U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy has long warned about what he sees as the erosion of democracy. In the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term, Murphy mused about the possibility of the president going after political opponents.
Now, he believes Trump is turning the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk into an opportunity to do just that — a message he has fiercely and repeatedly made over the past week.
Murphy didn’t back down from his grim and dire warnings on Thursday, pointing to the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show as the latest example of how he sees the administration using Kirk’s death as an excuse and justification for going after those who don’t agree with Trump. And Republicans who once championed free speech have changed their tune — or are silent, he argued.
“That’s censorship. That’s state speech control. That’s not America,” Murphy said. “Trump is making it 100% clear that he is going to ramp up his efforts to use the power of the federal government to harass and punish his critics. Not because they’re supporters of political violence — they are not — but because they have the audacity to openly oppose his policies. They aren’t even hiding what they are trying to do.”
In the week since the calls for peace and unity in Connecticut and elsewhere, the familiar political tensions have cropped back up.
And Murphy, who has been lauded on the left as an emerging leader of the party and criticized by the right as a Trump antagonist, has been persistent in his argument that democracy is on the line.
He led a Thursday press conference about new legislation called the “No Political Enemies Act” that appears to have only Democratic support. The bill would provide more protections for free speech in court by “creat[ing] a specific defense for those who are being targeted for political reasons” and covering their attorney’s fees.
He said it would also establish consequences for officials who use their government influence to target speech they don’t like, pointing to Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr’s criticism of Kimmel for his comments about the shooting suspect’s political affiliation, which came hours before ABC’s decision to cancel the show.
“The shooting of Charlie Kirk was a national tragedy. It should have been a line in the sand, an opportunity for President Trump to bring this country together to do whatever is necessary to stamp out political violence that’s targeted both Republicans and Democrats, political violence that emanates from both right-wing and left-wing radicalization,” Murphy said.
After losing a close ally in Kirk who mobilized young conservatives on high school and college campuses, Trump and his allies are ramping up an expanded crackdown on liberal organizations.
As a guest host on Kirk’s podcast earlier this week, Vice President JD Vance said the federal government will go after any group that “foments, facilitates and engages in violence.” He specifically named groups like the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations, which is funded by Democratic megadonor George Soros. But the White House is reportedly putting together a list of left-leaning organizations that they believe are complicit in political violence.
That caused alarmed for Democrats like Murphy.
“I think you’ve already seen them shamelessly use the judicial system to target Democrats. Trump has made it very clear that he’s talking about going after mainstream progressive groups and mainstream progressive donors, including the Soros family,” Murphy said in an interview earlier this week.
“They’re going to try to exploit this moment in order to shut down political dissent. I don’t think they’ll be successful, but part of our work has to be naming it so that they don’t get away with winning the argument about what the motive is,” Murphy added.
His comments came before Kimmel’s show was indefinitely pulled off the air.
Trump and his allies are taking a multi-pronged approach to reprimand those they view as adversarial: potential racketeering charges, reviewing tax-exempt statuses of nonprofits like the one run by Soros, and urging people to report employees at work who celebrate or mock Kirk’s death. The State Department said it will deny visas over celebratory messages and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi would go after “hate speech.”
“The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence. That was the last message that he sent me,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said in a recent Fox News interview. “We are gonna do that.”
Murphy, in response to Miller and others with similar messages, issued an ominous warning in a series of posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “Pay attention. Something dark might be coming.”
Murphy has been vocal since Democrats lost the November elections that they need to recalibrate and be willing to more forcefully respond to Trump. And many times that has caught the attention of the White House and the president himself, who lashed out at the Connecticut senator over his comments about Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a statement to HuffPost, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson pointed to Murphy’s own comments made days before the shooting that “we’re in a war right now to save this country,” arguing he’s “leaning into inflammatory rhetoric that drives leftists to violence.”
Murphy said he was responding to a question about disputes over redistricting. Trump asked Texas to redraw its congressional maps for the explicit purpose of netting more seats for Republicans. Since then, California has sought to redo its own maps to favor Democrats, and other red states have also followed suit.
Republicans, including Connecticut Republican Party chairman Ben Proto, have also taken issue with Murphy’s rhetoric. The GOP leader said social media has exacerbated things and helped ratchet up the rhetoric on both sides, though he laid more of the blame on Democrats.
“He more than anyone else should know people take stuff literally,” Proto said. “It’s less about what you’re saying and more about how you’re saying it, and how is it interpreted by someone who doesn’t know you … but knows you’re a leader. How we say things and the words that are chosen in very short snippets have impact on people.”
The Connecticut senator argued his use of metaphorical political speech used by members in both parties isn’t the same as the speech and actions from the president.
“We all use fighting terms when we talk about politics, but that is fundamentally different than what Donald Trump has done, which is literally pardon people for violent political acts simply because they were supporters of his,” Murphy said.
Trump and many Republicans have blamed the left wing of the Democratic Party for the shooting as the investigation into the shooting is underway. And they believe that the left’s rhetoric and choice of words have encouraged political violence.
Murphy was asked about that Thursday, as well as whether Democrats have a responsibility to rethink how they speak about Republicans. He was asked about using language about fascism to describe the administration, since the shooting suspect engraved ammunition with references to fascists.
But Murphy didn’t waver. He said it was imperative not to back down or downplay what he believes he’s witnessing.
“[Trump] is acting in a way that is scarily similar to many would-be despots all across this world, all across history, who have tried to transition a country from democracy to autocracy,” Murphy told reporters Thursday. “And so we have no obligation to sugarcoat the gravity of this moment.”
More details are starting to emerge about the alleged shooter and his motives over the past couple of days. Records showed text exchanges saying that he had “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred.”
On Sunday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said authorities didn’t have a motive, but, based on interviews with relatives, “there clearly was a leftist ideology.” But Cox cautioned against focusing solely on that and said he’s more concerned about “radicalization” that drives such violence, including the Minnesota Democratic legislator who was killed in the summer.
But political violence has been a scourge on both the right and the left, especially over the past year.
That has raised major concerns about the safety of political figures and elected lawmakers, particularly when they’re at off-campus events. Proto said a member of Congress who plans to visit Connecticut next week asked about having a police presence at all events. The GOP chairman said he’s never had that before.
“I don’t know if it’s going to get better anytime soon,” Proto said. “I’m just hoping it doesn’t get worse.”
Some Democrats have applauded Cox’s handling of the situation and calls for unity and civility. U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, believes more national Republicans should emulate that approach.
“Some of the Republican members … decided they would seize that moment without a fact in the world, not to be solemn, not to urge calm, but to say ‘you did this’ to the Democrats,” Himes said.
“This is the message coming out of the Oval Office. This is a way to get more violence,” he said. “A leader takes a deep breath. A leader says we don’t do violence in this country.”
In Connecticut, political tensions didn’t seem to be as high as those enveloping the nation’s capital. But the two party chairs, who had days earlier penned a joint statement on taking a step back and reflecting, had a back-and-forth over a national Republican committee that singled out U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, for not acknowledging the shooting after five days.
Connecticut Democratic Chair Roberto Alves called the remarks from the National Republican Congressional Committee “extremely dangerous” and called on Proto to get it retracted by national Republicans. The state GOP chair pushed back that the comments were “not necessarily politically violent language” and called on Democrats to look inward at their own political speech, according to the Hartford Courant.
Hayes pushed back on the NRCC’s statement, saying in a statement she has spoken against political violence throughout her time in Congress. On Friday, a couple of days after the shooting, she wrote a letter to leadership on the House Education and Workforce Committee asking for a hearing on school shootings. U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, who also sits on the committee, signed her letter.
But Democrats argue that Republicans, as the party in control of Congress and the White House, bear the responsibility of lowering the temperature and not jumping to conclusions as the investigation into Kirk’s death plays out.
For Republicans in Connecticut, they’re largely staying out of Trump’s hard-line approach.
“I think everybody is who they are, and they’re gonna do what they do. And I can deal with my little piece of the world up here,” Proto said when asked Trump’s own rhetoric.
“I understand my role as a partisan,” Proto added, noting his work trying to elect Republicans to local offices around Connecticut this fall. “I can’t control what comes out of Washington on either side of the aisle.”
Asked if he agrees with Trump’s crackdown on left-leaning institutions, Proto gave a more muted response but appeared open to investigating and prosecuting any groups that break the law.
“I think we can have the political debate, and we can fall out with political opponents. If they’re engaged in activities that are illegal, then yes, they should be investigated and prosecuted,” Proto said. “I’m concerned about the rhetoric getting to the point where it induces action — and the action that we saw last week and we’ve seen in other instances around the country.”
The Connecticut Mirror originally published this story.
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
