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After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, private-sector employees discover there’s no free speech at work

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3 months ago

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In the days following the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, numerous workers have been fired for their comments on his death, among them MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd.

It’s far from the first time workers have lost their jobs over things they say publicly — including in social media posts. In the U.S., laws can vary across states, but overall, there’s very little legal protections for employees who are punished for speech made both in and out of private workplaces.

“Most people think they have a right to free speech…but that doesn’t necessarily apply in the workplace,” said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, associate general counsel and vice president of HR Services for Engage PEO. “Most employees in the private sector do not have any protections for that type of speech at work.”

Add to that the prevalence of social media, which has made it increasingly common to track employees’ conduct outside of work and to dox people, or publish information about them online with the intent of harming or harassing them.

Employers have a lot of leeway

Protections for workers vary from one state to the next. For example, in New York, if an employee is participating in a weekend political protest, but not associating themselves with the organization that employs them, their employer cannot fire them for that activity when they return to work. But if that same employee is at a company event on a weekend and talks about their political viewpoints in a way that makes others feel unsafe or the target of discrimination or harassment, then they could face consequences at work, Matsis-McCready said.

Most of the U.S. defaults to “at-will” employment law — which essentially means employers can choose to hire and fire as they see fit, including over employees’ speech.

“The First Amendment does not apply in private workplaces to protect employees’ speech,” said Andrew Kragie, an attorney who specializes in employment and labor law at Maynard Nexsen. “It actually does protect employers’ right to make decisions about employees, based on employees’ speech.”

Kragie said there are “pockets of protection” around the U.S. under various state laws, such as statues that forbid punishing workers for their political views. But the interpretation of how that gets enforced changes, he notes, making the waters murky.

Steven T. Collis, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and faculty director of the school’s Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center, also points to some state laws that say employers can’t fire their workers for “legal off duty conduct.” But there’s often an exception for conduct seen as disruptive to an employer’s business or reputation, which could be grounds to fire someone over public comments or social media posts.

“In this scenario, if somebody feels like one of their employees has done something that suggests they are glorifying or celebrating a murder, an employer might still be able to fire them even with one of those laws on the books,” Collis said.

For public employees, which can range from school teachers and postal workers to elected officials, the process is a bit different. That’s because the First Amendment plays a unique role when the government is the employer, Collis explains — and the Supreme Court has ruled that if an employee is acting in a private capacity but speaking on a matter of public concern, they’re protected.

However, that has yet to stop the public sector from restricting speech in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. For instance, leaders at the Pentagon unveiled a “zero tolerance” policy for any posts or comments from troops that make light of or celebrate the killing of Kirk.

The policy, announced by the Pentagon’s top spokesman Sean Parnell on social media Thursday, came hours after numerous conservative military influencers and activists began forwarding posts they considered problematic to Parnell and his boss, defense secretary Pete Hegseth.

“It is unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American,” Parnell wrote Thursday.

A surge of political debate

The ubiquity of social media is making it easier than ever to share opinions about politics and major news events as they’re unfolding. But posting on social media leaves a record, and in times of escalating political polarization, those declarations can be seen as damaging to the reputation of an individual or their employer.

“People don’t realize when they’re on social media, it is the town square,” said Amy Dufrane, CEO of the Human Resource Certification Institute. “They’re not having a private conversation with the neighbor over the fence. They’re really broadcasting their views.”

Political debates are certainly not limited to social media and are increasingly making their way into the workplace as well.

“The gamification of the way we communicate in the workplace, Slack and Teams, chat and all these things, they’re very similar to how you might interact on Instagram or other social media, so I do think that makes it feel a little less formal and somebody might be more inclined to take to take a step and say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe this happened,’” Matsis-McCready said.

Employers are not ready

In the tense, divided climate of the U.S., many human resource professionals have expressed that they’re unprepared to address politically charged discussions in the workplace, according to the Human Resource Certification Institute. But those conversations are going to happen, so employers need to set policies about what is acceptable or unacceptable workplace conduct, Dufrane said.

“HR has got to really drill down and make sure that they’re super clear on their policies and practices and communicating to their employees on what are their responsibilities as an employee of the organization,” Dufrane said.

Many employers are reviewing their policies on political speech and providing training about what appropriate conduct looks like, both inside and outside the organization, she said. And the brutal nature of Kirk’s killing may have led some of them to react more strongly in the days that followed his death.

“Because of the violent nature of what some political discussion is now about, I think there is a real concern from employers that they want to keep the workplace safe and that they’re being extra vigilant about anything that could be viewed as a threat, which is their duty,” Matsis-McCreedy said.

Employees can also be seen as ambassadors of a company’s brand, and their political speech can dilute that brand and hurt its reputation, depending on what is being said and how it is being received. That is leading more companies to act on what employees are saying online, she said.

“Some of the individuals that had posted and their posts went viral, all of a sudden the phone lines of their employers were just nonstop calls complaining,” Matsis-McCready said.

Still, experts like Collis don’t anticipate a significant change in how employers monitor their workers speech — noting that online activity has come under the spotlight for at least the last 15 years.

“Employers are already and have been for a very long time, vetting employees based on what they’re posting on social media,” he said.



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5 VCs sounds off on the AI question du jour

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10 minutes ago

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December 10, 2025

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The views seem to range from bubble-wary to bubble-dismissive. We hashed it all out over eggs and sausages at Fortune’s IRL Term Sheet Breakfast at Brainstorm AI in San Francisco yesterday. This is Amanda Gerut, Fortune’s West Coast news editor, pinch-hitting for my colleague Allie Garfinkle.

Allie hosted five VCs with funds ranging in size from $5 million to $25 billion and views varied across the panel. This group alone is collectively going to deploy anywhere from tens to hundreds of millions over the next decade into companies with AI as a backdrop and these investments will either prove spectacularly right or wrong.

Here’s a roll call:

Jenny Xiao, partner at Leonsis Capital and former researcher at OpenAI, came in with a nuanced take. There’s something of a bubble, but it’s “relatively contained” in the infrastructure layer with overinvestment primarily in data centers, GPUs and in large language model companies. But right now, there’s actually underinvestment in the application layer because there are so many ways AI can make an impact in various enterprises, Xiao said. 

Vanessa Larco, former partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and co-founder of new venture firm Premise, has a contrarian view. “Everyone thinks enterprise is safer,” Larco said. “But I actually think the consumer might, this time around in the current environment, be what survives.” Larco’s reasoning is that if a consumer adopts your AI product, it’s because you’re giving them something faster, “radically cheaper, or much easier to use.” Once you’ve done that and built a brand, it’s very hard for people to quit you. 

Rob Biederman, managing partner at Asymmetric Capital Partners and chairman of Catalant Technologies, had a sobering view. “In every boom, 99% or 99.9% of companies fail, and one or two of them become Amazon or Google,” said Biederman, who had to dash off to catch a flight. Only companies that can systematically create value for customers, which most of them aren’t doing right now, will survive. 

Aaron Jacobson, partner at NEA, said the history of technological innovation “is always overhyped in the near term and underhyped in the long term, and that will be true of AI.” So at some point there will be a correction and there will be cycles of pain around valuation and funding, “but ultimately, in 10 years, we’re going to have a lot of really big, impactful companies.”

Daniel Dart, founder and general partner of Rock Yard Ventures, had the boldest counter to fears about a bubble. He sees a total addressable market we can’t yet imagine. People think self-driving Waymos will replace Ubers, but Dart sees elementary schools and elderly care centers with Waymos waiting out front and that proves to him we’re still in the early innings. 

“You’re really going to tell me there aren’t going to be any trillion-dollar companies in 2030 or 2034? No one here is going to take that bet,” said Dart. “There is going to be so much value creation that it’s like the birth of fire.”

See you tomorrow,

Amanda Gerut
Email:Amanda.gerut@fortune.com
Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.

Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

– Saviynt, an El Segundo, Calif.-based identity security platform, raised $700 million in series B funding. KKR led the round and was joined by SixthStreetGrowth, TenEleven and existing investor CarrickCapitalPartners.

– fal, a San Francisco-based AI-generated media platform, raised $140 million in Series D funding. Sequoia led the round and was joined by KleinerPerkins, NVentures, and AlkeonCapital.

– Radial, a New York City-based network designed to help patients access advanced mental health treatments, raised $50 million in Series A funding. GeneralCatalyst led the round and was joined by SolariCapital, SLHealthCapital, FounderCollective, BoxGroup, ScrubCapital, and DiedevanLamoen.

– Relation, a London, U.K.-based developer of medicines for immunology, metabolic, and bone diseases, raised $26 million in funding from NVentures, DCVC, and MagneticVentures.

– Aradigm, a New York City-based benefits platform for cell and gene therapies, raised $20 million in Series A funding. FristCresseyVentures led the round and was joined by AndreessenHorowitz and MorganHealth. 

– PrimeSecurity, a Tel Aviv, Israel and New York City-based AI-powered platform designed to detect and mitigate risks during software design, raised $20 million in Series A funding. ScaleVenturePartners led the round and was joined by FoundationCapital, FlybridgeVentures, and others.

– Algori, a Madrid, Spain-based AI-powered shopper insights platform for the fast-moving consumer goods industry, raised €3.6 million ($4.2 million) in funding from RedBullVentures, Co-invest Capital, AttaPoll, and others.

– EmpromptuAI, a San Francisco-based platform designed to help transition SaaS products into AI-native systems, raised $2 million in pre-seed funding. PrecursorVentures led the round and was joined by AlumniVentures, FoundersEdge, RogueWomenVC, and others.

Private Equity

– AppDirect, backed by CDPQ, acquired vComSolutions, a San Ramon, Calif.-based IT management platform, at an enterprise valuation of more than $100 million.

– JensenHughes, backed by GryphonInvestors, acquired SafetyManagementServices, a West Jordan, Utah-based fire and life safety company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– NewStateCapitalPartners acquired a majority stake in Harrell-Fish, a Bloomington, Ind.-based mechanical installation and maintenance services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– PestCoHoldings, a portfolio company of ThompsonStreetCapital, acquired SouthwestExterminating, a Houston, Texas-based pest control provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– ProsperityPartners, backed by UnityPartners, acquired a majority stake in Farkouh, Furman & Faccio, a New York City-based provider of tax, attest, accounting and business consulting services. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– SEVA acquired a minority stake in Pronto, a Lehi, Utah-based team communications platform designed for front–line employers and higher education institutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Exits

– ArclineInvestmentManagement acquired Altronic, a Girard, Ohio-based supplier of ignition, control, and instrumentation systems for critical infrastructure power systems, from HOERBIGERGroup. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– BerkshirePartners agreed to acquire UnitedFlowTechnologies, an Irving, Texas-based process and equipment solutions company for water and wastewater systems, from H.I.G.Capital. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– BessemerInvestors acquired Xanitos, a Newtown Square, Penn.-based provider of environmental services, patient transport, patient observation, and linen services, from AngelesEquityPartners. Financial terms were not disclosed.

– ShareRockPartners acquired a majority stake in AMAGTechnology, a Hawthorne, Calif.-based physical security solutions provider, from AlliedUniversal.



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Coupang CEO resigns over historic South Korean data breach

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3 hours ago

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December 10, 2025

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Coupang chief executive officer Park Dae-jun resigned over his failure to prevent South Korea’s largest-ever data breach, which set off a regulatory and political backlash against the country’s dominant online retailer.

The company said in a statement on Wednesday that Park had stepped down over his role in the breach. It appointed Harold Rogers, chief administrative officer for the retailer’s U.S.-based parent company Coupang Inc., as interim head.

Park becomes the highest-profile casualty of a crisis that’s prompted a government investigation and disrupted the lives of millions across Korea. Nearly two-thirds of people in the country were affected by the breach, which granted unauthorized access to their shipping addresses and phone numbers.

Police raided Coupang’s headquarters this week in search of evidence that could help them determine how the breach took place as well as the identity of the hacker, Yonhap News reported, citing officials.

Officials have said the breach was carried out over five months in which the company’s cybersecurity systems were bypassed. Last week President Lee Jae Myung said it was “truly astonishing” that Coupang had failed to detect unauthorized access of its systems for such a long time.

Park squared off with lawmakers this month during an hours-long grilling. Responding to questions about media reports that claimed the attack had been carried out by a former employee who had since returned to China, he said a Chinese national who left the company and had been a “developer working on the authentication system” was involved.

The company faces a potential fine of up to 1 trillion won ($681 million) over the incident, lawmakers said.

Coupang founder Bom Kim has been summoned to appear before a parliamentary hearing on Dec. 17, with lawmakers warning of consequences if the billionaire fails to show.

Park’s departure adds fresh uncertainty to Coupang’s leadership less than seven months after the company revamped its internal structure to make him sole CEO of its Korean operations. In his new role, Rogers will focus on addressing customer concerns and stabilizing the company, Coupang said.

Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.



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Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi says company will be worth $1 trillion by doing these three things

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10 hours ago

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December 9, 2025

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Ali Ghodsi, the CEO and cofounder of data intelligence company Databricks, is betting his privately held startup can be the latest addition to the trillion-dollar valuation club.

In August, Ghodsi told the Wall Street Journalthat he believed Databricks, which is reportedly in talks toraise funding at a $134 billion valuation, had “a shot to be a trillion-dollar company.” At Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, he explained how it would happen, laying out a “trifecta” of growth areas to ignite the company’s next leg of growth.

The first is entering the transactional database market, the traditional territory of large enterprise players like Oracle, which Ghodsi said has remained largely “the same for 40 years.” Earlier this year, Databricks launched a link-based offering called Lakehouse, which aims to combine the capabilities of traditional databases with modern data lake storage, in an attempt to capture some of this market.

The company is also seeing growth driven by the rise of AI-powered coding. “Over 80% of the databases that are being launched on Databricks are not being launched by humans, but by AI agents,” Ghodsi said. As developers use AI tools for “vibe coding”—rapidly building software with natural language commands—those applications automatically need databases, and Ghodsi they’re defaulting to Databricks’ platform.

“That’s just a huge growth factor for us. I think if we just did that, we could maybe get all the way to a trillion,” he said.

The second growth area is Agentbricks, Databricks’ platform for building AI agents that work with proprietary enterprise data.

“It’s a commodity now to have AI that has general knowledge,” Ghodsi said, but “it’s very elusive to get AI that really works and understands that proprietary data that’s inside enterprise.” He pointed to the Royal Bank of Canada, which built AI agents for equity research analysts, as an example. Ghodsi said these agents were able to automatically gather earnings calls and company information to assemble research reports, reducing “many days’ worth of work down to minutes.”

And finally, the third piece to Ghodsi’s puzzle involves building applications on top of this infrastructure, with developers using AI tools to quickly build applications that run on Lakehouse and which are then powered by AI agents. “To get the trifecta is also to have apps on top of this. Now you have apps that are vibe coded with the database, Lakehouse, and with agents,” Ghodsi said. “Those are three new vectors for us.”

Ghodsi did not provide a timeframe for attaining the trillion-dollar goal. Currently, only a handful of companies have achieved the milestone, all of them as publicly traded companies. In the tech industry, only big tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta have managed to cross the trillion-dollar threshold.

To reach this level would require Databricks, which is widely expected to go public sometime in early 2026, to grow its valuation roughly sevenfold from its current reported level. Part of this journey will likely also include the expected IPO, Ghodsi said.

“There are huge advantages and pros and cons. That’s why we’re not super religious about it,” Ghodsi said when asked about a potential IPO. “We will go public at some point. But to us, it’s not a really big deal.”

Could the company IPO next year? Maybe, replied Ghodsi.



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