The Best ‘Chilling Effect’ Yet

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

 

Before his resounding primary loss on Tuesday night, outgoing Representative Thomas Massie lent credence to the notion that foreign interests and American fifth columnists beholden to them contributed to what his allies called a “billionaire plot” to oust him from Congress.

 

Indeed, the opposition to Massie pumped millions of dollars into his race, among them “pro-Israel groups like the United Democracy Project and Trump allies like MAGA KY,” according to NOTUS. But these are Americans engaging in protected political speech. When I last checked, a self-described “libertarian Republican” would typically not object to, say, the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. Rather, what Massie and his fans were attempting to launder into the discourse was the implied claim that his deep-pocketed adversaries were beholden more to Israel’s interests than America’s.

 

“There’s going to be a chilling effect as a result of this race,” said one despondent Massie supporter, State Representative Steven Doan, following the representative’s loss. By that, it’s likely that he and his supporters meant the extent to which Donald Trump’s iron grip on his party will discourage Republicans from defying the president or offering reasonable criticisms of his conduct. That’s a fair and rational consideration. But if there is a “chilling effect” here, it will also be one that reinforces the desirable stigma around antisemitic agitation.

 

“I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent to concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv,” the embittered representative said of his victorious Republican opponent on his way out the door. That’s just the sort of remark that might be chilled by Massie’s district’s overwhelming repudiation.

 

The representative’s penchant for posting memes to social media in which he contends that America’s support for Israel’s defensive operations against Hamas (fewer than two months after the October 7 massacre), alleging that the federal legislature had traded in “American patriotism” for its antithesis, “Zionism,” could also experience a “chilling effect.”

 

Similarly, public figures might have second thoughts if they find themselves tempted to take beaming photos alongside antisemitic activists wearing apparel featuring the slogan “American Reich” and adorned with a fascism-inflected reimagining of the presidential seal.

 

There is the “chilling” of protected but unpopular speech by governmental entities, and then there are valuable normative taboos that are enforced only by virtue of the number of people who silently observe them. Those who think that personal expression can and, perhaps, should take any form have trouble distinguishing between the two.

 

Representative Doan is right to fret the extent to which the president’s grip on his party will reinforce the GOP’s pro-Trump omertà. But that’s only one element of the discourse that the voters of Kentucky’s fourth district consigned to the freezer. And some things are better served cold.