Chip Roy’s Free Speech Hypocrisy

By Tom Joscelyn and Norm Eisen

Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) has long portrayed himself as a defender of the First Amendment. After the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in September, however, Roy became a vocal supporter of the Trump administration’s campaign against the free speech of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). That campaign is based on the lie that peaceful, lawful, nonpartisan NGOs and charities are fomenting political violence in America, including Kirk’s killing. More than three months after Kirk was killed, the administration still has not produced any definitive evidence tying the alleged murderer to outside groups. But that has not stopped Roy from abusing the power of the People’s House to target NGOs.

On Tuesday, the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, which is part of the House Judiciary Committee and chaired by Roy, is holding a hearing on the supposed influence of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The subcommittee accuses the SPLC of coordinating “efforts with the Biden-Harris Administration to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”

Make no mistake: Roy has been after the SPLC for some time. And it is he and the subcommittee he chairs that pose a threat to free speech—not the Center’s work.

Roy began aggressively targeting the SPLC almost immediately after Kirk’s death. On Sept. 11, the day after Kirk was killed, Roy called for the House of Representatives to form a select committee on “The money, influence, and power behind the radical left’s assault on America and the rule of law.” Roy insinuated that the SPLC was somehow responsible for the shooting. “We have seen targets placed on the Family Research Council and Charlie Kirk by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) only to witness shootings toward each, including the tragic assassination of Charlie just this week, after being placed on the SPLC’s notorious ‘Hate Map’ three months ago,” Roy said.

Of course, the SPLC did not advocate for violence against Kirk, or anyone else, on its “Hate Map.” It simply reported that Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA, had trafficked in hateful ideas, including the “great replacement theory.” That blatantly racist belief holds that Democrats and the American elite are seeking to replace white Americans with non-white residents via mass migration and noncitizen voting in elections. (An antisemitic variant pushed by others blames Jews.)

As we’ve written previously, some experts regard the great replacement theory as the “deadliest” conspiracy theory of the internet age. Approximately 100 people have been killed since 2017 by extremists who were motivated, at least in part, by this white nationalist belief. (See our data linking a string of mass shootings around the world to this conspiracy theory.)

Kirk was not subtle in his endorsement of the great replacement theory, despite its role in motivating extremists to kill dozens of innocents. For instance, Kirk wrote in a Feb. 24, 2024, post to his millions of followers on Instagram: “The ‘Great Replacement’ is not a theory, it’s a reality.”

Which leads us to some basic questions for Roy: Is the great replacement theory not hateful? What is wrong with citing Kirk’s own words, just as the SPLC did? Does Roy dispute that Kirk trafficked in this extremist belief? Will Roy disavow it?

As The New Republic has reported, Roy “espoused…a variant of the explicitly white supremacist ‘great replacement theory,’” during a Fox News interview in February 2024. “It’s not just political,” Roy said of the Democrats’ immigration policies. “They want to remake America. They want to end Western civilization.”

Roy is also the sponsor of the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act, which Philip Bump of the Washington Post has described as the great replacement theory in “legislation form.” The SAVE Act was drafted to counter the supposed problem of noncitizen voters, even though non-citizen voting is already illegal and virtually nonexistent. Still, a one-pager promoting the bill on Roy’s website claims that the Biden administration “released at least 4.6 million illegal aliens into the country, with 1.8 million known ‘gotaways,’” who in “many states” are “eligible for driver’s licenses and other benefits, providing ample opportunities to illegally register to vote in Federal elections”—a direct echo of the great replacement theory. That is nonsense, as the statistics prove.

On Sept. 18, Roy invoked a version of the theory once again during a speech he delivered on the House floor, claiming that he could produce a “list of people who were killed, abused, assaulted, harmed” by immigrants because a “radical group of leftists decided that open borders for their political purposes was more important than your safety and security as Americans.” With his next sentence, Roy called for the House to form the select committee—the same one he would have investigate SPLC and other NGOs.

In defending his call for more House investigations, Roy said he agreed with the “plans” that Vice President J.D. Vance and White House aide Stephen Miller “put forward” to “go after leftist non-governmental organizations in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder.” Roy quoted each of them. “We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence,” Vance said while hosting Kirk’s show the week after he was killed. During that show, Miller vowed to “channel all of the anger” generated by Kirk’s death “to uproot and dismantle these ‘terrorist’ networks.” After quoting their opinions, Roy endorsed them: “The vice president is correct…my friend Stephen Miller is correct.”

More than three months have passed since Kirk’s death. The Trump administration has not alleged that any NGO supported the man charged with his murder. As we explained at the time, Vance and Miller’s comments were not only unhinged from reality—they were also a direct threat to free speech.

Roy has not provided evidence to substantiate the claims made by Vance and Miller. But the congressman is clearly sensitive to the charge that his own House investigations could infringe upon First Amendment rights. “And for those that say this is somehow clamping down on speech, wrong, you can say virtually anything you want to say in this country,” Roy said during his Sept. 18 appearance on the House floor. “But number one, there’s consequences to that, including getting fired, including having television shows canceled because there’s a limit to what a society should have to take.” Roy added: “And if you’re going to say crazy things, then there can be a consequence to saying those crazy things.”

Providing context for why the great replacement theory is dangerous in America, as SPLC has done, is hardly crazy. One of SPLC’s missions is to expose white supremacy and counter the conspiracy theories that fuel it. Documenting the wide reach of the great replacement theory, once a fringe extremist idea confined to the backwaters of the internet that has now gained popularity on the American right, is certainly consistent with this mission. The FBI, which consulted with SPLC in the past, should certainly be concerned about how this hateful belief can incite even more violence.

The SPLC should not be investigated for shedding light on this hate. It should be lauded. And instead of creating a bogeyman to fight, perhaps Chip Roy should reflect on how that hate has consumed much of his own side of the political aisle.