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

Media

Motherhood

New York Times

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.
<div style="max-width: 728px; margin: 0 auto;">
<iframe style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; max-width: 100%; width: 100%; margin: 20px auto 5px; border: 0;" src="https://player.mux.com/vPV9NXwv2ztltZw500ckeY8o7tDUjhp6G?metadata-video-content-type=embed_video&amp;metadata-video-id=55357fea-2c0f-4e36-9e1d-546f50796b5d&amp;metadata-video-stream-type=on-demand&amp;metadata-video-title=2026-06-22%20Trans%20Dad%20Comic%20Strip&amp;poster=https%3A%2F%2Fdailywireplus-v2.imgix.net%2Fimages%2Fembedded-videos%2F2d81b6c8-21a0-4c39-879e-cdc8da1038db.png&amp;autoplay=false&amp;accent-color=%23DB3D3B&amp;primary-color=%23ffffff&amp;secondary-color=%23000000" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Credit: Daily Wire News
</div>
&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.”
<div style="max-width: 728px; margin: 0 auto;"><iframe style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; max-width: 100%; width: 100%; margin: 20px auto 5px; border: 0;" src="https://player.mux.com/BcVl9ca8oR7SR00GkntbIDikUyBWI8emr?metadata-video-content-type=embed_video&amp;metadata-video-id=f7a549b9-529f-4dea-9550-6ba926ecf0fa&amp;metadata-video-stream-type=on-demand&amp;metadata-video-title=2026-06-05%20Platner%20Girlfriend%20New%20York%20Times%20Story&amp;poster=https%3A%2F%2Fdailywireplus-v2.imgix.net%2Fimages%2Fembedded-videos%2Fe721eb5a-9167-4c40-b6cf-0382cb59cc55.png&amp;autoplay=false&amp;accent-color=%23DB3D3B&amp;primary-color=%23ffffff&amp;secondary-color=%23000000" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
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

Politics

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.

The New York Times Finally Discovers That Criminals Commit Crime

Crime stats

Criminal Justice

January 6

public safety

dystopian

This Insane Moment Belongs In A Dystopian Novel

George Orwell

illegal immigrants

Matt Walsh

New York City

Opinion

Radical Islam

You’re not ready to become a mother.
I wasn’t &#8220;ready&#8221; when I became one at 29. I definitely wasn’t ready to be married at 22, either. Happily, I did it all anyway. And then I watched as I steadily grew into these roles, finding my footing with a little grace, a lot of missteps, and more joy than I would’ve ever expected.
For this, I’m probably an anomaly — and definitely not a good feminist, according to The New York Times, which on Friday published its latest <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/us/politics/us-birthrate-decline-women.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/us/politics/us-birthrate-decline-women.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772321232845000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3hYnYfwr9CW_joLMOUB1GT">article</a> about the precipitous decline in the U.S. birthrate. The framing was predictable: this is a good thing, insisted the gaggle of childless twenty-something women interviewed for the piece, because it means women are finally waiting until they’re &#8220;ready&#8221; to have children.
The most obvious first rebuttal to this argument are the statistics on marriage, motherhood, and happiness. According to the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), the <a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/get-married-young/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.compactmag.com/article/get-married-young/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772321232845000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3-NbsFdVUogNa1Ku-mQhlO">happiest</a> young women in America are married moms, and it’s not close.
And the longer women wait to marry and have children, the less likely they’ll be able to reach those milestones — socially and biologically. Recent IFS <a href="https://ifstudies.org/insights?id=3886" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ifstudies.org/insights?id%3D3886&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772321232845000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0TJTJPhmOurlAEs7kT_KPJ">research</a> indicates that women’s odds of having children fall dramatically after they turn 30.
But the deeper issue with framing the debate over falling birthrates as a feminist win is the suggestion that anyone is ever &#8220;ready&#8221; to become a mother. By today’s cultural standard — what Brad Wilcox has called the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFzU4ND77tA" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DNFzU4ND77tA&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772321232845000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1FLr-6BB0wE7G5jU5CLi1-">Midas Mindset</a>” — the term &#8220;ready&#8221; usually has capitalist connotations. It’s defined by having a certain income, reaching a certain level of professional success, or having racked up enough life experiences, like traveling and dating around before settling down.
Indeed, the women <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/us/politics/us-birthrate-decline-women.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/us/politics/us-birthrate-decline-women.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772321232845000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3hYnYfwr9CW_joLMOUB1GT">interviewed</a> by the Times — the young marketing student who regrets having to care for her siblings while her mom hustled to make ends meet; the recent grad who wants to build her career first; and the gym employee who “enjoys the [childless] peace” with her husband — are all under the impression that being ready for kids is primarily a logistical and financial proposition.
But if this standard were real, we should expect there to come a moment in most women’s lives when they’ve reached some or all of these benchmarks, prompting them to wake up and suddenly find they’re ready to become mothers.
But that’s not what’s happening. Because that’s not how any of this works.
The women featured in the Times seem to believe that becoming a mother is something they can accurately imagine ahead of time. They believe it’s an endeavor that will someday fit into pictures of their lives they’ve already painted. The problem is that motherhood doesn’t lend itself to that kind of logic. There is no analog to having children by which women (or men, for that matter) can ever really make an informed decision not to do it. That would be like saying, “I’ve looked at this from every possible angle, and I’ve decided not to live on Mars.” To say such a thing would be to have no actual idea what we’re choosing or not choosing.
What many of the women interviewed by the Times don’t seem to understand is that to become a mom is to fundamentally change. A woman in her early twenties can look at the prospect of motherhood as if it were simply another life choice. She might think “maybe I’ll move to another city,” or “maybe I’ll break up with my boyfriend,” and she can pretty fairly imagine what those experiences would be like, because she’d still be herself when or if they happened. But to contemplate motherhood as the same sort of question is a category error. Because when she becomes a mom, she will change so fundamentally that she, frankly, has no business making decisions today on behalf of that stranger.
That probably explains why childless women who try to defend their decision tend to overestimate the hard parts of motherhood and wildly underestimate the wonderful parts. Rose Paz, a young college student who spoke to the Times, said she doesn’t want to have kids right now because it would be a financial struggle, and she remembers the painful experience of watching her own parents stress out over money.
I can empathize with that fear, and it’s true that below poverty, motherhood can be a daily crisis. But if Ms. Paz is imagining some future point in her life in which she won’t feel stressed about money — that is, I’m sorry to say, a fundamental misunderstanding of both stress and money. Life just doesn’t work that way, and motherhood has nothing to do with it.
Another woman, a social demographer, told the Times that the falling birthrate is a “success story” because women are finally making sure they have their &#8220;lives in order&#8221; before having kids. &#8220;We spent decades shaming women for having kids under the wrong circumstances, for not having their ducks in a row… now they are holding up their end of the bargain,” she said.
Certainly, no woman should ever be shamed for having a child; much less a woman whose deadbeat partner has chosen to abandon her to single motherhood. But the social stigma on teen and single motherhood was never really about women having kids when they were poor; it was about women having kids when they weren’t married. These supposedly empowered women claiming to have taken back control of their own lives aren’t talking about making sure a man commits to them before having babies; they’re talking about making enough money.
Again, that’s not the right perspective. The happiest women in America are married moms. Past a certain level of basic material security, the hardships of parenthood aren’t really mitigated by more money, because they’re much deeper and much more existential than the merely financial. They are mitigated by marriage, though. And that’s because, just as it takes a man and a woman to make a baby, it also takes a man and a woman to raise a baby.
It turns out, the best parts of marriage and motherhood have nothing to do with money, either. In my experience, they are surprising and unscripted. The best parts are finding your babies in bed, reading under the covers with a flashlight. It’s when they say “ex-shepally” when they mean “especially.” It’s watching their hair grow wild and curly. It’s catching them being kind to a young stranger. It’s seeing yourself care more about them than your own comfort, when you hadn’t really known that was possible.
I’m almost 40 now, with two young daughters and a marriage going on 17 years. I can’t imagine a deeper source of both vulnerability and joy than this family of mine. I can reasonably imagine what life would have been like if I hadn’t gotten married young. I remember what it was like to travel alone, to answer to no one but myself, to sleep in on Saturdays, and to pee in solitude.
Women who haven’t married or had children, however, don’t have the same insight into their own what-ifs. They may really believe that not having children during their healthiest childbearing years is the path toward their deepest happiness. But they don’t know it, and they’re almost certainly wrong. From a Christian perspective, I believe this is why God made childbearing something totally outside our control.
The hard things in life are usually the very best things, but most of us don’t have the strength, on our own, to choose the hard things. Young women should get married and have babies anyway. They’ll see — I mean this literally — exactly what I mean.
Maria Baer is a contributing writer at the Institute for Family Studies and co-host of the Breakpoint podcast with The Colson Center for Christian Worldview.
<div>
<section class="css-88lhuq">
<div id="post-body-text" class="css-o2tmhu">
<div class="e1lu91wr0 css-5a7pfj" data-narration-container="true">
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
</div>
</div>
</section>
</div>

Mother of Girls

No One’s Ready To Be A Mom

babies

Parenting

The New York Times and its subsidiary, The Athletic, have once again demonstrated their undeniable slant toward Communist China.
Following the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, the outlet&#8217;s coverage of American-born skier Eileen Gu and the gold-medal-winning U.S. Men’s Hockey team reveals a disturbing double standard: fawning praise for a &#8220;cosmopolitan&#8221; athlete representing an authoritarian regime, contrasted with cynical skepticism toward actual American patriots.
The Athletic wasted no time elevating Gu, the San Francisco-born athlete who chose the Chinese flag over the Stars and Stripes. Describing her as a &#8220;scientist, politician, skier, model, and student,&#8221; the outlet compared her to a &#8220;magician&#8221; whose mastery &#8220;dazzles&#8221; the audience. Yet, when it came to the U.S. Men’s Hockey team — who captured the hearts of the nation with a gritty gold-medal run — the tone shifted to a lecture. The outlet warned that while it’s &#8220;nice to be feted as a winner,&#8221; athletes must realize that such celebrations are &#8220;easily repurposed into political capital.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
How the New York Times covers a traitor winning medals for our greatest adversary 
vs. 
How the New York Times covers our boys winning medals for the glory of the U.S. 
Just appalling beyond belief. <a href="https://t.co/AjTSGjROvV">pic.twitter.com/AjTSGjROvV</a>
&mdash; Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) <a href="https://twitter.com/bungarsargon/status/2026440704436604936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The message from the media elite is clear: National loyalty is a &#8220;crude&#8221; relic of the past, while &#8220;world citizenship&#8221;—especially when funded by the CCP — is the ultimate modern virtue.
This contrast has reignited a fierce national debate. National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke didn&#8217;t mince words, <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/cooke-what-eileen-gu-is-doing-is-adjacent-to-treason/">labeling</a> Gu’s decision as &#8220;adjacent to treason.&#8221; Cooke noted that if an American had defected to the Soviet Union for Olympic glory in the 1970s, the &#8220;grotesque&#8221; nature of the move would have been obvious. &#8220;She chose to represent a communist dictatorship over the United States,&#8221; Cooke pointed out. &#8220;That is the wrong call.&#8221;
National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/02/jack-hughes-or-eileen-gu/">furthered</a> this critique, contrasting the &#8220;bloody-mouthed&#8221; hockey players, like star Jack Hughes, with Gu’s brand-managed persona. While the hockey team played for their country and the memory of their late teammate Johnny Gaudreau, Gu represents a &#8220;cosmopolitan ideal&#8221; that floats above nationhood.
&#8220;Is loyalty to country a matter of choice, or an unalterable commitment?&#8221; Lowry asked, highlighting the divide between those who feel fundamental gratitude toward America and those who maintain a &#8220;critical distance.&#8221;
The controversy extends far beyond the slopes. Critics like Bill Maher have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bill-maher-shreds-lebron-james-john-cena-eileen-gu-stop-kowtowing-to-china">slammed</a> the trend of American icons — from LeBron James to John Cena — &#8220;kowtowing&#8221; to Beijing to protect their bottom lines. Maher pointed out the hypocrisy of athletes and celebrities who ignore China’s &#8220;authoritarian surveillance state&#8221; and the genocide of the Uyghurs while lecturing Americans on social justice at home.
As the 2026 Games conclude, the legacy of these Olympics isn&#8217;t just about medals; it’s about the widening chasm between an elite media class that sneers at patriotism and a public that still believes in the red, white, and blue.

MixCollage-25-Feb-2026-10-33-AM-144

New York Times Glorifies China’s Communist Darling, Rails Against American Hockey Heroes

New York Times Cheers China Communist Darling, Lectures American Heroes

Eileen Gu

US Hockey Team

Menu