Matthew Dowd opened a floodgate.

The MSNBC political analyst, who lost his job shortly after on-air comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination, was the first of many figures to face consequences Thursday for public statements or actions about the shooting.

Indeed, raw feelings about the killing have ignited a campaign to shame — and more. Several conservative activists sought to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory. Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer said she would try to ruin the professional aspirations of anyone who celebrated Kirk’s death.

MSNBC said Dowd is no longer with the network after his comments, shortly after the shooting, about “hateful words” leading to “hateful actions.” Both MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler and Dowd apologized for the remarks, which Kutler called “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable.”

Dowd said he didn’t intend for his comments to blame Kirk for the attack. Still, it brought an abrupt interruption to his work as a television commentator, which the former aide to President George W. Bush has done for nearly two decades.

Actions spread across country, from Mississippi to Arizona

A Florida reporter was suspended for a question posed to a congressman. A comic book writer lost her job because of social media posts, as did educators in Mississippi and Tennessee. “CBS Mornings” host Nate Burleson was attacked for a question. An Arizona sports reporter and a Carolina Panthers public relations official both lost jobs.

An anonymously registered website pledged to “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” and asked people to offer tips about people who were “supporting political violence online.”

The site published a running list Thursday of targeted posts, along with the names, locations and employers of people who posted them. While some posts contained incendiary language, others didn’t appear to celebrate the shooting or glorify violence. There were several similar efforts, including one by activist Scott Presler, who asked his followers about teachers who supposedly celebrated Kirk’s assassination, and posted findings on X.

A staff member at the University of Mississippi was fired after sharing “insensitive comments” about Kirk’s death, according to the school’s chancellor, Glenn Boyce. The university did not identify the employee or immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press.

The president of Middle Tennessee State University said he’d fired a staffer who offered “callous and inappropriate comments on social media” about the assassination. President Sidney A. McPhee did not identify the staff member but said the person “worked in a position of trust with our students.”

It wasn’t clear if it was the same person, but an X post by Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn identified an assistant dean of students at MTSU who posted online that she had “ZERO sympathy” following the shooting. Blackburn said the person should be ashamed and fired.

A warning to teachers in Florida

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education commissioner warned the state’s teachers that making “disgusting” statements about Kirk’s assassination could draw sanctions, including the suspension or revocation of their teaching licenses. Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas said in a memo to school district superintendents that he’d been made aware of “despicable” comments on social media.

“I will be conducting an investigation of every educator who engages in this vile, sanctionable behavior,” Kamoutsas said in the memo, which he also posted on X on Thursday. “Govern yourselves accordingly.”

The rush to police commentary appeared to have little precedent in other recent examples of political violence, such as the 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or the shooting deaths earlier this year former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband Mark.

DC Comics announced that it was ditching a new “Red Hood” series, a Batman spinoff, after one issue had been published and two more were in the works. The comics’ writer, Gretchen Felker-Martin, had published comments about Kirk’s shooting online that DC called offensive.

“Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” the comics publisher said.

Loomer, whose pressure campaigns have resulted in several Trump administration firings, attacked the entertainment website TMZ for what she called a “disgusting” livestream where employees could be heard laughing and cheering seconds before Kirk’s death was announced. TMZ said the noise had nothing to do with the Kirk story — the staff members were crowded around a computer watching a car chase — but apologized for the bad timing and how it looked to viewers.

A writer for the Arizona media company PHNX Sports was fired after conservative activists called attention to a series of online posts that attacked Kirk’s positions on guns and Gaza and called him evil.