🔥 New in The Lever: Which corporate Democrat is cosplaying as progressive?

👇 Further down in this newsletter:

• New data from the Low-Wage 100.
• Which state is keeping Big Tech’s secrets?
• CBS’ clear-cut Islamophobia.

SPONSORED

Political campaigns buy personal data from brokers to build precision profiles on voters. That same data gets picked up by scammers running fake donation and voter-registration schemes. Your information doesn't disappear after election day — it gets resold and repurposed indefinitely. Incogni removes your data from these brokers, so you stop being a profile for sale. Get 55% off with code LEVER.

Try it out.

In a hurry? These are the top stories in the country today. 

👀 Corporations who’ve aligned themselves with the Trump administration are looking to curry favor with Democrats, suspecting they could be investigated should the House flip in November.

🤖 President Donald Trump spoke out in support of data centers, saying that U.S. communities should “let Data Reign” — or risk ending up “backwards and poor.” 

🚨 ICE targeted people with no criminal records as part of a surge in new arrests, according to government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project.

Race to the bottom. CEOs at the 100 lowest-paying corporations on the S&P 500 saw their average compensation increase 41 percent between 2019 and 2025, while their workers’ median pay rose only 20 percent. For reference, the inflation rate for this period was 26 percent. A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies finds that the average worker at companies on the “Low-Wage 100” made $36,571 in 2025 — less than one percent of CEOs’ $17.5 million pay average. The average CEO-median worker pay ratio at these firms was 614-to-1 in 2025, compared to 574-to-1 in 2019. At least 36 billionaires owe their massive wealth to companies on the Low-Wage 100 — including Walmart, DoorDash, Tyson Foods, Estee Lauder, and Carvana. 

💸 During this time, the Low-Wage 100 approved more than $718 billion in stock repurchases — a common ploy to enrich top shareholders, including CEOs, who often receive a big portion of their compensation in stock awards. 

☝️ A 2024 survey of likely voters indicated 80 percent at least somewhat supported a policy that would raise taxes on companies that have a CEO-median worker pay ratio of more than 50-to-1. 

Corporate media check. Trump-allied CBS News is tying a high-profile Muslim Senate candidate to 9/11 and demanding he answer for past comments. In what appears to be a case of Islamophobia, CBS News tweeted an article detailing Michigan candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s (D) past remarks on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with the caption, “As the nation prepares to mark 25 years since Sept. 11, 2001, Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, may be facing the risk of renewed scrutiny and fresh political attack.” In the accompanying article, CBS scrutinizes a now-deleted post from El-Sayed made on September 11, 2021, where he said this: "Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I'll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country."

🤔 CBS also mentioned unrelated statements made by El-Sayed during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which he compared virus death tolls to the September 11 attacks while arguing for a comprehensive federal response plan. 

💬 “Abdul has always unequivocally condemned terrorism and the September 11 attacks,” a spokesperson for his campaign told CBS recently. “Mike Rogers'’attempts to misrepresent Abdul’s beliefs are bad-faith lies meant to mislead Michiganders.”

🍊 Reminder: CBS was purchased by Trump administration allies Larry and David Ellison and is now helmed by Bari Weiss, a right-leaning political commentator.

Secrets kept. Data center backlash has hit Michigan’s pivotal U.S. Senate race, pushing Republican candidate former Rep. Mike Rogers to flip and offer a late-stage endorsement of a statewide construction pause on the controversial projects. However, new reporting in The Detroit News is shining light on how lawmakers in the state representing both parties have deferred to Big Tech when it comes to data center projects: In 2024, just months before Michigan Democrats lost power of the state House, they expanded special data center tax breaks, creating a “tax-free runway” for the state’s largest data center projects until 2050. The law also contained a provision blocking the Michigan Economic Development Corporation from disclosing information about which companies are using these tax exemptions — leaving the public completely in the dark. 

🤔 A pro-data center Michigan Democrat who helped pass the 2024 legislation told The Detroit News that he was “unaware” of the non-disclosure provision at the time of the law’s passing. “At this point, I think what we need to do is make sure this whole process is as transparent for people as possible,” said state Rep. Joey Andrews. 

💰 Even before the 2024 law was passed, companies in Michigan made tax-free purchases on $212 million worth of data center equipment in the previous four years. Companies that have taken advantage of the sales tax break include those that previously lobbied Michigan state lawmakers on data centers and other issues, like Google. 

👺 Across the country, Big Tech has used non-disclosure agreements, shell companies, and other tools to keep details of their data center plans hidden from the public.

Workers’ share of the pie keeps getting smaller. (Financial Times)

Truth to power. Senate Democrats will reportedly soon force a vote on a resolution that would order the Trump administration to hand over information about Israel’s human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and 10 other Democrats introduced the legislation, which centers on at least nine U.S. citizens killed in the West Bank since 2022. That includes the high-profile assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who was shot by an Israeli soldier in 2022, even though she was wearing a visible press vest. The Israel Defense Forces apologized for her death but did not cooperate with the U.S. government's investigation.

🚨 “We’ve seen ongoing human rights violations on the West Bank, but we’re going from bad to abysmal,” Van Hollen told The New York Times. In 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is breaking the law by allowing settlement activity in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.  

🐜 Bug life. A National Geographic photographer spent three years following giant anteaters in Brazil to document the threats they face from urbanization.

🛸 I want to believe. Nearly 80 percent of Americans believe the U.S. government knows more about UFOs than it’s telling the public, the highest percentage on record, according to Gallup.

🎮 Playing hooky. Corporate productivity is set to take a hit this November, as gaming enthusiasts across the country plan to use their vacation days to stay home and play Grand Theft Auto VI, the popular franchise’s first new release in 13 years.

Max Rose, the pugnacious former Democratic congressman from Staten Island, has been a frequent guest on cable news this election cycle, touting the success of moderate candidates in this year’s Democratic primaries like Luke Bronin in Connecticut’s First Congressional District and Cait Conley in New York’s 17th District. 

“These are each instances of phenomenal public servants, phenomenal records… It’s do you have new ideas, are you willing to shake up the system,” said Rose, a self-described “old-school Democrat,” during a recent appearance on MSNOW. 

These candidates have something else in common: They were lifted to success over progressive opponents with millions of dollars in spending from VoteVets, an influential veteran-focused political network where Rose serves as a top adviser. Rose, an Army veteran, joined the organization by 2024 after a stint in the private sector following his unsuccessful 2020 reelection bid. 

Less well known, however, is Rose’s dual role as an operative for the artificial intelligence industry — a position never disclosed in his television appearances or in the op-ed pages where he pens defenses of Silicon Valley. 

First reported by The New York Times in May, Rose has been an adviser to Leading the Future, a new organization launched in 2025 with the backing of AI executives to fend off industry regulation. The group’s top donors include OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of the AI-focused venture capital heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz, and software giant Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale. Andreessen and Lonsdale are prominent supporters of President Donald Trump and have mostly contributed to Republican candidates. 

“The revolving door between the Democratic establishment and corporate lobbies that are literally raising our utility bills and bankrolling Trump embodies the political corruption voters are fed up with,” said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, an advocacy group focused on electing progressive candidates. 

The Leading the Future network has raised a whopping $75 million and has deployed its financial firepower in both Democratic and Republican primaries to knock off candidates perceived as too adversarial to the tech industry in favor of those promoting lighter-touch regulations. 

Most notably, the PAC, through its affiliated Democratic spending arm Think Big, spent nearly $8 million to defeat Alex Bores, a congressional candidate for New York’s 12th Congressional District, who sponsored AI safety legislation as a state lawmaker and made tech regulation a key plank of his campaign platform. In the race for Massachusetts’ open 6th congressional seat, Think Big has dropped nearly $700,000 on television ads to back Dan Koh, a former Biden White House official. 

The playbook is modeled on the cryptocurrency industry’s warpath in recent election cycles, in which crypto-affiliated groups spent massive sums to defeat foes of their preferred policies. The most prominent example was the crypto PACs’ successful effort to oust former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in 2024 by dropping $40 million on the race. In fact, Josh Vlasto, the head of Leading the Future, was the chief spokesperson for Fairshake, the crypto industry’s super PAC, and still serves as an adviser.

Rose is no stranger to such tech matters. As the chair of the House Counterterrorism Subcommittee in 2019, he oversaw certain AI policy issues related to national security and convened a hearing with tech executives focused on the use of AI by social media sites to take down terrorist content. 

In the hearing, Rose expressed skepticism about the technology’s capabilities, at least in the realm of content moderation: “We’ve been approached by the social media companies with this libertarian, technocratic elitism that’s highly, highly disturbing and it centers around the claim that AI can accomplish everything.”

Now, as an adviser to Leading the Future, Rose has apparently shifted on his views on the technology, warning lawmakers not to dismiss artificial intelligence’s potential. 

“The last consumer tech generation optimized for clicks and attention,” Rose wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Reporter, a right-wing news outlet that did not disclose the author’s ties to the industry. “AI is being applied to problems we have actually wanted technology to solve.”

Leading the Future could also have tapped Rose to fortify the AI industry’s ties to the Democratic Party’s top brass, especially since in Rose’s role at VoteVets, he’s closely aligned with the party establishment. 

VoteVets has amassed a $20 million war chest for political spending this cycle and has intervened in Democratic primaries, often alongside the spending vehicles affiliated with Democratic Party leadership. The group has donor and organizational ties to a new dark money “party within a party” pushing Democrats to the “moderate” middle.

Another operative at VoteVets, Peter Kauffmann, also has corporate ties, serving both as a vice chair at the PAC and as the lead spokesperson for an Astroturf lobbying operation at the behest of Wall Street banks and credit card companies.

Under Rose’s watch, VoteVets and Leading the Future have rarely lined up on the same side in a Democratic race, but both organizations’ billionaire donors share financial interests. 

Among VoteVets’ largest individual contributors this year is Stephen Mandel, a hedge fund executive whose portfolio is heavily invested in the buildout of data centers to power the AI boom. Several of VoteVets’ endorsed candidates have staked out middle-of-the-road positions on regulating artificial intelligence compared to their progressive counterparts. 

VoteVets has only occasionally waded into AI policy issues, for instance opposing the use of “error-prone AI tools” at the Department of Veterans Affairs to make up for staff cuts under the Trump administration. 

As an official at VoteVets, Rose has modified his antagonism toward the left. As a member of both the centrist Problem Solvers Caucus and the more conservative Blue Dog Caucus, Rose frequently sparred with the progressive “squad” members of the House, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and in 2019, publicly challenged the “socialist” wing of the party to try to primary him.

This year, however, as Democratic primary voters have shifted left and moved against the party’s establishment, Rose has struck a different tone: “It’s not left versus middle. It’s not progressive versus moderate… that’s how we’re seeing the transformation of the Democratic Party,” said Rose on MSNOW. 

“Just like voters now have to question whether spending from groups like EMILYs List or the Blue Dogs is actually just the Israel lobby using them as a pass-through, every voter is now forced to question whether VoteVets-backed candidates are also the choice of the pro-Trump AI lobby,” said Andrabi of Justice Democrats. 

Neither Rose nor VoteVets responded to a request for comment from The Lever.

This is Lever Weekly, a recap of our work from the past week. If you only read one email from us all week, this should be it.

Here’s what The Lever published this week:

Nevada Governor Backed Data Centers Days After $1 Million Donation. AI-linked donors poured $2 million into Republican Joe Lombardo’s reelection campaign as he championed data centers that could consume enough water for 150,000 households.

The Democratic Primary Operative With A Wall Street Side Gig. Peter Kauffmann helps lead a billionaire-funded network intervening in Democratic primaries — while representing a front group fighting to keep your credit fees high.

Private Prison Giant Gave Trump-aligned Super PAC $1.4 Million After Landing Mega ICE Contracts. GEO Group made the donation weeks after securing two five-year immigration detention-center contracts expected to generate more than $160 million annually.

This Senate Candidate Tried To Let His Future Employer Spy On You. Mike Rogers took thousands from AT&T, pushed to let telecoms share private customer data without a warrant, then joined the company as a security adviser.

American Beef Is On The Chopping Block. Trump has a 300,000-ton cattle problem. Plus, a federal judge tells Texans offended by drag shows: “Just don’t go.”

Democrats Want A Break From Israel. Key Democratic voters want a 2028 presidential candidate who will cut off military aid to Israel.

Hollywood’s Hangover. The $111 billion merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery could cause thousands of workers to lose their jobs, according to new research.

The Billionaire Building The Democrats’ New Machine. We peel back the curtain on one billionaire’s effort to move the Democratic Party more to the center during this midterm season and the upcoming presidential season.

Your weekly essential midterms update from The Lever newsroom. Midterm Madness brings you the races worth watching, the money trails worth following, the numbers that cut through the spin, and the campaign moments that say more than the official talking points ever will. 

Every Wednesday, paid subscribers get essential election updates, reporting, and insights like:

• The YouTuber unraveling Michigan’s Senate race.
• House leadership’s “screw-you” to Democratic voters.
• The candidate who can’t stop putting her foot in her mouth.

Why is meat so expensive? Who’s pouring herself a cup of ambition? And who is Hasan Piker anyway?

The answers to these questions and many more can be found in LeverMind, our weekly news quiz for paid subscribers that tests your knowledge of the developments that really matter — and who needs to be held accountable.

Find out if you’re a true LeverMind:

Every week, You Love To See It rounds up important policy wins, environmental victories, and social initiatives improving people’s lives, exclusively for paid subscribers. 

A taste of this week’s good news:

• Meta loses its screen privileges
• A toxic weedkiller is toast
• Voters block a cash grab
• Trump’s trans-record heist hits a wall

Lever Leaders provide our highest level of support and receive additional perks in return, including a yearly gift subscription for friends and family, access to an exclusive Lever staff meeting for a sneak peek at our future plans, and an annual gift of limited-edition Lever merchandise.

Join readers like Paul K., who had this to say about becoming a Lever Leader:

“I want to rock the boat.”

Washington Post — David Sirota authored a piece for the publication on how Bernie Sanders reminds him of Barry Goldwater.

Newsweek — In its coverage of the brewing political war over AI data centers, the outlet noted how a major Senate candidate flipped his stance on the matter after we exposed his financial ties to the industry.

• Newsmax and Canary Media also noted the candidate flip-flop following our coverage.

Inequality Watch — Sirota appeared on The Real News Network program to discuss how legalized political corruption is shaping Democratic politics.

Robert Reich — The political commentator highlighted our reporting on a private prison giant boosting President Donald Trump’s war chest after scoring major ICE contracts.

Good things are happening! Meta gets a very expensive timeout, regulators kill a killer weedkiller, big money gets the cold shoulder, and Trump’s trans-care crackdown gets blocked.

Meta Gets Grounded

It’s been well established: social media is addictive. Users are inundated in a frenzy of apps, ads, and notifications that even Google has acknowledged is disruptive to daily life — while still trying to sell you its latest smartphone.

That’s why 47 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories have gone after Meta, the parent company of Facebook. Earlier this month, the coalition took the corporation to court, suing the company for allegedly running a business model predicated on keeping young users addicted. One of their witnesses, for example, was a former employee who described an unofficial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward accounts they believed were held by children under 13.

On Aug. 26, Meta agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion to settle the matter, $12 billion of which will be paid out immediately. The rest is to be paid out if attorneys general successfully reach settlements with other social media giants: YouTube, TikTok, and Snap. It’s the largest settlement a tech company has ever reached with states.

The settlement is only a fraction of the $200 billion some states in the coalition were expected to demand from the federal trial. Along with financial penalties, Meta agreed to limit how teens can use its social media apps, including by hiding “likes” of their posts and limiting teen usage to two hours a day and only between 6 a.m. and midnight.

In a statement, Meta asked other social media companies to follow suit: “These protections will only be truly effective if we work with our peers — TikTok and YouTube — to put the same measures in place.”

Attorneys general had already scored wins against the social media behemoth in California, Texas and New Mexico, where Meta was forced to pay roughly $2 billion in total after judges ruled that the company had exposed children to addictive content and predators. 

Accountability You Can Wear

Check out The Lever’s merch. Every purchase supports holding the powerful accountable through the tireless independent journalism that corporate media will not do. Free shipping on all orders.

Shop Now

Weed It And Weep

Paraquat is a dangerous toxin banned in more than 70 countries. Exposure has been found to increase one’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and has been potentially linked to birth defects. When it’s ingested, it can be fatal to humans. It’s also sprayed on untold acres of U.S. crops each year.

But while the Environmental Protection Agency slow-rolls a review of paraquat’s risks, more than a dozen states are now considering restricting the herbicide. In May, Vermont became the first state to ban paraquat. And on Aug. 10, California said it would also phase it out.

California’s announcement is significant because it is the country’s top paraquat producer and consumer. Studies have shown California’s Central Valley — where herbicide use is heavily concentrated — has a higher rate of Parkinson’s than elsewhere in the state.

Unlike Vermont, which passed a law banning paraquat, California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation announced that all paraquat manufacturers had agreed not to renew their product registration, meaning they will no longer be able to sell the herbicide in the state. Those with leftover stock can only sell it for two years, effectively ending its use in the state.

One of the largest producers of paraquat, a Chinese company called Syngenta, has faced thousands of lawsuits accusing it of failing to warn customers about the toxin’s risks. Earlier this year, Syngenta said it had ceased production of paraquat entirely.

Alaska Ends A Political Gold Rush

Since 2021, Alaska’s campaign finance laws have been plagued by a debilitating loophole. That year, a federal judge declared that the state’s limits on how much people could contribute to campaigns — $500 a year — were too low. In response, the state’s Public Offices Commission eliminated all limits on donations to state-level political candidates. The move opened the floodgates for candidates to potentially receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from just a handful of donors.

Now, Alaskans have decided to do something about it. On Aug. 18, voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum to reinstate donation limits. Next season, donors won’t be able to give a candidate more than $2,000 per two-year election cycle. The cap does not affect independent expenditures from labor unions or political action committees, which are still allowed to collect unlimited amounts of money under the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision.

The referendum defies the wishes of Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R), who vetoed a bill last month that would have implemented the same caps.

Campaign finance reform advocates say the rule was sorely needed. Together, Alaska’s gubernatorial primary candidates raised nearly $9 million this primary season, much of it from a handful of donors. No candidate has raised more than Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D), who advanced as one of two Democratic candidates in the general election. He collected more than a million dollars from non-Alaskan donors who gave at least $10,000 to his campaign.

Alaska’s problem was not unique. Nearly a dozen states allow unlimited donations to political campaigns, while some states have very high donation caps. California, for example, allows $39,200 in individual contributions to gubernatorial candidates per race.

New Jersey To Trump: Fuggedaboutit

The Trump administration and its allies are making no pretenses about their efforts to limit transgender children’s access to healthcare. The federal government has forced clinics providing gender-affirming care to shut down and demanded trans children’s medical records. Texas Republicans have also demanded youths’ and abortion patients’ medical records — even those held by out-of-state providers.

On Aug. 20, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed legislation shielding her constituents from such efforts. The law makes it a criminal offense to interfere with reproductive or transgender healthcare and blocks law enforcement from helping out-of-state operations extradite their providers or patients.

Sherrill’s signature arrived on the same day that the Human Rights Campaign Foundation published an analysis finding that one in three Americans under 25 now identify as LGBTQ+ and 12 percent of older Americans identify similarly. The study also found that one in 43 of American adults now identify as transgender or gender-expansive, more than double what a Gallup poll found earlier this year.

The New Jersey law follows a related measure passed in Illinois earlier this year that protected the medical records of out-of-state patients seeking abortions in the state who were at risk of regulatory retaliation in their home states.

It’s not the only recent roadblock for the Trump administration’s attempts to target providers who treat transgender youths. On Aug. 26, a federal court denied the Trump administration’s appeal of a federal court decision stopping the Department of Justice from subpoenaing transgender youths’ medical records. At least eight other federal district courts have prevented the Trump administration from seizing transgender youths’ records.

In the race to secure the Democratic ticket for Massachusetts’ upcoming Senate race, Rep. Seth Moulton has put out a not-so-subtle call for ads targeting “voters under 40” highlighting that he’s “one of Massachusetts’ rising progressive stars” and a “next generation progressive fighter who supports abolishing ICE, taxing the rich and health care for all.”

Beyond raising legal questions about prohibited coordination between campaigns and outside groups, the brazen appeal is a reinvention for a six-term congressman who said last year that progressive populism is “great for Democrats if we want to continue losing.” 

A review of Moulton’s donors, investments, and voting record also suggests his new branding is at odds with his political history. Progressive standard bearers say Moulton’s pivot is an example of establishment Democrats attempting to capitalize on their base’s leftward shift and fool voters into supporting them over actual progressive candidates.

“We’ve seen this in the wake of Sen. [Bernie] Sanders’ presidential campaigns, where you have a lot of establishment consulting firms or elected officials painting themselves with that brush in an effort to appeal to progressive voters, but it’s a smokescreen,” said Robert Dempsey, national political director of Our Revolution, a progressive organization founded as a continuation of Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign. “It’s not real. It’s disingenuous, and voters see right through that.”

Moulton, who has represented the congressional district just north of Boston for 11 years, has raked in more than $1.7 million in campaign donations from private equity, Wall Street, healthcare industry, and tech donors this election cycle. What’s more, a Wall Street-funded super PAC supporting Moulton has spent at least $5.4 million boosting his campaign and opposing incumbent candidate Sen. Ed Markey, according to news outlet Sludge. 

A Lever analysis of Moulton’s voting records also shows that he has routinely voted to pass legislation favorable to the cryptocurrency industry, continue weapons sales to Israel amid the genocide in Gaza, and extend warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications in 2024. He has since flipped his positions on Israel aid and warrantless surveillance. The congressman also faced recent scrutiny over his investments in nonpublic companies with federal contracts. 

Additionally, he made disparaging comments about trans athletes, telling The New York Times in November 2024 that he doesn’t want his two daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” He has since apologized for the comment. 

In comparison, Markey, Moulton’s opponent, coauthored the Green New Deal and has the backing of prominent progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Markey also cosponsored a bill in 2025 that would close a tax loophole exploited by private equity and hedge fund managers to avoid taxes on certain types of compensation. (According to Sludge, Moulton has never cosponsored such private equity tax reforms.) 

Despite how Moulton would like outside spending groups to depict him, his voting record and campaign donors are telling “Massachusetts voters exactly who he is,” said Cam Charbonnier, Markey’s campaign manager.

“Seth Moulton’s election-year reinvention as a progressive would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical,” Charbonnier told The Lever. “After years of positioning himself as a corporate-friendly moderate and attacking the progressive movement, he is now being propped up by millions from corporate PACs, private equity investors, and wealthy financiers.”

The Moulton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The Thin Red Line

On Monday, August 24, Moulton’s “Media Info” page was updated with a message, framed in red, stating that “Likely Primary Election voters across Massachusetts… need to see on TV, cable and especially digital that after 50 years in Washington, Ed Markey decided to run again — at 80, for a six-year term — rather than pass the torch to one of Massachusetts’ rising progressive stars.”

The message also includes links to media-friendly photos and video B-roll of Moulton.

The note might seem puzzling to the average voter perusing Moulton’s website, but experts say the message is an example of a legally dubious campaign finance loophole used by campaigns and political action committees to skirt campaign finance laws barring the two entities from coordinating. 

The tactic, called “redboxing,” involves a campaign posting video footage, demographic targets, and messaging on its website in hopes that an outside group runs advertising amplifying the message. In this instance, Advance Progress, a super PAC largely funded by private equity interests that is supporting Moulton, has run at least two ads, featuring materials posted on Moulton’s website. The ads call on Markey to “pass the torch” to Moulton, “the kind of progressive Democrat we need now” who’ll “take on ICE and make billionaires pay their fair share.”

Beyond the tactic raising legal questions, it is part of a “troubling trend” by super PACs, dark money groups, and wealthy donors to influence elections, said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel for ethics at the campaign watchdog Campaign Legal Center.

“[Redboxing] runs the risk of the candidate becoming beholden to the donors who are supporting that ad, and those donors don’t necessarily represent the views of the American public,” Ports told The Lever. “This trend the [Federal Election Commission] has of not policing coordination drowns out the voice of everyday voters, and that’s why this is really troubling to see this much coordination happening and to see super PACs and the special interest donors behind them almost become like an integrated part of candidates’ campaigns.”

The 2022 midterms saw more than 200 candidates use this tactic, and many candidates in the current midterm election cycle have also employed the strategy.

Moulton’s own PACs have received funding from other individuals working in hedge funds and venture capital firms, as well as from PACs affiliated with weapons contractors RTX, Honeywell, and Leidos. 

Hold Them Accountable With A Donation. Give a one-time donation in any amount to fund The Lever‘s mission to hold the powerful accountable through reader-supported investigative journalism. Every cent helps.

Make A One-Time Donation Now

He has also received more than $54,000 from individuals and PACs affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying and campaign donation group, according to campaign watchdog OpenSecrets. Candidates’ willingness to accept AIPAC donations has become a core issue for many progressive voters because of the group’s support for Israel’s ongoing military actions in Palestine.

These campaign donations and Moulton’s voting record make him unfit to call himself a progressive, said Jonathan Cohn, policy director with the statewide grassroots organization Progressive Mass.

“Seth has done a fascinating job of trying to rebrand himself as progressive this cycle,” Cohn told The Lever. “[Moulton] doesn’t ever really actually hit on the big problem over the past few decades of the Democratic Party’s movement away from thinking about how the government can positively intervene to improve people’s everyday lives.”

Cohn said that progressive candidates need to support core issues at the center of the progressive movement, like taxing the rich and providing universal public services, such as Medicare for All. Dempsey, with Our Revolution, added that progressive candidates need to support increasing the minimum wage, expanding union protections, and holding people in power accountable. 

Dempsey said that if Moulton wants to call himself a progressive, then he needs to support reining in “out-of-control spending” by the Defense Department and getting money out of politics. 

“I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope for that, seeing how he has benefited greatly from the dark money spending that we see dominating American politics now,” Dempsey said. “It’s really frustrating to see moderate corporate Democrats call themselves progressives in an attempt to fool voters.”

In November 2025, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pulled an about-face on climate policy that caused a furor among the state’s environmentalists. 

Once an opponent of new fossil fuel infrastructure, the governor announced she would approve a new Trump-backed gas pipeline project that had previously been rejected by state officials. She called the new strategy an “all of the above” approach to energy, invoking voter concerns about “grid reliability and affordability.”

What Hochul didn’t say was that her new posture came weeks after her office met with a gas industry front group funded and deeply tied to the company behind the long-delayed pipeline project, according to industry materials reviewed by The Lever.

At a fossil fuel industry conference in April, the pipeline-backed group Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future took credit for Hochul’s change of heart, boasting of “high-level engagement” with her office. According to the group’s executive director, Susan Waller, Natural Allies provided the governor’s office with in-house polling on New Yorkers’ views on natural gas shortly before Hochul’s announcement.

“They had their pollsters call our pollster and sit down and go through it,” Waller told a crowd of fossil fuel executives and lobbyists. “And within a very short time — weeks — Kathy Hochul went with all of the above.”

Natural Allies is a public relations group for the gas industry, created in the wake of nationwide pipeline protests in the 2010s and backed by powerful fossil fuel companies and utilities. Its political target for years, setting it apart from other tendrils of the fossil fuel industry, has been Democrats. 

According to slides and audio of Waller’s presentation reviewed by The Lever, Hochul’s flip-flop marked a victory for Natural Allies and its corporate benefactors’ aggressive 2026 political strategy amid changing headwinds in the Democratic Party: “Leveraging concern about affordability to change the politics around natural gas.”

The materials provide an inside look into how pipeline companies and fossil fuel interests, eyeing the fault lines running through the Democratic Party, are trying to quell the party’s burgeoning populist wing, win the support of establishment actors like Hochul, and build, in their words, a “bulwark against the far-left.”

Billions of dollars of gas pipeline infrastructure, potentially running through hundreds of miles of wetlands, forests, and private property, are at stake. One of Natural Allies’ primary bankrollers, Williams Companies, is trying to advance two pipeline projects in New York, including the pipeline that Hochul greenlit last year, the Northeast Supply Enhancement pipeline. The projects are backed by President Donald Trump, who has also put pressure on the governor to move them forward.

Waller’s presentation provides a rare inside look into Natural Allies’ campaign. The April workshop in Norfolk, Virginia, was hosted by the ONE Future Coalition, a consortium of some of the nation’s largest gas companies. Natural Allies’ slides unmask previously unknown operators within the group’s cadre of former lawmakers, governors and party leaders, all of whom are targeting officials and voters to win support for gas. And the materials reveal the next states and politicians that the gas industry plans to target in its efforts to exploit the divisions plaguing the Democratic Party.

“There’s a big fight happening right now within the Democratic Party about how to talk about climate change, how to talk about energy issues,” said Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Clearly the gas industry sees an opening to push their toxic product and make money in the process.”

In response to The Lever’s questions about the meeting, a spokesperson for Hochul said that the governor’s “top priority is keeping the lights on and costs down for all New Yorkers” and that “the only thing that drives her decisions is what’s best for New Yorkers.”

The spokesperson added, “We don’t comment on private meetings, but it’s not uncommon for the Governor’s office to meet with those on both sides of many critical issues.”

The Lever also sent Natural Allies detailed questions about Waller’s presentation and its 2026 ground game. 

“Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future is and always has been an advocate for a balanced energy mix that delivers affordability, reliability, and emissions reductions,” wrote a Natural Allies spokesperson in reply. 

Changing The Narrative

For decades, public relations has been central to the gas industry’s playbook. The industry has long exploited the term “natural gas” to help sell fossil fuel as a more environmentally friendly alternative to coal, and to conceal from consumers that natural gas is largely methane, a pollutant and powerful greenhouse gas. 

In the 1970s, one of the primary purveyors of the myth of clean natural gas was the Gas Research Institute, a think tank and research and development operation backed by pipeline companies and utilities. Though its bankrollers had an obvious financial interest in gas, the Gas Research Institute maintained a veneer of independence. In internal documents, the group boasted that it was viewed “not as a lobbying group but as an objective and reliable information source.” 

As a report last month by the investigative nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity exposed, the gas industry used the think tank to launder the industry’s reputation, disseminating reports describing gas as the “cleanest form” of energy and rejecting concerns about its impact on indoor air quality. 

That information war continued even as evidence mounted that methane emissions carried serious climate and health risks. Over time, the industry began to present natural gas as a “bridge” fuel that would aid in the transition to renewables, even while many of those same fossil fuel interests lobbied against that transition. While the Gas Research Institute was absorbed into another gas industry group in 2000, the natural gas lobby carried the torch.

LIsten TO Master Plan Now

Master Plan: The Kingmakers, uncovers the decades-long plot to build an all-powerful American presidency. From Richard Nixon’s downfall to Ronald Reagan’s legal revolution, Dick Cheney’s post-9/11 power grab to the the radical blueprint of Project 2025, the series traces how a fringe legal theory — the unitary executive — has been used to manipulate the machinery of the U.S. government.

Listen to the new season now.

But in the 2010s, as the climate movement gained momentum and mass protests erupted over oil and gas pipelines, the gas industry faced a larger-scale crisis of public opinion.

By Waller’s telling at the April conference, the solution began with a call between JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Alan Armstrong, then the executive chairman of Williams Companies, based in Oklahoma. (Earlier this year, Armstrong was appointed U.S. senator for the state.)  

“[Dimon] told Alan… ‘why doesn’t Williams have some way of communicating to people to tell them how important natural gas is?’” Waller explained. “‘You guys are a hell of a good pipeline operator, but you just are horrible when it comes to advocating for your business.’”

This was the inception of Natural Allies, which was established at a 2020 trade association meeting some time after this call. “All of these CEOs got together, they stacked hands, and they formed our group,” Waller said. 

A representative for Armstrong, a Natural Allies cofounder, confirmed the anecdote. “For context, Dimon questioned why the entire natural gas industry didn’t invest more in telling the great story it had to tell about low-cost and abundant energy,” a staffer at his Senate office wrote in an email to The Lever. 

When The Lever sought comment from Dimon, a JPMorganChase spokesperson wrote in reply that the company was “not involved in the activities of Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future.”

Alongside Williams Companies, Natural Allies’ “foundational members” include Quanta Services, Inc, TC Energy, and EQT, all of which are in the business of natural gas production and infrastructure. Other backers include Canadian pipeline company Enbridge and gas utility and energy company National Fuel.

When Waller joined Natural Allies in 2020 as executive director, she may already have understood the importance of a strengthened public relations arm for the gas industry. She previously worked at Enbridge, focusing on outreach and “stakeholder engagement.” During her tenure at the company, from 2017 to 2020, Enbridge faced mounting protests over its expansion of Line 3, a crude oil pipeline running from Alberta, Canada, to Wisconsin, cutting through Indigenous land. 

Enbridge’s tactics during the protests, including payments to local police, garnered national scrutiny.

“Our vision is to change the narrative on energy,” Waller told her audience in April. “We really want to position natural gas as its own brand, independent of other fossil fuels.” (This position, while certainly not novel for gas industry advocates, has apparently ruffled feathers among other fossil fuel interests: “I’ve had pushback from that,” Waller admitted during the talk.)

In Natural Allies’ early years, the group drew attention for its focus on Black and Latino voters. In 2022, the group launched a $10 million ad campaign targeting a younger, non-white audience that painted natural gas as a clean, affordable energy solution. Internal documents obtained by The Guardian at the time indicated that Natural Allies was laser-focused on messaging for a younger Democratic base, in part by deploying a message about affordability.

The claim that natural gas is cheaper or more reliable than renewables is a longstanding industry talking point — and one that environmentalists say is deceptive.

The fracking boom of the 2000s and 2010s unlocked massive new gas reserves in the U.S., lowering the cost of gas. But historically, natural gas supply was “very constrained and very expensive,” explained Stokes at the University of California, Santa Barbara. With the industry’s relentless push for liquefied natural gas exports, which is straining supply, “that’s basically what we’re seeing again,” she said.

An April report from Public Citizen estimated that the rapid growth of gas exports drove up consumer energy costs by 21 percent just last year. At the same time, natural gas, as a fossil fuel, is subject to the same instability as the global oil market, as has been made clear by the impacts on the natural gas market wrought by Trump’s war in Iran. 

This evidence has not stopped Natural Allies from doubling down on its claims about affordability. But now the group is contending with a mounting threat — from the anti-establishment left.

Polling And The Damage Done

“Economic populism within the Democratic Party is intensifying and increasingly anti-corporate,” Waller warned the crowd at the April conference. “Some of the members of Congress — we have a hard time getting into their offices.”

To address this burgeoning economic populism, Natural Allies has adopted a state-by-state approach for its PR offensive, focusing on several key states led by Democrats: New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia. All are blue or swing states that pipeline companies are eyeing for natural gas infrastructure — which requires permitting approval from state officials.

Among these, New York has been a central proving ground. Here, Natural Allies has waged a relentless campaign over the last year to delay and weaken New York’s landmark 2019 climate law, which introduced greenhouse gas emissions limits that have blocked new natural gas infrastructure in the state. In the spring, the group threw its weight behind Hochul’s proposed rollbacks to the law, many of which ultimately made it into this year’s state budget. 

As New York Focus reported in April, despite Natural Allies’ clear legislative priorities in New York, the group says it does not lobby in the state. A spokesperson for the group told the outlet, “We have never had legislative meetings or met with the [governor’s office] to discuss legislation at all.”

Yet Waller, in her comments at the April conference, touted the group’s success in influencing Hochul’s posture. “[New York voters] were concerned about this clean energy agenda that right now New York has,” she said, adding that Natural Allies shared polls with the governor proving the claim. “And [Hochul] is actually reversing that now.” 

“To be clear,” a National Allies spokesperson told The Lever, “Natural Allies’ activities nationally and across key states do not constitute lobbying.” 

During her tenure as New York governor, Hochul has faced criticism from environmentalists for “backsliding” on the state’s climate commitments and taking money from fossil fuel interests. In 2023, the governor tried to use the budget to introduce carveouts to the state climate law to allow for additional greenhouse gas emissions (a gambit that ultimately failed). And she has continually delayed what she once billed as her signature climate policy, a “cap and invest” program to lower emissions.

But in the eyes of some climate activists, Hochul’s embrace of an “all of the above” energy strategy and her revival of the “zombie” Northeast Supply Enhancement pipeline last November was her biggest betrayal yet.

A spokesperson for Hochul said that “the commonsense reforms Governor Hochul fought for in this year’s budget protect New York’s status as a climate leader, while prioritizing affordability for New Yorkers.” And certainly, Hochul is contending with more powerful forces than Natural Allies, as the Trump administration works to undermine a transition to renewables. “Without a federal partner, there is only so much states can do on their own,” the governor wrote in a March op-ed, explaining her new approach.

Eunice Ko, the deputy director at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, said that it was not particularly surprising that Hochul may have been receptive to Natural Allies’ pitch, noting the governor is known for being “very thin-skinned and responsive to polling and public perception.” But she said the revelations about Natural Allies’ involvement were still concerning.

“We find it incredibly disturbing that weeks after, apparently, she went with ‘all of the above,’” Ko said.

Ko noted that polling can easily be harnessed by fossil fuel interests to build a misleading narrative: “A poll is only as good as the questions asked.”

Natural Allies notes that many of its polls in New York and elsewhere — which are central to its political strategy — are executed by a “bipartisan public strategy firm.” But the polls are crafted by MAD Global Strategy, a PR firm helmed by Mike DuHaime, a longtime GOP public relations strategist and adviser to former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R). DuHaime has worked with Natural Allies since its early days, and PR firms tied to him have raked in millions from the organization. 

In the months before the meeting with Hochul’s office, Natural Allies published a MAD Global poll of New Yorkers, finding that a majority of voters “oppose New York’s current posture that blocks new natural gas pipelines.” The poll called natural gas infrastructure a “winning issue” for the governor. Its concluding message: “Affordability is paramount.”

The poll claimed to find that 59 percent of New Yorkers supported new gas pipelines. But the wording of this particular question might have skewed the results. Respondents were told that households are facing “skyrocketing power bills” without new natural gas infrastructure. They were then asked, “Do you support or oppose New York’s policy to stop new natural gas supplies that put reliability at risk?”

“We stand by the results of our polling, which has been conducted to surface the views of voters on energy-related issues,” a Natural Allies spokesperson wrote in an email to The Lever.

Even if Hochul’s decision was made independently of Natural Allies, the governor has been echoing the group’s talking points. 

“While I am still committed to working toward our [climate] targets, with all the stress our residents are under, New Yorkers expect their elected officials to prioritize affordability,” Hochul said in March, shortly after another round of polling released by Natural Allies in New York, which highlighted “a 5-point shift since last May toward prioritizing affordability” among voters.

Beyond New York, Natural Allies has made similar overtures to Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts, as CommonWealth Beacon reported in May. Like Hochul, the Democratic governor has backed off on prior climate commitments to advance new natural gas infrastructure. In her April presentation, Waller claimed that Natural Allies’ relentless polling and outreach helped shape these policies.

“It’s becoming very evident to these folks that it’s critical to get pipeline construction,” she said.

The Ground Game To Come

According to Waller’s presentation, Natural Allies soon plans to begin targeting Democrats in two new states: Illinois and New Mexico. (“We’ve been considering Colorado and Indiana, but we’re going to sit back and wait,” Waller said.) 

In New Mexico, where the approval of new gas pipelines has become a determining factor for the state’s data center buildout, Natural Allies is apparently taking aim at Sen. Martin Heinrich (D), a ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee who has earned the ire of the gas industry for his hardline stance on regulating natural gas.

“He is constantly trashing natural gas, which is just very frustrating,” Waller said of Heinrich.

To counter such opposition, Natural Allies is building up an imposing ground game in one state after another. Part of that ground game includes a Trojan horse strategy. 

“I don’t think they are thought of as a trade association,” one Democratic strategist told The Lever. Rather, the group “shows up as a cadre of former colleagues that aren’t your regular lobbyists,” helping it gain access within the party.

To broadcast its message, Natural Allies hired high-profile Democratic politicians and political operatives, rather than fossil fuel lobbyists. Former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) is one of several well-known Democrats who, after leaving office, now serve on the organization’s “leadership council.” Others include former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and, more recently, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. These roles are apparently well compensated; Natural Allies paid Landrieu’s consulting firm, VNF Solutions, over $700,000 between 2021 and 2024, tax filings show.

The politicians write op-eds, attend speaking engagements, and appear in ads on behalf of Natural Allies, serving as the organization’s public face — without always disclosing that they are on the gas industry’s payroll.

The group selects state leadership chairs to serve as a face for its messaging — often trusted, longtime local political leaders. Its New York chapter, for example, is chaired by Ruben Diaz, the former Bronx borough president. “People want to hear from people they trust,” Waller told the gas industry workshop. 

While Natural Allies claims it is not engaged in lobbying, some of these political figureheads are at the same time moonlighting as lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry. As The Washington Post reported in 2023, Landrieu works as a lobbyist on the Hill, representing clients including Williams Companies. Diaz also has a similar gig at Actum, a lobbying shop that has ties to Natural Allies. 

And in each state, Natural Allies has hired a boutique PR firm, often one with deep political connections. In Wisconsin, Waller’s presentation revealed, apparently for the first time, that the group hired former Democratic and Republican Party chairs to deliver its message.

To create a sense of grassroots support behind its well-funded media blitzes, the operation runs polling and signature-gathering campaigns. Waller’s presentation claimed Natural Allies gathered “10,000+ signatures” in support of Hochul’s stance on natural gas in the months after the governor announced her “all of the above” strategy, all while releasing new rounds of polling in her favor.

Stokes, the University of California professor, called Natural Allies’ efforts “part of a long trend of astroturfing within the fossil fuel industry.” 

“The fossil fuel industry does not have public support, right,” she said. “So what they do is they make fake grassroots, they make ad-driven campaigns — and this is just another example of that.”

Still, even if manufactured, the industry’s talking points are having some effect, particularly as energy costs rise for U.S. consumers.

“We are all experiencing the volatility and the cost of being stuck on this fossil fuel roller coaster,” Ko said. In contrast, she emphasized, “Renewable energy can be cheap and is cheap.”

But it can be hard to cut through the relentless drumbeat of the gas industry, with its millions of dollars to spend. 

“It’s been extremely challenging to pierce through this narrative,” Ko said. 

Natural Allies, on the other hand, is tallying up its wins.

 “It’s really been incredible watching the progress we’re getting in these states,” Waller said at the April conference.

🔥 New on Lever Time: The quiet billionaire building a new Democratic machine.

👇 Further down in this newsletter:

• The beef between ranchers and the White House.
• Uncharacteristic caution from Big Tech.
• A rhinestone mandate from heaven hits Texas.

In a hurry? These are the top stories in the country today. 

🌎 The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the visas of up to 200,000 people seeking asylum in the U.S., the largest mass revocation in history. 

🛑 Ghislaine Maxwell’s petition to reverse her conviction and leave prison was denied by a federal judge. 

🏁 Meta settled a lawsuit — filed by 47 states, U.S. territories, and Washington, D.C. — alleging that Facebook and Instagram harm children, agreeing to pay at least $12 billion and impose new limits on underage users.

Beefing. Members of the GOP are breaking with the White House after President Donald Trump waved additional tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef. American ranchers feel the move is a “betrayal,” with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association accusing Trump of “undercutting American farmers and ranchers with inferior product” — even as industry experts hypothesize the imports won’t save Americans much money at the grocery store. “We might see a quarter to 35 cents [less]” in consumer savings per pound, one livestock economist told NPR. Republican lawmakers, especially in states with large agricultural economies, are offering rare rebukes of Trump over the issue: “This hurts!” tweeted Sen. Mike Rounds (R) of South Dakota.

🐄 Concerningly, during an interview with Glenn Beck this week, Trump and the right-wing media personality discussed retracting regulations on U.S. beef ranchers to make it easier to compete with foreign imports. “You’re saying, with less regulation, you think that the ranchers and farmers would do a very good job of processing the beef?” Trump asked while Beck decried “insane” inspection requirements. “This is a very big thing you just told me, though, because you just gave me a very good idea,” Trump added. “OK, good, good, very good. I love the call. I love this call.”

💢 The import controversy comes as Tyson Foods, one of the largest U.S.-based meat processors, is laying off more than 3,000 workers and shutting down two of its facilities in Utah and Illinois — even as skyrocketing prices have already doubled the company’s profits this year.

🥩 Meanwhile, Brazilian giant JBS — the largest meatpacker in the world, responsible for 25 percent of beef sales in the U.S. — is expanding its empire by continuing its practice of buying up American meat processors. The company is seeking to purchase the rest of Colorado-based meatpacker Pilgrim’s Pride after previously acquiring 82 percent of the company.

Prepare the floodgates. This week, Bill Gates issued a stark warning about rapidly evolving artificial intelligence technologies, arguing that political leaders and business executives are wholly unprepared for the coming economic disruption, cyberattacks, surveillance, bioterrorism, and social upheaval. “The transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history,” Gates wrote in a new blog post. In a separate interview with Semafor, Gates said he’s in a “state of shock” over the “insane” lack of foresight from government leaders and tech executives. “The geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead,” he wrote. On the economy, Gates said, “Many jobs will disappear forever.” He predicted the backlash against job losses will “make the data center thing look like nothing.”

📉 This comes as new studies indicate AI is affecting women and young people’s ability to find work. A Stanford University study found that entry-level workers seeking the most “AI-exposed” jobs have far lower employment levels than their peers. And new research from LinkedIn found women are having a harder time landing new AI jobs than men, further exacerbating the gender gap in the tech sector.

🤖 The Microsoft founder urged lawmakers to develop a framework for integrating AI into society, arguing that it shouldn’t be left to the AI companies to regulate themselves. He proposed new taxes on AI tokens and robots so companies are not incentivized to use AI to avoid payroll taxes on their human workers. “A tax would slow the rush away from human labor a little and raise money for retraining and a stronger safety net,” he wrote.

🚨 Gates said other tech leaders share his urgency, including Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman and Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis. Those three were among the hundreds of signatories on a 2023 statement arguing that addressing the risk of extinction from AI should be a “global priority.”

🤷 Nvidia, a key AI tech provider, reported record earnings and forecasted a 70 percent growth in revenue next fiscal year, potentially up to $1 trillion annually. The company says demand for its computer chips driving the AI boom is higher than ever.

Is Trump selling out the strategic oil reserve to the highest bidder? (Source: Bipartisan Policy Center)

Dolly looking down. A federal judge struck down a 2023 Texas law restricting drag shows, dealing a blow to state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who is running for Senate. U.S. District Judge David Hittner, an 87-year-old Reagan appointee, declared Senate Bill 12 to be “an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment.” Hittner determined the law was unnecessarily broad and could criminalize “other common public occurrences,” including swimming, cheerleading, dance contests, karaoke, musicals, art exhibitions and “dressing in potentially provocative costumes at comic book conventions.” 

♥️ The judge had simple advice for anyone who might be offended by drag shows: “Just don’t go,” he wrote.

💅 In the ruling, Hittner referenced Dolly Parton, the legendary performer and queer icon who died at the age of 80 this week. The judge argued that Parton’s status as a “voluptuous sex symbol” could’ve subjected her to civil and criminal penalties under the law. Drag performer Brigitte Bandit, a Parton impersonator, was one of the plaintiffs challenging the Texas law. Parton showed her support for Bandit by giving her a signed rhinestone guitar in 2023.

🕺The judge also noted that some people were once offended by “Elvis’s signature hip gyrations” and “shamed Miley Cyrus for ‘twerking’ on stage during a live performance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards.”

😸 Cat at work. A construction crew in Ohio rescued a tiny kitten from inside a machine, and now it’s part of the crew.

🔮 A rock as big as a garage. Step inside the Crystal Cave off Lake Erie, the world’s largest geode.

🐧 Aww. Puffins are thriving in Maine and drawing big crowds of tourists eager to spot the elusive birds.

🗳️ This is Midterm Madness, the only newsletter you need to stay up to date on election news. Key race updates, money trails, numbers that cut through the spin, and campaign moments that say more than official talking points ever will — from The Lever team to your inbox, every Wednesday.

👇 Further down in this newsletter: 

• The YouTuber unraveling Michigan’s Senate race.
• House leadership’s “screw-you” to Democratic voters.
• The candidate who can’t stop putting her foot in her mouth.

In a hurry? These are key stories that crossed our desks this week.

🎶 Dolly Parton’s sudden passing at 80 briefly united the political world, provoking outpourings of grief and celebrations of her life from President Donald Trump, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the British royal family.

😴  Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and conspiracy theorist who lost Minnesota’s Republican primary for governor, is withholding the $825,000 he agreed to pay for a hand recount. 

📍 The grassroots action group Swing Left is expanding its midterms map into races Democrats previously didn’t think were winnable. They now have 29 House races categorized as “must-flip” districts.

Race to the middle. Michigan candidate for U.S. Senate, Abdul El-Sayed, and other Democrats have released statements distancing themselves from popular leftist streamer Hasan Piker and disavowing recent comments he made concerning Jewish Americans’ support for Israel. The Searchlight Institute — a new billionaire-backed think tank aiming to push Democrats to the right — also weighed in, taking the opportunity to criticize El-Sayed’s denouncement of antisemitism as “half-hearted.” Until now, Searchlight had stayed relatively quiet in the Michigan race after unsuccessfully backing state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) against El-Sayed in the primary. 

💬 Here’s what Piker said that’s causing backlash: “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action. Not against the state of Israel mind you, but against American Jews.”

🎤 Piker, who has also campaigned with the Democratic Socialists of America, previously joined El-Sayed on the trail in Michigan and attended his primary victory party. But this week, El-Sayed declined to defend Piker, instead saying that “antisemitism is a scourge, and we need to address it in all its forms” and that “nobody speaks for this campaign besides [him] and [his] campaign spokespeople.”

⏪ On the other side of the Michigan race, Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers is reportedly asking the Israel lobby to keep its support on the down-low as it’s increasingly seen as a potential liability.

Base baiting. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) elevated pro-Israel Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) to a key committee post responsible for shaping Middle East policy, even as new polling shows the Democratic base wants their leaders to cut off military aid to Israel. Moskowitz, whose AIPAC-backed campaign defeated democratic socialist Oliver Larkin in a primary earlier this month, announced that Jeffries tapped him to be the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. Moskowitz promised to use that perch to “strengthen America’s relationships with Israel and our Gulf allies.” If Democrats regain control of the House in November, Moskowitz will chair the committee. 

🚨 Ben Rhodes, former President Obama’s deputy national security adviser, blasted the move, saying Democratic leaders in Congress are “once again showing zero regard for the vast majority of their own voters.” A new survey of 4,000 Democrats across six early-voting states found primary voters “overwhelmingly” want their next presidential candidate to support an arms embargo and sanctions against Israel. 

🤝 Jeffries was already on the defensive this week after The New York Times reported he met privately with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner. Jeffries — who is in line to be the

next Speaker should Democrats win the House — said the two met to discuss the affordability crisis ahead of the midterms. Democrats are gearing up to investigate allegations of corruption in the Trump administration if they win the House, and Jeffries bristled at the notion that the meeting with Kushner was a sign he’d have a light touch. “No one is going to get a pass. We’re going to hold every single member of the Trump cartel accountable,” Jeffries said.

👀 Nevertheless, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) defended Jeffries, saying he still supports him to be the next Speaker of the House.

🗣️ Elsewhere, Jeffries joined other Congressional Democrats in rebuking Hasan Piker, although he did not mention the streamer by name. “The malicious claim that American Jews are inviting violence against themselves is dangerous and antisemitic,” Jeffries posted on X.

The doctor will see you now. Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) — the sister of late Sen. Lindsey Graham — won the Republican primary for his former seat in a special runoff election yesterday, defeating Rep. Ralph Norman. Graham was endorsed by President Donald Trump (notably, Norman endorsed Nikki Haley in the 2024 presidential race) and the president’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., spent more than $800,000 on Graham’s behalf on the race’s final day. Despite Trump’s support, polling showed a tight race in the lead-up to the election. Graham has no previous experience in politics and made a widely publicized blunder during a debate last week, avoiding a question about China by saying “national security is not my thing.” 

🩺 Graham will challenge Democrat and pediatric physician Annie Andrews in the general election, who has already begun campaigning on a message of “the sister versus the doctor.” Andrews is running on a public healthcare option, reproductive freedom, and a ban on corporate PAC money, among other progressive priorities. 

⁉️ In a bizarre moment during her victory speech, Graham denounced “government-run healthcare” as a “bad idea,” then added this personal anecdote: “My parents worked long, hard hours to make ends meet. We didn’t take vacations. If they were sick, they had to get up and go to work, ‘cause if the doors weren’t open, we weren’t making money. My mother passed away when I was 11 and my father just over a year later… I understand the struggles facing South Carolina families.”

The Democratic Socialists of America have notched high-profile victories in national races, but the group is making strides in some local and state elections, too. (Source: Brookings Institute)

Switching teams. James Dolan, the billionaire owner of the New York Knicks, is looking to take down New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) after backing her last campaign. Dolan’s political network has pumped millions of dollars into committees and super-PACs supporting Bruce Blakeman, the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee. Dolan has emerged as a top GOP donor in New York politics this cycle, as he tries to chip away at the progressive momentum sweeping across the Empire State. In addition to Dolan’s support for Blakeman, his family has given a combined nearly $1 million to the Nassau County GOP this year. And Dolan has been showering cash on committees aiming to elect Republicans to the state legislature. It’s a major reversal for Dolan, his family and their affiliated groups, all of whom spent heavily in support of Hochul and her predecessor, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).

🏀 In June, as we reported in Lever Daily, Dolan hosted Trump and Blakeman in his private suite at Madison Square Garden during the NBA Finals. The Knicks will be the first NBA champions to visit the White House in either of Trump’s two terms in office. Trump, Blakeman, and Dolan all support an overhaul of Penn Station that won’t require Madison Square Garden to move across town. Meanwhile, Dolan has feuded with Mamdani, accusing him of trying to stifle public celebrations around the Knicks’ NBA title.

💲 Despite Dolan’s giving, Hochul has a massive financial advantage over Blakeman and remains the heavy favorite in the race. However, the latest Siena College poll found Hochul’s 20-point advantage in June has been cut in half. Republicans are hoping Blakeman performs adequately at the top of the ticket to boost down-ballot Republicans running for House seats in key swing districts.

🤐 Dolan’s turn to the GOP comes as billionaire Ronald Lauder, one of the most influential GOP donors in New York, has quietly stopped the flow of funds to conservative causes. Lauder, who spent $11 million in support of then-Rep. Lee Zeldin’s (R-N.Y.) gubernatorial campaign, has not spent at all ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The New York Times reports that Lauder disbanded his political team.

Three days after a prominent artificial intelligence investor and his wife donated $1 million to a political action committee boosting Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s reelection campaign, Lombardo publicly endorsed the state’s booming data-center buildout. A week later, the PAC collected another $1 million from the wife of a developer building those facilities in Nevada, according to campaign finance records reviewed by The Lever.

The revelation comes as the driest state in the nation grapples with data centers’ enormous resource demands. Fueled by $340 million in state tax abatements since 2021, Nevada has roughly 70 data centers in operation, under construction, or being planned. But amid new research suggesting the industry’s expansion could triple the state’s energy demands and consume as much water annually as roughly 150,000 households, cities and counties across the Silver State have begun issuing moratoriums on new data centers.

The matter could become a pivotal election issue. Lombardo’s Democratic opponent, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, has criticized the incumbent’s stance on data centers and just sued the federal government over cuts to its already strained Colorado River allocation. (Lombardo also supports the lawsuit.)

“Now we know why Joe Lombardo says he’s ‘wholeheartedly in support of data centers: He’s bought and paid for by them,” Ford told The Lever in response to the data center-related donations. “Taking care of his and Trump’s ‘billionaire friends’ at Nevadans’ expense is standard operating procedure from Lombardo. I’m running for Governor to pause and audit data centers’ tax breaks and block them from raising our costs, because I fight for working Nevadans – not data center billionaires, like Joe Lombardo.”

On May 11, Better Nevada PAC, a political action committee supporting Lombardo, received $500,000 from Ben Horowitz, cofounder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and another $500,000 from Ben’s wife, Felicia. Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, has invested in numerous AI and data center companies, and Horowitz has long been a prominent political donor. Horowitz and his business partner Marc Andreessen both donated $2.5 million to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and Horowitz later donated another $2.5 million to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. 

Three days after Lombardo received the Horowitzs’ donations, he posted a video on X stating, “I support data centers because they bring jobs, investments, and economic growth to Nevada.” 

On May 21, the Better Nevada PAC received another $1 million from Jessica Roy, wife of Rob Roy, who founded Switch, a data center development company currently building facilities in Nevada. Switch has received millions of dollars in tax abatements, according to The Nevada Independent. Andreessen Horowitz is also a major Switch investor.

On June 25, Lombardo also received $5 million from the Republican Governors Association, a nonprofit dedicated to electing GOP governors that has received at least $8.5 million from people and companies invested in AI and data centers since January 2025. Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of investment firm Citadel, donated $3 million; and Paul Singer, CEO of Elliott Investment Management, donated $2.5 million. Both Citadel and Elliott are heavily invested in AI and data centers. 

This month, Lombardo told the Latin Chamber of Commerce that data centers could be a “new gold rush,” if the proper guardrails are in place. Standing beside President Donald Trump at a different event, he also voiced his support for Trump’s “billionaire friends” because “those billionaire friends provide jobs. And unless you take care of them, those jobs are absent.”

Lombardo’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

“An Opportunity To Diversify Nevada’s Economy”

In a June op-ed for the Reno Gazette Journal, Lombardo argued that Nevada can pioneer a model for states to effectively work with data centers, calling them “an opportunity to diversify Nevada’s economy, strengthen our workforce and position our state as a national leader in technology and innovation for decades to come.” Data centers will bring jobs and investments to the state, he wrote, as long as guardrails prevent residents from paying higher utility bills and protect the state’s water resources. 

He added that data centers are “known to use massive amounts of water… and raise electricity costs for surrounding communities,” but claims that “it isn’t happening in Nevada.”

A January report from the Desert Research Institute, a science nonprofit, found that in 2024, data centers consumed 22 percent of the state’s electrical generation, an amount that the institute predicted could grow to 35 percent by 2030. The same report found that the state’s current development plans could result in data centers consuming up to 16 billion gallons of water annually, according to calculations by The Lever — enough for roughly 150,000 households a year. 

“Assuming the highest level of efficiency, the water needed annually for data center cooling under the projected load growth from NV Energy is more than 14,940 times the water needed for a single household, close to 17 times the water needed for an 18-hole golf course, and approximately six times the water needed for an alfalfa farm,” the authors wrote.

LIsten TO Master Plan Now

Master Plan: The Kingmakers, uncovers the decades-long plot to build an all-powerful American presidency. From Richard Nixon’s downfall to Ronald Reagan’s legal revolution, Dick Cheney’s post-9/11 power grab to the the radical blueprint of Project 2025, the series traces how a fringe legal theory — the unitary executive — has been used to manipulate the machinery of the U.S. government.

Listen to the new season now.

Then in May, NV Energy, the state’s largest energy provider, issued a report stating that Nevada’s future energy demands will nearly triple due to data centers.

Earlier this month, NV Energy sued Tract, a data center developer building two massive facilities near Reno, claiming that it is trying to pass infrastructure and energy costs on to consumers. According to NV Energy, Tract is trying to move the matter to a private court to evade public criticism.

🔥 ICYMI in The Lever: Private prisons are wading into our elections again. 

🎧 Listen: How Obama waged his secret drone war.

👇 Further down in this newsletter:

• The issue that could decide the 2028 election.
• What stocks has the president been trading?
• A new era of sanctions.

In a hurry? These are the top stories in the country today. 

📩The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can move forward with plans to restrict mail voting ahead of the midterm elections.

🤒 Two people in Pennsylvania have died from the measles, the first measles-related fatalities in the state in 35 years.

🚣 Amid the president’s ongoing spat with Canadian lawmakers, the White House is “giving serious consideration” to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America.

SPONSORED

Unknown number calling? It’s not random… Scammers don’t pick phone numbers at random. They buy your data from brokers, leading to phishing, impersonation, and identity theft. Use Incogni to take control of your personal information. Get 55% off for annual plans with coupon code LEVER.

Protect Your Data

Litmus test. A new survey of Democrats in the first six states holding 2028 primaries revealed that voters “overwhelmingly” want the party’s next presidential nominee to back an arms embargo and sanctions against Israel. Conducted by the Institute for Middle East Understanding, the poll of over 4,000 people shows that more than half of Democrats surveyed in South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Michigan, New Mexico, and Virginia said Israel is committing a genocide. In all states except South Carolina, over 50 percent of respondents said that a 2028 presidential candidate’s stance on Israel will influence how they vote; in South Carolina, 46 percent felt this way.

📈 In all six states included in the survey, more than 60 percent of respondents would prefer to support a 2028 presidential candidate who would cut off weapons to Israel. 

🏆 Rumors surrounding who will run in Democrats’ 2028 presidential primaries have been swirling. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) said this week that he is “kicking the tires” on a bid, while former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited South Carolina to “reintroduce himself” to voters. 

War games. Yesterday, the Treasury Department announced a new round of economic sanctions against Iran, as the U.S.-Israeli-led war drags down President Donald Trump’s approval rating ahead of the midterms. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the pressure campaign as an “economic D-Day” and the “single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary.” “Operation Economic Outcast” will target Iran’s vital industries, including oil, shipping and technology, while companies, countries, and individuals that continue to do business with Iran will be cut off from the U.S. financial system. The new sanctions could put the U.S. on a collision course with Iran’s largest trading partners, including China, Russia and India, although Bessent dodged the issue, saying only that “no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions.” 

🛢️ Trump initially said the preemptive attacks to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program would be over in a matter of weeks, but the war has lasted for nearly six months, and negotiations to end the conflict have repeatedly stalled. The Strait of Hormuz, a global vein of oil and gas distribution, has largely been closed, sending price shocks through the energy market. 

📉 The latest Reuters-Ipsos survey found support for the war at an all-time low, as Republicans are increasingly likely to say they oppose Trump’s actions. Only 31 percent of Americans support the war, down from 37 percent in March. The poll also found Trump’s approval rating at the lowest point of his two terms in office — just 33 percent.

🤑 Congressional Democrats released a new report finding Trump’s oil and gas holdings have surged by 39 percent this year, potentially adding more than $15 million to the president’s wealth. Oil prices are up nearly 30 percent since the U.S. and Israel first attacked Iran in late February. 

Money matters. A new round of financial disclosures revealed that President Trump has recently made major revisions to his stock portfolio: In June, he completed more than 1,000 trades totaling between $78 million and $263 million, including in industries affected by the president’s war on Iran, like weapons manufacturers RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Northrop Grumman. The president also made a series of trades in Palantir, the surveillance tech firm founded by MAGA ally Peter Thiel, which has been tapped by the Trump administration for lucrative federal contracts. Those include $10 billion to develop software for the Department of War and $30 million to develop “ImmigrationOS,” a surveillance platform for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

🚀 The president also bought and sold stock in the companies that have financially backed his political ambitions (or seen their owners do so). Those include crypto trading platform Coinbase and Meta, which donated $1 million each to Trump’s second inauguration; SpaceX, the rocket and technology company of 2024 campaign megadonor Elon Musk; and Nvidia, the computer chipmaking firm whose CEO gave a non-public amount to the White House ballroom project. 

🎭 Trump’s stock portfolio is managed by undisclosed third-party money managers. This month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led a letter demanding that the White House unmask their identities.

Trump’s cuts to food stamps have been devastating — but not as much as Biden’s. (Source: Stephen Semler)

On the house. Students attending public schools in Michigan will receive free lunches this school year. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signed the school budget on Monday, saying the program would save families about $1,000 per child. Recent studies have shown free meals at school improve student attendance, interactions, and participation.

👎 New analysis from the Center for American Progress found that cuts enacted under Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” could eliminate meal programs for students at public schools. Enrollment in the nation’s largest federally funded food assistance program plunged over the past year, as the GOP’s budget cuts were implemented. The study found that the amount of money the Trump administration has spent on the Iran war would be enough to fund free school lunches for every school-age child in the U.S. for a year.

✂️ In Florida, Miami-Dade County, which offered free student meals for the past four years, says it will end free school lunches because it no longer meets federal requirements under the Trump bill. Some districts have gotten creative to provide food to public school students, with Washington state planning to pay for it through a “millionaires’ tax.”

🐘 Pet sounds. A rock musician and a naturalist are making music out of their field recordings of animals in the wild. 

🧠 Wandering minds. Studies in mice suggest that daydreaming may rewire your brain and might improve learning and memory.

🔭 Deep space. NASA is preparing to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named after NASA’s first chief of astronomy, which will measure light from up to a billion galaxies as it studies dark energy and hunts for exoplanets.

🔥 New by David Sirota: Is Bernie Sanders the new Barry Goldwater?

👇 Further down in this newsletter:

• The devastating downstream effects of Hollywood’s mega-merger.
• Even Republicans are distancing themselves from AIPAC. 
• Big Tech is eyeing a new state to fill with data centers.

In a hurry? These are the top stories in the country today. 

🥕 Enrollment for the nation’s largest federally funded food program plunged over the past year as new restrictions from President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” took hold.

🎰 More than 150 Polymarket accounts appear to have been trading on inside information from the U.S. military, according to a new analysis for the nonprofit Anti-Corruption Data Collective.

🛂 A federal judge struck down the Trump administration’s ban on visas for immigrants from 75 countries.

SPONSORED

Political campaigns buy personal data from brokers to build precision profiles on voters. That same data gets picked up by scammers running fake donation and voter-registration schemes. Your information doesn't disappear after election day — it gets resold and repurposed indefinitely. Incogni removes your data from these brokers, so you stop being a profile for sale. Get 55% off with code LEVER.

Try it out.

Lights, camera, pink slips. A new study on the $111 billion mega-merger between the TV and movie giants Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery projects that the planned sale could trigger the loss of roughly 4,500 jobs in Los Angeles County over the next three years. The total financial consequences of such a shakeup include $1.26 billion in lost wages, $2.78 billion in missed economic value, and $547 million in unpaid tax revenue. More than 10,000 total “job years” (equaling one year of work at one job) are at risk, including work at businesses that service Hollywood, like printing houses and transport companies. Between 2022 and 2025, California already shed roughly 114,000 jobs in the entertainment sector, or 14 percent of the industry’s total workforce.

🥴 In California, where state Attorney General Rob Bonta is leading a lawsuit to block the Paramount merger, Los Angeles City Mayor Karen Bass urged state prosecutors to “come to the table” and negotiate a settlement. Bass, who’s been courting the support of business groups in L.A., argued that “this is not about taking sides” and that “continued uncertainty is not good for workers… productions… [or] the future of this industry.”

📺 The parties were supposed to meet to discuss a settlement today, but negotiations have stalled. Bonta canceled the rendezvous, accusing Paramount of “playing games” and leaking previous discussions to the media. His office will seek “robust structural remedies” before considering a settlement offer, and will reportedly ask the firm to sell off some of its cable television channels.

🍊 Remember: Paramount is helmed by David Ellison, the son of GOP megadonor and Trump ally Larry Ellison. The elder Ellison gave roughly $45 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign before providing financing for the prospective merger, which Trump’s Federal Communications Commission has signaled it will approve.

Thanks, but no thanks. Friends of Mike Rogers, the GOP’s candidate for Senate in Michigan, asked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) not to spend in his race out of fear that the group's public backing could be a liability, according to a report in Axios. After a meeting between Rogers and AIPAC chair Michael Tuchin last week, AIPAC pulled a video advertisement that criticized Abdul El-Sayed, Rogers’ Democratic rival. However, Rogers isn’t swearing off help from the pro-Israel lobby altogether. According to The New York Times, his team has proposed hiring AIPAC strategists and recommended that AIPAC donors keep a lower profile by funding a front group instead or donating directly to Rogers’ own super PACs.

💰 El-Sayed told The Lever earlier this year that the U.S. should not bankroll apartheid and genocide and pledged to work in the Senate to cut off unconditional military aid to Israel. 

🏳️ So far this cycle, AIPAC has been on the losing side of numerous high-profile Democratic primaries — including El-Sayed’s — where it sought to quell critics of the U.S.-Israel alliance. This happened even though AIPAC dropped tens of millions of dollars on these races. 

🕵🏻‍♂️ The Lever has covered apparent attempts to avoid the growing toxicity of the pro-Israel lobby by shuffling what would otherwise have been AIPAC-stamped money to groups of a different name.

Windy City windfall. Data center builders in Chicagoland have been exploiting property valuation disparities and lucrative local incentives to dodge tens of millions of dollars in taxes that could have been reinvested in the local community, according to a joint investigation by the Chicago Tribune and the Illinois Answers Project. The tax avoidance schemes are directly impacting local homeowners, who would otherwise have saved thousands of dollars on their annual tax bills. By fighting for favorable property assessments at thinly attended government hearings, Big Tech companies in the region have lowered the property value of data centers by millions of dollars, significantly decreasing their property taxes. Cook County officials have awarded multi-million dollar tax breaks to at least 18 data centers in the northwest suburbs of Chicago by agreeing to depressed property valuations and additional incentives, according to the investigation. 

🏛️ In one case, Microsoft argued that its data center in Northlake was valued at $250 million, while Cook County valued the property at $900 million. Many of the data centers are already receiving an automatic tax break that reduces a property’s taxable value by 60 percent for its first 10 years of operation. 

💸  In the suburb of Northlake, the average homeowner would have saved $2,000 on their annual tax bill if the data center properties had been fairly evaluated. The analysis found the valuation reductions and incentives deprived the suburbs of Elk Grove, Northland, and Franklin Park of nearly $2 billion in income, which would have meant about $100 million in tax savings for homeowners in the area.

☑️ Progressive lawmakers and candidates spearheaded opposition to data center construction early on, and it’s emerged as a mainstream topic in the 2026 midterm election cycle. Polls show a swift and growing backlash, with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), Texas GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton, and Michigan GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers among those who have joined the stampede in recent weeks to propose new guardrails on data centers. In Nevada, the issue has consumed the gubernatorial race, with the Republican and Democrat each blaming the other for the proliferation of data centers in the state.

Data centers aren’t landing with the public. (Source: Heatmap)

🤖 Zoom. A Chinese robot broke Usain Bolt’s world record in the 100-meter dash at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, although decelerating is still a challenge for bipedal machines.

😮‍💨 Reefer madness. Baby boomers are smoking more pot — but they’re also narcing on each other. 

🐕 Man’s best friend. Dogs are “surprisingly good” at distinguishing between different human emotions.

This is Lever Weekly, a recap of our work from the past week. If you only read one email from us all week, this should be it.

Here’s what The Lever published this week:

The Senate Candidate Who Could Get Rich Off Data Centers. Michigan Republican Mike Rogers holds millions in AI-related investments while backing Donald Trump’s push to fast-track the infrastructure fueling the industry.

Days After The Lever Revealed His AI Investments, Mike Rogers Flipped On Data Centers. The GOP Michigan Senate candidate now supports a one-year moratorium on data center construction in the Wolverine State.

Hakeem Jeffries’ Betrayal Shows Why Democratic Voters Are So Enraged. House Dems’ leader declared his opposition to Medicare For All on the same day a new poll shows almost all Democratic voters support it.

Elon Musk’s Banking Empire Just Got Gov. Hochul’s Blessing. Despite lawmakers’ warnings about Musk, New York gave the world’s first trillionaire a critical approval in his plan to turn X into an “everything app.”

Deploying To SCOTUS: Big Oil’s Dark Money Army. Right-wing dark money groups and Big Oil are pressuring the Supreme Court to shield the fossil fuel industry from paying for climate change-related damages.

Money Shot. Moderna’s cancer vaccine results doubled its stock price after taxpayers paid to help develop the treatment.

All The President’s Millionaires. The Trump administration is stacked with 57 “ultra-millionaires.”

Consumers Frozen Out Of Tariff Refund Bonanza. Refunds from Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs are boosting corporate quarterly earnings, while Consumers who paid the tariffs are shut out.

Your weekly essential midterms update from The Lever newsroom. Midterm Madness brings you the races worth watching, the money trails worth following, the numbers that cut through the spin, and the campaign moments that say more than the official talking points ever will. 

Every Wednesday, paid subscribers get essential election updates, reporting, and insights like:

• AIPAC’s missed shot at redemption.
• The latest shocking DSA win.
• Who’s pouring money into Maine. 

Who’s leeching off small businesses? Where is Big Tech getting all its data? And Liberation Day for whom?

The answers to these questions and many more can be found in LeverMind, our weekly news quiz for paid subscribers that tests your knowledge of the developments that really matter — and who needs to be held accountable.

Find out if you’re a true LeverMind:

Every week, You Love To See It rounds up important policy wins, environmental victories, and social initiatives improving people’s lives, exclusively for paid subscribers. 

A taste of this week’s good news:

• New York City puts scorching subway heat to good use
• America’s purest waters fend off miners
• Willy gets a little freer 
• A Q&A with a Texan activist successfully fighting Trump’s border wall

Lever Leaders provide us with our highest level of support and score additional perks in return, including a yearly gift subscription for friends and family, access to an exclusive Lever staff meeting for a sneak peek at our future plans, and an annual gift of limited-edition Lever merchandise.

Join readers like Jerold M., who had this to say about becoming a Lever Leader:

“Independent investigative journalism is a cornerstone of a healthy thriving democracy.”

MS NOW — Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed noted on cable news that our reporting influenced his opponent’s sudden shift on data centers. 

Politico’s Morning Money — The finance-focused newsletter highlighted The Lever’s story on New York greenlighting Elon Musk’s plans to open a bank. 

Michigan Advance — The nonprofit newsroom republished our investigation into Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers’ financial ties to data center build-outs.

The American Prospect — The progressive publication copublished our story on a Democratic Party operative with a Wall Street side gig. 

More Perfect Union — The news outlet included our reporting in a video about why your Uber rides are so expensive.