The massacre at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis was one of the most horrifying attacks on children and people of faith in recent memory — yet legacy media seems more committed to narrative management than truth-telling. Two children murdered. Seventeen more wounded, including 14 students, while attending Mass to mark the first week of the school year. A manifesto posted online. Anti-religious slurs scrawled on weapons. And a shooter, Robert “Robin” Westman, who openly identified as transgender.
These are the facts. But if you read USA Today’s coverage, you’d never know them. The shooter’s name was missing entirely.
Somebody hold USA Today’s beer. Their article on the Minneapolis school shooting omits the fact the shooting was trans, but manages to include this: pic.twitter.com/LmFL8Buike
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) August 28, 2025
Instead, readers got a bloodless write-up, padded with broad statistics from Voice of America about “right-wing extremists,” white supremacists, and past racially motivated shootings. In other words, the media quietly swapped out the actual profile of this killer for a narrative more in line with their usual script.
This isn’t journalism. It’s deliberate omission — anti-journalism.
Meanwhile, The New York Times at least acknowledged the shooter but chose to dignify him with his “preferred pronouns,” as though ideological etiquette matters more than informing the public. Imagine being the parent of one of those dead children and opening the paper to see the murderer’s self-perception treated with more respect than your loss.
USA Today refused to report that the Minnesota shooter was transgender, but they somehow found a way to shoehorn a claim that ICE is causing attacks on churches into their article.
You can’t make this stuff up. pic.twitter.com/vd5JksGnIk
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) August 28, 2025
Let’s be clear: Robert Westman, a transgender-identifying former student of the school, opened fire on children during Mass. He uploaded a video manifesto, expressing bitterness about his failed transition, hatred for Christians and Jews, and even violent fantasies about killing Donald Trump. His own mother had once worked at Annunciation before retiring in 2021. He targeted the school deliberately.
This wasn’t some vague act of “random violence,” as USA Today would have readers believe. It was a targeted anti-Catholic attack, carried out by a deeply disturbed individual whose transgender identity is relevant not because of politics, but because this is not the first such case. Nashville’s Covenant School in 2023, STEM Highlands Ranch in 2019 — the pattern is emerging, whether the media wants to acknowledge it or not.
