“We called 911 for almost everything except snitching” reads the first line of an Atlantic article, “How I Became a Police Abolitionist,” by social justice activist and lawyer Derecka Purnell. Her deeply personal essay, first published July 6 in the Ideas section, tells of her childhood in a polluted neighborhood surrounded by violence and beset by fear, using one particularly disturbing memory of a police officer shooting their cousin, just a “boy,” in the arm for skipping the basketball sign-in sheet in front of Purnell and her sister, who had been playing basketball but were forced to hide “in the locker room for hours afterward.”
“When people dismiss abolitionists for not caring about victims or safety,” she writes, “they tend to forget that we are those victims, those survivors of violence.”
“This story means everything to me,” Purnell wrote on Facebook later that day. “I cried a lot while writing it.”
An investigation by The Federalist encompassing newspaper archives, police department records, questions to The Atlantic, the police union, and the office of the mayor, however, called the story — including facts about the neighborhood, the timeline of the incident, and if the incident described even happened at all — into question.
Four days, six comment requests, and one follow-up story later, The Atlantic issued a series of major corrections that confirmed The Federalist’s investigation — and gutted the Purnell’s story of the police violence that made her “a police abolitionist,” rendering it a story about a private security guard shooting his adult cousin. Although the updated story no longer involves personally motivated and barely punished police violence against children, it now includes mention of a police investigation. Additionally, a contemporary news article uncovered by The Federalist using the updated timeline details pending police charges against the shooter.
Someone in the neighborhood, it appears, called 911.
A Very Different Story
“The first shooting I witnessed was by a cop,” the story read from 7 a.m. on July 6 until 1:37 p.m. on July 20. It detailed a police officer shooting a “boy” on city property in front of children over a personal feud, then seemingly suffering only a short suspension from duty at that rec center:
I was 12. He was angry that his cousin skipped a sign-in sheet at my neighborhood recreation center. I was teaching my sister how to shoot free throws when the officer stormed in alongside the court, drew his weapon, and shot the boy in the arm. My sister and I hid in the locker room for hours afterward. The officer was back at work the following week.
If her prescribed abolition of police departments were followed sooner, she wrote, “I wouldn’t have hid in the locker room for hours because of a police shooting, and maybe my sister would have a better jump shot.”
The article was widely shared among top journalists and activists, including an Atlantic editor, whose praise remained online Monday night.
On Monday afternoon, The Atlantic updated the above paragraphs (material changes bolded) to read:
The first shooting I witnessed was by a uniformed security guard. I was 13. I remember that the guard was angry that his cousin skipped a sign-in sheet at my neighborhood recreation center; the victim told police it had started as an argument over ‘something stupid.’ I was teaching my sister how to shoot free throws when the guard stormed in alongside the court, drew his weapon, and shot the boy in the arm. My sister and I hid in the locker room for hours afterward. The guard was back at work the following week.
The Atlantic still refuses to share any corroborating evidence or if they did a fact-check on the original story before publication, although a search of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s archives encompassing the now-broadened timeline reveals an early-2004 shooting at Buder Recreation Center, less than three blocks from Purnell’s old address.
That article, published March 9, 2004, is titled “Security Guard Is Charged With Assault,” and reports that, “The security guard, 23, and his cousin, 18, were quarreling at the center about 4:50 p.m. [March 8] when the shooting occurred, according to Richard Wilkes, a Police Department spokesman. The victim was shot in the arm.”
“Wilkes,” the 2004 article concludes, “said there were no other injuries and no children were involved in the incident.”
When asked if The Atlantic spoke to the victim, spoke to the guard, or acquired a police report, Anna Bross, a vice president of communications at the magazine, replied, “To start, you can find coverage of the incident in local newspapers in 2004.”
The article’s title and call for police abolition remain unchanged, although the story justifying her activism is no longer about (1) a police officer shooting (2) a child (3) without serious consequences, and is about now (1) a private security guard shooting (2) an adult (3) and being charged with assault. The magazine decided police bringing charges within one day, however, was not worth mentioning — and the 18-year-old victim is still simply described as just a “boy.”
“I’ve reshared this essay with corrections about the shooting I witnessed,” Purnell tweeted more than five hours after the correction went live. “I was not 12. I was 13. The shooter was a uniformed private guard with a badge and gun. When we say abolish the police, that includes private police, too. thank you for reading <3.”
Purnell has led a prolific career, including writing for The New York Times and a stint at the helm of The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy.
Monday afternoon Sunshine Law requests to the St. Louis Police Department and city hall on police responses to the Buder Recreation Center in March 2004, and on park employees or contractors facing discipline, had not yet been returned, although the police quickly replied that they would send records over. Missouri law gives government three days to respond to requests, and in every request the previous week, the city beat that timeline.
While still declining to say if the article was fact-checked before it was posted on July 6, and if so by who, Bross emailed that she “will keep an eye out for the significant corrections or updates to your piece(s),” referencing The Federalist investigation that fact-checked the article for them.
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No comments on A story based on a lie
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George Mason University Prof. David Bernstein:
Via College Fix, the Rutgers English Department purports to challenge “the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage.” So far so good. Helping students who struggle with standard English is exactly what an English Department that wants to helps disadvantaged students should do.
Instead, though, Rutgers goes even woker. Rather than merely deemphasizing standard grammar, the English Department declares that standard grammar is “biased,” and endorses “critical grammar,” which “encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them w/ regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”
In short, the Rutgers English Department wants to make sure that students who come to Rutgers with a poor grasp of standard written English not only remain in that state, but come to believe that learning standard English is a concession to racism. I remember when keeping “people of color” ignorant was considered part of white supremacy.
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The four founders of the Lincoln Project — Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, George Conway, and John Weaver — introduced their new venture to the world in a New York Times op-ed in which they described their aims as to prevent President Trump’s reelection by “persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states” to vote against him and to take down as many Republican members of Congress as possible.
But the project is a scam — little more than the most brazen election-season grift in recent memory. And it is working. As the ragtag band of three otherwise unemployed strategists plus one lawyer hoped, the allure of Republican-on-Republican violence has proven irresistible to the MSNBC set. Per their most recent FEC filing, the group has raised $19.4 million since its inception this past November.
The gap between the group’s rhetoric and its actions is enormous. The Times op-ed declared that “national Republicans have done far worse than simply march along to Mr. Trump’s beat. Their defense of him is imbued with an ugliness, a meanness and a willingness to attack and slander those who have shed blood for our country, who have dedicated their lives and careers to its defense and its security, and whose job is to preserve the nation’s status as a beacon of hope.” And yet the group’s focus thus far has been on vulnerable Senate Republicans, notably the moderate Susan Collins and the mainstream Cory Gardner, who haven’t exhibited any such behavior. Neither has Joni Ernst, another target.
The Lincoln Project’s ads don’t attack these GOP senators for supporting profligate federal spending, contributing to explosive debt, or enabling feckless foreign policy, nor do they bash President Trump for his incoherent trade policy or his failure to tame an ascendant administrative state. Rather, they attack Republicans from the left, in terms that please the Lincoln Project’s predominantly progressive funders. Rarely, across dozens of ads, is a political principle recognizable to anyone as center-right to be found. Is the Lincoln Project aware of who Abraham Lincoln was?
That most spots sound instead like Democratic boilerplate — the type of partisan schlock a Democratic candidate might run against a GOP opponent in a D+5 district — may go some way to explaining where the Lincoln Project is coming from. One ad slams North Carolina senator Thom Tillis for proposed cuts to federal education funding and Obamacare while claiming he supports putting “kids in cages.” Another sandbags Colorado’s Cory Gardner for siding with Trump on health care and the environment. Yet another lectures Susan Collins that she works “for Maine, not Mitch McConnell.” In an ad assailing the Senate majority leader, the group dubs him “Rich Mitch” and smears him as someone who has used his office to accumulate wealth (ignoring that most of McConnell’s wealth comes from his wife, Elaine Chao, not from anything he did during his time as a senator).
It’s one thing to object to candidates of (ostensibly) your own party on principled or even petty political grounds. It’s quite another to employ the ideas and vocabulary of those with whom you have fundamental philosophical disagreements. The Lincoln Project’s founders may have written, “Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain,” but they have yet to demonstrate one.
This makes sense when one examines the Lincoln Project’s FEC filings. To date, the group has spent nearly $100,000 for “fundraising consulting services” with the Katz Watson Group. That firm’s founder, Fran Katz Watson, is a lifelong Democratic operative who previously worked as the national finance director for the Democratic National Committee. The firm’s long list of left-wing clients includes the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Beto for Senate. In addition, the Lincoln Project has spent large sums contracting with Elrod Strategies, the firm run by Adrienne Elrod, former director of strategic communications for Hillary for America, and has paid Zachary Czajkowski handsomely for “political strategy.” Czajkowski’s resume includes work for Barack Obama, former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton, and disgraced former California representative Katie Hill.
If a group of unemployed strategists were looking to shape a persuasive center-right critique of Trump and his allies, these are not the talents they’d turn to. If, on the other hand, the aim was to open up anti-Trump wallets on the left, they couldn’t pick a better team. The Lincoln Project’s communications director is Keith Edwards. He previously worked on communications for Mike Bloomberg’s run in the Democratic presidential primary and as a staffer for New York City Council speaker Corey Johnson, also a Democrat. Johnson is on record as trying to kick a Christian relief organization, Samaritan’s Purse, out of New York City, after its staff set up a field hospital in Central Park at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Never mind that these volunteers were risking their lives to help others; Johnson alleged that its presence was “painful” to “all New Yorkers who care deeply about the LGBTQ community.”
For a group that makes a big deal out of transparency and morality, the Lincoln Project’s financial records make interesting reading. Spending by super PACs is divided into disbursements, which cover operating expenses, and independent expenditures, which are used in support of (or opposition to) a candidate. To date, the group has steered roughly 50 percent of its total spending, including almost all of its independent expenditures, through just two firms: Summit Strategic Communications and TUSK Digital. Summit Strategic Communications is run by the Lincoln Project’s treasurer, Reed Galen. TUSK Digital is run by former Lincoln Project adviser Ron Steslow.
Through July 13, the Lincoln Project paid at least $5.6 million to Summit and TUSK as independent expenditures against Donald Trump and GOP senators and for Joe Biden and Montana governor Steve Bullock, a Democrat running for the Senate. Save for $72,000 paid to Getty Images, that is the entirety of the Lincoln Project’s independent expenditures. Since the money goes directly to Summit and TUSK, no one outside of those two firms knows the vendors they use to buy ads, create visuals, do direct mailings, etc. By contrast, other super PACs, including America First Action, which backs Trump, and Unite the Country, which backs Biden, pay their vendors directly, allowing donors and the public to see exactly where the money gets spent. Since disclosure of spending on subcontracted third parties is not required, it is impossible to say how much of this money was actually spent by Summit and TUSK and how much the Lincoln Project founders pocketed or paid out to other principals.
For example, per Open Secrets, the group recorded an independent expenditure against Arizona senator Martha McSally, with video production costs paid to Summit totaling over $14,000 — an exorbitant amount for a 90-second video made entirely from stock photos and news clips. Compare this to a seasoned political consultant (interviewed on background for this story) who ran a statewide race and hired a film crew to meet in a remote area to shoot for two days. The team created enough content for a short biographical video, two 30-second ads, two 15-second ads, and two six-second bumper clips for a total cost of $15,000. This calls into question how much Summit pocketed versus how much it actually paid its subcontractors.
The Lincoln Project has made limited national cable ad buys, airing their ads mainly in Washington, D.C., or on Morning Joe — neither market is exactly a Republican hotbed. Despite Joe Scarborough’s conservative track record as a member of Congress, the show he cohosts appeals to a heavily Democratic audience.
The Lincoln Project also spends heavily on social media. According to the Facebook Ads Library, the group spent $1.67 million on ads across Facebook and Instagram. However, many of those ads target donors with asks containing links to their donation page.
The group’s intentional lack of transparency, combined with the nearly $20 million it’s hauled in to date, raises valid questions about the potential for financial grift. Meanwhile, the Lincoln Project continues to raise funds from left-leaning partisans by advancing Democratic narratives in an effort to defeat centrist Republicans — an intellectually disingenuous gambit at best. Earlier this year, the group introduced the tagline, “Our mission is to defeat Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box in 2020.” Another line, often attributed to P. T. Barnum, might be more honest: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
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There are questions about the numbers in Wisconsin’s coronavirus count.
The state’s Department of Health Services on Monday once again reported see-saw numbers when it comes to the number of people being treated in the hospital.
DHS said 250 people were hospitalized as of Monday afternoon. That’s a jump of almost 60 people in 24 hours. It is also the latest in what has been a series of up-and-down spikes.
The moving number of hospitalizations also comes with a warning. DHS posted an explanation on its website the data regarding hospitalizations is likely to change.
“Changes were made to the way hospitals report data by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), effective July 22. As adjustments are made to meet reporting requirements, data may appear different from expected,” DHS wrote. “We are working to make any disruption as short and minimal as possible.”
Those are, however, not the only changes to the state’s data.
Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, said under-reporting and late reporting from public health managers in Dane County have put Wisconsin’s coronavirus count under a cloud.
“After the stunning revelation that Dane County had 17,000 unreported Covid-19 negative results that dramatically skewed the positivity rates in that county for at least three weeks, the public can no longer be assured that all state and local data is reliable without greater transparency and honesty from public health bureaucrats,” Nass said Monday.
The new broke last week that Public Health Madison & Dane County, the capital city’s joint public health department, did not report its negative tests results dating back to at least July 10.
Nass said Madison is Wisconsin’s second largest city, and a problem with the numbers there causes problems for the coronavirus numbers statewide.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the state positivity rate and many local county positivity rates are skewed significantly higher by the backlogs in reporting negative results,” Nass said. “While the development of backlogs was not intentional, the decision by public health officials to stay quiet about the existence of the backlogs was clearly intentional and terribly inappropriate.”
Nass said DHS need to make it clear that the backlogs are affecting the numbers the department reports each day.
There was no clarification with Monday’s report wherein DHS reported 590 positive tests and 6,356 negative tests. Wisconsin’s daily positive-test rate was at 8.5 percent.
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We begin with our National Anthem, which officially became our National Anthem today in 1931:
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The Wall Street Journal reported last week:
A group of journalists at The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones staffers sent a letter on Tuesday to the paper’s new publisher, Almar Latour, calling for a clearer differentiation between news and opinion content online, citing concerns about the Opinion section’s accuracy and transparency.
The letter, signed by more than 280 reporters, editors and other employees says, “Opinion’s lack of fact-checking and transparency, and its apparent disregard for evidence, undermine our readers’ trust and our ability to gain credibility with sources.”
The letter cites several examples of concern, including a recent essay by Vice President Mike Pence about coronavirus infections. The letter’s authors said the editors published Mr. Pence’s figures “without checking government figures” and noted that the piece, “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave,’” was later corrected.
The letter says many readers don’t understand that there is a wall between the Journal’s editorial page operations, which have been overseen by Paul Gigot since 2001, and the news staff, which is overseen by Editor in Chief Matt Murray. Mr. Murray was also copied on the letter.
The letter proposed more prominently labeling editorials and opinion columns on the website and mobile apps, including the line “The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion pages are independent of its newsroom.” It also suggests removing opinion pieces from the “Most Popular Articles” and “Recommended Videos” lists on the website, and creating a separate “Most Popular in Opinion” list.
The letter also proposes that “WSJ journalists should not be reprimanded for writing about errors published in Opinion, whether we make those observations in our articles, on social media, or elsewhere.”
Reporters should not be expressing opinions on media-owned social media accounts.
The letter doesn’t challenge the right of the editorial page to offer its own opinions and analysis.
“We are proud that we separate news and opinion at The Wall Street Journal and remain deeply committed to fact-based and clearly labeled reporting and opinion writing,” said Mr. Latour, chief executive of Dow Jones & Co. and publisher of the Journal. “We cherish the unique contributions of our Pulitzer Prize-winning Opinion section to the Journal and to societal debate in the U.S. and beyond. Our readership today is bigger than ever and our opinion and news teams are crucial to that success. We look forward to building on our continued and shared commitment to great journalism at The Wall Street Journal.”
Messrs. Latour and Murray earlier received letters from journalists seeking more diversity in the newsroom and voicing concerns regarding hiring practices and how stories involving race are covered by the Journal.
Among the other examples the latest letter highlighted was an opinion article titled “The Myth of Systemic Police Racism,” which the letter’s authors said was one of the paper’s most read articles in June. The article argued that the “charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today.” The letter says the piece “selectively presented facts and drew an erroneous conclusion from the underlying data.”
In their opinion.
The letter said that many “employees of color publicly spoke out about the pain this Opinion piece caused them during company-held discussions surrounding diversity initiatives” and added that if the “company is serious about better supporting its employees of color, at a bare minimum it should raise Opinion’s standards so that misinformation about racism isn’t published.”
The letter also said that “Opinion has also published basic factual inaccuracies about taxes,” citing two specific articles.
Opinion pages recently have become subjects of newsroom controversy.
In early June, James Bennet stepped down as editorial page chief of the New York Timesfollowing widespread criticism in the newsroom and on social media of an opinion column by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) that called for the government to deploy U.S. troops to cities to deter looting following the May 25 police killing of George Floyd. Mr. Bennet was succeeded by Kathleen Kingsbury, now acting editorial page editor for the Times.
Bari Weiss, a well-known editor and writer for the Times’s opinion section, resigned on July 13, writing on her website that she had been bullied by colleagues and that her work and character were “openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in.”
A spokeswoman for the Times said at the time that it is “committed to fostering an environment of honest, searching and empathetic dialogue between colleagues, one where mutual respect is required of all.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial section replied:
We’ve been gratified this week by the outpouring of support from readers after some 280 of our Wall Street Journal colleagues signed (and someone leaked) a letter to our publisher criticizing the opinion pages. But the support has often been mixed with concern that perhaps the letter will cause us to change our principles and content. On that point, reassurance is in order.
In the spirit of collegiality, we won’t respond in kind to the letter signers. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility in any case. The signers report to the News editors or other parts of the business, and the News and Opinion departments operate with separate staffs and editors. Both report to Publisher Almar Latour. This separation allows us to pursue stories and inform readers with independent judgment.
It was probably inevitable that the wave of progressive cancel culture would arrive at the Journal, as it has at nearly every other cultural, business, academic and journalistic institution. But we are not the New York Times. Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle, and our opinion pages offer an alternative to the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today’s media.
“Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle.” Coming from fellow WSJ employees that should have left a mark.
As long as our proprietors allow us the privilege to do so, the opinion pages will continue to publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse. And these columns will continue to promote the principles of free people and free markets, which are more important than ever in what is a culture of growing progressive conformity and intolerance.
As a reader I have to wonder about the WSJ reporters who do not “attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle,” and wonder why they are still employed. Say, the “more than 280.”
The WSJ is one of the few national news media outlets (and in state daily newspapers there are none) that actually gives conservative viewpoints fair treatment, let alone express the correct conservative point of view.
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First, the Fond du Lac Reporter:
A Fond du Lac man was charged [July 9] with a hate crime after authorities said he intentionally crashed his pickup truck into a motorcyclist on July 3 killing the driver.
Daniel Navarro, 27, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, using a dangerous weapon and first-degree recklessly endangering safety, all as hate crimes. Fond du Lac County Circuit Court Judge Robert Wirtz set bail at $1 million during an initial court appearance.
Fond du Lac County sheriff’s deputies responding to a report of the crash at Winnebago Drive and Taycheedah Way in the town of Taycheedah found the motorcyclist, 55-year-old Phillip A. Thiessen of Fond du Lac, dead in the roadway.
Thiessen was a former Marine and a retired special agent with Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation. He had previously been a police officer in Fairfax, Virginia.
“We do not believe that the suspect knew Phillip, had ever met with Phillip or had targeted him because of his background in law enforcement,” Sheriff Ryan Waldschmidt said during a press conference Thursday.
According to the criminal complaint, police determined Navarro was driving east on Winnebago Drive when his pickup crossed the centerline and hit Thiessen.
A deputy at the scene asked Navarro if he heard him correctly about the crash being intentional and Navarro responded “yes, it was intentional, sir.” The deputy described Navarro’s demeanor as calm as he appeared to stare into the distance.
During interviews with detectives, Navarro said he believed he had been intentionally contaminated with a chemical sterilizer on his jacket by an employment supervisor in Ripon approximately a year and a half ago.
He went on to say, according to the complaint, that a friend poisoned him a year and a half ago, that he is still being poisoned by a neighbor and that he could hear one of his neighbors making racist comments through the walls of this residence.
Navarro told detectives that those who are poisoning him, giving him acid, and making racist comments are all Caucasian and targeting Navarro because he is Mexican.
He told investigators he took his red pickup, which is registered to his father, out for a drive in order to charge up the truck battery because he only leaves his parent’s house about once per week, the complaint states. He said he drove out in the county and saw the motorcycle, which he targeted because he believed it was a Harley Davidson driven by a white person.
However, Navarro was not aware of specifically who was driving the motorcycle because the headlight of the motorcycle was so bright.
Navarro’s parents said their son had been isolating himself and spent most of his time watching the news.
Now, Jake Curtis:
To many, the sound of a roaring Harley is iconic — an audible symbol of American freedom and ingenuity. To Wisconsinites especially, seeing a Harley on the road is a source of pride, as Milwaukee serves as the company’s global headquarters. Yet to Daniel Navarro, the sight and sound of a Harley represented white supremacy. As a result of that misplaced rage, over the July 4 weekend Navarro allegedly decided to take out his prejudice on Phillip Thiessen, swerving his pickup truck head-on into Thiessen. With the exception of a few local news outlets, the incident has received little attention. It simply does not fit with the national media narrative, so there will be no marches or protests commemorating Thiessen’s service-oriented life.
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Today in 1977, John Lennon did not get instant karma, but he did get a green card to become a permanent resident, five years after the federal government (that is, Richard Nixon) sought to deport him. So can you imagine who played mind games on whom?
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Today in 1965, the Rolling Stones were to release “Beggar’s Banquet,” except that the record label decided that the original cover …
… was inappropriate, and substituted …
… angering one member of the band on his birthday.
The number one single …
… and album today in 1975:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 