A Washington Post columnist revealed on Monday that she has been fired for her social media posts about the Charlie Kirk assassination and the school shooting in Colorado.
Karen Attiah wrote on her Substack, according to Fox News, that "On Bluesky, in the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Utah and Colorado, I condemned America’s acceptance of political violence and criticized its ritualized responses — the hollow, cliched calls for ‘thoughts and prayers’ and ‘this is not who we are’ that normalize gun violence and absolve [W]hite perpetrators especially, while nothing is done to curb deaths."
She claims that she was fired for speaking against political violence, "racial double standards," and America's "empathy towards guns."
The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable’, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false. They rushed to fire me without even a conversation. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.
In her Monday post, she included the screenshots of the comments that got her fired, including one that said, "Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for [W]hite men who espouse hatred and violence."
She claimed that she only made one direct reference to Charlie Kirk, where she argues she quoted him in his own words.
Attiah wrote, "'Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a [W]hite person’s slot' - Charlie Kirk," referencing something Charlie Kirk said in July 2023 on "The Charlie Kirk Show."
However, he did not claim all Black women lack brain processing power; according to Reuters, he specifically referred to Joy Reid, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Michelle Obama, and Sheila Jackson Lee. A viral X post, however, claimed the former.
#CharlieKirk:
— Elizabeth (@alluring_nyc) September 11, 2025
"Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person's slot." pic.twitter.com/j6PKQec2gn
Fired Washington Post columnist @KarenAttiah: "My only direct reference to Kirk was his own words on record."
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 15, 2025
Except, what she claims to be a direct quote is not even remotely close to being true. https://t.co/oKgINoAMsG pic.twitter.com/MEAmDkSTfJ
She now claims that the Washington Post, of all publications, no longer reflects the people it is meant to serve, noting that she was the last Black full-time opinion columnist at the paper, and crying racism.
What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic.