The Federalist is like a conservative version of Mother Jones or HuffPo. Not what I’d consider reliable but it can collect together facts that can be verified that other organizations won’t necessarily put together. For example, there’s an article right now observing that, while we’ve had a Supreme Court with a majority of Republican appointees for 50 years, for a lot of that time it’s been appointees confirmed by a Democratic Senate. (Democrats held the Senate almost without any gap from 1936-1982.) So candidates that ended up getting wobbly like Souter and Stevens were compromise candidates. The NYT just isn’t going to highlight facts like that.