I’ve spent most of my adult life toiling away in many different political and journalism jobs, but focused on one single mission the whole time: a mission to show that corruption isn’t an inevitability or an abstraction, but is instead a human-manufactured system that directly harms us all in concrete ways. That work across books , articles , op-eds , videos , newspaper columns , reporting projects , podcasts and films culminated in the creation of The Lever six years ago, and the release of the very first episode of our podcast series Master Plan two years ago, in which I argued:

Your life is worse than it should be thanks to the corruption of American democracy.

Trouble earning enough to pay your credit card bill and your rent ? You can thank the corporate donors who delivered cash to lawmakers who then blocked a minimum wage increase, blocked rent control, and blocked a cap on credit card interest rates.

Are you one of the 112 million Americans who struggle to pay for health care? You can thank the health insurance companies, who funneled millions of dollars to lawmakers to make sure they keep America as the only industrialized country without government-guaranteed healthcare.

Sweating climate change? Look no further than the mountains of money that fossil fuel companies give to lawmakers to let those companies continue incinerating the atmosphere.

I’ve been saying this for literally decades, seeking out any platform — even those with a different ideology — to try to spread this message . And I confess that at times — after all the eyerolling and all the politicians vilifying me — the work has felt demoralizing. There have been moments when I’ve felt like a deranged person screaming into an abyss, and moments when I’ve wanted to quit.

But now is not one of those moments — because for the first time in my life, what I and a handful of other anti-corruption voices have been spotlighting has finally taken center stage in American politics.

Yes, miraculously, against all the odds and amid all the corporate media propaganda and all the super PAC spending, the 2026 election has actually become a crystal clear referendum on the master plan to legalize corruption.

And what’s more, Democrats are doing what I and a few others have been eyerolled for advocating over the last quarter century: They are actually linking the corruption crisis to all the other crises.

“We have a corruption crisis that’s leading to an affordability crisis,” Iowa Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek said during this week’s Senate debate against Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson.

Texas Rep. James Talarico put it even more succinctly in his Senate race: “We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis.”

Politico reports that Democrats from Georgia to Ohio are making the same point: “They’re leaning hard into anti-corruption messaging in the final weeks of the campaign as new research suggests that linking corruption to Americans’ economic struggles can boost Democrats into the home stretch.”

This is an exceedingly rare moment in American politics — the kind of anti-corruption moment that we haven’t experienced since the immediate aftermath of Watergate.

Think about what we’re seeing: We have polls — including even Fox News polls — telling us that voters see corruption as a top issue in the midterms.

We see the corruption issue breaking out of the political discourse and making its way into the popular culture .

We have candidates in the most contested states hammering home the connection between political corruption and prices for the basic necessities of life. And Talarico literally points to the Powell Memo , which our podcast series Master Plan exposed as the original blueprint of the 50-year movement to deregulate the campaign finance system and legalize corruption.

Help us reverse the Master Plan . Upgrade to a paid subscription and fund the reporting that exposes it.

Upgrade now

Thanks to Donald Trump’s in-your-face corruption , nobody can deny just how rotted the entire system is. And thanks to follow-the-money journalism , against-all-odds grassroots organizing, and brave anti-corruption candidates walking into a firehose of moneyed opposition, we have finally arrived at a seminal opportunity — not just for anti-corruption candidates to win one election, but for serious anti-corruption policy to be legislated and enacted.

These opportunities almost never come around, which means that this is a time to think way bigger than mere congressional stock trading bans and nibble-around-the-edges ethics reforms (all of which are important). If Democrats win the midterms, it is time for them to go huge in ways I’ve talked myself hoarse about over the last quarter century.

In the coming weeks, I’ll have a lot more to say about exactly what a real and comprehensive anti-corruption agenda can look like; stay tuned for more information on that. (In the meantime, see here and here for a glimpse, or just read my first book, Hostile Takeover , from 2006).

But the point is, we cannot miss this opportunity or let Democrats offer only half-measures. We must understand that the upcoming elections are not the end of this. They will merely be the end of the beginning of an epic battle.

If you have been part of the anti-corruption movement and have felt gaslit and demoralized over the last however many years, take a moment to feel a sense of excitement and a sense of accomplishment. It’s real.

Then get ready for the biggest fight of all: The fight to turn opportunity into action and finally reverse the master plan.