Attorney General Pam Bondi, America’s highest-ranking law-enforcement official, declared in an interview posted to YouTube yesterday that federal law enforcement will “go after” Americans for hate speech. “There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech,” she said. In fact, there is no hate-speech exception to the First Amendment.
In a post on X this morning, Bondi tried to qualify her comments. But the fact that the attorney general of the United States publicly misrepresented long-standing American speech law is ominous, especially in the context of threats made by other Trump-administration officials, their allies, and President Donald Trump himself to target “left-wing” organizations that the administration says promote violence. When ABC News’s Jonathan Karl asked the president this morning what he made of Bondi’s hate-speech comments, Trump responded, “She’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart.” Let’s be clear about what’s happening: At a moment of polarization and political violence, the president and his attorney general are attacking a constitutional right that protects all Americans from abusive majorities.
Bondi issued her original warning on The Katie Miller Podcast, whose host is a former Trump-administration official and the wife of Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff. The episode focused on Charlie Kirk’s assasination. Several minutes into the conversation, Katie Miller claimed that universities are complicit in Kirk’s death because they allow conservatives to be harassed on campus. Bondi agreed, and added that anti-Semitism on college campuses is “disgusting.” She went on, “We’ve been fighting these universities left and right, and we’re not going to stop. There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.”
Miller then asked, “Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people so we show them that some action is better than no action?” Bondi replied, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything. And that’s across the aisle.” Federal agents handcuffing people for hate speech would be a flagrant violation of the Constitution. Confusingly, Bondi then added, “Think about Josh Shapiro,” referring to the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. “They firebombed his house while his wife and children were sleeping upstairs.” That attack was arson and perhaps attempted murder, not hate speech.
Later in the interview, Bondi said, “We’ve got to unite this country against violence. And I have no tolerance––it’s not free speech when you come out and you say it’s okay what happened to Charlie. We’re firing people. We’re seeing people online who are posting hate speech. They should be shut down. They should be stopped from doing this. And they should know there are consequences for your actions.”
Although the statement “It’s okay what happened to Charlie” is abhorrent and warrants social stigma, it is also—undoubtedly—protected speech. Bondi, in her capacity as a federal official, is compelled to tolerate it and prohibited from shutting it down. “The attorney general would be wise to read the words of the Supreme Court,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in a statement, “which has repeatedly held that the ‘proudest boast’ of America’s free speech tradition is ‘freedom for the thought that we hate.’”
In her post this morning, Bondi was more careful. “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime,” she wrote. “For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.” Bondi is correct that true threats and incitement are not protected, but her comments to Miller did not make such a distinction. In that interview, and in another, Bondi seemed ignorant of constitutional law in a way that would be striking for any lawyer and is unacceptable in a U.S. attorney general.
This muddying of distinctions between lawful and unlawful speech is dangerous and chilling. That is why figures as varied as the anti-Trump independent Justin Amash and the MAGA-aligned culture warrior Matt Walsh are calling for Bondi to resign or be fired. “I have LOTS of conservatives on my X feed, and every single one that has commented on Pam Bondi’s vow to prosecute ‘hate speech’ has unequivocally denounced it. As do I,” the conservative writer Rod Dreher posted. “It was a moronic thing to say, and she must retract or resign.” Brit Hume, the chief political analyst for Fox News, wrote: “Someone needs to explain to Ms. Bondi that so-called ‘hate speech,’ repulsive though it may be, is protected by the First Amendment. She should know this.”
The political right has long rejected and even mocked calls from the left to criminalize hate speech. Last year, plenty of observers—myself included—criticized Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate, after he said that there was “no guarantee to free speech on misinformation and or hate speech.” Last month, I reported on the criminalization of hate speech in much of Europe, a trend that Vice President J. D. Vance has criticized. Vance has also said that the Department of Government Efficiency should rehire a staff member who resigned after reports that he’d posted “Normalize Indian hate” and other racist drivel on social media. “I don’t think stupid social-media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance declared.
Presidents swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Having an attorney general who either doesn’t understand the First Amendment or is willfully promising to violate it is at odds with that oath. Should Bondi follow through on her ill-considered pledge to “target” and “go after” Americans for hate speech, she would deserve to be impeached. Doing so in a misguided effort to avenge Kirk’s death, or to celebrate his life’s work, would be especially perverse, because Kirk himself rejected Bondi’s stated views.
“Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” Kirk declared in a 2024 post on X. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
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