Vance’s dangerous attack on free speech

The vice president's justifications for this ideological abuse of government power are obviously false.

On Monday, Vice President JD Vance hosted the Charlie Kirk show, ostensibly to pay tribute to his fallen friend. But that was not Vance’s sole purpose for assuming Kirk’s mic. Indeed, the vice president used the occasion to launch an unhinged broadside against his perceived political opponents, threatening the free speech rights of civil society.

Vance knew what he was doing. Before introducing White House aide Stephen Miller as a guest, Vance protested that “the crazies on the far left” are saying, “Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech.” Vance insisted this was not his intent: “No, no, no.”

The vice president doth protest too much. In his next breath, Vance made his agenda clear. “We're going to go after the NGO [non-governmental organization] network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.” He did not cite a single piece of evidence connecting Kirk’s assassin to any NGO. Nor have law enforcement officials alleged that Kirk’s killer had any accomplices. Nevertheless, Vance explained the “whole administration has been working” toward the goal of quashing NGOs.

Miller wholeheartedly endorsed Vance’s threat to non-profit groups. Miller insisted—again, without providing a shred of evidence—that an “organized campaign” led to Kirk’s murder. Miller claimed, conveniently and perhaps apocryphally, that the “last message” Kirk sent him concerned the need “to have an organized strategy to go after the leftwing organizations that are promoting violence in this country.” The Trump adviser vowed to “channel all of the anger” generated by Kirk’s death “to uproot and dismantle these ‘terrorist’ networks.” Again, no one other than a 22-year-old man is currently charged with the crime and, so far at least, there has been no indication that anybody else helped.

Miller’s choice of words, echoing the 9/11 era, was no accident. A “vast domestic terror movement” exists, Miller claimed, and the Trump administration would unleash the power of the federal government, including the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, “to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks.” Al Qaeda, a real international terrorist network, attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001.

What terror “networks” were responsible for Kirk’s horrific murder? Vance and Miller did not and could not say.

Vance’s justifications for this ideological abuse of government power are obviously false. For example, the vice president claimed that political violence is “not a both sides problem,” but instead a “much bigger and malignant problem” on the left. The “data is clear,” Vance argued, “people on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence.”

In fact, while political violence in the United States is still relatively rare, the American right—not the left—is more inclined to commit such acts. For example, the CATO Institute has produced a study of politically motivated terrorism inside the United States over the past half-century. CATO found that 3,599 people were killed in politically motivated terror attacks from Jan. 1, 1975, through Sept. 10, 2025. Subtracting the death toll from 9/11, the single largest terror attack in American history, this figure drops to 620 people. Right-wing terrorists were responsible for the majority of these murders: 391 deaths, or 63% of the total. Meanwhile, left-wing terrorists accounted for 65 murders, or about 10.5% of the total.

This finding has been confirmed in other studies as well. For instance, the Anti-Defamation League reports that all the extremist-related murders from 2022 through 2024 were committed by right-wing extremists. “One of the reasons extremist murder totals have been down in recent years has been a decrease in deadly incidents connected to domestic Islamist extremists and far-left extremists,” the ADL found. That has already changed in 2025, as an ISIS-inspired terrorist killed 14 people in an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day. But the point remains: In general, right-wing extremists, including white supremacists, are more deadly than other types of extremists.

The Trump administration knows what the data shows—and is trying to hide it from the public. Still another study, published by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in 2024, found that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.” The NIJ’s analysis shows that “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists” since 1990. The NIJ’s study was previously hosted on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) website. But according to 404 Media, the DOJ quietly deleted it in recent days. An archived version can still be found online.

So, the data is clear. But it shows exactly the opposite of what Vance wants people to believe.

In making his case, Vance ignored the data on actual political violence in America. Instead, he cited a single online poll conducted by YouGov to support his argument. But even here he was cherry-picking. The vice president ignored a series of other polls showing that the American right is more likely to support political violence.

For example, polling by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) shows that Republicans are more likely than Democrats and independents to agree that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save the country.” Fortunately, only a minority of Republicans (18%) and Democrats (11%) agreed with this statement during polling earlier this year. However, the American right has repeatedly demonstrated greater support for political violence, as shown in PRRI’s polling. In August 2021, for instance, Republicans’ support for political violence peaked at 35%, whereas Democrats have never exceeded 13% approval. Similarly, an analysis of polling data conducted by researchers at the University of California Davis found that MAGA Republicans “are more likely than others to endorse political violence.”

All of which is to say that Vance is dishonest. While trying to point the finger at the left, he whitewashed political violence from his own side, even though it is far more common.

Indeed, the vice president said nothing about the murders of Melissa Hortman and her husband in June. Hortman was a Democratic politician who previously served as the speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. Nor did Vance mention the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol—an act of political violence that was instigated by his boss and resulted in approximately 140 police officers being assaulted by right-wing rioters and extremists.

Of course, Vance did mention the July 14, 2024, assassination attempt on President Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., falsely insinuating that the would-be assassin was part of a left-wing trend, even though the shooter had known mental health issues and no political motive or accomplices have been found.

As should be clear by now, Vance has no interest in a sober reflection on political violence in America or on solutions. He is using the heinous murder of Kirk as a cudgel against his political foes.

There was much more wrong with the Vance speech, including claims he made about the funding of The Nation, a magazine that published a story he disliked about Charlie Kirk. A deputy editor for The Nation quickly pointed out on social media that Vance’s claim was not true. But that fact, like so many others, does not matter to Vance.

Since the murder of Charlie Kirk last week, Vance and others have honored the conservative activist as a champion for free speech. Kirk did not deserve to die for his speech. Hs death was a tragedy—a negation of the right to free speech each American enjoys.

But if the Trump administration truly wants to honor Americans’ First Amendment rights, then it should not cynically exploit Kirk’s assassination to target the speech of its critics.

Tom Joscelyn is a senior fellow at Just Security Susan Corke is the executive director of Democracy Defenders Action and Democracy Defenders Fund. Norm Eisen is publisher of The Contrarian.

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