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:

LEVER DEEP DIVE OF THE WEEK

💔 Is A Monopoly Ruining Dating? Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a Lever report revealed how a $8.5 billion online dating colossus that owns Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and many other services could be harming America’s love life. Digging through lawsuits and behavioral psychology, we uncovered who’s making money from your floundering love life.

LEVER SCOOPS OF THE WEEK

😡 Musk Gets More Government Cash While Pushing Education Cuts. The kicker? His companies already take in $8 million a day in public funds.

🏦 Banks Get Their Pro-Merger Regulator. The new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants ever-bigger banks, which isn’t great for the rest of us.

🔥 Chemical Companies Ask Trump’s EPA To Hide Potential Disasters. Check for dangerous facilities in your neighborhood before it disappears.

💰 Musk Targets His Companies’ Regulators. The billionaire is trying to shut down the agency that would regulate his new payment system.

⚖️ Trump’s Purge vs. Roberts’ Memo. The chief justice’s previous writing could complicate the president’s attempt to gut independent federal agencies.

📈 Prison CEOs Predict Jackpot Off Immigration Crackdown. It’s important to listen to what corporate executives tell their shareholders on earnings calls.

🩴 Elon Doesn’t Want You To Know His DEI Past. He was for it before he was against it.

THIS WEEK ON LEVER PODCASTS

🍔 RFK’s Beef With Big Food. New Health Secretary RFK Jr. and medical professionals agree: The ultraprocessed food industry needs to be reined in. But will Big Food allow it to happen?

💸 Trump’s Tariff War Explained. How the trade barriers could affect you and your family — and create some really weird geopolitical effects.

🏆 The Lever’s podcasts just scored more accolades! 

Both Lever Time, our flagship weekly podcast, and Master Plan, our investigative audio series, have been nominated for prestigious Ambie Awards for Excellence in Audio. If you haven’t listened, subscribe to both podcasts now to learn what all the fuss is about.

Listen & Subscribe To Lever Time
Listen & Subscribe To Master Plan
THIS WEEK’S LEVER DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

🌍 Sierra Club’s Crypto King resigns. After we exclusively reported details on top Sierra Club lobbyist Kevin Harris’ double duty as an agent for Crypto.com, he resigned last week. Harris was paid more than $241,000 from the Sierra Club in 2023 while simultaneously lobbying Congress on behalf of the fossil fuel-soaked crypto industry. 

🚓 Fortress predicted everything. For-profit detention company CoreCivic has already offered ICE an increase of 28,000 beds since Trump took office — which could mean $1.5 billion in new revenue, its CEO told investors. The CEO of the prison giant GEO Group — which Attorney General Pam Bondi used to lobby for — told investors last year “we’re looking at a theoretical potential doubling of all of our services.” The two contractors already receive more than $1 billion annually in government contracts. This 1992 sci-fi movie now seems like a prophecy.

⚡ There’s pharma price-gouging in your electricity bill. New York City’s biggest electricity provider, Con Edison, is asking regulators to approve double-digit rate hikes for both power and gas in order to cover the company’s rising expenses. In a regulatory filing flagged by economic researcher Matt Stoller, the company specifically cited a 12 percent increase in employee benefit costs, “primarily due to rapidly rising costs and utilization of GLP prescription drugs.” These weight-loss and diabetes drugs can cost 10 to 15 times more in the United States than in other countries.

WE LOVE TO SEE IT

Every week, we bring paid subscribers a newsletter full of policy wins, environmental victories, and initiatives that make life better for working people. This week, a major Midwest city cleaned up its energy act, states water local news deserts, indie bookstores kindle competition with Amazon, and regulators force corporate mergers into the open.

THANK YOU TO OUR LEVER LEADERS

Lever Leaders provide us with our highest level of support and score additional perks in return, including an annual gift of limited-edition Lever merchandise, a yearly gift subscription for friends and family, and access to an exclusive Lever staff meeting for a sneak peek at our future plans. Every week, we highlight folks who’ve taken that step.

Become A Lever Leader Today
LEVER IN THE NEWS