A Los Angeles podcast host named Southworth — an LGBTQ+ activist who once hosted a Christian youth show called "The Remix" and currently runs a podcast called "Yass, Jesus!" — has been indicted by a federal grand jury for posting videos calling for President Trump's assassination and doxxing the family of Trump's personal attorney.
Not suspended. Not deplatformed. Indicted.
According to Not the Bee, Southworth didn't just make vague threats on social media. He published the home address and phone numbers of Trump's attorney's family and left voicemails promising that "justice comes to your door." That's not political speech. That's not protest. That's a man painting a target on someone's family and handing out directions.
The First Assistant U.S. Attorney didn't mince words: "Threats against the President of the United States are federal crimes. We will not tolerate threats of political violence." Simple, declarative, and exactly the kind of statement we spent four years never hearing when the target was a Republican.
Southworth came out as gay in 2008 and was named one of Instinct Magazine's "Leading Men" that same year. He built a platform as an LGBTQ+ rights advocate within the faith community — the kind of person who gets invited to panels about "love" and "inclusion" and "building bridges." The bridge-building apparently has limits. Specifically, it stops at the 45th and 47th President of the United States, whose assassination Southworth decided to advocate for on camera.
This is the part where someone will point out that threats come from all sides of the political spectrum. Sure. But we're not talking about an anonymous account with twelve followers posting something unhinged at 2 a.m. This is a public figure with a media platform, a brand built on compassion and faith, who recorded himself calling for the murder of a sitting president and then doxxed his lawyer's family for good measure. There's a difference between a random lunatic and someone who built a following preaching tolerance and then used that following to distribute kill-the-president content.
The pattern isn't subtle. Every few months another activist or media personality crosses the line from "resistance" rhetoric into actual criminal threats, and every time we're supposed to treat it as an isolated incident rather than the logical endpoint of years of treating political opponents as existential threats to democracy. When you spend a decade telling people that a politician is literally Hitler, some percentage of your audience is going to take you at your word.
What's notable about this case isn't the threat itself — federal prosecutors deal with those regularly. It's the doxxing. Publishing a family's home address and phone numbers while simultaneously calling for assassination isn't commentary. It's operational. It's the difference between saying something terrible and giving someone a map.
A grand jury in Los Angeles looked at the evidence and returned an indictment. In Los Angeles. The city where progressive prosecutors have spent years declining to charge actual violent criminals decided this one warranted federal action.
When the "Yass, Jesus!" guy is the one making death threats, the branding might need some work.