Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) on Thursday said he will seek to have social media companies place lifetime bans on users who celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist shot Wednesday while speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University.
“I’m going to use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” Higgins wrote in a post on the social platform X.
“If they ran their mouth with their smarta-- hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution… those profiles must come down,” he added.
The Louisiana lawmaker said he will lobby big tech to "have zero tolerance for violent political hate content.”
Most social media companies have scaled back their efforts to police content over the past year, though most maintain rules against direct threats toward individuals.
Earlier this year, Meta, owner of both Facebook and Instagram, relaxed its rules surrounding hate speech, dropping some protections for LGBTQ individuals specifically.
Their model now follows Elon Musk’s social platform X, where users are asked to submit notes or corrections to posts that are potentially misleading or lack context.
Kirk's killing has spurred a surge of anger on the right as authorities seek to track down the shooter. Some of Kirk's critics have suggested his divisive rhetoric invited violence.
“He was constantly pushing this sort of hate speech aimed at certain groups,” Matthew Dowd, a political operative and contributor to MSNBC, said on the network Wednesday. “And I always go back to: Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions."
Dowd was fired on Thursday.
Higgins is not the only lawmaker to make demands on social media outlets in the wake of the shooting.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) called on X, Meta and TikTok to remove graphic videos of Kirk's assassination from their platforms.
"He has a family, young children, and no one should be forced to relive this tragedy online,” Luna said Wednesday night on X.
Higgins said he will go further than social media bans in targeting those who expressed happiness about Kirk’s death.
“I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked,” he added in his Thursday post.
“I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I’m starting that today. That is all.”
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