The Kirkstag Fire

OA1191 - In today’s Rapid Response Friday, we examine some of the legal questions raised as the Trump administration throws as much political capital as possible behind the recent assassination of Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk and their implications for the future of the First Amendment rights they claim to revere Kirk for championing. Is there any legal basis for Trump to designate a “domestic terrorist group,” let alone one that even his FBI has previously admitted doesn’t exist? Matt looks back to the first Trump term to try to understand what is coming. We then examine how the states are getting around the FDA’s limitations on the COVID-19 vaccine and the latest in Trump’s litigious war on the media before closing things out with a fun footnote on the only other time in US history that a US President has sued someone for libel.

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1. Tyler Robinson indictment (filed 9/16/2025)

2. 18 USC 2331 (federal definition of “domestic terrorism”)

3. “Memorandum on Inadmissibility of Persons Affiliated with Antifa Based on Organized Criminal Activity” (1/5/2021)

4. “Documents Show Trump Officials Used Secret Terrorism Unit to Question Lawyers at the Border,” Dara Lind, ProPublica (5/14/2021)

5. “Migrant Caravan in Tijuana with ties to El Paso Texas,” DHS Field Information Report (10/18/2019)

6. “Trump v. New York Times Company” (complaint filed 9/15/2025)

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