Attorney General Pam Bondi is now reportedly under fire from across the political spectrum after suggesting that the federal government could pursue criminal charges against individuals engaging in what she described as “hate speech.”
The remarks, made during an interview on former Trump administration official Katie Miller’s podcast, came as debate swirled over the flood of online reactions to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week.
“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,” Bondi said. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
The attorney general’s comments quickly triggered a storm of criticism, particularly from conservatives who emphasized the broad protections afforded to speech under the First Amendment. Many argued that Bondi’s suggestion threatened to erode a cornerstone of American liberty.
“For a couple [of] decades, we defended religious freedom and speech that some people deemed to be inappropriate,” House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said. “Look, in America, it’s a very important part of our tradition that we do not — this is a conservative principle and certainly an American principle — we do not censor and silence disfavored viewpoints.”
Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume was equally direct, posting that, “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.”
Bondi’s critics argued that her stance not only mischaracterized constitutional protections but also undercut the very principles that Charlie Kirk himself had championed. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former Democratic senator Claire McCaskill called her approach “an affront” to Kirk’s legacy.
“Pam Bondi, look what she’s done within the MAGA movement,” McCaskill said. “First we’ve got Epstein, where she said, ‘I’ve got the list on my desk.’ Then she trashes the legacy of Charlie Kirk. If Charlie Kirk said, ‘I want a legacy,’ he probably would have said free speech, right? He would have said, ‘I want it to be that you can go out and say whatever you want to say and in America there are no handcuffs.’ And instead what Pam Bondi does is she trashes that legacy and threatens cuffs for anybody who says anything that they disagree with.”
By Tuesday, Bondi attempted to clarify her remarks, posting on X that “threats of violence” are not protected speech.
But the effort at reframing only fueled further criticism, with both left- and right-leaning commentators warning of the dangers in conflating constitutionally protected speech, however offensive, with criminal threats.
Her initial declaration—“there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech”—has since become a flashpoint in the broader debate over whether government officials should attempt to regulate online discourse.
For many conservatives, the answer is simple: the First Amendment does not carve out exceptions for unpopular or even offensive opinions.
While the assassination of Charlie Kirk has reignited discussions about political violence, the controversy surrounding Bondi underscores a deeper tension—whether the government’s instinct in moments of national trauma is to protect liberty or to limit it.
[READ MORE: Trump Sues New York Times, Accuses Paper of “Malicious Defamation”]
