Attorney General Pam Bondi Threatens to Go After Critics by Deploying Non-Existent 'Hate Speech' Laws

Sep 16, 2025

As part of the administration’s attempt to use the shooting of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to suppress dissent, Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to “go after” Kirk’s critics for engaging in “hate speech.” The irony is that criminalizing so-called “hate speech” was an old crusade of the left. It never succeeded so there are no laws against “hate speech.”

Given the flurry of threats from the administration, this incident largely went under the radar and I could only find it reported on a somewhat obscure website, with links to the original statement:

Bondi has vowed to go after anyone who targets somebody else with hate speech, but it was quickly pointed out that that is impossible due to the First Amendment, which protects the freedom of speech.
Speaking on The Kate Miller Podcast, Bondi said: “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.” She continued: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech … and that’s across the aisle.”
People were left baffled that the government’s chief legal advisor didn’t seem to understand that her suggestion is not legally possible without possibly breaking the constitution.
“Unreal. There is no ‘hate speech’ exception to the First Amendment. There is no constitutional basis for pursuing anyone for hateful words about Charlie Kirk (or anyone else). Hateful words are immoral. They are not illegal,” someone pointed out.

That “someone” in the last quote is David French, The New York Times columnist who had a long career as a litigator on free-speech cases. He knows the law on this issue, and it is appalling—but hardly surprising for this administration—that the nation’s attorney general does not.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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