And now for some good news! I’d like to welcome Sharon Weinberger to the staff of The Intercept, where she will serve as our national security editor, heading up our investigative reporting on intelligence, military affairs, government surveillance, and the Snowden archive.
Sharon is an experienced national security reporter with a focus on science and technology, and her reporting and voice was instrumental in the success of the Danger Room blog at Wired—an early model for how to present substantive reporting on the internet. Most recently, she has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., where she she was working on a history of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the topic of a forthcoming book from Knopf. She has been a Knight Science Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an International Reporting Project Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a Carnegie Fellow at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and an Alicia Patterson Fellow. Her writing on military science and technology has appeared regularly in Nature, the BBC, Discover, Slate, Wired, and The Washington Post, among other publications. In addition to her forthcoming DARPA history, she is the author of Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon’s Scientific Underworld.
Juan Thompson also joins The Intercept this week as a staff reporter. Juan was most recently a production assistant and reporter at Chicago’s NPR member station WBEZ, and before that he worked as a reporter for DNAinfo Chicago. His work is focused on the intersection of politics, technology, and American culture, and he lives in Brooklyn.
The arrival of Sharon and Juan brings The Intercept‘s total staff count to just north of 20 reporters, editors, and technologists, and we look forward to continuing that growth and increasing our capacity to put invaluable, independent journalism on the internet.
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
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