Épisodes

  • BREAKING: The House Has Voted — But Can Trump Still Hide The Epstein Files?

    BREAKING: The House Has Voted — But Can Trump Still Hide The Epstein Files?
    Nov 18 2025
    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 long and brutal fight to expose the Epstein scandal. First, investigative journalist Julie K. Brown, whose reporting originally broke open the Epstein scandal, joined the podcast to explore the revelations from the newly released documents. Then, David spoke with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who’s leading the bipartisan fight to force the government to release the rest of the Epstein files — but who questions whether the Senate will sneak an escape hatch into the bill. Click here for a transcript of this episode 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    54 min
  • MONEYBOMB, Part 6: Did A Federal Judge Sink Super PACs? (With Larry Lessig)

    MONEYBOMB, Part 6: Did A Federal Judge Sink Super PACs? (With Larry Lessig)
    Nov 13 2025
    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 against Super PACs, click here. ⁠Click here⁠ to order our new book, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 min
  • MONEYBOMB, Part 5: Why Populism Is Now Centrism (With Adam Bonica)

    MONEYBOMB, Part 5: Why Populism Is Now Centrism (With Adam Bonica)
    Nov 6 2025
    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 Democracy, to discover how the labels that we use in our political system are changing — and how this week’s election results could shift the Democratic Party’s battle against corporate power and the oligarchy. For a full transcript of the episode, click here. Click here to order our new book, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    40 min
  • MONEYBOMB, Part 4: How Zohran Mamdani Beat Citizens United

    MONEYBOMB, Part 4: How Zohran Mamdani Beat Citizens United
    Nov 3 2025
    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, democracy coalition coordinator for Citizen Action of New York, and Jillian Gilchrest, a Connecticut state representative now running for Congress. For a full transcript of the episode, ⁠click here⁠. Click here to order our new book, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    41 min
  • BONUS: An Exclusive Interview With Graham Platner

    BONUS: An Exclusive Interview With Graham Platner
    Nov 1 2025
    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? As a special bonus episode, we’re releasing the unedited audio of that interview. Click here to watch the video on YouTube. Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews like this one 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    49 min
  • MONEYBOMB, Part 3: The Montana Plan To Kill Citizens United

    MONEYBOMB, Part 3: The Montana Plan To Kill Citizens United
    Oct 30 2025
    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 national politics. Could this effort deal a blow to the corporate takeover of politics? And could it blaze a path for other states to follow? Click here to order our book, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. To read more of Tom Moore’s writing about The Montana Plan, click here. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 min
  • MONEYBOMB, Part 2: The 28th Amendment (With Rep. Joe Neguse)

    MONEYBOMB, Part 2: The 28th Amendment (With Rep. Joe Neguse)
    Oct 23 2025
    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? Click here to order our book, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    41 min
  • MONEYBOMB, Part 1: JD Vance’s Supreme Court Plot

    MONEYBOMB, Part 1: JD Vance’s Supreme Court Plot
    Oct 16 2025
    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 options we have to stop them. 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 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    26 min