This week’s election results make it clear: Democrats are at risk of squandering their chance to tackle the climate crisis and economic inequality before the midterms.
At every turn, Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have sought to weaken and delay President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan — taking aim at the very provisions that are most desperately needed.
Polling shows that provisions like clean energy and paid family leave are popular with voters, but they’re opposed by powerful corporations that have spent lavishly on campaign contributions and lobbyists.
There’s nothing moderate about Manchin and Sinema’s obstructionism — but we need dogged investigative reporting to uncover the dirty deals and private interests behind these negotiations.
After decades of media consolidation and downsizing, fewer and fewer newsrooms have the resources or appetite for this kind of accountability journalism. The Intercept is different.
For months, we’ve been breaking stories on the lobbyists and billionaire donors who have been working to weaken legislation behind closed doors. But we’re not immune to the broader trends in the media business — and since Donald Trump left office, the reader donations we depend on have begun to level off.
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The tragedy for journalism is that after decades of downsizing and newsroom layoffs, there simply aren’t nearly as many boots on the ground as there were in the past. That means it’s easier than ever for politicians to get away with bad deals at the public’s expense — even if they’re wildly unpopular with voters.
And while we’ve been able to avoid the deep layoffs that others have seen, The Intercept is affected by the same pressures that are hurting the entire news industry. Since Trump left office, ratings and subscriptions are down for news across the board. We’re seeing that, as well, in a decline in the number of people visiting our site.
But while we no longer have the spectacle of Trump drawing eyeballs to the news, the corporate and political corruption rotting away the heart of our democracy has only become more urgent.
