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Throughout 2024, as he pitched a weary American electorate on his return to power, Donald Trump promised repeatedly to put an end to the censoriousness of the Biden era. “We’re going to restore free speech, and we will really, truly restore it,” he said in Michigan, a few months before the election. It was a message that resonated with millions of people who might not otherwise have voted Republican, from MAHA moms to the Manosphere. I heard the complaints constantly on the campaign trail, from Uber drivers, parents, Walmart shoppers, country club types: Political correctness was out of control.

It’s become clear that Trump was never interested in ending cancel culture, per se, but rather in inflicting cancellations of his own. Last week, seizing on the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Bondi later walked back her comments after Sen. Ted Cruz noted, correctly, that hate speech is “absolutely” still protected under the First Amendment. But Trump himself went further: In just the last few days, he sued The New York Times for $15 billion (the case has already been thrown out by a Florida judge, but Trump will likely refile), suggested that protesters should be imprisoned, threatened to prosecute Democratic nonprofits, and argued, not for the first time, that broadcast networks that allow critical commentary of his administration are breaking the law and should lose their licenses.

On Wednesday, F.C.C. chair Brendan Carr growled that Disney-owned ABC could do things the “easy way” or the “hard way” after Jimmy Kimmel seemed to (incorrectly) suggest that Kirk’s assassin was MAGA. Within hours, Disney had suspended Kimmel indefinitely. Afterward, Carr boasted on CNBC, “We’re not done yet.” Meanwhile, Trump gloated on Truth Social and suggested that NBC should get rid of its two late-night hosts—Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers—too.

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The administration’s mafioso tactics are causing some heartburn on Capitol Hill. Many Republicans are sidestepping the issue and blaming Kimmel’s ouster on his ratings. When I asked House Republican Whip Tom Emmer for his opinion last week, he said Carr is “doing a great job” and dodged questions about whether the F.C.C. should be threatening broadcast licenses. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told me that the F.C.C. didn’t have anything to do with the decision to fire Kimmel. “We’re not talking about an F.C.C. proceeding and coercive authority. We’re talking about a private corporation making a decision,” he told me.

A handful of Republicans have publicly condemned the crackdown. Cruz, the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said on his podcast this week that it’s “unbelievably dangerous for the government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t like, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.” But Cruz was hailed as an outlier, with The Wall Street Journal editorial board calling the senator’s commentary his “finest hour.” A few other Republican critics made the point that if the F.C.C. is allowed to police speech, conservatives could be the victims when the balance of power switches. “I don’t want the government to be involved with policing speech,” Sen. Rand Paul told me and other reporters this week.

Within Republican congressional offices, however, the prevailing mood seems to be silent wariness. “Well, we don’t love it,” one senior Republican aide told me. Many of the top Republican aides I spoke with said they are watching to see if Trump pushes the issue further. But there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that last week’s assault on free speech was a one-time thing.

The muted response here is due to more than the usual Trump obedience. Many Republicans I’ve spoken to feel legitimately angry, even vengeful, over a culture that they feel has muzzled and ostracized conservative voices for years. They point to the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter, corporate boycotts, LGBTQ activist campaigns, and even Biden’s criticism of Georgia’s new voting rights law—which resulted in Major League Baseball moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta—as escalations in a culture war that reached its apotheosis during the pandemic.

In last week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with F.B.I. Director Kash Patel, Chairman Jim Jordan asked if the agency was “still spying on parents at school board meetings” or “still targeting Catholics.” (Patel said the agency was not.) Republicans with long memories still hold a grudge against former I.R.S. commissioner Lois Lerner, who resigned in 2013 amid allegations that the agency had delayed or denied tax-exempt status to conservative groups. (It’s worth noting that no evidence ever emerged that the I.R.S. acted on the direction of the Obama administration, and at the time Obama called the agency’s conduct “outrageous.”)

Trump has identified similar targets for the next wave of his retribution campaign. In the aftermath of Kirk’s murder, the president said that groups on the left should be investigated, prosecuted for RICO violations, or even be labeled as terrorist organizations. (Antifa is a top target, although it’s not an organized group. There is also no evidence that Kirk’s killer, Tyler Robinson, was associated or working with any organization.) When Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast this week, he specifically named liberal donor George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation as two nonprofits that should be investigated. Stephen Miller, who joined the memorial episode as a guest, told Vance, “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout the government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks.”

The Republican thirst for payback has been growing on the Hill. Rep. Chip Roy wrote a letter to House Republican leadership last week asking them to create a new committee to investigate “the money, influence, and power behind the radical left’s assault on America.” (Roy is also running for attorney general of Texas and he would love Trump’s endorsement.)

The idea isn’t totally new. Sen. Cruz introduced legislation in 2019 to investigate Antifa. But this time, it appears to be part of a broader and more aggressive effort to ramp up pressure on more moderate, establishment Democratic groups while providing a counternarrative to the idea that most political violence emanates from the right. Earlier this month, Speaker Mike Johnson staffed a new January 6 select subcommittee to investigate the “predetermined narrative the former January 6th Select Committee crafted to hurt President Donald J. Trump.” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, the former vice presidential nominee, rolled his eyes. “Why are they such babies?” he asked me. “They say we’re snowflakes, but they also say we are like violent commandos. Which is it?”

Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine that Republicans’ blunt-force efforts to punish their enemies and reshape media narratives will backfire. It’s one thing to take over the Kennedy Center and declare that Washington’s cultural institutions will be a little less woke and a lot more Cats. It’s another to gloat about canceling the former co-host of The Man Show and calling for NBC to fire the mostly non-political Jimmy Fallon. Sure, plenty of conservatives have been longing for this sort of retribution campaign. But the Gen Z men who listen to podcasters like Joe Rogan or Andrew Schulz have never heard of Lois Lerner.

Overreach is a real thing in politics, even if Republicans don’t yet feel they’re in danger of fomenting a mass cultural pushback of their own. Pressure campaigns to name and shame people for speech may be effective in the short term. But cancel culture didn’t work out well for liberals. When I asked Sen. Hawley if he worries about the political ramifications of Trump pushing too hard to silence critics and “end wokeism,” he replied emphatically, “No. I mean, because, no. No.”

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