HRC demands WSJ retract report linking Kirk shooting to transgender community [View all]

Source: The Hill

09/12/25 5:21 PM ET


The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, is demanding that The Wall Street Journal retract its reporting incorrectly linking the shooter in conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination with the transgender community.

Kirk, the 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot Wednesday afternoon while speaking at a Utah college. In the clamor of information related to Kirk’s killing, The Wall Street Journal, citing “an early bulletin circulated widely among law enforcement officials,” reported Thursday that investigators had discovered ammunition with expressions of “transgender and anti-fascist ideology” inside the rifle believed to have been used in Kirk’s killing.

The New York Times reported later Thursday that the document had not been verified by analysts with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, did not match other summaries of the evidence and “might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted.”

The story from The Wall Street Journal was later updated to reflect caution from some Justice Department officials about the veracity of the internal bulletin. On Friday, a lengthy editor’s note was appended to the outlet’s original report, after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R), during a news conference, “gave no indication that the ammunition included any transgender references.”

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/5501615-human-rights-campaign-wsj-retraction-kirk/