A new liberal media startup called “The Argument” launched Monday with roughly $4 million in backing from tech and philanthropic donors, pitching itself as a combative case for modern liberalism.
Founded by former Atlantic writer Jerusalem Demsas, The Argument says it will make an affirmative, data-driven case for liberalism, publish polling, and build a contributor network of marquee writers — or, as the new outlet puts it, “Join us. We’re Libbing Out.”
Demsas told Semafor the company raised about $4 million at a $20 million valuation from Arnold Ventures, Open Philanthropy, Patrick Collison, Susan Mandel, Gaurav Kapadia, Rachel Pritzker, Simone Coxe and John Wolthuis, with a grant from Emergent Ventures. She left The Atlantic to serve as editor-in-chief and CEO. (RELATED: Liberal Journalist Pretty Much Wets Himself On Stage As He Cries About How Irrelevant He’s Become)
“To move out of this post-liberal, populist moment towards a better future — one with equal rights, material prosperity, and commitment to human progress — will require our government, culture, politics, and people to recommit ourselves to liberal values,” Demsas told Semafor.
Demsas says the point of the project is to sell solutions, not to hector.
“We’re not just going to explain. We’re going to persuade. We’re not just going to diagnose the problem, we’re going to fight for the solutions,” she says in a launch video.
Demsas’ team includes Vox alum Kelsey Piper and former Semafor politics editor Jordan Weissmann, with election analyst Lakshya Jain running in-house polling — and a bench of contributors from Matt Yglesias to Derek Thompson, according to the launch write-up.
One of The Argument’s first pieces Tuesday takes direct aim at a Silicon Valley favorite: universal basic income.
“Many of the studies are still ongoing, but, at this point, the results aren’t ‘uncertain.’ They’re pretty consistent and very weird,” Piper wrote in a review of recent randomized trials of guaranteed income. She added that recipients “work a little less” but the money hasn’t produced sustained gains in health, stress, child outcomes or employment.
Piper’s summary tracks with the largest U.S. experiment to date. A three-year study by OpenResearch — backed by major tech donors and published through the National Bureau of Economic Research — randomly assigned 1,000 low-income adults to receive $1,000 a month and 2,000 to receive $50. Researchers reported a 3.9-percentage-point drop in labor-force participation among recipients, 1–2 fewer hours of work per week, and “no impact on quality of employment” or human-capital investment large enough to rule out small improvements.
“Wow,” wrote X user Paulos, linking to a post discussing Piper’s essay. “1. Studies show UBI straight up doesn’t work 2. Scientists (despite the evidence) remain unconvinced.”
The editorial pitch is seemingly to argue for what liberalism is for — housing, education, economic growth through the welfare state — and test favorite policies against data, even when the results cut against progressive priors. On Tuesday, that meant telling UBI proponents that the evidence isn’t cooperating.
