“Kill Your Local Republican.”
The Activist Called It the Moderate Position.
On July 1, 2026, videos surfaced of Wisconsin transgender activist Teha Delaruelle standing before a dry-erase board that read “kill your local Republican” — and vowing to “make this the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin.” Minnesota-based independent journalist Dustin Grage posted the footage to X, and it detonated across national coverage within hours.
In a companion clip, Delaruelle declared “we are doing trans jihad,” directed at “the oppressor, the bigots, the animals that make up MAGA,” and said the aim was to make Republicans “walk down the streets in fear.” A one-month deadline was attached: “we have one month to do this.”
This is the accountability trail: the Democratic congressional campaign the activist had volunteered for — Katrina deVille (D), running for Wisconsin’s 8th District — fired the activist and disavowed the rhetoric; Wisconsin Republicans, including Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), condemned it; and legal analysts are now arguing over whether a slogan with no named target and no set time crosses the line into a chargeable threat.
- 1board“kill your local Republican” written behind the activist on camera — The Daily Wire
- 0chargesfiled as of July 3; analysts cite the Brandenburg imminence bar — HotAir
- Firedcampaignremoved from Katrina deVille’s (D) WI-08 congressional campaign — New York Post
- 3+GOPWisconsin Republicans who publicly condemned it, incl. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R) — X
The footage is not ambiguous. In one clip, Delaruelle sits in front of a dry-erase board on which the words “kill your local Republican” are written, then points to the message and says, per video reviewed by The Daily Wire: “We’re going to make this the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin.” A time frame follows — a stated goal of one month.
“We're going to make this the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin. But I need your help, because we have one month to do this, so let's do it.”
Teha Delaruelle, per video posted July 1, 2026 · reviewed by The Daily Wire and The Daily Caller
“Moderate position” is the phrase that makes this more than a garden-variety unhinged rant. The framing is deliberate: it presents a naked call to kill members of one political party not as an extreme, but as a centering baseline — the reasonable middle the state should adopt. That is the rhetorical move at the heart of eliminationism: relocate the unthinkable to the center of the conversation and dare everyone else to be the “extremist” for objecting.
Other slogans visible on the board across the clips, according to HotAir’s review, included “Trans Jihad Now,” “Smash MAGA,” and “Left Wing D*ath Squads.” None of that is a subtext to be inferred; it is the text, on camera.
Delaruelle is a Wisconsin transgender activist who, according to reporting by The Heartland Post and independent journalist Robbie Harvey, had been active with the Democratic Party of Outagamie County for years before more recently volunteering with a congressional campaign. This is not an anonymous troll account; it is a person with a documented footprint in local Democratic politics.
The campaign in question belongs to Katrina deVille (D), a transgender Democratic Socialist and musician who is one of several Democrats running in the August 11, 2026 primary for Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District. The seat is currently held by Republican Rep. Tony Wied (R-WI), and the district leans roughly R+8 — meaning the primary Delaruelle attached themselves to is an uphill Democratic bid in Republican-friendly territory.
We are careful to keep the two people distinct. Some secondary coverage blurred them together; deVille is the candidate, and Delaruelle was, briefly, a volunteer. The distinction matters for accuracy and for fairness to a candidate who moved quickly to disavow the rhetoric — which we cover below.
The second thread of the videos escalates from a slogan to a stated program. “We are doing trans jihad,” Delaruelle says in one clip, aiming the phrase at “the oppressor, the bigots, the animals that make up MAGA.” The goal, stated plainly, is inversion by intimidation: as reported by The Daily Caller, “we’re gonna do the reverse. We’re gonna make it so that they walk down the streets with fear.”
The rhetorical structure here is textbook dehumanization — describing political opponents as “animals,” then pairing that with a call to make them live in fear and a slogan urging their killing. It is the grammar that precedes violence, and it is exactly the kind of language every serious observer, across the spectrum, has spent the last year warning about.
During an hour-long TikTok Live, Teha Delaruelle told viewers to 'kill your local Republican' and vowed a 'trans jihad' against MAGA. Here is the footage.
Grage, a Minnesota-based independent journalist, is the reason this footage reached a national audience. It is a recurring feature of this beat: independent reporters with a camera and a clipping habit surface material that would otherwise stay confined to a live stream watched by a few dozen people. We cite that work when it is load-bearing — and here, it is the primary artifact.
The consequences arrived fast. Reached by the New York Post, deVille said the activist had volunteered only briefly before being removed, describing Delaruelle as “deeply troubled” and someone who was “actively creating a dangerous situation around my campaign.” The candidate’s statement left no daylight:
“I want to be clear that I do not accept or condone violence or threats toward anyone and do not encourage violence, hate, or threats of any kind.”
Katrina deVille (D), WI-08 congressional candidate, to the New York Post
On the Republican side, the condemnation was immediate and named. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), a congressman now running for governor, responded on X with three words: “Just sick all around.” The Republican Party of Brown County issued its own statement: “The Republican Party of Brown County rejects all political violence and threats.”
Just sick all around.
Here the accountability story runs into the First Amendment. As of publication, no criminal charges had been filed, and none had been publicly confirmed to be under consideration. Delaruelle is entitled to the presumption of innocence in any proceeding that may follow.
The legal problem is one HotAir’s Ed Morrissey laid out plainly: the statements may sit “close to the line” of incitement, but they lack the specificity and imminence the Supreme Court requires. Under Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), advocacy of violence is protected speech unless it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely to incite or produce such action.” A slogan with no named target, no time, and no place is abhorrent — but it is also, on its face, the kind of generalized advocacy the Court has repeatedly held the government cannot prosecute.
Protected: abstract advocacy of violence — ugly, hateful, and legal. “Kill your local Republican” as a bumper-sticker abstraction likely falls here.
Not protected: a threat directed at a specific person, or advocacy intended and likely to produce imminent lawless action — a named target, a time, a place, a plan.
Why it matters: the same words can be a protected rant or a chargeable true threat depending on specificity and imminence. That is why the campaign firing and the public condemnation — social and political accountability — arrived before any legal action, and may be the only accountability that arrives at all.
That is an honest limit worth stating clearly, because the site’s credibility depends on it: the strongest sanction here may be reputational and political, not criminal. The videos are documented; whether they are prosecutable is a separate, much harder question.
For years the radical left has compared ordinary Americans to Nazis and mass murderers. That rhetoric is directly responsible for the political terrorism we are seeing — and it must stop right now.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Truth Social · President Trump on left-wing political-violence rhetoric after the Charlie Kirk assassination (paraphrase; not a response to this incident)
An isolated crank is a police matter. What makes “kill your local Republican” land the way it does is the year it arrives in. In September 2025, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated. The killing turned the abstract debate over eliminationist rhetoric into a concrete one, and it is the reason a video urging the killing of Republicans — however legally protected — cannot be waved off as mere edgelord theater.
The Trump administration has made left-wing political-violence rhetoric a running theme, with the White House repeatedly arguing that the routine labeling of the president and his supporters as fascists and Nazis helps license violence against them. Delaruelle’s videos are, in that framing, not an aberration but a data point — the quiet part rendered on a dry-erase board.
Those who constantly and falsely slander the President and his supporters as fascists and threats to democracy are fueling this kind of violence. It has to end.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Truth Social · The White House on left-wing demonization and political violence (paraphrase; not a response to this incident)
None of this requires exaggeration to be alarming. The plain facts — a documented call to kill members of a political party, marketed as “moderate,” from someone with real ties to a county party and a brief role on a congressional campaign — are damning on their own. The job here is to report them accurately and let them sit.
A Wisconsin activist with documented ties to the local Democratic Party stood in front of a board reading “kill your local Republican,” called it the moderate position, and vowed a “trans jihad” to make Republicans live in fear. The campaign that had briefly used the activist as a volunteer fired them and condemned the rhetoric. Wisconsin Republicans condemned it by name. And the law, for now, likely does nothing — because a slogan without a target is protected speech, however grotesque.
That is the whole record: the words are real, the firing is real, the condemnation is real, and the legal exposure is thin. Readers can decide for themselves what it says that this had to be called the “moderate” position for anyone to notice.
