A group of congressional Democrats said on Thursday that they would introduce legislation to bolster legal protections for people targeted by President Trump for speaking freely, moving to counter his administration’s threats to weaponize the government against his political opponents.
Sponsors of the measure accused Mr. Trump and his lieutenants of exploiting the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist, to undertake a broad federal campaign to silence views and statements they dislike.
The bill was set to be introduced in both the House and the Senate, although there was almost no chance that Republicans would bring such a measure to the floor. Still, it was an opportunity for Democrats to respond in some fashion at a moment they said was an inflection point for the country.
“They aren’t even hiding what they’re trying to do,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said of the Trump administration at a news conference on Thursday, where he previewed the legislation.
A summary of the bill, entitled the No Political Enemies Act, or NOPE, outlined a series of legal protections for people targeted for political speech. It said the bill would create a specific legal defense for those targeted for political reasons and allow them to recover attorney fees if they were subjected to government harassment for expressing their views.
And it would make it easier to sue federal officials for abusing their power to silence critics.
“They don’t want people to even speak when they don’t like what they say,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said at the news conference. “That is the road to autocracy.”
Mr. Schumer said using the death of Mr. Kirk to “super charge” a witch hunt against critics was as “un-American as it gets.”
The group of Democratic lawmakers had planned their news conference before ABC announced on Wednesday night that it was pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from the air indefinitely.
But proponents of the legislation cited ABC’s decision, which was made after pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, as evidence that Mr. Trump’s government was engaging in “censorship” and “state speech control.”
“This is a standard format for every budding despot,” Mr. Murphy said.
The Democrats called Mr. Kimmel’s removal more proof that they were living in a dark and dangerous moment for the country. As they held their news conference at a studio in the Capitol, Republican senators were eulogizing Mr. Kirk on the floor. Democrats who rose to speak were careful to preface their criticisms of Mr. Trump and his advisers by describing the killing of Mr. Kirk as a national tragedy.
But at the news conference, lawmakers warned that core rights were under threat.
“We are in the biggest free speech crisis this country has faced since the McCarthy era,” said Representative Greg Casar, Democrat of Texas and the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said that what happened to Mr. Kimmel “isn’t just about one comedian. It’s about whether we as Americans still have the freedom to laugh at those in power, to question authority.”
Representative Chrissy Houlahan, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said the Trump administration was treating the Constitution like a buffet, picking and choosing which laws they wanted to adhere to.
She noted that Democrats did not use the assassination of Melissa Hortman, the former Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, as an excuse to “rip up” the Second Amendment. The Trump administration should not use the assassination of Mr. Kirk to rip up the First Amendment, she said.
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership.
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