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Let's get into it:
It was nearly one year ago that opinion columnist Karen Attiah was fired by the Washington Post over vile posts downplaying the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The outlet said Attiah had hurt "the integrity" of the paper. Attiah had posted shortly after Kirk was shot and killed on September 10, 2025, saying "Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence…. not the same as violence." Now an arbiter's ruling determined that she must be rehired.
A private arbiter, Sarah Miller Espinosa, has ruled that the Post must rehire Attiah. In response to the ruling following arbitration, Attiah posted on Bluesky, "PLAYING DJ KHALED'S "ALL I DO IS WIN" ALLL DAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. Y'all better talk nice to me now."
Sharing an article from The New York Times about the ruling, Attiah wrote, "After the Washington Post fired me last year for speaking the truth in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing, I fought back. And I'm happy to announce: I won my case against the Washington Post. They have been ordered to reinstate me immediately."
That "truth" she's referring to is her claim that Kirk "espoused violence," but there's no evidence that he did. In his talks, open speaking events, articles, and interviews, he espoused family formation, marriage, raising children to believe in God, becoming Christian. He opposed abortion, sex changes for children, favored the upholding of the American Bill of Rights, and favored merit as a metric in hiring and education over identity-based factors.
In a Substack post after Attiah was let go for these comments, she claimed "I've been fired by the Washington Post for... condemning political violence and exercising journalistic balance in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting." She posted an alleged quote from Kirk, stating that he said "Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person's slot."
This was not accurate. In fact, Kirk was responding to a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that affirmative action in university admissions was racist against Asian and white students. During his July 13, 2023 broadcast, Kirk said "If we would have said three weeks ago ... that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racist. But now they're coming out and they're saying it for us! They're coming out and saying 'I'm only here because of affirmative action.'"
Joy Reid and the other women were vocal about how affirmative action was to credit for their academic inclusion in top universities. "Yeah, we know," said Kirk on his show. "You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously." He was speaking about these women, not all women, and referencing their own commentary on their own success.
Attiah called lying about a man and his legacy "balance." She said that the Post had said at the time that her commentary "endangered the physical safety of colleagues," and disputed that. However, she made the same claims about a column by Senator Tom Cotton and questions raised about a professor's plagiarism. By her own rules, she did, in fact, endanger the physical safety of colleagues.
It was the editor of the opinion page, for whom Attiah worked, who flagged her social media comments on Kirk after he was murdered. "Karen's social media feed yesterday and today is beyond the pale," Adam O'Neal said, "completely unacceptable for someone associated with Opinions." During the arbitration following her dismissal, Attiah said she was merely "commenting on our discourse on political violence."
In 2020, Attiah joined a pile-on against New York Times opinion staffers over their publication of a Senator Tom Cotton opinion piece that suggested the National Guard could be deployed to quell riotous BLM violence. "The New York Times put black people and black journalists in danger with that Tom Cotton piece," she said. "This is not okay." Many people were fired or forced out at the Times.
Leftist lies and rhetoric about Kirk, including that he was hateful and bigoted, likely resulted in his killing. Suspect Tyler Robinson told friends of Kirk, "I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out." That kind of commentary, just the kind Attiah engaged in, was not based in facts about Kirk's views, but a perception among the progressive, socialist left that anyone who disagrees with their own views is espousing violence.
They believe that advocating for children to not be sex changed or to protect women's sports equals trans genocide, that opposing diversity, equity and inclusion policies in academia, government, and hiring is racist, that making public allegations of plagiarism, as in the case of deceased Cambridge professor Jason Arday, is lynching, and that opposing abortion is the same as opposing women's rights. It is only by espousing these views that Attiah and others could believe that Kirk "espoused violence."
In demanding the Post rehire Attiah, arbiter Espinosa said The Washington Post "did not have good and sufficient cause" to fire her and "failed to establish the grievant engaged in gross misconduct." In summation, Espinosa said this was a violation of their labor agreement.
Attiah said she will be glad to get back to work after her time on Substack. Her latest piece for her own blog is on "How the British/global media hounded Jason Arday to death." She writes, "Given the history of white media's key role in terror against Black people, at what point do we call such actions of journalism outlets digital terror campaigns?" To her, plagiarism and fabrication allegations are "terror campaigns," but lying about a man is "balanced."
Arday was a professor who was lauded by the BBC throughout the recent years of his career. He called police after a journalist reached out for comment about plagiarism allegations, lied repeatedly about his accomplishments, said it was racist to question him about his fabrications, resigned after the university that hushed up the allegations undertook an investigation, and later died in his London home by what is believed to have been his own hand.
Arday was a liar. Kirk told the truth. But because one was black and the other white, she upheld the lies of Arday and claimed Kirk's truth was violence.
Attiah said of the ruling she be rehired that the "decision confirms what we've said from the start: I was doing my job as an opinion writer, and this was wrongful termination." She said she was "relieved to finally have that record set straight.
The Post wasn't the first to tangle with and release Attiah. In 2023, her book on murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, "Say Your Word, Then Leave: The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi and the Power of the Truth," was canceled by HarperCollins during the editing process. She claimed book publication was "inexplicably stopped" and that the publisher was "forcing [her] to pull the book."
In November 2023, she shared that she was "excited to announce" she would be teaching Race and Western Journalism at her alma mater, Columbia University. By April 2025, the course was canceled. She lamented that, saying, "I knew that race and identity were rarely taught in international affairs schools—or many journalism schools, for that matter. And I rarely had the opportunity to learn from a professor who looked like me."
Now the Washington Post can publish Attiah's work after she spent a year demeaning America, the heritage of the United States, and the legacy of Charlie Kirk. In a recent post, she wrote, "I don't respect America at 250. The only thing I can think of is how America is still a young, spoiled brat of a nation that no one is able to discipline. Foreign writers have been commenting on the US's developmental problems for centuries." Soon we'll be able to read all about it, again, in the Washington Post.
Libby