The Washington Post is under the microscope again. This time, it has been facing legal pressure to rehire former opinion columnist Karen Attiah. If she is brought back on board, her role would be within an overhauled Opinions section, which since early 2025 has had an explicit focus on “free markets and personal liberties” and is mostly populated by libertarians and conservatives.

Documents cited in the legal decision make it seem like former Opinions editor Adam O’Neal wanted to fire Attiah for some time, as her body of work was “inconsistent” with his section’s new free-marketeer vision. Officially, she was fired because of her social media use, following a post about the reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder that read: “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is … not the same as violence.” 

At the time of her firing, Washington Post staffers told Cockburn that Attiah had been missing deadlines. O’Neal may have erred in making the dismissal about “gross misconduct” instead, considering how difficult it is to fire columnists at-will at a paper such as the WaPo, where the guild is strong. It is not clear why Attiah would want her........

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