A shareholder revolt against The New York Times is gaining serious legal muscle, with a growing bloc of law firms now threatening to drag the paper of record into court unless it hands over internal records probing whether its board has been asleep at the wheel while the newsroom churns out coverage slanted against Israel.
On Tuesday, the National Center for Public Policy Research, backed by the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC) and two heavyweight firms, fired off a fresh <a href="https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Renewed-and-Supplemental-Demand-for-Inspection-of-Books-and-Records-of-The-New-York-Times-Company.pdf">demand letter</a> giving Times brass until July 21 to cough up board materials or face a lawsuit in Manhattan&#8217;s Supreme Court, The Washington Free Beacon <a href="https://freebeacon.com/media/exclusive-two-new-law-firms-threaten-new-york-times-with-shareholder-suit-over-gaza-rape-story-and-softball-investigation-of-platner-accuse-times-of-push/">reported</a> on Tuesday.
&#8220;The inclusion of two new prominent law firms — Grant &amp; Eisenhofer and Schall, Brown &amp; Schwartz — on NJAC&#8217;s campaign suggests that the Times may face difficulty dismissing their fresh concerns, which extend past mere anti-Israel bias to now encompass velvet-gloved reporting on two high-profile, anti-Israel Democrats,&#8221; the Free Beacon noted.
This is round two. The coalition first came knocking in May, furious over a widely panned Nicholas Kristof column that accused Israeli forces of using dogs to sexually assault Palestinian detainees — allegations that leaned heavily on sources tied to Hamas and that the paper&#8217;s own executive editor later admitted his newsroom &#8220;probably wouldn&#8217;t have&#8221; run &#8220;that exact piece.&#8221;
Now the group says things have only gotten worse. Its new target: the Times&#8217; soft-touch June investigation into Senate candidate Graham Platner, who was accused by ex-girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield of a horrifying pattern of abuse. The paper said it couldn&#8217;t corroborate her account — even though, Fifield says, she handed reporters witnesses, screenshots, diary entries, and more. Platner&#8217;s campaign didn&#8217;t implode until a second woman, this time a Democrat, told POLITICO he&#8217;d raped her.
The lawyers argue the Times gave shifting, contradictory explanations for its reporting standards — telling one outlet the story met &#8220;our standards,&#8221; and another that it only included facts that were confirmable — and say that inconsistency alone justifies letting shareholders peek behind the curtain.
&#8220;Stockholder seeks to investigate whether the Board is engaging in any form of oversight to ensure that the New York Times remains a news reporting agency worth anything to its stockholders, rather than becoming viewed by the public as a simple propaganda arm that selects its articles and reporting in a way that ignores truth in favor of pushing false narratives,&#8221; the letter states.
The letter also revives an ugly side-by-side: a March story that framed New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman&#8217;s wife as courting controversy over pro-Israel social media likes, versus a far gentler piece days later about democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani&#8217;s wife, who&#8217;d liked posts celebrating the October 7 massacre. Critics say the paper bent over backward to protect one and pounce on the other.
Beyond the Israel-related complaints, the filing dredges up the Times&#8217; long history of humiliating corrections — from the Wen Ho Lee <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/26/nyregion/the-times-and-wen-ho-lee.html">spying debacle</a> to the &#8220;Caliphate&#8221; <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-retracts-hit-podcast-series-caliphate-on-isis-executioner">podcast hoax</a> to a <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/york-times-retracts-massive-exaggeration-163906675.html">wildly inflated</a> child COVID hospitalization figure — arguing it all points to a board that looks away until public embarrassment forces its hand.
The Times, for its part, isn&#8217;t budging, with a spokeswoman dismissing the campaign, saying, “As we told the National Jewish Advocacy Center and National Center for Public Policy Research in response to an earlier demand letter, while positioned under corporate law, it is a clear attempt to chill First Amendment-protected journalism.”
But the shareholders insist this isn&#8217;t about politics or the First Amendment — it&#8217;s about whether the people overseeing America&#8217;s most influential newspaper are actually doing their jobs. If the Times doesn&#8217;t blink by July 21, the fight moves to a courtroom.

New York Times building – NYC

New York Times Nightmare: Shareholder Revolt Threatens To Expose Paper’s Inner Sanctum

anti-Israel

New York Times

Propaganda

War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Monday that the Department of War and the Department of Justice have created a joint task force to identify and prosecute government officials accused of leaking sensitive national defense information.
<a href="https://x.com/SecWar/status/2076673841913344136">In a video posted on X</a>, Hegseth said unauthorized disclosures can endanger American troops, compromise military operations, and cause &#8220;exceptionally grave damage&#8221; to national security.
&#8220;The unauthorized disclosure of sensitive War Department information has the very real potential to cause exceptionally grave damage to our national security and the operational integrity of our armed forces,&#8221; Hegseth said. &#8220;To leak sensitive national defense information and secrets betrays the men and women who wear our nation&#8217;s uniform.&#8221;
Hegseth said that when a leak occurs, it is critical for the department to quickly provide the Department of Justice, FBI, and other federal law enforcement agencies with actionable information.
According to Hegseth, the new directive expands the authority of the War Department&#8217;s Office of General Counsel to obtain records and other information related to leak investigations and requires department personnel to respond within 48 hours. 
&#8220;The security of our nation cannot be a bargaining chip for those who seek momentary headlines,&#8221; Hegseth said. &#8220;Access to confidential and secret information is a sacred trust. And those who betray that trust will be met with the full force of the law.&#8221;
The announcement comes as the Trump administration continues pursuing multiple investigations into leaks involving sensitive national security information. 
The announcement follows several recent investigations in which Trump administration officials said unauthorized disclosures threatened national security.
One recent investigation centered on media reports that two U.S. service members had gone down inside Iran during U.S. military operations earlier this year. One airman had been rescued while search efforts continued for a second.
President Donald Trump later said those reports placed the rescue operation &#8220;at great risk&#8221; because they alerted Iran that an American service member remained inside the country.
&#8220;All of a sudden, the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life,&#8221; Trump said.
Trump also said the disclosure made the rescue <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/furious-trump-threatens-jail-for-reporters-targets-sick-leaker-who-risked-rescue">mission more difficult</a> for American personnel. According to Trump, the second service member was eventually rescued during an operation involving 155 U.S. aircraft. Trump said his administration was attempting to identify the source of the leak.
Another investigation involves a New York Times report detailing why Trump departed Turkey aboard the older Air Force One instead of the newly accepted Boeing 747-8 donated by Qatar.
According to<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-nyt-story-that-just-triggered-doj-subpoenas"> The Daily Wire</a>, citing federal law enforcement sources, a senior FBI official urged the New York Times not to publish the story, warning that it contained highly sensitive national security information. The news outlet ultimately published the report, citing unnamed sources discussing the aircraft&#8217;s security protocols.
The Justice Department later issued grand jury subpoenas to four New York Times reporters connected to the story. A DOJ spokesman told The Daily Wire, &#8220;Reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.&#8221;

Secretary Hegseth And Chairman Caine Hold Pentagon Press Briefing On Iran Strikes

Pete Hegseth Reveals What’s Coming For Government Leakers

justice department

leaks

Media

Pete Hegseth

Politics

The New York Times

War Department

Second Lady Usha Vance delivered a rare rebuke to The New York Times over an article essentially claiming that women within President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration were using maternity fashion to weaponize pregnancy.
Vance, who is pregnant with her fourth child with husband and Vice President JD Vance, mocked the outlet&#8217;s attempt to make her wardrobe political and made it clear that her maternity fashion choices were typically born of just three things: necessity, comfort, and economy.
&#8220;Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks!&#8221; Vance posted via X. &#8220;In the meantime, enjoy my pregnancy fashion (or lack thereof) and a good story with your kids on &#8216;Storytime with the Second Lady.'&#8221;
Along with her caption, Vance shared a video — also featuring the vice president — of herself wearing the dress in question as he read aloud from A. A. Milne&#8217;s classic, &#8220;Winnie the Pooh.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
And here’s the receipt! <a href="https://t.co/tgICmpbapQ">pic.twitter.com/tgICmpbapQ</a>
— Second Lady Usha Vance (@SLOTUS) <a href="https://x.com/SLOTUS/status/2069857037303816372?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
For good measure, Vance followed up with a screenshot of her receipt showing that she had, in fact, purchased the dress from Old Navy. It also showed that the coral-colored &#8220;Asymmetrical Shoulder Maxi Dress,&#8221; originally $49.99, had been marked down to $12.99 and she had saved an additional $3.74— making her final total $8.75.
And while that choice may have been one of convenience and economy, Vance said in March that being pregnant as the Second Lady of the United States meant that she necessarily had to change her style, mainly because her position dictated a number of events that she would have to attend — and many of those would not be held in places where leggings and sweatpants were considered appropriate.
&#8220;I have to dress up a lot more. I enjoyed my last pregnancy — there were a lot of sweatpants. I was working from home and sometimes put a blazer on over what was under,&#8221; she told NBC at the time.
The article to which Vance was responding was published on Wednesday and was titled, &#8220;The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image.&#8221; If that did not paint a clear enough picture of the tone, the sub-headline removed all doubt: &#8220;Usha Vance, along with Katie Miller and Karoline Leavitt, shows how much is said by an expectant silhouette, without anyone saying a word.&#8221;
The article proceeded to accuse women within the Trump administration of flaunting their pregnancies to make a political point: this is what women are supposed to do — and how they are supposed to look.
<blockquote>
Together, the women have created a notably consistent, and somewhat paradigm-shifting, picture of the White House’s family and fertility platform.
If the bare-chested, muscled mixed martial arts fighters of the U.F.C. match that President Trump hosted on Flag Day were the poster guys for MAGA’s image of masculinity, then the pregnant women of Trump world are one half of their feminine counterparts. Along with the sheath-clad, lip-filled, pageant-haired Mar-a-Lago set, they offer an image of idealized womanhood that gives literal shape to the pronatalist movement.
</blockquote>
Jill Filipovic, the host of the “<a class="css-yywogo" title="" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-week-in-women/id1632915204" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Week in Women</a>” podcast, suggested that even though it&#8217;s highly unlikely that the pregnancies were coordinated, the presentation appeared to be: &#8220;It almost feels like a memo went out. They have quite intentionally opted to present themselves as, ‘I am really pregnant, and this is what women were chosen to do,’ and they are happy to say that both with their looks and their mouths.”
Vance, quite clearly, said otherwise.
Miller, whose fourth child with longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller was born just days before Father&#8217;s Day, <a href="https://x.com/KatieMiller/status/2069874153717395901">weighed in</a> as well — and said that maternity fashion had been made more difficult as American birth rates had fallen.
&#8220;Over the last few years, many clothing brands have largely stopped producing maternity clothes that most women actually want to wear. @SLOTUS has done a phenomenal job curating affordable, fashionable options that make pregnancy fashion accessible. The root cause is sadly straightforward: with fewer women having babies, it’s likely become unprofitable for brands to invest in dedicated maternity lines,&#8221; she said.

Second Lady Fires Back After NYT Says Trump Admin’s Women Are Weaponizing Maternity Fashion

Usha Vance Takes Rare Swipe At Media Over Maternity Fashion

Karoline Leavitt

Motherhood

Pregnancy

Usha Vance

Former Presidents Gather For The Obama Presidential Center Dedication Ceremony

The NYT Has Some Real Problems With These Eight Americans

America 250

DW Opinion

Liberalism

Patriotism

Racket News

Radical Chic

Tom Wolfe

According to the New York Times, the apotheosis of fatherhood is getting your tits chopped off.
On Sunday, while the majority of the Western world paused to honor the men who provide, protect, and show up, the Times was busy lionizing women who underwent double mastectomies, injected themselves with testosterone, and are now passing themselves off as dads to impressionable young children.
The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/21/opinion/trans-dad-parenting-fathers-day.html">piece</a>, titled &#8220;To My Daughter, My Gender Was Never Complicated,&#8221; was written by Zach Ellams — born Clair Ellams — a London-based editor and motion designer, and a biological woman performing the role of father for an audience that eats it up.
The whole thing was a three-pronged disaster: a belittlement of actual fathers, a disturbing window into child confusion manufactured by adults, and a stark exposé of the New York Times&#8217; true priorities.
The essay&#8217;s illustrations were unintentionally the most honest part of the piece. The <a href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/06/21/opinion/21jacobs-1/21jacobs-1-superJumbo-v4.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp">first</a>, captioned &#8220;you need a thick skin to be a parent,&#8221; showed Ellams&#8217; daughter, Elliot, shouting back: &#8220;You&#8217;re slow because you&#8217;re old.&#8221; A thick-skin moment, apparently.
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Credit: Daily Wire News
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&nbsp;
Bless her. It only gets harder from here. Real thick skin between mothers and daughters is earned through war; fights over boys, curfew violations, outfit standoffs at the front door. That&#8217;s tough love, and it’s coming. Getting teased about your pace on a jog is just another Tuesday.
The illustrations also fixated, obsessively, on body hair. Ellams’ beard appeared in every frame: spotty, coarse, and uneven, with the leg hair cutting off at the knees in some panels and disappearing entirely in others. It reads less like confident self-expression and more like a woman overcompensating in ink what biology refused to provide.
As a female, I can confirm: when I don&#8217;t shave, I look like <a href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/06/21/opinion/21jacobs-12b/21jacobs-12b-superJumbo-v3.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp">Figure A</a>. When I do, <a href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/06/21/opinion/21jacobs-13/21jacobs-13-superJumbo-v3.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp">Figure B</a>.
You can change the body of a woman, but you can’t take the woman out of the body.
Novelist Lionel Shriver once <a href="https://x.com/bdomenech/status/2068760284857036874">remarked</a> that &#8220;masculinity as an ideal is pretty ridiculous&#8221; — a sentiment the Times appears to have taken as editorial policy. They didn&#8217;t just celebrate a woman pretending to be a father; they did it on Father&#8217;s Day, with full illustrations, treating the demolition of fatherhood as a gift to their readership.
The Gray Lady’s Weapon of Mass Emasculation, engaged.
The hair became a problem beyond the page. On the playground, little Elliot told her friends she wanted a beard when she grew up. Her classmate, in the blunt, unimpeachable logic of childhood, replied: &#8220;You can&#8217;t grow a beard, you&#8217;re a girl.&#8221; Elliot&#8217;s answer: &#8220;My dad did, and he was a girl.&#8221; The illustration showed surrounding parents shooting glares at ‘Zach’. Not at the child — at the adult who manufactured that confusion and sent it to school with her.
Earlier in the piece, Elliot asked her biological mother, “How did you grow a mustache if you were a lady?&#8221; Good question, sweetheart.
Children are not confused about biology. They are made confused by adults projecting their confusion or mental illness. Even in their earliest years, kids understand what their eyes tell them. The rewiring requires repetition; tell them again and again that what they see isn&#8217;t what&#8217;s real, that the rules of nature are negotiable, that it&#8217;s not only okay to defy common sense but courageous.
As Mr. Rogers famously and plainly sang, “Boys are boys from the beginning. Girls are girls right from the start.” Children know this. The project of confusing them is deliberate.
And this carries <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK610258/">documented</a> costs. Trans-identifying adults carry psychiatric burdens at rates that dwarf the general population: depression in up to 76% versus 29%, anxiety disorders in 62% versus 20%, autism spectrum traits around 11% versus 1%, and suicidality four to 13 times higher. These burdens are transmitted through genetics, through modeling, through the daily ambient chaos of a household built on an identity crisis to the children within them.
When Elliot tells her classmates her dad &#8220;was a girl,&#8221; she isn&#8217;t just confused about biology. She&#8217;s absorbing the full emotional weight of her parent&#8217;s pathology and carrying it onto the playground.
The New York Times didn’t run this piece just to mock the 74 million fathers in this country. They ran it because they hardly think about those fathers at all. What they do think about, deeply and devotedly, is the extreme minority of some 130,000 biological females cosplaying as dads.
And they think those women deserve a Sunday spread. Because to them, fatherhood isn&#8217;t sacred. It&#8217;s a problem to be solved.
They have genuine contempt for fathers and want the institution dismantled. When the father is minimized or replaced by a simulacrum, it&#8217;s easier to usher in perverse ideology and capture young minds. Children without anchors are easier to redirect, and for the progressive Left, the grooming and sexual mutilation of your children is the end that justifies every means. That same calculus allowed more than a quarter-million British girls to be raped, groomed, tortured, and abused in the Rotherham and Rochdale scandals, while progressive leaders looked away for years and let the rot spread.
This is the ideology being taught in schools today: children can explain stolen land theory but can&#8217;t pass algebra, why birth rates are collapsing, marriages are cratering, pornography is mainstreamed, and the family is quietly dismantled.
And it&#8217;s why the Times featured four Father&#8217;s Day <a href="https://x.com/mtaibbi/status/2068771487452897357">pieces</a> written by six people — three women, a trans &#8220;man,&#8221; and two childless men — with not a single fathering father among them. The themes were: &#8220;My father&#8217;s death was the start of my life.&#8221; &#8220;My father was an addict who failed me.&#8221; &#8220;The pain of caring for a parent who abused you.&#8221;
That&#8217;s what they think fatherhood is. A wound.
I feel sorry for the dads.
Because fatherhood is so much more than whatever grievance theater the Times is packaging for its perpetually aggrieved readers.
My father is everything to me. He is the reason my sisters and I are who we are. He is a sounding board, an equalizer, the calm in our chaotic female storm. He sends Bible verses and spontaneous motivational texts, always followed by &#8220;I love you.&#8221; When I come to him with a car question, a finance question, a &#8220;how do I do this&#8221; — he responds in seconds, putting down his own work without a second thought. In return for my thanks that can never adequately be expressed, he shoots back the simple thumbs-up emoji. Because his unending support isn’t a favor. It’s just part of the job.
He taught us patience. He taught us kindness. He once told me his whole philosophy was to just &#8220;smile at people — makes them feel good.&#8221; He is most content after a day tending to his chickens and his yard, gathered around the dinner table with all his girls.
He is our everything. He is needed and he is wanted. And I will never — not for one solitary minute — allow a loveless, liberal newspaper to belittle his glory.
Thank you, dads. We love you.

A participant with a rainbow fan and a placard takes part

The New York Times Tries To Hate Dads But Doesn’t Know What One Is

Father's Day

fatherhood

Transgender

The New York Times doubled down on its reporting after an ex-girlfriend of Maine Democrat Graham Platner ripped the liberal outlet for watering down its story on her accusations that Platner treated her abusively during their relationship.
Lyndsey Fifield, who dated Platner from 2013 to 2015, said that the Times convinced her to come forward to talk about her experience with Platner, but then, the reporters left out critical details. In a post on X, she said the Times &#8220;twisted&#8221; the story into a narrative driven by Platner&#8217;s Senate campaign.
&#8220;It dawned on me that this really was a set up all along. The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life.&#8221;
In response to Fifield&#8217;s post, the Times told The Daily Wire that it stood by its reporting.
&#8220;We published accounts provided by several women who were in romantic relationships with Graham Platner,&#8221; Times spokeswoman Nicole Taylor said. &#8220;Our story accurately presents each of these accounts as told to our reporters and according to our standards. We stand by our reporting of the accounts from Ms. Fifield and the other women, who provided a revealing look at the behavior of a major candidate for the U.S. Senate.”
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Fifield, a Virginia conservative, said she <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ex-girlfriends-say-platner-lied-about-nazi-tattoo-detail-disturbing-behavior?author=Jacob+Wheeler&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Ex-Girlfriends+Say+Platner+Lied+About+Nazi+Tattoo%2C+Detail+Disturbing+Behavior">told</a> the Times that Platner regularly grabbed her by the shoulders hard enough to leave marks. She recounted an incident in which he allegedly twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom, and held the door shut, telling her to stay there until she was “calm.” Fifield said she eventually fell asleep and left the next morning, according to the Times.
Platner has denied any allegations of physical abuse.
Fifield, who has worked in Republican politics, said that the Times story downplayed the seriousness of her allegations and that stories from multiple other women she was told would be included were not.
&#8220;After the story went up I began to ask them … wait, where are the stories from the other women? Where are their accusations of sexual assault? Why am I the focus? Why are there 11 paragraphs dedicated to detailing my work history (more than has been published about Graham’s by far)?&#8221; Fifield asked. &#8220;Why does it say &#8216;nobody could corroborate&#8217; when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate?&#8221;
She added that she was tricked by assurances from the Times that it would fully tell her story.
&#8220;I bucked all advice from my friends (and resisted my conservative bias) and decided to fully trust the Times journalists,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;As they left my home they asked that I not talk to any other outlets and I insisted then and repeatedly over the following weeks that I would keep my word and only share this story with them.&#8221;
She also said that the Times failed to use numerous screenshots she provided to reporters to verify her account of the relationship.
&#8220;Where were the screenshots they’d said they would use? Or the mention that I’d supported local democrats and that most of my family (and husband) are liberal? The editors said it was too much, they explained,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The Times also failed to include any mention that I DID confide in multiple friends through the years that Graham had been abusive — long before he was running for office. Those friends confirm they told the Times so.&#8221;
Platner&#8217;s campaign has been plagued by revelations that he sent sexually explicit messages to multiple women while married and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/see-it-graham-platner-has-active-profile-on-predators-paradise-messaging-app">maintained an account</a> on Kik, a messaging platform flagged by child-safe advocates for being associated with sexual predators.

Graham Platner

New York Times Responds After Platner Abuse Accuser Rips Outlet For ‘Twisted’ Story

graham platner

Maine

In an effort to smear Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, The New York Times relied on input from a supposedly impartial authority on ethics in government. Supposedly.
The article targeted Duffy&#8217;s recent Department of Transportation project, a YouTube series titled &#8220;The Great American Road Trip.&#8221; Kathleen Clark, an attorney and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was described by the NYT simply as someone &#8220;who specializes in government ethics.&#8221;
Weighing in on the fact that Duffy&#8217;s family members were brought along for the ride and featured in the YouTube series, Clark argued that because those family members were not officially contracted to the DOT and were taking part in the project anyway, they were essentially receiving &#8220;gifts&#8221; from the series sponsors.
&#8220;Gifts to the secretary’s family are absolutely not gifts to the department,&#8221; she said. &#8220;This is really gift laundering &#8230; This is an incredibly corrupt endeavor, and it’s dangerous, because it affects public safety.&#8221;
But the NYT left out a few key details when describing Clark&#8217;s credentials.
Clark, in her capacity as an attorney, served as counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1991-1993 — during then-Sen. Joe Biden&#8217;s (D-DE) tenure as committee chair (1987-1995).
The Washington University Professor has also served on the board of directors (as Secretary) of American Oversight, Inc. — a nonprofit organization that also claims to be nonpartisan but has a clear bias against President Donald Trump — since its formation in 2017.
The group&#8217;s listed &#8220;priorities,&#8221; according to <a href="https://americanoversight.org">its own website</a>, are described as follows: &#8220;We were founded in 2017 in response to the unprecedented challenges that the Trump administration posed to our nation’s democratic ideals and institutions.&#8221;
Headlines posted on the American Oversight Inc.&#8217;s website in the last several weeks read like a typical left-leaning advocacy group:
<ul>
<li>ICE&#8217;s work with local police departments is being kept secret</li>
<li>American Oversight launches investigation into Trump admin&#8217;s politicized prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center</li>
<li>Statement from American Oversight and historians on today&#8217;s hearing to block Trump&#8217;s efforts to evade presidential records law</li>
</ul>
Clark&#8217;s page on Washington University&#8217;s website adds another layer to the story: while her history up to 2017 includes several ethics-based academic publications, she has none listed since that year. In addition, she has no media listings prior to 2025. But beginning in February of 2025, she has been sought out several times to provide comments to various outlets. Every one came after President Trump was sworn in to begin his second term. Every one is an attack either on someone serving in Trump&#8217;s administration or on the president himself.
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-04/kash-patel-s-800-000-trump-media-award-raises-conflict-questions-for-fbi-pick?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTczODY5MDQ1NywiZXhwIjoxNzM5Mjk1Mj" target="_blank" rel="noopener" aria-label="Kash Patel’s $800000 Trump Media Award Raises New Conflict Questions (opens in new tab)">Kash Patel’s $800000 Trump Media Award Raises New Conflict Questions</a></li>
<li><a href="https://contrarian.substack.com/p/musks-inexcusable-conflicts" target="_blank" rel="noopener" aria-label="Musk’s Inexcusable Conflicts (opens in new tab)">Musk’s Inexcusable Conflicts</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/02/13/nx-s1-5293124/special-government-employee-trump-musk-doge" target="_blank" rel="noopener" aria-label="Trump Hired Musk as a ‘Special Government Employee.’ Here’s What That Means (opens in new tab)">Trump Hired Musk as a ‘Special Government Employee.’ Here’s What That Means</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/14/elon-musk-public-financial-disclosure-form/78533975007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" aria-label="Elon Musk Has to Fill Out a Public Financial Disclosure Legal Experts Say. Where Is It? (opens in new tab)">Elon Musk Has to Fill Out a Public Financial Disclosure Legal Experts Say. Where Is It?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/health/dr-oz-medicare-finances-conflicts.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&amp;referringSource=articleShare" target="_blank" rel="noopener" aria-label="Dr. Oz: How His Millions Collide With Medicare (opens in new tab)">Dr. Oz: How His Millions Collide With Medicare</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.wsj.com/sports/golf/augusta-national-masters-emails-tickets-643b189b?st=JLy9Qe&amp;reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink" target="_blank" rel="noopener" aria-label="A Masters Tradition Unlike Any Other: Gifting Tickets to Government Officials (opens in new tab)">A Masters Tradition Unlike Any Other: Gifting Tickets to Government Officials</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/qatar-gifting-trump-400m-luxury-jet-raises-ethical-and-legal-concerns" target="_blank" rel="noopener" aria-label="Qatar gifting Trump $400M luxury jet raises ethical and legal concerns (opens in new tab)">Qatar gifting Trump $400M luxury jet raises ethical and legal concerns</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/04/21/trump-ballroom-donor-deal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" aria-label="Trump fought to keep the ballroom fundraising contract secret. Here’s what’s in it. (opens in new tab)">Trump fought to keep the ballroom fundraising contract secret. Here’s what’s in it.</a></li>
</ol>
And Duffy brings her count up to nine.
And while one might be able to excuse away some of that by pointing out the fact that even some Republicans raised ethical questions about some of those same topics, Clark&#8217;s social media footprint is &#8230; just the Left foot.
Her X handle, which hasn&#8217;t posted since 2024, directs would-be followers to lefty-haven BlueSky — but her old posts include a slew of criticisms aimed at Trump ally Elon Musk. One <a href="https://x.com/clarkkathleen/status/1829953371601846524">thread</a> from August 2024 bashes Vice President JD Vance over a 2021 interview. She reposted several comments comparing Trump to former President Richard Nixon and trashing the Supreme Court over its ruling on presidential immunity. And she criticized Justice Samuel Alito for <a href="https://x.com/WashULaw/status/1796897053101916369">refusing to recuse himself</a> from January 6-related cases over his wife&#8217;s decision to hang a Revolutionary War-era flag at their home.

The New York Times Co. Post An 82 Percent Decline In 2nd Quarter Profi

New York Times ‘Impartial’ Ethics Expert Is Anything But

Donald Trump

Ethics

Israel will pursue a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times over an opinion column by Nicholas Kristof alleging widespread sexual abuse of Palestinians by Israelis, including graphic claims that detainees were raped with objects and even assaulted by attack dogs.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Benjamin Netanyahu and Gideon Sa&#8217;ar instructed officials to initiate legal action after Kristof’s column, published Monday, accused Israeli prison guards, soldiers, settlers, and interrogators of carrying out systematic sexual violence against Palestinians. The ministry <a href="https://x.com/IsraelMFA/status/2054896697432519059">called</a> the piece “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”
The dispute centers on Kristof’s column, which leaned exclusively on interviews with 14 Palestinians and secondary reports from activist-linked human rights groups — many of which themselves relied on anonymous testimony. While the Times framed the piece as <a href="https://x.com/NYTimesPR/status/2054713015107273103">“deeply reported”</a> journalism, the column presented explosive accusations as credible despite offering little independently verifiable evidence beyond the claims of the accusers and organizations already hostile to Israel.
The column included graphic allegations that some detainees were beaten, sexually assaulted with batons and other objects, and in one especially lurid claim, assaulted by a trained dog. The latter allegation in particular drew intense backlash, with critics <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/nick-kristof-dog-torture-claim-israel-palestine">calling</a> it grotesque propaganda more akin to wartime atrocity rumors than serious journalism.
Israeli officials argued the column relied on deeply compromised sourcing, including <a href="https://ngo-monitor.org/ngos/euro-med-human-rights-monitor/">Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor</a>, an organization whose founder has been accused by Israel of ties to Hamas. Watchdog group NGO Monitor <a href="https://www.jpost.com/international/article-896131#google_vignette">also challenged</a> sources cited in the column, arguing that several had records of amplifying false or unverified allegations against Israel.
The timing of Kristof’s column further inflamed the controversy. It ran just before the release of an Israeli civil commission report documenting sexual violence committed by Hamas during the October 7 massacre, a report built from years of evidence collection, forensic review, and thousands of hours of visual documentation. Israeli officials accused the Times of effectively laundering unverified allegations against Israel at the precise moment documented evidence of Hamas atrocities was being released.
Kristof himself has faced criticism for similar reporting failures before. In 2014, he publicly acknowledged being misled by activist Somaly Mam, whose dramatic claims about child trafficking he had promoted for years before they unraveled. Kristof later wrote that he regretted elevating those allegations and admitted journalists are “less suspicious if someone claims something stigmatizing, like being trafficked into a brothel.”
The same pattern is repeating here: sensational claims, weak corroboration, and an apparent willingness to suspend skepticism when the allegations fit a preferred political narrative. Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whom Kristof cited in the piece, later said the columnist had misrepresented his comments by placing them in a way that suggested he endorsed claims he explicitly said he could not verify.
The Times issued a statement Tuesday defending Kristof and rejecting rumors of a retraction. Spokesman Charlie Stadtlander <a href="https://x.com/NYTimesPR/status/2054257854345888161">wrote</a> there was “no truth” to reports the paper was reconsidering the piece and described Kristof as “one of the world’s best on-the-ground reporters.”
Neither Israeli officials nor the Times have publicly released legal filings as of Thursday, and it remains unclear whether the lawsuit would be filed in Israel, the United States, or another jurisdiction. But the confrontation has already escalated into a broader indictment of a press establishment critics say is increasingly willing to run incendiary anti-Israel allegations on the thinnest possible evidentiary basis — so long as the target is the Jewish state.

Sign at the entrance to the New York Times Headquarters in

Israel Moves To Slap New York Times With Lawsuit Over ‘Blood Libel’ Hit Piece

Israel Will Take NYT To Court Over 'Blood Libel' Piece Ran By The Paper

Lawsuit

For years, the legacy media has uncritically pointed to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an authoritative source on extremism, frequently relying on its designations of &#8220;hate lists&#8221; in coverage of political and cultural issues, going so far as including Christian groups alongside neo-Nazi organizations and the KKK.
On Tuesday, however, the Justice Department accused the SPLC of secretly using donor money to pay leaders within white supremacist groups. The SPLC, which labels organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom as a hate group, was charged with multiple financial crimes, including money laundering and bank fraud. 
Prosecutors say the SPLC directed more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to such individuals while obscuring the transactions through accounts tied to &#8220;a series of fictitious entities.&#8221;
The charges come years after legacy media outlets have repeatedly cited the SPLC in reporting on conservative organizations and activists. 
The New York Times, for example, frequently refers to SPLC experts in articles on conservative figures and movements, including the late Charlie Kirk, whose Turning Point USA was labeled a “hate group.” In an article published on the day of Kirk’s assassination, the Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/politics/trump-charlie-kirk-ally.html?searchResultPosition=12">wrote</a> that his “rhetoric was long cast as racist, xenophobic and extreme by groups that study hate speech, including the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
The paper&#8217;s obituary of conservative activist David Horowitz also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/us/politics/david-horowitz-dead.html?searchResultPosition=28">quoted</a> the SPLC, which labeled him “the godfather of the modern anti-Muslim movement.”
Other outlets have similarly relied on SPLC reports and designations. When the conservative grassroots group Moms for Liberty was added to the list in 2023, NPR <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/07/1180486760/splc-moms-for-liberty-extremist-group">reported </a>that the SPLC compared the parental rights group to “pro-segregationist parent groups.” CBS News, in its coverage, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/gov-desantis-appoints-moms-for-liberty-co-founder-to-state-commission-on-ethics/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h">pointed</a> to the SPLC&#8217;s claims that the group had a history of &#8220;harassing community members, advancing anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation and fighting to scrub diverse and inclusive material from lesson plans.&#8221;
The SPLC&#8217;s designation of groups opposed to transgender ideology on kids or that hold to traditional Christian beliefs has received much coverage over the years.
One article from NBC <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/groups-opposed-gay-rights-rake-millions-states-debate-anti-lgbtq-bills-rcna21016">cited</a> the SPLC to identify groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, and the American College of Pediatricians as the core of the “anti-gay movement.&#8221; Similarly, the Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/10/09/colorado-flag-program/">turned</a> to the SPLC to label the group Gays Against Groomers as “an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.”
Groups concerned about Sharia law have also faced criticism from the SPLC. An article from NBC <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/smart-facts/what-shariah-law-n859981">pointed</a> to the SPLC as a source in a report about momentum to ban Sharia law in the United States. It noted that one anti-Sharia group had been labeled a hate group by the SPLC. 
The Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/22/white-nationalist-hate-extremist-groups">framed</a> the SPLC&#8217;s 2024 hate list as driven by people critical of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. 
Reporting in 2017 on the annual hate group list, CNN ran a headline titled “Here are all the active hate groups where you live,” providing a “hate map” that included groups that held traditional Christian beliefs. They later changed that headline to “The Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups” after <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/302442/cnn-modifies-story-on-the-southern-poverty-law-centers-bogus-list-of-hate-groups-adds-editors-note/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">complaints</a> from conservatives.

Legacy Media Relied On SPLC’s Hate Rankings To Bash Conservatives

Department of Justice

Legacy Media

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

President Donald Trump and a number in his administration have suggested that Democrats and media were actively rooting for the United States to lose the war with Iran — and one New York Times columnist gave a striking example of that during a Saturday interview on CNN.
Foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman admitted that he felt torn over fully backing the United States in the ongoing Operation Epic Fury, saying that he wanted the Iranian regime to fall but that he wasn&#8217;t sure it was worth the cost of elevating President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Friedman told CNN host Michael Smerconish that he was all for the end of the Iranian regime, but that it was the likelihood the credit — and with that credit, political capital — would go to Trump and Netanyahu that gave him pause.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Don’t want Iran to lose if it means Trump wins. <a href="https://twitter.com/tomfriedman?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TomFriedman</a> of <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NYTimes</a> really wants “to see Iran defeated militarily because this regime is a terrible regime for its people and the region,” but on CNN’s <a href="https://twitter.com/smerconish?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Smerconish</a> he fretted “the problem is I really don’t want to see Bibi… <a href="https://t.co/rgPngGXkGc">pic.twitter.com/rgPngGXkGc</a>
— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrentHBaker/status/2043048290523005341?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 11, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;I find myself, Michael, in a situation where I really want to see Iran defeated militarily because this regime is a terrible regime for the people and the region,&#8221; he explained, saying that the best thing for the Iranian people — and for the region across the board — would be a regime change that resulted in leadership that allowed the people to flourish and thrive.
&#8220;I&#8217;m all for that. The problem is I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are two awful human beings,&#8221; Friedman continued. &#8220;They are both engaged in anti-democratic projects in their own countries. They’re both alleged crooks. They are terrible, terrible people doing terrible things to America’s standing in the world and Israel’s standing in the world.&#8221;
&#8220;And so I really find myself torn,&#8221; Friedman concluded, saying that he was trying to balance his support for a new regime in Iran against his fears that Trump or Netanyahu might get a share of the credit for helping to  bring that about.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump

NYT Journo Admits He Was ‘Torn’ On Rooting For U.S. In Iran War

NYT Journo Admits He Was 'Torn' On Rooting For U.S. In Iran War

Benjamin Netanyahu

Iran

Israel

United States

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.
***
Earlier this week, the New York Times editorial board <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/opinion/trump-jan-6-pardons-crimes-recidivism.html">declared</a> with great alarm that “The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree.” President Donald Trump has issued many pardons and grants of clemency, as have his predecessors. The worst of these decisions, says the board, was Trump’s grant of “clemency on the first day of his second term to everyone who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.” That clemency was extended to approximately 1,500 participants in the infamous riot universally known by the date on which it occurred: January 6. Whether it was wise to issue a mass clemency to the rioters is a debatable proposition, but whether those rioters have since gone on a crime spree is an empirical question with a clear answer: Not even close.
The Times’ editorial tells readers that the results of the clemency “have been disastrous.” Big, if true! But the claim doesn’t hold up under even modest scrutiny. Here is what the board considers damning evidence: “At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack.”
Twelve, you say!?
“Disastrous” is about as dishonest a characterization for a recidivism rate of less than 1% as one can imagine. For context, national data show that more than 80% of released state prisoners — most of whom are released (typically after less than two years) onto parole after serving an average of about 44% of their maximum sentence, despite having around 10 prior arrests and five prior convictions — in America are rearrested for a new crime. On average, state prison releasees will generate five new rearrests over a 10-year period. Now, who would bet on the Times running an editorial decrying the practice of early parole, or calling for longer sentences? I certainly wouldn’t.
In fact, the same editorial board has a long history of dedicating page space to those pushing a decades-long effort to decarcerate and de-police. Over the years, the Times has said very little about the recidivism issue, but has had plenty to say in supporting efforts to be more lenient with offenders and tougher on police. That long record of both implicit and explicit support for criminal justice and police reforms that enabled a significant amount of reoffending — exactly the kind the Times now criticizes — makes this week’s editorial impossible to take seriously, especially the part calling for an electoral referendum on public safety.
Where were those calls when Democrats across the country were defunding their local police departments, pushing to release more and more repeat criminal offenders, and breathlessly celebrating prosecutors who ran on diverting as many criminal offenders as they felt they could politically get away with releasing?
The question is, of course, rhetorical. No one actually believes that the New York Times’s editorial board has suddenly connected with its inner carceralist. The editorial is transparently cynical and flagrantly hypocritical.
Republicans have traditionally held an advantage over Democrats in public opinion regarding which party is more effective on public safety. President Trump has made “law and order” a central theme of his presidency. Less than two weeks ago, he presided over a roundtable discussion on crime in Memphis, TN, where his administration deployed a U.S. Marshals-led task force comprising federal law enforcement agencies, local police, and the National Guard. The administration has been <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/03/president-trumps-memphis-safe-task-force-delivers-crushing-blow-to-crime/">enthusiastically touting</a> the success of the task force, to which it has attributed a steep decline in crime in what has long been one of America’s most dangerous cities.
Facilitating a 1,500-person crime spree would constitute a major political liability for any president — but it would be an especially bad look for this president. But the New York Times is grasping at straws here, and if it wants the public to take its newfound concern for the problem of repeat offending seriously, it should consider speaking up about any one of the countless examples of that problem plaguing Democrat-run cities across America.
***
Rafael A. Mangual is the Nick Ohnell fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a contributing editor of City Journal, and author of the 2022 book, Criminal (In)Justice.

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