Michigan Republicans have branded themselves as defenders of free expression, but a recent spate of bills threatens to erode the very First Amendment rights they claim to defend.
A group of GOP lawmakers recently introduced a House bill, called the “Anticorruption of Public Morals Act,” that would ban all online pornography, including depictions or descriptions of transgender people. The bill makes it a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison to “distribute or make available” prohibited content, including what it describes as “a disconnection between biology and gender.”
“Don’t make it, don’t share it, don’t view it,” lead sponsor Rep. Josh Schriver, R-Oxford, wrote on social media, alongside a call to add porn distributors to the sex offender registry. He said the measure was a tool to “defend children” and “safeguard our communities.”
The bill flies in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s long-held position that pornography is protected under the First Amendment unless it meets a narrow definition of obscenity.
Schriver is also among the Republicans who condemned negative remarks about conservative activist Charlie Kirk after he was fatally shot in Utah on Sept. 10. But many of those remarks just pointed out that Kirk stoked divisions and inflamed tensions across the country with racist, misogynistic, and homophobic rhetoric.
“The celebration of this assassination is an encouragement for more,” Schriver said in a newsletter Monday, urging the government to “raid online networks to end pipelines of violence.”
That rhetoric is at odds with his own remarks a year ago, when he declared in a newsletter, “No Michigan resident should fear jail time or criminal charges for exercising their 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech.”
Schriver previously lost his committee assignments after promoting the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
On Tuesday, Republicans in the House passed a bill that would criminalize protesting in the street without a permit. Blocking traffic, which is currently a civil infraction, would become a misdemeanor punishable by jail time and fines.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, Republicans said they were expressing their First Amendment rights when they jammed the streets in Lansing and ignored stay-at-home orders. They claimed Democrats were the enemies of free speech.
After the assassination of a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota and the wounding of another, Michigan Republicans were largely quiet, even when it was discovered that the shooting suspect Vance Boelter created a hit list for six Michigan Democrats.
By contrast, when Michigan Republicans claimed President Donald Trump was in danger of political violence, they introduced a bill in May that would criminalize the phrase “8647,” which they claim is a coded call for Trump’s assassination.
In reality, the number “86” is commonly meant to expel or discard, like removing a drunk person from a bar, while “47” is a reference to Trump’s role as the 47th president.
In the case of Rep. Matt Maddock, who co-sponsored both the porn ban and the “8647” bill, the contradictions are even more glaring. He has repeatedly cast himself as a free speech defender and filed a First Amendment lawsuit against Democratic leaders earlier this year for rejecting the use of tax dollars for political mailers.
Just a day before Kirk was shot, Maddock introduced a “free speech bill” aimed at protecting conservative student journalists from censorship.
“Suppression of conservative free speech is under constant attack and ridicule by the left in schools,” he wrote on X. “This protects free speech and allows students to bring civil action against the suppressor.”
Maddock also said Kirk “embodied the best of the 1st Amendment.”
But the Milford Republican has also sponsored proposals that would muzzle others. In 2021, he introduced the “Fact Checker Registration Act,” which would have forced fact-checkers to register with the state and post $1 million bonds. Democrats and others called it an affront to free speech.
At a fundraiser last year for the Trump “fake electors,” who included Maddock’s wife Meshawn Maddock, the lawmaker unleashed his own incendiary rhetoric, warning that the prosecutions of Republicans could lead to bloodshed.
“Someone’s going to get so pissed off, they’re going to shoot someone,” he said after claiming Democrats were communists. “That’s what’s going to happen. Or we’re going to have a civil war or some sort of revolution. That’s where this is going. And when that happens, we’re going to get squashed. The people here are going to be the first ones to go.”
The extent of Republicans’ concerns for speech and violence shift based on the situation. After Kirk’s death, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and Sen. Jeremy Moss, both Democrats, faced death threats and bomb scares. GOP voices were largely silent.
But when people said Kirk’s hateful rhetoric helped fuel the violence that claimed his life, Republicans sought to silence their free speech, either through legislation or calling for their firings.
Their self-described loyalty to the U.S. Constitution also oscillates. Rep. Joseph Fox, another Republican sponsor of the porn ban, pushed a bill in 2023 requiring schools to teach that America was founded on “Christian ethics,” a measure Democrats said clearly violates the separation of church and state.
Rep. Jennifer Wortz, also a co-sponsor of the anti-porn bill, was called “a staunch free speech advocate” when she was endorsed last year by Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by political activist David Koch.
Republicans also have a pattern of dismissing gun violence until one of their own is killed. It’s usually “thoughts and prayers” when children are gunned down in schools. But after Kirk was killed, Republicans demanded new laws to crack down on speech they dislike and turned their ire on liberals, instead of the man who pulled the trigger.
The national party is no different. Seizing on the fear, anger, and division, Trump said Wednesday he plans to designate the anti-facism group Antifa “a terrorist organization,” even though he pardoned about 1,500 people convicted for their role in the violent Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Two of the most violent groups that day were the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, far-right extremist organizations that have long histories of violence and intimidation. Their leaders were convicted of trying to overthrow the government through force.
Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi recently said the administration would “go after” so-called hate speech, only to backtrack when pressed about First Amendment limits. Outside the White House on Tuesday, Trump was asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl about Bondi’s plan to “go after hate speech.”
Trump responded, “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll come after ABC.”
Speaking of ABC, the network on Wednesday indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show following comments he made about Kirk’s killing, including that “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”
He’s not wrong.