LEVER WEEKLY: School’s Out, Zohran’s In

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 Headmaster Of The AI Apocalypse. Backed by tech money and Donald Trump’s executive orders, MacKenzie Price is out to replace teachers everywhere with AI.

Zohran Mamdani’s Mandate Is A Democratic Earthquake. There will now be a high-stakes battle to define the meaning of the New York mayoral candidate’s historic win.

Who’s Afraid Of Zohran Mamdani? The mayoral candidate defeated the master plan for the first time ever — and that’s prompted an elite panic about who gets to control political outcomes.

How Pharma, Oil, And Wall Street Funded Trump’s Tax Scam. Years of multimillion-dollar investments by conservative advocacy groups delivered Trump and congressional Republicans’ Big Beautiful Betrayal.

How To End Democrats’ Civil War. Abundance liberals and populists can together combat scarcity — but one side has to come clean.

Zohran Mamdani: “This Is The Heart Of The Battle For The Future Of The Democratic Party.” David Sirota sat down with the democratic socialist upstart who just won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary to discuss his plans for City Hall.

Iran Regime Change, Brought To You By Dark Money. Neocon think tanks demanding that Trump overthrow Iran’s government, no matter the risks, are funded by anti-Muslim billionaires and fossil fuel fortunes.

Lawmakers Reward Their Crypto Benefactors… And Iran. The president and crypto-backed lawmakers are accused of making it easier for terrorist organizations and rogue nations to deal in digital currencies.

Dividends For Stephen Miller, Deportations For Everyone Else. The man behind the Trump administration’s migrant crackdown holds stock in an ICE surveillance contractor.

Cuomo’s Allies Spread Tax Flight Myth. Critics say mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s plan to tax the rich would cause the wealthy to flee NYC — but research suggests otherwise.

Seventy-Two Minutes Until The End Of The World. Are we closer than ever to nuclear winter?

Can Trump’s War Be Stopped? Inside the effort to block the president from getting the United States involved in yet another Middle East war.

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Master Plan, a new book from The Lever, builds on the award-winning and chart-topping podcast series, uncovering the hidden history of how unrestrained money and influence have transformed the United States into a full-fledged kleptocracy — where policy is bought, elections are manipulated, and corruption operates in plain sight.

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Not yet reading Lever Daily? You’re missing out on news like this:

🥃 Liquor for all... but bread is Bolshevism. Critics of Democratic nominee for New York City Zohran Mamdani argue his proposal to open a few publicly owned supermarkets to compete with the giants is, simply put, communist. They might be surprised to learn that in red and purple America, several states offer a similar kind of public service to consumers: state-run liquor stores. That includes red-leaning Pennsylvania, where the state government operates nearly 600 liquor stores, and in deep-red Alabama, where the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board runs 168 liquor stores.

🏈 The “Holy Grail” of NFL secrets. A powerful group of National Football League executives encouraged teams to collude to pay players less, newly revealed arbitration rulings obtained by sports journalist Pablo Torres confirm. These documents — which both the NFL Management Council and NFL Player’s Association sought to keep secret — reveal that just days after the Cleveland Browns awarded quarterback Deshaun Watson with a five-year, fully-guaranteed $230 million contract in 2022, the NFL Management Council, “with the blessing of the Commissioner,” encouraged owners to collude to reduce salary guarantees in contracts.

😵‍💫 Amazoncoin could be too big to fail. Economic experts are sounding the alarm after Congress passed the GENIUS Act last week, allowing any company in the country to issue its own virtual currencies. The Capitol Forum reports that as retailers weigh releasing their own stablecoins, taxpayers could be on the hook for a bailout if Amazoncoin or Walmartcoin go kaput. And it’s not just consumers who may have to pay in stablecoin: A national grocers’ group is raising concerns that mega retailers could compel their suppliers to accept their personal currency as payment.

🚬 New-age ciggies... for pregnant women. A “harm reduction” tobacco company troublingly sees pregnant women as a core piece of their clientele for their new low-nicotine cigarettes. “People who need to reduce their cigarette intake for maybe medical reasons. I think of pregnant women, people who work in hazardous jobs, people who work in jobs that don’t allow frequent smoke breaks,” Lawrence D. Firestone, chairman and CEO of the publicly traded 22nd Century Group, recently said of his ideal customers. New-age tobacco firms are increasingly using health and organics-focused advertising techniques to sell their products to new markets.

Every week, our paid subscribers receive a newsletter full of policy wins, environmental victories, and social initiatives improving their lives. 

A taste of this week’s good news:

• Trump and Co. stumble in their war on the poor.
• A red state opens its mind state.
• Citizens unite against dark money.
• A prescription emerges for pharma profiteering.

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Status Coup News — Evelyn Quartz appeared on the independent news network to discuss her piece on why the liberal resistance to Trump is at risk of failure.

The Long Story with Simon Owens — The compendium of longform journalism called out The Lever’s deep-dive investigation into the failures of the FDA’s drug approval process.

Accountable.US — The investigative nonprofit highlighted our reporting on how Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Wall Street are funding Trump’s “Big Beautiful Betrayal.”

Common Dreams — The nonprofit news organization talked with David Sirota about the legacy of celebrated journalist Bill Moyers, who passed away on Thursday.

Capitalisn’t — On this audio exploration of capitalism, Sirota dissects the outsized role of money in politics and how it has rendered Democratic messaging incoherent.