For months, Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and President Trump, have been claiming that Americans’ opposition to data centers is being manufactured by China. The claim was popularized by a 2026 report by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, which has been cited by several Republicans. The report, however, does not provide any evidence China is driving opposition to data centers.

Through Paid For By, Popular Information obtained a political mailer from V-PAC, a super PAC supporting Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for governor in Ohio, attacking his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. The mailer is rife with false and misleading claims. A spokesperson for V-PAC admitted that the featured claim in the mailer was untrue, attributing the error to a “typo.”

New internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reveal the role that prominent election denier Heather Honey is playing as the department tries to find evidence of noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. The documents also detail the department’s investigations into nonprofit voter registration organizations, including plans for potential undercover operations.

Updated information

As Popular Information previously reported, Republican-aligned super PACs have spent millions of dollars attacking Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico on trans issues. Many of these ads falsely claim that Talarico supports “taxpayer-funded sex changes on kids.”

Through Paid For By, Popular Information obtained a mailer attacking Talarico with the same false claim. The mailer was paid for by Texas PAC, a super PAC created by Senate GOP leadership. Talarico never voted for such a policy and publicly supports a national ban on such procedures.

The best of the rest

A ProPublica investigation found that immigration agents have detained U.S. citizens over 500 times during the second Trump administration. At least 70 of these cases were American children and teens, who were sometimes handcuffed. (ProPublica)

After the U.S. Army announced that it did not need more of a specific armored vehicle, Congress passed the funding anyway. In the weeks that followed, “executives at the company that produces the vehicle found a way to flood key members of Congress with campaign donations,” including Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). (The Intercept)

On Kristi Noem’s last day as secretary of homeland security, DHS purchased five planes at a considerable markup from one of Noem’s political donors. The most expensive plane — a Boeing 737 converted into a private jet with marble showers and a manta ray skin-covered table — cost the department $108 million. (New York Times)

During Trump’s first term, the administration notoriously separated children and parents who had just crossed the border together, deeming the children “unaccompanied” and placing them in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Now, the administration is taking undocumented children who have been living in the U.S. with their parents and have never been unaccompanied, and sending them to ORR while their parents are detained. (Mother Jones)

Numerical information

Over 1,000: The number of measles cases in Pennsylvania this year, “making it the largest state outbreak in more than three decades.”

Around $11.6 million: The amount spent so far on pro-Trump taxpayer-funded ads, according to an estimate by AdImpact. Trump claimed earlier this week that the ads would be paid for by his super PAC, but the White House later clarified that the PAC would not be reimbursing the government for ads that already aired.

1: The number of sexual harassment and sexual violence complaints resolved by the Department of Education during the first 20 months of the second Trump administration, compared to more than 150 cases resolved during the same period of the first Trump administration.

Quote of the week

“We believe the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology.”

– OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in an interview with Politico

Photo of the week

In August 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appointed Heather Honey, an election conspiracy theorist, as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity. It is a new position that did not exist in previous administrations.

Honey, a private investigator, falsely claimed after the 2020 election that she had discovered that more votes were reported in Pennsylvania than voters. The Pennsylvania Department of State told Votebeat that her method was “not an accurate way to reconcile votes cast to the number of voters who participated in any individual election.” The false claim was cited by President Trump to justify his refusal to accept the results. “So in Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters,” Trump told the crowd on January 6, 2021.

Honey was also a key figure in a review of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona. Honey worked as a subcontractor for Cyber Ninjas, which was hired to conduct a review of the election results in Maricopa County. The review “was described by experts as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology.” According to ProPublica, “Honey helped draft the final report,” which ultimately found no evidence of fraud.

Honey has also worked closely with prominent election conspiracy theorist Cleta Mitchell. Honey founded Pennsylvania Fair Elections, which is a partner of Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. In 2022, Honey was a witness in an election challenge by Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who lost the election.

So what has Honey been doing for the Trump administration? We now know a lot more, thanks to the results of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Democracy Forward released Wednesday.

Documents obtained in the request reveal that “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) collected tens of millions of voter records, explored undercover investigations against voter registration groups and considered feeding state election data into a system used to locate people for deportation.”

Honey was at the center of this effort. According to the documents, “48.4 million records were obtained by DAS Heather Honey through independent sources of information.” It is unclear what “independent sources” Honey used to collect the information. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) also “obtained 50.6 million records from the Department of Justice (DOJ).” Records from “Texas, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio” were prioritized.

The data was sent to iLab for “identification of high-value targets.” The New York Times reported that this “appears to refer to the Innovation Lab within” HSI. According to the documents, some of the state data is also pending “entry into ELITE,” a tool made by Palantir that is “used to identify, prioritize and locate people targeted for immigration enforcement,” Democracy Docket reported.

This is all part of the Trump administration’s effort to identify “voter fraud” by noncitizens before the midterm elections. But the reality is that noncitizen voting is incredibly rare.

Because noncitizen voting is so rare, the Trump administration’s efforts are resulting in legal residents who were accidentally registered to vote being targeted for deportation. In August, the New York Times reported that “green card holders applying for citizenship have been placed in deportation proceedings for registering to vote.” Many did not vote or even intentionally register.

A December 2025 broadcast message sent to Office of the Principal Legal Advisor personnel that was released in the new documents stated that “ICE has begun coordinating with CBP, USCIS, and the Department of Justice to identify aliens who have illegally registered to vote or have unlawfully voted for criminal prosecution and/or removal proceedings.” The broadcast message noted that the law states a “conviction is not required,” nor is it required that the person “have knowledge that he or she has illegally voted.”

DHS investigates voter registration groups — and a skateboard shop

The documents also detail another tactic the Trump administration is using to seek examples of noncitizen voting: targeting voter registration groups. According to the new documents, HSI has been working to identify “organizations potentially facilitating unlawful voter registration or voting activity.”

An internal status report from June 1 shows that HSI investigated over 150 organizations it suspected of helping noncitizens register to vote. For the vast majority of organizations, HSI found “no derogatory information.” Twenty-six organizations are still under review and two were flagged for further investigation in Pennsylvania.

One of the organizations flagged in Pennsylvania is the state’s Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) branch. CAIR, one of the biggest Muslim civil rights organizations in the country, has been a frequent target of the right and was designated a terrorist organization by Republican governors in Florida and Texas.

The other organization that HSI investigated further in Pennsylvania is more surprising: Zumiez, a clothing and skateboard retail chain. The documents do not make it clear why Zumiez was under investigation in Pennsylvania. While Zumiez has worked with voter registration groups such as Voto Latino and Skate to the Polls, the brand is headquartered in Washington state. Zumiez has 20 retail locations in Pennsylvania.

HSI also worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to look into Black Fork Strategies, a progressive Ohio-based firm that works on voter engagement, and several other companies tied to it. (In June, the FBI raided the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, which was founded by the same person as Black Fork Strategies.)

The documents also reveal that HSI has at least considered using undercover agents to investigate voter registration organizations, although it is unclear if it has followed through. Pennsylvania and New Jersey were highlighted as priority targets for undercover operations.

According to the June 1 status report, the goal was for undercover agents to “target identified organizations and engage in communications with these entities to substantiate recruitment methods and activities related to illegal alien voter registration.” If the agents found that the organizations were recruiting noncitizen voters, then they would “gather evidence, disrupt activities, and trace financial backing and support structures” in order to “support broader

investigative and enforcement actions.”

The ultimate plan for the undercover operation was to “initiate prosecutions and dismantle illicit facilitation networks.”

Popular Information obtained a V-PAC mailer attacking Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton from an Ohio voter through Paid For By, our new web app. Paid For By instantly gives voters detailed information about the groups sending political mailers. Popular Information then reviews everything submitted.

The anti-Acton mailer is a vivid illustration of why more journalistic scrutiny of political mail is necessary. Every claim on V-PAC’s mailer is either flatly false or deeply misleading.

The lead claim of the flyer, which inexplicably includes the symbol of the communist party, is that Acton “was called ‘incompetent’ to the Ohio State Medical Board.” This is not true.

To support its claim, V-PAC cites Acton’s 1994 “Application for Certificate – Medicine or Osteopathic Medicine” with the State Medical Board of Ohio. The application is a 23-page document, and at no point is Acton described as “incompetent.”

On page 15, a doctor who supervised Acton for four months at the beginning of her pediatric residency in 1990 describes Acton’s medical knowledge at the time as “insufficient.” But on page 8, another doctor, who supervised Acton for a year later in her residency, described her medical knowledge as “excellent.”

In response to a request for comment, V-PAC spokesperson Conor McGuinness admitted Acton was never described as “incompetent” to the Ohio State Medical Board. “This was simply a typo that appeared on one piece of mail — our copy editor missed it,” McGuinness said.

A second major claim of the V-PAC flyer is that Acton is “TOO RADICAL.” The flyer claims Acton said that “illegals who took jobs from American workers have a right to be here,” citing Acton’s September 10, 2025, appearance on Better Bad Ideas w/ Sean O’Brien. This is also a lie. Acton never said that on the podcast.

During the interview, Acton brings up Trump’s false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were “eating pets.” Acton noted Ohio’s Republican governor said this was a lie, adding that the Haitian immigrants with legal status are valued members of the community and are employed by local businesses.

O’Brien diverts the conversation to a discussion of corporations that are profiting from employing “illegal immigrant workers” instead of Americans. Acton counters that the Haitian immigrants had legal status, stating that Ohio businesses were “benefiting [from] people who had a right to be here and were here.” She was distinguishing legal Haitian immigrants from undocumented (illegal) immigrants.

McGuinness did not respond to a request for comment about this portion of the mailer.

The V-PAC flyer also claims Acton “is a proud supporter of socialist Zohran Mamdani and backs his agenda,” citing an event broadcast by Ideastream Public Media on June 25, 2025. During that event, Acton was asked about Mamdani, who won the mayoral primary the previous day, and what lessons she took from Mamdani’s victory. Acton said that Mamdani “was very successful at bringing joy and reminding us his main focus was on costs and everyday issues.”

Finally, the V-PAC flyer warns that Acton is “UNHINGED.” The flyer says that Acton claimed “she was clean,” citing the same 1994 medical board application. On that application, she was asked, “Are you now or have you ever been, addicted to or excessively used alcohol, drugs, or other substances which may cause physical or psychological dependence, or impairment of the ability to practice?” Acton answered “NO.”

In the flyer, V-PAC suggests Acton’s answer in her 1994 application was a lie because “the police were called to Amy Acton’s house by her daughter who told 9-1-1 Acton had been drinking and throwing things and breaking glass.” The incident occurred in 2019, 25 years after the medical board application was filed. The police who arrived found “no evidence of any physical violence” and that it was a “verbal dispute only” over Acton’s working hours.

“Seven years ago, I had too much to drink while Amy only had one drink,” Acton’s husband, Eric, said in April. “I take responsibility for my actions that led to the police coming to our home, which was ultimately the result of a single fight between two people who love each other very much.”

In TV ads, V-PAC has suggested, without evidence, that Acton is an alcoholic.

If you’ve received political mail, upload it to paidforby.info. For federal races, you will instantly be provided with in-depth information about the sender. And every mailer is reviewed by a Popular Information journalist.

Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) claimed during an interview on Fox Business that opposition to data centers is a “Chinese psyop.” Johnson said, “I really believe that. It’s not a conspiracy theory. I think they’re pushing those ideas.”

For months, Republicans have been promoting the claim that pushback against data center construction is being manufactured by China. “I mean, a lot of people say it’s China,” President Trump said during an interview with Laura Ingraham. “A lot of people say that it’s a China PR thing.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said that “foreign psyops campaigns” are attempting to stop data center construction in the United States. “Any place that’s trying to build data centers is getting bombarded with foreign-directed propaganda to try to block these from being built,” Burgum said in May.

“[W]e are investigating whether China is behind a lot of this misinformation, false information against data centers,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said. Multiple members of Congress have written letters expressing concerns about “foreign influence campaigns” targeting AI and data centers. In a June letter, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) requested that “the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate foreign influence efforts targeting the buildout of American AI infrastructure.”

But while there are some efforts to foment opposition to data centers — as rival nations regularly try to promote discord — there is no evidence that any of these efforts have meaningfully shaped public opinion in the United States.

Data centers are deeply unpopular in America. A Gallup survey conducted in March found that over 70% of Americans “oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area.”

The “Chinese psyop” claim was popularized by a 2026 report by the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), which several Republicans have cited to justify their argument. BPI, a think tank established in 2021, conducts research on Bitcoin and other monetary networks. In May, BPI released part one of a report entitled “Foreign Influence in the Campaign against American AI.” BPI released part two of the report in June.

The reports were written by BPI’s head of research, Sam Lyman. In September, Lyman testified about the reports before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee in a hearing about foreign influence operations. “A war is raging between the world’s two superpowers for AI supremacy,” Lyman said during the hearing. “And China is pulling all the levers of state to win it, including foreign influence operations.”

Lyman previously worked as a senior advisor and chief speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He also worked as a public policy director at Riot Platforms, a company that “develop[s], own[s], and operate[s] large-scale data centers,” according to its website. (Riot Platforms was also a 2026 sponsor of BPI’s annual summit. Several sponsors of the event are involved in the data center industry.)

Multiple letters from Republican members of Congress cite the BPI reports. But the reports do not provide any real evidence that opposition to data centers in America is being fabricated by China. Furthermore, Lyman admits in the BPI report that “much American opposition to data centers is indisputably authentic.”

The BPI report’s central claim is that “international actors are working through state media organizations, nonprofit networks, and dark money groups to shape US policy and public opinion on artificial intelligence.” But the report provides little evidence that these “three vectors of foreign influence” have actually made a significant impact on the data center debate.

Claim one: Chinese state media is driving opposition to U.S. data centers

The first “vector” the BPI report discusses is Chinese state media. According to the report, “Beijing’s English-language propaganda outlets… are now openly campaigning against US AI data centers under their own attribution.”

The report cites a handful of examples of content advocating against U.S. data centers, but it fails to establish that this material had sufficient reach to influence public opinion. A video by China’s state broadcaster cited by the report, for example, has only about 1,200 views.

“China has an extensive state media apparatus that they use for a range of propaganda and influence operations, but we don’t see a particular focus on this [data center] issue from Chinese state media,” Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor and Media Forensics Hub co-director, told PolitiFact.

The BPI report also claims that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) invited “[t]wo officials tied to the Chinese government… onto a US Senate platform to advise the United States on slowing its own AI buildout.” The report is referencing an event hosted by Sanders at which two Chinese professors, Yi Zeng and Xue Lan, were invited to speak. The event was an after-hours public panel, and it also featured American and Canadian professors. Zeng and Xue have been featured in Chinese state media, but they are also world-renowned AI experts who both appear in Time magazine lists of most influential people in AI.

Additionally, a network of Chinese-linked accounts on X making anti-data center posts was found to have little to no engagement and no breakout beyond the network itself.

Claim two: U.S. expat in China is pushing local data center bans

The second “vector of influence” the report details is a network of nonprofits connected to Neville Roy Singham, a socialist U.S. expat who lives in Shanghai and was previously a consultant to the Chinese tech company Huawei.

The report cites a handful of examples in which nonprofits connected to Singham posted about slowing down data center development. But it provides no evidence that these posts were influential.

The report also claims that Singham has influenced data center discourse by propping up the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which has been involved in a number of local campaigns against data centers. The report describes Singham as “one of the largest private funders of left-wing political organizing” and calls PSL the “political arm of the Singham network.” But the report acknowledges that PSL does not disclose its donors, so it is unknown whether Singham is even a funder.

Even if the party is connected to Singham, its influence on the U.S. data center debate has been relatively small. Across the country, more than 500 jurisdictions have banned or restricted new data centers. The BPI report shows that PSL has been involved in organizing in 11 — just 2% — of the jurisdictions that passed new restrictions.

Despite the lack of support for the report’s claims about PSL, House Republicans have still run with the idea that PSL is a powerful force behind data center opposition, claiming the party consists of “nefarious international actors.”

Claim three: Foreign billionaires are bankrolling anti-data center action

The BPI report’s third primary claim is that opposition to data centers is also being bankrolled by foreign billionaires. The claim is centered around Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and British billionaire Alan Parker. The only evidence the report provides that Wyss and Parker have supported data center opposition is that their foundations made grants to a few nonprofit organizations that signed onto an open letter demanding a moratorium on new data centers in the U.S.

The Wyss Foundation has said it did not provide grants to oppose data centers.

The disclosure on this mailer only says, “Paid for by No Going Back PAC Inc.”

Going to the listed website isn’t very helpful. It says only that No Going Back PAC “makes independent expenditures in U.S. federal elections in support of candidates who share the values of the founders and funders of No Going Back PAC Inc.” Unless the recipient has the time and requisite skills to do federal campaign finance research, the “Paid For By” box is a dead end.

Today, that changes. Popular Information is releasing PaidForBy.info, a web app that gives you unprecedented insight into who is really sending you mail — and who is paying for it. All you have to do is take a photo of the front and the back of the political mailer and upload it.

Anyone can use PaidForBy.info for free and it takes seconds.

What you can learn from PaidForBy.info

If a voter uploads the No Going Back PAC mailer targeting El-Sayed, here is some of what they will learn —

PaidForBy.info also produces a condensed graphic summarizing the information, with an image of the mailer, that you can share on social media or via text. In this way, you can help inform your friends and neighbors.

The enduring relevance of political mail

We live in a digital world, but old-fashioned postal mail continues to play a critical role in American politics. While use of the U.S. Postal Service has declined overall, the volume of political mail continues to be robust. In 2026, across all races, political committees and groups are expected to spend $2.36 billion on direct mail, according to an estimate by PQ Media.

Postal mail maintains certain advantages over TV ads and other forms of paid communications. Television viewing is increasingly fractured, but physical mail continues to be read habitually by voters 50 and older, who cast 55% of all ballots in 2024. While no one knows exactly who watches a particular TV show, political strategists can use the voter file to target political mail precisely to the people they believe will determine the outcome of a race.

Despite its widespread use, political mail is one of the most opaque forms of paid political communication. Television ads are systematically tracked by commercial databases like AdImpact. Digital political ads are posted in public libraries maintained by Meta, Google, and Snapchat. For political mail, there is nothing comparable.

As a result, political mail is often the vehicle of choice for the most scurrilous attacks. Already in 2026, political mailers have been used to target Black voters with Klan imagery, smear a House candidate with AI-doctored photos, and push antisemitic tropes.

The people who receive these mailers often do not know who is responsible for them. PaidForBy.info helps solve this problem.

How to use PaidForBy.info

The tool also works on television and streaming ads. Just pause the screen when the “Paid For By” text appears at the end, take a photo or screenshot, and upload it to PaidForBy.info.

Right now, PaidForBy.info only returns info on committees involved in federal races. But we encourage you to upload mail related to state and local races as well. Every piece of submitted mail will be reviewed by Popular Information’s team of journalists, and we will report on the most newsworthy submissions. In this way, PaidForBy.info will help shine a light on one of the darkest corners of political communication. (Before anything is published, your personal information will be redacted.)

We believe information is power, and this tool is designed to empower you. We hope you will try it out. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know at mail@popular.info.

President Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., has raised over $400 million — more than any other entity has ever had to spend on the midterm elections. Trump raised a significant chunk of this unprecedented sum from corporations or individuals that are seeking, or recently received, favors from the Trump administration.

On Tuesday, Trump unveiled a new website, America.gov, that he claims will be an interface that provides services from the federal government. Currently, America.gov functions as an AI chatbot that bases its answers on government data. As a result, America.gov is capable of authoritatively debunking falsehoods that are a staple of Trump’s public remarks.

Since September 6, major Republican-aligned super PACs have spent $37 million on ads attacking Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico on trans issues. On Tuesday, Texas PAC, a super PAC created by Senate GOP leadership, launched a new digital-only ad on Meta platforms that accused Talarico of supporting putting “parents in jail if they do not support surgically transitioning their children.” The ad is completely baseless. Texas PAC took the spot offline hours after being contacted by Popular Information.

The best of the rest

An AP analysis found that, since 2015, Ken Paxton, the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, “left about 730 workdays blank on his official calendars and took over 275 out-of-state trips to places such as the California wine country, Caribbean resorts and European tourism hot spots.” The trips “cost Texas taxpayers a minimum of $1.9 million.” (Associated Press)

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg touts the company’s AI achievements. But when filing taxes, Meta tells the Internal Revenue Service “that its A.I. data centers are a giant experiment that could fail,” in order to “tap into a tax credit intended for research and experimentation.” (New York Times)

Local elections for sheriffs and prosecutors could be crucial in deciding how jurisdictions across the country respond to misconduct by federal agents or claims of election fraud. Of the 2,400 such elections taking place this year, Bolts has identified 25 races to follow. (Bolts)

ProPublica paid for one of its reporters to use a sports betting app to test its guardrails for curbing problem gambling behavior. The experiment found that as the reporter displayed more problematic tendencies, like chasing losses with even bigger bets, the app provided incentives to bet even more. (ProPublica)

Numerical information

At least $2.5 million: The cost of the Trump administration’s pro-Trump taxpayer-funded ads so far, according to an estimate by AdImpact.

More than $227 million: The amount donated to Trump’s super PAC and other Trump pet projects over the last two years by attendees at a White House summit on AI this week, according to Public Citizen.

$810 million: The amount of congressionally allocated funds that Trump is refusing to spend. More than half of the money being withheld is supposed to go to programs that support “refugees, asylees, and other non-citizens.”

Quote of the week

“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors… The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.”

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on his vision for the military, 9/30/26

Photo of the week

Smith actually attended an Iowa Hawkeyes basketball game in Maryland, not an Atlanta Hawks game like Schmitt claimed. Willis was hundreds of miles away.

For weeks, major Republican-aligned super PACs have been attacking James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, on trans issues.

Since September 6, Talarico’s opponents have spent an astonishing $37 million on these trans attacks. This includes over $30 million, mostly on broadcast ads, from Texas PAC, a super PAC created by Senate GOP leadership; over $4 million on streaming ads from MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC; and $1.3 million on digital ads from America PAC, the super PAC created by Elon Musk.

Several of these ads falsely claim that Talarico supports “taxpayer-funded sex changes on kids.” But Talarico never voted for such a policy and publicly supports a national ban on such procedures. This attack against Talarico has been rated “false” by PolitiFact. (In practice, such surgeries almost never occur.)

Nevertheless, the ads have continued to run on heavy rotation. But, with Election Day now a few weeks away, these false attacks do not seem to have muted Talarico’s popularity over his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The last 11 public polls released have shown Talarico with a narrow lead over Paxton, who is saddled with several political and personal scandals, according to RealClearPolitics. (Paxton released an internal poll showing him leading by 3 points.)

Most of these polls are within the margin of error. There is still plenty of time for momentum to shift, and Texas has reliably elected Republicans to statewide office for many years. Still, Paxton’s allies are concerned.

So they are upping the ante.

On Tuesday, Texas PAC launched a new digital-only ad on Meta platforms. In the ad, a woman named Miriam, who identifies herself only as “a mom of five,” looks into the camera and accuses Talarico of supporting putting “parents in jail if they do not support surgically transitioning their children.”

“If you care about your children, do not vote for James Talarico,” Miriam concludes.

Popular Information obtained the ad through the Meta Ad Library.

It’s notable that Texas PAC, which has spent the vast majority of its dollars on broadcast ads, is running this ad on a digital platform. This allows Texas PAC to micro-target the ad to voters it believes may not closely scrutinize its claims. Digital ads, in general, also attract less media attention. The ad is not posted on the Texas PAC YouTube page or featured on its website.

The new attack on Talarico is more outlandish than previous attacks, but equally false. The ad’s only citation purportedly supporting its primary claim is an October 2019 article in the Houston Chronicle. That article does not say Talarico supported jailing parents who do not support gender surgeries for minors. The article is about a bill to prevent family courts from considering whether a parent acknowledges their child’s gender identity in child custody disputes. At a committee hearing on that legislation, Talarico, who opposed the bill, said it was “abusive” to deny your child’s gender identity, “whether or not we label it with the term abuse.”

The bill had nothing to do with surgeries or criminal proceedings. The claim that Talarico supports jailing parents who do not permit their children to receive gender transition surgeries is completely baseless.

The woman who appears in the ad is Miriam Evans, a Republican activist in the Dallas area. She is a board member of Protecting Texas Children, a right-wing advocacy group that promotes “a Biblical view of gender and sexuality as stated in Genesis 1.” A recent post by the group celebrates that a “quiet rebellion is taking shape across Texas as communities increasingly reject Pride Month proclamations in favor of family-centered values.” Evans regularly speaks about her efforts to similar groups, including Moms for Liberty and local Republican Party chapters.

Evans did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. Texas PAC did not respond to a phone call and email.

About two hours after Popular Information reached out to Evans and Texas PAC about the ad, it was made “inactive” on Meta’s platforms.

On Tuesday morning, Trump unveiled America.gov, a new website he dubbed “the ultimate product.” Trump called America.gov “a restoration of America’s founding promise” and “a reinvention of your government for the 21st century and beyond.”

Trump’s pitch is that America.gov can be an interface to provide any service from the federal government. “Instead of forcing citizens to search through the endless maze of tens of thousands of terrible government websites and rules and more than 10,000 forms,” Trump said, Americans will visit America.gov.

That is the vision, but currently, America.gov is not integrated with the services of federal agencies. At Tuesday’s event, Trump signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to facilitate integration in the future. Whether and when it will actually function as advertised is an open question.

Right now, America.gov functions as an AI chatbot that bases its answers on official government sources. “Simply ask for what you need and America.gov will provide answers and it will be provided immediately,” Trump said. “Anyone who has used Grok or Gemini or ChatGPT will understand instantly how to use America.gov.”

It was developed with the assistance of Google’s Gemini and SpaceXAI’s Grok, according to Joe Gebbia, the Airbnb co-founder who led development of the site for the Trump administration. (SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, was in attendance at the event.) In 2027, the site will move “from answers to actions,” Gebbia said.

Nevertheless, Trump encouraged Americans to start using America.gov right away. “This took a while to bring it to a point where it’s so good,” Trump said. “America.gov is a declaration to the world that every citizen of our nation will be treated with respect and dignity.”

The functionality of America.gov at launch, however, was awkward for Trump. By providing summaries of official government data and reports, it easily and comprehensively debunks many of the falsehoods that Trump frequently promotes.

For example, on Sunday, Trump repeated his frequent claim that grocery prices have “come way down” from when Biden was in office.

On Tuesday morning, America.gov was definitive: “Official BLS grocery prices (food at home) have not fallen sharply since January 2025.” In fact, prices have gone up. Helpfully, it provided Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data that proved Trump’s claim was not true.

By Tuesday afternoon, however, America.gov refused to answer the question.

In other words, after providing accurate information, the Trump administration made the website much less useful.

No corporate overlords. No false equivalencies. No B.S.

Popular Information is independent journalism that holds the powerful to account.

We rely on support from readers to do this work. You can make a real difference for $50 per year or $6 per month.

Support accountability journalism

By Tuesday evening, however, America.gov’s chatbot was answering these kinds of questions again.

At an August 10 event with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump claimed that the United States was “requiring 72 jabs for our beautiful, healthy, lovely, delicate little children.”

America.gov made it clear that the U.S. did not require 72 shots. Rather, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides guidance for clinicians. It said CDC materials have described protecting children from 14 diseases before age 2, and that “combination vaccines mean fewer injections than the number of diseases covered.”

At a September 4 event, Trump claimed that “tens of thousands of farms and ranches went bankrupt” during the Biden administration. On Tuesday morning, America.gov made clear that this was false. In fact, there were just 139 Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies in 2023.

On September 9, Trump claimed that, as a result of his efforts, Americans now “pay the lowest prices in the entire world for prescription drugs.” America.gov informed users that “[o]fficial U.S. data do not show that Americans pay the lowest prescription-drug prices in the entire world.”

Famously, Trump consistently claims that he “won the presidency three times.” America.gov was having none of it: “Winning twice (2016 and 2024) is not three presidencies.”

Will America.gov continue to tell the truth? Time will tell.

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump, who is constitutionally prohibited from running for president again, has raised over $400 million through his super PAC, MAGA Inc. Trump has made it clear that he has complete authority over the funds, although such direct control is prohibited by law. “This is money from MAGA Inc. This is my money that I control,” Trump said. “I can spend it for what I want to spend it for.”

The amount raised by Trump’s super PAC is unprecedented. It is a larger war chest than any entity has ever had to spend in a midterm election. Super PACs supporting former President Joe Biden, for example, raised $57 million in the year after his election. (Biden was also eligible to run again in 2024.)

So how is Trump raising so much money?

Over the last 20 months, Trump’s super PAC has repeatedly received large donations from corporations or individuals that are seeking — or have recently received — favorable treatment from the Trump administration.

In MAGA Inc.’s latest September filing, it reported a $1 million donation from Phillip Sarofim that it received on August 21. Sarofim is the founder and CEO of Trousdale Ventures, a venture capital firm. (Sarofim previously donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, according to the New York Times.)

Sarofim’s Trousdale Ventures is a major investor in CesiumAstro, which makes communications systems for satellites. Trousdale Ventures has led multiple rounds of financing for the company. CesiumAstro is listed under Sarofim’s “Notable Deals” on his company bio.

In January, CesiumAstro “announced it secured a historic $200 million financing package from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM),” which is part of the Trump administration. The package included a “$185 million EXIM-authorized debt facility” and a “$15 million revolving credit facility from J.P. Morgan.” In May, EXIM named CesiumAstro as the “Make More in America (MMIA) Deal of the Year.”

On September 9, shortly after Sarofim’s donation to MAGA Inc., CesiumAstro’s loan from EXIM was formally increased to $280 million, “represent[ing] the Bank’s largest loan approval in the MMIA program to date.”

Correlation, of course, does not equal causation. But it is not an isolated incident. It is a pattern.

Trump administration backs Crypto.com, which has donated $35 million to MAGA Inc., in high-stakes litigation

Earlier this year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) intervened on behalf of Crypto.com in a high-stakes lawsuit over whether Crypto.com and other prediction markets could operate without complying with state gambling laws. This came just 25 days after MAGA Inc. received a $5 million donation from Crypto.com’s parent company. In April, the CFTC filed unprecedented lawsuits against several states to block their efforts to rein in prediction markets. To date, Crypto.com has donated $35 million to MAGA Inc., making the company MAGA Inc.’s single largest donor.

After $5 million MAGA Inc. donation, Trump blocked rule that would have prevented a medical supply company from charging Medicare

In February 2025, Extremity Care, a company that sells extremely expensive “skin substitute” bandages, donated $5 million to MAGA Inc. Six days later, Trump made a post criticizing a pending Biden-era rule that would have blocked Medicare from covering Extremity Care’s products. Then in April 2025, the Trump administration delayed the rule so it would not take effect until January 2026. This allowed Extremity Care to continue charging Medicare up to thousands of dollars per square inch for its products. The rule has since been formally withdrawn.

Trump administration takes action sought by a small Native American tribe that donated $2 million to MAGA Inc.

As Trump retook office, a small Native American tribe, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, gave Trump’s inauguration fund $1 million. For years, the Yocha Dehe had been trying to stop another tribe from building a casino close to its own. Soon after this donation, the Department of the Interior (DOI) sent a letter rescinding a previous determination that the land for the competing casino was eligible for gaming. The other tribe sued and a judge reinstated the eligibility temporarily, but still allowed DOI to reconsider its determination. During this reconsideration process, the Yocha Dehe donated $2 million to MAGA Inc.

Subscribe now

Days after receiving $5 million MAGA Inc. donation from tobacco company, Trump administration green lights fruit-flavored vapes

In April, two days after Reynolds American donated $5 million to MAGA Inc., Trump met with Reynolds executives at one of his golf courses. At the meeting, the executives complained about a ban on selling fruit-flavored vapes due to their appeal to children. Before the meeting was over, Trump had called the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and within a week, Reynolds and other tobacco companies were allowed to sell fruit-flavored vapes. (The FDA commissioner reportedly resigned in protest.)

After pharmaceutical company sends MAGA Inc. $1 million, FDA goes quiet

On May 26, the FDA sent a letter to QOL Medical, a pharmaceutical company, alleging that the company had misled providers by trying to push one of its very expensive products as a treatment for symptoms that it had not been proven to help. QOL had 15 days to respond to the letter, which could have put QOL products at risk of being excluded from federal health care programs. Within that 15-day window, QOL’s CEO sent a $1 million check to MAGA Inc. By July, the FDA had not acted on its letter.

As TikTok co-owner donated $16 million to MAGA Inc., Trump repeatedly delayed ban

In the first half of 2025, billionaire Jeff Yass, co-founder of the trading firm Susquehanna International Group (SIG), donated $16 million to MAGA Inc. During the same time period, Trump repeatedly postponed a domestic ban on TikTok, which was required by law. SIG owns around 15% of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, and Yass personally owns 7%.

After nursing home industry donates $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., Trump administration abandons rule requiring increased staffing levels

Last year, the nursing home industry was trying to convince the Trump administration to permanently block a Biden-era rule that required increased staffing levels. During August and September 2025, the industry had donated a total of $4.8 million to MAGA Inc. Less than a month after industry executives had lunch with Trump to press their case, the Trump administration stopped defending the rule in court.

Subscribe now

Trump delays toll bridge opening after MAGA Inc. received $1 million from owner of competing roadway

In January 2026, Matthew Moroun, whose family operates the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, made a $1 million donation to MAGA Inc. A few weeks later, Moroun met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to discuss a competing bridge that was about to open. Within hours of that meeting, Trump posted on social media that he would “not allow” the new bridge to proceed and in June, the opening of the bridge was delayed.

After Trump administration drops an enforcement action against their company, crypto executives donate over $10 million to MAGA Inc.

In June, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, founders of the crypto exchange Gemini, donated over $10 million in bitcoin to MAGA Inc. This came less than a month after the Trump administration dismissed an enforcement action brought by the Biden administration against Gemini.

Private prison operator donated $1.4 million to MAGA Inc. as it received contracts worth $165 million annually

In July, GEO Group, one of the country’s largest private prison operators, announced it had secured a five-year contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to run a detention center in Colorado for $85 million a year. Three days later, GEO Group donated $1 million to MAGA Inc. Two weeks after that, GEO Group announced another $80 million annual contract with ICE and then donated an additional $413,000 to MAGA Inc. two days later.

Two criminals were pardoned by Trump shortly after their relatives donated millions to MAGA Inc.

In at least two cases, Trump has pardoned relatives of major donors to MAGA Inc. In April 2025, he pardoned Paul Walczak, a nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes, just three weeks after his mother, Elizabeth Fago, attended a $1 million per-person fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago where attendees were promised face-time with Trump. He pardoned Julio Herrera Velutini, a banker indicted on bribery charges who had pled guilty to making an illegal political contribution, in January after Herrera’s daughter donated $3.5 million to MAGA Inc.

Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker and CBS Sports analyst, is running for Congress in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District. According to his campaign website, one of his top issues is “protecting women’s sports.” According to Feely, “radical gender ideology is destroying fairness and opportunity for young women, and weak leaders are letting it happen.”

Most of Feely’s commentary is geared toward excluding trans women from participating in women’s sports. This is largely a non-issue, as the NCAA has already limited participation in women’s athletics to “student-athletes assigned female at birth,” trans women are now barred from competing in women’s divisions in the Olympics, and there are no openly trans women competing in any professional sports in the United States. Most states, including Arizona, also ban trans girls from participating in girls sports.

This raises the question as to why Feely has made the issue central to his campaign. Is he truly concerned about women’s sports? Or is he just interested in exploiting women’s athletics as a political cudgel?

Unlike many congressional candidates, Feely has a lengthy history of public commentary before he entered the political arena. To gain insight into his real beliefs, Popular Information reviewed what Feely has said over the years about women’s and girls’ sports on television, during podcasts, and in other forums.

Feely has several daughters and has enthusiastically supported their athletic development, coaching the girls high school soccer team. His team won the state championship. But Feely’s public discussion of that experience, along with other comments, has also revealed his retrograde views about how females approach athletic competition, the economic value of women’s sports, and the skills of professional female athletes.

On a September 2021 episode of What’s Next with Eric Wood, a podcast hosted by a former NFL center, Feely said that girls’ athletic performance is dictated by their emotional state while “guys” can easily set their emotions aside:

For girls, girls are so emotional that to go out and play their best, they have to be right emotionally. You know, whereas guys, like, we can fight in the locker room. And I’m like, those don’t matter. Like, you can fight and then go out and like, it doesn’t matter. So what? That’s done with and we can go play the game. And for girls, like, if they’re not right emotionally, they’re not going to go out and play their best.

Feely also discussed his experience coaching girls soccer on an April 2020 episode of the When The Game Ends podcast. He said that girls cared more about their personal relationships with other players than success on the field. “Girls are so emotional,” Feely said. “They care more about the way they make people feel and the camaraderie than they do about winning.”

During the same podcast, Feely noted that coaching girls was “a little bit different than coaching guys.” He relayed a story when “every girl” started crying over a practice that wasn’t going well (even though he was not “riding them hard”) and he was forced to cancel practice the next day:

I remember there’s one, one practice this year. We’re getting ready. It was in the playoffs and we had a game coming up two days later and we had the worst practice we had maybe in four years, you know, just awful. No one could do anything. And the girls were completely emotional. And at one point I look over and there’s literally like four girls crying and I’m not even getting on them. I’m not like riding them hard. They’re just emotional. I think the pressure of the moment, you know, it’s kind of getting to them all. And so I have jokingly told our captains, like, go take them over, get some water, you guys hug it out, get all your crying out and then come back. And I turn around about two minutes later I look over and they literally are all over there crying like every girl is over there crying and they’re all hugging each other and I look at my coaches and I’m like alright we can’t practice tomorrow we gotta do something different.

Feely said that maybe if he coached girls for “six more years” he would “understand them” because “I’m not sure I do right now.”

Discussing female professional athletes, Feely has been more caustic.

In the summer of 2025, WNBA players were negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement. The minimum salary of about $66,000 was forcing many players to get a second job, even though arenas were packed. During an August 2025 episode of Fearless with Jason Whitlock, Feely said that WNBA players should stop complaining and be grateful for the money they are making:

If they lived a real life and they were they were making, you know, 50, 60 grand as a teacher or a coach or, you know, going out, getting a job, starting out in sales, having to travel all over the place, not being home, you know, making 60 grand a year. I think they’d have a different perspective. I think every person at WNBA would appreciate a lot more. They wouldn’t complain near as much about what they’re making. I think that holds true for the NFL and other sports as well.

Prior to his interview with Feely, Whitlock delivered a monologue calling the WNBA “the most unlikable league in the history of American sports by far.” He described WNBA players as wanting “all the glory, none of the work” and blasted their “entitlement.” Whitlock criticized Diana Taurasi, one of the greatest WNBA players of all time, for advocating for more money because, in his estimation, millions of men are better at basketball.

“I heard all your commentary,” Feely volunteered to Whitlock. “I don’t disagree with it at all.”

Feely has also said, as a then-49-year-old retired kicker, he could best many professional female athletes. On a June 2025 episode of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show, Feely said that he “could take on the women’s U.S. national team in soccer.” On the same show he said that he plays “with LPGA girls in golf” at his country club and “when I play well and I putt well, I can beat them head to head.” Feely said he can beat LPGA golfers even though he is a two handicap and “not great.”

A spokesperson for the Feely campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Between September 5 and September 21, Elon Musk’s America PAC spent about $1 million on ads accusing Democratic candidates of supporting “taxpayer-funded sex change surgeries on kids.” The catch? None of these candidates have said they support taxpayer funding for such surgeries (which are extremely rare), and several explicitly oppose the proceedures.

On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) and 11 other state attorneys general settled a lawsuit to block Paramount, which is controlled by the Trump-supporting Ellison family, from acquiring Warner Bros. A real settlement would have included an agreement from Paramount to divest important assets. But the deal did not require any divestiture, or any meaningful concessions by Paramount.

This week, New York City announced a historic enforcement action against DoorDash for underpaying or delaying payments to workers. The company will pay $131.5 million, with over $115 million going to more than 260,000 workers who were underpaid. The city said it was “the largest worker settlement in New York City history and the largest settlement involving food delivery workers in the United States.”

The best of the rest

In 2020, the FBI launched an investigation into the relationship between the former CEO of a defense contractor and the staff of Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). “The senator’s office steered government contracts worth millions toward the company while her campaign was pumping [the CEO] and his network for donations,” ProPublica reported, citing emails it reviewed. But then Trump began his second term and purged the unit working on public corruption investigations. (ProPublica)

The Associated Press reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding thousands of detainees who are subject to final deportation orders,” making it harder for their families and lawyers to find them or to file additional legal challenges. (Associated Press)

Last year, when Trump administration housing chief Bill Pulte looked into the mortgages of prominent Trump opponents like New York Attorney General Letitia James, he also pulled mortgage records for Attorney General Todd Blanche. According to officials who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, Pulte investigated Blanche, who was the deputy AG at the time, in order to pressure him into more aggressively investigating Trump’s opponents. (Wall Street Journal)

In 2025, journalists were arrested 32 times and assaulted 170 times in the United States. This year, things are not looking better as journalists covering the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown have been assaulted by federal agents. Reporters who are immigrants themselves have been detained by ICE, and at least one has been deported. (The Guardian)

Numerical information

$6.50: The price of a gallon of diesel, an all-time record.

760,000: The number of people Vice President JD Vance announced that the Trump administration was removing from Affordable Care Act coverage, alleging fraud.

20%: According to a new report from the Urban Institute, one in five middle-income renters could not afford to pay their rent at some point in 2025. In 2024, that number was 14%.

Quote of the week

“I struggle to understand the mindset and the psychology of a person who makes billions of dollars in the greatest country in the history of the world and decides to use that money, not to maybe provide health care to people who need it…”

– Vice President JD Vance at a Tuesday press conference during which he announced the ACA removals.

Photo of the week

This week, New York City announced a historic $131.5 million enforcement action against food delivery app DoorDash for underpaying or delaying payments to workers. The company will pay more than $115 million to over 260,000 workers who were underpaid. DoorDash will also pay over $16 million in civil penalties and costs.

In a press release, the city said it was “the largest worker settlement in New York City history and the largest settlement involving food delivery workers in the United States.”

According to DoorDash, the median amount paid to workers “will be around $48.” City officials said that over 27,000 workers are owed over $1,000, and around 700 workers are owed over $10,000, the New York Times reported.

“When a worker earns a wage, they deserve to be paid that wage — not tomorrow, not after a lawsuit, but on time and in full,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a press release. “The size of this settlement shows the damage done to workers by wage theft,” Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su said. “But it also shows that enforcement matters.”

The settlement stemmed from an investigation by the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) into allegations by DoorDash workers that the company had not properly paid them. DCWP additionally uncovered that DoorDash had been violating a 2023 rule setting a minimum pay rate. The rule “requires companies to pay couriers a base wage of $22.13 per hour, multiplied by the sum of all workers’ total delivery trip time and time spent waiting between orders,” according to Bloomberg.

According to DoorDash, the majority of the settlement (over $83 million) covers violations of the minimum pay rules, including not properly paying for “on-call time,” or the time workers spend on the app waiting between deliveries.

In a statement posted to its website, DoorDash argued that it “calculated on-call time differently than the City,” stating that while it “believe[d] our approach was fair, practical, and legal… rather than spend years fighting over whose method was right, we chose to pay Dashers sooner and use the City’s method going forward.” The company also blamed errors on technical problems or complicated situations.

“Simply put, we screwed up,” DoorDash said in the statement. “Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late. While these mistakes weren’t intentional, that doesn’t make them okay.”

As part of the settlement, DoorDash also agreed to a compliance monitoring program. The company will submit monthly data reports for three years, make software updates, and create internal controls to prevent new violations. Two worker advocacy groups are also partnering with the city to develop software that will allow workers to share data with the city about their trips and pay.

Affected workers will begin receiving emails about payments next month. At the beginning of next year, there will be a second round of payments as “DoorDash is still correcting elements of the compensable-time calculation logic that caused additional underpayments.”

DoorDash spent over $1 million to defeat Mamdani

DoorDash spent heavily to defeat Mamdani in last year’s election. On May 8, 2025, DoorDash donated $1 million to Fix the City, a super PAC supporting mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo. At the time, it was “the single largest donation in the race,” according to Politico. (In June, Michael Bloomberg donated $5 million to Fix the City, surpassing DoorDash.)

DoorDash’s super PAC, Local Economies Forward NY, spent over $368,000 on advertisements and other campaign content supporting Cuomo in the lead-up to the Democratic mayoral primary in June 2025. On June 13, 2025, Local Economies Forward NY also donated $150,000 to Competent New York, a committee launched by a public sector union in support of Democratic mayoral candidate Adrienne Adams.

“We’re committed to supporting leaders who prioritize practical, pro-local economy solutions that encourage growth and innovation,” John Horton, DoorDash’s head of public policy for North America, told Politico in May 2025.

Mamdani campaigned on a pledge to further regulate delivery apps. “This is a city where we will choose our own mayor,” Mamdani said in September 2025. “It’s not going to be Donald Trump… It’s not going to be DoorDash.”

Mamdani made the DoorDash donation a campaign issue at a debate with other mayoral candidates, including Cuomo. “I find it ridiculous to hear Andrew Cuomo talk about how we need to regulate the apps,” Mamdani said in June 2025. “How are you going to regulate DoorDash when they are giving you a million dollars to influence your street safety regulations and your labor regulations?”

DoorDash sued to block laws protecting delivery workers

In 2023, DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub sued New York City over the minimum pay rules that DoorDash has now violated. The lawsuit highlights that DoorDash was (or should have been) aware of the rules and what they required.

The delivery apps argued that the pay minimum would force them to increase prices and cut the number of delivery drivers. While the judge in the case initially blocked the pay minimum, he ultimately allowed it to proceed in September 2023. DoorDash and the other delivery apps appealed this decision, but a New York state appeals court denied them again, and the rule took effect in December 2023.

In 2025, DoorDash and Uber Eats sued New York City again, this time in federal court, to prevent the city from enforcing new laws on how consumers can tip drivers through delivery apps. Until December 2023, the apps allowed customers to tip their drivers at checkout, but the platforms switched to a model that only allowed tipping at the end of a delivery. The city found that this led to significantly fewer tips for drivers, so they enacted a regulation mandating an up-front tipping option. DoorDash and Uber Eats argued this would cause a loss of “goodwill” among customers, but a judge refused to block the regulation in a January 2026 ruling.

DoorDash’s legal troubles beyond NYC

In addition to the New York City settlement, DoorDash has doled out millions of dollars over the last few years to resolve lawsuits and investigations across the country related to pay and other benefits for its drivers.

Between 2020 and 2025, DoorDash reached four settlements with Washington, D.C., Illinois, New York state, and Chicago over DoorDash using tips from customers to cover drivers’ baseline pay. For example, if a driver was guaranteed to be paid $10 by DoorDash for an order and the customer tipped $3, then DoorDash would only pay $7 instead of giving the full $10 in addition to the tip. The lawsuits alleged that DoorDash misled customers about how the tips would be used.

To settle the lawsuits, DoorDash paid $2.5 million in D.C., $11.25 million in Illinois, $16.75 million in New York state, and $18 million in Chicago. (The Chicago lawsuit also included other allegations, so only a small portion of the settlement covered lost tips for drivers.)

In 2021, DoorDash settled claims that it misclassified drivers in Massachusetts and California for $100 million. The drivers alleged that they should have been classified as employees, but DoorDash had been treating them as gig workers, which hindered their ability to receive a minimum wage, overtime pay, and compensation for costs like fuel and mileage.

DoorDash has also settled investigations in San Francisco and Seattle over allegations that the company did not provide mandatory healthcare and sick leave benefits to drivers. DoorDash paid $5.3 million in the San Francisco case and $1.6 million in the Seattle case.

Paramount, controlled by Trump-supporting media mogul David Ellison, is attempting a $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. The combined company would own two of the largest movie studios (Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures), two of the largest streaming platforms (Paramount+ and HBO Max), and a slew of broadcast and cable TV networks (CBS, CNN, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Showtime, HBO, TNT, TBS, truTV, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, and Food Network).

On July 13, after the Department of Justice declined to challenge the transaction on antitrust grounds, a group of 12 Democratic attorneys general, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, filed suit. Their complaint argued that the proposed merger “would extinguish competition between Paramount and Warner Bros. and inflict substantial harm on movie theatres, basic cable distributors, and, ultimately, audiences nationwide.”

In short order, Bonta and the other attorneys general had Paramount over a barrel. On July 20, a federal judge granted a request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the merger. The court’s order did not require the states to post a bond, which is sometimes required to cover potential losses to the defendant if the lawsuit is ultimately unsuccessful.

Paramount, eager to avoid an even more damaging preliminary injunction, agreed on July 24 not to proceed with the merger until five days after a ruling on the merits of the suit or June 1, 2027. This created a big problem for Paramount because it had agreed as part of its offer to Warner Bros. to pay $7 million per day if the deal did not close by October 1, 2026.

On August 17, Paramount reversed course and attempted to amend its stipulation to require the states to post a $1.88 billion bond to cover the $7 million daily ticking fee and other costs. A hearing was scheduled for September 24 on that issue. There was no indication, however, that Paramount’s gambit would be successful. The same judge had already granted a TRO without requiring a bond and Paramount voluntarily stipulated to delay the closing pending a ruling on the merits without a bond.

Paramount paired its more aggressive legal strategy with threats to leave California if the lawsuit continued. This bullying tactic convinced several prominent Democratic officials in California, including Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, to call on Bonta to settle.

On Monday, days away from a hearing that likely would have left Paramount in an even weaker negotiating position, Bonta and the other attorneys general agreed to drop the lawsuit. A real settlement would have included an agreement from Paramount to divest important assets — some of its cable TV assets like CNN or its 49% interest in a third movie studio, Miramax. But the deal, formalized in a consent decree, did not require any divestiture.

The consent decree, moreover, does not include any real concessions by Paramount.

A prime example of the vacuousness of the settlement is the requirement for an “Editorial Independence Board.” The consent decree requires the new combined entity to create this group within 180 days of the merger closing. The Editorial Independence Board will be responsible for “establishing and monitoring adherence to ethical journalism as defined by journalism industry best practices and to editorial independence.”

That sounds great, but the details of how the Editorial Independence Board functions are less encouraging. First, the five members of the Editorial Independence Board are all selected by the combined entity’s board of directors. The board of directors is fully controlled by David Ellison and his father Larry Ellison, a MAGA billionaire. The Ellison family will control 77.5% of voting shares in the new company. In other words, an Ellison-controlled board will select five people to determine whether the Ellisons are interfering with the editorial independence of the company.

Even if the Editorial Independence Board were independent of the Ellisons, it has no power. It is tasked with “[e]stablishing a set of guiding editorial principles based on CBS News and CNN’s Standards & Practices policies and principles… of accuracy, independence, fairness, and journalistic integrity.” The Editorial Independence Board will then be responsible for “resolving any disputes between CBS News employees, CNN employees, and management of the Combined Entity regarding alleged violations of the News Editorial Principles.” There is no explanation as to how the Editorial Independence Board will resolve such disputes.

David Ellison will control the resources of the combined entity. That means he controls what kind of reporting at CBS News and CNN will be funded and what will be promoted. Since he took over CBS News in August 2025, the network’s news coverage has shifted to the right. David Ellison reportedly told Trump administration officials that “he’d make sweeping changes to CNN“ as part of his campaign to win Trump’s support for the merger.

It is not surprising that the concept of an “Editorial Independence Board” was first floated by Ari Emanuel, a business partner of David Ellison who supported the merger, last month.

Other major sections of the consent decree are similarly toothless.

Paramount’s empty pledge to release 30 movies per year

As part of the settlement, Paramount committed to distributing at least 30 films per year across both studios for five years. For the first two years, Paramount is required to distribute 30 films, of which at least 20 must be wide-release films. For the following three years, the company must release at least 32 films. At least four of the films released each year must be independent films and at least 20% must be blockbusters.

If Paramount does not meet this requirement, after a six-month cure period, “the company will be required to divest Miramax Studios and must pay $30 million per missed film,” with the majority of the money going toward health care and retirement funds for workers.

But this requirement is something that David Ellison has repeatedly volunteered to do for months. In March, David Ellison said, “[W]e are committed to delivering a broad pipeline of high quality storytelling, including 15 theatrical films per year per studio, for a total of at least 30 films annually.” In April, David Ellison repeated the sentiment, telling a crowd at CinemaCon, “I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word once we combine with Warner Bros., we are going to make a minimum of 30 films across both studios.” In a New York Times op-ed written by David Ellison in August, he reaffirmed the pledge.

The two studios are already planning on releasing more than 30 movies next year. According to Deadline, as of September, the two studios have a combined “36 movies on the release schedule for 2027.” The studios also already have 25 movies scheduled to be released in 2028. This is not a significant increase from what the studios are set to release this year. In 2026, the studios are scheduled to “release a combined 28 films nationwide,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Furthermore, Paramount is not even required to create all of the films itself. The settlement states that “at least fifty percent (50%) of the Films subject to this section shall be produced or jointly produced by the Combined Entity.” This means that Paramount could just distribute films made by others to meet the requirement. “So in fact, if you add up the numbers, Ellison promised to make fewer films going forward than Paramount and Warner are putting out today,” Matt Stoller wrote in BIG.

The settlement also includes a provision that states that the company will not be responsible for the requirements laid out in the agreement if “force majeure events beyond the Parties’ reasonable control” take place. This includes circumstances like “war,” “hurricanes and other major storms,” and “pandemics.” But the provision also includes “strikes,” “labor disruptions,” and “economic recessions” as valid circumstances to excuse Paramount from its obligations under the consent decree.

“The terms of this settlement at this moment in our nation’s history will be extraordinarily damaging,” Jane Fonda said in a statement for the Committee for the First Amendment, the group she founded, noting that the settlement states “that all its terms are void if there is a strike, labor disruptions, or an economic recession—meaning this settlement is also a union-buster.”

But Republicans do have one thing in their corner: the world’s richest person, Elon Musk.

After a falling out with Trump and the Republican Party last year, Musk has begun financially supporting Republicans again through his super PAC, America PAC. The New York Times reported in July that Musk “authorized his super PAC to spend $100 million to $120 million” to boost Republicans in the midterms.

How is Musk spending his ad dollars? He is playing the hits.

Across the country, Musk’s America PAC is spending money on advertising attacking Democrats for purportedly supporting “taxpayer-funded sex change surgeries on kids.” But gender-affirming surgeries are extremely rare for minors in the United States. A 2024 study by Harvard researchers “found little to no utilization of gender-affirming surgeries by transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) minors in the U.S.” And transgender youths themselves make up a very small part of the population.

Research has shown that gender-affirming care can be beneficial for the mental health of transgender youths and can save lives. But this care centers around supporting the children, not surgery.

Musk has spent years attacking trans people. Musk has an estranged transgender daughter, whom he has described as “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.” (In 2022, in a California court filing to change her name, Musk’s daughter wrote, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”)

Across Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Alaska, Musk’s America PAC spent about $1 million on these ads between September 5 and 21. America PAC has spent the majority of this money attacking Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, spending over $500,000 in Texas.

But the claims in the ads are not true. None of the candidates being attacked by Musk’s super PAC actually support these surgeries for minors.

Texas

America PAC’s ads attacking Talarico reference a Fox News article from March 2026 which states, “[Talarico] also voted against a bill to ban sex change surgeries for children.” (The Fox News article never mentions taxpayer funding.)

The underlying bill, Texas SB 14, which Talarico voted against in 2023 as a state representative, not only banned surgery for minors, but other gender-affirming care. Talarico called the bill “overly broad” and instead supported an amendment to the bill that would have only banned surgery. (State Medicaid funding for “sex change operations” was already prohibited in Texas, including for adults, before SB 14 was passed.)

Earlier this month, Talarico said in an interview with Fox News that he does not support gender-affirming surgeries for minors. When asked if he would support a nationwide ban on such surgeries, Talarico said, “Absolutely.”

So you read this newsletter, but you haven’t purchased a paid subscription. There are two possibilities:

1. You just can’t afford the price of a subscription ($50/year or $6/month) right now. If that is the case, we get it! That’s exactly why Popular Information does not have a paywall. We want everyone to have access to our work, regardless of their financial resources.

2. You value independent accountability journalism and understand why it is critical to preserving and protecting democracy. You have thought about supporting Popular Information, but you just haven’t gotten around to it. That’s how it goes — life is busy.

But maybe today is the day! It takes a minute, and paid subscribers are the entire reason this newsletter exists. To maintain our independence, Popular Information has no advertisers and no corporate owners. We count on readers like you.

Upgrade to paid

Ohio

America PAC’s ads about Sherrod Brown, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio, cite a 2023 interview in which Brown was asked about a bill sponsored by then-Senator JD Vance (R-OH) that would have made it a felony to provide surgery or other gender-affirming care to trans minors.

Brown said, “A child’s health care decisions are between them, their parents, their families and their doctors.” He did not offer support for “taxpayer-funded sex changes on children” as the ads claim.

Vance’s bill was referred to committee and never received a vote.

Iowa

In its ads attacking Josh Turek, an Iowa state representative running for Senate, America PAC cites his 2025 vote against Iowa House File 1049, a bill funding the state’s health and veterans departments. There was a provision in the bill that stated state Medicaid money “shall not be used for reimbursement for sex reassignment surgery or associated procedures.” It was a blanket ban, with no mention of minors.

At the time of this vote, such surgeries for children were already banned outright in Iowa. (Turek was absent from the Iowa House when the ban was passed in 2023.) So his vote against the 2025 budget bill had absolutely no impact on “taxpayer-funded sex changes for children,” which were not occurring anyway.

In June, a spokesperson for Turek told PolitiFact that he does not support surgeries for trans minors.

Michigan

America PAC’s ad about Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, is deceptive. It features clips of a viral exchange between El-Sayed and Fox News host Jesse Watters in which Watters asks El-Sayed if he supports surgeries for trans minors. It splices in this response from: “Do you really want to have this conversation? Are you circumcised?... You probably should want to move on.”

The ad takes El-Sayed’s “move on” line out of context. It says, “Abdul El Sayed supports sex changes for minors and tells parents they should move on.” He was addressing Watters, not parents.

In the interview, El-Sayed said, “I just think the government shouldn’t tell you what kind of healthcare you should have,” adding, “I’m not advocating anything.”

El-Sayed made similar statements at a recent campaign event. “The decision about what healthcare is necessary ought to be held between a patient — and or their parents if they’re under the age of 18 — and their doctor,” El-Sayed said. “That’s it.”

Alaska

America PAC claims that Mary Peltola, a former Alaska representative running for Senate, supports taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries (without specifying such surgeries for minors).

To support its claim, America PAC points to a vote Peltola took in 2024 against an amendment to a defense policy bill. The amendment barred dependent minors of service members from getting most gender-affirming care through the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP).

EFMP is a program meant to provide support to military families coordinating care for family members with special needs. The EFMP program, however, never provided surgeries for trans people because the program does not provide any medical procedures. That is provided through TRICARE, which does not fund such surgeries. Peltola never voted for anything that would have provided taxpayer funding for “gender transition surgeries.”

The amendment was not included in the final version of the law. Peltola ultimately voted to pass the bill, which included other restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors.

Legally speaking, Trump cannot directly control how it is spent. Super PACs must be technically independent, which means they cannot be controlled by an officeholder or candidate. Generally, this is accomplished by giving strategic and spending authority to a close ally.

At a press conference earlier this month, Trump made it clear that he does not intend to pay attention to this legal requirement:

I’m going to spend whatever amount of money necessary to try and help us. This is money from MAGA Inc. This is my money that I control. Now, this is separate from the RNC… I can spend it for what I want to spend it for. But I’m going to help a lot of the Congressmen and Senators that need help.

In an August interview, a reporter described MAGA Inc. as a super PAC “your allies control.” Trump quickly corrected the reporter. “Not my allies. I control it,” he said. Trump’s comments are now the subject of a Federal Election Commission complaint, although the agency does not have enough commissioners to function.

Last week, Popular Information covered MAGA Inc.’s initial ad spending, which is mostly being routed through a spinoff PAC called No Going Back. The report revealed that many of these ads contained false or hypocritical claims.

Since then, MAGA Inc. has released several new ads through No Going Back, targeting new races. This new batch of ads, which has received almost no media scrutiny, is even more brazen.

For example, in Florida’s 25th District, a new No Going Back ad attacks Congressman Jared Moskowitz (D) for “repeatedly violat[ing] federal law designed to stop Congress from insider trading” and failing “to properly disclose nearly 100 stock trades worth up to $1.7 million.” It notes that the New York Times has “noticed suspicious trades around Moskowitz.”

MAGA Inc., through No Going Back, has spent over $1.2 million in just five days airing this ad in Moskowitz’s district, blanketing the district with millions of impressions.

Stock trading by federal elected officials is a bipartisan problem. Members of Congress have influence on a range of issues that impact stock prices and should not be able to profit from that information by trading stocks. Many members of Congress, however, like to trade stocks, so the law has not changed. It only requires members to disclose their stock transactions within 45 days.

It is true that Moskowitz has made 580 stock trades from 2023 to the present, with a total transaction value of $1.18 million to $10.1 million. On two occasions in August 2024, Moskowitz filed his disclosures late. These late filings involved 94 trades, resulting in a $200 fine. In 2023, The New York Times reported that Moskowitz “sold shares of Seacoast Banking Corporation worth $65,000 to $150,000” belonging to his children around the time “he had attended a bipartisan congressional briefing” on the banking crisis.

But what the MAGA Inc. ad attacking Moskowitz fails to disclose is that the same laws “designed to stop Congress from insider trading” also apply to Trump. Since 2025, Trump has made almost 28,700 trades of securities with a total value of $898 million to $2.87 billion. Almost all of Trump’s trades were disclosed late (some by more than a year) and Trump paid multiple $200 fines. This is the same conduct — at a much larger scale — that Trump is spending millions to convince Florida voters is disqualifying for Moskowitz.

A Bloomberg analysis found that, since returning to office, Trump has traded more securities than all members of Congress combined.

As president, of course, Trump has far more influence over policy and stock prices than an individual Congressman. Popular Information has documented numerous instances where Trump bought stock in a company and then praised the same company days (or even hours) later.

The MAGA Inc. attacks on stock trades are not limited to Moskowitz. Through No Going Back, MAGA Inc. is running an ad attacking Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat representing the 34th District. The ad accuses Gonzalez of “hiding his secret stock trades.”

Since 2018, however, Gonzalez has made just 13 stock transactions with a total value of $646,000 to $1.57 million. In 2022, Gonzalez failed to timely report a single stock sale worth between $1,000 and $15,000. The ad cites a Business Insider report about that singular late filing. No Going Back has spent about $130,000 so far on the Gonzalez ad, with most of the spending on digital platforms.

A third No Going Back ad on stock trading targets Congressman Thomas Suozzi, a Democrat representing New York’s 3rd District. Suozzi’s record of stock disclosure is poor, particularly during his first stint from 2017 to 2023. Suozzi failed to file any periodic transaction reports until September 2021, when he reported over 400 trades late. An ethics investigation was dismissed after it failed to uncover evidence that Suozzi’s conduct was intentional.

Overall, Suozzi has engaged in 669 transactions with a total value of between $9 million and $28 million since first becoming a Congressman in 2017. To put that in perspective, in his second term, Trump has made 669 stock transactions roughly every two weeks. Now, Trump’s super PAC is spending over $1.1 million attacking Suozzi for stock trading.

The No Going Back ad goes beyond Suozzi’s failures and attacks him dishonestly. The ad claims that Suozzi “voted against banning congressional insider trading.”

But Suozzi voted against the stock trading ban because it had Trump’s unrelated voting restrictions (the Voter ID Act) attached. Suozzi does publicly support a stock trading ban and co-sponsors a bipartisan bill that would ban members of Congress from owning stocks.

The ad also accuses Suozzi of getting “caught breaking the law doing it just last year” because he was late disclosing purchases of Treasury bills, not stocks. Trump has been “caught breaking the law” multiple times this year for failing to disclose thousands of stock trades on time.

The crypto industry was desperate to pass the Clarity Act, which would legitimize and stabilize its business by providing it with a federal regulatory framework. Trump, who earned around $1.4 billion through his family’s crypto ventures in 2025, would be one of the primary beneficiaries of a permissive regulatory environment. On Monday, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) released a new version that she claimed included more ethics requirements for Trump. But it does nothing to actually limit Trump’s business. (UPDATE: The Senate saw through the ruse and blocked the bill from advancing on a 49-50 vote.)

As the midterm elections approach, the AI industry has tapped a former Obama aide, Jay Carney, to build ties with Democrats. This move was celebrated by former Vice President Kamala Harris as an “encouraging effort.” But Carney brings considerable baggage to the role. After leaving the Obama administration, Carney spent years as an executive at Amazon, where he worked to quash privacy and AI regulations.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission moved to rescind a rule that aims to curb “pay-to-play” scandals relating to public pension funds. The rule prevents money managers from wooing public officials with campaign contributions. The rule was inspired by corrupt pay-to-play schemes involving pension funds in New York and California.

The best of the rest

A Bloomberg analysis found that, in the first 17 months of his second term, “Trump or his money managers made nearly 28,700 trades,” which is more than every single member of Congress combined. At the same time, Trump is seeking “to pass a stock-purchasing ban for lawmakers that would exclude him from any restrictions.” (Bloomberg)

Illegal deportations have risen under the second Trump administration. Since 2025, “judges have ruled that the Trump administration has deported more than 170 people in… violation of court orders, in defiance of legally mandated due process protections, or to countries from which they had sought or received protection from torture and persecution.” (Politico)

In May, Donald Trump Jr. got married in the Bahamas in a lavish celebration that lasted three days and spanned two private islands. Despite his roughly $300 million net worth, Trump Jr. did not foot the bill for much of the wedding. Instead, Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the celebration, despite seeming to meet Trump Jr. only recently. (ProPublica)

Numerical information

$6.7 billion: The amount that federal employees were paid by the Trump administration to not work in 2025 due to DOGE’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

$7 billion: Trump’s net worth, according to a new Forbes estimate. Trump has increased his net worth by an estimated $2.7 billion since he won the 2024 election.

21%: Decline in viewers for the premiere of CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday. The show was recently overhauled by conservative pundit Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Quote of the week

“We spent more than $2 billion in FEMA funding. You’re waiting for some additional money… I’m gonna get that to you… Now if Michael [Whatley] loses, I’m not sending it. No, I’m only kidding. You’re getting it. You’re going to get it, Michael.”

– President Trump during a North Carolina rally on Wednesday

Photo of the week

On September 3, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made a quiet announcement: the commission, which oversees Wall Street, is proposing to rescind a 16-year-old rule enacted to prevent “pay-to-play” schemes involving investment advisers and pension funds for public employees.

The rule, officially known as Advisers Act Rule 206(4)-5, prohibits investment advisers from managing money for state or local government entities for two years after they have made campaign contributions to elected officials within those entities. In other words, the rule is meant to stop investment advisers from enticing elected officials with campaign cash. It was adopted in 2010 in response to pay-to-play scandals in New York and California.

Pension funds are massive pools of money that are invested to provide for the retirement of public employees such as teachers, firefighters, and police officers. In the United States, there are over 5,000 publicly run pension funds that hold a collective $6.5 trillion in assets. Millions of public employees rely on these funds to be managed in their best interest.

Yet SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins and the two other Republican SEC commissioners (the two Democratic seats on the commission have been left vacant by the Trump administration) are arguing that prohibiting investment firms and their employees from giving money to officials who control pension funds is an attack on political expression.

In a statement, Atkins said that the rule has “effectively resulted in the suppression of political speech” because many firms prohibit their employees from making political contributions to state and local candidates. “People should not have to choose between their political speech rights and a job in a particular industry,” he said.

This sentiment about the rule being a free speech issue has been echoed by many investment adviser interest groups. For example, the president of the Investment Adviser Association (IAA) — an organization which has lobbied the SEC on various finance issues — issued a statement saying, “We have long raised concerns that the rule imposes severe consequences without regard to whether a political contribution was actually intended to influence the award of advisory business.” (The rule does allow individual investment advisers to donate up to $350 to candidates they are eligible to vote for and up to $150 to any other candidates.)

Both the SEC and interest groups like IAA argued that the rule is unnecessary because state and local laws would be sufficient to prevent pay-to-play schemes. But when the SEC initially proposed the rule, it reasoned that “pay to play practices are rarely explicit and often hard to prove.” For this reason, the SEC determined that a broad, preventative approach was “particularly appropriate.”

From Rupert Murdoch to Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk, billionaires control much of the information you read.

Popular Information is different.

We are an independent outlet dedicated to uncovering the truth and holding the powerful accountable. And, as today’s edition illustrates, we always bring receipts.

There has never been a more important time to support our work.

Upgrade to paid

What were the pay-to-play scandals that inspired the SEC’s rule?

In October 2009, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) revealed a massive pay-to-play scandal: one of its former board members, Alfred Villalobos, had accepted over $40 million in fees for acting as a middleman to help billionaire Leon Black’s private equity firm Apollo Management secure investments from CalPERS.

As a part of the scheme, Villalobos delivered $200,000 in cash bribes, stuffed in paper bags and a shoe box, to then-CalPERS CEO Fred Buenrostro on behalf of firms including Apollo Management. In exchange, Buenrostro pushed investments toward Villalobos’ clients and provided him insider information on CalPERS. According to the Wall Street Journal, CalPERS employees felt pressured by Buenrostro to accept investment opportunities brought by Villalobos. In 2013, Villalobos and Buenrostro were indicted on criminal fraud charges.

As a result of Villalobos’ scheme, CalPERS invested over $3.5 billion in various Apollo funds.

The investments that Villalobos and Buenrostro directed to Apollo Management were among CalPERS’ worst-performing during its worst fiscal year ever. In 2009, amid the nationwide financial crisis, CalPERS lost $50 billion. This shrank the fund by 23%, while the median pension fund that year shrank by 19%. CalPERS’ investments in three different Apollo funds were each down between 50% and 60%.

In New York, former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi began accepting campaign donations from Elliott Broidy, chairman of Markstone Capital Group, and his wife in 2002. In exchange, from 2003 to 2005, Hevesi approved $250 million of investments in Markstone Capital Group from New York’s Common Retirement Fund. Over several years, Hevesi eventually took a total of $500,000 in campaign contributions and roughly $500,000 in gifts and travel expenses from Broidy. In October 2010, Hevesi pleaded guilty to a state corruption charge and was later sentenced to up to four years in prison.

Broidy’s wife also donated to Hevesi’s California counterpart, Controller Steve Westly, as Westly helped secure investments from the CalPERS pension fund for Markstone. As state controller, Westly was an influential member of the CalPERS board. In addition to Markstone, he also helped two other private equity firms — Perseus and Healthpoint — secure investments from CalPERS.

Markstone, Perseus, and Healthpoint donated over $200,000 combined to Westly’s campaigns between 2002 and 2006. The firms received a total of $80 million in investments from CalPERS. In the case of Healthpoint, for example, the firm had already pitched CalPERS without success. Then, in March 2003, Healthpoint executives began meeting with Westly and donated to his campaign at several fundraisers. By March 2004, Healthpoint had received a $5 million investment from CalPERS.

The Los Angeles Times reported these transactions in 2006, when Westly was running in the Democratic primary for California governor. He lost the race. No charges were ever filed in relation to the reporting.

The AI industry has placed a huge bet on President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. For example, in the 2026 cycle alone, AI executives and corporations have donated $42 million to MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC.

But the political winds may be changing. Trump’s popularity is near an all-time low. Republicans could lose control of one or both chambers of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

This all comes at a time when the public is increasingly concerned about the safety of frontier AI models, data center construction, and the impact of AI on their jobs. AI companies are looking to the federal government for help.

In a essay this month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for “regulation that targets all US frontier AI companies.” While this is framed around an altruistic concern about safety, Amodei acknowledged that government regulation would allow AI incumbents to coordinate their activities while avoiding “antitrust” issues. Amodei’s letter was endorsed by the two other biggest AI players, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk.

Trump, however, immediately rejected the idea. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

According to reports, the AI industry may now be hedging its bets.

According to Politico, Jay Carney, who served as White House press secretary during the Obama administration, has been tapped “to run a new initiative aimed at shaping national AI policy.” Carney has been hired by SV Angel, an investment firm led by Ron Conway, a major Democratic donor.

The new initiative is called “Project Blueprint,” which the New York Times reports is an effort to “rebuild bonds between leaders in the artificial intelligence sector and Democrats who are demanding new rules to regulate the technology.”

On X, former Vice President Kamala Harris called Carney’s hiring an “encouraging effort to bring industry and government leaders together.”

It is unclear who should be encouraged by Carney’s new role. While Carney worked for a Democratic administration, he abandoned public service more than a dozen years ago.

After leaving the Obama administration, Carney spent seven years as a hired gun for Amazon, where he reported directly to Jeff Bezos. (His official title was Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs.) In that role, Carney fought against government efforts to protect privacy and regulate AI.

A 2021 Reuters article describes Carney as the “architect of [an] under-the-radar campaign to smother privacy protections.” Internal documents obtained by Reuters revealed that Carney’s “mission included defeating restrictions on artificial intelligence and biometric technologies, along with blocking efforts to make companies disclose the data they keep on consumers.”

A memo reviewed by Reuters said that such restrictions could “impede growth for [Amazon’s] Alexa-powered devices.” It celebrated Carney’s role in “killing or amending privacy bills in ‘over 20 states.’”

Early in his tenure, Carney’s team targeted “a Washington state bill to regulate biometrics, including voice recordings, fingerprints and face scans.” The bill eventually passed “but only after lobbyists for Amazon and other firms had chiseled away at its privacy protections by convincing lawmakers to insert alternative language, often verbatim.” Among other concessions, voice recordings were exempted, sparing Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant from regulation. In an internal document, Amazon celebrated that the revised legislation “would have ‘little, if any, direct impact on Amazon’s practices.’”

After joining the company, Carney criticized Amazon’s lobbying efforts as “frugal” and “narrow.” Under Carney’s leadership, by 2020, “Amazon had registered at least 180 lobbyists in 44 U.S. states, up from at least 62 lobbyists in 27 states in 2014, the year before Carney arrived.”

At Amazon, Carney expanded a program called “Watering the flowers.” According to a 2019 CNBC report, “The flowers represent elected officials, and the goal is to create a well-tended ‘garden’ of pro-Amazon policymakers, from state governors and senators down to local officials and economic development teams.”

In a 2025 interview, Carney said in his corporate roles he spent “a lot of time thinking about how we can flood the zone with our narrative.”

Carney attacked whistleblower, dismissed concerns about poor working conditions

While at Amazon, Carney also dismissed concerns about conditions in the workplace. In 2015, the New York Times published an article alleging poor conditions for Amazon’s corporate employees. The article quoted a former Amazon employee, Bo Olson, who said, “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

Two months after the article was published, Carney posted a rebuttal on Medium. To discredit their accounts, Carney included additional details about some of the employees the Times had interviewed, including Olson.

“Attributed to Bo Olson, the image of countless employees crying at their desks set the tone for a front-page story that other media outlets described as ‘scathing,’ ‘blistering,’ ‘brutal’ and ‘harsh.’ Olson’s words were so key to the narrative the Times wished to construct that they splashed them in large type just below the headline,” Carney wrote. “Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records.” Olson denied the allegation.

In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that Carney was directly involved in a series of posts on Twitter (now X) responding to criticisms by some politicians. In one case, an official Amazon account responded to a post from Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI) that said, “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles.”

“You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us,” Amazon wrote back. (The company later apologized for the tweet and acknowledged “that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms.”) According to the Wall Street Journal, “Unlike most tweets from Amazon’s news account, these tweets were crafted by executives including Mr. Bezos and Mr. Carney.”

Carney v. unions

Carney also participated in anti-union efforts while at Amazon.

In April 2020, Carney defended Amazon’s firing of Chris Smalls, an Amazon warehouse worker who led a walkout at a Staten Island warehouse over worker protections during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amazon said that Smalls “was fired for violating a company-imposed 14-day quarantine after he came into contact with an employee who tested positive for the coronavirus.” Smalls said that he was “singled out after pleading with management to sanitize the warehouse and be more transparent about the number of workers who were sick,” arguing that others had come into contact with the positive worker “for longer periods of time,” VICE reported.

“Amazon’s warehouse workers protested because people are getting sick on the job. Their demands were not radical: a safer workplace, protective gear and paid sick leave,” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote on X. “Amazon’s response? Retaliate by firing a worker who helped organize the walk-out.” Carney responded to the post, “I’m confused. Thought you wanted us to protect our workers? Mr. Smalls purposely violated social distancing rules, repeatedly, & was put on Paid 14-day quarantine for COVID exposure.”

Leaked notes from an internal Amazon leadership meeting obtained by VICE, however, show that “company executives discussed a plan to smear” Smalls. Leadership reportedly “discussed encouraging Amazon executives to use Smalls to discredit the wider labor movement at Amazon.”

In 2021, Carney also responded to a post from Sanders supporting an effort to unionize a warehouse in Alabama. “Amazon workers in Alabama are sick and tired of being treated like robots. They are standing up and fighting back, and I am proud to support them,” Sanders wrote. “With all due respect, Senator @BernieSanders, you’re wrong on this. We treat our employees with dignity and respect. We offer a $15 min wage, health care from day one, and a safe, inclusive workplace,” Carney wrote.

The crypto industry is desperate to pass the Clarity Act, which would legitimize and stabilize its business by providing it with a federal regulatory framework.

Critically, the Clarity Act assigns most regulatory responsibility to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a small agency with a permissive approach to industry oversight, instead of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has a much more rigorous approach to regulation and enforcement.

One of the primary beneficiaries of the Clarity Act would be President Trump himself. As president, Trump has expanded and promoted various cryptocurrency projects, including a special visit to the White House for the largest holders of his meme coin. Trump’s latest financial disclosure revealed he personally earned about $1.4 billion in 2025 from his family’s crypto ventures, including the meme coin and World Liberty Financial. (Retail investors in the same projects have lost billions.) A permanent, relatively permissive regulatory environment would likely make Trump’s holdings even more valuable.

Concerns about Trump using the legislation to further enrich himself have been the principal obstacle to the Clarity Act’s passage in the Senate. The bill needs at least 60 votes, requiring a minimum of seven Democrats, to clear the Senate. Democrats and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) have said they will oppose the bill unless it curbs Trump’s profiteering. A key procedural vote is expected to occur Tuesday.

On Monday, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) released a new version of the Clarity Act that she claimed imposed meaningful ethics requirements on Trump.

“President Trump voluntarily agreed to unprecedented ethics restrictions, holding every federally elected official, judge, and their spouses to some of the toughest ethics restrictions in U.S. history,” Lummis said in a statement. “Democrats got what they wanted; now they need to take yes for an answer.”

The latest version of the Clarity Act, which runs 635 pages, does nothing to meaningfully limit Trump’s conduct.

Trump’s corrupt crypto projects are grandfathered in

The current version of the Clarity Act prohibits “covered individuals” from issuing a digital asset like a cryptocurrency or meme coin. The same group is also prohibited from sponsoring or promoting digital assets.

A “covered individual” includes the President, Vice President, members of Congress, federal judges, and other high-ranking officials. Including the President in this list is one of the concessions being promoted by Lummis.

But this will have little to no impact on Trump. On the last page of the legislation, in a provision ambiguously labeled “Application,” the bill states that the prohibitions apply only to digital assets issued or sponsored on or after the effective date of the legislation. That means the digital assets that Trump has issued and promoted — his meme coin, the World Liberty Financial token, and the USD1 stablecoin — are grandfathered in. They are legal and Trump can continue to promote them in any way he wants.

The “effective date” of the legislation is up to 360 days after the enactment of the Clarity Act, so even if the legislation is enacted this month, Trump could theoretically issue new digital assets well into 2027 that would also be grandfathered in.

So you read this newsletter, but you haven’t purchased a paid subscription. There are two possibilities:

1. You just can’t afford the price of a subscription ($50/year or $6/month) right now. If that is the case, we get it! That’s exactly why Popular Information does not have a paywall. We want everyone to have access to our work, regardless of their financial resources.

2. You value independent accountability journalism and understand why it is critical to preserving and protecting democracy. You have thought about supporting Popular Information, but you just haven’t gotten around to it. That’s how it goes — life is busy.

But maybe today is the day! It takes a minute, and paid subscribers are the entire reason this newsletter exists. To maintain our independence, Popular Information has no advertisers and no corporate owners. We count on readers like you.

Upgrade to paid

Trump does not have to meaningfully divest his holdings

The version of the Clarity Act released by Lummis has a third significant provision: “covered individuals” are prohibited from having a “significant financial interest” (defined as worth $15,000 or more) in a company that earned a plurality of its revenue from issuing or sponsoring digital assets.

The legislation, however, does not prohibit Trump from owning digital assets, which still allows him to profit from the industry he is regulating. Much of Trump’s interest in World Liberty Financial is held in tokens. The text also suggests Trump would be allowed to continue to collect his cut of new token sales as part of a grandfathered sponsorship agreement.

Trump also has a separate equity stake in World Liberty Financial — holding about 38% of the company through an LLC, according to his latest financial disclosure. But he is not required to divest his equity in crypto companies. Rather, the Clarity Act allows him to place his equity in a “blind trust.” But since Trump would know he’s placing his World Liberty Financial stake in a blind trust and the company is not publicly traded, such an action would carry little significance.

No plausible enforcement while Trump is president

Another major objection to the legislation is that only the Attorney General could bring an enforcement action. This would mean that, even if Trump failed to comply with an aspect of the law, it would require Attorney General Todd Blanche to sue him. Some Democrats demanded that state attorneys general be permitted to file suit against officials to enforce the law, to give the provisions that apply to Trump some real meaning.

The updated legislation does not provide that. The only option for state attorneys general for enforcement against officials is to file suit against Blanche seeking an injunction. Even that option is foreclosed if the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), which Trump also staffs, issues an opinion that the conduct targeted by a state attorney general is permissible. That limitation is buried on page 631 of the legislation:

In the theoretical case where an injunction is issued, it is unclear what would happen next. Even in the face of an injunction it is hard to imagine a scenario where Blanche, Trump’s former defense attorney, effectively prosecutes Trump. (State attorney generals are able to take enforcement actions against crypto exchanges directly.)

In other words, there is no plausible scenario where the law is enforced against Trump.

With Trump’s approval ratings hitting all-time lows and many Republican candidates in swing races struggling, Trump has finally begun spending some of this money. Television advertising funded by Trump’s operation has gone on the air.

The clearest sense of the scale of the spending is through advertising that has been reserved in key races. While these reservations can be changed, they offer the clearest view of both the scale of Trump’s efforts and his priorities. With the exception of Texas, this money is being routed from MAGA Inc. through a new Trump super PAC, No Going Back.

Since August 31, MAGA Inc. and No Going Back have reserved over $81 million in advertising.

According to FEC filings, the same groups are spending millions more on direct mail, text messages, and other activities.

The fact that the Trump operation felt it necessary, outside of Texas, to route public communications through a new super PAC called No Going Back illustrates the current unpopularity of the MAGA agenda. (Ads paid for directly by MAGA Inc. must include the line “MAGA Inc. is responsible for the content of this advertising.”)

The same dynamic is also found in the ads themselves. Some ads inaccurately accuse Democratic candidates of supporting MAGA policies. Other ads, in an effort to find an effective attack, simply use false or fabricated claims.

Trump, not Pappas, cut funding for rural hospitals in New Hampshire

In New Hampshire, Trump’s No Going Back PAC is running an ad attacking Congressman Chris Pappas, the Democratic Senate nominee, for voting “against vital funding for rural and vulnerable hospitals.”

This is false.

Pappas voted against H.R. 1, Trump’s signature reconciliation bill, which cut Medicaid spending in rural areas by $137 billion over ten years, according to an analysis by KFF. About one-third of that cut was offset by a $50 billion fund distributed to states. But H.R. 1 left rural healthcare, including rural hospitals, much worse off.

Pappas said he voted against the bill in July 2025 for that reason. In an August 2025 statement, Pappas said he opposed H.R. 1 because it “will have severe repercussions across New Hampshire communities, from our hospitals to our rural health care centers to our nursing homes.”

Now the Trump political operation is spending millions running an ad accusing Pappas of supporting cuts to rural health care spending because he opposed a Trump-backed bill that dramatically cut rural health care spending.

Ossoff did not vote to increase “taxes on working families” by $16.7 billion

In Georgia, a No Going Back ad accuses Senator Jon Ossoff (D) of voting “to raise taxes by over $16 billion on working families like yours.”

This isn’t true.

The ad cites Ossoff’s vote for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022. The IRA did not increase individual income tax rates for anyone. It closed some tax loopholes for individuals earning over $400,000. No working families saw their tax bill increase because of Ossoff’s vote.

What the IRA did do is create a minimum tax of 15% for profitable corporations. Some economists claim that corporate taxes will then trickle down to individuals in the form of lower wages or share prices. The $16.7 billion comes from a report attempting to quantify that effect on individuals making $200,000 or less. Even in this analysis, most of the burden falls on those making between $100,000 and $200,000 and the impact shrinks to less than $3 billion by 2027.

The ad attempts to redefine an effort to make profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes — a proposition that is quite popular among voters — as a tax increase on working families.

Cooper did not agree to release a “convicted child molester” early

In North Carolina, No Going Back says that Governor Roy Cooper (D) “released 3500 criminals, released early.” The next line is: “This convicted child molester shot a man dead.”

The ad references Cooper’s COVID-era settlement, reached with the ACLU, to release some inmates early — mostly those already scheduled to be released within a year. The ad’s implication is clear: Jimmie Earl Speight Jr., who was charged with murder in April 2021, was among that group.

This is inaccurate.

Speight Jr. was released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for car theft, in November 2020. Cooper’s settlement was signed in February 2021. Speights Jr.’s release had nothing to do with Cooper or the settlement. (Speight Jr. was included on a list associated with the settlement because the settlement, according to WRAL, “counted some people who had already been released, before the settlement, so that the actual number of people being released would be lower.”)

The No Going Back ad is one of several blaming Cooper for crimes completely unrelated to the settlement.