Luke Rosiak, an investigative reporter for The Daily Wire, was suspended from Twitter on Tuesday after he posted a link to a story about activists scheduling a transgender “Day of Vengeance” the same week of the shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.
Police said that a 28-year-old woman who identified as a transgender man killed three 9-year-old children and three adults at The Covenant School, which is associated with the conservative evangelical Covenant Presbyterian Church. Authorities revealed that the shooter, whom The Daily Wire will not name in accordance with company policy, executed a “targeted attack” and left behind a “manifesto.”
Rosiak noted on Monday that the suspected shooter executed her attack days before the Trans Radical Activist Network called for a “Day of Vengeance” on Saturday, April 1. Twitter removed a post from Rosiak linking to an article he wrote earlier this month about the activists.
“The shooting of a Christian school by a transgender comes the same week that activists scheduled a ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,’ with the group also raising money for firearms training,” Rosiak had said in the tweet.
Rosiak, who said he has been on Twitter for 13 years but has “never had a single strike,” received an alert indicating that the tweet violated “rules against violent speech” and stating that the social media platform does not permit users to “share abusive content, harass someone, or encourage other people to do so.”
He was told that he must delete the original post to regain access to his account; he appealed the decision, observing that he was not “advocating for violence” but rather “stating a fact and noting disapprovingly” that others had been calling for violence. Trans Radical Activist Network indeed retains its account on Twitter.
“The activists, which describe their ‘Day of Vengeance’ alongside references to Molotov cocktails and specifically mentioned Tennessee, advertised this event on Twitter itself, and their accounts have not been banned,” Rosiak told The Daily Wire in reaction to his suspension. “Are trans activists mass-reporting factual tweets to prevent the public from learning about their actions, and does Elon Musk’s system allow organized groups of leftists to game it that way?”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who called on federal officials to investigate whether the Nashville massacre was a hate crime against Christians, had retweeted the post from Rosiak. “This kind of hateful rhetoric, ‘genocide’ and ‘day of vengeance,’ must be condemned,” the lawmaker said. “The hate crime massacre in Nashville exposes where rhetoric like this can lead.”
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Rosiak, who broke the bombshell story about school officials in Loudoun County, Virginia, attempting to conceal a sexual assault in a women’s bathroom perpetrated by a boy allegedly wearing a skirt, has not been the first conservative to be suspended from Twitter even after Elon Musk assumed control of the platform last year. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) each briefly lost access to their account in recent weeks.
The suspected shooter sent messages to her former middle school basketball teammate moments before the attack, saying she was “planning to die today” and that the friend would “probably hear” about her on the news. “My family doesn’t know what I’m about to do,” she added. “One day this will make more sense. I’ve left more than enough evidence behind.”