Hecklers shout down California attorney general and Assembly majority leader at Whittier College

Adam Steinbaugh (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) reports:

Last week, Whittier College … hosted California's Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, in a question-and-answer session organized by Ian Calderon, the Majority Leader of the California State Assembly.

They tried to, anyway.

The event ended early after pro-Trump hecklers, upset about Becerra's lawsuit against the Trump administration over DACA, continuously shouted slogans and insults at Becerra and Calderon. A group affiliated with the hecklers later boasted that the speakers were "SHOUTED DOWN BY FED-UP CALIFORNIANS" and that the "meeting became so raucous that it ended about a half hour early."

The event, held in Whittier College's Shannon Center theater, was free and open to members of the community, and featured introductions from both Whittier's president and student body president. Becerra and Calderon were to have an hour-long question-and-answer session using audience questions randomly selected from a basket. As soon as they began the discussion, however, hecklers decked in "Make America Great Again" hats began a continuous and persistent chorus of boos, slogans, and insults….

Read the whole thing for more details, and for possible means of punishing such appalling interference with free speech; I also blogged about the California statute that Steinbaugh mentions when it was used to convict the University of California at Irvine students who had disrupted the Israeli ambassador's speech.