It’s been a helluva stretch. Two weeks ago, I was railing against the shameless hypocrisy of national Republicans (and Democrats) and lamenting that campus illiberalism had become a bipartisan affair. And 2025 has been marked by President Trump’s norm-shattering assaults on the legal profession, the media, and, of course, higher ed (though the comeuppance has often been richly deserved).

Well, the campus assassination of Charlie Kirk has made all of this little more than prologue, with Republicans honoring the free speech champion by dialing the illiberalism up to 11.

Attorney General Pam Bondi declared, “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech. We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Gee. I can vaguely remember, way back in the Biden years, when Republicans stridently (and correctly!) argued that the First Amendment allows for no such carve-outs. Of course, that’s back when Democrats held that saying there were only two sexes was “transphobic” hate speech, and when Republicans were worried about being silenced.

During a monologue the week after Kirk’s murder, Jimmy Kimmel, the (partisan and unfunny) late-night host, said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” It was an offensive statement and a stupid one, but it wasn’t wildly dissimilar to the comments of some officials and right-leaning pundits who lodged similar complaints about the left following the deaths of Michael Brown and George Floyd.  There was the Minneapolis police union president who described Floyd as a “violent criminal” and was vilified for being a “disgrace to the badge.” Right-wing influencer Candace Owens said Floyd was no “martyr” and launched a GoFundMe page for a café that was boycotted after an owner termed Floyd a “thug”; the GoFundMe account was terminated for being hateful and discriminatory.

Heck, I can recall when anything less than full-throated hosannas to Brown and Floyd got you denounced as a racist. Those of us who didn’t choose to say anything publicly can regale you with tales of being angrily told that “silence was violence,” that our reticence revealed our “privilege” and our bigotry. Advocates, philanthropic staff, and academics repeatedly told me that, unless I made amends, I deserved to be defunded and marginalized for the good of America’s youth. So, believe me, I understand MAGA’s frustration with Kimmel casually mouthing these untruths on network TV and getting cheered for it by Hollywood’s amen corner.

But FCC chair Brendan Carr took things to a baldly authoritarian place when he said in a podcast appearance, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” and explained, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” For anyone who deemed Carr’s threat too subtle, Trump made things very clear: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.” Trump went on to urge the termination of other late-night hosts he dislikes and has been musing about trying to pull the licenses of networks that are “against” him.

This all matters mightily for kids, schools, and colleges. When the attorney general is threatening to go after the wrong sorts of speech and the president is collecting the scalps of broadcasters who have criticized him, it casts a long shadow, making any defense of campus free speech or classroom discourse a naïf’s pipe dream.

It’s one thing when the overreactions come from celebrities and politicos, who inhabit their far-off towers. It’s quite another when the calls are coming from inside the house. A troubling number of teachers and professors posted horrific, despicable things about Kirk after his murder. I wouldn’t employ such people in any school or college I ran. Any such celebration in a classroom crosses a bright line (though there’ve been very, very few reported instances). But nearly all of the troubling conduct has been on social media. Now, any educator who publicly and explicitly cheers politically motivated murder cannot credibly claim to run a classroom where all students are welcome. So, there are educators who absolutely deserve to be fired, via appropriate processes, for violating professional codes of conduct.

That said, the definition of “celebrating murder” has metastasized in the past two weeks. For instance, a Ball State staffer was terminated for a Facebook post that read: “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends,” and described Kirk’s death as “a tragedy” for his family but also “a reflection of the violence, fear, and hatred he sowed.” To my eye, that’s crass but not a celebration of murder. Indeed, it strikes me as relatively measured in our meme-rage era. If such a remark is going to become grounds for immediate termination in schools and colleges, we’re about to open a door we may wish we hadn’t.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace urged Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to cut off funding to any educational institutions that “fail to take immediate administrative action, and to the extent allowed by law, to terminate any personnel who spews this hate.” (And, yes, this is the same Rep. Mace who once implored, “But when are we going to examine the Biden Administration’s efforts to suppress freedom of speech?” and who, last year, introduced the “No Funds For Fascists Act” to end U.S. aid to governments suppressing free speech.)

Speaking of the secretary of education: Last week, Secretary McMahon enthusiastically announced a new “America 250 Civics Coalition” in which the U.S. Department of Education will formally partner with the America First Policy Institute, Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, and several dozen other MAGA-friendly organizations to promote civic knowledge, patriotism, and a “shared understanding of America’s founding principles” in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. First off, this paean to our founding principles feels remarkably tone deaf in light of last week’s attacks on those same principles.

Second, c’mon, man. If the Harris-Walz administration had just announced a 250th coalition featuring a formal partnership between the department and the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, Center for American Progress, Harvard, et al., Republicans would have been (rightfully!) up in arms. We’d hear about Big Government using taxpayer funds to promote ideological allies, be reminded that no one should take such a transparently one-sided lineup seriously, and be told that this will do more to sow division than understanding. An essential part of the American story is pluralism, our ability to disagree and debate in good faith. There is none of that here. Instead, the secretary of education is using the authority of the U.S. government to do a 50-state speaking tour with an unapologetically like-minded coalition.

As one who long admired Charlie Kirk and his fearless commitment to robust discourse and healthy debate, I can’t help but think the actions and reactions of the past two weeks are a pitiful way to honor his legacy.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”