The Declaration of Independence offers a forgotten argument for facts - Poynter
The Declaration of Independence offers a forgotten argument for facts - Poynter
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July 3, 2026
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Fact-Checking
A large wall mural showing the signing of the Declaration of Independence is seen over visitors at the National Archives Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)
By:<br>Rebecca Catalanello
July 2, 2026
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Over 17 days in June 1776, a 33-year-old man bent over his lap desk, putting ink on paper, scratching out words, revising.<br>His countrymen were at war with their government. His mission was clear: Write a case for separating 13 English colonies from monarchical rule. Thomas Jefferson had advocated a year earlier to take up arms against the government to change the conditions citizens had been subjected to under British rule. Now he was certain the colonies needed to be free and self-governed. His colleagues had chosen him to be the primary author of a statement making clear why. All he had to do now, from the furnished second-floor rental of a three-story brick Philadelphia home, was get it down.<br>Government must be accountable to the governed. Subordination must give way to independence. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness.
If Jefferson ever found it hard to focus amid Philadelphia’s summer heat, he had the assistance of an enslaved teenager to help him with more mundane tasks of dressing, eating and lighting candles at nightfall.<br>Robert Hemings, born into slavery, was 14 that summer — the same age Jefferson had been when he inherited 2,750 Virginia acres and at least 30 enslaved people. Hemings was the son of a white slaveholder and a Black enslaved woman. He was 11 or 12 when Jefferson designated him his personal attendant.<br>Now Jefferson was writing about tyranny and "sacred truths" — the rights people have to "alter or abolish" government that erodes the rights everyone is born with.<br>As he drafted his declaration, he described abuses against the colonies using terms that could have been applied to enslaved people. The colonies needed "to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained," he wrote.<br>The time had come to be free.<br>"To prove this," he wrote, "let facts be submitted to a candid world."<br>As I write this on June 9, 2026, it’s been nearly 250 years since Jefferson first sat down to write the Declaration of Independence.<br>I am sitting in my air-conditioned, second-floor home office in New Orleans, editing stories on my laptop for PolitiFact, an online publication founded in 2007. My teenage daughter is out of school for the summer and I am struggling to get her to wake up before noon. My son is bouncing between sailing camp and soccer practice. I am not sure what I will make for dinner, or when.<br>Our president is once again charging that U.S. elections are rigged. My Instagram account last night served me a day-old video clip of a journalist asking him for evidence of said rigging and him ending the interview. It aired the same day I listened to ousted "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley tell a New York Times podcast what every journalist I know believes: "There is no democracy without journalism. It can’t be done. That is why I am a journalist."<br>I heard it and instantly tapped the 15-second replay button.<br>When I joined PolitiFact in 2018, a few terms had become startlingly commonplace: "fake news," "misinformation," "echo chamber." They weren’t phrases I heard a lot in my first 20 years in journalism.<br>But the years since have been defined by them.<br>"Fake news" in 2016 was a description for literal fake internet...