Charlie Kirk & Donald Trump's War on the First Amendment & the Trans Community

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Aired on Out-FM, Sept. 23, 2025

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Charlie Kirk & Donald Trump at Turning Point USA Event

Charlie Kirk & Donald Trump at Turning Point USA Event

 

Matthew Lyons and Janine Jackson
 
On this show, Out-FM's Bob Lederer and transgender activist Pauline Park spoke with Matthew Lyons, a longtime researcher of the far-right and racist organizations, about the aftermath of the assassination of Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk. They discussed the Trump administration's use of it as a pretext to pursue suppression of freedom of speech​ (including its effort to force out Jimmy Kimmel), retaliation against the liberal and left communities, and ​escalated attacks on the trans community. 
 
We started with a simple step that few media outlets have taken: We read and played a tiny sample of Kirk's own bigoted words directed against Black people, lesbians and gay men, trans folks, and others he viciously maligned for years. Together, these quotes paint a very different picture than the widely-claimed practitioner of "spirited discourse."
 
We also replayed a recent interview by our radio colleague Janine Jackson, Program Director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), about the administration's attempts to control, censor, and manipulate the mainstream corporate media. She spoke with Tim Carr of the advocacy group Free Press, which works to democratize the media and oppose censorship (totally separate from and opposed to the similarly-named, right-wing, pro-Zionist website headed by Bari Weiss, reportedly soon to become head of CBS News).
 
Matthew N. Lyons is a regular contributor to the radical antifascist website Three Way Fight, ("Against Fascism. Against the State. For a Free Humanity!"), as well as co-editor of the book Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism, and author of Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right's Challenge to State and Empire. He lives in Philadelphia. Matthew's recent article is What Charlie Kirk’s Life and Death Can Tell Us About the U.S. Right in the Age of Trump.
 
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As fascists openly call for trans people to be institutionalized, forcibly detransitioned, and labeled as terrorists, we must remind ourselves how trans existence is undefeatable, and how trans people always find the hope and drive to survive the unimaginable.

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