The New York Times is ramping up its pro-war propaganda at an alarming rate. Over the past month, a handful of editorials have called for a massive military buildup to prepare for war with China, all while pushing the same tired, hysterical anti-China narratives that the U.S. government has paid billions of dollars to spread. 

Just take a look at a few of the recent headlines (from just the past two weeks): 

“America’s military has defended the free world for 80 years,” the NYT writes, a clear perpetuation of its long-standing goal to push U.S. intervention abroad and disguise it as for-the-greater-good. “Rivals know this and are building to defeat us,” they lie, a blatant offense to good journalism. They argue for “additional spending” on top of the already absurd $1 trillion military budget and discuss the need to “bring private industry into the mission.” Who benefits from that? You guessed it: billionaires! 

As necessary as it is to remain vigilant about the NYT's incessant push to manufacture support for U.S. wars and cater to the sinister wishes of its sponsors, it’s also critical to highlight what’s missing, because that says just as much.

MISSING FROM THE NYT: 

• Any critical or investigative piece looking into the death of Chinese national Chaofeng Ge, who was found hog-tied and strung up in ICE detention. 
• Any analysis of the multiple Chinese scholars at the University of Michigan who have been federally persecuted and whose lives and careers have been ruined. 
• Any platform for Chinese, Chinese American, or Asian American voices who are living with the consequences of being cast as an “enemy within” as the U.S. gears up for war and paints them as villains. 

And the list goes on and on and on…

Clearly, the United States continues to be dangerous for anyone with Chinese heritage, but you’ll never read that in the New York Times. We must hold them accountable!

👉 Write to the New York Times: Inciting War is a Crime!

Listen: the timing of this slew of propaganda is no coincidence. While the NYT is pumping out all of these deranged articles, the U.S. military is deepening its military posture in the Pacific. The Trump administration just announced an additional $11 billion in arms sales to Taiwan in preparation for a 2027 war with China. And Japan, a keen U.S. ally, just deployed new missiles on the Ryukyu Island chain, near the Taiwan coast. This follows closely behind the U.S. deployment of its Typhon missile system in Japan, which has long-range abilities to hit many of China’s largest cities.

Additionally, in response to South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s request for the U.S. to return operational control of the South Korean military to South Korea, USFK Commander Gen. Xavier outright refused. This agreement, made over 70 years ago during the Korean War, gives the U.S. full control of South Korea’s military in the event of a regional war. It was never meant to last. But with a future war with China on the horizon, the U.S. will be keen to exploit the citizens of other countries before sending U.S. soldiers into battle. 

At the same time, the U.S. government passed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which essentially criminalizes any cooperation with China by naming any Chinese industries with ties to its government as military. As we fall further and further into a dire planetary emergency, the criminalization of climate cooperation is just as lethal and foolish as diving headfirst into nuclear war. 

And still, the New York Times ignores these crises and continues to plague our headlines with messages of ever-increasing war budgets and fear-mongering appeals to the hearts and minds of the U.S. public that war with China is both inevitable and imminent. We cannot let this slide! 

So what can you do?

1. Sign our petition to the New York Times. We pledge to scratch at them until our nails fall off!

2. Call and email the NYT: if they won’t write for the people, we will continue to expose them for the tool of war that they are.

Letters to the editor: [email protected]

General customer service: 1-866-273-3612

3. Share this alert with your friends, family, and the occasional stranger. 

4. Repost on your socials. Every action matters!

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5. End your damn subscription. No money to the NYT! (And don’t forget to tell them why, as many times as possible.)

Together, we can demand better. And even if the New York Times refuses to abandon its pro-war fixation (as Caitlin Johnstone says, “it’s a militarist smut rag that somehow found its way into unearned respectability”), we can still call out its total surrender to the imperial capitalist elite, its casual justification of war crimes, and the consistently weak arguments—matched only by the consistently poor writing—of its editorial board.

👉 Write to the New York Times: We See Through Your Propaganda!

Peace and solidarity, 

Megan, Jodie, and the CODEPINK Team

Contact [email protected] to learn more.

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