The former White House adviser Katie Miller—mother of three young children, and wife of the presidential right-hand man Stephen—walked out of her front door one Thursday morning last month and was confronted by a woman she did not know. When she told this story on Fox News, she described the encounter as a protest that crossed a line. The stranger had told Miller: "I'm watching you," she said. This was the day after Charlie Kirk's assassination. It also wasn't anything new.

For weeks before Kirk's death, activists had been protesting the Millers' presence in north Arlington, Virginia. Someone had put up wanted posters in their neighborhood with their home address, denouncing Stephen as a Nazi who had committed "crimes against humanity." A group called Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity warned in an Instagram post: "Your efforts to dismantle our democracy and destroy our social safety net will not be tolerated here." The local protest became a backdrop to the Trump administration's response to Kirk's killing. When Miller, the architect of that response who is known for his inflammatory political rhetoric, announced a legal crackdown on liberal groups, he singled out the tactics that had victimized his family—what he called "organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting peoples' addresses."