Responding to the latest ICE murder in Minnesota, A.G. Pam Bondi added a new requirement for speech to be protected–it must be disorganized. Bondi said this on Saturday:
It’s extremely organized. The signs they have are all matching, they’re well written. And look at what’s happening today. How did these people go out & get gas masks? These protesters. Would you know how to walk out on the street and buy a gas mask? Think about that. We’re not gonna have it”
So: People sharing a common goal and message, using matching, well-written signs marks unprotected speech that government need not tolerate (and can suppress, even violently). Only disorganized, random, and poorly expressed speakers enjoy constitutional protection.
Bondi might emerge as the worst of this batch. Everyone knew Stephen Miller was a ghoul, because he had been a ghoul for years. Bondi pretended to be respectable and serious, until she wasn’t.
Update: And Greg Bovino said this on Sunday:
When politicians, community leaders, & some journalists engage in that heated rhetoric we keep talking about, when they make the choice to vilify law enforcement calling law enforcement ‘Gestapo’ or using the term ‘kidnapping,’ that is a choice & there are actions & consequences.
Scott Shapiro (Yale) pointed out that government cruelty in response to being called bad names has historical parallel: People in Nazi Germany called the Gestapo “the Gestapo,” and look what happened there. Or as a comedy group showed about six years ago (thanks to an alert reader for reminding me of this):
Maybe I should start a running thread of “How the free-speech-warriors in the Trump Administration narrowed free speech today.”