Lever Time

Congress has the power to stop Trump’s unpopular war in Iran — but lawmakers have never used it before. Their excuse? An obscure immigration case from 1983. In this special episode, David Sirota tells the wild story of how a Kenyan-born immigrant and a Ralph Nader-aligned lawyer unwittingly expanded the powers of the president — and left Congress believing that it’s powerless to stop unauthorized wars. 

Listen to the rest of Master Plan: The Kingmakers.

Get ad-free episodes of Master Plan and Lever Time by becoming a paid subscriber. Enjoy bonus episodes, exclusive content, and support this show...

Last week, California Democrats killed CalCare, a proposed single-payer health care bill. Will the state ever achieve its dream of universal health care? 

Tom Steyer — a gubernatorial candidate who ran ads against single-payer health care in 2020 — says he is now the Golden State’s best bet. He also wants higher taxes for the rich, stronger environmental protections, and the abolition of ICE. The catch? He’s a billionaire running a self-financed campaign. 

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager turned philanthropist, to discuss the collapse of Rep. Eric...

Tax Day sucks — confusing forms, piles of receipts, and expensive tax prep software. But it doesn’t have to be this way. A simple fix called return-free filing, proposed by Ronald Reagan decades ago, could save Americans millions of hours and billions of dollars. So who keeps shooting it down? 

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota traces the 40-year dogfight over your tax return.

Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews by becoming a member at levernews.com/join.

To leave a tip for The Lever, click here. It helps us do this...

Right now, Big Tech is mobilizing a network of super PACs with more than $100 million in the bank to influence the 2026 midterm elections. Their number-one target? One of their own: a former Palantir engineer who's running for Congress in New York’s 12th District.

On this week's episode of Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with New York Assemblymember Alex Bores to find out exactly what he did to land on the AI industry's most-wanted list.

Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews by becoming a member at ⁠levernews.com/join⁠.

To leave...

Hours-long TSA lines, air traffic controller shortages, and skyrocketing flight prices. Deadly crashes, failing safety regulations, and international threats. There’s no doubt about it: U.S. air travel has been a hot mess in 2026. How did we hit such turbulence? And how does the current crisis tie into a decades-long master plan to hold airplane safety hostage for political gain?

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Bill McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, to answer the question everyone is asking: Is it still safe to fly?

Earlier this month, FBI Director Kash Patel admitted under oath that the FBI has been buying Americans’ location information from data brokers, sidestepping traditional warrant requirements. 

Lawmakers like Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have been on the front lines trying to ban this practice, but that requires reforming FISA Section 702, one of the country’s most powerful — and least understood — surveillance laws. 

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Wyden and Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress, to ask some big questions about the executive branch’s abuse of spy powers: How has a post-9/11...

This week on Lever Time, we’re sharing an excerpt from our investigative series Master Plan: The Kingmakers. In this new season of our award-winning podcast, David Sirota and our team of journalists expose the decades-long plot to turn the president into a king. 

Visit MasterPlanPodcast.com to hear the full episode and subscribe to Master Plan: The Kingmakers.

Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews by becoming a member at levernews.com/join.

To leave a tip for The Lever, click here. It helps us do this kind of independent journalism.

When American bombs dropped on Iran, a mysterious shortwave radio station began broadcasting a list of numbers in Farsi across the globe. Reminiscent of Cold War spy communications, the broadcast raises serious questions: Where is the broadcast coming from, and who is listening to it? Is Iran sending messages to terrorist sleeper cells in the United States? And how is the Trump administration addressing these concerns, if at all? 

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Shane Harris from The Atlantic to get some answers. 

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

On February 28, the United States and Israel began bombing Iran — with no congressional declaration, public debate, or clear endgame. For those who grew up watching the Ayatollah cast as America’s original supervillain on the nightly news, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. Donald Trump pitched the idea 46 years ago. We’ve been expecting this for decades. But why?

On today’s episode of Lever Time, Iranian-born journalist Hooman Majd and Drop Site News founder Ryan Grim help us grapple with some big questions: Why has the United States long been unable — or unwilling — to make peace with Iran? Who...

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump’s tariffs were illegal, striking a blow to his favorite geopolitical strategy. The decision could make it far harder for any president to wield tariffs as a weapon, but how will the ruling affect your wallet?

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with trade expert Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project. Lori and David unpack the weaponization of trade policy, the messy reality of tariff refunds, and who will pay — or get paid — following the court’s decision...

In October, a Philadelphia man emailed an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security, criticizing a government policy. Hours later, federal agents and local police were banging on his door to interrogate him without a warrant. It feels like something out of a movie, but it's real.

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with ACLU attorney Steve Loney to ask some big questions: How are federal agencies obtaining your private data without a warrant? How are tech giants like Google enabling them? And what should you do if this happens to you?

For...

An important message about the future of The Lever's Master Plan podcast, from our host, David Sirota.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In February 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, setting off a chemical disaster. Politicians and lawyers promised justice, and the railroad company swiftly settled for a historic $600 million. 

Three years later, many victims haven’t seen a dime. Where did all that money go?

Today on Lever Time, producer Natalie Bettendorf is joined by Lever reporter Katya Schwenk, who scoured court documents and traveled to East Palestine to uncover the toxic secrets behind one of the largest disaster settlements in history.

Click here to read Katya's in-depth investigation.

G...

While one tech CEO warns that artificial intelligence could “destroy all life on Earth,” other industry giants have declared war on rules that could limit AI’s power. Their battlefield? The 2026 midterm elections.

In Part Three of What Tech Wants, Lever Time’s investigation into why Silicon Valley is buying our democracy, producer Ariella Markowitz explores Big Tech’s latest obsession — artificial intelligence — and its crusade against anyone who stands in its way.

Click here for a transcript of the episode.

To listen to the first two episodes of this series, click here.

Get ad-fr...

In 2024, the cryptocurrency industry spent more than $130 million to influence elections nationwide. Their campaign donations and lobbying efforts turned the tables for their risky boom-and-bust business, which is now poised to overtake our entire financial system.

In Part Two of What Tech Wants, Lever Time’s investigation into why Silicon Valley is buying our democracy, producer Ariella Markowitz reveals how crypto companies aligned with President Donald Trump to advance their agenda.

To listen to Part One of our series, click here.

Click here to subscribe to Molly White’s newsletter Citation Needed.

Cl...

In 2022, nonprofit neighborhood groups, backed by Silicon Valley billionaires, helped recall a progressive district attorney in San Francisco. What happened next would change the country. 

In Part One of What Tech Wants, Lever Time’s investigation into why Silicon Valley is buying our democracy, producer Ariella Markowitz uncovers how a local experiment unlocked a new formula for political power.

Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews by becoming a member at levernews.com/join.

To leave a tip for The Lever, click here. It helps us do this kind of independent journalism.

As private investment companies encroach upon youth sports, how does that hurt the players — and their families? As Lever reporter Luke Goldstein discovered, there’s more at stake than just higher prices. 

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota tells the story of how a Lever investigation into a shocking claim prompted a national outcry, one that led to a small but mighty victory against Black Bear Sports Group, one of the youth sports kingpins calling the shots.

Read Luke Goldstein’s reporting mentioned in the episode here and here. 

Click here for a full tran...

This week we’re sharing a special episode from our friends at On NOTUS, which was recently featured by Semafor and POLITICO as a must-listen podcast.

Produced by the nonpartisan newsroom NOTUS and hosted by congressional journalist Reese Gorman, On NOTUS brings on lawmakers from Capitol Hill for truly candid conversations. Each week, they go past the headlines and soundbites to hear what really makes Congressional leaders tick and what brought them to Washington in the first place. You’ll get an insider's view of the people shaping policy in the United States, from House Majority Whip Tom...

Are we wasting our talents on meaningless jobs? Should our career choices reflect our morals? Author and historian Rutger Bregman thinks so. He argues that the most talented people in America are stuck in a real-life version of the movie Office Space  — and that we should be trying to solve the world’s biggest problems instead. 

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Bregman to ask: When did we lose our moral ambition? Are we greedy, cynical, or are we just trying to escape an ever-increasing affordability crisis?  

Click here to learn about Bregman’...

2025 has been a tremendous year for the artificial intelligence industry. Stock prices for AI companies skyrocketed, soaring beyond expectations and propping up an otherwise stagnant U.S. economy. But everywhere, there’s talk of an AI bubble — one even bigger and more threatening than the 2008 housing bubble or the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s.

What makes this bubble so different? When is it likely to pop? And if it does, what does that mean for the rest of us? 

In this episode of Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Ed Zitron and Sruthi Pinna...

As parents, we’re told homicidal maniacs, drug peddlers, and creeps are lurking in every shadow, waiting to grab your children. But is that true? Is our obsession with keeping our kids safe doing more harm than good?

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota investigates the difference between good parenting and overparenting — and the political history behind our fear that kidnappers are roaming the streets. David enlists the help of author and advocate Lenore Skenazy, a champion for “free-range parenting,” who was once labeled the World’s Worst Mom when she let her child ride the New York City...

From flying to online shopping to using social media, everything seems to be getting worse. It’s all — pardon our language here — shittier.

According to today’s Lever Time guest, that’s no accident. Cory Doctorow is the author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. In this episode, Doctorow explains how enshittification works, how it’s infected our online spaces, and what we can do to stop it.

Plus, as an exclusive bonus to our paid subscribers, click here for the rest of David’s conversation with Cory Doctorow. They t...

The U.S. House just voted to force the Trump administration to release every document it has on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful associates. The move comes after Congress released 23,000 pages of Epstein emails and text messages, a data dump that references Donald Trump more than 1,500 times and has so thoroughly tarnished former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers that he’s stepped back from public commitments. Now, many more revelations are likely to come.

In this special episode of Lever Time, David Sirota sits down for a live interview with two people who’ve led the l...

Maine overwhelmingly voted last year to end Super PACs. A federal judge blocked the ballot measure — but left a kill switch inside the ruling. Larry Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School and head of the nonprofit Equal Citizens, is ready to flip that switch and take his case to the Supreme Court.

In our final episode of Lever Time’s MONEYBOMB series, David Sirota speaks with Lessig about the legal battle against Super PACs and why he believes that we can stop Citizens United without touching it.

To read more about Larry Lessig’s case a...

For the first time in the Citizens United era of billionaires and corporate money buying U.S. elections, change may be afoot. This week, Democrats campaigning on a populist message won resounding victories in the face of big-money opposition. 

An aging party establishment is still calling for Democrats to be more moderate and centrist, but what if the center has moved? What if populism is the new centrism? 

On this new episode of Lever Time’s MONEYBOMB series, David Sirota sits down with Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica, author of the newsletter On Data and Demo...

Ahead of the closely watched New York City mayoral race, everyone is looking for a lesson from progressive Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani’s rise to political stardom. The real answer may be a vastly undervalued political strategy: public money. Could public financing of elections overcome Citizens United and the flood of corporate cash and corruption in American politics?

In the latest episode of Lever Time’s MONEYBOMB series, we explore the importance of publicly funded campaigns. David Sirota speaks with two people who have had front-row seats to how public financing is combating election corruption — Karen Wharton, democr...

This week, in a special live interview, David Sirota sat down with Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner. 

Platner is a military veteran and oyster farmer who is a first-time political candidate running in the Democratic primary in the race to challenge Republican Senate incumbent Susan Collins. His rough-around-the-edges campaign has resonated with Maine’s working-class voters, sending him surging in the polls. But his past social media comments have surfaced in the last few weeks, thrusting him into controversy and pushing voters to ask: does Platner still have a shot at winning the Senate seat, and should he...

A group of Montana activists is pushing a ballot initiative attacking Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that granted corporations the right to spend unlimited money in politics. While Montana’s Republican Attorney General  attempted to block the ballot initiative this week, the fight is far from over.

In the third episode of Lever Time’s MONEYBOMB series, David Sirota sits down with political strategist Tom Moore from The Center for American Progress. That nonprofit is spearheading the Transparent Election Initiative, Montana’s new plan to purge dark money from the state, which could potentially rewrite nati...

A group of Montana activists is pushing a ballot initiative attacking Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that granted corporations the right to spend unlimited money in politics. While Montana’s Republican Attorney General  attempted to block the ballot initiative this week, the fight is far from over.

In the third episode of Lever Time’s MONEYBOMB series, David Sirota sits down with political strategist Tom Moore from The Center for American Progress. That nonprofit is spearheading the Transparent Election Initiative, Montana’s new plan to purge dark money from the state, which could potentially rewrite...

For 15 years, lawmakers have been trying — and failing — to overturn Citizens United, the landmark Supreme Court decision that allows corporations and billionaires to overrun our political system with money. Now, some Congressional Democrats are going big — by trying to enshrine campaign finance protections in the Constitution.

In the second episode of Lever Time’s MONEYBOMB series, David Sirota sits down with Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), cosponsor of the new Citizens Over Corporations Act, which would introduce a Constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling. Does the effort have a real shot at fixing our democracy crisis?

Cl...

Most Americans want to overturn Citizens United v. FEC, the landmark 2010 Supreme Court decision that unleashed unlimited corporate spending on U.S. elections. But two new cases before the high court — including one spearheaded by now-Vice President JD Vance — are instead set to expand that ruling and turn America into a kleptocracy.

For the next several episodes of Lever Time, we’re taking a deep dive into Citizens United and how it’s transformed our lives. In this first episode, David Sirota uncovers conservatives’ plan to deregulate the campaign finance system, their efforts to legalize bribery, and what optio...

Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment have drawn the ire of consumers — and the Federal Trade Commission — for exorbitant ticket prices, misleading hidden fees, and shady resale tactics.  

But losing your right to sue Ticketmaster or join a class action lawsuit is now just a click away. Hiding in the company’s new terms-of-use agreement, The Lever found a clause that forces ticket buyers into arbitration, a private judicial system rigged in favor of the company.

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with The Lever’s Luke Goldstein and anti-monopoly attorney David Sel...

While media giants cave to frivolous Trump libel lawsuits and muzzle late-night hosts who step out of line, CBS News’ parent company has announced that the billionaire-backed conservative provocateur Bari Weiss will be the network’s new editor-in-chief.

Today on Lever Time, we’re going back in time to understand how we arrived at this present-day media hellscape. Who set this plan into motion, and how do we fight back?

Click here to pre-order our new book, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America.

Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extend...

Getting a home mortgage used to take weeks of phone calls and paperwork. Now, real estate search platforms like Zillow and Redfin offer comprehensive, nearly one-click homebuying. What are the hidden costs of trusting these industry giants with every step of the process?

Today on Lever Time, producer Natalie Bettendorf speaks with Lever reporter Helen Santoro about her investigation into how these one-stop real estate shops may actually be hurting homebuyers — and the U.S. economy.

You can read Helen’s story here, and a follow-up story here.

Click here for a full tran...

Last week, President Donald Trump dramatically altered the U.S. government’s approach to domestic terrorism. NSPM-7, a little-noticed national security directive, expands the list of terrorism indicators to include any behavior that is deemed anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, extreme on gender, hostile towards “traditional American views” on family, and more. 

Today on Lever Time, producer Ariella Markowitz sits down with independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein, who first sounded the alarm about the memorandum’s ability to suppress free speech and target Trump’s political opponents.

To check out Ken Klippenstein’s reporting on the new directive, cl...

In the first nine months of his second term, President Donald Trump has filed more than 200 executive orders. State attorneys general are filing lawsuits to block the Trump administration’s blatant power grabs, but will our legal system prove strong enough to save American democracy?

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota speaks with Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), who has sued the Trump administration dozens of times, for an on-the-ground look at the battle to stop the Trump agenda.

Click here for a full transcript of the episode.

Get ad-free episodes, bonu...

President Donald Trump says that U.S. violent crime has spiraled so far out of control that he needs to send troops into Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Memphis. But is that really true? 

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota speaks with Alec Karakatsanis, award-winning civil rights lawyer and author of the book Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, about how government officials are manufacturing fear to justify authoritarian rule.

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota talks with bestselling author Bill McKibben, who says the solar energy revolution has reached a tipping point and is now poised to reshape our world.

Click here to learn about Sun Day, a nationwide action this Sunday, Sept. 21, to celebrate and advocate for solar power.

To check out McKibben’s new book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, click here.

Click here for a full transcript of the episode.

To leave a tip for The Le...

First, they cancelled Stephen Colbert; now they’ve pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air. The common denominator? Corporate power.

On today’s episode of Lever Time, David Sirota talks with media-consolidation expert Craig Aaron and monopoly authority Matt Stoller about how media corporations are transforming the news and information environment to curry favor with the Trump administration. Where is this all heading? Are our most basic freedoms going to survive? 

Click here for a full transcript of the episode.

The kind of accountability journalism that The Lever does every single day is under assau...

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota speaks with Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary and economics professor, about what he’s learned from working in multiple presidential administrations, where he believes that American politics went wrong, and what the Democratic Party needs to do to save itself — and the country.

Click here for more of this interview, in which Reich explains how the Baby Boomer generation failed America.

You can check out Reich’s new memoir, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, here. 

Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews by becomin...