Lever Time

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For decades, major labor unions like the Teamsters have endorsed the Democratic ticket in presidential elections — but not this year. In a surprise move, the Teamsters declined to endorse either former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris. The development — and Trump’s surprising levels of support from blue-collar and union voters — suggests something’s changing in the world of working-class politics.Today on Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh unpacks the cultural and economic trends that have turned working-class voters away from the Democratic Party and explores how the Republican Party is now working to win them over.

Donald Trump is heading to Aurora, Colorado, on Friday — a city that Trump has repeatedly portrayed as crime-ridden and taken over by Venezuelan gangs, despite the refutations of city officials and police. Ahead of Trump’s Colorado rally on Friday, David Sirota joined the podcast City Cast Denver to explain why Trump has focused on Aurora and the signal he’s sending with his rally in the Denver suburb.

Millions in the Southeastern United States recently endured one cataclysm after another. First, Hurricane Helene left chaos and destruction across a trail of states. Then, in Georgia, a catastrophic chemical plant fire released plumes of toxic chlorine gas, forcing thousands to evacuate or shelter in place. Both disasters share a troubling backstory: regulatory failures fueled in part by corporate greed made the crises worse. On Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh sits down with reporter Katya Schwenk and news editor Lucy Dean Stockton to hear how government inaction and corporate meddling led to weakened climate adaptation infrastructure and lax oversight of dangerous chemical facilities.

Vice President Kamala Harris has built a broad coalition that stretches from climate activists to a former oil company CEO, all of them aligned against former President Donald Trump. But if Harris wins in November and Trump’s out of the picture, what happens to this band of strange bedfellows, who frequently find themselves split on core issues like taxation and corporate power? What kind of a mandate will Harris have to lead? And is this arrangement setting her up for a rudderless administration?Today on Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh sits down with journalist Ben Bradford, host of the podcast series Landslide, to discuss what happened when Jimmy Carter built a similarly broad coalition in 1976 and ask if the Democrats’ big tent is about to burst. 

In 1971, Lewis Powell, a tobacco industry lawyer and future Supreme Court justice, penned a memo calling on conservatives and business interests to make the nation’s legal system far more friendly to corporate power. A few years later, a lawyer named Michael Horowitz penned a follow-up memo calling for conservatives to indoctrinate generations of lawyers as the right’s foot soldiers on the ground. Today on Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh talks to David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher about their deep-dive investigation into this 50-year plan in the hit new Lever  podcast Master Plan. Then, he sits down with journalist David Daley to discuss his latest book, Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections. Daley’s book centers around Chief Justice John Roberts, whose ascent to the high court — and the conservative rulings he’s handed down — was the culmination of decades of work that began with Powell and Horowitz’s memos. 

When Kamala Harris first ran for president in 2019, she promised to deliver Medicare for All to the people — but that changed. Early in her campaign, she frequently referred to a 2017 bill she co-sponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders that would have effectively abolished private health insurance. But when political winds didn’t look good, Harris changed course, and ultimately released her own, very different version of the bill, which sought to bolster and support private insurance companies by expanding their role in Medicare. It wouldn’t be the only time Harris bucked a campaign pledge for political gain. Today on Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh looks at two defining moments in Harris’ career to understand how the presidential hopeful acts when forced to choose between the values she campaigned on and political gain.In her current campaign, Harris has tried to play it safe. She’s consistently pushed the Biden administration’s agenda while remaining vague on how she’d respond to key issues. One of those issues has been how to handle Israel’s invasion of Gaza, a disaster that Harris will likely inherit if she wins the presidency. If so, the Gaza crisis will present one of the first tests of what a President Harris would do in office, but even close observers are unsure what the vice president ultimately believes is the best course of action on the matter.

In television commercials, at speeches, and on the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris frequently boasts that she stood up to big banks as California's attorney general. But her sloganeering obscures a sometimes-ugly record. Today on Lever Time, Arjun Singh looks back at Harris' early years as a district attorney and then state attorney general to see what they show us about the president she may soon become.When Harris first ran for District Attorney of San Francisco in 2003 — a time when prosecutors rarely described themselves as “progressive” — she campaigned as a crime fighter with few qualms about putting criminals behind bars. Later, as California’s attorney general, Harris continued to lean on her role as a tough prosecutor, vowing to go after mortgage lenders who utilized abusive tactics to strong arm Californians. But when it came time to fight the banks, did Harris let them off easy? Harris’ actions in that moment have left some observers with a pressing question: What does Kamala Harris actually believe?

The Lever’s David Sirota reports on his adventures at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, sharing his on-the-ground reporting on Democrats’ fear of another Trump presidency and their rhetoric loathing the corporate takeover of politics. Sirota spotlights the tension between the convention’s populist framing and its corporate sponsors footing the bill. Sirota also talked to Democratic senators about whether any of Vice President Kamala Harris’ policy promises can become reality without the Senate first ending the filibuster. In her convention address, Harris pledged that as president, she will center her agenda around workers — not the corporations whose executives and lobbyists sponsored and monitored the party’s convention from the arena’s luxury suites. The big unanswered question: Will Harris deliver her agenda when those corporate forces inevitably push back? 

Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascent to presumptive Democratic nominee has upended the presidential contest and energized Democratic voters — but what’s the policy behind the vibes?On Friday, Harris unveiled a series of economic policies, including a proposed federal ban on grocery price gouging and plans to lower prescription drug and housing costs. It was a good step, but one that came after Harris faced pressure and criticism for not having a more robust policy platform.But amid viral trends like “coconut tree summer” and Harris’ “brat” era, do voters really care about what Harris actually wants to accomplish in office? Today on Lever Time, David Sirota and Arjun Singh sit down with Semafor’s Max Tani and The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang to unpack why Harris’ great-taste-less-filling campaign has garnered the traction it has. Despite her twenty years as an elected official, it’s been surprisingly difficult for journalists to know what Harris wants to do with the presidency. In her 2019 presidential bid, Harris ran as a supporter of Medicare for All and an opponent of fracking — two positions her campaign has now renounced. And her approach to foreign policy and antitrust enforcement, cornerstones of the Biden administration, remains a mystery.

For more than a decade, global politics have been rocked by the rise of right-wing nationalist governments. Similar to Donald Trump’s rise in the United States, countries like India, Hungary, Brazil, and Italy have seen the emergence of far-right governments who’ve channeled popular anger into support for nativist and anti-immigrant platforms. It turns out we’re largely to blame for it.Today on Lever Time, Arjun Singh sits down with Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp to discuss his new book The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept The World, in which Beauchamp traces the roots of modern right-wing regimes to an antidemocratic tradition that began in the United States. 

On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, a move that drew praise from a wide swath of the party, from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Sen. Joe Manchin. Though Walz was relatively unknown until recently, his stock within Democratic politics skyrocketed in the last few weeks. As governor, Walz passed legislation Democrats have long championed, including increasing taxes on corporations, providing free breakfast and lunch to all school students, and creating a paid family and medical leave program. On Lever Time, Arjun Singh sits down with Ryan Grim, co-founder of Drop Site, to dig deeper into Walz’s record — the good and the bad — and explore what Walz’s selection signals to voters. 

Floods, heat waves, wildfires and other climate extremes are becoming a way of life for millions around the world — and tragically a way of death. After a historic, record-breaking flood in France killed her mother, a daughter wants to hold oil companies criminally responsible for her death, joining seven other plaintiffs in a lawsuit. Today on Lever Time, senior investigative reporter Lois Parshley examines a growing global movement of advocates and legal scholars trying to convince courts that fossil fuel companies should be charged with homicide after they knowingly caused climate change. Read the companion article to this episode exclusively on The Lever by clicking here. 

As Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee, her party is facing an uphill battle to defeat Donald Trump and his attempt to frame his corporate agenda as populism. In a wide-ranging interview on The Brian Lehrer Show on New York’s largest public radio station, David Sirota discusses his recent essay in The Lever about how Democrats must do a better job making clear the party is serious about fighting for America’s working class. 

With Trump last night becoming the GOP nominee and now having his largest polling lead — and with Biden reportedly on the verge of dropping out — David Sirota, Arjun Singh, and The Atlantic’s Tyler Austin Harper review what is one of the wildest moments in American political history. The biggest question of all: Will the Democrats decide to lose the election, or will they actually fight to win?It's been an extraordinary three weeks in American politics. Biden's disastrous debate performance brought the questions about his age and mental fitness center stage, a gunman nearly assassinated former President Donald Trump, and Republicans went full MAGA by announcing former never-Trumper J.D. Vance as Trump's runningmate at the Republican National Convention. All while the Democrats squabble over Biden’s future.