New York Times: White House Plans Broad Crackdown on Liberal Groups

New reporting from the New York Times highlights the Administration’s plans to leverage the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use government power to intimidate, punish, and silence dissent from the Administration’s opponents.

Cole Leiter, Executive Director of Americans Against Government Censorship, said:

“Even before law enforcement was able to identify a credible suspect, let alone their associations or motive, political actors — inside and outside of government — started using this tragedy as a pretext to punish their political rivals. Over the past eight months we have seen the Administration and its allies laying the groundwork for exactly this kind of abuse of power, weaponizing government to attack organizations they disagree with. It is not what Americans want from their government, and it doesn’t make anyone safer.”

Read the report from the New York Times below and HERE:

New York Times: White House Plans Broad Crackdown on Liberal Groups

Trump administration officials on Monday responded to the activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination by threatening to bring the weight of the federal government down on what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on the killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents.

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The White House and President Trump’s allies suggested that he was part of a coordinated movement that was fomenting violence against conservatives — without presenting evidence that such a network existed. America has seen a wave of violence across the political spectrum, targeting Democrats and Republicans.

On Monday, two senior administration officials, who spoke anonymously to describe the internal planning, said that cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. The goal, they said, was to categorize left-wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism, an escalation that critics said could lay the groundwork for crushing anti-conservative dissent more broadly.

Some of the highest-ranking officials in the federal government used Mr. Kirk’s podcast, “The Charlie Kirk Show,” to lay out their plans.

From his official office at the White House, Vice President JD Vance served as a guest host of the podcast, inviting senior members of the administration, including Stephen Miller, the president’s top policy adviser, to praise Mr. Kirk while also detailing their plans to crack down on what they called leftist nongovernmental organizations. The show was broadcast on the television screens in the White House briefing room and in several West Wing offices.

In their comments, Mr. Vance and Mr. Miller spoke in vague and menacing terms about far-left groups that they said facilitated violence.

Mr. Miller said that a formal effort would be coming, with federal agencies rooting out what he referred to as a “domestic terror movement,” and that they would be doing it in Mr. Kirk’s name.

“With God 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, eliminate and destroy this network and make America safe again for the American people.”

They praised Mr. Kirk’s commitment to free speech while threatening to exact a price against the “far left” that they accused of fomenting political violence in America.

An administration official said officials would be investigating people behind the recent burning of Teslas and assaults against immigration agents, and would be looking to draw links between those episodes and organized liberal groups.

In the wake of Mr. Kirk’s killing, Mr. Trump immediately blamed the “radical left” for much of the political violence in the country, and appeared to excuse violence on the right by saying that it was driven by people who “don’t want to see crime.”

The president also promised investigations into who was funding and organizing the left, suggesting the violence was somehow coordinated

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“The results of the investigation into Charlie Kirk’s murder have not been released and it’s unclear whether law enforcement has a full and complete picture of what motivated this individual,” Mr. Cohen said.

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