In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the free speech debate is back in the national spotlight as Republicans and Democrats trade insults. It seems that everybody is missing that there has been a role reversal on speech in America.

Democrats are posting in all caps “PROTECT FREE SPEECH” and “LEGALIZE COMEDY.” Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi is threatening to “go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” as if she were a progressive blogger from 2020.

The irony is lost on everyone directly involved, as Democrats pretend that their free speech erosions over the past decade never happened, and Republicans apparently forget they ever cared about the issue at all. The reality is that this mess just reveals the hackery of all involved.

That's clear when we look at Jimmy Kimmel's saga. The Trump administration used the Federal Communications Commission to pressure ABC to take Kimmel off the air, which the network has since reversed after blowback. It remains to be seen if the administration is going to take further action against ABC as a result.

Neither the GOP nor the Democratic Party is pro-'free speech'

The Kirk vs. Kimmel debate happened after Republicans spent years advocating against the Biden administration trampling on free speech during the COVID-19 pandemic, criticizing colleges that were hostile to free speech and vowing to resist efforts to ban hate speech.

Yet, Bondi has said, “If you wanna go in and print posters with Charlie's pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that,” in response to an Office Depot location refusing to print such content for a Kirk memorial. “We can prosecute you for that.”

Such a stance is entirely antithetical to the mainstream conservative position that has existed for years. Supreme Court precedent holds that businesses cannot discriminate based on all sorts of characteristics, but they can refuse to produce specific content of a creative work.

However, Democrats, too, have flip-flopped on the issue of free speech. While they have rightly called out the attorney general for her anti-constitutional stance on free speech issues, they forget that in the past five years, they have fought against two Supreme Court cases dealing with the precise underlying issue here.

When it came to the cases Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and 303 Creative v. Elenis, Democrats fought in favor of public accommodation laws trampling the free speech rights of businesses, for a cake baker and a web designer, respectively. In each case, businesses refused to create custom creative works for a same-sex wedding.

Democrats will argue that these scenarios are somehow different, but the reality is that all of these examples are the same as the Trump administration compelling businesses to produce vigil posters for a conservative activist. Compelled speech is compelled speech, regardless of what the cause is and which political party it serves.

When it comes to so-called hate speech, the Democrats' record is no better. Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said, “There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy,” back in 2022.

This isn’t just theoretical; it actually happened under the Biden administration. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was pressured by the White House to censor content during COVID-19, “including humor and satire.” Once again, Democrats will pretend as if this is different because of the motivation, but the Constitution doesn’t come with a “public health” asterisk on it.

Has everyone forgotten the past few years?

For years, conservatives warned that Democrats arming the government to go after free speech would backfire on Democrats, and it clearly has. Bondi’s comments are entirely unacceptable, but they were also entirely predictable under the trajectory that free speech is on in our political climate.

Yet, both Republicans and Democrats have lost the plot now that the scales of power have tipped in the other direction. Democrats didn't listen to the warnings that were given to them, but now conservatives are refusing to heed their own past words.

As one of the few remaining people who genuinely care about free speech over partisanship, it's incredibly frustrating for me to watch people pretend to care about the issue. Few of our partisan leaders genuinely do.

While the number of comments from Republicans publicly disagreeing with the attorney general was somewhat comforting, Trump and the rest of his loyalist administration have Bondi's back, seemingly, so the criticisms have no roots. Until Congress shows a sliver of spine in standing up to this administration, their words mean extremely little to me.

The Trump administration appears eager to expand how the government can go after speech it dislikes. Democrats pretend to be appalled after having done the same thing when they were in power. Nobody has a leg to stand on, and people are pretending they actually care about the American Constitution.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What if I told you neither Republicans nor Democrats care about free speech? | Opinion

Reporting by Dace Potas, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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