Ben Domenech - Wikipedia

Domenech's NRO column recapped political talk shows on television.[7] Domenech was the youngest ever political appointee of the George W. Bush administration. His father, Douglas Domenech, had held several mid-level positions in the Bush administration.[5] Ben Domenech later worked as a speechwriter for Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.

Domenech subsequently worked as a contributing editor for the National Review Online, followed by two years as chief speechwriter for United States Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). He also then worked as an editor at Regnery Publishing, where he edited books by Michelle Malkin, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Hugh Hewitt.[8]

In March 2006, Domenech was named as a blogger for The Washington Post, hired to contribute to the newspaper's opinion pages from a conservative point of view. Liberal and left-of-center bloggers protested Domenech's appointment, citing what they regarded as inappropriate comments on his blog. Among other things, Domenech had called political cartoonist Ted Rall a "steaming bag of pus"; described Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of former Secretary of State John Kerry, as an "oddly shaped egotistical ketchup-colored muppet"; and called Pat Robertson a "senile, crazy old fool". The Post, however, vowed to stand by Domenech.[9]

On March 21, 2006, only three days into his appointment, however, Domenech resigned his position after evidence surfaced showing that he had earlier plagiarized the earlier works of others that had originally appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, the National Review, and several other publications. The Post said it had not known about his plagiarism when the newspaper hired him, and had editors known, they would never have offered him the job in the first place. Jim Brady, the-then executive editor of washingtonpost.com, said he would have fired Domenech had he not first offered to quit because the allegations of plagiarism made it necessary to "sever the relationship".[10]

During the 2008 election, Domenech wrote numerous columns for both Human Events[11] and for The Washington Times.[12][13][14][15] During the 2012 election, Domenech commented extensively on social and economic issues related to the Occupy Wall Street movement. for the Heritage Foundation.[16]

In September 2013, Domenech, along with Luke Sherman and Sean Davis, co-founded The Federalist; senior editors include David Harsanyi and Mollie Hemingway.

Domenech said at the time that The Federalist was inspired by the mission and worldview of the original Time magazine's editor, Henry Luce, which he described as, "[leaning] to the political right, with a small-c conservatism equipped with a populist respect for the middle class reader outside of New York and Washington."[17]

In August 2020, Jeremy W. Peters of The New York Times wrote that, under Domenech, "The Federalist has been one of the biggest breakouts ... diving headfirst into the culture wars ... Its pieces have questioned the Me Too movement ... and called the effort to recognize transgender identity a 'war on women.'" Peters wrote that Domenech and other staff for The Federalist "offer an outlet for outrage against those the president has declared his enemies, often by reducing them to a culture war caricature of liberalism."[18]

The Federalist is owned by a private company and thus has not been required to disclose the identities of its financial backers. Domenech and the other founders of the conservative website have refused to do so. BuzzFeed News has reported that the website's funding has prompted "a considerable amount of speculation in the political media world". BuzzFeed further pointed out that "the Federalist has been resolutely opaque about its finances. The site is owned by a private company and doesn't have to disclose its ownership or funding structure; its parent company, FDRLST Media, was incorporated as a limited liability company in Delaware in 2016."[19]