A Texas teachers union sued the state's education department on Tuesday, accusing it of an improper “wave of retaliation” against public school employees over their social media comments following the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.
The lawsuit says the free speech rights of teachers and other school staff were violated by the Texas Education Agency and its commissioner, Mike Morath, because they directed local school districts to document what the education agency described as “vile content” posted online after Kirk was fatally shot in September.
Despite calls for civility, some people who criticized Kirk after his assassination faced a backlash from Republicans who saw them as dishonoring him, leading to firings by universities, sports teams and media companies. Florida's education commissioner also promised to investigate teachers over objectionable comments.
The lawsuit says the Texas agency has received more than 350 complaints about individual educators, and the agency said Tuesday that 95 investigations remain open.
Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, alleged that the state clearly demonstrated it is trying to police speech that offends Morath because it hasn't given similar directives after mass shootings or other violence, such as the killing of actor-director Rob Reiner.
“It was in fact a witch hunt,” Capo said during a news conference in Austin.
The education agency said it could not comment “on outstanding legal matters.”
The lawsuit cites the cases of four unnamed teachers — one in the Houston area and three in the San Antonio area — who were investigated over social media posts critical of Kirk or of the reaction to his death. According to the lawsuit, the Houston-area teacher was fired, while the three San Antonio-area teachers remain under investigation.
Texas AFT, which represents about 66,000 teachers and other school employees, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Austin. The four teachers were anonymous because of concerns about their safety, Capo said.
The lawsuit comes less than month after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, both conservative Republicans, announced a partnership with Turning Point USA, the right-wing group Kirk founded, to create chapters on every high school campus in the state.
The Associated Press sent emails seeking comment from the governor's office and Turning Point USA, which are not named as defendants in the suit.
Morath told school superintendents in a Sept. 12 letter that social media posts could violate Texas educators' code of ethics and promised that “each instance will be thoroughly investigated.”
The lawsuit argues that Morath's letter represents a state policy that is too broad and too vague to be enforced fairly and without squelching protected speech.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that agencies can limit public employees' speech if it deals with their official duties or if it could disrupt the workplace, but Randi Weingarten, the union's national president, said neither is an issue in the Texas lawsuit.
"We’re talking about schoolteachers when they were not in classrooms — in private, on their own social media, commenting on a matter that everyone in the country and the world saw,” she said during the news conference.
The lawsuit said none of their posts celebrated or promoted violence, which Morath said wouldn't be protected speech.
Kirk was an unabashed Christian conservative who often made provocative statements about politics, gender and race. He founded Turning Point USA in 2012 and built it into one of the country’s largest political organizations, shaping a generation of young people by taking his conservative message onto college campuses. He was shot during such an appearance at a university in Utah.
FILE - Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks at The Believers' Summit 2024 at a Turning Point Action event in West Palm Beach, Fla., July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
FILE - Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks at a Turning Point event prior to Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaking, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mesa, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
FILE - Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks during a campaign rally, Oct. 24, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal officers have encountered opposition in nearly all of the cities targeted by President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign. But it was in Minnesota — a state that’s been in daily conflict with the Trump administration in 2026 — that a 37-year-old woman was shot and killed by an immigration officer.
Trump has focused on several blue states in the divide-and-conquer campaign that has characterized his second term, and now he has turned to Minnesota, where the killing of George Floyd and the protests it sparked stained his first presidency.
Trump last month called the state’s Somali population “garbage” in the wake of a massive federal investigation into COVID-19 and medical aid fraud tied to organizations serving Somali immigrants, among others. The fraud cases led Minnesota's Democratic governor, Tim Walz — former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate — to announce this week he will not run for reelection.
In June, a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband were assassinated by a Trump supporter, although conservatives insist the gunman was actually a leftist working at Walz’s behest. On Sunday, the victims’ family begged Trump to take down a social media post echoing those conspiracy theories.
Amid that mounting tension, the Trump administration announced Tuesday that it was sending more than 2,000 federal officers to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in what it claimed would be the biggest immigration enforcement operation in history.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who killed Renee Good during a protest Wednesday against the immigration raids opened fire just blocks from where, in 2020, a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd. The parallels were painful and frightening for many in the area, including Stephanie Abel, a 56-year-old Minneapolis nurse, who is keeping her gas tank full and cash handy in memory of the chaos that followed that slaying.
“I thought the federal government would realize that now is not the time to be toying with people,” Abel said. “What are they going to try to do to get Minneapolis to ignite?”
Floyd's death sparked the biggest protests of Trump’s first term. The president, who is still publicly bitter about the unrest, contends it should have been met with a stronger show of force.
That’s the approach Trump has adopted in his second term, trying to cow blue states by surging military and immigration agents into their cities and insisting that anyone who doesn’t comply with federal demands will face severe consequences.
Immigration operations that started last summer in liberal strongholds such as Chicago,Los Angeles and Portland also generated large protests. Good is at least the fifth person killed during ICE enforcement efforts.
The Twin Cities operation is intertwined with a conservative effort to make Minnesota the poster child for government fraud. Though prosecutions for the fraudulent use of hundreds of millions of dollars of federal COVID-19 and health aid by social service groups began in the Biden administration, Trump and conservatives have seized on the scandal in recent weeks.
In November, Trump called Minnesota “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” after a report by a conservative news site, City Journal, claimed federal money was fraudulently flowing to the militant group al-Shabab. There has been little, if any, evidence, proving such a link. Nevertheless, the president said he would end Temporary Protected Status for Somalis in Minnesota.
The allegations got a new charge late last month when conservative influencer Nick Shirley posted an unconfirmed video claiming that day care centers in Minneapolis run by Somalis had fraudulently collected over $100 million in government aid.
The Trump administration on Tuesday said is withholding funding for programs that support needy families with children, including day care funding, in five Democratic-led states over concerns about fraud. Joining Minnesota on the list were California, Colorado, Illinois and New York.
Minnesota’s place on a list of targeted blue states is not unexpected.
Under Walz, Minnesota has become something of a beacon for liberals as an example of a state that expanded the public safety net even as the nation swung to the right. Since Trump’s first election, the state has seen large increases in education spending, free school breakfasts and lunches, and improved protection of abortion rights.
Trump lost Minnesota by only 4 percentage points in 2024, making it significantly less liberal than California and New York. Still, it has been reliably Democratic throughout the Trump years, a rarity in the swingy upper Midwest.
The state’s political tilt reflects the size of the Twin Cities metro area and its robust population of college-educated liberals, which overwhelm the state's more conservative rural reaches.
It’s the sort of cleavage that has defined national politics during Trump's years in office.
“Minnesota is a microcosm of a lot of the tensions we have in our society,” said David Schultz, a political scientist at Hamline University in St. Paul. “We’re a country that’s hugely polarized, Democrats-Republicans, urban-rural.”
On Thursday, Minnesota was an ominous indicator of the damage those divisions can inflict. Minneapolis schools remained closed after immigration agents clashed with high school students at one campus on Wednesday. The state’s National Guard remained on standby at Walz’s directive.
Walz begged Trump to ease up, saying Minnesota's residents are “exhausted” by the president’s “relentless assault on Minnesota.”
“So please, just give us a break,” Walz said during a news conference Thursday. “And if it’s me, you’re already getting what you want, but leave my people alone. Leave our state alone.”
Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press reporters Giovanna Dell'Orto, Rebecca Santana and Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis contributed.
This story has been corrected to show George Floyd was not fatally shot.
Federal agents confront protesters outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)
A makeshift memorial honoring the victim of a fatal shooting involving federal law enforcement agents is taped to a post near the site of the previous day's shooting, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz responds to questions from reporters regarding whether he will seek a third term during a press conference following an event on the state's new Paid Family and Medical Leave program, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, in Minneapolis. (Kerem Yücel/Minnesota Public Radio via AP)
