The Bulwark

During its nonprofit phase, Republic Affairs received funding from left-of-center donors and foundations, including Pierre Omidyar‘s Democracy Fund Voice and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The publication transitioned to a subscription- and advertising-supported model after its sale to Center Enterprises and reported its first profitable year in 2024. ^{4 5 6 7}

Background

The Bulwark launched as a news-aggregator website and relaunched in January 2019 as a full editorial operation, drawing staff from the Weekly Standard, the neoconservative magazine co-founded by Bill Kristol that closed in December 2018 when its parent company, Clarity Media, discontinued it. The outlet was organized as a project of Republic Affairs (formerly known as the Defending Democracy Together Institute), a 501(c)(3) organization founded in Washington, D.C., in August 2018 by Kristol. Republic Affairs’ board of directors consisted of Kristol, political consultant Sarah Longwell, and radio host Charlie Sykes. ^{8 9 10 11}

Republic Affairs also had a 501(c)(4) counterpart, Defending Democracy Together. ⁷ Publisher Sarah Longwell was simultaneously a co-founder of Defending Democracy Together, and as a consultant through her firm, Longwell Partners, which was paid $391,516 by Republic Affairs in 2020. ⁵

Activities

The Bulwark produces daily newsletters, opinion articles, podcasts, and video programming. Its flagship audio product, the Bulwark Podcast, was hosted by founding editor Charlie Sykes until early 2024, when Tim Miller took over as host. Publisher Sarah Longwell hosts the Focus Group Podcast and other subscriber-exclusive programs. ^{12 13}

The outlet launched a paid subscriber model, Bulwark+, in 2021, initially reporting approximately 16,000 paid subscribers. By early 2025, the publication reported approximately 90,000 paid Substack subscribers; at the base rate of $100 annually, that equates to roughly $9 million in gross annual subscription revenue before Substack’s platform fee, though the publication also offers a higher-tier founding membership at $300 per year. The Bulwark ranked as the fourth-most subscribed news outlet on Substack as of September 2024. ^{14 5 13}

YouTube advertising became a substantial revenue source, bringing in between $150,000 and $300,000 per month, according to a 2025 New York magazine report. ^{5 15} The Bulwark’s YouTube channel grew from approximately 50,000 subscribers in September 2023 to more than 1.7 million as of June 2026. ^{16 17}

The Bulwark expanded its reporting operation in 2024, hiring Sam Stein, formerly of Politico, as the managing editor in June 2024, ¹⁸ and adding reporter Marc Caputo, who later left the publication for Axios. ^{13 19}

Funding

Nonprofit Phase

The Bulwark was founded and financed primarily through Republic Affairs (formerly known as the Defending Democracy Together Institute), a nonprofit advocacy group formed to support conservative and former Republican opponents of President Donald Trump. Republic Affairs spent approximately $1.2 million directly on The Bulwark in 2019 and approximately $1.3 million in 2020. In 2019, editor Jonathan V. Last was paid $190,000 as an independent contractor, and co-founder Charlie Sykes was paid $140,000 as president of the organization. In 2020, Last received $197,083 and Sykes received $126,875 as editor-employees. ⁵

The largest single known donation to Republic Affairs during this period was a contribution of more than $1 million from the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund in 2019. Fidelity Charitable is a donor-advised fund provider that does not publicly identify the underlying donors behind individual contributions. ⁵

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation contributed to Republic Affairs in September 2018, routed through DonorsTrust, a right-leaning donor-advised fund provider. OpenSecrets reported in 2020 that 501(c)(4) counterpart Defending Democracy Together received at least $1.6 million in grants from Democracy Fund Voice, a 501(c)(4) organization created and funded by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. ²⁰ Republic Affairs also received a $125,000 grant in 2020 from the New Venture Fund, one of several left-wing nonprofits managed by Arabella Advisors (now Sunflower Services). ^{20 5 6 7}

Semafor has reported that early in The Bulwark’s history, publisher Sarah Longwell solicited personal contributions from two of her consulting clients to cover initial operating shortfalls of approximately $400,000: Kathryn Murdoch, wife of James Murdoch and a donor to left-of-center causes, and Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn co-founder and prominent Democratic mega-donor. ¹³

For-Profit Phase

In August 2021, Republic Affairs sold The Bulwark to Center Enterprises, Inc. for $100,000, per the nonprofit’s 2021 tax return, completing its transition from a nonprofit-subsidized operation to a for-profit media company. The for-profit revenue model relies on Substack subscriptions, YouTube advertising, podcast sponsorships, and live events. The publication reported its first profitable year in 2024. ⁵

People

Sarah Longwell is publisher of The Bulwark and president and CEO of Longwell Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based political communications firm she founded in December 2019. Longwell co-founded Republic Affairs (formerly known as the Defending Democracy Together Institute) and Defending Democracy Together with Bill Kristol in 2018, and is also president of the Republican Accountability PAC. ^{21 22}

Bill Kristol is editor-at-large of The Bulwark. Kristol co-founded the Weekly Standard in 1995 and also co-founded Republic Affairs (formerly known as the Defending Democracy Together Institute) in 2018. In a February 2020 tweet, Kristol publicly declared alignment with the Democratic Party, writing: “We are all Democrats now,” a statement reported at the time as a notable departure from his prior Republican identity. ²³

Charlie Sykes, a former right-of-center talk-radio host based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was the founding editor-in-chief of The Bulwark from its 2019 founding until departing the outlet in 2024. Sykes previously worked as a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard and as an MSNBC contributor, and was a national advisory-board member of the Democracy Fund, a center-left organization created and funded by Pierre Omidyar. ²⁴

Jonathan V. Last (known as JVL) is editor of The Bulwark. Last was previously a senior writer and digital editor at the Weekly Standard, and was paid $190,000 as an independent contractor by Republic Affairs in 2019. ⁵

Tim Miller hosts the Bulwark Podcast. Miller previously worked as a senior aide on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush‘s (R) 2016 presidential campaign and co-founded America Rising, a Republican opposition-research super PAC, before breaking with the party over President Donald Trump. ¹³