Most style guides would call that an error, em dash should be used without surrounding spaces (while an en dash requires them). The only publication I know that has (recently?) eschewed that advice is WaPo. If the idea was to make it more visible, I believe the correct solution would have been for WaPo to use an en dash but render it longer in their typeface.
yes, i agree with you and this is how i used to use emdashes. chatgpt also agrees with you, which is why spaces are a pretty good indicator that it's not an LLM
