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Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) speaks with reporters outside the US Capitol on September 11, 2025.<\/span>Francis Chung\/Politico\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n When Utah authorities<\/span> 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 <\/strong>a storm of rumors and inaccurate reporting about the gender identity and motivations of Kirk\u2019s shooter.<\/p>\n Almost immediately after Kirk was shot on Wednesday, right-wing social media accounts began speculating that his killer was transgender.<\/p>\n The next morning, unvetted <\/strong>claims spread <\/strong>by <\/strong>right-wing political commentator Steven Crowder were <\/strong>quickly followed by a Wall Street Journal<\/em> article claiming\u2014based on an unquoted bulletin \u201ccirculated widely\u201d by law enforcement officials\u2014that expressions of \u201ctransgender ideology\u201d were <\/strong>engraved on the shooter\u2019s ammo. An hour later, Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican who frequently promotes anti-trans legislation, was hurling slurs on camera.<\/p>\n For years, if not decades, voices demanding gun reform have been accused of \u201cpoliticizing\u201d violence\u2014and of casting blame \u201ctoo soon\u201d in the wake of tragedy. When it wasn\u2019t gun rights but trans people on the line, that rhetoric went out the window\u2014for media outlets, public figures, and government representatives alike. Here\u2019s how quickly the claims made their way from far-right speculation to the Wall Street Journal<\/em> and a member of Congress.<\/p>\n September 10, 12:23 p.m.: <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n September 10, 4:40 p.m.: <\/strong>President Donald Trump announces on Truth Social that Kirk has died from his injuries.<\/p>\n September 11, 8:35 a.m.: <\/strong>Right-wing commentator Steven Crowder posts a screenshot on X of a supposed \u201cinternal message\u201d leaked from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives alleging that law enforcement officials found gun cartridges at the scene engraved with unspecified \u201cwording\u2026expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology.\u201d Crowder\u2019s post is viewed more than 25 million times.\u00a0<\/p>\n September 11, 10:23 a.m.<\/strong>: The Wall Street Journal<\/em> posts a link on X to a news story captioned: \u201cBreaking: Ammunition engraved with transgender and antifascist ideology was found inside the rifle authorities believe was used in Kirk\u2019s shooting, sources say.\u201d<\/p>\n The article cites \u201can internal law enforcement bulletin and a person familiar with the investigation.\u201d The post receives more than 11 million impressions. At 10:51 a.m., the Daily Beast<\/em> publishes a story<\/a> repeating the claims. At 11:20 a.m., the New York Post<\/em> publishes a similar<\/a> story.\u00a0<\/p>\n September 11, 11:29 a.m.: <\/strong>Right-wing news outlet the Daily Caller<\/em> posts<\/a> a video of GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, an outspoken opponent of transgender rights.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sounds like the shooter was a tranny, or pro-tranny,\u201d she tells the reporter. \u201cAnd just because I want to protect women, that I\u2019m worried about getting murdered? Are you fucking kidding me? It\u2019s out of control, and enough is enough, and I\u2019m going to double down on this.\u201d<\/p>\n September 11, 1:18 p.m.:<\/strong> The New York Times<\/em> reports<\/a> that the internal bulletin has not been verified by ATF analysts and does not match other summaries of the evidence. According to a \u201csenior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation,\u201d such reports are usually not made public due to potentially inaccurate information.<\/p>\n September 11, 1:34 p.m.: <\/strong>The Trans Journalists\u2019 Association \u201curges caution<\/a>\u201d in a statement, pushing outlets reporting about the investigation to \u201cprioritize direct quotes and, to the greatest degree possible, identify the source and evidence\u201d and emphasizing <\/strong>that \u201ctransgender ideology\u201d is \u201ca term coined for and used in anti-trans political messaging.\u201d<\/p>\n September 11, 3:28 p.m.: <\/strong>Citing \u201creporting in multiple outlets,\u201d conservative talk show host Megyn Kelly uses Kirk\u2019s death as an opportunity to attack trans people.<\/p>\n \u201cCharlie Kirk\u2019s killer engraved the ammunition used to murder him with pro-transgender ideology, according to reporting in multiple outlets\u2014to the surprise of literally no one,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s one particular group that\u2019s been running around killing Americans in the name of transgender ideology lately and it\u2019s transgender activists or individuals or those who proclaim that they are.\u201d <\/p>\n In an interview on Kelly\u2019s show, Donald Trump Jr. says, \u201cI can\u2019t name, including probably, like, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, a group that is more violent per capita than the radical trans moment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n September 11, 4:43 p.m.: <\/strong> The UK-based Telegraph<\/em> asserts<\/a> that the killer\u2019s ammunition was \u201cengraved with pro-trans messages.\u201d<\/p>\n September 11, 5:00 p.m.<\/strong>, 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 <\/em>alters its story to include the New York Times<\/em> and CNN<\/em> reporting, adding \u201cSome Sources Urge Caution\u201d to its headline.\u00a0<\/p>\n September 12, 10:10 a.m.:<\/strong> 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 <\/a>from the recovered bullet casings, none of which reference transgender people in any way.<\/p>\n September 12, 10:36 a.m.: <\/strong>Rep. Mace calls for prayers for Robinson. \u201cWe know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual,\u201d she writes<\/a>.<\/p>\n Shortly after the<\/span> revelations at Cox\u2019s Friday press conference, Human Rights Campaign launched a petition<\/a> demanding the Wall Street Journal<\/em> retract and apologize for its article on the shell casings.<\/p>\n \u201cJumping to those conclusions was reckless, irresponsible, and led to a wave of threats against the trans community\u2026Many online who peddled rumors with incomplete and untrue details did not care about the facts,\u201d HRC press secretary Brandon Wolf said in a statement.<\/p>\n At 2:46 p.m. ET on Friday, the <\/strong>Wall Street Journal <\/em>posted<\/a> on X that it had appended an editor\u2019s note to its original article acknowledging that Cox \u201cgave no indication that the ammunition included any transgender references.\u201d (The newspaper laid off five members<\/a> of its standards and ethics team last year; its current deputy editor for standards did not reply to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n The phrase \u201ctransgender ideology\u201d has \u201cincreasingly become a shorthand for everything that threatens the MAGA-preferred vision of the nation, of the people, of the family,\u201d says Joanna Wuest, assistant professor of women\u2019s, 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 \u201cgender ideology\u201d\u2014a move that has been used to limit trans people\u2019s access to bathrooms, identification documents, and medical care, as well as their protections from discrimination in education and employment.<\/p>\n Those who use the phrase \u201cgender ideology\u201d are generally referring to the idea that someone can have a gender identity\u2014a deeply felt, internal sense of gender\u2014that differs from their sex assigned at birth. \u201cThere\u2019s been this movement on the right, but also just in general, to frame that as an ideology,\u201d says Saskia Brechenmacher, a senior fellow researching gender, civil society, and democratic governance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. \u201cOther people would say, \u2018No, that\u2019s just the way the world is.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are just terrified,\u201d Marhoefer says. \u201cI think we\u2019re getting used to being terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n