Indiana’s future Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith threatened IU’s student newspaper on social media.
Beckwith posted on X that a recent Indiana Daily Student front page was “elitist leftist propaganda” that “needs to stop or we will be happy to stop it for them.”
The page featured president-elect Donald Trump and contained negative quotes about him from former allies.
This is from the Indiana Daily Student, the student newspaper at Indiana University after Trump won. Your tax dollars at work. They called him a “moron,” a “fascist,” and a “threat to democracy” (even though we aren’t a democracy, but I don’t expect students at IU to know that.)… pic.twitter.com/4Ot8ZKVx5G — TheMicahBeckwith (@MicahBeckwith) November 12, 2024
IU emeritus law professor Daniel Conkle called Beckwith’s rhetoric disturbing.
“For him to engage in that kind of rhetoric, to my mind, is fundamentally inconsistent with what It means to have a commitment to free speech,” he said.
But Conkle said retaliation is unlikely because Governor-elect Mike Braun likely won’t enable it. Braun did not pick Beckwith as his running mate, and Conkle said the two don’t always agree. He also said discriminating against speech based on political viewpoints violates the First Amendment.
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IDS co-editor-in-chief Marissa Meador said Beckwith’s tweet is concerning and factually incorrect. She said the IDS isn’t directly funded by taxpayers, and that Beckwith mischaracterized published quotes from Donald Trump’s former allies as coming from student reporters. These quotes included terms such as “fascist” and “moron.”
“These were former Secretaries of Defense, former Chiefs of Staff, that sort of thing,” Meador said. “Certainly not anything we were saying.”
IU spokesperson Mark Bode said in a statement the IDS is editorially independent from IU.
Beckwith did not immediately respond to a request for comment.