Texas’ MAGA Republican leaders this week continued talking out of both sides of their mouths this week, one the one hand praising Charlie Kirk’s commitment to free speech and the first amendment while on the other demanding that students who criticize Kirk or make fun of his assassination and that others who criticize the slain conservative be fire from their jobs.
Kirk, a controversial conservative activists known for making racist, misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric and who claimed to celebrate and defend the First Amendment right to free speech, was shot to death Sept. 10 while talking with students at Utah Valley University in one of his “Prove Me Wrong” debates as part of his The American Comeback Tour.
As the Texas Tribune reports, when students at Texas State gathered last week to mourn Kirk, one student yelled out, “Hi,” my name is Charlie Kirk” before dropping to the ground and pretending to be shot. The stunt was caught on video.
Gov. Greg Abbott immediately demanded that school officials expel the student straight away because “Mocking assassination must have consequences.” (Texas State officials confirmed that the person in question is not a student there any more.)
This is the same Gov. Greg Abbott who, as the Texas Tribune points out, in 2019 signed into law a bill “requiring all outdoor spaces on university campuses a open forums for public speech and prohibiting universities from considering anticipated controversy when deciding whether to allow a speaker on campus.”
Of course, that was when schools were cancelling events featuring controversial right-wing speakers due to concerns over threats of violence. At the time George Washington University Professor Mary Ann Franks, a First Amendment expert, said that even as supporters promoted the measure as protecting free speech, it actually “played into a strategy pushed by conservative groups, including Kirk’s Turning Point USA, to whip up anger toward higher education,” and, Franks said, “vilify students and universities as being intolerant.”
Last year when students began using their First Amendment right to say things the MAGA Republicans didn’t like, Texas lawmakers walked back some of the protections in the 2019 law. And a new law passed by the Legislature and signed by Abbott this past June, restricts who can protest on campuses and when they can protest.
(On Sept. 3, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — FIRE — filed a lawsuit challenging the new law.)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Texas’ perpetually-under-investigation Attorney General Ken Paxton, not content to limit his demagoguery to Texas, has “joined a multi-state coalition in sending a letter to university administrations across the nation demanding that they uphold the First Amendment and not add unreasonable policies to suppress conservative speech,” according to a press release from Paxton’s office today (Monday, Sept. 22).
Paxton, by the way, is challenging incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the 2026 GOP Primary. He is also facing allegations of mortgage fraud, and is in the middle of divorce proceedings with his wife, Texas Sen. Angela Paxton, who filed for divorce earlier this summer, saying that based on “recent discoveries” she was filing on “biblical grounds.” Ken, however, refuses to let any of that bother him and continues to use the Office of the Attorney General as a tool in his bid to unseat Cornyn.
Paxton’s press release today said this letter “comes in the wake of the tragic assassination of national hero Charlie Kirk and responds to troubling reports that some university officials are using the murder as pretext to chill conservative voices under the guise of heightened security.”
It continues, “If facility-use and security-fee policies are imposed because of the speake4’s political viewpoint rather than in a neutral and consistent manner, that is unlawful discrimination.”
“Any twisted radical attempting to weaponize the tragedy of Charlie Kirk’s assassination to silence the conservative movement will be exposed, stopped, and held accountable,” Paxton declared most righteously, apparently oblivious to the fact that the students being thrown out of their schools, the companies having their business threatened and the individuals losing their jobs (Jimmy Kimmel, anyone?) are, in a majority, those who have been critical of Kirk, his methods and his legacy.
“The patriotic voices of the young people in the conservative movement are louder and stronger than ever, and I will not allow any school to quiet them,” the AG pledged.
Oh, and also today, Paxton’s office sent out another press release to let everyone know that the patriotic and heroic AG is heading to Houston to speak at an event on Wednesday, Sept. 24, for Stratford High School students who, Paxton claims, “ were targeted for starting a Club America group, which is the name of [Charlie Kirk’s] Turning Point USA’s high school program.”
According to Paxton’s office, the students were discussing starting the new group and talking about possible sponsors in a private group message, but screenshots of those discussions and the students’ names were posted on social media, with “a radical activist” urging people to pressure potential sponsors into not being actual sponsors.
Paxton, waxing ever patriotic and heroic, declared, “The far-left tried to silence these patriotic young Texans, but we will never surrender. In honor of Charlie, we will be bolder and more courageous than ever.”
— Tammye Nash
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