The national deficit usually feels like an abstract talking point: America’s permanent credit card bill that just keeps getting bigger, without ever coming due.

But suddenly, our national debt has a real cost. As President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts threaten to add trillions to the deficit, every major credit rating agency has now downgraded the United States’ credit rating, suggesting that the U.S. is no longer a reliable borrower — a move with potentially disastrous, far-reaching consequences for the global economy.

To unpack what’s at stake, David Sirota sits down with Stephanie Kelton, a world-renowned economist and pioneer in Modern Monetary Theory, to ask her big questions: What does a credit downgrade mean? Should we really be thinking about America’s spending and debt like it’s a household budget? And how exactly could too much national debt bankrupt the country?

The answers, argues Kelton, necessitate transforming our perception of money itself.

There’s a new evil genius on Capitol Hill, one that privacy experts warn could empower tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to issue their own private currencies. The Senate is poised to pass the GENIUS Act, which would give so much free rein to such “stablecoins” that it could destabilize the rest of the economy.

Today on Lever Time, Arjun Singh sits down with Lever reporter Luke Goldstein to understand the GENIUS Act, how it could turn Big Tech companies into unregulated banks, and why this should be a concern for the rest of us.

You can read Luke’s full story on the GENIUS Act and the future of “ZuckBucks” here.

He came in with a bang but is going out with a whimper. After his 24/7 role on Trump’s election stage and his high-profile rampage through the federal government, billionaire Elon Musk says he’s scaling back his work for the administration and ramping down his political spending. With his image tarnished and businesses facing turbulence, is Musk down for the count — or planning his return as America’s most infamous oligarch?

Today on Lever Time, David Sirota talks to Michael Scherer, a reporter for The Atlantic who has the inside scoop on what happened to Musk and what kinds of ticking time bombs he and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency may have left inside the federal government.