The Intercept is $1 million short of the budget we need to avoid making painful cuts next year. This is the first time in our 12-year history we’re facing a gap like this without a safety net.

Here’s why: The Intercept was built on a multiyear commitment from our founding donor, who believed there was an urgent need for fearless investigative journalism. That support always had an end date, and it arrived: December 2025. For the first time in our history, we’re operating without it.

Knowing this day would come, we've spent recent years building a second foundation: you. Readers like you already sustain a large share of our budget. It’s the only funding model that comes with no strings attached — no billionaire owner, no advertiser to please, no donor who can get spooked and walk away. Now we need that foundation to carry more weight than ever.

Even as we’ve leaned harder into reader support, we’ve watched major donors and philanthropists pull back their support for independent journalism — not because the need has lessened, but because they’re afraid of backlash from the Trump administration. That fear is exactly why our work matters more, not less.

Right now, that work means covering the Trump administration’s attempts to criminalize dissent, the abuses of ICE, and the genocide in Gaza — stories many outlets are too cautious, too compromised, or too frightened to tell in full. This is the work our journalists put themselves on the line for every day. It’s the journalism you read. And it’s the journalism $1 million in cuts would gut.

We just kicked off The Intercept’s fall fundraising drive. If you believe independent journalism matters right now, will you donate $5 now to help close our budget gap by September 30?

I know $5 alone won’t close a $1 million shortfall. But that’s the point of independent media funded by readers: When thousands of people give what they can, it adds up to something no single donor — however powerful, however nervous — can take away.

Please be part of this. Donate $5 now to help The Intercept keep reporting the stories that the corrupt and powerful don’t want told.

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Thank you,