This is a web version of The Lever ’s daily email newsletter.
🔥 ICYMI in The Lever : Advanced artificial intelligence is scary — but are we afraid of the wrong thing ?
👀 Watch : How Citizens United and “ corruption of inaction ” created the MAGA era.
👇 Further down in this newsletter:
- The billionaire brothers with another check for the president.
- A PR populist with a data center past.
- Who is winning the AI infrastructure race?
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STORIES TO GO
In a hurry? These are the top stories in the country today.
🚨 CNN, MS NOW, and Politico are suing President Donald Trump after their reporters were banned from the White House.
🤷🏻♂️ JPMorgan gave up on forecasting future oil prices, blaming volatility from the Iran war.
🎥 Paramount has reportedly reached a settlement agreement with state attorneys general, paving the way for its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros.
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TODAY'S TOPLINES
Winklevossed! Last month, the Winklevoss twins — the world’s first “bitcoin billionaires” — each donated roughly $5 million worth of the cryptocurrency to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, according to financial records reviewed by The Lever . These donations came around the same time that the Trump administration and Big Crypto were pushing to pass the Clarity Act , legislation that would have created a light-touch regulatory framework for the burgeoning crypto industry, legitimizing the Trump family’s crypto empire and limiting states’ ability to fight crypto scams. However, the bill failed to pass a procedural vote in the Senate last week .
📢 The same day, Tyler Winklevoss took to X to announce “Plan B” : getting the Trump administration to “[write] Clarity through rulemaking” that doesn’t require congressional approval.
😳 Winklevoss tagged Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Mike Selig. In the following days, both leaders lamented the Clarity Act’s failure and made formal advances toward crystallizing new cryptocurrency rules.
💸 This round of Winklevoss cash follows another joint $10 million gift made to MAGA Inc. this summer, also reported by The Lever . That donation came less than a month after the White House moved to vacate a Biden-era enforcement action against the brothers’ crypto exchange, Gemini (including a $5 million penalty).
📢 Bluesky , Reddit , LinkedIn , X , Substack , Threads , Mastodon , and Facebook .
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PR populism. A Republican Congressional candidate in Iowa has pitched himself as an anti-corruption crusader, swearing off corporate PAC donations and claiming to represent voters who’ve “been left behind by a broken political system that works for insiders and lobbyists.” But as rapid data center development in his northeastern Iowa district has spurred multiple construction moratoriums, former state Rep. Joe Mitchell has worked as one of those insiders, earning nearly $100,000 consulting for a “data center PR agency.” Mitchell — a 29-year-old real estate developer worth as much as $21 million — is running for Iowa’s open 2nd Congressional District seat, which is being vacated by Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) as she runs for Senate.
🤖 After serving two terms in the Iowa legislature from 2019 until 2023, Mitchell brought his expertise to KAOH Media, a public relations firm which, by its own description , “helps AI developers navigate public opinion, regulatory hurdles, and community concerns.” According to financial disclosures reviewed by The Lever, KAOH paid Mitchell $92,500 in consulting fees between 2024 and 2025.
👀 Mitchell also joined the 2024 Trump administration transition team and later worked for the Federal Housing Finance Agency before being appointed a regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in July 2025. During that time, Mitchell cheerleaded President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill tax-cut act. According to The American Prospect , the final law awarded major tax breaks to data center developers.
🤔 Executives at KHAO — where Mitchell was contracted — argue that Americans’ opposition to data centers stems, in part, from ignorance. “A controversy in one community can shape sentiment and policy conversations elsewhere almost overnight, and social media accelerates both legitimate concerns and misinformation,” said KHAO CEO Brad McAfee.
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DAY IN DATA
The AI infrastructure boom is an American phenomenon. (Source: Centre for British Progress )
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TAKE ACTION
Tell State Legislators: Our Hospitals Are Not for Sale. A hospital is the difference between life and death. It is where babies are born, where workers care for their neighbors, and where families turn during the worst moments of their lives.
Private equity firms should not get to buy these institutions, pull money out of them, and leave communities to deal with what remains.
Tell state legislators to pass a moratorium on private equity purchases of hospitals and keep health care in the hands of the communities it serves.
Start Writing
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DOOMSCROLL DISTRACTIONS
🐆 New animal alert. These photographs show the Bolivian tilcayo, a tiny “tiger cat” that is the first new cat species identified in over 100 years.
🌋 Dormant. A hill in Sussex County, New Jersey, contains the East Coast’s volcanic past .
🦝 Boot camp. Sick and injured raccoons are learning to survive the wilderness in this Mississippi training camp .
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Big Crypto Buys Plan B
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at LeverNews.