On social media, a theory persists about North Carolina power outage

While police have not identified suspects nor provided a motive for the “targeted attacks” on two energy substations in North Carolina over the weekend, one theory has quickly taken hold on social media: The outages were intended to shut down a drag performance.

The theory, which sprouted up almost immediately after the power went out in Moore County around 8:15 p.m. on Saturday, came after weeks of threats and hours of protests from far-right activists against the “Downtown Divas” drag show set to take place at Sunrise Theater that night. And it...