WASHINGTON – Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson warned the Trump administration that it was stepping on free-speech rights as it sought to silence critics of activist Charlie Kirk after his assassination in Utah.

“You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we're seeing in the aftermath of his murder won't be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country,” the former Fox News TV host said during a special edition of his podcast on Sept. 17.

Carlson’s remarks echoed concerns raised by other conservatives over efforts to shut down and seek retribution against those who have mocked Kirk’s death or have been openly critical of his hardline political views.

In Tampa, Florida, radio host Ryan Gorman said Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, went too far when he threatened retaliatory action against ABC if it did not punish late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over his remarks about the Republican response to Kirk’s death. ABC responded by pulling Kimmel’s show off the air indefinitely.

“I see a million ways this could go bad down the road,” Gorman said. “This is not a good step here. The FCC chairman is in way too far with how he’s trying to control things and get different companies to bend to the Trump administration’s will. You do not want government having that kind of power.”

Even the conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal slammed Carr's threats toward ABC over Kimmel's comments. Although the paper criticized Kimmel over his Kirk remarks and anti-Trump views, a recent Sept. 18 editorial said they "shouldn't be cause for the government to push someone off the airwaives."

"The squeeze on Disney looks to be a case of cancel culture on the right," the editorial said.

To many guardians of free speech, the campaign to shame and silence Kirk’s critics is not only a dangerous threat to the First Amendment, it’s part of the “cancel culture” for which Republicans have spent years vilifying Democrats and others on the political left.

“It’s the same cancel culture that we saw coming from the left before – it’s just that now it’s directed at a different target,” said Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit group whose mission is the protection of free speech.

George Floyd, Charlie Kirk and 'cancel culture'

One was a Black man who died face down on a Minneapolis street after a grocery store clerk accused him of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. The other was a White conservative activist gunned down by an assassin on a college campus in Utah.

The deaths of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025, occurred five summers and 1,200 miles apart. But both further polarized a nation already deeply divided by political ideology and touched off a movement to punish those whose views did not fall in line with the prevailing sentiment of the moment.

Protesters flooded the streets to demand racial equality and an end to police brutality in the aftermath of Floyd’s death as the political left demanded the nation confront its complicated history with race. Statues of confederate generals came tumbling down, and people were publicly shamed on Twitter and fired by their employers over remarks deemed racially insensitive. The country-pop music group The Dixie Chicks dropped “Dixie” from its name.Conservatives and others on the political right raged against a dangerous “cancel culture” that they argued aimed to rewrite history and silence those with opposing views.

But in the week and a half since Kirk’s assassination, it is conservatives who have demanded retribution against those who have made remarks on social media that are critical of Kirk or that have been seen by some as celebrating his death.

More than 100 people have faced repercussions for their remarks over Kirk’s slaying, a USA TODAY analysis shows. High school teachers and college professors have been fired or disciplined after posting anti-Kirk comments on social media. Doctors, lawyers and first responders have been fired, suspended, censured or investigated. So have journalists, government workers and employees of private businesses.

The quest to seek retribution against Kirk’s critics has again raised questions about the limits on free speech and set off alarms because of the Trump administration’s role.

Vice President JD Vance urged Americans to call out those who celebrated Kirk’s death and to call their employers. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested the Justice Department would investigate those who engage in “hate speech,” although she later backtracked and said the agency would only target those who incite violence.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department has denied visas to foreigners who celebrated Kirk’s assassination. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said servicemembers or Pentagon employees could be punished for glorifying Kirk’s killing.

President Donald Trump, who during his inaugural address back in January vowed to end government censorship and bring back free speech, praised ABC’s suspension of Kimmel and said other broadcasters that criticize him might lose their licenses.

Lee Rowland, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, said the administration’s pressure campaign against ABC extends far beyond cancel culture. It’s worse, she said, because the FCC controls the broadcast licenses that the network’s affiliates need to stay on air.

“This is a pretty cut-and-dried situation of government coercion of private businesses to seek to quash dissent and punish people with views disfavored by the federal government,” Rowland said. “This is a much darker story than the kind of omnipresent cancel culture that we see happening right now.”

Cancel culture is seductive to people of all political persuasions, Rowland said.

“People hate cancel culture when it is targeted at people with views they support,” she said. “And people tend to embrace cancel culture and participate in it – and even try to call it something else and find a moral high ground – when they are trying to punish someone whose speech they disagree with.”

Cancel culture didn’t start with Floyd’s death, but it did gain momentum after he was killed when a White police officer put a knee on his neck for over nine minutes while arresting him outside a convenience store. The officer was later convicted for killing Floyd.

Since then, celebrities like author JK Rowling, comedian David Chappelle and then-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick have been targeted because of their views on transgender issues or racial equality. Companies like Target and Bud Light have faced boycotts over their support of LGBTQ+ rights.

The boycotts and campaigns have often been driven by social media, where large groups of people can easily share their collective rage and publicly shame a nemesis for an unpopular political position or perceived wrongdoing.

“It’s a lot easier to whip up Twitter mobs to do this kind of cancel culture than in the olden days, when you had to grab your torches and pitchforks and go to the town square,” Corn-Revere said.

A 'corrupt abuse of power'

Kirk’s death flipped the script, with Republicans who once complained about cancel culture now embracing efforts to shut down those who celebrate his death or question his legacy.

House Democratic leaders accused Trump and the GOP of censorship and waging war on the First Amendment. They slammed Carr’s threats to ABC as a “corrupt abuse of power” and called on him to resign the FCC chairmanship immediately.

Though no Republicans have gone that far, some of them have also suggested the administration has gone overboard in trying to silence Kirk’s critics.

U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House committee that oversees the FCC, did not mention Carr by name. But he said at an event in Washington on Sept. 18 that, while businesses act to reflect what their consumers want, government needs to be cautious on what it does.

“Just because I don’t agree with what someone says, we need to be very careful,” Guthrie said. “We have to be extremely cautious to not try to use government to influence what people say.”

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, warned on his podcast on Sept. 19 that conservatives will lose if government starts deciding what people can say.

Cruz said he’s thrilled Kimmel is gone, arguing that the comedian’s brain “melted” when Trump returned to the presidency and that he became “bitter and nasty and he lied about Charlie Kirk.”But the senator also warned that using the power of the FCC to punish speech creates a precedent that could be used against Republicans in the future.

“Going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again, wins the White House,” he said. “They will silence us, they will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly.”“And that,” he said, “is dangerous.”

Michael Collins writes about the intersection of politics and culture. A veteran reporter, he has covered the White House and Congress. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Charlie Kirk, cancel culture and conservative concerns over Jimmy Kimmel and a brash FCC

Reporting by Michael Collins, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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