Master Plan

You’ve probably heard of Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that helped unleash billionaire money into American elections. But few know the inside story of how a network of conservative lawyers and activists carefully orchestrated the case. With the 2026 midterms just days away, we're revisiting Episode 9, “Going Big,” from Season 1 of Master Plan: Legalizing Corruption. We travel to Indi...

With the 2026 midterms approaching and billions of dollars flooding into American elections, we're revisiting one of our most popular episodes of Master Plan. In 1971, corporate lawyer Lewis Powell wrote a manifesto explaining how corporations and oligarchs could fight back against New Deal-era reforms and use their money to hijack American politics. For decades, the Powell Memo seemed like an urb...

Today, we are sharing the Season 3 premiere of The Future of Our Former Democracy, the Signal Award-winning podcast from More Equitable Democracy and Mori Strategies. The Future of Our Former Democracy has spent two seasons exploring what the U.S. can learn from democracies around the world, most recently Germany and then Ireland. This season, host Colin Cole, Director of Policy, Outreach, and Com...

This week we’re sharing a special episode from You Might Be Right, the chart-topping politics podcast from the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee. It was recently named a “must-listen” by both NPR and Spotify. The show is hosted by former Tennessee Governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam. Coming from opposite parties, they bring leading experts into sub...

In the season finale of Master Plan: The Kingmakers, we ask Democratic leaders what the next U.S. president should do with the expanded executive powers that Trump will leave behind.  Featuring exclusive interviews with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y), Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I), Sen. Michael Bennet (Co.), and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh...

A little-known conservative operative spends years figuring out how to bend the machinery of government to a president's will. By the time Donald Trump returns for his second term, a shadow government is ready to seize control. TRANSCRIPT & BONUS MATERIALS: Click here to read a transcript and to explore archival sources related to the episode. Get Master Plan episodes early and ad-free by becoming...

Obama vowed to restore the rule of law after the War on Terror. But behind closed doors, his administration created a secret system that allowed the president to decide who lived and who died. TRANSCRIPT & BONUS MATERIALS: Click here to read a transcript and to explore bonus archival documents related to the episode. Get Master Plan episodes early and ad-free by becoming a paid subscriber. Enjoy b...

September 11, 2001 brought chaos and terror to the United States. It also brought an unprecedented opportunity. After decades of watching what he felt was the erosion of presidential power, Vice President Dick Cheney leveraged a national emergency to shift the balance of power toward the executive branch. We trace Cheney's evolution — from Gerald Ford's chief of staff to George W. Bush's right-han...

Every crisis creates an opportunity. The final chapters of The Kingmakers reveal the plot to build an all-powerful presidency — and put it in the hands of a man who wants to be king. Watch the full video trailer on YouTube: [link].  Catch up on Episodes 1-4 now. New episodes begin dropping to our premium subscribers in early August. Become a paid member today with this special discount. Learn...

Today, we are sharing the debut episode of First America, the brand-new history podcast from Critical Frequency and Pushkin Industries. Hosted by award-winning journalist Rebecca Nagle and featuring leading Native historians, First America unveils how the founders’ treatment of Indigenous nations – and their resistance – shaped U.S. democracy. The show does not simply add another blemish to the im...

The Master Plan team is hard at work on the next batch of Season 2 episodes. In the meantime, we’re sharing an episode from our friends at Scene on Radio. Their new season, The News, explores the crisis facing American journalism: collapsing local newsrooms, declining public trust, and a media ecosystem flooded with misinformation. In this first episode, the two-time Peabody Award-nominated series...

This week, the Iran War will reach its official 60-day mark. That’s a critical deadline under the War Powers Resolution, a Nixon-era law created to limit presidential war-making. Under that law, President Donald Trump can claim a one-time, 30-day extension, so the Iran War will likely continue. But the War Powers Resolution also gives Congress a secret weapon to end this unpopular war — or any war...

Rather than retreat from Iran-Contra and other scandals, conservative operatives inside the White House — led by Attorney General Edwin Meese — went on the offensive. Drawing on newly uncovered documents and exclusive interviews, we trace how Meese helped turn a fringe idea into doctrine: that all executive power belongs to the president alone. This is the origin story of the unitary executive the...

Emboldened by a landslide election, the president’s men began to see themselves as 1980s action-movie heroes, willing to break the law to get what they want. The result was the Iran-Contra affair, a secret arms deal that ignited a constitutional crisis. Would Congress roll over and play dead — or actually do something? TRANSCRIPT & BONUS MATERIALS: Click here to read a transcript and to explore bo...

How did Project 2025 take control of the White House? It all began decades ago, when a beer-baron-backed think tank handed President Ronald Reagan an 1,100-page instruction manual for expanding presidential power. The next episode is available now for premium subscribers. Click here. TRANSCRIPT & BONUS MATERIALS: Click here to read a transcript and to explore bonus historical documents related to...

Before Trump, there was Nixon. His attempts to seize the power of the purse and secretly expand the Vietnam War forged a constitutional crisis, a backlash, and a template for an imperial presidency. TRANSCRIPT & BONUS MATERIALS: Click here to read a transcript and to explore bonus historical documents related to the episode. Get Master Plan episodes early and ad-free by becoming a paid subscriber....

A new season of Master Plan debuts on March 16. For early access to new episodes and exclusive bonus content, click here to upgrade to a paid subscription to The Lever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve got big news — Master Plan is now a book! Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America, co-authored by David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher, is now available from all major booksellers. The 265-page book expands on the award-winning podcast with exclusive archival documents, new reporting, and never-before-seen photos. It tells the story of how corporate interests and politi...

In a special Master Plan bonus episode, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse joins David Sirota to break down the impact of the Supreme Court’s’ 2010 Citizens United ruling on 2024's super PAC spending spree. The two dig into billionaires like Elon Musk openly backing candidates and the hidden power of dark money, and discuss current reforms efforts to bring transparency back to democracy. Plus, the Master...

We all live in the master planners’ world now, immersed in an ocean of corruption. The 2024 Republican presidential campaign is bankrolled by billionaires, while corporate interests’ power was in full display at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. What will it take to reclaim our democracy? Is there any hope of reversing the master plan?  Get ad-free Master Plan episodes by becoming a paid su...

Unleashed by the Citizens United ruling, the master planners launch a three-part heist to crack the vault protecting democracy itself. First, the schemers take out the security cameras monitoring dark money. Then, they disarm the last campaign finance cops on the beat. Finally, they pull off a getaway so prosecutors can’t charge them as they run off with the loot.  Get ad-free Master Plan episodes...

An anti-abortion legal activist starts using the federal courts to chip away at campaign finance restrictions, setting his sights on the Supreme Court. Indiana lawyer James Bopp Jr. engineers the Citizens United case and hand-tailors it for Justice Anthony Kennedy’s storied swing vote — setting him up for an explosive 5-4 ruling that would devastate campaign finance law. Get ad-free Master Plan ep...

As President George W. Bush declares “Mission Accomplished” in the Iraq War, his administration wages a different war with swing-state senators defying his judicial nominees. Operatives like Leonard Leo and Brett Kavanaugh seize the moment to try to dramatically shift the balance of the Supreme Court. But when Bush goes off script and nominates a trusted legal aide for a Supreme Court vacancy, the...

After a series of setbacks in the push to legalize corruption, the master planners know they must take over the U.S. Supreme Court and halt the trend of Republican-appointed justices siding with campaign finance reformers. So in the early 2000s, they deploy their new judicial machine in an epic battle to try to permanently change the courts from the bottom up. This is part one of a two-part story...

When five U.S. senators get caught pressuring a regulator on behalf of a financial magnate, they become known as the “Keating Five.” The public is predictably outraged. But what no one expects is that one of those senators will learn from his mistakes and become the staunchest campaign finance reformer in decades.  Get ad-free Master Plan episodes by becoming a paid subscriber. Enjoy bonus episode...