iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

NEW: Only 38% of Americans support tariffs associated with a $100 annual increase in household costs. (Source: Cato Institute)

22410

Days after The Lever questioned Black Bear Sports about hiring a private equity veteran as CEO, the company’s claim that it had “nothing to do with Wall Street” disappeared from its website. The nation’s largest youth hockey operator had repeated that denial for months.

12613

Susan Collins is fighting to keep her seat against @troyjackson207.bsky.social, Graham Platner’s Democratic replacement. Jackson’s out-of-state party advisers are reportedly frustrated by the Sanders ally’s “backwoods cadence” and progressive stances — and want him to move to the center.

105826

The Lever @levernews.com · 22/09/2026

Last year on The Lever’s podcast, Sen. @chrismurphyct.bsky.social raised concerns that the merger could put two major newsrooms under the control of Trump allies, pointing to the Ellison family’s relationship with the president and the administration’s confrontations with major media outlets.

22816

Earlier this year, we told you how Black Bear Sports banned parents from filming their own kids’ hockey games — then backed down after our reporting. Now there’s more: the company quietly named a private equity veteran CEO, and its “nothing to do with Wall Street” denial has vanished.

13217

The Lever @levernews.com · 22/09/2026

The Paramount deal would put CBS and CNN under one roof—the kind of concentrated media power Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s 1971 memo urged corporate America to build around institutions shaping public opinion. CBS executives later joined the Chamber effort to act on it.

1128996

The Lever @levernews.com · 22/09/2026

NEW: JD Vance says Watergate would be a “12-hour news story” today. He may have a point — but only because conservatives spent decades fighting the reforms Watergate produced, rebuilding presidential power, and recasting Nixon as a victim rather than a warning. Jared Jacang Maher explains ⬇️

56529

The Lever @levernews.com · 21/09/2026

Last year on The Lever's podcast, Sen. @chrismurphyct.bsky.social warned that the consolidation could leave allies of President Trump controlling both major newsrooms, pointing to the Ellison family’s ties to Trump and recent clashes between the administration and the press.

12510

The Lever @levernews.com · 20/09/2026

"We don't need to choose just one sub-issue within AI, the same way we don't have to choose one sub-issue within the economy." NY Assemblymember @alexbores.nyc makes the case to @davidsirota.com for Democrats working every angle of AI regulation at once.

24020

The Lever @levernews.com · 20/09/2026

🚨NEW: "The Terminator" imagines killer robots. "The Big Short" imagines a Ponzi-scheme collapse. Which one will the AI apocalypse resemble the most? If it's the latter, then all of us may be already FUBAR, says @davidsirota.com.

Screenshot from the article that says: "AI safety risks are very real and legitimately terrifying. But if we are actually beginning to approach “The Terminator” scenario, then there is some good news: We at least have some existing laws that might still be able to deter the construction of an army of murderous T-1000s.

But if we are instead more likely headed toward a sequel to “The Big Short” — in which investors’ dreams of capitalizing Machine Gods are exposed as a nightmare that wasted trillions of dollars financing a souped-up Clippy — then all of us may already be FUBAR, if you believe the subtext of a new report from one of the world’s biggest banks, and another report from one of the world’s biggest consulting firms."

24117

The Lever @levernews.com · 18/09/2026

Who gets to decide how AI reshapes our lives — tech companies, politicians, or the public? Today at 3pm ET, @davidsirota.com talks with NY Assemblymember @alexbores.nyc about his new $30M effort to unite Democrats around AI safeguards. Watch live: www.levernews.com/david-sirota...

12811

The Lever @levernews.com · 18/09/2026

Here’s a revealing snapshot of Trump’s AI policy: Regulators restricted an AI tool after alleging it could mass-produce deceptive customer reviews. Trump’s FTC threw out the order, saying it placed too much burden on AI innovation.

13116

The Lever @levernews.com · 17/09/2026

Want the full conversation? Become a Lever Premium subscriber to listen: www.levernews.com/cutting-thro...

1173

Before Robert Kraft stepped in to silence criticism of the genocide in Gaza, he gave money to key pro-Israel midterms candidates.

12814

🚨 NEW: Hakeem Jeffries created a five-member commission to help write House Democrats’ AI policy agenda. Among its members: lawmakers backed by major AI political groups and Silicon Valley donors seeking to shape those very rules.

1514566

One way lawmakers could start regulating AI right now: make the industry disclose who is using all those GPUs — and what they’re being used for. .@edzitron.com explains why GPU transparency across the biggest AI companies could be a first step toward understanding the scale of the boom.

12511

A super PAC founded by allies of Ted Cruz to combat antisemitism inside the GOP spent more than $90K attacking @abdulelsayed.bsky.social . The AI-generated ad depicts El-Sayed alongside his family and Hasan Piker as the phrases “death to America” and “celebrate 9/11” appear on screen.

62714

Everyone’s worried about the “Terminator” AI doomsday. But the more immediate threat could look a lot more like The Big Short. . @edzitron.com explains why the AI boom’s real danger may be an economic one — and what happens if the money behind it starts to unravel.

726155

The Lever @levernews.com · 15/09/2026

Delaware AG Kathy Jennings, who just won her Democratic primary with about 71% of the vote, already played a major role in AI policy: last year her office approved OpenAI’s restructuring into a for-profit public benefit corporation.

1117

NEW from @DavidSirota.com: Weeks before the midterms, Democrats' highest-profile icons are publicly celebrating the AI industry’s revolving-door corruption aiming to infiltrate the party.

3138

The Lever @levernews.com · 15/09/2026

🚨 New: A Ted Cruz-linked super PAC just spent $90K on an AI-generated ad against @abdulelsayed.bsky.social. This seems to be the first time the group, The Front Line Action, has ever attacked a Democrat, despite being founded to fight antisemitism inside the GOP.

32416

The Lever @levernews.com · 14/09/2026

From @matthewstoller.bsky.social: The real AI crisis isn't the technology. It's that the people building it keep getting to write the rules for it, even when they're the ones sounding the alarm.

Screenshot that says the following: It’s hard to escape that there’s something very strange and manipulative about AI safety discourse. The AI doomers have a lot of money; they run the major AI companies; they fund most AI research; and they staff the major AI Safety nonprofits, like the one that investigates security problems. Many are sincere, but the strange hyper-rationalist effective altruism theology is a huge part of the AI Safety space. As an academic computer scientist who has been around this world for a decade told me, “It’s a weird quasi-religion, like a cult. The core people are sociopaths, and then the rest are neurotics.” It’s not a coincidence that Sam Bankman-Fried was the single most important early funder of Anthropic.

22613

The Lever @levernews.com · 10/09/2026

🚨 NEW: As Congress scrambles to contain AI risks, a little-known Pentagon office is dismantling safeguards and racing AI into warfare. Its systems helped select 13,000 targets in Iran — while Big Tech alumni run the office and their former employers chase military contracts.

33528

Chris Pappas just won the Democratic nomination for New Hampshire’s Senate seat after campaigning on cleaning up big money in politics and touting his refusal to take corporate PAC cash. But Pappas has received more than $600,000 in contributions connected to AIPAC over his congressional career.

32410

Lindsey Graham died in July. Now money he raised to keep his Senate seat is helping his sister run to take it over — after the very Republican committee spending to help her won a Supreme Court case that changed the rules.

1217

State governments are on a tear enacting new election-related legislation ⬇️

1125

The Lever @levernews.com · 08/09/2026

Gavin Newsom says the American economy was “engineered for the very top” and needs an “economic reset.” Yet when California activists proposed a one-time 5% tax on billionaires, Newsom emerged as one of its most prominent opponents.

76423

Elon Musk’s super PAC is pouring money into the midterms again. In Maine, America PAC has spent roughly $170,000 on electioneering supporting Sen. Susan Collins, part of a broader multimillion-dollar push into congressional races around the country.

71915

The Lever @levernews.com · 08/09/2026

Maura Sullivan is asking New Hampshire Democrats to send her to Congress today. One less-discussed part of her résumé: she worked at Ginkgo Bioworks, a biotech company a short seller accused of using related-party customers to inflate its business. Executives later donated to her campaign.

196

The Lever @levernews.com · 08/09/2026

NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTES TODAY. John Sununu chaired Boston Scientific’s “Compliance and Quality” committee as women reported devastating injuries from the company’s pelvic mesh — a product the FDA would ultimately order off the market. Now he’s seeking the GOP Senate nomination.

11013

The Lever @levernews.com · 03/09/2026

Stock trading by teenagers and children jumped 65% in a single year, reaching $70 million. Charles Schwab now offers investment accounts to kids as young as 13, and Nasdaq wants trading available 23 hours a day.

22114

The Lever @levernews.com · 03/09/2026

🚨 The guy who helped Trump bulldoze AI regulations has a confession: He knew the technology could pose catastrophic risks. He just didn’t say so because it might have cost him influence. Now he’s warning AI “rogue agents” could escape human control and form autonomous societies.

33117

🚨 Trump has pushed presidential power to extraordinary new extremes. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Democrats shouldn’t respond by voluntarily surrendering the power of the office. “When Democrats are in charge, they falsely handcuff themselves and say, ‘We can’t do anything.’” @aoc.bsky.social

35024

Before flash floods killed at least two people and stranded 80 at the Grand Canyon, Trump’s Interior Department pulled 300 specialized emergency responders from across the country – to work on his D.C. golf course and Reflecting Pool upgrades.

514796

Opioid settlement money was supposed to help communities recover from an addiction crisis. Instead, 19 law enforcement agencies spent nearly $1 million of it on Flock cameras and other automated license-plate readers, according to Mother Jones.

24723