Mass Shooting News Dominated by Shooter’s Identity
Leading Off: The right wing is using the transgender identity of a mass shooter to fuel hatred towards the entire trans community. The Texas house passes a bathroom ban with massive penalties. And two North Virginia school systems fight back against Trump’s Department of Education. Our top stories starting out the week in trans news.
by Assigned Media
Following a shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis last week, on the morning of August 27, the identity of shooter Robin Westman has come to dominate the news cycle. Republican politicians and their supporters on social media have sought, and in large part succeeded, in distracting from calls for gun control in the wake of 2 children’s deaths by encouraging increased hatred, fear, and blame towards the entire transgender community. Although there has been pushback against the false statements on the right, the lives of the victims and the possibility for national action against gun violence have once again been subsumed in responses to inflammatory far-right rhetoric.
After noting that local news had confirmed the shooter had a history of transition, Assigned Media became the first outlet to note that mass shooters are disproportionately cisgender men in a brief piece on Wednesday afternoon. Several national news organizations have run stories focusing on debunking the myth that trans people frequently commit mass shootings including USA Today, Mother Jones, and Snopes.
Extremism experts have noted material the shooter left behind fits the pattern of a nihilistic online subculture that idolizes mass shooters. In replies on Bluesky to Assigned Media’s Evan Urquhart, New York Times reporter Aric Toler (who co-bylined an NYT story on the shooter) shared that the original target the shooter had planned to attack was an underground trans music venue.
On Thursday, the Texas House passed Senate Bill 8, which would ban trans people from restrooms matching their gender identities in government facilities across the state. This ban comes after a nearly decade long battle of the Texas government pushing similar bans.
Texas joins twenty other states that have passed similar types of legislation. Where Texas stands out, however, is in the magnitude of the penalties against facilities for violations of the law. In an earlier draft of the bill, the penalties were $5,000 for a first offence and $25,000 for subsequent offences. In an amendment that received no debate, the Texas House increased those penalties to $25,000 and $125,000 respectively, making this the most aggressive bill in banning trans people from bathrooms across the U.S. The fines would target local governments who failed to enforce restrictions.
This bill, if passed by the Senate with the new amendments, would restrict trans people from accessing restrooms in government buildings, schools, and universities. It would also put inmates in jails and prisons in facilities matching their gender assigned at birth, and would restrict trans women from accessing women’s domestic violence shelters.
After the Department of Education threatened to cut funding over allowing trans students to use restrooms matching their gender identity, two North Virginia county school systems are suing to reverse the sanctions.
In a statement on Friday, Arlington Public School Superintendent said that the schools were “being asked to violate both state and federal law,” referring to the case of Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, which affirmed that transgender people have the right to use the restroom matching their gender identity.
In that same statement, they say that the DoE is “effectively freezing $23 million in funding APS relies on.” In a statement by Fairfax County Public Schools’ Superintendent, they say that the DoE is “effectively freezing access to as much as $167 million in federal funding.”
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