Neither one of which is acceptable. Both are very destructive.

Good to hear it! Alas, one doubts Rubio was talking about his own Republican party and trying to get it to tone down. He was almost surely trying to describe the Left and Democrats. Quite rich from the guy who threatened deportation as a way to silence dissent. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote that Republicans aren’t even pretending to care about Free Speech anymore.

The Republican Party’s commitment to free speech has never been full-throated. Rather, their approach has been more of a “free speech for me but not for thee” sort of thing at the best of times. But in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting death, even the nominal lip service conservatives give to the First Amendment is wholly out the window. In its place, we now have pretty much every textbook violation of the First Amendment you can imagine. Lucky us.

Needham then gives many examples. That includes the nasty guy calling for an investigation into is funding all that “alleged nefarious liberal slander of Kirk,” I’m sure the answer is “nobody.” We’re all willing to call out Kirk’s harmful comments for free – does that imply Republicans won’t say anything without being bribed? But even if there was a money trail, the conservative Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United should keep the benefactor protected. Singer sums up the situation well with the opening paragraph of a post:

Conservatives have come up with a host of measures they want taken to avenge right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's murder—none of which include gun reforms.