Bret Stephens is the perfect example of how bankrupt the ideology of "challenging readers" has become in establishment media.
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Nothing Stephens writes is actually challenging to the NYT's liberal readership. He argues from false information, nonexistent evidence and motivated reasoning. He's intellectually incurious and uninterested in dissecting the dogmas of his own ideological peers.

Genuine intellectual challenge comes from robust information and outsider perspectives. Consider, for example, Nikole Hannah-Jones' work on desegregating schools. Or Anand Giridharadas' work on billionaire philanthropy.

Their ideas are challenging because the information behind them is incontrovertible. They make us feel uncomfortable because we see all the work that led the authors to their conclusions.

What Stephens is doing is the opposite of challenge. He's not bringing new facts into the public realm. He's not doing original reporting. He's not making us see anything in a new way.

He is simply repeating, in workaday prose, opinions we can find in 75 other places. He is the voice of an increasingly entrenched, lazy and amoral ruling class. The fact that the NYT's editors consider that to be "challenging" is a far bigger problem than Stephens himself.