The New York Times’s Latte Logic of Social Collapse

Three days before a 31-year-old male stormed the White House Correspondents Dinner, hoping to assassinate President Donald Trump and members of his cabinet, the New York Times published a 35-minute video titled: “‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’ Why petty theft might be the new political protest.” In it, a Times editor interviewed two other members of the media aristocracy about the moral code shared by a large swathe of young Americans.

That code justifies theft—and even violence—when harnessed to a fashionably left-wing cause. None of the participants—podcasting celebrity Hasan Piker, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, and Times opinion editor Nadja Spiegelman—expressed alarm at the glorification of crime. They smirked and giggled through the discussion, betraying a breezy indifference to lawbreaking.

It was striking enough that the Times published the video after reviewing the final cut. The paper was not embarrassed by the participants’ ignorance and entitlement. Nor was it troubled, apparently, by their debate over whether the December 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was “actually effective political action” or merely—and disappointingly—effective “political consciousness-raising.”

But after the assassination attempt on Trump on April 25 by yet another young megalomaniac, one might have thought that the Times would want to distance itself from its hipster commentators and their ends-justify-the-means morality.

It apparently feels no such discomfort, however, and thus has left the video online. That is fortunate. The exchange offers a more revealing window into left-wing political violence than the latest would-be assassin’s predictably disjointed manifesto. When future archeologists seek to date the moment that the demise of the West became inevitable, this artefact of peak decadence will be a strong contender.

The video’s most memorable feature is the visual contrast between the participants’ studied downtown chic and their professed identification with what Piker calls the “masses.” Tolentino’s makeup is flawless, accentuating her exotic feline beauty; her nails gleam with shell-pink lacquer; her carefully styled waves glow with tawny highlights; her low-cut denim tank top, jeans, and high-heeled boots signal urban sophisticate. This outfit may not be ideally suited to organizing the proletarian “sabotage and, sort of, engagement with property destruction” she evokes with wistful nostalgia. But it fits perfectly in the all-white Brooklyn loft where the interview was filmed.

Piker sports a powder-blue, long-sleeved Ralph Lauren shirt, complete with polo pony logo. His tennis shoes are by Adidas, the very embodiment of the “system of global capital” that he claims to want to overthrow, complete with allegations of labor abuses in its Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indonesian factories.

Admittedly, Spiegelman’s plumpness might earn her some demerits when trying to enter a Soho nightspot, but her Times affiliation can do wonders to overcome deviations from the optimal clubbing look.

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Government Sues New York Times for Alleged Discrimination Against White Man

The New York Times is making news itself these days, with a “diversity and inclusion” drive that’s dragged it into court.

One of the most influential liberal news outlets in the nation is facing a federal lawsuit from President Donald Trump’s administration over alleged discrimination against an unidentified white male employee in favor of women, blacks, and other nonwhites when a promotion was at stake.

And the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission clearly isn’t fooling around.

In the lawsuit, according to the New York Post, the alleged victim claimed the Times employee had been passed over for a promotion in favor of a final panel of candidates that included “a white woman, a Black man, an Asian female and a multiracial female.”

According to a New York Times report about the suit, the alleged victim claimed that the promotion of a white man would fail to follow the newspaper’s own goals as described in a 2021 document called “Call to Action.”

“A decrease in the percentage of White male employees (whether new hires, existing employees, or those in leadership, as appropriate) was a necessary consequence for the NYT to achieve these results,” the article noted, citing the lawsuit.

The man at the heart of the issue has been working at the newspaper since 2014, according to the New York Times report. Last year, he applied for a job as deputy real estate editor, the newspaper stated. He did get one interview for the job, but never made it to the panel interview stage.

The EEOC lawsuit claims he is more qualified than the person who received the promotion.

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The Moral Malaise: The New York Times Makes The Case For “Microlooting” To Murder

“It is so hard to live ethically in an unethical society.” That lament heard this week from New York Times opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman could well be the Democratic Party’s epitaph.

Spiegelman was interviewing two left-wing influencers about how everything from shoplifting to murder may be excusable today in light of the unfairness they see in society.

The podcast, a product of the nation’s newspaper of record, reveled in the moral relativism that has taken over the American left. It featured the ravings of the antisemitic Marxist streamer Hasan Piker, who calmly explained how the murder of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson was perfectly understandable. His rationalization came from Marxist revolutionary Friedrich Engels, who had called capitalism “social murder.” If capitalists are “social murderers,” then why not kill them? The logic is liberating and lethal for some on the left looking for a license for violence.

Mind you, this same newspaper had once condemned and effectively banned a U.S. senator for writing an op-ed advocating the use of the military to quell violent protests during the summer of George Floyd’s death. The Times even forced out its own opinion editor for having the temerity to publish such an opinion.

But glorifying murder? The suggestion of open hunting season on corporate executives did not appear to shock or repel Spiegelman. After all, we are living in “an unethical society.” She explained that many felt that the murder of Thompson, the father of two, meant that “finally, someone can actually do something about health care.”

Even liberal comedians are practicing a literal version of slapstick. Margaret Cho this week declared that “we need a feral, bloodthirsty, violent Democrat.”

To be fair, Spiegelman did concede that it might seem a bit “scary” for some to start murdering our way to social justice.

She also explained that shoplifting can be justifiable because people are “stealing from Whole Foods — not just for the thrill of it, but out of a feeling of anger and moral justification.”

New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino also contributed to the podcast, titled “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?” She immediately threw in her own experience with “microlooting” and explained why it is arguably moral: “I have, under very specific circumstances. I will say, I think that stealing from a big-box store [isn’t] significant as a moral wrong, nor is it significant in any way as protest.”

She detailed her own past thefts and added, “I didn’t feel bad about it at all, in part because the store was a corporation. And it certainly felt, in a utilitarian sense, I was like, this is not a big deal. Right, guys?”

Not in the confines of the New York Times, where apparently you are entitled to all goods that are fit to pilfer.

The bizarre exchange highlighted the moral chasm that is opening its maw on today’s political left. In my book “Rage and the Republic,” I write about how rage helps people excuse any offense or attack. It dismisses the humanity of others and provides a license to hate completely and without reservation.

It is not really murder or theft if there are no real humans on the other side, is it?

Other columnists have defended such property crimes. Washington Post writer Maura Judkis ran a column mocking shoplifting stories as the “moral panic” of a nation built on “stolen land.” It is reminiscent of those who excused rioting in past summers “as an expression of power” and demanded that the media refer to looters as “protesters.”

Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism ProfessorNikole Hannah-Jones went so far as to call on journalists not to cover shoplifting crimes.

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They Can’t Even Flip Burgers

The Protected Class Finally Meets The Real World

The New York Times tried to write a sympathy piece for the USAID class. It accidentally wrote an indictment. The villain of the story was supposed to be DOGE, the great orange-bad-men-with-spreadsheets monster that came into Washington and started cutting through the federal fat farm. The victims were supposed to be the noble public servants, contractors, grant managers, NGO executives, and democracy-development professionals who suddenly found themselves outside the taxpayer-funded cocoon. Then the Times gave away the whole game: one former senior vice president at a USAID-funded nonprofit had been making roughly $272,000 a year, and after the gravy train jumped the tracks, she was interviewing for a $19-an-hour job at a spice store.

Normal Americans did not read that and reach for a tissue. They read it and asked the only question that matters: what in God’s name were we paying for?

That is what the coastal press still does not understand. A quarter-million-dollar salary means something in the real country. It means working years of double shifts. It means a house is paid off. It means college tuition. It means a small business surviving another year. It means a mechanic, a nurse, a trucker, a cop, a farmer, or a welder would have to grind for years to see what one USAID-world executive was pulling down annually from a system most Americans cannot even see, let alone audit. Then we are supposed to cry because the private economy looked at that résumé and said, “the best we can do is 19 bucks an hour.”

No. That is not a human-interest story. That is a flashing red light.

The entire Times frame is backward. DOGE was treated like the marauding villain because it dared to question the sacred bureaucracy. How dare anyone cut government jobs? How dare anyone interrupt the NGO pipeline? How dare anyone ask whether these programs actually work? How dare anyone touch the soft, padded, credentialed ecosystem where public money flows into nonprofit offices, consultant contracts, administrative salaries, stakeholder meetings, and reports about reports. The Times wants Americans to see cruelty. What Americans see is confirmation.

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New York Times Portrays Fired USAID Staff as Victims — Reaction Is Not What They Expected

In July 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that USAID would no longer send foreign assistance across the globe.

Rubio noted that USAID had, for decades, failed to ensure the programs it funded actually supported America’s interests.

“Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War. Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown,” Rubio wrote in a blog post, according to Fox News.

“This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end. Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests. As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance. Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency,” Rubio said.

During the summer of 2025, the DOGE team announced they had eliminated another $14.3 billion in bogus contracts, including international contracts tied to USAID.

Following the funding cuts, the agency went from roughly 10,000–16,000 direct employees (plus hundreds of thousands of contractors and local staff overseas) to under 300 remaining staff. Over 90–97% of USAID’s workforce was eliminated.

Elisabeth Bumiller and Eileen Sullivan wrote A Year After U.S.A.I.D.’s Death, Fired Workers Find Few Jobs and Much Loss for The New York Times, bemoaning the struggles of the laid-off workers, something thousands of Americans face each day without fawning coverage from the outlet.

The authors share the example of a USAID-funded senior VP,making $272,000, or roughly five times more than the median income of the average American worker.

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Leftists Excited to Begin Cannibalizing the Elderly

Did you live a self-reliant, constructive life? Did you play by the rules, work hard, raise your kids to be productive members of society, save up, and arrive in seniority well-provisioned for your well-earned golden years?

Sucker!

If you simply reverse the direction of each of the Ten Commandments, you arrive at the leftist version. Among these is the Marxist tenet of weaponized envy — Thou shalt covet — and its corollary, Thou shalt steal.

Socialist-communists are always on the lookout for ways to play the many against the few so they can pillage the minority, enriching themselves while throwing crumbs to their useful-idiot foot soldiers. And right now, they are taking aim at senior citizens who saved their pennies so they might enjoy their retirements.

An opinion-setting column appeared in the New York Times on Tuesday. Entitled “Older Americans Are Hoarding America’s Potential,” it was penned by Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale who has a book coming out called Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth — and What to Do About It (emphasis added, because that’s the scary part).

In his column, Moyn makes perfunctory efforts to calm readers’ fears about his intentions. “‘Ageism’ identifies an enduring phenomenon: the mistreatment of older people for no reason other than being older,” he soothes. “Americans in middle age and beyond are routinely passed over for opportunities because of the irrelevant fact of a number on paper or how they act and look after getting older.”

And yet, “In today’s world, the unfair discrimination they cite coexists with a different kind of unfairness: a gerontocratic society in which the old control ever more power and wealth, leading to overrepresentation in political life and unequal power in social life.”

That’s right: It’s unfair to keep what you earned and to exercise your civic duty to vote and be engaged.

Naturally, that leads Moyn to conclude: “It is not ageist to ask whether older people should be required to give more to younger Americans and national priorities — it is critical to the future of our democracy and society. America needs to confront gerontocracy before the system collapses under the weight of its inequality and injustice.”

No, it’s not “ageist” to ask that — it’s Marxist.

“Older Americans deserve a say over the future even when they might not live to see it,” Moyn placates, before ratcheting up his rhetoric: “But they do not deserve the stranglehold over it they currently enjoy through overrepresentation in elections, which produces too many regressive policies and too many seniors in the highest offices.”

A second column, in the May 2026 issue of The Atlantic, is an even more direct attack. It’s titled “An Oligarchy of Old People.” Recall that socialist stars AOC and Bernie Sanders just completed their so-called Fighting Oligarchy Tour, and author Idrees Kahloon could not make it much clearer that “Old People” are the enemy. The opening salvo is an ugly comparison of elderly people who lived successful lives to dictators: “Gerontocracy has always thrived in undemocratic places—Communist people’s republics, Gulf monarchies—where only death could pry power from the ruling elders.” Well, then, I guess we know where Kahloon stands on the subject.

Kahloon points out that high-level politicians and the most engaged voters tend to be over 50. This seems only natural to me, and generally desirable, as leaders ought to have some life experience and wisdom.

But Moyn gives away the game when he complains that these powerful old people have the wrong political preferences:

Some of the excessive power that the aging have amassed harms society, as they enjoy advantages to the detriment of others. That power hurts a large number of elderly Americans themselves. Crucial priorities for the future, like creativity and dynamism, environmental remediation, immigration policies and tax fairness also suffer under gerontocracy. Older Americans favor restrictions on immigration most, even when they need immigrant caregivers most. Likewise, there is a correlation between age and resistance to policies to halt the overheating of the planet or raise funds for education and other civic purposes.

Both authors lay on the envy-mongering. Here’s Kahloon:

Although political gerontocracy has operated overtly, the rising economic power of the elderly has escaped much notice. Over the past 40 or so years, American wealth has grown ever more concentrated among the oldest generations. In 1989, Americans over age 55 held 56 percent of it; today they hold 74 percent. During that same period, the share of wealth held by Americans under 40 has shrunk by nearly half, from 12 to 6.6 percent. The color of money is now gray.

Both authors bemoan the fact that 55-and-up-year-olds own the most expensive real estate and hold the most powerful jobs. Except for the ones who don’t, who are thus also harmed by the greedy successful elderly hoarding their “accumulated housing, jobs and wealth,” as Moyn describes it. So much for passing down one’s legacy to one’s children or favorite charities, I suppose. Whatever — the elderly have-nots are simply more bodies to add to the push to loot the elderly haves.

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REPORT: The Latest ‘Shadow Docket’ Scandal Proves Between the Justices and Legacy Media, SCOTUS Is Toast

This week seems to be rife with journalistic malpractice from outlets either running with leaked and unsubstantiated material that tries and fails to put Trump administration officials in a bad light or works to erode and undermine our nation’s institutional bodies of governance. 

The latest installment from The New York Times involves leaked memos from the United States Supreme Court, verified by more anonymous sources

The Times spoke to 10 people, liberals and conservatives, who were familiar with the deliberations over the pivotal emergency order and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because confidentiality was a condition of their employment.

Amazing how one can fail so spectacularly on this basic tenet of integrity. God help us.

The papers expose what critics have called the weakness at the heart of the shadow docket: an absence of the kind of rigorous debate that the justices devote to their normal cases.

After obtaining the papers, The Times confirmed their authenticity with several people familiar with the deliberations and shared them with a spokeswoman for the court. The Times posed detailed questions to the justices who wrote the memos; they did not respond.

Nor should they. 

As RedState reported in February, Chief Justice Roberts took action to secure the integrity of the court’s processes after the 2022 leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Two months later, if this latest tranche of leaked memos is any indication, it hasn’t worked. Between justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly criticizing their constitutionalist colleagues, and the legacy media’s breathlessly publishing unsourced and leaked material, soon there will not be a Supreme Court left to preserve.

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New York Times does it again, pushing pro-vaccine narrative over journalism

A recent New York Times article examining Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and developments at the CDC is drawing criticism over what some describe as one-sided vaccine coverage.

The article, published March 23, relied heavily on interviews with former CDC officials and presented commonly cited claims that vaccines are safe and effective, while offering little perspective from those who question that view.

It also highlighted Kennedy’s work and advocacy, including claims that he has spread misinformation about vaccines.

The coverage pointed to a 2025 measles outbreak in a Texas community with low vaccination rates, attributing reported deaths to measles. Other accounts cited by Children’s Health Defense have raised questions about those conclusions.

The article also addressed statements about vaccine ingredients, including the use of fetal cell lines in some vaccines. Kennedy has raised concerns about the presence of human DNA fragments, which some individuals cite as a religious or ethical issue.

On autism, the article echoed the widely held view that rising diagnosis rates are largely due to expanded screening and reporting. Critics argue that explanation does not fully account for the increase.

The article further referenced concerns about what it described as “spurious harms” linked to vaccines. However, federal data show billions of dollars have been awarded through the vaccine injury compensation program.

It also cited public health positions on issues such as fluoridated drinking water and routine vaccination schedules recommended by major medical organizations.

The broader debate over vaccine mandates and informed consent was also raised, including whether individuals should have the right to decline vaccines for religious or personal reasons.

The discussion comes as vaccination rates for some vaccines have declined, religious exemptions have increased, and lawmakers consider changes to vaccine policy, including liability protections and exemption laws.

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New York Times Downplays Savage Hammer Murder of Mother to Attack Trump, Doesn’t Include That Killer Was an Illegal Alien from Haiti

The New York Times is under fire for its coverage of the savage hammer murder of a mother in Florida by a Haitian illegal alien, downplaying the heinous crime, shielding his immigration status, and complaining about President Donald Trump’s reaction instead.

The article, while blasting Trump for “disparaging comments about Haitian immigrants,” used softened language to describe the crime and did not mention the killer’s illegal status even once.

On April 3, 40-year-old Rolbert Joachin, a Haitian national who entered the United States illegally, brutally murdered 51-year-old Nilufar Yasmin outside a Chevron gas station in Fort Myers, Florida, where she worked as a clerk.

Surveillance video captured Joachin smashing the windshield of Yasmin’s car with a hammer before she confronted him. He then repeatedly struck her in the head with the weapon, bludgeoning her to death in broad daylight.

Authorities said the attack was calculated, and Joachin later told detectives he went to the gas station specifically to kill her.

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The New York Times Runs Sob Story About a WI Dairy Farmer Who Might Lose His ‘Undocumented’ Laborers

Democrats have made it very clear that one of the reasons they support unfettered illegal immigration is that they want to import a slave-labor class that they can pay cheaply and keep in deplorable working conditions. They prove this every time they argue that, sans illegals, we wouldn’t have anyone to clean our toilets or cut our grass and the price of our produce would go up because farmers would have to pay people a living wage to harvest crops (a lot of which is automated these days, anyway).

Now the New York Times is playing that card again, this time with Wisconsin, where a farm that made the choice to hire “undocumented workers” is worried deportations will hurt their business.

Here’s more:

That worker, who came from Mexico as a teenager, knew that a calf that was sick in the morning could be dead by evening. He knew this because he has worked in the dairy industry in Wisconsin for his entire adult life, and on this family farm for about 20 years. Now in his 40s, he has mastered the intricacies of milking, birthing and inseminating, and logging it all onto a computer. This February morning, he was passing down his knowledge to the 19-year-old grandson of the family who employs him.

“We’re a little bit behind today, so you can hear everybody’s kind of angry at us,” said Sullivan O’Harrow, the grandson, who motioned toward the bellowing calves as he walked beside the worker training him.

Immigrant workers are the lifeblood of the O’Harrow farm, a four-generation family enterprise with 1,600 cows in northeastern Wisconsin. But many of them will not travel to Mexico to see dying parents, or drive to nearby towns to visit siblings, or let journalists use their names in newspapers, because they are afraid of being swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

That they need to hide strikes the O’Harrow family as morally wrong, but also as potentially bad for the country: These workers oversee America’s milk. By one estimate, dairies that employ immigrant workers produce 79 percent of the nation’s milk supply and the price of milk would double without them.

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