Charlie Kirk's horrific assassination shattered the political landscape this week. Social media erupted as private companies fired employees who celebrated his death—confused about free speech protections—but then our government began to trample the very principles Kirk himself had championed.

1. Free Employers Punish Free Speech
2. The Ominous Promise of Retribution
3. No Humor in Trump's Media War
4. The Fed Bends the Knee
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Note: No Saturday essay this week—I'm focused on growing The Rebellion.
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In 1981, nineteen-year-old Ardith McPherson sat at her desk in a Texas constable's office when radio crackled with news of President Reagan's shooting. "If they go for him again, I hope they get him," she whispered to her boyfriend. A deputy overheard. She was fired instantly. McPherson sued—and won at the Supreme Court. The government, ruled five liberal justices, could not silence even repugnant political speech by its employees.
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Bold text intended.
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In the hours after the abhorrent assassination of Charlie Kirk, MSNBC’s Matthew Dowd made the vile suggestion Kirk’s “hateful” rhetoric contributed to his own death. He was fired, as were employees of the Washington Post, the law firm Perkins Cole, the Carolina Panthers and many others—their employers citing misaligned values.
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Cries of "cancel culture" and "chilling effect" echoed from politicians and press freedom groups, while social media trolls raged about free speech violations.
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But the First Amendment does not protect speakers against private employers—it restrains only the government. This distinction preserves the foundation of free society: government cannot silence citizens, but neither can government force private entities to amplify voices they find abhorrent.
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Private companies exercising their right to sever ties with employees who mock the murdered isn't oppression—it's the termination of a voluntary association, and a refusal to subsidize those who celebrate a murder of a man who thrived on open debate.
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More troubling was Defense Secretary Hegseth's vow to pursue military personnel who spoke inappropriately about Kirk's assassination. While this appears to violate the McPherson precedent, the 2006 Garcetti v. Ceballos decision carved out a major exception: government employees lose all First Amendment protection when speaking pursuant to their official job duties. The conservative Court prioritized managerial authority over constitutional speech rights, potentially giving Hegseth legal cover.

"We are going to use every resource we have…throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks."
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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's issued this ominous warning in the hours after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. White House advisers are now preparing executive actions that would review tax-exempt status of left-leaning nonprofits and could wield anticorruption laws as political weapons.
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Trump threatens George Soros with RICO charges, claiming his Open Society Foundation funds violent protests. The administration points to allegations that Soros-backed groups like Indivisible have received millions to promote messaging calling Trump supporters "Nazis" and "fascists," creating what they claim fosters violence against conservatives.
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This would constitute a clear violation of their freedom of speech—however hyperbolic it may be.
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Attorney General Pam Bondi now compounds these concerns with her fundamental misunderstanding of constitutional law. "There's free speech and then there's hate speech," she declared, promising to "go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech." The Supreme Court rejected this distinction in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), establishing that only speech promoting "imminent lawless action" loses First Amendment protection. Charlie Kirk himself understood this principle: "As soon as you use the word 'hate,' that is a very subjective term," he once explained. "Then all of a sudden it is in the implementation of whomever has the power."
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Yet FCC Chair Brendan Carr's defense of "almost all speech" provides unexpected constitutional clarity, particularly given his recent threats against media outlets. His restraint on social media regulation offers hope that institutional free speech guardrails might hold.

Trump’s media war reached new heights of absurdity this week when he filed a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times, claiming his "one-of-a-kind, unprecedented personal brand alone is reasonably estimated to be worth at over $100,000,000,000"—a figure Bloomberg pegs at just $5.4 billion.
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Trump claims the Times caused him "reputational and economic harm" by reporting that he inherited and squandered his father's fortune, only rehabilitating his image by hosting The Apprentice. It went on to accuse the Times of being a "full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party."
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That claim is not entirely without merit, but what does that make Fox News?
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The lawsuit, which Reason portrayed as a "breathless hagiography any attorney should be embarrassed to file", went on to argue The Apprentice “represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump's singular brilliance”.
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Trump's narcissistic intimidation campaign would be laughable if government power weren't backing it up. After Jimmy Kimmel inaccurately claimed Monday night that Charlie Kirk's assassin was "one of them"—a MAGA supporter—FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened ABC, saying "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."
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The intimidation worked instantly. ABC pulled "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" off the air indefinitely after Nexstar Media Group, seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger, announced its 32 ABC affiliates would preempt the show "for the foreseeable future."
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Kimmel abandoned comedy for partisan sermonizing years ago, but Americans should be free to deliver their verdict via their remotes—not intimidation by their government.
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Despite projecting inflation will hit 2.6% next year—well above their 2% target—and won't reach that target until 2028, the Fed cut rates anyway this week. Their own data screamed "hold steady," but Trump wanted cuts and Trump got cuts. His appointee Stephen Miran brazenly dissented for even steeper reductions, revealing the political pressure. Jerome Powell claims politics played no role, but when you're cutting rates while predicting three more years of above-target inflation, what else explains it? The Fed is now tolerating higher inflation to appease political demands, abandoning the very mandate that justifies their existence.
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American Renegade of the Week: Danielle Sassoon

After Danielle Sassoon butted heads with her boss, Supreme Court Justice and conservative intellectual giant Antonin Scalia, the junior law clerk cried to her friend—worried she had “pushed too hard, gone too far, and exhausted my good will”.
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Scalia had told her she was “impossible to please,” but instead of seeking retribution for her intellectual insubordination, he incorporated Sassoon’s feedback into his final dissent, even changing the mind of another justice with his modified opinion.
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The incident instilled in Sassoon the courage to fight for the principles she held dear.
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10 years later, Sassoon found herself sitting across Acting Deputy Attorney General Emile Bove in the early days of Trump’s second term. Once Trump’s personal lawyer, Bove delivered an ultimatum: drop the corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, or face the consequences.
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Sassoon, just three weeks into her role as acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, listened as Bove explained how Adams had promised to help Trump's immigration crackdown—but only if the federal bribery charges vanished.
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Justice, it seemed, was now a bargaining chip.
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But Bove had miscalculated. The 38-year-old prosecutor sitting before him wasn't some career climber willing to bend principle for position. She was Scalia’s protégé, and had spent a decade in the Southern District prosecuting cult leaders, crypto fraudsters, and murderers without regard to their connections or political utility.
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Sassoon delivered her answer in an eight-page, bridge-torching resignation letter: "I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams's counsel and without my direct input," she wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
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The evidence against Adams was clear—the mayor had accepted luxury travel from Turkish officials while doing their bidding on city permits. Sassoon refused to be complicit in the charade.
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Since her resignation, Sassoon has re-emerged as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writing and speaking with striking candor about integrity, dissent, and the duty to uphold justice even under political pressure.
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Scalia would have been delighted.

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