Will Sommer and Lauren Egan will go deep on what’s driving Donald Trump’s conspiracy cult, and how Democrats plan on mounting their opposition under his second administration
The Bulwark has hired Will Sommer to cover the MAGA movement under Donald Trump’s second term, starting on March 6.
Will will publish a twice-a-week newsletter, “False Flag,” alongside video content on Substack and YouTube, with dispatches from the field and expert analysis on the forces driving today’s far-right. He brings a deep expertise in prominent online characters and conspiracy-driven communities—including the QAnon movement—based on his years of reporting at The Washington Post, Daily Beast, and more. Will authored a book on QAnon, and starred in a feature documentary that appeared to out its founder.
“I’m thrilled to be joining The Bulwark at this critical time in journalism and politics. The online world that I’ve been following my whole career is no longer a side show of conspiracists, castoffs and rabble-rousers,” said Will. “It is now the main driver of our daily conversations. In many respects, it is the backbone of our current government. I look forward to reporting on this community and telling these stories for an outlet that is growing rapidly and meeting news consumers where they are.”
In addition, Lauren Egan recently joined The Bulwark to launch a new newsletter called “The Opposition,” covering the Democrats and their attempts to regain both a cultural foothold and political power. Lauren’s reporting will focus on the Democrats’ strategy and tactics as an opposition party to thwart Trump’s second-term agenda; the chilling effect of Trump’s takeover of the government; and prospects for a new Democratic majority in Congress. Lauren joins us after stints as a White House reporter at NBC News and Politico, where she co-authored the popular West Wing Playbook newsletter.
The Bulwark has brought on nearly 10 new editorial and production staff in the past year to support our growing suite of content. We now have eight total newsletters and 14 original podcasts, including “The Bulwark Podcast” (a top 10 show on Apple Podcasts’ News charts) and “The Next Level” (top 50), as well as the recently launched “FY Pod” (“For You Pod”; top 100), which focuses on Gen-Z politics.
This comes at a time of overall expansion: The Bulwark broke 1 million YouTube subscribers last month, only a year after a major investment in our YouTube content offerings. We also now have more than 685,000 total Substack subscribers, up more than 170 percent over this time last year. We have added an average of more than 2,400 subscribers a day since the November election.
