Recently, a transgender woman was arrested in South Carolina for allegedly making a death threat against South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace online.
19-year-old Roxie Wolfe of Greenville County, South Carolina, made the post on April 26th on the platform formerly known as Twitter. In the tweet, she said she would shoot and kill a given official—who, in the original post, wasn’t named. This was identified as Nancy Mace.
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Wolfe did admit to writing the post, and her account has been deleted; we’ll most likely never officially know what the post said. Fox News claims to have the exact wording, but I’d take this with a grain of salt since it’s…Fox News.
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According to Fakes News, the tweet read “I am going to assassinate [Mace] with a gun and I’m being 100% deadass”. The article also misgenders and deadnames Wolfe.
It is unknown whether she planned to follow through with her threat.
Wolfe’s case brings up a bigger issue. This year alone, thousands of people have been posting the phrase ‘Somebody needs to do it’ to TikTok, Twitter, Instagram. The phrase is a reference to wanting to assassinate Donald Trump, as we live in an age of mass political dissatisfaction with our current administration. If Wolfe’s only crime was sending that tweet, her arrest doesn’t make sense. There have also been celebrities like Ethel Cain who have made death threats against our previous and current president, and nothing has happened to her. Wolfe is a trans woman without celebrity status who is now at the mercy of the state for a tweet that might have simply been a reference to a meme. It could be possible that she did make plans to assassinate Rep. Mace, but we have yet to see proof of this.
It’s especially bs when you consider that law enforcement only take death threats seriously when they concern public officials. If you have an ex who’s been sending you threatening voicemails, and you call the cops, they will tell you that they can’t do anything and even accuse you of wasting police resources.
For now, this whole thing smells of the current administration putting on a show of intimidation towards the transgender community. It is especially scary when you consider how the rights of transgender prisoners are being overlooked by this current administration.
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