# The Bulwark ***The Bulwark*** is an American news-and-opinion outlet — the flagship of the **Never Trump** conservative movement — launched in **December 2018** in the wreckage of *The Weekly Standard*, which had folded that same month. It was created by longtime Republican strategist **Sarah Longwell** (its publisher) with the support of **Bill Kristol** and **Charlie Sykes**, both veterans of the shuttered *Standard*, and staffed largely by *Weekly Standard* refugees. Its founding editor, [[Jonathan V. Last]], described the project's premise bluntly: after "the murder of the Standard," there needed to be "a home for rational, principled, fact-based center-right voices who were not cowed by Trumpism." The Bulwark matters for the KB as **the institutional home of establishment conservatism's anti-Trump remnant** — the writers, strategists, and ex-officials who did not follow the Republican Party into MAGA and who now function as a hybrid center-right/anti-authoritarian outlet, courted by liberal audiences even as it retains its conservative self-description. It is a recurring source of intra-right critique and a useful lens on the fracture between movement conservatism and Trumpism. ## Founding and structure The Bulwark began as a nonprofit project under the **Defending Democracy Together** institute, the 501(c)(3) Kristol-led advocacy group, and launched initially as a news aggregator before being relaunched in 2019 as an original-content outlet built around former *Weekly Standard* staff. It has since become one of the most-read political publications on **[[Substack]]**, part of the broader migration of political journalism onto subscription newsletters, and a surprise success on [[YouTube]]. **Key figures:** - **[[Jonathan V. Last]]** ("JVL") — editor; author of the daily *Triad* newsletter. - **[[Tim Miller]]** — writer-at-large and host of *The Bulwark Podcast* (which he took over from Charlie Sykes in February 2024); ex–[[Jeb Bush]] and RNC communications operative turned Never Trump podcaster. - **Sarah Longwell** — publisher; Republican strategist and focus-group impresario who co-hosts several of the outlet's podcasts. - **Bill Kristol** — co-founder and editor-at-large; former *Weekly Standard* editor and one of the movement's most prominent Never Trump voices. - **Charlie Sykes** — founding editor-in-chief (later stepping back); former conservative talk-radio host. - **Sam Stein** — managing editor (joined from *Politico*/*The Daily Beast*), part of the outlet's expansion beyond its conservative core. ## Editorial identity The Bulwark occupies an unusual niche: **center-right in self-description, anti-Trump in practice, and increasingly cross-coalition in audience**. Its writers argue from conservative or ex-conservative premises but treat the Trump movement — not the Democratic Party — as the primary threat to constitutional order. That posture has made it a frequent chronicler of the intra-right rupture ([[The MAGA Fracture]]) and a platform where establishment Republicans who broke with the party explain why. Critics on the populist right dismiss it as a vehicle for "politically homeless" former Republicans; critics on the left note its continued conservatism on some policy questions even as it makes common cause with liberals against authoritarianism. ## Current hook: the court-expansion argument (June 2026) On **June 30, 2026**, hours after the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship in [[Trump v. Barbara]], editor [[Jonathan V. Last]] published **"The Supreme Court Just Made the Case for Its Own Expansion."** Last's argument inverted the celebratory framing: the fact that **three justices took the anti-constitutional side** of a birthright-citizenship case he called "blatantly unconstitutional" — and that the constitutional guarantee survived by only a single vote — was, he wrote, evidence that the Court itself now "cries out for reform," up to and including expansion. The piece is a representative Bulwark move: treating a nominal win for the rule of law as proof of deeper institutional rot, and pushing a structural-reform argument (Court expansion) that establishment conservatism would once have rejected out of hand. ## See Also - [[Tim Miller]] — writer-at-large; *Bulwark Podcast* host - [[Jonathan V. Last]] — editor; author of *The Triad* - [[The Weekly Standard]] — the outlet whose 2018 closure The Bulwark succeeded - [[Substack]] — the newsletter platform central to The Bulwark's growth - [[Trump v. Barbara]] — subject of JVL's June 2026 court-expansion argument - [[The MAGA Fracture]] — the intra-right split The Bulwark chronicles