There's this now-pervasive idea that endemic corruption is new, singularly Trump driven & purely a product of Citizens United. This is false & delusional. The truth: A handful of people executed a plan over 50 years. MasterPlanPodcast.com LeverNews.com/book Listen, read, learn & pass it on.

political news is now literally “presented by” the corporations & lobby groups seeking to shape politicians’ perception of news

🚨NEWS: Trump has effectively shut down the government's main whistleblower program targeting corporate crime, according to new data. Under Trump's SEC chair - who has attacked whistleblowers - the program denied a record number of claims & hasn't awarded anything this year.

🚨NEW INVESTIGATION: How ICE's detention center buying spree is bailing out the commercial real estate industry & being facilitated by a handful of powerful real estate brokerages — including one with financial ties to Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick.

🚨New billboard our campaign just erected near the ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colorado. Every ICE agent leaving the facility should know: you are not above the law.

In our deep blue state with a near-supermajority Dem legislature, Dems just helped Republicans make sure that ski towns cannot tax out-of-state tycoons’ part-time vacation mansions in order to fund affordable housing for workers & others who actually live there. What stage of oligarchy is this?

Black Mirror’s episode “Common People” is an absolutely incredible piece of art — and maybe the greatest TV episode about monopoly power that’s ever been made.

our society is in a really dark place

I pay the rapacious price for Altitude Plus to watch Nuggets basketball. And yet, even though I pay, they put betting ads on my screen while the game is happening, in a way that *blocks the game* view. This is how aggressive the sports betting industry is. It’s unacceptable.

The White House put out this press release 72 hours after the CBS News headline.

NEWS: The new "centrist" Abundance think tank pressing Democrats to tout deregulation is headed by a registered corporate lobbyist for Open AI, Larry Ellison's Oracle, and a crypto think tank, according to federal records reviewed by @levernews.com. www.levernews.com/do-not-pass-...

A friend sent me this old article, reminding me specifically of the part about Bezos & the WaPo, and how I was slammed by basically everyone in media for suggesting media owners influence their media properties. What a difference a few years makes. www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/u...

In 1998, they made a RomCom valorizing a corporate monopolist destroying a local small business while he used a Big Tech platform to anonymously seduce the small business owner. The late 1990s were deranged.

February trip to a river here in Colorado

I’ve had a weird & winding career in politics & journalism, but in all the twists & turns over 30 years, there has been a throughline — one that still guides my work, even as the mission has become more difficult than ever.

This is very good.

the view right now from my secure undisclosed Colorado location

Epstein got to retain his social status even after he was convicted. Today, people who went to Epstein’s Rape Island are similarly getting to retain their social status. The Epstein class isn’t deterred — they are running their scheme on a new loop RIGHT NOW.

If you’re looking to take back your cognition from the algorithms ruining your life, making you miserable and drowning you in slop, then remember: one of the greatest apps ever made is Instapaper. Not Instagram — InstaPAPER. Thank me later.

🚨NEW: You are facing flight delays and higher ticket fees thanks to private jet owners, who have gotten lawmakers to create special rules forcing everyone else to subsidize them at the country's most congested airports. www.levernews.com/snakes-on-a-...

I noticed anytime I log onto any social media, I feel bad. But in my job, I have to post to amplify my news outlet’s work. So I’ve mostly been posting via a third party app (Buffer), so I don’t scroll or see comments & my brain has felt better than it has in years. There’s a lesson here, I think.

In response to ICE committing violence and murder, the Democratic Party is demanding more prominent QR codes.

We've reached the Orwellian stage of the ICE discourse in which Democratic politicians are asking their liberal fans to believe that the big problem with masked men committing violence and murder is the masks, not the violence and murder.

Teachers, nurses, first responders are paid barely enough to survive, while those on TV who bloviate about politics for 5 minutes are paid millions. Amid layoffs of reporters, individual TV pundits are paid more than what it would cost to preserve entire newsrooms of journalists.

The democracy crisis is cable-TV-lobotomized liberals providing more rock-solid job security to Democratic leaders who allowed this epic nightmare to unfold than the job security that's provided to the average college football coach who faces the threat of firing after one bad season.

🚨NEWS: Trump officials initiated rulemaking that could shut down the whistleblower system empowering victims of corporate abuse to seek help from law enforcement - and to warn the public about about the abuse. Credit companies are pressing regulators to “cease publishing data."

🚨The Lever is hiring🚨 Our newsroom won the 2025 National Press Club Award - and now we are expanding. Please see the job listing here - and please pass it on to anyone you know who might be interested in applying. www.levernews.com/now-hiring-s...

🚨The Lever is hiring🚨 Amid all the media layoffs, @levernews.com is now hiring. The Lever has built a subscriber-supported award-winning newsroom doing accountability journalism. Go to our website and find the job listing - and please pass it on.

The media world’s stunned “I can’t believe it” reaction to the awful WaPo layoffs shows even now, so many in journalism implicitly assumed billionaires are going to rescue them & their industry. This is a wake up call: oligarchs are not the benevolent saviors media have long depicted them to be.

So lemme get this straight: Pizzagate fabulists worked really hard to manufacture what they thought was the most insanely dark fictional story that could ever be conjured… …and that fictional tale ended up being milder & more chill than the real stuff that actually happened in the Epstein files.

🚨NEW: Working-class households have been facing higher rates of food inflation than rich households because of corporate concentration, according to new Federal Reserve data. Corporate monopolies have been more able to reduce competition & jack up prices in poor locales.

Three years ago, a brand-name company detonated a chemical bomb in a town. It became the world’s biggest political story. Politicians got famous promising help. Media monetized clicks. Lawyers got rich. Meanwhile, many victims got sick & got no money. Welcome to America.

I decided to be vulnerable & send my favorite podcast a deeply personal question I've been struggling with - and I suspect many others are struggling with as well. I appreciate Hidden Brain airing the question and offering some really thoughtful answers. You can listen here 👇

This didn't hold up & I'm still wondering why Ezra Klein insisted on publicly declaring this a few months ago — at exactly the moment lawmakers were trying to force the release of Epstein's files. What explains the impulse to provide NYT cover for powerful people at that moment? I don’t get it.

Three years ago, a brand-name company detonated a chemical bomb in a town. It became the world’s biggest political story. Politicians got famous promising help. Media monetized clicks. Lawyers got rich. Meanwhile, many victims got sick & got no money. Welcome to America.

In different ways, both parties & their media are trying to help their donors depoliticize the Great Fleecing. They aim to make politics & elections about literally anything other than everyone being bilked every minute of every day. Why is that their goal? I try to answer that here - pass it on

when you’re so angry and disgusted with the world that you rage row 5,000 meters in less than 20 minutes at age 50 and survive to post about it afterwards

As norms-worshiping Democrats unilaterally disarm in the court wars, even the allegedly “moderate” Ezra Klein-approved Republicans are openly escalating their onslaught

After a corporation detonated a chemical bomb, politicians got famous, media got clicks, lawyers got rich, the company got legal protection... ...and the victims were left sick & poor as their town died. Never again wonder why Americans are so angry 👇 www.levernews.com/the-derailme...

The "news" is now almost 100% everything other than the unprecedented financial pillaging of 99.9% of the country at every minute of every day. Literally, this is no longer even a momentary topic of media coverage or political conversation in America. It's genuinely incredible.

Here’s a secret: You don’t need to expose your brain to “breaking news” unless it’s about events in your community right now. Your brain doesn’t need any of the other “breaking news.” Exposing yourself to it is bad for your mental & cognitive health.

🚨After the East Palestine derailment, politicians got headlines, lawyers & investors got big payouts & Norfolk Southern got a settlement protecting itself. But many victims are sick & have gotten little to nothing. A must-read on how disaster is monetized for the powerful while victims suffer👇

🚨After the East Palestine derailment, politicians got headlines, lawyers & investors got big payouts & Norfolk Southern got a settlement protecting itself. But many victims are sick & have gotten little to nothing. A must-read on how disaster is monetized for the powerful while victims suffer👇

Date night at Jokic’s first night back!

There’s that famous Tom Hanks line from A League Of Their Own about how in life “the hard is what makes it great.” Now there’s new scientific evidence that’s true — the harder something is to achieve, the more your brain rewards you when you achieve it. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

just sitting here trying to figure out which of these best represents the Democratic Party right now