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Thought Police in Trump’s America

Stephen Miller’s wife Katie on X Wednesday afternoon, sans evidence, accused liberals of being responsble for Charlie Kirk’s death. (I deliberately did not amplify hers and related tweets by reposting them.) She complained that liberals had likened “us” (presumably the Trump administration) to Hitler and the Nazis. She might have included Stasi if the shoe fits.

Christopher Landau, Trump’s deputy secretary of state, posted this to X on Thursday:

In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country. I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action. Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the @StateDept can protect the American people.

The MAGA faithful responded to Landau by turning in anyone who posted snide or dismissive posts about Kirk’s death. Landau acknowledged receipt of informants’ tips by posting this image. Translation per Grok: “The Visa Remover.”

The Trump administration earlier this year announced it would screen visa applicants for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States” or for any “who advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to national security; or who perpetrate unlawful anti-Semitic harassment or violence.” Including by examining visa holders’ public social media accounts.

The BBC reported:

While the State Department did not specify what they meant by “support for terrorism”, the Trump administration has targeted some students who have protested in support of Palestine, arguing they had expressed antisemitic behaviour.

The Guardian adds:

Expanding such social media vetting to encompass commentary on an event such as Kirk’s death would be a significant expansion of the administration’s efforts to restrict dissenting views and opinions, particularly of “foreigners” in the US.

As we’ve seen since January, those who overstay their visas, have them revoked, or have their green cards cancelled are now subject to deportation, some with extreme prejudice to God knows where.

I warned you that thought crimes were next.

Update: The Washington Post published this just after post time.

President Donald Trump, following the death of GOP activist and close friend Charlie Kirk, vowed to unleash the weight of his administration onto those he said contributed to an environment of “radical left political violence.”

Meaning?

Other senior administration officials spoke of a broad plan to focus on public speech and rhetoric, declaring that those who speak in violent terms about Trump and his allies will face consequences. Some suggested a more expansive campaign, calling out schoolteachers and college instructors who have made public statements criticizing Kirk since his death, and promising to deport noncitizens who do the same.

Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told a radio host:

“So in the coming days, the president will be telling the American people about what we plan to do,” she continued. “It will not be easy. There’s layer upon layer upon layer, and some of this hate-filled rhetoric is multigenerational, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

Wiles stressed that the administration intends to protect free speech as it continues to develop its plans.

Ask the people the State Department plans to deport about protecting free speech.

* * * * *

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“What I was really disgusted by yesterday is a couple of talking heads that sees this as an opportunity to say we’re at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this. It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you’re a leader of a conservative movement. And there were two in particular that I found particularly disgusting.”

As far as I know, he’s the only elected Republican condemning this behavior. The rest are either silent or are on the “THIS IS WAR!!!” bandwagon.

I don’t know who the two he mentions are because there were so many.

Good news. While Trump is blowing millions of dollars each day on a little military pageant in Washington DC, they are cutting programs that study food borne illness

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quietly and drastically scaled back the country’s most comprehensive system for tracking the food-borne illnesses estimated to sicken millions of Americans each year.

Public health experts consider the program, called the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (or FoodNet), to be one of the most critical ways to protect against the dangerous pathogens, such as listeria and vibrio, that cause food-borne illnesses. For years, it tracked eight of them. As of this summer, it will only track two.

The sprawling effort involves three federal agencies and 10 state governments, which work together to root out food-borne illnesses early and study their origins. The government has other systems for tracking pathogens, meaning people will likely continue to learn about outbreaks. But public health experts said they worried that scaling back FoodNet could present long-term health risks.

“You will clearly miss cases,” said Dr. Glenn Morris, a physician and epidemiologist in Florida who helped establish FoodNet at the Department of Agriculture.

A C.D.C. spokeswoman said that the department had determined that some of the program’s processes were “duplicative,” namely that other C.D.C. programs also track food-borne illnesses. She also noted that the two pathogens FoodNet would continue to monitor — salmonella and a strain of E. coli commonly referred to as STEC — are among the country’s top contributors to food-borne illness, hospitalization and death.

But other programs are less thorough than FoodNet, and the pathogens cut from the program are also dangerous. Two of them, campylobacter and listeria, killed a total of 72 people in 2022, and made thousands sick, according to FoodNet data. The others are cyclospora, shigella, vibrio and yersinia.

Don’t worry. The vegetable crops are all dying in the fields and the meat packing plants have no employees because we’re deporting all the workers so this won’t be a problem. There are always canned goods. Yum yum. Unfortunately they’ll probably get rid of all the regulations that prevent botulism so that could be a problem too.

Just take some Ivermectin and drink a coke made with cane sugar you’ll be fine.

This worked out well:

South Korean businesses have suspended at least 22 U.S. projects after an ICE raid on a Hyundai Motor factory site in Georgia detained hundreds of South Korean workers.

Some 475 employees, including 300 South Koreans, were taken into custody Thursday at the Savannah-area battery plant. Videos released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials showed the detained workers in shackles and chains. The raid shocked Seoul, a key U.S. ally, where people expressed a sense of betrayal by Washington.

The facility was part of a $4.3 billion joint venture that was slated for completion later this year. It was expected to create 8,500 jobs that would support the car company’s nearby electric vehicle plan, but construction on the factory was put on pause after the raid.

Work on at least 22 other factory sites with ties to South Korea has also been halted, reported The Korean Economic Daily. Those facilities are involved in industries related to automobiles, shipbuilding, steel, and electrical equipment.

South Korean companies with U.S. business interests have canceled travel plans and recalled their U.S.-based staff, fearing that their employees could be affected by more raids.

I’m sure the US Manufacturers will immediately pick up the slack and everything will be just fine. We really don’t need any Korean companies investing in our country. They’re polluting Real American with their foreign ways.

I suspect this will pass and a deal will be made. But clearly Korean businesses are very very pissed off.

Apparently Trump actually stepped in to say that the Korean workers could stay in the country and the workers said “hell no!”

This is part of the reason:

Trump: "The whole issue of the women. Comfort women. Very specifically. We talked and that was a very big problem for Korea, not for Japan. Japan was, wanted to go, they want to get on. But Korea was very stuck on that."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-08-25T17:34:34.734Z

This is a tremendously insulting, ignorant, and consequential moment from Trump. Trump clearly has no idea what he has done. But starting w the 50+ million people in South Korea, many throughout Asia and the rest of the world are aware. Even SecState/NatSecAdvisor little Marco must know.

— James Fallows (@jfallows.bsky.social) 2025-08-26T00:57:30.921Z

In case you aren’t aware:

It’s been nearly a century since the first women were forced into sexual slavery for Imperial Japan, but the details of their servitude remain painful and politically divisive in Japan and the countries it once occupied. Records of the women’s subjugation is scant; there are very few survivors and an estimated 90 percent of “comfort women” did not survive the war.

Though military brothels existed in the Japanese military since 1932, they expanded widely after one of the most infamous incidents in imperial Japan’s attempt to take over the Republic of China and a broad swath of Asia: the Rape of Nanking. On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops began a six-week-long massacre that essentially destroyed the Chinese city of Nanking. Along the way, Japanese troops raped between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women.

The mass rapes horrified the world, and Emperor Hirohito was concerned with its impact on Japan’s image. As legal historian Carmen M. Agibay notes, he ordered the military to expand its so-called “comfort stations,” or military brothels, in an effort to prevent further atrocities, reduce sexually transmitted diseases and ensure a steady and isolated group of prostitutes to satisfy Japanese soldiers’ sexual appetites.

“Recruiting” women for the brothels amounted to kidnapping or coercing them. Women were rounded up on the streets of Japanese-occupied territories, convinced to travel to what they thought were nursing units or jobs, or purchased from their parents as indentured servants. These women came from all over Southeast Asia, but most were Korean or Chinese.

Once they were at the brothels, the women were forced to have sex with their captors under brutal, inhumane conditions. Though each woman’s experience was different, their testimonies share many similarities: repeated rapes that increased before battles, agonizing physical pain, pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and bleak conditions.

“It was not a place for humans,” Lee told Deutsche Welle in 2013. Like other women, she was threatened and beaten by her captors. “There was no rest, ”recalled Maria Rosa Henson, a Filipina woman who was forced into prostitution in 1943. “They had sex with me every minute.”

Naturally, Trump thinks this is no big deal.

Economist Heather Long:

The middle-class squeeze from tariffs is here.

Inflation hit 2.9% in August, the highest since January and up from 2.3% in April.

It’s troubling that so many basic necessities are rising in price again: Food, gas, clothing and shelter all had big cost jumps in August. And this is only the beginning.

Here are some items directly impacted by tariffs:
Coffee +21% from last August
Audio equipment +12%
Living and dining room furniture +10%
Tools +6%
Jewelry/watches +6%
Women’s dresses +6% / men’s pants +4%
Toilet paper +5%
Musical instruments +5%
Photo equipment +5%
More to come in the months ahead.

More worrying news: Initial jobless claims soared to 263,000 last week. That’s the highest in almost 4 years “Cost cutting” in back among CEOs and that is corporate speak for more layoffs. It’s going to be a rough few months ahead as the tariffs impacts work their way through the economy. Americans will experience higher prices and (likely) more layoffs.

Not to worry though:

Lutnick: "I would say the first quarter of next year will be the best quarter of construction jobs this country has ever seen, and that's gonna roll all the way through '26. So I think you're gonna see GDP growth next year over 4%." pic.twitter.com/yuDGBrTSMO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 11, 2025

I feel so much better.

Axios reports:

The State Department on Thursday indicated it would review the legal status of immigrants “praising, rationalizing, or making light” of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting.

The Trump administration has previously targeted immigrants for review and possible removal for activities such as participating in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.

 “In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in a Thursday post on X.

“I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action.”

Democratic and Republican leaders were both quick to condemn political

I guess it’s better than declaring all-out war on the left as so many are doing but it’s still reprehensible. First of all, how do they know which commenters are immigrants? Is this a thing? Second of all, it would be good to have a definition of “praising, rationalizing and making light” because that could be anything.

Whoever he is and whatever the motive, the psycho who killed Charlie Kirk certainly did a lot of good for the authoritarian project.

Free Speech is dead. Long live cancel culture.

Rolling Stone reports on the firing of Matthew Dowd from MSNBC for saying that “hate speech begets hate” about Charlie Kirk on Wednesday. There has actually been a slew of firings and suspensions all over the country of people who were improperly irreverent about the death of Charlie Kirk on social media. I’m not kidding. The article points out just how hypocritical this is:

The irony of this termination and a slew of similar firings over the past 24 hours is that Kirk and Turning Point USA, the conservative youth group he co-founded, branded themselves as the ultimate defenders of free speech. In a June debate at the Oxford Union, during a tour of the U.K. in which he condemned the country for its “totalitarian” censorship of its citizens, he argued, “You should be allowed to say outrageous things.” Last year, Kirk posted on X: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. 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.”

Yeah right. It’s always been “free for me but not for thee” but after all the years of whining and braying about cancel culture this is really a bit much:

Far-right social media figures including Laura Loomer, Enrique Tarrio, the pseudonymous “Catturd,” and Chaya Raichik (author of the anti-LGBTQ account “LibsOfTikTok”) have sought to identify and expose individuals either speaking negatively of Kirk’s effect on political discourse or seemingly celebrating his murder. An anonymously run website called Charlie’s Murderers has served as a hub for personal information, including employment details, about people allegedly endorsing the assassination. A college administrator named on the site has lost her job, while others have received death threats. Many have been targeted for pointing out that Kirk in 2023 said, “It’s worth to [sic] have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

Charlie Rock, a public relations coordinator for the NFL‘s Carolina Panthers, apparently alluded to this comment of Kirk’s in a post on his personal Instagram account on Wednesday. “Why are yall sad? Your man said it was worth it,” he wrote, including a reference to song “Protect Ya Neck,” by the Wu-Tang Clan. A source disclosed disclosed to The New York Times on Thursday that the Panthers subsequently fired Rock. “The views expressed by our employees are their own and do not represent those of the Carolina Panthers,” the organization shared in a post on X. “We do not condone violence of any kind. We are taking this matter very seriously and have accordingly addressed it with the individual.”

[…]

Now, educators and scholastic administrators across the country are being fired or suspended for speaking their minds on him. Laura Sosh-Lightsy, assistant dean of students at Middle Tennessee State University, was terminated for posting on Facebook that she had “ZERO sympathy” for Kirk, and that he “spoke his fate into existence,” after Sen. Marsha Blackburn drew attention to these online remarks and demanded her firing. (Shosh-Lightsy had been at the school for more than 20 years.) The University of Mississippi meanwhile fired an unidentified employee who allegedly reshared an Instagram post disparaging Kirk as a white supremacist and concluded, “I have no prayers to offer Kirk or respectable statements against violence.”

An elementary school teacher in Florida was suspended from her position for posting an article about Kirk’s death on her Facebook page and writing, “This may not be the obituary [w]e were all hoping to wake up to, but this is a close second for me.” (The state’s education commissioner, Anastasios Kamoutsas, warned teachers in a memo on Thursday that they were monitoring such statements. “We will hold teachers who choose to make disgusting comments about the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk accountable,” he wrote.) Two teachers in Massachusetts were likewise placed on leave for unspecified posts regarding Kirk’s death. A Virginia teacher has been suspended for taking to Facebook to say of the assassination, “I hope he suffered through all of it.” And the Oklahoma State Department of Education has said it is investigating a middle school educator who posted “disgraceful rhetoric” in the wake of the deadly shooting.

All we’ve been hearing for the past 48 hours is how Kirk was all about free speech and debating your adversaries in an open forum. Guess not. They’ve got web sites going that are doxxing people who’ve said things as anodyne as they have “zero sympathy” for Kirk or “karma’s a bitch.”

Best watch what you say in America these days — at least if you say it about a right wing hero. Everyone else is fair game.

Hey, here’s some more good news:

U.S. businesses are facing the biggest health-insurance cost increases in at least 15 years, after already-steep boosts in recent years that have pushed the annual expense for family coverage high enough to equal the price of a small car.

Costs for employer coverage are expected to surge about 9.5% in 2026, according to an estimate from Aon, while an employer survey by WTW suggested 9.2%. Both benefits-consulting firms’ projections, which were provided exclusively to The Wall Street Journal, would represent the fastest rate of increase since at least 2011, when the price tags for employer coverage were far lower than the recent average of roughly $25,500 for a family plan.

Other employer surveys conducted this year have generated similar findings—sharp hikes in health-coverage spending for next year, on top of two years of significant increases.

“It’s an unsustainable number for a lot of employers,” said Shawn Gremminger, chief executive of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions, which represents employers. The reaction from employers to the increases “ranges between upset, shocked, freaked-out and resigned,” he said.

I’m sure this must be Joe Biden’s fault. Or, at least, “the left.” It will be interesting to see how they spin this.

Keep in mind that Dr. Oz, in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, is talking about withholding treatment that AI says is unnecessary, so that’s another way to save money.

Ezra Klein’s headline writers did him no favor with that one. His piece isn’t actually that bad. He says that Kirk was using dialog and discussion to argue for his ideology and that’s what we do in a democracy which is correct. We’re supposed to settle our differences through argumentation and debate and any political violence endangers us all.

Some people go so far as to compare Kirk to Martin Luther King, the man who changed America using peaceful, passive resistance following the precepts of Thoreau and Gandhi. On the right we have this:

Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group, shut down his office upon hearing the news of his friend’s death.

“I’m racking my brain trying to think of another political figure that had a similar impact and following who was assassinated, and the only person I can think of is Martin Luther King Jr.,” Mr. Schilling said…

Intercessors for America, a Christian group with ties to the Trump administration, emailed supporters on Wednesday night with a suggested prayer in response to Mr. Kirk’s death. The subject line referred to “Charlie Kirk, a modern day MLK.”

Former Obama adviser David Axelrod suggested that Kirk’s murder was of similar import as well:

DAVID AXELROD, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think it’s very precarious. And you just outlined it in the questions you asked earlier. We can go. One of two ways in this country. We can embrace this notion that somehow were at war and there’ll be more killing and more violence.

Or we can learn from this moment. I — you mentioned history. I was a kid when, we went through a period of assassination in the 1960s. I remember when Martin Luther King was killed. Robert Kennedy went onto the streets of Indianapolis. He was a candidate for president at that time and was very, very dangerous, frankly, for him to be out there but he insisted on going. And he spoke to the crowd.

And, Erin, he finished, and I wanted to share this. He finished with a poem by Aeschylus, the ancient Greek poet. And it was, “even in our sleep pain which cannot forget falls drop by, drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will comes wisdom. Through the awful grace of God.”

The question is have we seen enough, to embrace wisdom here and recognize that this is not a path that we want to go? As a country, and let’s be clear, I heard what those folks said. Weve had political assassinations of Democrats and Republicans of the left and the right. This is not something that is exclusive to one or the other.

But I will say, if we continue to embrace this notion that if we disagree that were not only political opponents, but you are an enemy, you are an evil. You want to destroy the country. You want to destroy our way of life. That is a prescription for disaster.

Many of Kirk’s allies disagree with that sentiment. The following is a collage of tweets from right wing influencers:

Since Kirk is being extolled for his commitment to respectful dialog, I think it may be a good time to revisit some of his commentary in order to celebrate the salutary effect his words have had on our body politic.

Here’s Kirk on Martin Luther King himself:

Trump ally Charlie Kirk: “Martin Luther King is a bad guy… The country made a mistake when it passed the Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act was a mistake.”pic.twitter.com/bV0ZYzRDRx https://t.co/quBSV5BKqN

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) January 22, 2025

He had big plans:

On political violence:

This is how he treated a victim of political violence btw. pic.twitter.com/pZweKBSkcf

— DreamLeaf 🌱🌻 🍉 (@DreamLeaf5) September 10, 2025

On guns:

Charlie Kirk (2023): "I think it's worth to have a cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe." pic.twitter.com/sEHw5suXEW

— Ron Smith (@Ronxyz00) September 10, 2025

Charlie Kirk: “god’s perfect law says gay people should be stoned to death” pic.twitter.com/wW9oPSFygZ

— daniel™️ (@danielsogay) September 10, 2025

“Let him rest in peace”

Here’s Charlie Kirk letting George Floyd ‘rest in peace’ pic.twitter.com/MNkARgvwYK

— Ego 🍔 // 🦋 (@TrussEgo) September 10, 2025

#CharlieKirk:

"Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person's slot." pic.twitter.com/j6PKQec2gn

— Elizabeth (@alluring_nyc) September 11, 2025

Charlie Kirk: “I’m sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’” pic.twitter.com/bbs48cxJhy

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) January 23, 2024

Charlie Kirk denied the existence of Palestine and the Palestinian people.

What a douchebag pic.twitter.com/Knf283rOPi

— Omar El Fares 🇵🇸 عُمَر الفارس (@3lfares) September 11, 2025

Oh yeah almost forgot Kirk said that if his 10 year old daughter was raped and forcefully impregnated he would have her deliver that baby pic.twitter.com/qXX2YzD2SG

— Alpel (@AlpelDokkan) September 10, 2025

I found those in a moment of scrolling. So that’s Kirk and it’s what he was selling to young people all over the country and doing it quite successfully. He was a talented demagogue who appealed particularly to alienated, white males.

We can give him credit for not leading a militia or a terrorist group that perpetrated violence against all those people (aka “cockroaches”) he railed against on college campuses. But I’m not going to say that he was leading a peaceful movement of passive resistance like Martin Luther King, nor am I going to say that “he did politics right.” Call me crazy but racist propaganda and rank demagoguery just doesn’t seem like a good thing for our politics. Yes, he had a right to do it but that doesn’t mean it was right.

None of this is to say he deserved to be shot. Nobody does and I’m consistent on that no matter who it is. I’m against shooting people, period. But you can hold two disparate ideas in your head at the same time: it’s an abomination that Kirk was killed but he wasn’t a hero either. It appears that our media and political establishment are having a very hard time making that distinction.

Update —

Just noting for the record:

And profiting from it

Reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination followed predictable patterns. Leaders of both major parties issued statements condemning the violence and offered condolences to Kirk’s young family.

“Below that seethed the eternal, inescapable culture war, each side excoriating the other,” Andrew Egger writes at The Bulwark. “It barely mattered how representative of their broader political cohorts these posters were; every American’s social-media algorithms made sure they got to see whichever ones would make them maddest.”

That is in itself a problem capitalism cannot and will not address. All the incentives in the attention economy support addicting social media users to agitation, anger, and resentment. Therein lies profit, dividends, career advancement. Not to pursue those is a crime against capitalism, a term found nowhere in our country’s founding documents. William Hogeland makes clear in “The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding” that below the founders’ lofty rhetoric and the framers’ revolutionary government design, wealth accumulation drove men like Hamilton as much as idealistic concepts of equality for some.

Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, Marx believed. But they grow slowly. We are reaping the harvest 250 years and a lot of technology and a widening wealth gap later.

There is also a widening gap in the behaviors on display between two major cable networks. Stockholders of both expect profits. But one constructed its business model directly on making its viewers angry and keeping them stewing. It’s turned Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate into 24-hour programming.

Egger observes:

Over on MSNBC, just minutes after the shooting, pundit Matthew Dowd ghoulishly rushed to lay the blame at Kirk’s own feet: “I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” (He was later fired from the network.) On Fox News, Jesse Watters seemed ready to anoint Kirk the first martyr of the second U.S. Civil War: “Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it?” (He was not fired by his network.)

Firing Watters wouldn’t be profitable.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 
May Day Strong
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense