On the last Sunday in May, Jeremy Lee Quinn, a furloughed photographer in Santa Monica, Calif., was snapping photos of suburban moms kneeling at a Black Lives Matter protest when a friend alerted him to a more dramatic subject: looting at a shoe store about a mile away.
He arrived to find young people pouring out of the store, shoeboxes under their arms. But there was something odd about the scene. A group of men, dressed entirely in black, milled around nearby, like supervisors. One wore a creepy rubber Halloween mask.
The next day, Mr. Quinn took pictures of another store being looted. Again, he noticed something strange. A white man, clad in black, had broken the window with a crowbar, but walked away without taking a thing.
Mr. Quinn began studying footage of looting from around the country and saw the same black outfits and, in some cases, the same masks. He decided to go to a protest dressed like that himself, to figure out what was really going on. He expected to find white supremacists who wanted to help re-elect President Trump by stoking fear of Black people. What he discovered instead were true believers in “insurrectionary anarchism.”
To better understand them, Mr. Quinn, a 40-something theater student who worked at Univision until the pandemic, has spent the past four months marching with “black bloc” anarchists in half a dozen cities across the country, chronicling the experience on his website, Public Report.
He says he respects the idealistic goal of a hierarchy-free society that anarchists embrace, but grew increasingly uncomfortable with the tactics used by some anarchists, which he feared would set off a backlash that could help get President Trump re-elected. In Portland, Ore., he marched with people who shot fireworks at the federal court building. In Washington, he marched with protesters who harassed diners.
Mr. Quinn discovered a thorny truth about the mayhem that unfolded in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis. It wasn’t mayhem at all.
While talking heads on television routinely described it as a spontaneous eruption of anger at racial injustice, it was strategically planned, facilitated and advertised on social media by anarchists who believed that their actions advanced the cause of racial justice. In some cities, they were a fringe element, quickly expelled by peaceful organizers. But in Washington, Portland and Seattle they have attracted a “cultlike energy,” Mr. Quinn told me.
Don’t take just Mr. Quinn’s word for it. Take the word of the anarchists themselves, who lay out the strategy in Crimethinc, an anarchist publication: Black-clad figures break windows, set fires, vandalize police cars, then melt back into the crowd of peaceful protesters. When the police respond by brutalizing innocent demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and rough arrests, the public’s disdain for law enforcement grows. It’s Asymmetric Warfare 101.
An anarchist podcast called “The Ex-Worker” explains that while some anarchists believe in pacifist civil disobedience inspired by Mohandas Gandhi, others advocate using crimes like arson and shoplifting to wear down the capitalist system. According to “The Ex-Worker,” the term “insurrectionary anarchist” dates back at least to the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, when opponents of the fascist leader Francisco Franco took “direct action” against his regime, including assassinating policemen and robbing banks.
If that is not enough to convince you that there’s a method to the madness, check out the new report by Rutgers researchers that documents the “systematic, online mobilization of violence that was planned, coordinated (in real time) and celebrated by explicitly violent anarcho-socialist networks that rode on the coattails of peaceful protest,” according to its co-author Pamela Paresky. She said some anarchist social media accounts had grown 300-fold since May, to hundreds of thousands of followers.
“The ability to continue to spread and to eventually bring more violence, including a violent insurgency, relies on the ability to hide in plain sight — to be confused with legitimate protests, and for media and the public to minimize the threat,” Dr. Paresky told me.
There’s an even thornier truth that few people seem to want to talk about: Anarchy got results.
Don’t get me wrong. My heart broke for the people in Minneapolis who lost buildings to arson and looting. Migizi, a Native American nonprofit in Minneapolis, raised more than $1 million to buy and renovate a place where Native American teenagers could learn about their culture — only to watch it go up in flames, alongside dozens of others, including a police station. It can take years to build a building — and only one night to burn it down.
And yet, I had to admit that the scale of destruction caught the media’s attention in a way that peaceful protests hadn’t. How many articles would I have written about a peaceful march? How many months would Mr. Quinn have spent investigating suburban moms kneeling? That’s on us.
While I feared that the looting and arson would derail the urgent demands for racial justice and bring condemnation, I was wrong, at least in the short term. Support for Black Lives Matter soared. Corporations opened their wallets. It was as if the nation rallied behind peaceful Black organizers after it saw the alternative, like whites who flocked to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after they got a glimpse of Malcolm X.
But as the protests continue, support has flagged. The percentage of people who say they support the Black Lives Matter movement has dropped from 67 percent in June to 55 percent, according to a recent Pew poll.
“Insurrectionary anarchy” brings diminishing returns, especially as anarchists complicate life for those working within the system to halt police violence.
In Louisville, Ky., Attica Scott, a Black state representative who sponsored a police reform bill, was arrested last week and charged with felony rioting after someone threw a road flare inside a library.
In Portland, Jo Ann Hardesty, an activist turned city councilor, has pushed for the creation of a pilot program of unarmed street responders to handle mental illness and homelessness, a practical step to help protect populations that experience violence at the hands of police. Yet Ms. Hardesty is shouted down at protests by anarchists who want to abolish the police, not merely reform or defund them.
“As a Black woman who has been working on this for 30 years, to have young white activists who have just discovered that Black lives matter yelling at me that I’m not doing enough for Black people — it’s kind of ironic, is what it is,” Ms. Hardesty told me.
In Seattle, Andrè Taylor, a Black man who lost his brother to police violence in 2016, helped change state law that made it nearly impossible to prosecute officers for killing civilians. But he has been branded a “pig cop” by young anarchists because his nonprofit organization receives funds from the city, and because he cooperates with the police.
“When they say, ‘You are working with the police,’ I say, ‘I have worked with police and I will continue to work for reform,’” Mr. Taylor told me. “Remember, I lost a brother.”
Black people get shot for doing ordinary law-abiding things. They don’t have the luxury of anarchy, he told me.
That’s the thing about “insurrectionary anarchists.” They make fickle allies. If they help you get into power, they will try to oust you the following day, since power is what they are against. Many of them don’t even vote. They are experts at unraveling an old order but considerably less skilled at building a new one. That’s why, even after more than 100 days of protest in Portland, activists do not agree on a set of common policy goals.
Even some anarchists admit as much.
“We are not sure if the socialist, communist, democratic or even anarchist utopia is possible,” a voice on “The Ex-Worker” podcast intones. “Rather, some insurrectionary anarchists believe that the meaning of being an anarchist lies in the struggle itself and what that struggle reveals.”
In other words, it’s not really about George Floyd or Black lives, but insurrection for insurrection’s sake.
The Wall Street Journal watched Tuesday night’s presidential debate so you didn’t have to (I announced volleyball on the radio instead):
No one expected a Lincoln-Douglas debate, but did it have to be a World Wrestling Entertainment bout? Which may be unfair to the wrestlers, who are more presidential than either Donald Trump or Joe Biden sounded in their first debate Tuesday night.
The event was a spectacle of insults, interruptions, endless cross-talk, exaggerations and flat-out lies even by the lying standards of current U.S. politics. Our guess is that millions of Americans turned away after 30 minutes, and we would have turned away too if we didn’t do this for a living.
Mr. Trump no doubt wanted to project strength and rattle Mr. Biden, but he did so by interrupting him so much that he wouldn’t let Mr. Biden talk long enough even to make a mistake. The President bounced from subject to subject so frequently that it was hard to figure out what he hoped to say beyond that Joe Biden is controlled by the Democratic left. Even when moderator Chris Wallace asked a question that played to the strengths of his record—such as on the economy—Mr. Trump couldn’t stick to the theme without leaping to attack Mr. Biden.
The former Vice President wasn’t much better, interrupting nearly as much. And for the candidate who says he wants to bring people together, he was ready with his own name-calling. He called Mr. Trump a “racist,” a “clown,” and told him to “shut up, man.” He spun out falsehoods as fast as the President, notably in asserting that 100 million people would be vulnerable to losing their health insurance due to pre-existing conditions. The Obama Administration set up a special fund for pre-existing conditions in the transition to ObamaCare, and the takers were only in the thousands. Mr. Trump didn’t know enough to be able to rebut him.
No one won this fiasco, but Mr. Biden did succeed in passing the test of appearing coherent for 90 minutes. Mr. Trump had done him the favor of calling his mental capacity into question for months, so expectations were low. Mr. Biden passed that bar, albeit in highly scripted fashion.
The former Vice President kept his focus on Mr. Trump’s divisive political style and management of the pandemic. The truth is that Mr. Biden hasn’t offered anti-virus policies that are much different than Mr. Trump’s, except for a mandate to wear masks, which he has since walked back. His indictment is mainly about Mr. Trump’s temperament and narcissism, which Mr. Trump reinforced with his interruptions and “you’re worse” taunts. Mr. Trump succeeded again in making his pandemic policies sound worse than they are.
The benign explanation for the President’s performance is that like other incumbents in their first debates he was overconfident and underprepared. A less benign view is that he grew flustered as the debate went on and lost his cool and whatever focus he had at the start. He was so scattershot with his answers that he rarely offered a sustained case for his own policies. When Mr. Biden said Mr. Trump had called veterans “suckers” and “losers,” Mr. Trump didn’t refute it but brought up Hunter Biden.
Mr. Wallace had a hard task as the two men brawled, but he didn’t help by injecting himself too much into the debate. His verbose questions often took one side of the issue, as if playing gotcha in his Sunday interview program, when the point should have been to solicit information to help voters.
We hope for better when the two vice presidential candidates debate next week. Maybe one of them will act like a President.
Which is why today’s column is a bipartisan love fest for Donald Trump and Joe Biden – both of whom have been very aggressive in limiting their tax liabilities.
Here are some details from the report in the New York Times about Trump’s leaked tax returns.
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750. He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made. …His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. …They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. …Most of Mr. Trump’s core enterprises — from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington — report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year. …Business losses can work like a tax-avoidance coupon: A dollar lost on one business reduces a dollar of taxable income from elsewhere. The types and amounts of income that can be used in a given year vary, depending on an owner’s tax status. But some losses can be saved for later use, or even used to request a refund on taxes paid in a prior year.
It’s worth noting that the leaked returns didn’t show any unknown business ties to Russia. Nor do they suggest any criminality.
Instead, Trump appears to have relied on using losses in some years to offset income in other years – a perfectly legitimate practice.
Now let’s look at some of what CNBCreported about Joe Biden’s clever tactic to save lots of money.
…consider borrowing a tax-planning tip from Joe Biden. The former vice president…reported about $10 million in income in 2017 from a pair of S-corporations… The two entities were paid for the couple’s book deals and speaking gigs. …both S-corps generated a lot of income, they paid out modest salaries in comparison. …In 2017, the two companies paid the couple a combined $245,833 in wages. …any amounts the Bidens received as a distribution wasn’t subject to the 15.3% combined Social Security and Medicare tax. …Tim Steffen, CPA and director of advanced planning at Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee. “…if you don’t report that income to the business as wages, then that portion of the income avoids Social Security and Medicare taxes,” he said.
So how much did this aggressive strategy save the family?
The article doesn’t do all the math, but it certainly seems like the Biden household avoided having to cough up any payroll taxes on more than $9.75 million.
There’s a “wage base cap” on Social Security taxes (thankfully), so it’s possible that their tax avoidance only saved them about $283,000 (what they would have paid in Medicare taxes – 2.9 percent rather than 15.3 percent).
ESPN broadcaster Mark Jones doesn’t need to be fired. He needs help. He needs an intervention. Like the network that pays him, Jones has been radicalized by his Twitter feed.
In reaction to a Louisville grand jury failing to indict the officers who shot Breonna Taylor in an attempt to subdue her boyfriend who shot a police officer, Jones declared on his Twitter feed that he would no longer accept a police escort to the games he broadcast.
“Saturday at my football game,” Jones tweeted, “I’ll tell the police officer on duty to ‘protect’ me he can just take the day off … I’d rather not have the officer shoot me because he feared for his life because of my black skin or other dumb ish. I’m not signing my own death certificate.”
Saturday at my football game I’ll tell the police officer on duty to “protect” me he can just take the day off. Fr.
I’d rather not have the officer shoot me because he feared for his life because of my black skin or other dumb ish.
The tweet is insanity. It reveals a dangerous level of paranoia and delusion. Broadcasters of all ethnicities have been receiving police escorts to and from sporting events for at least 50 years. Not one police officer has ever assassinated a broadcaster. Not one.
Mark Jones is crying for help. Twitter is feeding his delusion. Unfortunately so is ESPN. Black Lives Matter cult leaders Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James have indoctrinated the entire network. The Worldwide Leader exists today as a virtual cult compound for racial radicalism.
The network’s reaction to the Louisville grand jury was unprofessional, bizarre and cult-like. Tall broadcasters with no expertise in criminal justice or fact-based journalism ranted and whined. Former University of Georgia basketball player Maria Taylor and former college and NBA star Jalen Rose emoted on ESPN’s NBA Countdown Show.
“I just want people to know that blacks are hurting,” Rose said. “And, uh, as we related to sports that are predominantly black, the WNBA, the NBA, the NFL, all of those players are performing with heavy hearts. And we’re still showing up to try to do our jobs, and I was in that position. I can’t lie to y’all. I was looking in my closet like, ‘I’m going to wear something fresh today, because if I say something to get me fired, then I was crisp.’ That’s what I was thinking.”
I’m not sure if Rose is aware that President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was shown on television and Americans went to work afterward. Breonna Taylor’s been dead for months. It’s also been obvious for months that the police officers who responded to the gunfire of her boyfriend were not going to be charged with murder. BLM cult leader LeBron James and his NBA flock misled their followers into believing the state of Kentucky would waste taxpayer money on a criminal prosecution it could not win.
But Rose wasn’t done. He pivoted into a deeper form of illogic.
“Because when Kyle Rittenhouse in (Kenosha), as a 17-year-old, kills two people and yet three cops aren’t directly charged for killing Breonna Taylor, it shows you how they feel about black lives in America.”
Rittenhouse is white. He killed two white BLM cult members. Rittenhouse has been charged with their murders despite the fact there is quite a bit of evidence that he shot them in self-defense.
Jalen Rose is drowning in the deep end of the pool. ESPN should not allow Rose, Taylor or any of their ex-jocks to swim in the criminal justice waters. It’s too deep. Too dangerous.
If the Worldwide Leader wants to discuss police work, grand juries and race, why not hire former police officers, lawyers and historians to do it at a high level? Why not let trained, experienced journalists lead the discussion? Why let the blind lead the blind?
I’ve known Jalen Rose since he was 19 and a sophomore at Michigan. In the past, I’ve supported his charter school in Detroit. Rose, I believe, wants to make a positive impact on the world. Like all of us, he has blind spots. Wealth invites delusion.
Rose and Jones fit the profile of men vulnerable to Black Lives Matter radicalization. They’re black men married to white women.
I am not disparaging their marriage choices. No one who knows my dating history could argue I have a problem with inter-racial dating. No one.
But, as I’ve written previously, your choice in partners can complicate your racial worldview, particularly in this social media era. Black men who date or marry white women face an incredible amount of racial backlash in the real world and in the social media world. Random people, friends and family members question your blackness.
Swearing allegiance to Black Lives Matter ideology is a protective shield against the criticism. Mixed-race black people use BLM as a shield in the same fashion. It’s not a coincidence that Colin Kaepernick is the head of this cult. Racial radicalism makes him feel black.
I know some of you feel I’m out of bounds discussing the racial makeup and dating preferences of BLM cult members. I’m not. BLM cult members speculate about the racial motivations of police officers, district attorneys and grand juries.
There’s no proof that former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin was motivated by George Floyd’s black race. There’s no proof the three Louisville police officers were motivated by Breonna Taylor’s black race. The evidence points to the Louisville cops being motivated by gunfire that struck a police officer with a lawful warrant.
It’s not a coincidence that many of the most strident BLM cult members are mixed race or involved in a mixed-race relationship. Kaepernick, Kenny Stills, Jussie Smollett, Bubba Wallace, Chuba Hubbard. BLM Grand Wizard Shaun King is a white man who has adopted a black identity.
BLM is a cult for people with identity issues. When I worked at ESPN, the common complaint from black male employees was that it was difficult for black men married to black women to rise in the management pyramid.
ESPN disrupted the Western-prescribed all-black nuclear family long before Black Lives Matter called for it on its website.
Let me repeat. I have NO problem with inter-racial marriage. None. If you’re going to do it, just make sure you’re man or woman enough to handle the complications without joining a race-bait cult.
Someone at ESPN should convince Mark Jones to delete his Twitter account and seek counseling. He’s melting down. In 2018, he posted a picture of himself smiling and praising police in Syracuse. Thursday, he tweeted that the picture was actually him thanking a black dude for finding a bag he lost. I’m not exaggerating. Look at the tweet below.
A young Black dude actually found the bag which had popped out of our SUV. He was heading to the game and saw it in the ditch. He recognized my face on my iPad in the bag. He handed it off to Police at the parking lot✊🏽😂😂 https://t.co/UGf7tuJXhs
What we’ve seen at ESPN over the past several years and in the last 48 hours in particular is why sports fans should ‘Kick their ESPN habit. We’re not perfect here at Outkick. But we’re not a radical cult promoting a race war in America.
The number eight song today in 1958, one week or almost a month after the end (depending on your definition) of summer:
Today in 1967, the Beatles mixed “I Am the Walrus,” which combined three songs John Lennon had been writing. The song includes the sounds of a radio going up and down the dial, ending at a BBC presentation of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Lennon had read that a teacher at his primary school was having his students analyze Beatles lyrics, Lennon reportedly added one nonsensical verse, although arguably none of the verses make much sense:
The recent murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police, and the riots and protests that have followed, have forged an essential discussion on police brutality that has been long in the making. In the past, many of us have responded to publicized incidents of police brutality by giving officers the benefit of the doubt because we believe that the other side of the story will justify their actions. We must now reckon that the “other side of the story” does not always absolve police officers’ of wrongdoing. For the first time, many of us now stare directly into the eyes of police brutality’s harsh existence, the same existence that Black people have known to be true their entire lives.
The reignition of the Black Lives Matter movement was undoubtedly justifiable, expected, and necessary in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. As the movement gains steam, it forces us to have difficult conversations and continue to stare into the eyes of police brutality’s existence.
Naturally, the recent movement has stirred up intense passion, coupled with anger and frustration – which is a good thing. How could someone not watch the horrific video of George Floyd’s murder and not be angry? What’s not so good is the burning desire that many Americans have to argue with one another. We’ve seen this desire play out as cancel culture’s recent growth has swarmed and infested public and private life.
We should take solace in the fact that virtually all Americans agree – police brutality is a problem, and police reform is necessary. The idea that a vast swath of the country rejects this idea is unfounded. A CBS News poll recently found that 91% of Americans believe that police reform is necessary. We have been witnesses to the spawning of a significant culture shift in our country, and that’s a good thing.
The vast majority of Americans believe that if we want communities, particularly the African American community, to feel protected against gross negligence and abuse of power, police reform must be pursued and enacted. While we’re virtually all in agreement on the problem, the discourse begins when deliberating the solutions to the problem.
In Wisconsin, we’ve seen the calls for police reform amplified, peacefully and violently, in its two largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison. If you’re from Wisconsin, you know that the state’s residents typically don’t share the same grievances as those who live in the Milwaukee and Madison area.
Despite this, rallies and marches against police brutality have occurred across the entire state since the death of George Floyd. The grievances against police brutality are not limited to Milwaukee and Madison area residents, as towns across the state such as Oshkosh, Appleton, Platteville, and Kenosha have seen residents join in the fight against police brutality.
Since this issue is not specific to any part of the state, the state’s Assembly, Senate, and Governor must expostulate with one another to address police brutality. People can post on their Instagram stories all they want. Still, no structural change will be created without thoughtful, comprehensive legislation at the state level.
So, what should police reform look like?
The call to “Defund the Police” has been thrust into the forefront of the police reform debate.
In Milwaukee and Madison, street murals reading “Defund the Police” have been painted in giant yellow letters on major city streets. The Milwaukee Common Council is exploring a 10% budget reduction to the police department that would amount to a nearly $30-million-dollar budget cut. State Rep. David Bowen, (D-Milwaukee), and State Rep. Jonathan Brostoff, (D-Milwaukee) have come out in support of Defunding the Police.
This is a bad idea. The majority of the money allotted to police budgets goes towards the officer’s salaries. If we decide to pay our officers less, they have less incentive to do their job well. If we pay officers more, they have an incentive to perform at a high level in efforts to maintain a high paying job. The National Economic Bureau even found statistical evidence that when officers are paid more, their performance increases.
If we’re expecting police officers to be better, why would we be taking money away from them? When schools are failing, we don’t “Defund Schools,” we give them more money and implement new plans to ensure their success. The city of Milwaukee has been defunding the police department for years. This past year the city cut the department’s budget by 60 officers, and the homicide rate in Milwaukee has more than doubled.
We should increase funding for police departments. The solution to police brutality is better policing, not less policing. We should be training our officers more. By paying more and training more, we can improve the performance of our local police officers.
In addition to increasing funding for police departments, the state should extend Act 10 to cover police unions. Police unions present the same danger that other public section unions present; they place their members’ interests over the broader community. Police unions around the country have lobbied against greater transparency in day-to-day policing, public record laws that would make filed complaints against officers’ public, merit-based pay, and banning contracts with private trainers.
Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin), passed the controversial union reform Act in 2011. However, the Act did not apply to police unions. The Act restricted collective bargaining, ended mandatory union dues, and required contributions to benefits. The implementation of Act 10 allowed school districts to evaluate teacher’s disciplinary decisions on an individual basis and not worry about letting a lousy teacher go even if they had tenure. The same would be true if Act 10 were extended to police unions. Instead of an officer being shielded by the union, the department could evaluate disciplinary decisions on an individual basis and have the ability to fire the officer for any wrongdoing.
Under the Milwaukee Police Union contract, officers can only be interrogated during certain hours of the day, which leaves the officers time to get their story straight. Last year, 93 Milwaukee police officers were disciplined for egregious misconduct, but all kept their jobs. If Act 10 were extended to police unions, it would have the same effect that it’s had on teachers’ unions. It would provide departments the ability to promote their officers based on performance, not age. And the ability to individually evaluate the misconduct of their officers without police union protection. All in all, extending Act 10 to police unions would make for a more accountable and effective police force.
As we continue to stare directly into the eyes of police brutality’s harsh existence, let’s continue to fight for solutions. Let’s increase training and funding for police while extending Act 10 to cover police unions. By creating a more prepared, effective, and accountable police force, we can take the first step in helping the African American community feel protected against abuse of power from which George Floyd suffered.
Grebe wrote that for the Badger Herald, which when I was a UW student was the campus’ independent and conservative newspaper. Apparently that is no longer the case, as the College Fix reports:
The Badger Herald, one of two student newspapers at the University of Wisconsin Madison, has dismissed a columnist following his submission of an op-ed that argued against defunding the police and instead spelled out ways to reform police departments.
Tripp Grebe, its author, called for better pay, better training, and police union reforms.
“If we’re expecting police officers to be better, why would we be taking money away from them? When schools are failing, we don’t ‘Defund Schools,’ we give them more money and implement new plans to ensure their success,” Grebe wrote in his submission.
“The city of Milwaukee has been defunding the police department for years. This past year the city cut the department’s budget by 60 officers, and the homicide rate in Milwaukee has more than doubled,” he argued. “… As we continue to stare directly into the eyes of police brutality’s harsh existence, let’s continue to fight for solutions. Let’s increase training and funding for police while extending Act 10 to cover police unions.”
After he submitted it, he was told by the Herald’s opinion editor Samiha Bhushan via email in late August that although the piece was “well written” that it was “too much of a hot take,” and that upper management of the paper was worried it may “alienate” incoming freshmen, according to a screenshot of the email.
“Additionally,” the email continues, “we just posted an editorial board supporting BLM and another article publicly endorsing two candidates who want to defund the police. As a result, your article would cause a lot of backlash that we cannot afford right now.”
Bhushan said if Grebe was open to edits, there was a chance it may be able to run.
But a later email from upper management at the paper changed tune, next suggesting that the issue with Grebe’s piece was solely with sourcing, despite the piece containing nearly 20 different sources from news outlets such as CBS News, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the National Economic Bureau.
Grebe was later dismissed from the Herald via email after they were tipped off to an inquiry on the issue by the Young America’s Foundation. YAF originally reached out to UW media affairs division, which apparently alerted the campus paper of the situation.
“It is of the utmost importance that our work is accurately and relevantly sourced,” reads Grebe’s dismissal letter, “your column was not, hence our decision not to publish this column.”
In a statement to YAF, Badger Herald Editor in Chief Harrison Freuk defended the paper’s decision, saying their emails to Grebe were unclear; he denied that their pro-BLM editorials had anything to do with not running the column, and instead told YAF it was a matter of Grebe’s column containing “inaccurate/irrelevant information.”
Freuk did not respond to a request from The College Fix seeking comment.
On their website, the Badger Herald describes itself as “the nation’s largest fully independent student newspaper,” and states it published items that “reflect the interests and tastes of the University of Wisconsin community.”
Grebe was arguably the most prominent conservative opinion voice at the Herald, which has published five of his op-eds this year, such as the “Constitution should be interpreted as written, not as public opinion changes” and “While racialized attacks are unjustified, Chinese government mishandled COVID-19 pandemic.”
Grebe told The Fix he “enjoyed being the only conservative columnist for a publication like the Badger Herald.
“It’s frustrating that my column was censored because its viewpoint was different from the paper’s editorial stance. Like any writer, I want to work for a paper that will permit me to express my viewpoint in a responsible way without being required to change my opinion to satisfy others,” he said via email.
“It was disappointing to see the Badger Herald editorial staff claim my article wasn’t published due to a sourcing issue, once the story became public,” Grebe continued. “The Herald made it very clear both in their emails and when I met with them personally, that my article was well written and there was no sourcing issue.”
The FBI and the Pennsylvania State Police, investigating reports of issues with mail-in ballots at the Luzerne County Board of Elections in Pennsylvania, have recovered a number of discarded military ballots.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday announced the findings of their ongoing inquiry. According to the DOJ, officials recovered nine military ballots so far, all of which were cast in support of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The DOJ states the investigation has been ongoing since Monday and Election officials in Luzerne County have been cooperative.
It is unclear from the DOJ statement why the ballots were discarded and where they were found. The DOJ said some of the discarded ballots could be attributed to specific voters and others could not.
“Our inquiry remains ongoing and we expect later today to share our up to date findings with officials in Luzerne County,” the DOJ statement reads. “It is the vital duty of government to ensure that every properly cast vote is counted.”
The news of the discarded ballots comes as Trump has raised concerns, on multiple occasions, about the potential for problems with widespread mail-in balloting.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has found a number of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania discarded in the trash. They were ballots cast for President Donald Trump.
The Office of Inspector General is conducting an investigation after a box of mail was found in a ditch in Outagamie County.
According to a social media post shared with WFRV Local 5, the box was found on Tuesday and turned over to the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Office.
WFRV Local 5 reached out to the U.S. Postal Service for comment. Officials provided us with this statement:
We are aware of some mail, including absentee ballots, recovered in Greenville, Outagamie County earlier this week. The United States Postal Inspection Service has asked the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to conduct an investigation regarding these issues. The Postal Service will respond to the OIG findings once the investigation is concluded. We have no further information to provide at this time.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 