The New York Times editorial board (2/8/25) this month urged readers not to get “distracted,” “overwhelmed,” “paralyzed” or “pulled into [Donald Trump’s] chaos”—in short, don’t “tune out.” But what good is staying informed unless there are concrete actions Trump’s opponents can take to rein him in?
Right after the election, in a column headlined, “My Manifesto for Despairing Democrats,” Times columnist Nick Kristof (11/6/24) suggested readers “hug a lawyer,” get a dog, and/or remain “alert” to “gender nastiness.”
Michelle Goldberg (11/6/24) used her post-election column, “This Is Who We Are Now,” to castigate the voters who “chose” Trump, “knowing exactly who [he] is.” “This is…who we are [as a country],” she added mournfully, despite the fact that less than 30 percent of US adults voted for Trump. She did not mention the nearly 90 million Americans who were eligible to vote but didn’t, or explore why they were so alienated from politics. Her own instinct, she wrote, was to turn inward, and she predicted the next few months would be “a period of mourning rather than defiance.”
Although she saw “no point” in protesting Trump’s inauguration, she did express a vague hope that people would “take to the streets if [Trump’s] forces come into our neighborhoods to drag migrant families away,” and that they would “strengthen the networks that help women in red states get abortions.” The work of the next four years, she concluded, would be “saving what we can” and “trying to imagine a tolerable future.” But, for the moment, all she could do was “grieve.”
Even in a column headlined “Stop Feeling Stunned and Wounded, Liberals. It’s Time to Fight Back,” the Times‘ Charles Blow (1/29/25) presented fighting back as a strangely inactive process: “People, especially young people, are simply not built to passively absorb oppression,” he wrote; they will, at some point, “inevitably react and resist.” Yet he offered few suggestions for how they might do this, defaulting instead to vague proclamations like “Confidence has to be rebuilt” and “Power and possibility have to be reclaimed.” Finally, he noted, “resistance must be expressed in opinion polls and at the cash registers,” because “the people’s next formal participation in our national politics won’t come until the 2026 midterms.”
Reinforcing disarray
Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein (New York Times, 2/2/25): “Elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless and divided…. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future.”
While counseling patience, discipline and self-care, the paper runs several headlines per month painting opposition to Trump as pointless, ineffective, disorganized and/or pusillanimous. It is both fair and necessary to report critically on efforts to oppose Trump, and the New York Times has done that to some extent. But in headlines, framing and content, the paper often goes from reporting on Democratic disarray to reinforcing it.
Days after the election, the Times (11/7/24) began a story headlined “Devastated Democrats Play the Blame Game, and Stare at a Dark Future” as follows: “A depressed and demoralized Democratic Party is beginning the painful slog into a largely powerless future.” According to a photo caption in the story, “Many Democrats are left considering how to navigate a dark future, with the party unable to stop Mr. Trump from enacting a sweeping right-wing agenda.”
From more recent stories like “‘We Have No Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump” (2/2/25), “Venting at Democrats and Fearing Trump, Liberal Donors Pull Back Cash” (2/16/25) and “Democrats Fear They Are Missing the Moment to Remake the Party” (2/17/25), we learn that Trump’s opposition is “demoralized,” plagued by “second-guessing” and “fretting.”
It’s true that many Democratic voters are furious at the Democratic Party. But other reporting suggests that a functional opposition exists. Democrats’ legal strategy is slowing Trump down. His approval ratings have notably declined. A broad majority of Americans feel the president isn’t doing enough to address the high prices of everyday goods, and a slim majority (52%) say he’s gone too far in using his presidential power. This has spurred a fed-up public to lead dozens of mass protests throughout the country. And Bernie Sanders recently held massive rallies in Omaha and Iowa City to pressure the area’s Republican representatives to vote against Trump’s federal budget in March, drawing overflow crowds of more than 2,500 in Omaha and 1,175 in Iowa City.
‘I think of socialism’
Shane Goldmacher (New York Times, 2/17/25): “For disillusioned Democrats…what is needed is a deeper discussion of whether the party’s policies and priorities are repelling voters.”
Because the New York Times treats the complaints of mega-wealthy donors as more legitimate than the fury of the Democratic base, it often presents money as the best and/or only means of affecting policy. “Prominent” Democrats have “lost faith in the party’s resolve to pinpoint its problems, let alone solve them” (2/17/25), and rich donors are “furious” over “Democrats’ tactical missteps and wasteful spending”—so they’re withholding their money accordingly (2/16/25).
The Times (2/17/25) quotes wealthy donors who blame progressives for the party’s losses at length, like personal-injury lawyer John Morgan, a “major Democratic contributor…who has often backed more moderate candidates”:
When I think “progressive,” I think of the Squad…. And when I think of the Squad, I think of socialism, and when I think of socialism, I think of Communism, and when I think of Communism, I think of the downfall of countries.
The needs and policy preferences of rank-and-file voters don’t get similar attention.
Though it framed the findings differently, the Times (2/17/25) mentioned a poll that showed a slender majority of Democratic voters—six points more than the share who favor more moderation—want the party to become more liberal or stay the same, and one which shows that a large majority of Democrats across all demographics want the party to focus on economic issues like wages and jobs (63%) rather than cultural debates (31%). These views are strikingly different from those wealthy donors typically express, with different implications than the polls’ headlines suggest.
When it comes to identifying what went wrong, Democrats are more aligned than the Timeshas indicated. Two weeks after asserting that “leaderless, rudderless and divided” elected Democrats have “no shared understanding of why they lost the election” (2/2/25), the paper reported that there is, in fact, “almost universal agreement on a diagnosis of the party’s problem with the working class” (2/17/25). And despite the fact that far more Americans didn’t vote in 2024 than voted for Trump or Harris, the Times has expanded its coverage of undecided and Trump voters, while demonstrating scant interest in the tens of millions of Americans who stayed home.
‘No parallel in history’
Peter Baker (New York Times, 1/20/25): “Trump…opened an immediate blitz of actions to begin drastically changing the course of the country and usher in a new ‘golden age of America.’”
The New York Times’ emphasis on Democratic weakness stands in stark contrast to its treatment of Trump. While the Democratic Party struggles to define “what it stands for, what issues to prioritize and how to confront a Trump administration,” Trump is “carrying out a right-wing agenda with head-spinning speed” (2/2/25).
After years of dismissing Trump as an amateurish reality television star (6/16/15, 12/22/15, 9/16/16)—in 2015, the paper couldn’t come up with a single reason why he might win the GOP nomination, despite having “really tried” (6/16/15)—the Timesnow sees him as forceful and decisive, if reckless; a born leader fulfilling his mandate with impressive speed and strength. He has engineered a “remarkable political comeback” and an “audacious and stunningly successful legal strategy that could allow him to evade accountability.” He has “redefined the limits of presidential power,” his “success in using his campaign as a protective shield has no parallel in legal or political history” (11/6/24), and he has “little reason to fear impeachment, which he has already survived twice” (2/5/25).
Compared to its headlines about Democrats, the Times’ headlines about Trump could just as easily have been written by the man himself: “With Political Victory, Trump Fights Off Legal Charges” (11/6/24), “For Trump, a Vindication for the Man and His Movement” (1/20/25), ” “A Determined Trump Vows Not to Be Thwarted at Home or Abroad” (1/20/25), “Trump’s New Line of Attack Against the Media Gains Momentum” (2/7/25) and “Trump Targets a Growing List of Those He Sees as Disloyal” (2/17/25).
The overall message is that Trump is virtually unstoppable, and even high-ranking congressional Democrats and billionaire donors, let alone ordinary Americans, have no idea how to stop him. The Times has answered its own question, “Resisting Trump: What Can Be Done?” (2/10/25) with a resounding very little, aside from responding to opinion polls and meekly waiting to vote in the 2026 midterms.
Acknowledging Trump’s political savvy is partly a business decision—as the Times (1/13/25) has noted, “many reporters, editors and media lawyers are taking [Trump’s threats against the media] seriously…. He is altering how the press is operating.” Some would rather stay proximate to power than take on a vindictive, litigious and power-drunk president. It’s also a mea culpa of sorts; chastened by criticisms from both left and right, elite journalists and editors have spent years thinking maybe they were too quick to dismiss Trump’s appeal and too late to understand it.
Fighting Trump’s agenda
The New York Times‘ Jacey Fortin (12/3/24) covered successful resistance to a culture-war bogeyman in Republican-dominated Montana.
Whatever the reasoning, it does not serve readers to present Trump as a force of nature, and avenues for resistance as minimal, especially when there are plenty of examples to the contrary. Ordinary people are fighting Trump’s agenda through long-term political and labor organizing.
And the New York Times has covered elected leaders who have taken effective stands against anti-democratic bullies. When Montana Republicans barred her from the House floor in 2023 for “attempting to shame” them in a debate, state legislator Zooey Zephyr fought back to defend both “democracy itself” and the transgender community to which she belongs (New York Times, 4/26/23).
Her courage paid off. Zephyr was reelected, and in December she joined colleagues in defeating a GOP proposal to restrict which bathrooms lawmakers could use in the Montana State Capitol (New York Times, 12/3/24).
Weeks earlier, Tennessee legislators expelled two Democrats from the state House after they joined constituents in demanding stricter gun laws. An attempt to expel a third Democrat who joined the protest failed by one vote (New York Times, 4/6/23).
After being expelled, state legislators Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were quickly but temporarily reinstated, reelected several months later, and have “risen in national prominence” (New York Times, 2/2/24). Their colleague, Rep. Gloria Johnson, who survived the attempt to expel her, won Tennessee’s 2024 Democratic primary for US Senate. Johnson lost the Senate race to GOP incumbent Sen. Marsha Blackburn in November, but voters reelected her to the Tennessee House.
Even when efforts to prevent the passage of anti-democratic laws and policies ultimately fail, as they did when Texas Democrats fled the state to block voting restrictions in 2021, they inspire people to engage in politics and fight for their communities. The New York Times has a responsibility not to scold its readers for their supposed apathy, but to show them how to take on corrupt and lawless leaders like Trump. Hector a person for tuning out, and they’ll read the news for a day; show them how to use power, and they’ll civically engage for a lifetime.
This article originally appeared in Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) on February 26th, 2025
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