How Trump Has Cracked Down on Dissent Since the Killing of Charlie Kirk

The very public murder of Charlie Kirk on a Utah campus last September sent convulsions of grief through the political right. Within days, the Trump administration began transforming the slain prophet of young conservatives from a martyr to a cause.

“The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven was, he said, that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence,” Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff, said three days after the killing. “And we are going to do that.”

The message Mr. Miller described quickly turned into policy. Now, a year later, it is clear how bright a line of demarcation the period after Mr. Kirk’s death has become in the efforts by President Trump and his allies to target Americans they see as “the enemy within.”

The administration’s nearly exclusive crackdown on left-leaning organizations and activities has ushered in a pitched battle over political dissent and free speech.

Officials have taken a governmentwide approach to scrutinizing citizens and organizations opposed to Trump policies. Tax agents have examined nonprofit groups. Investigators have looked into the books of labor unions. Prosecutors have brought charges against anti-ICE protesters, asserting that a leftist conspiracy is provoking political violence on the streets.

These efforts came together this year in Minnesota, the scene of heated protests in response to the government’s aggressive immigration sweep. Federal investigators infiltrated neighborhood watch committees, church meetings and an environmental group in an operation that surveilled hundreds of ordinary people. Ultimately, 15 protesters were charged with conspiring to impede immigration enforcement as members of the far-left movement known as antifa, but prosecutors did not accuse them of any violent acts beyond kicking an ICE vehicle and sideswiping another.