Fired After the Charlie Kirk Revenge Purge, They’re Still Unemployed

Emily Taylor, a former English professor, was devastated when she learned that Charlie Kirk, the conservative commentator she had previously praised, had been shot in the throat at Utah Valley University in January. This was the first time in her life that she had not returned to her job as an educator. Taylor had resigned from her tenured position at Presbyterian College in South Carolina due to a political witch hunt led by lawmakers who threatened to cut her college's funding for acknowledging Kirk's violent rhetoric before his assassination.

Now, she is one of over 600 individuals whose lives were disrupted by the Charlie Kirk revenge purge, as a result of a free-speech crackdown led by the Trump administration.

A year after Kirk's death, The Intercept interviewed five people who lost their jobs due to the purge and four attorneys representing seven more clients. Most of these individuals are still unemployed after falling victim to one of the largest mass censorship campaigns in modern history. Their stories highlight a disturbing trend where an overzealous online army, backed by powerful figures, terrorizes political enemies.

Allen Chaney, the legal director of the ACLU of South Carolina, pointed out that the saturation of online life has made it easier for such purges to take place.

Taylor had to wait for her children to finish their piano lessons when she heard the news of Kirk's shooting on September 10, 2025. She distinctly remembered his final words, "Counting or not counting gang violence?" But the backlash was swift. President Donald Trump hailed Kirk as "our greatest evangelist for American liberty," and Vice President JD Vance threatened to target anyone who celebrated Kirk's murder.

Online trolls and politicians alike joined the campaign to target anyone critical of Kirk, making it easy to harass people en masse by simply searching his name on X.

Many of those targeted by this purge were not high-profile public figures, but rather support staff and others not in positions of power. Melody Fowler-Green, an attorney representing several people fired in the wake of the Kirk killing, noted that these individuals are often not well-off. Attorneys representing the clients stressed that this purge represents a chilling shift in the protection of free speech during the Trump administration, an era where censorship and harassment have become commonplace.