Gavin Newsom has warned that the Trump administration is preparing to use the killing of Charlie Kirk to dismantle democratic institutions under the guise of lowering crime.
The California governor took issue with a pledge that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller made earlier on Monday during an appearance on the show Kirk once hosted.
Miller told Vice President JD Vance that the administration is “going to channel all the anger we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.”
Miller cited “the organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses—combining that with messaging designed to trigger and incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence.”
“It is a vast domestic terror movement,” Miller went on. “With God and as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks, and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
Rather than joke once more about one of the architects of Trump’s immigration and crime crackdown, Newsom pushed back in a serious tone.
“Wake up, America,” the Democrat wrote on X. “Stephen Miller has already publicly labeled the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization. This isn’t about crime and safety. It’s about dismantling our democratic institutions. We cannot allow acts of political violence to be weaponized and used to threaten tens of millions of Americans.”
Newsom, who strongly condemned Kirk’s shooting and offered condolences to his family, attached a clip of Miller on Fox News ranting about how the Democratic Party is “not a political party” but a “domestic extremist organization.”
Wake up, America.Stephen Miller has already publicly labeled the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization.This isn’t about crime and safety.It’s about dismantling our democratic institutions.We cannot allow acts of political violence to be weaponized and used to… https://t.co/yqiJo1Oh7o pic.twitter.com/h9CvlhRTVQ
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 15, 2025
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Miller’s attack surely has the approval of his boss, Donald Trump. After Kirk’s shooting, Trump lashed out at “radical left lunatics.”
Rhetoric from the “radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today,” Trump said in a video posted by the White House on Wednesday, the night of the shooting. He then came to the defense of right-wing extremists by arguing their actions are borne out of such a strong desire to prevent crime.
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