Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens did something extraordinary on November 1, 2026. Two days before the election, she endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over her own party’s Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, who had defeated her in Michigan’s Democratic primary.

She explained why.

“We have to stand with country. We can’t stand with hate. We can’t stand with Hasan Piker.”

Stevens specifically condemned Piker, warning about his influence on college campuses and the hatred being spread to young people.

Piker is no obscure activist. The internationally followed livestreamer reaches millions online, appears at universities and campaigns alongside prominent Democrats, including El-Sayed at an April rally at the University of Michigan.

Days before Stevens’ endorsement, Piker had compared West Bloomfield, a heavily Jewish Detroit suburb, to a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood. “It’s racial supremacy. It’s Jewish supremacy,” he declared.

This was the same community where a synagogue and preschool had been targeted in an attempted terrorist attack earlier in the year.

Piker has a long history of stoking Jew hatred and had previously described Israeli and Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and “psychopaths,” compared Jews in Judea and Samaria to the KKK and repeatedly invoked Jewish supremacy. His rhetoric had traveled well beyond Michigan, gaining enormous audiences and legitimacy through appearances alongside political candidates.

El-Sayed had proudly campaigned with Piker before distancing himself from some of his statements. Another controversy involved Cenk Uygur, whose advertisement linked rising grocery prices to American assistance to Israel, even though annual military spending to it is less than 5% of what America spends on its military abroad, and has sent six times as much money to Ukraine for its defensive war against Russia as the US sent to Israel for its defensive war against genocidal Palestinian Arabs. Stevens condemned the advertisement as antisemitic. El-Sayed only disavowed its message.

Stevens nevertheless concluded that she could not support him.

Then came The New York Times.

Its article, “Inside the Abdul El-Sayed-Haley Stevens Meltdown in Michigan,” explained in the subheading that the relationship had shattered partly because of Israel, “but also because of their sensitive egos and hurt feelings.”

Sensitive egos? Hurt feelings?

The newspaper described Stevens as “still absorbing her primary loss” and feeling “scorned” by El-Sayed’s failure to include her in campaign events. It quoted a Democratic operative blaming the spectacle on “one person”—Stevens.

One person? What about the Jews who were being attacked?

The Times declared that “at the root of the disagreement” was American policy toward Israel. It detailed AIPAC’s spending against El-Sayed, Stevens’ attachment to Israel, her Jewish fiancé, his donations to AIPAC and her consideration of converting to Judaism.

Yet it never named Hasan Piker, whom Stevens repeatedly condemned, or Cenk Uygur, whose advertisement had sparked another confrontation. Uygur became merely “an ally.”

Most remarkably, the only time the word “antisemitism” or “antisemitic” appeared was when this so-tarred overly sensitive person said that “she viewed” the ad as antisemitic when in fact it was widely viewed as antisemitic, even among Democratic politicians.

The newspaper had plenty to say about Stevens’ feelings, Israel, AIPAC and Jewish connections. It could not bring itself to name the hatred at the center of her objections.

Instead, the Times described the rupture as reflecting “a major fissure coursing through the Democratic Party about what its relationship with Israel and Jewish donors should be.”

Jewish donors.

Not Jews being attacked. Not the normalization of antisemitic rhetoric. Jewish donors.

Piker himself had accused Stevens of being “weirdly obsessed with Israel” and having been “paid handsomely for this strange obsession.” The Times did not repeat his accusation, but its framing likewise directed attention toward Jewish money and influence rather than the hatred Stevens condemned.

This is how antisemitism becomes mainstream. The New York Times did not need to endorse Piker’s hatred to reinforce its underlying prejudices. By reducing objections to antisemitism to hurt feelings and Jewish concerns about safety to money and influence, the newspaper helped normalize the very hostility Stevens was protesting.

The Times was no longer simply reporting on attacks against Jews. It had become a participant in perpetuating them.