The president, vice-president and members of Congress have begun calling for the government to investigate progressive organizations in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder, in terms those targeted say are reminiscent of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the “red scare” of the 1950s.
Donald Trump, speaking to Fox & Friends on Friday, presented “vicious and horrible” radicals on the left of US politics as a roadblock to the country coming together politically after the shooting. On Sunday, he amplified his attack on political enemies by declaring that “a lot of people that you would traditionally say are on the left … [are] already under investigation”.
The posture is being echoed by members of his administration.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the DoJ, Homeland Security, and throughout this government, to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks,” said Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, speaking to Vice-President JD Vance while Vance guest-hosted Kirk’s podcast Monday. “We will do it in Charlie’s name.”
The day after Kirk’s murder, 22 members of the House Freedom Caucus sent a letter to the house speaker, asking for the creation of a select committee on “the money, influence, and power behind the radical left’s assault on America and the rule of law”.
The letter, echoing commentary from the president and the right, contends that Kirk’s murder is of a pattern of “coordinated attack” by “NGOs, donors, media, public officials” and others, attempting to tie together widely distinct incidents , from the February 2024 murder of Georgia college student Laken Riley to the killing last month of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte.
None of the organizations in the letter, nor other prominent organizations on the political left, said they had been contacted by federal law enforcement or Congress in the wake of the Kirk killing. Some, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) or the Open Society Foundations – an organization closely associated with financier George Soros – have been through rounds of rightwing congressional inquiry during Trump’s first term.
“We are aware of reports calling for investigations into our founder George Soros and the work of the Open Society Foundations based on unfounded allegations,” a spokesperson at the Open Society Foundations said. “We are a human rights organization that works to strengthen American democracy and uphold the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the US constitution. Our work is in full compliance with US laws.”
The SPLC also said it had not been contacted by the Trump administration. “We must have meaningful national conversation about violence and polarization in America,” an SPLC spokesperson said. “Blaming organizations that monitor extremism distracts from the urgent work of addressing the conditions that allow hate and violence to grow. SPLC remains committed to exposing extremism, equipping communities with knowledge, and defending the rights and safety of marginalized communities.”
Others named in the letter are preparing for fire.
“There is a real cost to these threats from elected officials and their allies with platforms,” said Jessica Brand, founder of the Wren Collective, a non-profit working on criminal justice reform. “They inflict tremendous fear and costs to those on the receiving end. People have to increase security, live with fear of future attacks, and find themselves on the receiving end of vile and terrifying threats. And that’s the goal – the purpose of these threats is to silence critics and quash dissent.”
The Wren Collective began drawing attention last week when Fox News and other rightwing media outlets began broadcasting a report by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund – an organization providing legal support to police officers accused of criminal misconduct – attempting to link the reform nonprofit to policies by progressive district attorneys.
Targeted investigations of organizations on the basis of their political values harks back to McCarthyism, the anti-communist “red scare” of the 50s, said Danaka Katovich, national co-director for Codepink, a feminist anti-war organization founded in 2002 to protest US military intervention and promote peace and social justice. Codepink went through a round of investigations before, to little effect, she said.
“They’ve launched congressional investigations over Codepink’s funding sources that their Democrat colleagues often parrot talking points from,” Katovich said. “Of course, nothing has come of these investigations besides trying to intimidate us from advocating for peace and justice.”
She added: “It’s a really critical moment for other organizations to stand in solidarity, loud and clear solidarity, with organizations facing repression. Now’s not the time for splitting hairs over smaller disagreements. If they come after one of us they will come after us all.”
The rhetoric isn’t new, but the Trump administration has been untethered to political and legal norms that in the past prevented the government from attempting to exercise power over nonprofit groups. A bill to permit the treasury department to eliminate the tax-exempt status of nonprofit it deemed to be supporting terrorism passed in the Republican-controlled house last year, but died in the Senate.
Notably, loud complaints about investigations into conservative nonprofit groups and churches that appeared to be abusing the tax code and legal requirement to avoid using tax-exempt resources for partisan political campaigns has been a recurring theme for Republicans. An attempt to add the language into the president’s tax and spending bill was stripped out before passage.
But Katovich highlighted a bill proposed to grant the US secretary of state the power to revoke or refuse to issue passports to American citizens accused of material support for terrorism. The bill will have a hearing this week.
