A lot of people wanted to know what Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was thinking on July 22, 2020, as the country watched him choke on clouds of tear gas fired by federal officers.
It was a surreal moment – an American mayor under attack alongside thousands of his constituents after weeks of nightly racial justice protests — and covered as such by every major news outlet in the country. Footage of the mayor, wincing and teary-eyed, made the rounds on cable news. Reporters trailed him through the crowd, lobbing questions about his thoughts on the unfolding scene (“Orwellian”) and the taste of the tear gas (“nasty stuff.”)
But Michael Kessler, a computer programmer by trade and City Hall watcher by hobby, wanted a deeper look into what the mayor was thinking on one of the most chaotic nights of the city’s most tumultuous year.
Under the state’s public record law, anybody has a right to ask for any record retained by an Oregon public body related to “the public’s business.” So Kessler submitted a public records request for Wheeler’s texts.
The mayor had been busy that day.
As Wheeler prepared to make his first appearance at the protests, he texted soon-to-be Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, inviting the prosecutor to join. Schmidt, newly elected and perhaps sensing the chaos bound to erupt when Wheeler waded into a crowd that had cursed his name nightly, declined. He had to focus on his new job, he wrote.
Others were more encouraging. E.D. Mondainé, then the...
U.S. President Donald Trump launched a new artificial intelligence chatbot on Tuesday, calling it “damn good.” Turns out that one of the things it’s reasonably good at is debunking Trump’s own lie...