The New York Times staff could no longer hold their tongues. Over the years, the Times’ opinion section has run questionable — and sometimes downright harmful — columns. Since editorial page editor James Bennet took over in 2016, there have been a number of eyebrow-raising pieces run in his section, many of them from columnist Bret Stephens. And still, publicly, staffers did not publicly criticize their colleagues or employer. They couldn’t — it would be a violation of the Times’ social media policy . But when the paper ran an op-ed from Republican Sen. Tom Cotton on Wednesday that called for the use of military force against American citizens, dozens of staffers decided that they could not continue to say nothing. This moment is too big, there is too much at stake. And so an avalanche of Times staffers took to Twitter to openly criticize the decision of their employer.