‘THAT LAW SCHOOL FAILED’

Supreme Court Justice Flames Pam Bondi’s Free Speech Crackdown

The attorney general has proposed criminalizing “hate speech” after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, despite Kirk describing himself as a “free speech absolutist.”

The MAGA base and liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor don’t see eye to eye on much, but they agree that criminalizing “hate speech” is not constitutional.

Sotomayor joined right-wing commentators Tuesday morning to criticize Attorney General Pam Bondi’s proposed crackdown on free speech in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

“Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself, that law school failed,” she told a panel at New York Law School on Tuesday, according to Politico and NBC News.

Sotomayor, a 71-year-old graduate of Yale Law School, did not mention Bondi by name. However, it was clear she was referring to the Stetson Law alumna in her remarks.

Bondi, 59, told Katie Miller during a podcast interview on Monday that she was instructing Justice Department officials to enforce hate speech investigations. She suggested that the crackdown might include those reveling in the assassination of Kirk.

DEFYING KIRK

MAGA Melts Down at Bondi Over ‘Hate Speech’ Crackdown

Tom Latchem

“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” she said.

Bondi added, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

The remarks have many of President Donald Trump’s supporters in an uproar. Kirk was strongly against the criminalization of “hate speech,” which he said is “subjective” and is open to abuse by the party in power. He said he was a “free speech absolutist.”

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“Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” Kirk posted to X in 2023. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”

Trump exploded at ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl on Tuesday after he made note of the criticism of Bondi’s remarks.

“And what do you make of Pam Bondi saying she’s going to go after hate speech?” asked Karl. “Is that, I mean, a lot of people, a lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech.”

Trump responded: “She’d probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart.”

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Karl countered, “Would that be appropriate?”

Trump went on to suggest it was.

“Maybe they’ll come after ABC,” he said. “Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they’ll have to go after you.”

Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh is among those in MAGA who are harshly criticizing Bondi’s plans.

“This is really outrageous and infuriating,” he wrote, reacting to the video of Bondi on The Katie Miller Podcast. “We’re already having a lot of success fighting back against the leftists celebrating Charlie’s death. We don’t need Pam Bondi swooping in to throw the entire conversation off the rails by completely missing our point. And having a ‘hate speech’ crackdown in the name of Charlie Kirk—a man who absolutely rejected ‘hate speech’ laws—is especially grotesque.”

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Josh FialloBreaking News Reporter

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