Last week, Ryan Grim outraged many on the left when he attempted to discredit the rape allegations brought against Graham Platner. On his podcast, Grim had disclosed that Platner had been his bartender at his favorite dive bar, the Tune Inn in DC.
It wasn’t the first time that Grim faced accusations of smearing a critic without disclosing his deep financial and personal conflicts of interest.
Grim’s editor Nausicaa Renner is married to former UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman, who was demoted and suspended from his job for his role in illegally retaliating against UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock.
However, in July 2024, when Grim first published an article at Drop Site News accusing Barofsky of being a Zionist, nowhere in the article did he mention that his editor was married to the UAW’s Communications Director. Given that Renner and Furman jointly own a $1.3 million home in Evanston, Illinois and have a child together, this was a clear financial and personal conflict of interest that Grim should have disclosed.
In 2024, Payday Report repeatedly asked Grim to disclose his editor’s marriage to Furman; Grim refused. Since then, Grim’s story, which was based on just one anonymous source, has been accepted as truth among many labor activists, who are completely unaware of Grim’s conflict of interests
In recent months, two other leading publications on the labor left, Jacobin and Labor Notes, have amplified Grim’s smear campaign. In both instances, these publications refused to disclose their own deep conflict of interest with the UAW.
Now, Payday Report has obtained leaked transcripts of a UAW executive board meeting that discredit Fain’s claims that Barofsky tried to interfere in the union’s positions on Gaza.
The transcripts prove that not only did Barofsky not interfere in the UAW’s political process, but he openly denounced legal threats leveled by the ADL against the UAW due to their support of Gaza. He also denounced accusations that the UAW’s position on Gaza could be construed as “antisemitism”.
“I think [the ADL is uninformed. I think he is wrong,” said Barofsky of the ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “I don't agree with it.”
At the same time, the UAW also began to face intensive legal actions by Zionist legal campaigns against the UAW. UAW Local 2325, the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys (ALAA), was forced to pay $315,000 to three Zionist union members over claims that they violated their rights as union members.
Given the legal cost of these lawsuits, the UAW’s Executive Board began to debate how they could limit the union’s legal liability. UAW leaders thought it would be good to hold a “teach in” to understand the issues better and how they could address the legal risk.
UAW Executive Board members asked Barofsky to help them obtain more information as the UAW navigated questions around their legal liabilities.
Still, despite clear evidence that shows Barofsky did not attempt to interfere with the UAW's position on Gaza, three publications, Drop Site News, Jacobin, and Labor Notes, have all run stories claiming that Barofsky is investigating the UAW since he is a Zionist.
All three publications failed to reveal significant financial and personal conflicts of interest. Their reporting comes as Fain faces a tough re-election campaign following accusations that Fain engaged in emotionally abusive and retaliatory behavior against union democracy in the union.
Yesterday, Payday Report ran a blockbuster story entitled "Leaked UAW Transcripts Discredit Fain’s Attack on UAW Monitor Barofsky". The story, which is nearly 7,000 words, discredits the smear launched against Barofsky and raises serious questions about why Drop Site News, Jacobin, and Labor Notes all failed to reveal their financial and personal conflicts of interest in their reporting.
Jacobin Doesn’t Disclose Labor Columnist Forced Out of UAW
In June, Alex Press of Jacobin wrote a piece repeating Grim’s Zionist conspiracy theory, claiming that “The origin of Barofsky’s escalating conflict with Fain had little to do with the financial corruption the monitor was tasked with investigating.”
Not disclosed in the Jacobin piece is the fact that Jacobin’s lead labor columnist Chris Brooks was forced to resign as the UAW’s Chief of Staff in December of 2025 Brooks’ resignation came after it was discovered that he had lied to union members while orchestrating a smear campaign against UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, who questioned the financial oversight of the UAW.
In December of 2023, Mock angered Brooks and then-UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman and Brooks by refusing to award a $500,000 no-bid contract to a politically connected DC consulting firm for billboards and media buys to support union organizing at Volkswagen in Chattanooga.
Given that the no-bid contract was for $500,000, a significant expenditure for any union, Mock denied the request until more dialogue within the union could be had about whether the expenditure should be approved.
Union organizers debated whether spending $500,000 was an effective use of organizing resources, especially given that the no-bid contract was awarded to a media firm, Conexión, with little experience in union organizing. The firm was founded by Adrian Saenz, who served as the White House’s Director of Public Engagement under President Biden, and was staffed primarily by DC-based Democratic Party officials.
Furman and Brooks also grew frustrated with Mock after she refused to approve a no-bid contract for Feldman Strategies, a communications firm founded by DC political operative Andrew Feldman. The federal consent decree was very clear that the union should solicit at least three bids before approving any contract, unless the union had a reason to grant a special exception.
In their attempts to discredit Mock, who was Fain’s running mate four years ago, and demote her from several of her leadership positions, Brooks and Furman engineered charges against Mock, and were found to have lied to the union membership about their campaign.
In December of 2025, Brooks was forced to resign as UAW Chief of Staff and Furman was demoted from his job and suspended for two weeks without pay.
Despite the fact that it was covered by major publications including the Detroit Free Press, Reuters, and even Brooks’ hometown paper, The Chattanooga Times Free Press, Jacobin at no point informed its readers that its labor columnist had been forced out of the union after Barofsky proved that he had lied to union members.
(For more on the Jacobin scandal, read our February 2026 piece titled “Jacobin’s New Columnist Chris Brooks Doesn’t Disclose Corruption Charges that Led to His Ouster from UAW”)
Labor Notes Doesn’t Disclose Role in Financing Fain’s Re-Election Support Group
Around the same time that Jacobin began attacking Barofsky, Labor Notes’ Jane Slaughter joined in the fray. In her piece published on June 25th, Slaughter quotes Nick Licktick, a member of the UAW Member Action network, telling her, “The Monitor told Fain to support Israel. Fain told him to kick rocks. It’s clear this has all been personal since then.”
Much like Ryan Grim and Alex Press, Slaughter also refused to reveal her direct conflict of interest - she’s funding the UAW Member Action network, which is backing Fain.
As one of four directors of the Social Justice and Solidarity Fund, Slaughter is responsible for giving out nearly a million dollars in grants a year to labor organizing, including the UAW Member Action network
Nowhere in her Labor Notes piece quoting Nick Licktick does Slaughter reveal her role in helping bankroll Fain’s support network as he runs for re-election. Instead, Slaughter presents herself as a neutral and objective labor reporter.
The smear campaign launched by Drop Site News, Jacobin, and Labor Notes, all without revealing massive conflicts of interest, has proven effective in persuading the left that Fain is facing retaliation for the union’s opposition to Israel’s attacks. Activists regularly claim that Barofsky has a secret Zionist agenda, despite strong evidence contradicting this smear campaign
However, an examination of the transcripts of the UAW’s International Executive Board meetings discredits this Zionist conspiracy theory. Examining these records is crucial to understanding the truth of the crisis hitting the UAW.
Do UAW Rank-and-File Deserve to Read All the UAW Transcripts?
With Fain facing a grand jury for credible scandals around his leadership, he’s leaned harder than ever into a persecution narrative against Barofsky to make himself a martyr, relying heavily on his narrative and the lack of access to transcripts for members and independent news outlets to review
A review of the UAW’s Executive Board transcripts presents a very different view of what happened between Fain and Barofsky. (I encourage everyone to go read our 7,000-word story "Leaked UAW Transcripts Discredit Fain's Attack on UAW Monitor Barofsky".)
Why this Zionist conspiracy theory has been allowed to persist raises troubling questions about the editorial independence of some left-leaning media outlets.
Drop Site News, Jacobin, and Labor Notes all refused to disclose their massive personal and financial conflicts of interest with the UAW as they attempted to defend UAW President Shawn Fain.
Payday Report, though, believes that union members have the right to know honest and accurate information, especially during a union leadership election. If you have any information you would like to share with Payday, you can contact me anonymously at melk@paydayreport.com or (412) 613-8423.
