Concrete action the feds, states, and citizenry can take right now to stop the madness

A left-wing fanatic allegedly killed the most popular, well-connected, and starry-eyed young idealist on the right at the exact time the most aggressive administration since Richard Nixon is in the White House, the House of Representatives is rowdy and Republican, a far less rowdy GOP controls the Senate, alternative media is reaching parity, and Republican voters are actively engaged.

The Democrats could not have found a worse field to fight on.

Republicans just need to stop playing footsie and take this fight seriously.

This moment is historic, and for once the Grand Old Party is poised to meet it. Charlie Kirk’s cowardly assassin changed everything, and Democrats are just beginning to realize the extent of their trouble.

Here’s what this country and its government can do now, and in the near future, to make sure the system that produced and propelled Kirk’s killer is finally and mercifully dismantled.

The colleges

Charlie was murdered on a college campus for debating ideas colleges don’t welcome or tolerate. The American university system, its accreditation power, and its staff foster the protected breeding grounds for the extremism plaguing the country, but they’re not invulnerable. Republicans just need to stop playing footsie and take this fight seriously.

It starts with the governors. Republican governors have no reason to tolerate state schools that undermine the public safety and the future of the country. That process lies with the state boards of regents, which call the shots for these schools. For decades, Democrats have appointed ideologues for their cause to these boards while Republicans have used them to reward donors who want box seats for the big game. That needs to end now.

Republican governors must take their appointments seriously, and voters need to take those appointments seriously as well. The Republican Party has done an admirable job of remaking the judiciary by forcing candidates for the executive to lay out the judges they’d choose. This success can be repeated with education. “What’s your plan for the university board of regents, Mr. Candidate? And what will you do to make sure state-run schools teach the kind of skills and values the state and its voters want to see taught?”

Red states have a serious problem with institutional capture by Democrats. Republicans have the power to change that. Let Charlie’s awful murder now give them the will.

But what about private universities? The federal government has a heavier hand than the states and has power to compel even private schools on certain fronts.

One key is the 1983 Supreme Court precedent set by Bob Jones University v. United States. That questionable ruling used an undeniably ugly school policy (banning interracial dating for students and staff) to strip the school’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. In doing so, the then-liberal Supreme Court set a broad precedent: That the federal government can remove the tax status of an organization that has policies "contrary to public policy” and that “cannot be viewed as conferring a public benefit within the above ‘charitable’ concept or within the congressional intent underlying 501(c)(3)."

It’s an awful ruling, but would Justice Amy Coney Barrett overrule a precedent set to end a racist practice? Would Chief Justice John Roberts or his left-wing colleagues? That seems unlikely, so at the moment, Bob Jones gives Washington a powerful weapon to wield against private universities that are enforcing segregated housing, queer-only spaces, intimidation and limits on free speech, militant trans lessons, and other orthodoxies that are “contrary to public policy” or that “cannot be viewed as conferring a public benefit.”

And then there’s Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which established that “fighting words” — or “a direct personal insult or invitation to exchange fisticuffs,” as further defined by Texas v. Johnson — are not protected by the First Amendment. States are the front line for enforcement, so don't count on California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom’s government to protect speakers on campuses, but scenarios exist that empower Washington to step in, including when fighting words are used to deprive someone of civil rights. Campus radicals routinely try to block political opinions they don’t agree with and stop Christians and Jews from speaking openly on campus, but it would still be a difficult prosecution for the feds.

An easier option might mean bypassing civil rights laws to prosecute more straightforward cases, like solicitation to commit a crime of violence or conspiracy against rights, both of which could be used to protect people who are threatened or attacked for using their First Amendment rights.

Remember: Public speech is a federally protected activity that cannot simply be ignored by Democrat states.

Then there’s the anti-riot act and the law against transmitting threats across state lines (i.e., on social media). Bring them all to bear. Invite your friends!

President Donald Trump could further instruct the Department of Education to issue guidance that opens colleges up to financial civil liability for violent political disruptions. The executive order would be based on the Ku Klux Klan Act (more on this later), which helped defeat that band of violent militants by creating structures for financial liability around their activities. He could even call the order the “Disrupting the New Left Klan,” or something similar.

These tools all exist. And when you threaten their money, you’ll see American institutions work to break free of their radical captors.

The nonprofits

Colleges and universities aren’t the only nonprofits using the perks the American people have granted them to spread radicalism and criminality. The left-wing nonprofit sphere, already handicapped by internal radicalism and wounded by the end of USAID, provides a lot of the resources, funding, and organization behind the political street violence.

The Department of Justice can begin by investigating the big guys in the room, many of which either backed violent radicals and organizers during the 2020 riots and recent Los Angeles riot or funded organizations that took active roles in these criminal disturbances.

These include the Open Society Foundations and the network run by billionaire Shanghai resident and China propagandist Neville Roy Singham, which includes the People's Forum, Code Pink, the United Community Fund, and the Justice and Education Fund.

The mother-ship sources of funds that have ended up in the bank accounts of violent political groups and their legal enablers should be frozen immediately. Those funds stay frozen until the Department of Justice and Congress can discern what kind of violence, unrest, and disorder they are funding. This sort of deep dive will also mean investigating the board members, officers, and staff of these rich and powerful organizations.

The federal government can go for plenty more than the big fish, too. The microscope can be trained on Arabella Advisors and New Venture Fund, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, Telescope Fund, Impetus Fund, North Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, Windward Fund, Arnold Ventures, all associated grantee organizations, and all known perpetrators of domestic lawlessness and disorder.

Investigations should focus on allegations of financing Antifa-style groups, protest coordination leading to violence and illegal disruptions, and any ties to recent assassinations or murders. Investigators must have the authority to subpoena financial records, communications, and witness testimonies across state lines.

President Donald Trump has also floated using anti-racketeering RICO laws, which could be applicable to everyone from the foundations to the militants they empower. For decades Republicans wouldn’t dare go after these types. That kind of breathing room naturally breeds the kind of legal sloppiness you simply do not find in the nonprofits of the long-scrutinized and persecuted American right.

Stop the money going toward the violent radicals targeting American cities, schools, agents, and police, and you’ll cripple their revolution.

Disrupting the New Klan

There’s an irony in the similarities today’s masked left-wing militants share with the Ku Klux Klan, and that irony would be even more delicious if some of the laws written to combat the Klan were used against our new political terrorists.

Using already written laws is essential, given the small majorities in the House and Senate. Fortunately, the Ku Klux Klan Act, first passed during Reconstruction but updated twice in the 1980s, provides several powerful tools for going after domestic radicals.

Consider, for example, the federal statute covering “conspiracy to interfere with civil rights.” Section 3 specifically targets “two or more persons” who disguise themselves to “either directly or indirectly” deprive someone of equal protection under the law.

Further, the law creates civil liability for “two or more persons” from so much as planning:

to prevent by force, intimidation, or threat, any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, from giving his support or advocacy in a legal manner, toward or in favor of the election of any lawfully qualified person as an elector for President or Vice President, or as a Member of Congress of the United States; or to injure any citizen in person or property on account of such support or advocacy.

Masked rioters disrupting speeches on college campuses fall squarely in line here with this already existing (and tested) law.

The neigboring statute goes even farther, creating civil liabilities for those who even know about the plans to attack or intimidate political speech. Suddenly, those left-wing internet chats seem a little risky, don’t they?

Trump’s Wednesday-night declaration that Antifa will now be treated as a domestic “major terrorist organization” is a strong step, but it will entail difficult application and invite legal pushback. American laws wisely empower the government with much less leeway for domestic groups than it has with foreign terrorist organizations. There is no statutory procedure for it.

Fortunately for White House policymakers, Antifa has a global presence, and if investigators can identify channels for money or communication between the chapters, they’ll have an easier time, just as the government has accomplished with MS-13 and other international drug gangs now designated as transnational criminal organizations.

The designation should serve to prioritize investigating and unraveling Antifa radical activities, as well as raising those activities from crimes to national security threats, with FBI, DHS, and ATF involvement. It could also give legal space for using Patriot Act powers to recover financial and phone records and aggressively pursue funders and the avenues they use.

“If you try to designate just Antifa as a single entity or movement, what I suspect you'll find is that the bureaucrats will say, ‘We don't know what that is; that’s not a thing that exists,”’ Center for Security Policy Director Kyle Shideler explained on BlazeTV’s “Blaze News: The Mandate” Monday night. The “faster and more effective” way to target them, he said, is to start abroad, then connect the dots to specific domestic groups.

The president could also direct the Department of Justice to trace funding back from bridge-blockers and other illegal disruptors to its sources and charge them with civil conspiracy. Given the international sources of some of this money, he could further instruct the Department of State to trace money from illegal unrest to hostile state actors like Cuba and Roy Singham’s China.

Next steps

There’s a hunger on the right for new laws to rein in the militant left. On Capitol Hill, Republicans face a narrow Senate majority that limits what they can pass. That doesn’t mean they should sit idle. Force votes. Put Democrats on the record and let voters decide.

Start with bills that hit the organizations fueling disorder. Pass laws that strip nonprofit status or tax breaks from groups that provide material support for riots, block public roads, or coordinate mass unlawful activity. Bar leaders of those groups from serving in other nonprofits or labor-union boards for a set period. Treat financier-enablers the way we treat organized crime and corrupt enterprises — follow the money and expose the patrons.

Most importantly, wield powers that already exist. Criminal prosecutions against backers of revolution pose constitutional hurdles, but civil penalties and financial-liability tools face far lower barriers. Use asset forfeiture, civil suits, treble damages, and regulatory sanctions to choke off funding.

Targeting money silences mobs far more effectively than a thousand press releases. Congress and state attorneys general should use those authorities aggressively — and make sure the public sees who defended the financiers.

Wield power responsibly and legally, but firmly. Target the many carve-outs the people have generously granted nonprofits and universities in the understanding that they would use their privileges to make our country a better and more prosperous place.

We’re in a very dangerous place. Support for political violence has skyrocketed among liberal and “very liberal” Democrats. If the levels we’re seeing there were mirrored on the American right, we’d be on the fast track to a terrible civil war.

We have a chance to stop that without surrendering any of our rights or granting the government sweeping new authorities. The beast is growing. We have to starve it now.

Blaze News: Report exposes Soros' Open Society funding of alleged pro-terror leftist groups

BlazeTV's "Blaze News: The Mandate": Homeland Security expert details step-by-step plan to label Antifa a terrorist group

Blaze News: State Department cuts ties with Armed Queers-affiliated NGO

The American Mind: The radical left’s assault on the right is an assault on our nation

Blaze News: Media tries to protect Antifa with tired al-Qaeda talking points

House Oversight Committee: Neville Roy Singham and the CCP-linked funding fueling civil unrest in the United States

Fox News: House Ways & Means Committee targets tax-exempt status of CCP-linked nonprofit tied to violent protests

Hadley Arkes in Public Discourse, 2010: It’s time for conservatives and liberals alike to remember that certain words by their very utterance inflict injury

The Intercept, 2022: Woke meltdowns have brought progressive advocacy groups to a standstill

The New York Times, 2022: Democrats are having a purity-test problem at exactly the wrong time

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