The Lever is a news and commentary outlet founded by David Sirota, a far-left journalist and former speechwriter for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT).

Background

The Lever originated as The Daily Poster, a Substack founded by David Sirota in April 2020. In May 2021, The Daily Poster moved to its own website. In March 2022, The Daily Poster rebranded as The Lever. ^{1 2}

In an interview, Sirota described The Lever as countering mainstream media biases, particularly an incentive for media outlets to cater to the political biases of their audiences. Sirota believes that this paradigm insulates politicians from legitimate criticisms and makes politics less efficient overall. ³

Bias

Media Bias/Fact Check rates The Lever as having a “left” bias. The group gives The Lever a “high” rating for its factual reporting. ⁴

Notable Stories

In March 2023, shortly after the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, The Lever reported that Silicon Valley Bank had extensively lobbied the federal government to reduce financial regulations. Silicon Valley Bank president Greg Becker had submitted a statement to a U.S. Senate panel encouraging the federal government to exempt more banks from financial regulations instituted after the 2008 financial crisis. ⁵

In February 2023, The Lever reported that Norfolk Southern, the railway company that suffered a high-profile derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, had successfully lobbied the federal government to end a safety regulation on brakes dating back to the Civil War. ⁶

In late 2022, Southwest Airlines canceled thousands of flights and stranded up to one million passengers due to erroneous responses to bad weather produced by the company’s software systems. The Lever produced numerous reports covering the ordeal and claimed that Democratic legislators had previously pushed for stricter regulations on the treatment of customers by airlines, but the recommendations were rejected by U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (D). In January 2023, the Lever published an article criticizing the left-of-center media for neglecting or refusing to cover possible errors by Secretary Buttigieg for partisan reasons, while claiming right-of-center media covered the story to score political points. David Sirota wrote, “This dynamic is a big part of the democracy crisis in America. It has created two throngs of zombie partisans fighting a never-ending war of attrition from behind screens that tell them only what they want to hear, and censor facts that might alter their thinking.” ^{7 8}

In August 2022, The Lever and ProPublica published a story on how Barry Seid made $1.6 billion in donations to the Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit run by conservative activist Leonard Leo that has allegedly boosted right-of-center influences over the American legal system. ⁹

Leadership

David Sirota is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, and also works as an editor-at-large at Jacobin and as a columnist at the Guardian. ¹⁰ Sirota is a far-left journalist whose work includes having written a defense of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez that called his economic record a “miracle” and writing an article expressing hope that the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber was a “white American” to counteract alleged bias against minorities by the U.S. government. ^{11 12}

Sirota has been associated with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT). Sirota worked as a speechwriter for Senator Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign. ^{13 14}

Sirota was nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing the film Don’t Look Up. ¹⁵

Sirota is married to Colorado state Representative Emily Sirota (D). ¹⁶

1. “Welcome to the Daily Poster’s New Website.” The Lever. May 6, 2021. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.levernews.com/welcome-to-the-daily-posters-new-website/.
2. “Introducing THE LEVER.” The Lever. March 20, 2022. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.levernews.com/introducing-the-lever/.
3. “The Conversation: David Sirota.” The Young Turks. February 3, 2023. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://tyt.com/shows/the-conversation/2023-02-03/watch/8a8a8c8c4e3f6000.
4. ^[1] “The Lever – Bias and Credibility.” Media Bias/Fact Check. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-daily-poster/#google_vignette.
5. Burns, Rebecca; Sirota, David; Rock, Julia; Perez, Andrew. “SVB Chief Lawmakers To Weaken Bank Risk Regs.” The Lever. March 10, 2023. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.levernews.com/svb-chief-pressed-lawmakers-to-weaken-bank-risk-regs/.
6. Sirota, David; Rock, Julia; Burns, Rebecca; Cunningham-Cook, Matthew. “Rail Companies Blocked Safety Rules Before Ohio Derailment.” The Lever. February 8, 2023. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/.
7. Sirota, David. “The Partisan Ghost In The Machine Media.” The Lever. January 2, 2023. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.levernews.com/the-partisan-ghost-in-the-media-machine/.
8. Radde, Katilyn. “Southwest faces investigation over holiday travel disaster as it posts $200M loss.” NPR. January 26, 2023. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1151667801/southwest-airlines-investigation-losses-holiday-travel-cancellations#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Department%20of%20Transportation,losses%20in%20the%20first%20quarter
9. Perez, Andrew; Kroll, Andy; Elliot, Justin. “How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to the Architect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts.” ProPublica. August 22, 2022. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.propublica.org/article/dark-money-leonard-leo-barre-seid.
10. “Biography.” David Sirota. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://davidsirota.com/biography/.
11. Sirota, David. “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.” Salon. March 6, 2013. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/hugo_chavezs_economic_miracle/.
12. Sirota, David. “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white America.” Salon. April 16, 2013. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/lets_hope_the_boston_marathon_bomber_is_a_white_american/.
13. “Biography.” David Sirota. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://davidsirota.com/biography/.
14. Dovere, Edward-Isaac. “From a Bogus Website to Bernie Sanders’s Inner Circle.” The Atlantic. March 22, 2019. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/bernie-sanderss-new-speechwriter-has-controversial-past/585547/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share.
15. “Biography.” David Sirota. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://davidsirota.com/biography/.
16. “David Sirota.” Substack. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://substack.com/profile/9225239-david-sirota.