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Q&A: Marisa Kabas on Scooping the World on the Federal Funding Freeze

“If your job isn’t to inform people in a way that will help them, then I don’t really understand what your job is.”

February 5, 2025
 

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Marisa Kabas, an independent journalist based in New York, has recently emerged as a leading voice in holding power to account: since Trump took office, she has broken two major stories that sent ripples across the media landscape. Two days into the new administration, she exposed a directive from the Trump administration suspending all travel for staff at the National Institutes of Health. Then, last week, she was the first to report on the Office of Management and Budget memo freezing all government grants and loans. (A court blocked the effort, and the memo was rescinded; what will become of the freeze itself remains somewhat unclear.) Kabas posted the document on Bluesky before it was confirmed by major outlets including the Washington Post. “I sat with my stomach in knots until I saw the Washington Post confirmed,” she wrote afterward. “Despite the massive growth of independent journalism, there’s still this idea that news is only ‘real’ once it’s confirmed by massive corporate outlets. After all, could one woman with absolutely zero institutional backing in leggings and a sweatshirt in her NYC apartment really be the one to break such an important story? Now we know the answer is yes.”

A 2009 graduate of George Washington University, Kabas worked in public relations before moving into journalism, freelancing for Today.com and later working at the Daily Dot and Fusion. After post-Trump election layoffs, she briefly worked in political communications before returning to write for HuffPost, the New Republic, and MSNBC’s website. In 2022, she founded The Handbasket, an independent media platform, first as a side project, then as a full-time venture. (She launched on Substack, but has since switched to Beehiiv, a different newsletter platform.) In addition to the NIH and OMB, she has covered the media’s handling of Trump’s second term, federal funding battles, labor rights in journalism, corporate influence on the press, the climate crisis, and pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses; a sharp critic of both the Trump administration and mainstream media’s failures in covering it, her work dissects the political and economic forces shaping American journalism today. In recent weeks, paid subscriptions surged from eight hundred to around seventeen hundred, highlighting the growing demand for unfiltered, independent work; since she broke the OMB memo, she has been profiled by outlets including the Associated Press and Nieman Lab, which highlighted her scoop as, in the AP’s words, “a key moment for a growing cadre of journalists who work independently to gather and analyze news and market themselves as brands.” 

Late last week, I spoke with Kabas about her recent scoops, the challenges of going solo, and the evolving role of the press in today’s political climate. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Marisa Kabas. (Courtesy photo.)


SB: Your recent scoops have gained significant attention. Can you walk us through how you uncovered these stories?

MK: I can’t disclose too many details because I need to protect my sources. But I received a tip on Monday [January 27] that the Office of Management and Budget had sent a memo to agency and department heads, freezing all government grants and loans. It was a shocking revelation, and my source was extremely alarmed. Over the past couple of weeks, especially in the first ten days of the Trump administration, I’ve received numerous tips; I broke a story about the NIH suspending travel. But this memo stood out as the most significant tip I had received so far. After reviewing a copy of the memo, I posted the text via Bluesky. As far as I know, I was the first to publicly share it.

Why do you think these sources trusted you more than mainstream media outlets?

Journalism isn’t about the number of sources you have, but the quality of your sources. Over time, I have developed really good relationships with a lot of people from all walks of life and all types of work, and not just in one specific area. Even though we are dealing with something fairly specific right now, I think my broader scope has really prepared me for this moment. People have concerns across various sectors, not just within the government. You can have a well-placed source, but if they don’t trust you, they won’t share the whole truth. Ultimately, it all comes down to mutual trust—your source trusting you, and you trusting them.

What reactions have you received from the public and officials regarding your recent scoops?

It’s been an overwhelmingly positive response. People were deeply grateful to my source for trusting me with this information, and to me for making it accessible to everyone. A couple of days later, the memo was reversed. Reports suggested that because the memo was leaked earlier, there was time to file lawsuits and mobilize public opposition before it could take effect. This is a huge responsibility, one I don’t take lightly. 

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Have mainstream media outlets properly credited your reporting?

Some have, some haven’t. The Washington Post was the first major outlet to confirm my reporting, and they credited me, which I appreciated. The New York Times initially didn’t, but after I reached out to the reporter, they added a reference, which was a pleasant surprise. Overall, I’ve received more credit than independent journalists typically do when they break news. 

How do you perceive the current media coverage of President Trump’s administration?

Many outlets aren’t equipped to handle this moment because they’re still so worried and they are clinging to traditional norms taught in journalism schools or traditional media institutions. They are not comfortable with breaking the rulebook, even in the face of clear and present fascism. I don’t know what it will take for them to completely take off the gloves and fight alongside all of us. A lot of journalists argue that their role isn’t to advocate, that that’s not their job. But if your job isn’t to inform people in a way that will help them, then I don’t really understand what your job is. 

Do you see yourself remaining independent? Is this the best path forward for your work?

Yes, I plan to remain independent for the foreseeable future. My paid subscriptions have nearly doubled this week, and there seems to be a strong interest in supporting independent journalists and exploring new approaches, especially after seeing how the old ways led to another Trump administration. I believe there’s a growing appetite for a different kind of coverage—one with a bit more fight. Dan Rather, the legend himself, posted that independent journalism is now the way forward. Unfortunately, legacy media can no longer be solely relied upon to hold power accountable. That said, I still believe legacy media has its place, and there’s room for collaboration rather than competition. The key is fostering mutual respect between independent and traditional journalism, ensuring they complement rather than oppose each other.

You left Substack due to concerns over its content policies. Could you elaborate on that decision and its impact on your work?

In late 2023, Jonathan M. Katz reported for The Atlantic that Substack was monetizing explicitly Nazi-affiliated publications on its platform. As a Jewish woman and granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, this was unacceptable to me. So I organized a group of Substack writers, and we published an open letter to the cofounders, asking a simple question: “Do you support Nazis or not?” Their response was that while they didn’t support Nazis, they prioritized free speech above all else. And they ultimately do not have ethical problems with sharing revenue with Nazi publications. That was the last straw for me. I moved to a new platform, Beehiiv, where I receive a larger share of my revenue and have full control over my platform. My goal is to build my own media, which is what I’m trying to do with The Handbasket.


Other notable stories:

  • Yesterday, the website of the US Agency for International Development, which had been offline since the weekend amid Elon Musk and his allies’ push to gut the agency, came back online—but only to inform almost all staffers that they will soon be pulled off the job. (We wrote about the chaos at USAID yesterday.) Meanwhile, teams of reporters from major outlets have been scrambling to work out exactly what Musk is trying to do to the federal government, and, crucially, whether it’s legal. (The Washington Post reckons that much of it isn’t.) Charlie Warzel, a tech writer at The Atlantic, makes the case that Musk’s actions amount to “nothing short of an administrative coup.” Musk is proceeding as he did when he acquired X, Warzel writes: “seize a polarized, inefficient institution; fuse his identity with it; and then use it to punish his enemies and reward his friends.”
  • For CJR, Barbara Starr, a former defense correspondent for CNN, argues that the Pentagon’s recent move to rotate NBC, NPR, the New York Times, and Politico out of their designated workspaces in the building—in favor of a trio of right-wing outlets (and the liberal news site HuffPost, which doesn’t have a Pentagon reporter and didn’t request to be included)—appears to be a warning. “The Pentagon says its latest moves are an effort to let different media into the press area,” Starr writes, and for now, “several familiar institutions remain, including CBS, CNN, ABC, Reuters, and the Associated Press.” Yet “it’s hard not to interpret the decision as anything other than a form of targeted retribution against publications that the Trump administration doesn’t like.”
  • Business Insider’s Claire Landsbaum and Anna Silman are out with a deep dive on the Daily Beast’s fortunes under the management of Joanna Coles and Ben Sherwood, the veteran media executives who took over the site last year. According to Sherwood, the site had been on track to lose nine million dollars last year. Following a round of layoffs and buyouts, it is now reportedly turning a profit, but it “has generally been lighter on the hard-hitting journalism it was once known for; instead, the site features aggregation and opinion columns from Coles’ famous acquaintances.” (Coles said that she has expressed a desire to hire more investigative reporters and do more original journalism.)
  • Recently, CNN announced that it will expand its presence in the Middle East—where it already boasts hubs in Abu Dhabi and Dubai—by opening a new operation in Qatar; now Sara Fischer reports, for Axios, that Reuters is expanding in the region, too, with plans to host a leadership summit in Abu Dhabi and to launch a new website in Arabic. With Dow Jones also building out business opportunities there, “news organizations are eyeing the Middle East as an expansion opportunity,” Fischer writes—a departure from the pullback that followed the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
  • And Modern Retail’s Cale Guthrie Weissman reports that Mschf, a “self-described art collective known for its buzzy product drops and stunt promotions,” is soliciting “hard-hitting, Pulitzer Prize–worthy” pitches for a new publication called Soap Magazine—which will be published exclusively on the labels of soap and body care products. Mschf, which has yet to announce the project (and declined to comment to Weissman), wants it to be “pro-writer” and “anti-corporate,” and to do “journalism with a side-order of story-telling (a la Jack Kerouac, or even Anthony Bourdain).”

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Sacha Biazzo is a Delacorte fellow at CJR.