This week is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump is marking the occasion by describing his role in heroic terms, claiming he personally went to Ground Zero to aid recovery efforts. On September 6, Trump made the following remarks on Fox News:

And I went down. I was building a building in New York, and I had a lot of construction workers. And I went down there very shortly thereafter the following day, you couldn’t go down the same day, but like the following day, very, very quickly afterwards and we worked long and hard.

Trump relayed a similar story at a White House event on Tuesday:

I was building a big building in New York and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened, and they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people. Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest. It was — it was raw. Nobody’s seen anything like it ever.

Although some details change, Trump has made similar claims in interviews for decades, claiming to have sent 100 or more construction workers to Ground Zero. Trump has claimed he “helped“ clear rubble and “spent a lot of time down there.”

There is no evidence any of this is true.

Two Trump-branded buildings were under development in New York at the time — Trump World Tower and Trump Place at Riverside South. But neither Trump nor the Trump Organization employed “a lot of construction workers.” Rather, the construction manager of both developments was Bovis Lend Lease. So any construction workers were employees of Bovis Lend Lease or their subcontractors, not Trump. Journalist Tim O’Brien, who wrote a biography of Trump, noted that in 2001, the Trump Organization as a whole employed around a dozen people. Trump has never identified an employee who worked on emergency response at Ground Zero.

Richard Alles, was a battalion chief of the New York Fire Department in 2001, and supervised “search and rescue units for the entire first two weeks of the operation.” After that, Alles worked at Ground Zero in various capacities for months. “I was in a supervisory role with the fire department at the time,” Alles told PolitiFact in 2019. “I was there for several months — I have no knowledge of his being down there.”

Further, Alles said, if Trump had sent 100 construction workers to Ground Zero, “there would be a record of it” because “[e]verybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services.” In 2019, the New York Times reported that “there is no documented evidence of [Trump] marshaling his resources to aid in the relief effort.”

“They lifted me up and they started running with me.”

On Tuesday, Trump also offered a new version of a story involving him being physically carried away from danger by firemen:

United States Steel Building was creaking. Really creaking. And we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down.

And I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us. And two firemen, big strong guys — and I’m not the smallest guy in the world — they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down.

On September 12 and 13, there were two evacuations of the area around around One Liberty Plaza — the former U.S. Steel Building. Authorities believed at one point the building sustained structural damage and Trump gave a couple of interviews in the general vicinity on September 13.

But Trump appeared to first tell the story of getting forcibly evacuated by firefighters 15 years later during a 2016 campaign appearance in New Hampshire. In that version of the story, he runs under his own power rather than being carried. An excerpt from the New Hampshire Sunday News on January 17, 2016:

Trump said that in the following days he went to the area where two towers fell and spoke with firefighters. Suddenly, they all heard an eerie sound -- and believed another one of the buildings could collapse.

“They grabbed me,” Trump said of the quick exit from the scene. “I never knew I could run that fast.”

Trump gave a similar account to Newsmax on September 7, 2021. It is not the only 9/11-related story he appears to have embellished.

In 2015, Trump claimed he was looking out a “window in my apartment” and “watched as people jumped“ from the World Trade Center. This would have been impossible, since his apartment is in midtown, about four miles away.

At a 2015 campaign rally, Trump also claimed that, on 9/11, “I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.” Pressed for more information by ABC News, Trump said he was watching TV and saw “people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down.” While there were a number of urban myths about Muslim populations in New Jersey cheering the attack, there is no evidence that it happened — and it was certainly not broadcast on television.

Vote.gov, which is run by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), does not ask for your personal information or track your activities. According to the site’s privacy policy, the EAC “does not collect personally-identifiable information about you when you visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information to us.” The exception to the policy is very limited. For example, if you email the EAC requesting information, they will retain your email address so they can send a response. Further, the EAC does not track your internet activity. “No cookies used by EAC ever store any information that may be used to identify you personally,” the commission’s privacy policy says.

But Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is funding an aggressive advertising campaign encouraging people in key states to check their registration status at a different website, votesafe.org. That website is run by America PAC, Musk’s super PAC.

While Vote.gov collects no personal information, votesafe.org collects the following:

Previously, votesafe.org had a privacy policy that provided some limitations on how America PAC could use this data:

Personal Identifying Information collected via the www.votesafe.org will only be used to support America PAC’s activities, and it will not be shared with any advertisers, political organizations, or third parties not directly affiliated with America PAC.

On August 29, 2026, the privacy policy was updated and no longer includes that language. The new version allows America PAC to “share” or “sell” personal information with “our business partners.” This includes selling information about “whether you are registered to vote” and “how you submit your vote… where permitted by law.”

In addition to selling your personal information, America PAC can also sell “inferences” it makes from the information it collects including “psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitude.” The “business partners” can then disclose your information to other parties.

You also agree to receive calls and texts, not only from America PAC, but also from “related entities as well as third parties.”

Votesafe.org is currently configured to share your information with numerous partners and to let advertising companies comprehensively track you across websites, apps, and streaming services.

As you visit votesafe.org:

Over the last week alone, America PAC has spent over $180,000 promoting votesafe.org on Meta. Some of the ads are innocuous-looking messages, just reminding people to vote:

Other Meta ads attack “socialists” or specific Democratic senate candidates with incendiary messages:

On Sunday, America PAC also launched YouTube ads attacking Democratic candidates. Nearly all of these ads promote VoteSafe.org at the end.

Overall, Musk has pledged to spend over $100 million in the midterm elections, focusing on turnout. The data collected through votesafe.org looks to be central to this effort.

Votesafe.org is not just a website but a platform that can be white-labeled by Musk’s ideological allies. The data is then sent to America PAC’s servers.

Sentinel Action Fund, the Super PAC affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, used votesafe.org to create its own voter registration site — register.sentinelactionfund.com. Sentinel Action Fund then spent $650,000 on advertising that promoted the site and defended Trump’s presidency during Fox News’ coverage of the State of the Union. Jessica Anderson, the president of Sentinel Action Fund, said the new site made registration “easier” and ensured “voter information isn’t going into the hands of extremist Democrat organizations.” Sentinel Action Fund’s connection to Musk’s votesafe.org has not been previously reported.

Votesafe.org also powers the registration site of another organization, Ready to Register. In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections reported Ready to Register “sent mailings to an unknown number of citizens with an outdated voter registration application which includes four political parties that are no longer recognized in North Carolina.” The North Carolina Board of Elections also “received reports that mailings are being sent to deceased individuals and that the group may be using outdated voter data.” Further, “QR codes on the mailings may cause information from other people to pre-populate on a form, which has raised privacy concerns among voters.” In July, the Washington Post reported that the source code of Ready to Register’s website “links to another group affiliated with Musk’s political outfit, America PAC.”

Last year, Popular Information broke the news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stopped paying for third-party medical care for detainees on October 3, 2025. Eleven months later, ICE still has no system in place to pay for third-party medical care. Hospitals and other providers who have continued to treat detainees are owed millions of dollars.

During this year’s Super Bowl, State Farm went all out for an ad riffing on Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” poking fun at rival insurance companies for only going “halfway there” with their coverage. This week, the ad was cited in a lawsuit brought against State Farm by Los Angeles County. The lawsuit alleges that State Farm failed to pay benefits to victims of the 2025 LA wildfires and seeks at least $160 million in restitution.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC supporting Senate Republicans, put out an ad last month featuring a father talking about the 2024 murder of his son. The ad connected the murder to the policies of Roy Cooper, the former Democratic governor of North Carolina who is now running for Senate. In an interview with Popular Information, the father in the ad, Ronald Hayes, said that SLF led him to believe he was being interviewed for an ad about gun violence and did not disclose its political affiliation. Hayes called the ad “deceitful.”

The best of the rest

A Mother Jones investigation found that “[m]ore than a dozen local law enforcement agencies across the country have used opioid settlement money to procure Flock cameras and other AI-powered automated license plate readers.” Advocates wanted the money to be used for underserved communities affected by the opioid crisis. (Mother Jones)

ProPublica reported that United States Postal Service (USPS) officials assigned to create new rules on mail-in voting “expressed concerns in internal meetings about how the rules they were drafting could delay or block ballots from reaching large swaths of eligible voters for the upcoming midterms, but the rules moved forward anyway.” (ProPublica)

The U.S. Department of Commerce quietly cut language from its scientific integrity policy that banned political interference from reports issued by the department’s umbrella of agencies, which include the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This change comes as the Census Bureau prepares for the 2030 national census, which could change the distribution of political representation. (NPR)

Numerical information

6 months: Last Friday marked six months of the war with Iran. There is currently no end in sight.

$61: The price of a roll of 25 $1 coins with Trump’s face on them, according to the U.S. Mint website. A bag of 100 coins costs $154.50.

Nearly $253,000: The value of a new contract for lighting renovations at the White House’s Harry S. Truman Bowling Alley.

Quote of the week

“The way the president is playing Iran… there haven’t been American deaths. It’s really just an economic choke-out…”

– U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick during a Wednesday interview with CNBC, ignoring the 18 Americans who have died during the war with Iran. Lutnick apologized for his statement on Thursday.

Photo of the week

Apple Maps changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America for U.S. users following Trump’s executive order changing the name last week. An official White House X account celebrated the change.

On August 5, the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the super PAC of Senate Republicans, announced a new television ad attacking Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in North Carolina.

The ad features Ronald Hayes, whose son Shemar was murdered in 2024. In just 30 seconds, it ties Shemar’s murder to Cooper, who served as governor of North Carolina from 2017 to 2025. The blame is pinned on a settlement Cooper reached with the ACLU to release some inmates early during the COVID pandemic. “As the governor, Mr. Cooper was allowing these criminals back on the streets,” Hayes says in the ad. “Is my son going to get a second chance? No, he’s never coming back.”

But in an interview with Popular Information, Hayes says that he was manipulated into appearing in the ad. According to Hayes, the SLF operatives who recorded the footage misrepresented the purpose of the interview, never revealed their political affiliation, and coached Hayes into providing the soundbites that appear in the ad.

Hayes is a member of a group of about a dozen grieving parents whose children have been murdered. The SLF operatives reached out to everyone in the group and offered an opportunity “to share our stories.” Hayes was left with the impression that “we’re doing an ad about gun violence and our deceased kids.”

Hayes said he was interested in “talking about Shemar and what I feel about gun violence.” He had also written a book about Shemar that he wanted more people to know about.

After he agreed to participate, Hayes began to communicate with Michael Luethy. Previously, Luethy worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the North Carolina Republican Party, and the Republican State Leadership Committee. Luethy currently runs a Republican consulting firm based in North Carolina called Oak Grove Campaigns.

But Luethy never revealed that he was working with the SLF or his connection to Republican politics. Rather, Luethy represented to Hayes that he was “independent.” Luethy invited Hayes to a luxury home in Charlotte and encouraged him to bring copies of his book. Hayes had never been on camera before.

The SLF paid Oak Grove Campaigns $456.90 on April 30, 2026, for travel. Luethy did not respond to a text message seeking comment.

At the outset, Hayes was given an opportunity to talk about his son and was asked about the book. Then, Hayes said, “all of a sudden, in the middle of the recording, it went from me talking about what happened to my son to Governor Cooper.”

“Well, what do you think about North Carolina letting out 3,500 murderers, rapists, and killers?” Hayes said he was asked. “Of course, I am a victim. What am I going to say?” Hayes said he initially responded without saying Cooper’s name. He was then prompted by the SLF operatives to deliver the soundbite they wanted. “Would you mind saying Roy Cooper?” the operatives asked.

Prior to arriving at the filming, Hayes said, he “never knew anything about the governor of North Carolina letting out 3,500 criminals due to COVID-19 back in 2019 and 2020.” Hayes noted that he knows the policy was unrelated to his son’s murder. (The man who murdered Hayes’ son in 2024 had no prior adult criminal record and, therefore, was not released from prison.) Hayes was distressed when he saw the ad, which makes it seem “as if I’m saying that my son’s murderer was one of the ones who Governor Cooper let out of prison.”

“Why would I go on there and just flat out tell a blatant lie?” Hayes asked. He called the ad “deceitful, conniving, and sneaky.”

Hayes said that the SLF operatives filmed at least two other interviews with members of the grieving parents group, but those were not turned into ads. In both cases, the SLF operatives redirected the discussion from the personal tragedy to a political attack on Roy Cooper.

According to data from AdImpact, the SLF has spent over $6 million airing Hayes’ ad on television and digital platforms. Hayes said the ad has profoundly impacted his day-to-day life. “You would not believe how many people now just walk up to me and ask me, ‘Am I that guy that’s in that commercial?’”

Hayes said he is a Democrat and would not have knowingly participated in a GOP attack ad. “Why would I do a commercial? I’m just an everyday man,” Hayes said. “They targeted me as a victim of gun violence and because of the death of my son.”

Murder as a political football

The Hayes ad is part of a concerted campaign by Republicans to link Cooper to murders with no plausible connection to his policies.

President Donald Trump blamed Cooper for the August 2025 murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was stabbed while riding the train in Charlotte, allegedly by Decarlos Brown Jr.

“The blood of this innocent woman can literally be seen dripping from the killer’s knife, and now her blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail, including Former Disgraced Governor and ‘Wannabe Senator’ Roy Cooper,” Trump said in a September 8 Truth Social post. According to Trump, Brown was on the streets because he was “released on CASHLESS BAIL in January.”

In January 2025, Brown was charged with a non-violent misdemeanor — misusing a 911 line. As is typical in such cases, he was released by a judge without bail. Even if he had been incarcerated by the judge pending trial, the maximum sentence for the charge would have been 120 days, meaning Brown’s sentence would have been completed before the August 22 murder.

In 2020, Cooper established a task force to consider “discriminatory law enforcement and criminal justice practices.” But the recommendations of the task force were never approved by the legislature and had no impact on the bail decisions related to Brown or anyone else.

More recently, the SLF, through a TV ad and a fake news website, has attempted to link the 2025 murder of Logan Federico, allegedly by Alexander Dickey, to Cooper. But Dickey was from South Carolina and had committed all of his crimes in South Carolina, including the alleged murder of Federico. He was incarcerated in South Carolina and was released prior to the murder by a South Carolina judge. The murder had nothing to do with Cooper’s policies or North Carolina at all, except for the fact that Federico was a North Carolina resident.

Jake from State Farm, call your office.

The company kicked off 2026 with a splashy Super Bowl commercial featuring two popular comedic actors, Danny McBride and Keegan-Michael Key, as insurance agents for a fictional State Farm competitor, Halfway There Insurance. The duo riffs on the Bon Jovi classic, Livin’ on a Prayer:

There is damage to your home on this block

We won’t make things right cuz filing a claim is tough

No luck

Whoa, we’re halfway there

Whoa, you’re living on a prayer

State Farm described the ad, which also includes a cameo by Jon Bon Jovi himself, as “a humorous parody that encourages viewers to not settle for coverage that makes you feel ‘halfway there.’” The ad “exaggerates potential common consumer frustrations with their insurance experiences, from confusing terms to impersonal corporate environments.”

No expense was spared. The full ad debuted during the most widely watched broadcast of the year and was extended through March Madness. In 2025, State Farm spent $1.139 billion on advertising.

On Monday, the ad was cited in a lawsuit filed by Los Angeles County on behalf of the people of California seeking at least $160 million in restitution plus civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation.

The lawsuit alleges that State Farm failed to pay benefits due to victims of the 2025 LA wildfires. According to the complaint, many Californians with State Farm insurance “cannot return home because smoke, soot, ash, debris, and chemical contamination have made their homes unsafe and Defendants have failed to agree to conduct the necessary testing or to fully and timely cover the costs of remediation.” Some State Farm policyholders, the complaint claims, now “face eviction or homelessness.”

The 107-page complaint contains several horror stories. In one case, a “97-year-old Palisades resident” lived in a home “within 250 yards of burned structures.” Nevertheless, “State Farm refused to authorize or pay for environmental testing, telling the family that if they wanted testing, they could pay for it themselves.” Meanwhile, remediation contractors said “they could not begin cleaning without knowing what contaminants were present, because lead, asbestos, and other toxins require different protocols.”

The man’s daughter, despite persistent efforts, has been unable to reach a resolution with State Farm. In one instance, she was placed on hold for two hours and fifty-six minutes before being disconnected. The man, who suffered a stroke shortly after the fire, “has never been able to return to his home.”

In other cases, according to the complaint, State Farm denied payments until the policyholder went to the press or reported the company’s behavior.

In one total-loss claim, consistent with many others, State Farm began sending checks almost immediately after the policyholder went to the press. In another total-loss claim, State Farm refused to pay for 16 months and then immediately sent 4 checks to consumers the next morning after they told an EPA representative, who was visiting the Altadena area, about State Farm’s failure to pay them.

Los Angeles County also seeks penalties against State Farm for false advertising, specifically citing the Halfway There campaign. From pages 76-77 of the complaint:

State Farm’s Head of Marketing, Alyson Griffin, said the campaign was meant to convince viewers that State Farm’s services are more than just halfway there, and that State Farm chose the song because it “gets customers to realize we’re here to help.” She said State Farm wanted customers “to feel confident in their insurance” and did not “want them to feel like they’re living on a prayer.”

…The campaign was built to induce consumers to choose or stay with State Farm on the representation that it, unlike inadequate alternatives, delivers complete claims service and makes things right after a covered loss.

The complaint describes the Halfway There campaign as “a false-advertising problem of State Farm’s own making.” According to Los Angeles County, State Farm “defined adequate insurance as insurance that ‘makes things right’ after covered damage” even as it was, in the complaint’s words, “delivering to its own California and Los Angeles County policyholders the very inadequacies the advertisement mocked.”

The website State Farm created to promote the Halfway There campaign has been taken offline and the ads have been removed from YouTube.

The lawsuit cites the California Department of Insurance (CDI), which concluded that State Farm “delayed, underpaid, and buried policyholders in red tape at the worst moment of their lives.” CDI found that in more than half of the claims it reviewed related to the LA wildfires, State Farm violated state law.

The gap between the ad and the reality facing State Farm’s California policyholders, the lawsuit alleges, constitutes “a materially false statement about the nature of State Farm’s services, aimed at California consumers and likely to deceive them.”

Los Angeles County attempted to resolve its issues directly with State Farm, but the company allegedly “declined to substantially comply with the People’s requests for voluntary production of documents or a later-issued administrative subpoena.”

As State Farm slow-rolled California policyholders, its coffers continued to swell. The company “ended 2025 with $170 billion in net assets — $24.8 billion more than a year earlier.”

State Farm is not OK

California is not the only state with grievances against State Farm.

On June 24, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R) filed a lawsuit against State Farm alleging that the company fraudulently denied or underpaid claims to Oklahoma customers for damages caused by hail and wind. Drummond alleged that the company “engaged in a pattern of deceptive and fraudulent conduct that harmed policyholders throughout Oklahoma by using undisclosed claims-handling practices, restrictive internal standards and outcome-oriented engineering reviews to reduce claim payments and increase corporate profits.”

The lawsuit claims that the company started an internal program called the “Hail Focus Initiative” to limit the number of approved roof replacements and reduce claim payments. The lawsuit alleges that State Farm continued to market and sell homeowner policies as covering replacement costs for hail and wind damage, while creating undisclosed internal guidelines designed to deny claims and minimize coverage.

“The allegations describe a corporate scheme that threatens the integrity of Oklahoma’s insurance marketplace and undermines public confidence in an industry families rely on when disaster strikes,” Drummond said in a statement. Drummond also filed a similar lawsuit against Allstate in July.

Hundreds of Oklahoma homeowners have sued State Farm over similar issues. The company’s alleged scheme to reduce costs related to wind and hail damage allegedly began in Texas in 2020 before expanding to other states. Court documents released in August in a case between State Farm and an Oklahoma couple revealed that the company “reduced its payouts to policyholders by more than a billion dollars,” NBC News reported. In an internal email, a claims manager stated that there was “[a]bout a $1.4B decrease in indemnity from 2020 to 2021.” The email said, “When we started this work, we were replacing roofs at a rate of 5.6 to every 1 we repaired. In 2021 we landed at 2.0 for every 1 and 2022 increased to 2.2 to every 1.”

In a statement on its website, State Farm writes, “Over the past two years alone, State Farm has paid more than $1 billion to Oklahoma customers for wind and hail damage. By contrast, the number of bad-faith lawsuits currently pending in Oklahoma is equivalent to approximately 1% of the roughly 30,000 residential and commercial claims State Farm has responded to each year, on average, over the past five years.”

Last year, Popular Information broke the news that on October 3, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) abruptly stopping paying third parties for medical care provided to detainees. Third-party providers are used to provide “medically necessary” care including “dialysis, prenatal care, oncology, [and] chemotherapy,” according to ICE.

Prior to that date, payment for medical care for ICE detainees was processed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). But the VA “abruptly and instantly terminated” its agreement with ICE after the arrangement, which dated to the George W. Bush administration, drew criticism from right-wing activists. The activists falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants were siphoning resources from veterans. Actually, ICE was fully reimbursing the VA for the service.

According to documents published by ICE on a government contracting website on November 12, 2025, the termination of the agreement with the VA left ICE unable to “pay for medically necessary off-site care.” ICE described this as an “absolute emergency” that needed to be resolved “immediately” to “prevent any further medical complications or loss of life.”

Eleven months later, ICE still has no system to pay for outside medical care provided after October 3, 2025.

Hospitals and other providers who continue to treat ICE detainees are not receiving payment. UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, located in Aurora, Colorado, for example, has provided medical care for ICE detainees, including 150 hospital admissions, clinic appointments and emergency visits, since last fall. It hasn’t been paid for any of these services, racking up over $4 million in unpaid bills.

“Like other healthcare providers, UCHealth has been unable to submit claims and has not been reimbursed for care provided since October 1, 2025, because of a disruption in the Department of Homeland Security’s medical payment system,” UCHealth spokesman Dan Weaver told CPR News last month.

Moshannon Valley EMS is a non-profit organization which provides ambulance services in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. As of June, it had responded to 43 calls to a local ICE detention center since October 2025. It has not been paid for any of that work. “We have to have some faith that someone’s going to do the right thing and compensate us for the work that’s provided,” EMS chief Fred Ferguson told NOTUS.

Internal data obtained by Popular Information reveals that, in 2024, the VA processed over $246 million in medical claims related to the treatment of ICE detainees (and a much smaller number of detainees held by Customs and Border Patrol) by third parties. Data obtained by American Oversight found the VA processed $96 million in claims in 2025 before the relationship with ICE was terminated.

In the absence of payment, it is unclear how many providers, like UCHealth, are continuing to provide treatment and how many are refusing to treat ICE detainees.

An alarming increase in ICE detainee deaths

A report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights found that in “the 500 days between President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025 and June 4, 2026, 52 people died in ICE custody in the United States.” The mortality rate was “nearly four times that of the Biden administration, and more than two and a half times as high as that of the first Trump administration.”

Although the information about these deaths disclosed by the Trump administration has been minimal, “Physicians for Human Rights medical experts had a high suspicion of inadequate or delayed health care in several of the 39 deaths that occurred during the first year of the current administration, raising serious concerns that the deaths may have been preventable.”

The inability of ICE to pay for outside medical care, including emergency services, may be a contributing factor.

For example, on December 3, 2025, Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, a detainee at the Camp East Montana detention facility in Fort Bliss, Texas died of liver failure. According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, for two months before his death Gaspar-Andrés “went to the medical unit nine times, complaining of symptoms including bloody stool and bleeding gums.” But he “was sent back from visits to the medical unit with allergy, heartburn and indigestion medications and diagnosed with influenza despite repeatedly testing negative.” By the time he was finally transported to a hospital on November 16, doctors were unable to save his life.

On June 24, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General announced an “evaluation of detainee deaths in ICE custody“ because of “an increase of detainee deaths in ICE custody each year since fiscal year 2022.”

Delay after delay

On October 17, 2025, ICE awarded an emergency contract to Acentra Health to create a system “to receive, adjudicate, process, and pay healthcare claims” related to the treatment of ICE detainees by third parties. Acentra, so far, has been paid $36 million to create such a system.

No claims have been processed by Acentra to date. The company, and ICE, originally said that claims processing would begin on April 30, 2026. After that, the date was repeatedly pushed back without explanation. A few days ago, all estimates of a launch date were removed.

Now, Acentra is claiming they were never supposed to process claims at all. They were just creating a system for someone else to use to process claims. At the end of June, DHS put out another request for information to “identify potential vendors capable of providing a comprehensive medical claims processing system.” The first question asks: “What are your typical and realistic timeline [sic] for transitioning complex and comprehensive claims adjudication and provider reimbursement services… ?”

Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, who has been nominated by Trump to permanently lead the department, is a member of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. In that role, Sonderling has pledged to “root out waste, fraud, and abuse” in safety net programs like unemployment insurance “and protect hardworking Americans’ tax dollars.”

Prior to joining the Trump administration, however, as an attorney at the Florida law firm Gunster, Sonderling had a much different relationship with these programs.

During two trips to China in 2015, Sonderling made numerous speeches and presentations pitching Chinese nationals on investments in Florida. These events were designed to entice potential Chinese investors by emphasizing that their investment would make their entire family eligible for green cards, allowing them to live and work permanently in the United States through a controversial program known as EB-5.

At a July 2015 presentation Sonderling delivered with the Premier Capital Group, a Chinese language banner in the room emphasized that investors who received green cards would have access to “America’s Comprehensive Welfare.” This included “unemployment benefits,” “state disability benefits,” “food stamps,” “free school meals,” “low-cost public housing,” “Medicaid,” and “Retirement benefits.”

Another banner that appeared alongside Sonderling as he spoke emphasized that investors could “get a green card in a short time” and that “one person applies, the whole family immigrates.” Recipients would have access to “free medical care and education benefits.”

Sonderling and Premier Capital Group were seeking $500,000 investments in the Wellness Resort Hotel and Ocean-View Condominium Project. (Premier Capital Group also charged a $13,000 fee for its role.) Sonderling visited the Premier Capital Group offices as well. The project was later subject to numerous lawsuits alleging construction defects, improper zoning, and unpaid contractors.

An archived version of the firm website said that, at Gunster, Sonderling assisted “various clients with their international business dealings and capital fundraising throughout Asia.”

The China trips were documented extensively by Sonderling in hundreds of photos reviewed by Popular Information that were published to two public Flickr accounts. The Chinese text that appeared in the photos was translated using artificial intelligence. Sonderling’s activities in China have not been previously reported.

The photos document that Sonderling participated in at least five speaking engagements touting EB-5 visas in China. Most of these seem to be connected to the same hotel and condo project.

Among Sonderling’s events was a speech sponsored by the Kaiping General Chamber of Commerce, which is closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party. The same event was co-sponsored by the Kaiping Foreign & Overseas Chinese Affairs Bureau, which is part of the Chinese government, and the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, a state-controlled bank.

Sonderling’s nomination to become the permanent Labor Secretary is now pending before the Senate. Contacted through the Labor Department, Sonderling did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump administration — and others — blast EB-5 as a vehicle for fraud and abuse

In a February 2025 appearance in the Oval Office, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called the EB-5 program “full of nonsense, make believe and fraud.” Lutnick described it as a way to buy “a green card that was low priced.” Lutnick said that the Trump administration would replace the “ridiculous” EB-5 program with a Trump Gold Card that would sell green cards for $5 million.

The Trump Gold Card program was formally launched, with a reduced price of $1 million, in December 2025. At that event, Lutnick said that “the average green card holder earned less than the average American” and, as a result, “were more likely to be on the dole and be on our assistance programs.” Access to these assistance programs was pitched as a key benefit of the EB-5 program during Sonderling’s tour. (The Trump Gold Card, however, did not replace the EB-5 program, which still exists.)

Lutnick’s commentary was only the latest criticism of the EB-5 program by Trump administration officials. In June 2018, L. Francis Cissna, who served as Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services during Trump’s first term, testified at a Senate hearing called “Citizenship for Sale: Oversight of the EB-5 Investor Visa Program.” During the hearing, Cissna raised concerns about “fraud, abuse, and national security risks related to the program.” Cissna testified that “[i]n the absence of legislative reforms” Congress should consider allowing key aspects of the program to expire.

Criticisms of the program are not limited to the Trump administration. A 2015 Government Accountability Office report said the EB-5 program had “[u]nique fraud risks,” including “uncertainties in verifying that the funds invested were obtained lawfully and various investment-related schemes to defraud investors.” In a March 2018 floor speech, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said the EB-5 program “sells, yes sells, our citizenship.” Grassley described it as a “corrupt, scandal-clad program.”

Opponents of California’s proposed billionaire tax are running an ad falsely claiming that the initiative would require everyone to itemize and report all their assets to the state. The ad was sponsored by Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes, a project of the California Business Roundtable (CBRT). CBRT’s PAC is funded by several billionaires, including Peter Thiel.

The New York Post has repeatedly claimed that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani “doxxed” wealthy New Yorkers by publishing a property ownership list last month as the city implements the new pied-à-terre tax. But Mamdani did not doxx any New York City residents because the same information has been public for decades. Nevertheless, the false claim has now spread to other major media outlets.

Earlier this month, Popular Information exposed a network of fake news sites run by a super PAC affiliated with Senate Republicans. One of these sites is now pushing a misleading attack about former North Carolina governor and current Senate candidate Roy Cooper. The site published an article linking a murder to Cooper’s policies. But the man accused of committing the murder was formerly incarcerated in South Carolina, not North Carolina, and the crime took place in South Carolina.

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This week, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced that two unvaccinated people in Lancaster County died from measles. In 2021, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was chair of the Children’s Health Defense at the time, spoke at an Amish country fair in Lancaster County, “where he praised the low childhood vaccine uptake” and “downplayed the severity of measles.” (MS NOW)

Private prison company GEO Group donated $1.4 million to President Trump’s primary super PAC MAGA Inc. weeks after the company won two contracts with the Department of Homeland Security to run immigration detention centers in North Carolina and Colorado. GEO Group has said that the contracts are estimated to “generate more than $160 million in annual revenue.” (The Lever)

In 2021, dozens of companies signed a letter asking Congress to strengthen the Voting Rights Act. This week, the Guardian reported that several of these companies — including DoorDash, Airbnb, and Target — have continued to donate to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA is providing financial backing to numerous attorneys general working to undermine the Voting Rights Act. (The Guardian)

When Charlie Kirk was killed last year, his friend and fellow conservative commentator Candace Owens had recently started her solo career. She split with the right-wing news site The Daily Wire after she promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories. Over the last year, her audience has grown by millions. Her primary focus has been peddling conspiracy theories about Kirk’s murder, including that it was orchestrated by Israel. (The 19th)

Numerical information

Quote of the week

Photo of the week

President Trump signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” amid an ongoing trade war between the U.S. and Canada. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The North Carolinian bills itself as “Independent Journalism for North Carolina.” But the website is not independent. It is fully controlled by the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the super PAC of Senate Republicans.

The North Carolinian published an unbylined article on August 21: “Families Demand Accountability for Repeat Offenders as North Carolina Prison Releases Face New Scrutiny.” The article focuses on the “murder of 22-year-old North Carolina resident Logan Federico.” It emphasizes that the man who was accused of murdering Federico, Alexander Dickey, had previously been charged with “at least 48 crimes across 14 separate occasions, including 31 felony charges.”

The article then links Federico’s murder to “the decision by former governor Roy Cooper’s administration to release thousands of inmates during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Federico’s murder, however, has nothing to do with Cooper or North Carolina.

The crime was committed in 2025 in South Carolina by Dickey, a South Carolina man who was previously incarcerated in South Carolina. All of Dickey’s crimes occurred in South Carolina. Dickey was released from Lexington County Detention Center, a South Carolina jail, by a South Carolina judge.

The purported news article about Federico’s murder in the North Carolinian does not mention South Carolina. The fake news website is being used to legitimize the smear with an article no legitimate outlet would publish.

The SLF is promoting the fake news article to North Carolina residents through paid ads on Meta platforms.

The online campaign also reinforces a television ad by the SLF. The ad features an image of a report about the murder by WCNC, a North Carolina TV station, with a “Charlotte, N.C.” dateline. But, conveniently, it obscures the text of the piece stating the crime took place in South Carolina.

Federico’s father has appeared with Cooper’s opponent, Republican Michael Whatley, on the campaign trail.

In an article published online on July 27, the Post claimed that the Mamdani administration “published a searchable database of Big Apple properties that could fall under the state’s new pied-à-terre tax, effectively doxxing thousands of wealthy New Yorkers.” The Post quoted people calling it a “reckless and foolish move,” “a mistake,” and “a dangerous precedent.”

An article published the same day by the New York Post Editorial Board called the database an “enemies list” and “a kind of one-stop class-warfare shopping list for antifa radicals looking for targets.” The article claims that the list was released to “scar[e]” people and that the Mamdani administration “want[s] everyone owning private property to fear their wrath.”

But Mamdani did not “doxx” any New York City residents. The same information has been public — and searchable online — for decades.

This is not unique to New York City. Property records, including tax information, are publicly available across the country because these records make private ownership of real property possible. Without a public record, there would be no way to resolve competing claims over the same property or ensure that property is transferred unencumbered.

The city was required to publish an updated property ownership list in July as it implements the pied-à-terre tax. The tax will create an annual surcharge on some properties that are not used as a primary residence, also known as “pieds-à-terre.” The tax will apply to condos and co-op units valued at over $1 million and homes valued over $5 million. An April analysis by New York City Comptroller Mark Levine found that the tax could raise between $340 million and $510 million in revenue annually.

But there is little in the new list that wasn’t already freely available. The city has a searchable database called the Automated City Register Information System (ACRIS) that allows users to quickly and easily search through property records by name and address.

While around 960,000 properties were included in the supplemental roll, the actual list of properties that will be subject to the pied-à-terre tax is much smaller. Last month, the city mailed letters to around 17,000 property owners that may be subject to the new tax. Around a third of the letter receivers have already applied for exemptions, the New York Times reported earlier this month.

New York officials have contested the claim that residents were doxxed by the database. “We publish property tax rolls in accordance with the law, as the city has done twice a year for years, frankly, if not decades and centuries,” Mamdani said during a press conference. New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) said that there was “[n]othing unusual here,” adding, “Every building, property tax debt is public. Always has been.”

Several residents included in the data set are now suing the Mamdani administration, arguing that city officials “acted too hastily and sowed confusion.” The lawsuit seeks to take down the supplemental tax roll, among other things, but does not challenge the actual tax. A judge temporarily paused the rollout earlier this month, but an appeals court threw out the order.

Nevertheless, the false “doxxing” claim has been repeated incessantly by the New York Post, and has now spread to other media outlets.

An avalanche of false accusations

Since its initial article from July 27, the New York Post has published around 30 articles on the pied-à-terre tax. Many of them have repeated the doxxing claim and implied that the Mamdani administration is purposely endangering residents who might disagree with the mayor’s agenda.

In a column from August 1, for example, the New York Post Editorial Board wrote, “The sole explanation for this intentional data dump is that the mayor’s office wanted to embarrass and frustrate people who have the bad taste to own something in a city ruled by socialists who believe that all housing should be public housing.”

On August 10, the Editorial Board repeated a similar claim, saying, “This mass doxxing can only be understood as Mao-style anti-landlord rabble-rousing, aiming to shame and scare the radicals’ class enemies.”

On the cover of its August 11 edition, the New York Post described the database as a “shame the rich” list.

In several articles, the New York Post made reference to the 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione, implying that by making their addresses public, Mamdani was opening wealthy New Yorkers up to similar attacks. One opinion column claimed that Mangione murdered Thompson “in the name of the same toxic ideas that Mamdani peddles.”

The New York Post’s doxxing claim has spread to other outlets, including more mainstream papers like the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

The Wall Street Journal has published many articles on the pied-à-terre tax, and several acknowledge that the information in the new database was already publicly available. However, one column by the paper’s editorial board strikes a very similar tone to the New York Post’s coverage. It says, “The Mayor rolled out his new pied-à-terre tax by publishing the names and addresses of some 960,000 people who could have to pay. Nothing like publicly stigmatizing your class enemies, comrade.”

The Washington Post Editorial Board published a similar statement. The editorial reads, “Note to future mayors: Naming and shaming nearly a million homeowners in your city isn’t a good use of political capital.” Like the New York Post, the Washington Post column also mentions Mangione, saying that such a “high-profile [instance] of anti-capitalist violence may contribute to the anxiety” of wealthy New Yorkers named in the database.

Fox News has also repeatedly pushed the claim that the Mamdani administration is doxxing people. On July 28, for example, Fox News contributor and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine said the database “is really inciting the bloodlust of [Mamdani’s] Marxist revolutionary comrades…. This is inviting other professional squatters to move into these homes or worst-case, Luigi [Mangione] wannabes to prey on these people who have done nothing wrong.”

Other outlets that have claimed that Mamdani is doxxing people include right-leaning sites The Daily Wire and Reason. But the claim has also been repeated by the left.

On a July episode of Pivot, a podcast produced by New York Magazine, liberal businessman Scott Galloway said he had been “doxxed” by Mamdani. Galloway, who noted that he initially supported the pied-à-terre tax, said, “The question I would have is, other than trying to identify and imply these people have done something wrong — and then, 18 months after a health-care CEO was executed in the street, published the list — what is the upside here? Why is he doing this?”

Galloway’s comments were covered by outlets such as Fox News, Reason, and The Hill. Popular Information reached out to Galloway for comment but did not receive a response.

Beyond the media, powerful politicians have also parroted the doxxing claim. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) posted on X, “Comrade Mamdani doxxed thousands of New York City homeowners. This is the communist intimidation playbook in action.”

In November, California voters will consider a one-time 5% tax on the assets of a few hundred of the state’s billionaires. The initiative, should it pass, is expected to generate tens of billions of dollars for health care and education programs.

Opponents of the measure have a big problem: taxing billionaires is quite popular.

A new ad being run extensively on Meta platforms navigates around this issue by claiming it is not a “billionaire tax” but an “everyone tax.” This may be an effective message but it is not true.

The ad features a “Trojan pig” being led through the streets of a suburban community by someone who resembles Bernie Sanders. A mother running with a stroller is coaxed by the Sanders lookalike, “Do you like free stuff?” She nods.

As the Sanders lookalike flees the scene, the narrator claims that it was all a ruse. “Buried in the 32-page bill, they snuck in a provision that allows them to turn the tax on you,” the narrator says ominously. “Every Californian will have to report all their assets to the state tax board.”

This is a lie.

The rest of the ad shows the tax’s backers, hidden in the belly of the wooden pig and dressed in suits, ripping away personal property from residents. They steal a small boat and a surfboard, and assault a young boy to seize his bike. The ad concludes as the Sanders lookalike returns and grabs the woman’s stroller. “I thought you were taxing billionaires?” she asks him, crying. “You should have read the fine print,” he replies with a grin.

The fundamental premise of the ad is false. It claims that the initiative’s drafters included a provision that allows them to “turn the tax on you.” The initiative says that the tax can only be amended by the Legislature through a two-thirds vote of both houses. Even then, any changes must be “consistent with and further[] the purposes of the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act,” which is a one-time tax on the assets of billionaires.

It would be easier for the California legislature to simply create a new wealth tax that applies to everyone, starting from scratch — that takes the same two-thirds vote. But that has nothing to do with the initiative.

Nevertheless, the ad claims that “every Californian will have to report all their assets to the state tax board.” Under the initiative, Californians just have to certify that they do not have $1 billion or more in assets by checking a box. This will be an easy calculation for nearly all Californians.

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The money behind the deception

The ad, which launched last week, is sponsored by Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes, a project of the California Business Roundtable (CBRT). The group has already spent between $125,000 and $150,000 promoting the ad on Meta platforms. In total, the group has spent over $440,000 since April on ads targeting the tax on billionaires.

The top donor to the CBRT Issues PAC is Peter Thiel, the Trump-supporting venture capitalist with a net worth of about $27 billion. Thiel donated $3 million to the CBRT Issues PAC in December 2025. Other top supporters include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt ($1.5 million) and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen ($750,000). Both men are billionaires.

Another $1.9 million came from Kim DeGeorge, who lists her occupation as “not employed.” Kim DeGeorge is the spouse of Marco DeGeorge, the co-founder of the athleisure brand Alo. Marco DeGeorge has a net worth of $3.7 billion.

The CBRT did not respond to a request for comment.

Billionaires fighting a billionaire tax with AI slop

The Meta ad library discloses that CBRT’s anti-billionaire tax ad was “created or edited with AI.” It shows. For example, the Bernie Sanders lookalike begins the ad with gapped or missing teeth. By the end of the ad, he reappears, wearing a different tie, with a perfect teeth.

There is an even more embarrassing error in the tagline that ends the ad where the word “billionaire” is misspelled.

Another ad posted to the group’s Instagram account yesterday contains the same misspelling.

After securing the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina, Michael Whatley launched his general election campaign with an ad that emphasized he was traveling the state in a GMC truck. “Whatley’s driven thousands of miles across North Carolina trying to fix our country and help working families,” the narrator says as Whatley, wearing a flannel shirt, starts the engine. Whatley’s humble approach is contrasted with his Democratic opponent, former Governor Roy Cooper, who is shown in a tuxedo and accused of “siding with national liberals.”

Whatley has spent more than $1.5 million airing the ad statewide, according to estimates by AdImpact.

A more accurate account of Whatley’s travel habits, however, is found amid thousands of pages of campaign finance filings. Those documents reveal that Whatley’s campaign committees have spent over $100,000 since last September on travel in a $2 million private jet. Although efforts were made to obscure the owner of the aircraft, there is a paper trail linking it to Carl Andrew “Drew” Boggs — a felon convicted of defrauding the federal government.

In 2025, the Whatley for Senate campaign reported five payments, ranging from $8,243.10 to $21,615.24, to N5YD LLC for airfare. In 2026, two additional payments to N5YD LLC, for $8,426.28 and $9,575.87 were paid by the Whatley Buckhout Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee benefiting Whatley and Laurie Buckhout, a Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina. The most recent payment to N5YD LLC was paid by the Whatley Victory Committee, another Whatley fundraising vehicle. The payment for $19,701.42 on June 23 appears on page 4946 of the Whatley Victory Committee’s July Quarterly filing.

N5YD LLC was registered anonymously in Wyoming in 2022. The first payment by Whatley’s campaign in 2025 lists N5YD LLC’s address as “1613 W Roosevelt Blvd, Monroe, NC 28110-2754.” That is the address of the Boggs Group, a major construction company which was rebranded as TrueRock in 2023.

Subsequent payments to N5YD LLC list a P.O. Box located in Monroe. That P.O. Box is also associated with the Boggs Group and was used by Drew Boggs to make an in-kind contribution of $10,490.58 to the North Carolina Republican Party in 2021, when Whatley was the chairman. Boggs family members use the P.O. Box to register various cars and boats, according to public tax records published by Union County, North Carolina.

The same tax records reveal that N5YD LLC is a shell for a 2001 Cessna 525A valued at $1,931,487. N5YD is the tail number of the jet.

In 2015, Drew Boggs was “sentenced to 30 months in prison… after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States Department of Transportation and money laundering conspiracy.” Over a period of 10 years, Boggs and his co-defendants “engaged in a scheme by which they fraudulently obtained federally and state funded construction contracts by falsely certifying that a disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE)… would perform and be paid for [a] portion of the work on those contracts.” Over that time period, Boggs obtained 37 federal contracts worth $87.6 million.

Actually, Boggs’ companies performed the work and paid the DBE, Styx Cuthbertson Trucking, a kickback for facilitating the scheme. There were elaborate efforts to conceal the fraud, including routing the payments through Styx’s bank accounts and “using magnetic decals bearing the ‘Styx’ company logo to cover the ‘Boggs’ logo on company trucks.”

In total, Whatley’s campaign committees have paid $104,749.73 to N5YD LLC for air travel on the Cessna. (Notably, N5YD LLC was formally dissolved in 2023 by Wyoming for tax delinquency.) In addition to the use of the jet, Drew Boggs donated $6,612 to the Whatley Victory Committee in May and June of 2026.

After his guilty plea, political contributions from Drew Boggs have been controversial. In 2014, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R) donated more than $10,000 linked to Boggs and his family to charity. “Taking advantage of a program designed to help disadvantaged businesses is wrong and our campaign will not be associated with these actions,” a campaign spokesperson said. “Therefore… it will be reflected in our next campaign finance report that any contributions from those who have been found guilty for these improper actions will have been donated to the Durham Rescue Mission and the Joe Martin ALS Foundation.”

Drew Boggs was pardoned by President Trump on January 20, 2021, the last day of his first term. “Since his release, Mr. Boggs has rebuilt his company, has employed hundreds of people, and has dedicated countless hours and financial resources to his community,” the White House said in a release.

In addition to travel on the Cessna linked to Boggs, the Whatley Victory Campaign paid an additional $31,247.46 on June 16 to another entity, Old Well Aviation LLC, for private jet travel. According to FAA records, Old Well Aviation LLC owns a Cessna 525 CitationJet. The company is managed by Charlotte-area developers, including Eric Wood, who donated $2,500 to the Whatley Victory Campaign in May 2026.

The Whatley campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, pledged not to be involved in a second Trump administration, instead claiming that he would be focusing on his private equity company. But Kushner has been involved in nearly every consequential foreign policy negotiation since Trump returned to office. These negotiations are not going well. The Strait of Hormuz is closed, the Russia-Ukraine war has intensified, and Israel is rejecting U.S. leadership in Gaza.

Polymarket has touted its prediction market as a “global truth machine.” Yet official Polymarket accounts on X have repeatedly spread brazen misinformation. Most recently, a Polymarket account posted a false graphic claiming babies in the U.S. receive 72 vaccine injections.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been absent from the Senate for two months after suffering a fall in June. McConnell is still being paid his $174,000 Senate salary while out sick. This is a luxury many Americans don’t have, in part because of McConnell. Popular Information identified at least 23 times since the start of his Senate career that McConnell has voted against creating or expanding medical leave, paid or unpaid.

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A Texas Tribune analysis of federal government data found that at least 60 children have been held by the Trump administration “in the Dilley detention center for 100 days or more — far exceeding the 20-day limit for detaining immigrant children.” (Texas Tribune)

General Dynamics was paid $533 million in taxpayer money for an artillery factory that never produced one usable shell. Despite this, “the Army has not held General Dynamics or a key Turkish subcontractor… publicly accountable for the failures. Nor has it made General Dynamics pay a penny back.” (ProPublica)

House Democrats opened an insider trading investigation this week after the CEO of Energy Fuels bought 74,000 shares of his own company just a week before the Trump administration drastically shrank Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument. The change will be a boon to Energy Fuels, which owns the last conventional uranium processing site in the U.S. Previously, the mill was just a mile from the monument border, meaning much of its surroundings were closed to mining. Now, there are over 1 million acres of uranium-rich land ready to be mined nearby. (The Salt Lake Tribune/Grist)

The Trump administration has awarded a contract worth up to $244 million to Our Rescue to represent unaccompanied minor children. The company was founded by Tim Ballard, a former ICE agent who quit to join efforts to rescue children in sex trafficking rings. Ballard is currently facing two lawsuits accusing him of coercing sexual acts, sex trafficking, and forced labor. (The Washington Post)

Numerical information

Over $238 million: Trump Media & Technology Group’s net loss for its second quarter. The company had a revenue of less than $2 million.

$2.1 trillion: The projected fiscal 2026 federal deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This is $200 billion more than originally projected.

Up to $2.9 million: The amount that a judicial watchdog estimates Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has earned from his fossil fuel industry investments since being nominated to the Supreme Court in 2005.

Quote of the week

“Prices are dropping fast. Iran is going absolutely fine. We totally control the Strait of Hormuz… and things are going great for our country.”

– President Trump

In fact, the Consumer Price Index is up 3.4 percent compared to last year and the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed, with traffic through the strait near a three-month low.

Photo of the week

Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire and the Republican nominee in Ohio’s gubernatorial race, served as the frontman for a dubious pharmaceutical company and then cashed out weeks before its dramatic crash.

In 2014, Ramaswamy founded Axovant, a company he used to buy the rights to an inauspicious Alzheimer’s drug that had repeatedly failed in clinical trials. Axovant then hired Ramaswamy’s mother, who, despite lacking relevant research experience, helped massage data from old clinical trials to make the drug appear more promising. The extent of the elder Ramaswamy’s role has not been previously reported.

In 2015, touting his mother’s reinterpretation of the data to potential investors and regulators, Ramaswamy led Axovant to a $1.4 billion initial public offering, the largest in biotech history at the time. He spent the ensuing two years promoting the drug intepirdine as a possible breakthrough for the millions of Americans who have Alzheimer’s disease.

Then, after structuring the company to insulate himself and other insiders from potential losses, he cashed out through a private back door weeks before another clinical failure cratered the stock price. One state retirement fund for teachers lost more than $1 million.

Ramaswamy, whose gubernatorial candidacy has received tens of millions in combined financial backing from fellow right-wing billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Yass, and Bill Ackman, reaped an estimated $260 million from Axovant’s parent company.

Ramaswamy has maintained that he is “proud” of his work on intepirdine. “There is probably nothing in a meaningful way we could’ve done differently in the decision of advancing that drug,” he said at a 2018 conference held as the Axovant share price hovered around the $1 mark. “Given those same set of facts… with a different drug today, I think we would make the same decision.”

The Ramaswamy campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Daniel Skinner, a professor of health policy at Ohio University, noted that while Ramaswamy was never charged with a crime, he profited substantially off of his intepirdine marketing right before the failure of its last clinical trial. “That’s where people have a lot of questions, whenever you kind of pump and dump something,” he said in an interview with Oligarch Watch. “You look back at his words, and he was extremely effusive — really right up to the very end — about the prospects of this working.”

How Ramaswamy’s mother massaged data from failed drug trials

After completing his undergrad at Harvard in 2007, Ramaswamy cut his teeth by co-managing the biotech portfolio of a New York hedge fund. He used the experience to start his own company in 2014: Roivant Sciences, which launched a web of subsidiaries to buy up floundering pharmaceutical drugs from major developers with the goal of bringing them to market.

One of Ramaswamy’s early reclamation projects was SB-742457, a drug to improve cognitive functions in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Axovant, a Roivant subsidiary, acquired the drug in December 2014 and rebranded it to RVT-101. It later settled on the international nonproprietary name intepirdine.

Axovant purchased the in-license for intepirdine from GlaxoSmithKline for a $5 million upfront payment — a sum that was tantamount to “lunch money,” as one industry publication observed at the time. (A 2026 analysis by Ambrosia Ventures found the median going rate for similar pharmaceutical licensing deals was $50 million.)

The bargain-bin selloff reflected the drug’s troubled developmental run, which concluded with Glaxo discontinuing it, according to AlzForum. At Glaxo, it had failed multiple Phase 2 clinical trials, including the two most recent trials — involving 576 and 684 patients — before its acquisition by Axovant.

But once in the hands of Axovant, Glaxo’s failed clinical trials were reevaluated to make intepirdine appear full of promise as an Alzheimer’s treatment.

In 2015, Ramaswamy, who was 29 years old at the time, hired his own mother, Geetha Ramaswamy, as Axovant’s vice president of medical and scientific strategy. By July of that year, within weeks of Axovant raising $315 million in its record-setting IPO, the elder Ramaswamy had co-published two analyses on intepirdine despite having no experience conducting clinical trials, an investigation by Oligarch Watch found.

While Geetha Ramaswamy had previously worked in the neuroscience divisions of Abbott Laboratories and Merck, her roles were primarily focused on management, relationship building, and recruiting and training, according to her LinkedIn. “Played a key role in Speaker training .[sic] Valued as a scientific peer by national experts,” reads one of her LinkedIn career bullet points. But Geetha Ramaswamy appears to have never conducted a clinical trial before or during her time at Axovant, nor did she produce significant original research during her career.

At Axovant, her co-analyses pulled from Glaxo’s 48-week, Phase 2b clinical trial of 684 Alzheimer’s patients that found the drug had “failed to achieve formal statistical significance” and had not “met the overall criteria for success.”

However, by omitting huge segments of the original trial data, a “responder analysis” co-authored by Geetha Ramaswamy concluded there was enough evidence to “support the initiation of a Phase 3 confirmatory study evaluating the efficacy of RVT-101 [intepirdine] in mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease in the second half of 2015.”

Instead of measuring patients’ exact cognitive performance while on intepirdine, her analysis merely divided them into two classifications: “responder” and “non-responder.” Put another way, if it were an academic test, a responder analysis would use pass-or-fail grading instead of a numeric system.

An article published last year in the leading peer-reviewed journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia objected to responder analyses for increasing the risk of “causal fraud” when used to evaluate the clinical benefits of Alzheimer’s treatments. “Statistical approaches that rely on a dichotomized binary outcome, including responder analyses… result in a loss of information and reduced statistical power, increasing the risk of false positives and negatives,” wrote University College London’s Kathy Liu and colleagues.

In smoothing over clinical findings that were a liability for her son’s ascending company, Geetha Ramaswamy also stood to profit financially. Along with her annual salary of $250,000, an Axovant regulatory filing from 2015 reported that she was “granted a stock option for 262,500 common shares… with an exercise price of $0.90 per share.”

The other analysis she co-published shortly after Axovant’s IPO was a “completer analysis” that again sugarcoated Glaxo’s failed 684-patient trial — this time, by excluding the more than 30% of patients who had dropped out during the 48-week duration. “Given the low drop-out rate, this analysis provides an accurate representation of the study,” Geetha Ramaswamy and her colleagues wrote in their reanalysis that comprised only “patients with complete data at each study visit.”

Completer analyses have long been panned within the medical research field for producing biased or inadequate findings due to the exclusion of data. In a 2011 article, Thomas R. Fleming, a biostatistician who co-developed the leading statistical method for monitoring clinical trials, criticized completer analyses as “simplistic” and for inducing biases. “Missing data on outcome measures in clinical trials meaningfully reduce the integrity and interpretability of results,” he added.

But the controversial method produced the numbers that Axovant needed.

Days before its record-setting IPO, Axovant shared identical completer analysis data in a June 2015 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, in which the company asserted that its drug “has the potential to be a best-in-class 5-HT6 receptor antagonist for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease based on its safety, tolerability and efficacy for up to 48 weeks.”

Axovant also cited the completer analysis in a July 2015 press release to claim that patients treated with intepirdine suddenly showed “statistically significant benefits” and argue that a Phase 3 trial of intepirdine was justified.

Additionally, analysis co-authored by Geetha Ramaswamy combined three separate patient performance and dementia severity yardsticks: Clinical Dementia Rating - Sum of Boxes (CDR-SB), Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale - Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-Cog), and Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study - Activities of Daily Living (ADCS-ADL). The composite approach seemingly helped Axovant mask the pivotal failure of the original trial’s CDR-SB objective — a test that scores disease severity in Alzheimer’s patients — which Glaxo had used as one of two primary objectives to decide the trial had failed.

Nevertheless, Geetha Ramaswamy’s responder co-analysis pointed to the ADCS-ADL scale as proof that patients on intepirdine had shown improvements, even though it was not deemed to be an essential co-primary endpoint in the clinical trial. The change meant the tests that previously torpedoed the trial no longer had to stand on their own. Geetha Ramaswamy and her team ultimately came away with a contorted but improved p-value score, pulled from the same clinical data that showed the drug had failed.

“A unique drug that we actually think could help millions”

Ramaswamy used his mother’s dubious math to help raise $315 million during Axovant’s $1.4 billion IPO, figures the company reached on no revenue.

In submitting its pre-IPO S-1 form to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Axovant claimed that Glaxo’s Phase 2b clinical trial — the same one that had failed, the same one that Geetha Ramaswamy then cherrypicked from — showed subjects who received 35 mg of intepirdine “in combination with donepezil achieved a statistically significant improvement in cognition at 12, 24 and 48 weeks following initiation of treatment.”

“We believe this is a meaningful result,” the filing continued.

The structure that Ramaswamy used to launch the IPO meant that four parties controlled more than 90% of Axovant shares. Three-quarters of the equity stayed with Roivant, and 13.15% went to Visium Asset Management and RA Capital Management in the IPO. Janus Capital Management, a hedge fund, purchased less than 2%. Public investors and traders were provided a free float of approximately 10%.

In its red flags for identifying potential pump-and-dump schemes, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has pointed to a limited public float and the concentration of a company’s IPO shares into a few hands as two marks that investors should watch out for.

To boost the stock, Ramaswamy boasted on CNBC that Axovant was in the catbird seat “for delivering value” to the five million Alzheimer’s patients in the US. Intepirdine, he added, was a “unique drug that we actually think could help millions of patients.”

“If you think about it, we own global rights to a drug that has already demonstrated in a large Phase 2b study efficacy on the two parameters that the FDA has historically required for new Alzheimer’s disease drugs,” he claimed in an interview with Jim Cramer shortly after the IPO. “And actually, we’re only — we believe — we’re only one additional Phase 3 study away from the approval of this drug.” (Along with not having any of its own clinical data, Axovant launched its IPO without a single recruit for future clinical trials.)

One factor contributing to the excitement around intepirdine was the “great hope” shared by patients and their family members who desperately wanted a cure, explained Skinner, the Ohio University health professor. “There’s been extraordinary failure in the Alzheimer’s space,” he added.

Ramaswamy, who signed an SEC filing claiming intepirdine had “best-in-class” potential, fed into that hope by telling Forbes that the drug would make “a huge difference” if approved.

But reality eventually caught up with his claims. In February 2016, Pfizer discontinued its analogous 5-HT6 Alzheimer’s drug because it met pre-specified futility criteria, meaning researchers determined there was no reason to continue clinical trials. A separate 5-HT6 drug being developed by Lundbeck also failed three Phase 3 trials within a six-month span beginning in September 2016.

Unable to sell 75 million Axovant shares on the open market without risking a market nosedive and regulatory disclosures, Ramaswamy monetized Roivant’s position through a private $1.1 billion SoftBank investment. (Ramaswamy never held a direct personal stake in Axovant, instead maintaining indirect ownership through Roivant.)

An SEC disclosure from September 2017 reported that SoftBank had gained “beneficial ownership” over Roivant’s 75 million Axovant shares.

Less than one month later, intepirdine failed its Phase 3 trial, causing Axovant stock to crash 70% in one trading day.

“Heads I win and tails I also win”

After the collapse of the Phase 3 trial, the value of Axovant shares held by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System fell from $1,228,000 to $68,000, per SEC filings. Axovant eventually rebranded to Sio Gene Therapies and lost 99.8% of its value before shuttering completely.

Ramaswamy, meanwhile, made an estimated $260 million during his time at Roivant, according to Forbes.

Since winning the Republican nomination in the Ohio gubernatorial race, Ramaswamy has shied away from discussing his time in biotech, choosing instead to cast his business success story in more vague terms, noted David Niven, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati.

“One of the defining questions of the campaign will be, are Ohioans talking about this in October — are they aware of how well he did, and how poorly most other folks did on that Alzheimer’s drug?” Niven said in an interview with Oligarch Watch.

The basic reality of how Ramaswamy ran Axovant, Niven added, “was heads I win and tails I also win, in terms of the outcomes of the trials or whether the drugs actually proved useful or not.”

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was hospitalized on June 14 after suffering a fall that left him unconscious. He remained hospitalized until mid-July, when he was transferred to a rehabilitation center. On August 6, McConnell announced that he was discharged and was continuing his recovery at home.

But, two months later, McConnell has not returned to work in the Senate. Over that period of time, he has missed 59 floor votes. Nevertheless, McConnell has continued to receive his Senate salary of $174,000 per year.

McConnell is fortunate to be employed in a job with excellent benefits. There is no federal law, however, that provides guaranteed paid sick leave. In 2025, about 27 million private sector workers had no paid sick leave.

One reason: Mitch McConnell.

Since he entered the Senate in 1985, McConnell has voted against creating or expanding medical leave — paid and unpaid — at least 23 times.

Notably, near the beginning of his tenure, McConnell supported the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which provided up to 12 weeks of unpaid medical leave to care for yourself, a child, a spouse, or a parent. On June 14, 1990, McConnell delivered a floor speech declaring that the law was necessary “to promote the well-being of American families.”

The Senate approved the FMLA by voice vote the same day. But it was vetoed by President George H. W. Bush.

A year later, however, the Senate took up the FMLA again and McConnell reversed his decision. “I understand the reason for the Family and Medical Leave Act. We need to protect employees, and strike a balance between the needs of the marketplace and the needs of individuals who work in that marketplace. That was my reason for supporting similar legislation last year, although no recorded vote ever was taken on the issue,” McConnell said in 1991. “Today, however, we are mired in a continuing recession. Our Nation’s economy is in feeble health, its fiscal arteries clogged by tax increases and massive regulatory burdens.”

McConnell declared that he “cannot support any massive work force mandates like the measure before us today” and urged his colleagues to “revisit this issue when the economy is on a sounder footing.”

In the 35 years since, McConnell has never again voiced public support for medical leave and consistently opposed efforts to expand paid and unpaid medical leave.

McConnell’s long record of opposing medical leave

In October 1988, McConnell opposed a cloture vote on the Parental and Medical Leave Act, the precursor to the FMLA, which would have provided eligible employees with unpaid leave for a new child, a child with a serious illness, or for a serious health condition. In September 1988, McConnell also supported an effort to delay the legislation.

After his initial support in 1990, McConnell spent years opposing efforts to pass the FMLA and supporting amendments to weaken the bill. In 1991, McConnell opposed an amendment to create the FMLA of 1991. The same year, McConnell supported an amendment that would have required employees to enter arbitration procedures if their employer violated the law. McConnell also supported the Republican alternative to the bill, the American Family Protection Act, which did not guarantee medical leave. In 1992, McConnell voted against overriding Bush’s veto of the FMLA.

In February 1993, McConnell voted against the FMLA again, which was ultimately signed into law by President Bill Clinton. During consideration of the legislation, McConnell supported at least six efforts to weaken the bill. For example, McConnell supported an amendment that would have instead provided tax incentives for employers that adopted “flexible family leave policies.” McConnell additionally supported an amendment that would have allowed employers to satisfy the FMLA requirements “by offering such leave as a benefit in a cafeteria plan,” which could have required employees to give up other benefits to qualify for medical leave. In July 1993, McConnell also supported efforts to “eliminate a family and medical leave requirement” from the National Service Trust Act of 1993.

In 2015, McConnell also voted against adding an amendment to the congressional budget to establish “a deficit-neutral reserve fund for legislation to allow Americans to earn paid sick time.”

In 2019, senators debated whether to accept a provision in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act to expand paid medical leave for federal employees. McConnell voted against a resolution to accept the House version, which would have granted federal personnel paid leave to take care of sick family members, as well as new children. Instead, McConnell voted for a provision that favored “voluntary compensatory time programs” and tax incentives over family and medical leave.

At the start of the Covid pandemic, the House passed a bill with bipartisan support to temporarily mandate paid leave, although many of its provisions were watered down due to pressure from the Trump administration and business groups. The House bill mandated 14 days of emergency sick leave for the next year, with the government reimbursing businesses for the cost.

McConnell voted against a proposal in the Senate to make the paid sick and family leave mandate permanent. He then voted in favor of another proposal to cut the paid leave from the bill, instead routing funding to state unemployment agencies.

The final version did include paid sick leave, but it was reduced to 10 days. McConnell nevertheless derided the medical leave provisions as “a new, untested mandate on small businesses” imposed at “literally the worst time in living memory,” before voting in favor of the bill. Two days later, McConnell introduced legislation to allow the administration to issue waivers to employers.

Later in the pandemic, McConnell voted in favor of striking a provision from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 that created a fund to give federal employees up to 600 hours of paid Covid-related leave. The vote failed and the provision remained in the ARPA, which McConnell ultimately voted against.

Most recently, as rail workers threatened to strike in 2022 over work attendance policies that gave them inconsistent time off and penalized workers for taking sick time, the federal government stepped in to impose a new contract for the workers and avert a strike. McConnell voted against a proposal that would have added seven days of paid sick leave to the contract. Although it received bipartisan support, it fell short of the 60 votes needed to pass. Eventually, McConnell voted in favor of the final contract, which imposed wage increases and added one personal day, but did not add any sick time for rail workers.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan says his company is a “global truth machine.” Coplan has argued that Polymarket is “the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now“ and creates “an information landscape with less sensationalism and more truth.” In June 2025, Coplan announced a partnership with X because the “two top truth seeking apps on the internet are stronger together.”

More recently, Polymarket, in an apparent effort to increase engagement, has been using X to promote brazen misinformation.

On August 10, an official Polymarket account on X posted a graphic falsely claiming that, in the United States, babies receive 72 injections. President Trump, according to the Polymarket post, was ending this practice.

This graphic, which was previously posted by the White House in January, is false, according to multiple independent fact checkers. PolitiFact, which rated the graphic “False,” reported that babies “received anywhere from 12 to 30 shots before their second birthday depending on the use of combination vaccines and annual COVID-19 and flu vaccines.”

Trump also personally claimed on Truth Social that the United States required “72 ‘jabs’ for perfectly healthy babies.” PolitiFact found that figure “takes into account 18 years of recommended vaccines, including an annual flu and COVID-19 shot, and assumes that each vaccine dose would be given as a separate injection.”

FactCheck.org similarly found the claim was incorrect. It noted that “a person could complete the U.S. childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule as of early 2025 while receiving less than two dozen shots and oral vaccines.” The claim also failed fact checks by STAT News and CNN.

This is not an isolated incident.

On August 3, Polymarket’s main X account posted that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that he would require an ID to make purchases at city-owned grocery stores.

This claim is false. It was never “revealed” by Mamdani or anyone else. It was a baseless rumor that spread widely on right-wing media outlets, according to the Associated Press. “When we’re talking about a city-run grocery store, one in each borough, which by the way, you do not need an ID to shop at, no matter what you’ve just heard in the news of today,” Mamdani said during an August 3 media interview.

The false claim, which was not corrected, garnered 19.6 million views on X. Polymarket used the attention to promote its prediction market on whether Mamdani would open a city-owned grocery store by December 31.

The tactic reveals that Polymarket’s business is not “truth.” Polymarket seeks to maximize attention for its markets. That frequently involves spreading false information.

Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment.

A market for misinformation

Popular Information identified numerous other occasions where Polymarket has spread misinformation on social media platforms. On August 8, for example, Polymarket posted on X, “JUST IN: WNBA Commissioner announces the league is meeting to review what a woman is, after multiple former NBA stars announced plans to join the league.” Polymarket used the post to promote a market about whether Enes Kanter Freedom, a former NBA player who claims he will enter the WNBA draft, will be selected in 2027.

But this is not accurate. The Polymarket post seemingly refers to an internal memo sent to teams by WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert. The memo, obtained by the Associated Press, said that the topic of “transgender athlete participation in women’s basketball” would “be discussed further by a task force of team presidents and general managers at a previously scheduled meeting.” But there was no announcement and no planned review of “what a woman is.”

On July 3, a Polymarket account promoted a post from Trump claiming that the U.S. spent significantly more on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) than other countries. The post claims that the U.S. spent $999 billion on NATO.

But this is not true. The annual NATO budget was around €4.6 billion in 2025, and is estimated to be up to €5.3 billion (or over $6 billion) in 2026. According to NATO, “[a]ll allies contribute to funding NATO using an agreed cost share formula derived from the Gross National Income of member countries.” The U.S. is among the top contributors, financing around 14.9% of the budget from 2026 through 2027. But many other countries pay similar amounts, including France (10%), the United Kingdom (10%), and Germany (14.9%).

The graphic posted by Trump and promoted by Polymarket is seemingly referring to the total defense spending per country. According to NATO estimates, the U.S. spent $980 billion on defense in 2025.

Polymarket has also promoted misleading information about elections. On June 1, Polymarket posted that Los Angeles mayoral candidate Karen Bass “surge[d] in the Los Angeles Mayoral Election odds — & tomorrow is Election Day.” Polymarket stated that there was a “64% chance” she was re-elected.

But June 2 was only the primary election for the Los Angeles mayoral race. To win the election outright, a candidate has to receive over 50% of the primary vote. (Bass did not receive 50% of the vote during the primary and will therefore be running in the general election in November.) The Polymarket odds included in the post were not for the primary election, but instead for the overall election winner.

Polymarket’s checkered history

Polymarket’s habit of posting false or misleading information on social media is a long-established pattern.

In a March review of Polymarket’s social media accounts — which have millions of combined followers — the New York Times identified hundreds of posts containing false or misleading information.

Frequently, the subjects of Polymarket’s misinformation are opponents of the Trump administration. (Polymarket is connected to Trump through Donald Trump Jr., who has invested in the company and serves as an unpaid advisor.)

In November 2025, for example, Polymarket made a misleading post about Mamdani, who was running for New York City mayor at the time. The post, made on Election Day, said that Mamdani’s name would appear twice on the ballot.

The post did not mention that candidates’ names often appear multiple times on New York City ballots because they can be nominated by multiple parties. Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa’s name also appeared twice on the ballot. Regardless, Polymarket’s post set off a conspiracy theory that the election was rigged in Mamdani’s favor.

Another frequent target for MAGA and Polymarket is Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN). In a post from December, Polymarket pushed conspiracy theories about how Omar’s net worth has increased since 2019. The post did not mention that her net worth now includes the assets of her husband, who she married in 2020.

While liberal politicians are often the subject of the misleading posts, Polymarket has also posted misinformation about other prominent figures.

In January, for example, Polymarket posted on X that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had advised young people to work at McDonald’s or Palantir before starting their own companies.

Within a few hours, Bezos replied with his own post saying, “Nope. Not sure why [P]olymarket made this up.”

In fact, Polymarket’s claim seems to be a distortion of an answer Bezos gave during an interview at Italian Tech Week months earlier. Bezos actually said, “I always advise to young people: Go work at a best-practices company somewhere where you can learn a lot of basic fundamental things [like] how to hire really well, how to interview, etc.”

Bezos did not mention working for Palantir or McDonald’s.

Prior to his work with the Trump White House, Kushner’s main professional experience was as a real estate developer. He almost bankrupted his family’s development company by purchasing an aging New York City skyscraper for $1.8 billion.

After assuming a broad foreign policy portfolio during Trump’s first term, Kushner leveraged his connections with autocrats in the Middle East to raise billions for a new private equity company, Affinity Partners, in 2021. Kushner then pledged not to be involved in a second Trump White House. “I’m an investor now,” Kushner said in February 2024. “I served in government, and I think my track record is pretty impeccable. Now I’m a private investor.”

Without explanation, Kushner broke that pledge and has been involved in nearly every consequential foreign policy negotiation since Trump returned to the White House in early 2025. But he has been pursuing these high-level negotiations as a side hustle, and continuing his role as an investor.

It has not been going well.

Since Trump’s October 2025 speech, the hotspots in Kushner’s portfolio have all deteriorated. Kushner has guided the United States into a substantially worse strategic position. In all cases, the prospects for a lasting peace are further away.

None of this seems to be bothering Kushner.

The Strait of Hormuz is closed, the fighting in Ukraine has intensified, and Israel is rejecting American leadership in Gaza. Meanwhile, Kushner is taking a family vacation in Iceland.

Gaza peace deal crumbles

On Sunday, after months of negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a peace plan for Gaza touted by Trump. The plan would have involved Hamas “hand[ing] over its weapons in stages to a new Palestinian administration in Gaza” in exchange for Israel withdrawing its forces from Gaza.

The plan was negotiated by Trump’s “Board of Peace.” In January, Trump appointed Kushner to the Board of Peace’s Executive Board, as part of his “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.”

Trump celebrated the peace deal at the end of July, writing on Truth Social, “Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY.”

But now, the deal has hit a roadblock. “Israel rejects the 15-point document,” Netanyahu reportedly said in a cabinet meeting, stating that the military “will not make any withdrawal until Hamas is truly disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and citizens.”

At the beginning of August, an exiled Palestinian official alleged that Kushner was involved in the peace deal, writing on social media that “Kushner confirmed to us that he had agreed with the Israeli side to halt the attacks on Gaza beginning tomorrow morning,” the Jerusalem Post reported. (He later edited the post to state instead that “Kushner has informed us that he is working with the Israeli side to stop the attacks on Gaza.”)

Kushner has been involved in negotiations surrounding Gaza for months. Last fall, Trump called on Kushner to help negotiate a ceasefire agreement in Gaza. “We called in Jared,” Trump said in October 2025. “We need that brain on occasion. We gotta get Jared in here.”

Kushner has also been heavily involved in plans to reconstruct Gaza. In January, Kushner presented a plan to develop Gaza at the World Economic Forum at Davos. The plan involved building Gaza into a luxury urban development. Kushner described it as a “destination.” But in the months since, that plan has “shrunk dramatically from an ambitious blueprint for the reconstruction of the whole territory to a small pilot project in the south of the strip,” according to the Guardian.

A diplomatic catastrophe in Iran

Kushner has been one of the Trump administration’s key negotiators in the war with Iran, traveling to the Middle East several times for talks with leaders from the region. Since the beginning of the war, Trump has repeatedly claimed that these negotiations were on the brink of success and the war was nearly won.

Yet months later, the war is ongoing and negotiations are at a standstill. Last week, Trump threatened Iran with “decapitation” if they did not agree to a deal soon. But on Sunday, he told Axios that his administration was “low-keying it” and “only semi-negotiating” while waiting for Iran to cave to economic pressures. Meanwhile, Iran has said it will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed until the U.S. meets a sweeping set of demands. Kushner’s performance in negotiations with Iran has drawn sharp criticism, with one former Middle East negotiator for the U.S. giving Kushner “an F in diplomacy.”

While Kushner has been negotiating on issues that could significantly impact Middle Eastern countries, Affinity Partners has collected tens of millions of dollars in fees from these same governments, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Intensifying fighting in Ukraine

Kushner has also been involved in months of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, with little success. The war between the countries has continued for over four years. In December, Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly met with Russian President Vladimir Putin “for around five hours.” In February, Kushner and Witkoff were also involved in hours of negotiations between the two countries in Geneva.

But after the U.S. began the war with Iran, Kushner and Witkoff’s mediating between Russia and Ukraine stalled. Officials from both countries were reportedly frustrated by the delay. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CBS News that he understood “that there are challenges in the Middle East,” but that Ukraine needed “more, more than words.” Russian officials were reportedly “desperately waiting for the return of Witkoff and Kushner,” according to the New York Times.

Now, fighting between the two countries is intensifying. Kushner and Witkoff are rumored to be visiting Kyiv and Moscow in the coming weeks to pick negotiations back up.

Mass protests in Albania

While Kushner flails as a negotiator, one of his major real estate developments is also in jeopardy.

In 2024, Kushner unveiled plans to develop Sazan Island and a nearby peninsula on the coast of Albania into a luxury resort with 10,000 hotel rooms. The development, backed by Kushner and a group of other investors, has been the subject of ongoing protests, known as the Flamingo Revolution, and an investigation by Albania’s corruption watchdog.

Most recently, questions have emerged about how Kushner and the development group acquired the land for the luxury resort. In September 2024, a group of residents of the peninsula sent a letter to Kushner, warning him that the residents were the rightful owners of the land, but a man named Artur Shehu had stolen it from them. The development group bought the land from Shehu anyway. In June, Albanian prosecutors accused Shehu of leading an international drug-smuggling operation, which included laundering money through stolen property. According to the prosecutors, Shehu used forged ownership documents to acquire land on the peninsula, which he then sold to Kushner’s development group for $120 million.

Congressman Max Miller (R-OH) is facing serious allegations of domestic abuse. On May 7, The Daily Mail reported that Miller is “accused of years of documented physical abuse against his ex-wife, Emily Moreno.” The alleged abuse includes a June 2024 incident where Miller hurled “a pot of boiling water at Emily during an argument inside their Ohio home, with some of the water striking her chest, while their then eight-month-old daughter was present.”

The Daily Mail also reported that on February 1, 2026, “Miller allegedly grabbed and struck Emily, 32, during a custody exchange at his Ohio home, leaving bruises on her arm, elbow, and torso as the couple’s two-year-old daughter Ruth looked on.” The Daily Mail published several photos documenting injuries from the alleged attacks.

“The photographic evidence speaks for itself. These images, combined with the documented history in court filings, directly contradict years of Mr Miller’s denial,” Moreno’s attorney told The Daily Mail.

The allegations, including the assault with hot water, were also included in a May 27 court filing by Moreno:

On Saturday, June 8, 2024, I told Congressman Miller that I was planning to leave him. He got extremely upset. He took hot water from a pan he had just cooked eggs in and threw it at me. Shocked, I fell to the floor and lay there in a fetal position. Congressman Miller took the sprayer from the sink and continued to spray me with hot water.

Miller has denied the allegations and sued Moreno for defamation. He has accused his ex-wife of being “mentally ill, a liar, a stalker and a dangerous individual.” On August 2, Miller publicly released a trove of documents that he claimed proved his innocence. The materials included a photo of “his toddler daughter nude.” Miller blamed his attorney.

The same day, Moreno’s father, U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH), called on Miller to resign from Congress. “If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives,” he said. “I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.” Ohio’s other U.S. Senator, Jon Husted (R), also called on Miller to step down.

Before becoming a Congressman, Miller served as an aide to President Trump. Asked about the allegations against Miller on August 3, Trump called Miller “a very good person,” adding “I’m going to let the families figure that out.” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) also continues to back Miller. “There’s all sorts of domestic events going on with 435 members of Congress all the time, it’s not my business to get engaged in it,” Johnson said.

Trump and Johnson are not the only ones who continue to support Miller. Dozens of corporations are financially backing Miller’s campaign. Prominent corporations who donated $2,000 or more this cycle include Stanley Black & Decker, AT&T, Kroger, DraftKings, Nike, and Walmart.

Several companies, including Elevance, Altria, Pfizer, John Deere, and TD Bank sent donations to Miller that were received after the publication of the Daily Mail article.

Concerns about Miller’s personal conduct, however, have been public since July 2021, when Politico, citing three sources, reported that Miller pushed former Trump aide Stephanie Grisham “against a wall and slapped her in the face in his Washington apartment after she accused him of cheating on her.”

Miller also denied those allegations and filed a defamation suit against Grisham, who included those allegations (without naming Miller) in a memoir. That lawsuit was settled but Grisham sued Miller in July, alleging that he violated the terms of the settlement and last week filed for a restraining order.

Popular Information contacted all of Miller’s corporate donors and asked if they continued to support Miller’s candidacy. Citi declined to comment. The other donors did not respond.

One of the outlets that published the New York Post’s false narrative was CBS News New York. But this week, CBS News New York aired a new segment highlighting people with family members who died on 9/11 “defending Mayor Mamdani’s inclusion in this year’s solemn remembrance ceremony.”

One Nation, an opaque nonprofit affiliated with Senate Republicans, spent $1.7 million in less than a week on a new ad attacking Senator Jon Ossoff (D). The ad received 78 million impressions across Georgia. But almost nothing in it is true. The ad attacks Ossoff for positions that have actually been pursued by Republicans, including cutting the child tax credit.

Popular Information uncovered a network of fake news sites created by One Nation, the Senate Republican dark money group. The sites target at least six states with key Senate races. While they claim to be “independent” news outlets, they produce partisan propaganda. One Nation is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Meta promoting articles published on these sites that praise Republican Senate candidates or attack their Democratic rivals.

The best of the rest

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is quietly spending billions of dollars buying up private immigration detention centers. In July, CoreCivic announced that the government bought two of its centers for $1.5 billion. Sources told TIME that the plan “is for ICE to take over private detention facilities while building new ones alongside them.” (TIME)

Many sponsors of Freedom 250’s Great American State Fair did not properly disclose their donations, including Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, and UnitedHealth Group, a NOTUS analysis of federal lobbyist contribution reports found. This could violate federal lobbying law. (NOTUS)

For at least six months, Jennifer Mascott continued to run a D.C. public affairs firm after being appointed and confirmed as a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in October 2025. Judicial ethics experts said Mascott was operating in a gray area. The firm went out of business in June after hemorrhaging clients and staff. (Politico)

Last year, Trump signed into law a ban on intoxicating hemp products. Now, senators are working at the administration’s request to delay the ban from coming into effect. The son-in-law of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles stands to benefit. He is the CEO of companies that sell such hemp products. (New York Times)

Numerical information

6.81%: The average interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hit its “highest level in over a year” last week.

350,000: The number of Haitian immigrants who lost their temporary protected status after a federal court ruling.

$275 billion: The total projected cost for 15 new “Trump-class” battleships. The price tag is 50 percent higher than the original government estimate.

Quote of the week

“When we go all the way back to 2015 and 2016, and people in the media looked at President Donald J. Trump, and everyone came out with allegations. Dozens of women, dozens of crazy allegations, dozens of nasty criminal misconduct [allegations]. And you know what he did? He stayed in the fight.”

–Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) when asked if he would drop out of his reelection race after domestic abuse allegations by his ex-wife.

Photo of the week

The Alaska Navigator bills itself as “independent news covering the Last Frontier.” On June 10, the outlet published an article headlined, “As Fentanyl Deaths Rise in Alaska, Sullivan Pushes Tougher Penalties and Enforcement.”

The piece, which has no byline, reports that Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) — who is locked in a competitive campaign against Democrat Mary Peltola — “is leading efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and support law enforcement agencies confronting the epidemic.”

Curiously, although Sullivan has been in the Senate for more than a decade, the piece cites only one piece of evidence: Sullivan’s vote for the HALT Fentanyl Act in March 2025. Sullivan was one of 84 senators to vote for the bill, which classified fentanyl-related substances as schedule I narcotics. But Sullivan did not lead the effort to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act. He was not the bill’s sponsor or one of its 16 original co-sponsors. (Sullivan became a co-sponsor on March 6, 2025, about a week before it passed the Senate).

The Alaska Navigator also reports that “Retired Alaska Wildlife Trooper Director Doug Massie, who spent 25 years in law enforcement… credits Senator Sullivan with supporting tougher penalties for traffickers and policies aimed at reducing the drug’s impact on communities throughout the state.” But there is no direct quote from Massie, who is running for the Alaska state legislature as a Republican, or an explanation of why Sullivan deserves credit. There is no record of Massie making a public statement about Sullivan on fentanyl or any other topic.

Both the content and tone are highly unusual for an independent news outlet. That is because the Alaska Navigator is not an independent news outlet. Rather, it is a website fully controlled by One Nation, a dark money group that works in concert with the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the super PAC of Senate Republicans. One Nation has directly contributed over $70 million to the SLF this political cycle.

Other content published by Alaska Navigator includes “Senator Dan S. Sullivan’s Legislative Record of Supporting Alaska’s Veterans,” “Sen. Sullivan’s tax policy helps Alaska businesses thrive,” and “Opinion: Dan Sullivan has earned another term by delivering for Alaska.”

One Nation has ensured that Alaskans see this content by spending tens of thousands of dollars on Meta ads promoting Alaska Navigator articles since June. These ads further distort reality. For example, the fentanyl article was promoted with an ad declaring there was a “New Bill to Crack Down on Fentanyl Trafficking, Supported By Dan Sullivan.” But the only bill mentioned in the article was the HALT Fentanyl Act, which was signed into law in July 2025.

While the ad discloses it was paid for by One Nation, it does not disclose that Alaska Navigator is owned and operated by One Nation. That fact is only revealed in small, faint type at the very bottom of the Alaska Navigator website.

Alaska Navigator’s domain, thealaskanavigator.com, was registered on March 20, 2026. The website, however, includes an article dating back to January 2026, making it appear more established. That article was added using a tool called FakerPress, according to the website’s source code. FakerPress markets itself as “a clean way to generate fake and dummy content.”

The fake Alaska news outlet is one of at least six operated by One Nation in states with key U.S. Senate races. Popular Information identified these sites through disclosures in their Meta advertisements. The other five sites in the network include:

Maine Policy Updates (“Maine’s News Source”)

Ohio Pulse (“Your trusted source for local news, investigative journalism, and community stories across the Buckeye State”)

Iowa Voice (“Stay Informed. Stay Iowa”)

Peach State Post (“Georgia’s Premier News Source”)

New Hampshire Daily (“An independent news organization dedicated to covering the stories that matter most to Granite State residents”)

Collectively, One Nation has spent between $198,900 and $274,640 promoting these sites on Meta platforms. Maine Policy Updates has been operating since January, but most of the ad spending for the other sites began in June.

Iowa Voice features a story headlined, “Iowa Farmers Say Potential ‘Death Tax’ Threatens Family Succession Plans.” The piece praises Ashley Hinton, the Republican candidate for Senate, for being “an original cosponsor of the Death Tax Repeal Act, legislation that would permanently repeal the federal estate tax.” The piece highlights that supporters of the bill believe it would “make it easier for family farms and small businesses to remain in family hands across multiple generations.” The piece does not mention that the estate tax impacts only 0.3% of farms. It also does not quote or paraphrase a single farmer.

Other content on these sites mirrors One Nation’s TV ads. A July 30 article on Peach State Post falsely suggests that Senator Jon Ossoff opposes increasing the Child Tax Credit. A One Nation political ad, which has blanketed the state over the last several days, contains the same attack.

The sites attempt to appear more legitimate by cutting and pasting content from actual news outlets. The Peach State Post recently published a story under the headline “Former Atlanta city officials Bickers, Beard who were convicted in corruption cases denied clemency by Trump.” At the end of the piece it says, “Read more here” and links to 11Alive, an Atlanta news website. But the story on Peach State Post contains the full text of 11Alive’s story. There is nothing more to read. There is no indication that Peach State Post secured permission to repost 11Alive’s work. The article is presented as Peach State Post’s original work.

One Nation, which is organized as a 501(c)(4), is not required to disclose its donors. So it is unknown who is bankrolling its fake websites or other activities.

One Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.