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.
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Here’s what The Lever published this week:
LEVER DEEP DIVE OF THE WEEKIs The GOP’s Tax Revolt Collapsing? The anti-tax movement has dominated American politics for 50 years — but it may finally be fraying.
LEVER SCOOPS OF THE WEEK
How Trump Is Helping Price Gougers Exploit His Tariffs. Emboldened by the new administration’s regulatory reprieve, “price optimization” consultants are showing corporations how to weaponize import levies to fleece consumers.
The Conservative Plan To Bring DOGE To Canada. Audio reveals how Canadian conservatives are plotting with energy and tech executives to slash services “more quickly” than Trump.
The Government’s Chemical Disaster Tracking Tool Just Went Dark. The chemical lobby demanded Trump make the locations of high-risk chemical plants secret. The EPA did just that.
Elon Musk’s Fight To Keep Tesla Repairs Expensive. Tesla is in hot water for allegedly doctoring odometers to run out its warranties and make consumers pay for expensive repairs.
Automaker’s Tariff Plan: Cut Jobs And Pay Off Wall Street. Stellantis laid off a thousand U.S. workers in response to tariffs, then authorized billions in shareholder payouts.
Trump’s Bid To Take Us Back To 2008. A top financial regulatory agency has been commanded to ease up on fintech and crypto industries.
It Pays Well To Deny Coverage. As Cigna fights off a lawsuit claiming it systematically denied patients coverage, the health insurance giant just paid a departing executive $10 million in severance.
Meta Foots Zuckerberg’s $24 Million “Personal Security” Bill. While Meta’s CEO gets paid a $1 annual salary, filings reveal the company shelled out $24 million last year for his personal security and private jet travel.
How 7-Eleven Bought The Chicago Police. After the convenience chain store sponsored a Chicago Police Department foundation gala, officers increased police stops near 7-Elevens.
Crypto Scams Are Exploding — And There’s No Plan To Protect You. New data reveals Americans lost a record $9.3 billion to cryptocurrency fraud last year, yet the government has no unified strategy for combating online scams.
THIS WEEK ON LEVER PODCASTS
TAX REVOLT, Part Two: Supply Side Santa Claus. How a small group of economists shaped Reagan’s tax policy and the future of the Republican party.
BONUS: How Art Laffer Created The Cult Of Reaganomics. Economist Art Laffer was the intellectual backbone of every Republican tax cut, including Trump’s. Laffer’s advice: Don’t bother fighting the rich anymore, they’ve already won.
THIS WEEK’S LEVER DAILY HIGHLIGHTSNot yet reading Lever Daily? You’re missing out on news like this:
🎓 Education is priceless… except when it’s very, very expensive. The price of a college degree is rising, but the return on investment from a higher education is declining, according to new data from the Federal Reserve. The college wage premium, or the difference in average earnings between those with or without a post-high school degree, is down 10 percent since 2000 after more than doubling over the prior two decades. Meanwhile, the average cost of a four-year public degree has increased by 141 percent in the last 20 years. As the Trump administration resumes collections on more than five million borrowers who’ve defaulted on their student loans, officials are also “deprioritizing” regulatory oversight of the $412 billion private student loan market.
🤖 True or false: This test question was written by a computer. The State Bar of California, the judicial agency overseeing the state’s legal licenses, was caught using artificial intelligence to generate exam questions for prospective lawyers taking the bar exam. After a $22 million budget deficit last year, the agency is cutting costs by outsourcing its testing materials and issuing bar exams remotely. The State Bar has asked the California Supreme Court to lower the passing score to compensate for its flub.
💄 The camera adds 10 pounds. As DOGE strips the rest of the federal government for parts, embattled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is putting his money where his mouth is (literally) and building a makeup studio in the Pentagon for remote television interviews. Hegseth has yet to hold a press conference in the Defense Department briefing room, but he has used it to film appearances on Fox News. Defense — and apparently eye shadow — spending is safe from Trump’s cost-cutting agenda: He and Hegseth just proposed the country’s first-ever $1 trillion annual defense budget.
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A taste of this week’s good news:
- A Midwest state took on pharmaceutical price-gouging — and won.
- An Ivy League institution gets schooled in managing workers’ retirements.
- Airbnb brings more transparency to your summer vacation.
- A pharma giant will pay millions in fines for its shady prescriptions.
THANK YOU TO OUR LEVER LEADERS
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“I love The Lever for its fearless investigations.”
LEVER IN THE NEWS
- The Nation — Longtime columnist Jeet Heer urged readers to subscribe to The Lever’s reporting as an alternative source of media offering “honest looks at Trump.”
- MSNBC — The Rachel Maddow Show featured our exposé on suspicious campaign contributions going to Billy Long, Trump’s pick for IRS chief.
- St. Louis Post-Dispatch — The largest newspaper in Long’s home state used our reporting to demand that his nomination be withdrawn.
- The revelations we uncovered about Long were also referenced by Politico, the Revolving Door Project, CPA Practice Advisor, and the Missouri Independent, among others.
- The Hill — David Sirota joined Rising to discuss why Trump’s tariffs are a political trap for Democrats.
- Common Dreams — The outlet referenced our reporting on the EPA shutting down its chemical disaster risk tracking map, at the industry's request.
- Our breaking coverage of the government’s chemical facility database going dark was also referenced by the Project On Government Oversight, AlterNet, and Great Lakes Now.
- Pluralistic — The website, founded by journalist Cory Doctorow, featured our reporting on how companies plan to take advantage of Trump’s tariffs.
- BIG — Antitrust expert Matt Stoller featured our report on the cottage industry advising companies on how to price-gouge consumers using Trump’s tariffs.
- Futurism — The publication cited our reporting on Elon Musk’s conflicts of interest in the USAID shutdown.
