Updated on: August 24, 2026 / 12:36 PM EDT
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An arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to reinstate a Black opinion writer fired over social media posts about violent White men following last year's killing of Charlie Kirk.The ruling Thursday said the newspaper did not have sufficient cause to terminate Karen Attiah, who at the time was the last Black full-time member of the Post's opinion desk. The arbitrator, Sarah Miller Espinosa, also ordered the Post to award Attiah full back pay and lost benefits. Kirk, who rose from a teenage conservative campus activist to become a top podcaster and ally of President Trump, was shot and killed Sept. 10 during a public appearance at Utah Valley University. He was 31.Tyler Robinson is charged with crimes including aggravated murder and has not yet entered a plea. The 23-year-old defendant turned himself in a day after the shooting. Kirk launched Turning Point USA in 2012 and made provocative statements about race, gender and politics. He was critical of the Black Lives Matter movement on college campuses and called George Floyd, the Black man whose 2020 murder at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked protests, a "scumbag." His death elicited a torrent of comments about him, both pro and con, and some who spoke out against him in the days after the killing faced sanctions or dismissal at work.Attiah posted after Kirk's killingAfter Kirk's killing, Attiah, the founding global opinion editor for the Post and the newspaper's only Black female opinion writer, made several posts to her Bluesky account.
