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FACT BRIEF

Was a call to 'ban' cabinet appointments for white people related to the supposed identity of the Colorado shooting suspect?

By Dana Ford
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NO

There is no publicly available evidence the 21-year-old man identified as the suspect in the Boulder, Colorado, King Sooper shooting is an "Islamic extremist," and some evidence he was non-religious.

As for the contemporaneous battle over the make-up of President Joe Biden's administration, Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono did not call for an outright ban on white people in the Cabinet, but stalled approval of Biden picks until Asian American Pacific Islander communities were represented. An article on social media tried without basis to link their political stance to the Colorado shooting response.

The Colorado shooting suspect, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, faces 10 counts of murder in the shooting on March 22, 2021, at a grocery store in Boulder. The suspect's brother told CNN that Alissa may have been suffering from mental illness and was not very political or particularly religious.

See a full discussion of this at Lead Stories
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Boulder (CO) Police Boulder Shooting Update March 23, 8:30 a.m.
CNN Here's what we know about the Boulder, Colorado, mass shooting suspect
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Lead Stories
Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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About fact briefs published on Gigafact
Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact —a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all fact briefs here.