It’s never too soon for the right to blame trans people

When Utah authorities announced on Friday morning that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson had been apprehended in connection with the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, they quelled a storm of rumors and inaccurate reporting about the gender identity and motivations of Kirk’s shooter.

Almost immediately after Kirk was shot on Wednesday, right-wing social media accounts began speculating that his killer was transgender.

The next morning, unvetted claims spread by right-wing political commentator Steven Crowder were quickly followed by a Wall Street Journal article claiming—based on an unquoted bulletin “circulated widely” by law enforcement officials—that expressions of “transgender ideology” were engraved on the shooter’s ammo. An hour later, Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican who frequently promotes anti-trans legislation, was hurling slurs on camera.

For years, if not decades, voices demanding gun reform have been accused of “politicizing” violence—and of casting blame “too soon” in the wake of tragedy. When it wasn’t gun rights but trans people on the line, that rhetoric went out the window—for media outlets, public figures, and government representatives alike. Here’s how quickly the claims made their way from far-right speculation to the Wall Street Journal and a member of Congress.

September 10, 12:23 p.m.: Charlie Kirk is shot during an event at Utah Valley University after taking a question about transgender people and mass shootings. Right-wing accounts on X immediately begin speculating, without evidence, that the shooter is transgender. An online witch-hunt ensues.

September 10, 4:40 p.m.: President Donald Trump announces on Truth Social that Kirk has died from his injuries.

September 11, 8:35 a.m.: Right-wing commentator Steven Crowder posts a screenshot on X of a supposed “internal message” leaked from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives alleging that law enforcement officials found gun cartridges at the scene engraved with unspecified “wording…expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” Crowder’s post is viewed more than 25 million times. 

September 11, 10:23 a.m.: The Wall Street Journal posts a link on X to a news story captioned: “Breaking: Ammunition engraved with transgender and antifascist ideology was found inside the rifle authorities believe was used in Kirk’s shooting, sources say.”

The article cites “an internal law enforcement bulletin and a person familiar with the investigation.” The post receives more than 11 million impressions. At 10:51 a.m., the Daily Beast publishes a story repeating the claims. At 11:20 a.m., the New York Post publishes a similar story. 

September 11, 11:29 a.m.: Right-wing news outlet the Daily Caller posts a video of GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, an outspoken opponent of transgender rights.

“It sounds like the shooter was a tranny, or pro-tranny,” she tells the reporter. “And just because I want to protect women, that I’m worried about getting murdered? Are you fucking kidding me? It’s out of control, and enough is enough, and I’m going to double down on this.”

September 11, 1:18 p.m.: The New York Times reports that the internal bulletin has not been verified by ATF analysts and does not match other summaries of the evidence. According to a “senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation,” such reports are usually not made public due to potentially inaccurate information.

September 11, 1:34 p.m.: The Trans Journalists’ Association “urges caution” in a statement, pushing outlets reporting about the investigation to “prioritize direct quotes and, to the greatest degree possible, identify the source and evidence” and emphasizing that “transgender ideology” is “a term coined for and used in anti-trans political messaging.”

September 11, 3:28 p.m.: Citing “reporting in multiple outlets,” conservative talk show host Megyn Kelly uses Kirk’s death as an opportunity to attack trans people.

“Charlie Kirk’s killer engraved the ammunition used to murder him with pro-transgender ideology, according to reporting in multiple outlets—to the surprise of literally no one,” she said. “There’s one particular group that’s been running around killing Americans in the name of transgender ideology lately and it’s transgender activists or individuals or those who proclaim that they are.”

In an interview on Kelly’s show, Donald Trump Jr. says, “I can’t name, including probably, like, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, a group that is more violent per capita than the radical trans moment.” 

September 11, 4:43 p.m.: The UK-based Telegraph asserts that the killer’s ammunition was “engraved with pro-trans messages.”

September 11, 5:00 p.m., CNN reports that, according to two law enforcement sources, at least one cartridge was marked with arrows, which could have been misinterpreted by ATF analysts to be connected to the transgender community. By the following morning, the Wall Street Journal alters its story to include the New York Times and CNN reporting, adding “Some Sources Urge Caution” to its headline. 

September 12, 10:10 a.m.: At a press conference, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox identifies the suspect in custody as 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson, whom neither Cox nor law enforcement claim is transgender. Cox reads the inscriptions from the recovered bullet casings, none of which reference transgender people in any way.

September 12, 10:36 a.m.: Rep. Mace calls for prayers for Robinson. “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual,” she writes.

Shortly after the revelations at Cox’s Friday press conference, Human Rights Campaign launched a petition demanding the Wall Street Journal retract and apologize for its article on the shell casings.

“Jumping to those conclusions was reckless, irresponsible, and led to a wave of threats against the trans community…Many online who peddled rumors with incomplete and untrue details did not care about the facts,” HRC press secretary Brandon Wolf said in a statement.

At 2:46 p.m. ET on Friday, the Wall Street Journal posted on X that it had appended an editor’s note to its original article acknowledging that Cox “gave no indication that the ammunition included any transgender references.” (The newspaper laid off five members of its standards and ethics team last year; its current deputy editor for standards did not reply to a request for comment.)

The phrase “transgender ideology” has “increasingly become a shorthand for everything that threatens the MAGA-preferred vision of the nation, of the people, of the family,” says Joanna Wuest, assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Stony Brook University. Trump has led a policy crusade against transgender people since his first day in office, starting with an executive order against “gender ideology”—a move that has been used to limit trans people’s access to bathrooms, identification documents, and medical care, as well as their protections from discrimination in education and employment.

Those who use the phrase “gender ideology” are generally referring to the idea that someone can have a gender identity—a deeply felt, internal sense of gender—that differs from their sex assigned at birth. “There’s been this movement on the right, but also just in general, to frame that as an ideology,” says Saskia Brechenmacher, a senior fellow researching gender, civil society, and democratic governance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Other people would say, ‘No, that’s just the way the world is.’”

Laurie Marhoefer, a professor of LGBTQ history and Nazi Germany at the University of Washington, says his transgender friends reacted with alarm as soon as news broke of the shooting. But the panic increased when the false statements about the shell casings came out. Friends began to check in with him, asking how worried they should be about retaliation.

“People are just terrified,” Marhoefer says. “I think we’re getting used to being terrified.”