At President Trump’s urging, the Florida legislature redrew the state’s electoral maps in an effort to increase the number of Republicans in Florida’s Congressional delegation. One of the members targeted by the changes is Congresswoman Kathy Castor (D-FL), who represents the state’s 14th Congressional District. Republicans changed the borders of Castor’s district in May 2026. The new 14th Congressional District supported Trump over Harris by more than 10 points.

In an election where Republicans are facing political headwinds, flipping Castor’s seat is a top priority. No Going Back PAC, an offshoot of Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, has spent at least $6.4 million opposing Castor.

About $2.4 million of No Going Back PAC’s spending, according to AdImpact, has gone toward broadcasting an ad that attacks Castor for buying stock in a financial company that bought up property in Tampa. “In Congress, Kathy Castor traded stocks in a Wall Street firm that bought more than 1,600 Tampa Bay homes, raising rents and pricing people out,” the narrator says. “Kathy Castor profited.”

Although the ad does not name the “Wall Street firm,” it cites a June 22, 2013, article published in the Tampa Bay Times. According to that report, Blackstone, a New York private equity firm, through its subsidiary Invitation Homes “spent more than $250 million acquiring 1,650 homes in the Tampa Bay area.”

One of MAGA Inc.’s largest donors is Blackstone CEO and co-founder Stephen A. Schwarzman, who donated $5 million to MAGA Inc. in December 2025 and another $5 million in September 2026. MAGA Inc., which funds No Going Back PAC, is now spending millions to attack Castor for buying Blackstone stock.

Castor’s investment in Blackstone was tiny. According to reports filed by the House of Representatives, Castor purchased Blackstone stock worth between $1,000 and $15,000 in February 2015. She added to her position in January 2019, although the combined value was still $15,000 or less. When Castor sold her position in Blackstone in March 2020, the value was still somewhere between $1,000 and $15,000. At most, Castor made a few thousand dollars from her brief ownership of Blackstone.

In response to a request for comment from Schwarzman about the ad, a Blackstone spokesperson said that “Blackstone no longer owns Invitation Homes” and sent Popular Information a fact sheet titled, “Supply Deficit, Not Institutions, Driving Affordability Challenges.” The spokesperson did not address that Castor ad directly.

Trump, who says he controls the super PAC behind the Castor ad, has made far larger purchases of Blackstone stock. At the end of 2025, Trump owned Blackstone stock worth between $1.35 million and $2.93 million. He has continued to purchase Blackstone stock this year, most recently disclosing a purchase of between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of Blackstone stock on August 21.

Although Blackstone sold its ownership stake in Invitation Homes in 2019, it subsequently acquired more real estate companies. In 2024, Blackstone owned nearly 4,000 homes in the Tampa area. This did not get in the way of Trump buying millions in Blackstone stock.

Trump’s super PAC is banking that the public will not find out who is funding the ad or the details of its attack against Castor.

On Monday morning, Elon Musk announced in a post on his social media platform X that he plans to give American children one share of SpaceX, his rocket, satellite, and AI company. “Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America,” Musk wrote. “This will be the first of many.”

One share of SpaceX stock would be worth around $146 for each child, based on Friday’s closing price. According to 2025 census data, there are around 72 million children in the United States. If Musk donated one share to every child, the giveaway would be valued at around $10.5 billion today.

Musk did not provide any details on the giveaway, including whether shares would be given to every person under 18 or the exact timing of the giveaway. It is also not immediately clear how Musk would distribute the SpaceX shares to American children. On X, Musk responded “Yes” to a post about the shares potentially being distributed via Trump Accounts. A person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Musk has “agreed in principle to distribute the stock through the Trump Accounts initiative.”

On Monday, President Trump celebrated Musk’s announcement, writing in a post on Truth Social that the shares would be going to Trump Accounts. “A BIG THANK YOU to our legendary friend, Elon Musk, for his incredible generosity in giving SpaceX Stock to millions of American children through TRUMP ACCOUNTS!” Trump wrote.

Trump Accounts are savings accounts for children that were launched on July 4. This summer, Trump said in an interview that he believed that Musk would donate SpaceX stock to Trump Accounts. “Well, I think that he will do that,” Trump told CNBC. In July, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell separately announced that she and her husband would be donating a share of SpaceX to around two million children with Trump Accounts.

While, at first blush, it seems like an act of charity, there are reasons to be skeptical of Musk’s motivations.

Changing the narrative

A Quinnipiac poll conducted last month found that 74% of Americans have little to no trust in the leaders of AI companies. This is a major problem when AI companies are seeking approval from communities to build massive data centers, trying to convince millions of Americans to buy their products, and lobbying for legal protection from liability risks.

Is Musk motivated by a sincere desire to help American children? Or is this just a public relations gimmick? Influential figures in Musk’s orbit have suggested rehabilitating the image of the AI industry is at least part of the motivation.

David Sacks, Musk’s longtime friend and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, has been advocating for AI companies to donate stock as a way to change the perceptions of the public. In a post on X, Sacks wrote, “I hope every AI company will follow the lead of [Shotwell] and give American kids a vested interest in their success. This would do much to improve the public’s image of AI.”

A memo from the Treasury Department on Trump Accounts says, “Donors are attracted by the hope that a stock contribution with a five-year holding period may lead recipients and their families to feel that they have a stake in the fate of the corporation to a greater extent than if the child’s holdings of the corporation were only through an index fund.” Any child who has a Trump Account will not be able to sell their donated SpaceX stock for at least five years.

There is considerable potential for Musk and other AI executives to use stock donations to sway the interests of an entire generation of children and their parents. While Musk announced donating one share to all children, future gifts could be targeted to specific geographic areas. For example, if a company wanted to construct a data center in a particular area but was facing pushback, it could donate stock to all of the children in the area.

For Musk, all of this comes at a small cost. Musk is the world’s richest person, with a current net worth of around $904 billion, according to Bloomberg. A donation of $10.5 billion is just over 1% of his net worth.

Musk also may have been seeking to keep up with one of his rivals in the AI industry. On Sunday, Anthropic committed 5% of its shares to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, which it described as “a new wholly owned entity dedicated entirely to the public benefit.” Overall, about 20% of Anthropic’s shares have been dedicated to the public good. The co-founders have personally pledged 80% of their equity to charity.

Under Anthropic’s announcement on X, Musk replied, “I recommend giving the shares directly to the public.” The next morning, Musk declared his own donations.

Tax benefits

The donation of SpaceX stock would provide huge tax benefits to Musk personally.

As the founder, Musk paid essentially nothing for his SpaceX stock. Giving the shares away allows Musk to avoid about $2.5 billion in federal capital gains tax.

Because stock donations must be routed to Trump Accounts through a non-profit charity, the donations also count as a tax-deductible charitable donation and can generally be written off at their full market value for up to 20% of the donor’s adjusted gross income.

Musk has not said which private foundation he would make the donation through, but it seems likely that he would use his own Musk Foundation. Not only would this help Musk secure a tax deduction, it would also help the Musk Foundation meet its minimum annual giving requirements — which it has a history of violating.

Private foundations, including the Musk Foundation, are required to give away 5% of their assets each year. According to the New York Times, the Musk Foundation fell short of this 5% requirement in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. The current value of the Musk Foundation is unknown, but its assets were worth over $14 billion in 2024.

The uncertain future

The pledge to donate billions of dollars in stock is just one in a long line of grand promises made by Musk. In several previous cases, he has reneged or not fully fulfilled his promises.

For example, in 2021, Musk told the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) that if they could come up with a $6 billion plan to solve world hunger, he would sell Tesla stock to fund it. WFP quickly sent Musk a plan, but he did not donate the $6 billion.

Musk later donated $5.7 billion in Tesla stock — to his own foundation.

On Saturday, thousands of “No Kings” events were held around the country. It was a critical day for the anti-Trump protest group, which has attracted millions of participants since 2025. Saturday’s events focused on early voter activation ahead of the midterm elections.

Then, at around 1:30 p.m. Eastern, No Kings’ Instagram account was taken offline. It left the organization without its biggest megaphone during the height of the protests.

The account remained offline for approximately 90 minutes. Even after the account was restored, it took until after 5 p.m. before No Kings could post new content to the account. Common Cause called Meta’s actions “an alarming act of corporate censorship,” accusing the company of deplatforming “grassroots voter mobilization efforts.”

Just after 6 p.m., Meta spokesperson Andy Stone released a statement, claiming the suspension was an “error”:

When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems. That’s what happened with the No Kings IG account in the lead up to today’s day of action. Unfortunately, that automated action was clearly taken in error. Everything is now working as it should and we sincerely apologize.

No Kings cast doubt on this explanation. “In the 24 hours before our account was shut down, we posted only a handful of times and livestreamed to thousands,” the group said. “Meta’s ‘high-frequency’ excuse doesn’t add up.”

Meta’s action against No Kings is the latest in a series of “errors” impacting the accounts of Trump critics. On October 15, a Brazilian court ordered Meta to stop throttling the accounts of President Lula, a Trump critic who is facing Trump’s preferred candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, in a runoff election. Meta acknowledged that Lula’s accounts faced restrictions but, according to the Associated Press, blamed the issue on “unrelated global technical glitches.” In September, Instagram suspended the accounts of Albanian groups protesting Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is planning to develop a luxury resort in the country. A Meta spokesperson said the accounts were “disabled by mistake.” Meta also initially rejected ads for the film Musk, a critical documentary of Trump’s political ally, calling it “an error.”

In other cases, Meta has shut down accounts at the explicit request of the Trump administration. Last October, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Department of Justice (DOJ) contacted Meta and asked it to shut down a Facebook page called “ICE Sighting-Chicagoland.” Meta complied with the request. The Trump administration has been targeting anti-fascist and other left-wing groups through a controversial presidential memorandum, NSPM-7.

The censorship of Trump critics comes as Meta has sought to establish a close relationship with Trump and his administration. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s second inauguration and $5 million to Trump’s White House ballroom, and paid $25 million to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over his suspension from Facebook after January 6, 2021. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appointed UFC CEO Dana White, a top Trump ally, to the Meta board and named Dina Powell McCormick, a deputy national security advisor during Trump’s first term, as Meta’s president.

Zuckerberg has visited the White House frequently and reportedly talks to Trump regularly on the phone. He has been influential in shaping the administration’s AI policy.

Popular Information contacted Meta for comment and asked a spokesperson if it had received any communications regarding No Kings from the Trump administration or allied groups.

The company did not answer that inquiry but referred us to another post on X from a Meta spokesperson which claimed that the No Kings Instagram account was suspended after “our network security systems detected the use of a Claude tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags, the rate of which sharply increased (~4x volume) in intense bursts on October 17.” This differs from the initial explanation by the same spokesperson which claimed the suspension was due to No Kings posting, sharing, or commenting at high volumes.

TikTok censors ads for Musk documentary

Another social network with close ties to the Trump administration, TikTok, is censoring ads promoting Musk, the critical documentary. After briefly feuding with Trump, Musk has once again emerged as a key ally. (Trump awarded Musk with the “National Medal of Science” earlier this month.) Musk has become the largest donor to groups supporting Republican candidates in the 2026 midterms by a wide margin, contributing over $300 million so far.

Musk has called Alex Gibney, the filmmaker behind Musk, an “idiot,” a “horrible human,” and a “tinfoil hat crackpot.” X has banned all ads for Musk on the social network he owns, X.

On Friday, Bleecker Street, the company distributing Musk, revealed that TikTok has permanently banned it from advertising the film. TikTok’s policies prohibit ads “referencing, promoting, or opposing” any “current executive, legislative, or judicial public officials.” Musk, however, is a private CEO and has no current public position. The policy also prohibits “[a]dvocacy for or against” any “past, current, or proposed elections.” These ads, however, promote a film, not any candidate.

The executive chairman and co-founder of Oracle, which owns 15% of TikTok and controls a board seat, is Trump-supporting billionaire Larry Ellison. Further, Ellison was a member of Tesla’s board, where Musk is the CEO, from 2018 to 2022. Oracle also provides some of the infrastructure to train Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok.

On Tuesday morning, Popular Information broke the news that newly appointed White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia did not have a law license — despite claiming for years that she was a practicing attorney. On Friday, after days of intense scrutiny about her legal credentials, Zacharia was “transitioned out” of the role.

CNN reported that Zacharia’s removal was a direct result of her inability to satisfactorily respond to Popular Information’s reporting, which became a problem for her even on typically friendly platforms like Fox News:

After a string of surprisingly combative interviews on Fox News – specifically her appearance with Trump’s friend Sean Hannity on Thursday night, when the host grilled her over her legal credentials – the president decided it was untenable for her to remain in the role.

Zacharia’s abrupt removal was a damaging development for Republicans so close to the midterm elections. “18 days until Election Day, and instead of driving this unifying message, Republicans are dealing with the fallout of Katie Zacharia’s firing after just five days on the job,” CNN’s Laura Coates said.

That’s Popular Information’s mission: we investigate, uncover new facts, and hold the powerful accountable.

Right now, we are doing a paid membership drive to fund even more ambitious journalism in the run-up to the midterm elections and beyond. We set a goal of 225 new paid subscribers — and we need 31 more to hit it.

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Also this week in Popular Information

Zacharia repeatedly promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory on social media, accusing elites from the Democratic Party and Hollywood of sexually trafficking children and eating people, a Popular Information review of Zacharia’s social media found.

Shortly after Zacharia’s first press conference, a reporter asked Trump where she had passed the bar exam. Zacharia, standing nearby, suggested she took the test in China, where she worked for a law firm from 2011 to 2013. But this makes no sense. China does not allow U.S. citizens to take its bar exam and no U.S. state offers a bar exam in China.

For months, Trump has celebrated data centers, calling them “absolutely beautiful” and a “Golden Goose.” Yet his super PAC (which he has said he controls) is paying for ads attacking Democratic congressional candidates for supporting data centers. A Popular Information review of two such ads found their claims to be misleading.

The best of the rest

Shortly before Trump retracted threats to strike power plants in Iran in March, “[b]illions of dollars’ worth of contracts predicting oil would fall and the S&P 500 would rise were placed.” After analysts at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) submitted a referral flagging the trades, a senior advisor to Trump’s CFTC chairman told a supervisor “to retract the referral.” (Bloomberg)

A Washington Post analysis revealed that around “two dozen former DOGE staffers have parlayed their government experience into relevant private-sector jobs or investments.” Start-ups linked to former DOGE workers “have raised at least half a billion dollars in funding.” (Washington Post)

A newly uncovered video shows Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who is currently running for Senate, partying in Dubai in late 2024 with two American fugitives and a woman who is not his wife. The fugitives, Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, had been indicted in the U.S. on health care fraud charges months before but had not returned to the country. Ahmed had donated nearly $200,000 to Paxton. (Wall Street Journal)

In 2024, Meta launched an invite-only Facebook Content Monetization program to pay certain creators for their posts. Since then, Meta has invited accounts that promote white supremacy, neo-Nazi ideology, and election fraud conspiracy theories. A report this week identified 29 accounts in the program that have a history of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. (The 19th)

Numerical information

21: The number of U.S. troops who have died during the Iran war, according to an update from the Pentagon.

Around $2,000: The cost of the Iran war for the average American household, according to a new estimate by Moody’s Analytics.

445: The number of days during his second term that Trump has cast doubt on U.S. elections. That’s more than 70% of the days in the term so far.

Quote of the week

“We’re still running transgender ads. It’s just not resonating. $100 million in ads, $125 million in ads, and nothing’s moved the needle here in Texas in a month in the Senate race. Let’s be honest. The 8 to 10 percent of voters in the middle who are going to decide this election, when they hear stuff about boys in girls’ sports, they don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

— Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) in an interview with Texas Monthly

Trump has called data centers “fabulous” and “absolutely beautiful.” Trump has also claimed that data centers make “a fortune” for the surrounding communities, calling them “tremendous WINS for the States and Communities that are lucky enough to get them.” In August, Trump argued that “data centers could be bigger than oil.”

In September, Trump claimed that “communities that were dying” before having data centers are now “wealthy.” In a July post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “One of the biggest Driving Forces in the Future for Jobs, are Data Centers,” arguing that “[t]hey are big, strong, bold, and Money Machines for the State in which they are built.”

Trump has also claimed that data centers make communities safer. “Look, the data centers make a lot of money,” Trump said in a September interview with TIME. “If you want to be poor, you want to have no money, if you don’t want to have a job, and if you want to live in a crime-infested area, squalor, all the things that go along with it, you should not have a data center.” In the same interview, Trump said, “It doesn’t mean I want them right next to my house, but certainly I like them in my county.”

But while Trump is publicly championing data centers, his super PAC, which he has made clear that he controls, is paying for advertisements attacking Democratic candidates for allegedly supporting data centers.

Popular Information obtained a mailer from No Going Back PAC, an alter ego of Trump’s super PAC MAGA Inc., attacking Jamie Ager, the Democratic candidate for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. The mailer attacks Ager for being “open to large AI data centers” and “putting… AI data centers ahead of North Carolinians.”

The mailer was submitted by a North Carolina resident through Popular Information’s new web app, Paid For By.

So, why is Trump’s super PAC attacking Democrats for something he has publicly supported?

The reality is, despite Trump’s support, data centers are deeply unpopular. A Gallup poll conducted in March found that over 70% of Americans “oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area.”

Trump’s contradictory attack mailer is also inaccurate

Aside from being hypocritical, the mailer’s claims about Ager are unsupported.

As evidence for the claim Ager “is open to large AI data centers,” the mailer cites an April article by a news outlet called Mountain Xpress. But that article, in which Ager was asked about his stances on various environmental issues, does not show that he is “open” to data centers.

In the article, Mountain Xpress asked Ager his stance on data center development in relation to a moratorium enacted by the town of Canton, which is in the district he is running to represent. “Data centers need to work for us, not the other way around. If we’re going to let a data center be built in Western North Carolina, it needs to bring good local jobs; it cannot poison our water or our air, and it cannot drive up electric bills for families and small businesses,” Ager responded. “Canton asked the right questions. Every community deserves that ability to set the terms if they want a data center at all.”

Elsewhere, Ager has supported a moratorium on new data centers. In August, Ager said, “I’m really skeptical that centers are a good fit for Western North Carolina… We need to be very careful, and I support a short term moratorium to make sure we study the issue before we make any long term commitments.”

Most recently, Ager wrote in an October 8 Facebook post, “Western North Carolina’s natural beauty is irreplaceable. Data centers strain water resources, raise utility bills, and cause noise pollution. I support a 1-year moratorium on new data centers because these facilities are not good neighbors.”

The mailer also makes unsupported claims about Ager’s healthcare stances, stating that he “would expand giant health insurer profits” and “opposed $50 billion for rural healthcare.” These claims take Ager’s statements out of context. In reality, he has said that Affordable Care Act subsidies should be extended as a stopgap, in order to lower costs for enrollees. He also expressed opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which did include $50 billion for rural healthcare, but also cut Medicaid for rural communities by an estimated $137 billion over ten years.

Trump super PAC’s TV attack on data centers

The Ager mailer is not the only instance in which No Going Back has pushed misleading claims about a Democratic candidate’s stance on data centers.

In a TV ad, No Going Back accused Democrat Jessica Killin, who is running to represent Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, of “profiting off companies pushing for data centers.” The ad specifically claims that a lobbying firm co-founded by Killin’s husband has been paid “$580,000 by tech companies pushing for data centers.”

As evidence, No Going Back cites a New York Times article about data centers that does not mention Killin at all, but does mention Meta and Alphabet — two companies in which Killin’s husband owns stock. According to the Colorado Sun, the claim about Killin’s husband’s lobbying firm is also misleading. The firm FS Vector does lobby on behalf of technology companies that seem to use data centers, but the Colorado Sun could not identify any clients who directly own or operate data centers.

Killin’s campaign told the Colorado Sun that she supports a moratorium on a new data center in El Paso County, Colorado.

For years, President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, has publicly claimed she is a lawyer. Zacharia has repeatedly said she was “outside counsel” to the World Bank and “general counsel” to a California non-profit. Trump himself touted Zacharia as an “attorney” in his post announcing her appointment on Truth Social.

On Tuesday morning, Popular Information reported that there was no evidence that Zacharia was ever licensed to practice law in any state.

A few hours later, Trump was confronted with Popular Information’s report on the South Lawn of the White House by the New York Times’ Shawn McCreesh. Trump motioned to Zacharia, who was standing behind him, to answer the question:

Q: You said she’s an attorney. Where did she pass the bar exam? Which state?

TRUMP (to Zacharia): Which state?

ZACHARIA: When I moved to China.

Q: Where did you pass the bar exam?

Watch:

When Zacharia was pressed again, she appeared to wave the question away.

Zacharia’s answer makes no sense. China’s bar exam is not available to U.S. citizens and U.S. states do not offer bar exams in China.

On Tuesday afternoon, Zacharia provided a somewhat different response to Politico’s Dasha Burns. “I practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials,” Zacharia said.

Zacharia did work for Zhong Lun, a Chinese law firm, from 2011 to 2013. Currently, a foreigner can only practice law at a Chinese firm if they have practiced for two years in their home jurisdiction, among other conditions. The position is called a “foreign legal consultant.”

Mark Jia, a Georgetown Law professor who specializes in China, explained that the formal rules for foreigners at Chinese law firms were put into place in 2017. But even before 2017, Jia said, he was not aware of anyone like Zacharia being hired as a foreign legal consultant. “Why would a Chinese law firm hire someone to advise on foreign law if they were not licensed to practice that law in their home countries?” Jia asked. He suggested it was more possible Zacharia was employed as a paralegal or another similar position.

Further, Jia argued that, even in the event that Zacharia was hired as a foreign legal consultant in China, it would not make her a lawyer:

It is not accurate for her to call herself a lawyer. There is a difference between being licensed to practice law and doing legal work… The Chinese government does not make someone an attorney simply by allowing them to perform some legal work for a law firm. You have to be admitted as a lawyer somewhere, and I have seen no evidence that she was admitted as such anywhere.

The questions about Zacharia’s legal credentials and her fumbling answers resulted in a flood of national and international news coverage.

It is quite clear now that Zacharia has never been licensed to practice law and is not a lawyer. But other questions remain unanswered. How did Zacharia act as general counsel for a California non-profit if she was not admitted to practice? Was the White House aware that she was not a lawyer before she was hired for the job?

Zacharia’s job as press secretary is to talk to the media. So it will be difficult for her to avoid answering these questions.

UPDATE (10/14): This piece was updated to more precisely describe Professor Jia’s views on Zacharia.

This is also how Zacharia, repeatedly and publicly, describes herself. “I’m a lawyer,” Zacharia said during an appearance on the Greg Kelly Show on October 5, 2026. “[A]s a lawyer, the procedural steps are absolutely critical,” Zacharia opined during the August 31, 2026, edition of Fox & Friends First. “I’m a lawyer, I went to Pepperdine, Pepperdine Law,” Zacharia said on the “In Front of Us” podcast on August 14, 2026. “[A]s a lawyer, there’s a big difference between answering something under oath and answering something to the media,” Zacharia explained on CNN on February 7, 2026. There are many more examples.

Zacharia was also identified on screen as a lawyer during at least 18 appearances on Fox News since March 2025.

Yet, there is no evidence that Zacharia ever passed a bar exam or has been admitted to practice law in any state. She is not listed as a member of the State Bar of California, the state where she lives. According to her LinkedIn account, she worked as “General Counsel” for a nonprofit in the state called Fix California. Zacharia is also not listed as a member of the State Bar of Texas or as a member of the D.C. Bar, two other places where she worked.

Popular Information searched for evidence in all 50 states, plus D.C., that Zacharia was admitted to practice law anywhere — and found none.

On Sunday, Popular Information emailed White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly with detailed questions about Zacharia’s professional history, including whether she was ever admitted to practice law in any state. Popular Information received the following response from a general White House Press Office email account: “Refer you to the President’s TRUTH on Katie.” That is the social media post that calls Zacharia an attorney.

A lawyer, by definition, is “an individual who is authorized to practice law.” Merely holding a J.D. degree, as Zacharia does, does not authorize her to practice law. To become a lawyer, she would need to be admitted to a bar, which in most cases involves passing a bar exam.

This is not an academic distinction. In California, where Zacharia says she was employed as “General Counsel” to a nonprofit, holding yourself out as a lawyer when you are not admitted to the state bar (or otherwise authorized to practice) is a crime. According to the law, any person “holding himself or herself out as practicing or entitled to practice law or otherwise practicing law who is not an active licensee of the State Bar, or otherwise authorized pursuant to statute or court rule to practice law… is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Zacharia’s conflicting accounts of her work as “General Counsel” in California

Zacharia’s current LinkedIn page claims that she worked full-time as “General Counsel” to Fix California, a right-wing nonprofit founded by Trump ally Ric Grenell, from January 2024 to March 2025. A general counsel is an organization’s chief legal officer, who represents the organization as an attorney.

It is unclear, exactly, what work Zacharia did as General Counsel for Fix California. If she was engaged in the practice of law, which is typical work for a general counsel, without being an attorney, she would have violated state law. If she did not perform any legal work, why was she claiming to be the organization’s General Counsel?

While her LinkedIn page claims her work as General Counsel at Fix California ended in March 2025, she continued to publicly claim the position long after. In September 2025, Zacharia changed her X bio to “Fox News & Newsmax Analyst General Counsel to Fix California | Lawyer | Political Strategist | Former OPA,” according to an archive of her account. She dropped the General Counsel title from her X bio in November 2025 but put it back in April 2026. An archive of Zacharia’s X bio on May 1, 2026 says: “Fox News, CNN, Newsmax, & OANN et al. Commentator | General Counsel, Fix California | Lawyer | Fmr. Department of Homeland Security Spokeswoman | Sicilian.”

The title remained in her X bio until July 2026.

Over the years, Zacharia has also claimed a number of other roles with Fix California, including Senior Advisor and Chief Administrative Officer. According to Fix California’s IRS filings, Zacharia was never paid a salary. In 2024, she was paid $27,367 as a commission on her fundraising efforts. (The organization has not yet filed its 2025 report with the IRS.)

Zacharia’s conflicting accounts of her legal work in China

After graduating from law school in 2011, Zacharia moved to China, where she worked at Zhong Lun, a large Chinese law firm. It is quite plausible for a law school graduate who is not admitted to practice law in any state to work for a firm in China, since the work may not involve American courts.

But Zacharia has claimed that, while in China, she served as “outside counsel” to both the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). “I was the outside counsel to the IFC and the World Bank,” Zacharia said on the Buck Sexton Show on February 28, 2025. “It was an interesting and exciting experience.” She repeated this description of her work many times, and it was included in her biography for the California Globe, where she was a columnist.

The World Bank and the IFC employing a recent law school graduate with little to no experience as “outside counsel” is less plausible. Indeed, Zacharia’s description of her work while in China has varied. A June 2026 press release announcing Zacharia’s appointment to NovaRed, a mineral exploration company, describes something far narrower: work on “matters involving organizations associated with” the World Bank Group and the IFC.

Katie Zacharia, who was appointed White House press secretary by President Trump on Friday, repeatedly promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy on social media, accusing elites from the Democratic Party and Hollywood of sexually trafficking children and eating people.

Trump plucked Zacharia from relative obscurity. According to Zacharia’s LinkedIn profile, since graduating from Pepperdine Law School in 2011, she has held a variety of legal and media positions, including as a pundit on Newsmax and Fox News. Prior to her appointment, Zacharia’s most recent position was a senior communications advisor for Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform.

Zacharia did not just work for Truth Social; she was also a prolific poster. Since March 2022, Zacharia has posted 2,696 “Truths,” including 1,534 original posts and 1,162 “ReTruths” of posts from other users. While Zacharia’s deleted tweets have attracted some media coverage, her more unguarded use of Truth Social has been overlooked.

Zacharia repeatedly used Truth Social to promote Pizzagate and other fringe conspiracy theories. Pizzagate, which originated in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign, is the unfounded conspiracy that prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and her 2016 presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta, were involved in a child sex trafficking ring.

Pizzagate’s name comes from the baseless claim that Podesta and others held child sex slaves in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., where they also performed satanic rituals. (The establishment does not have a basement.) Online commentators claimed they had uncovered Pizzagate by decoding hacked messages from Podesta’s email account. In December 2016, a man traveled from North Carolina to Comet Ping Pong and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle. Pizzagate formed the basis for the QAnon conspiracy, a more elaborate theory that contends Satan-worshiping Democrats and Hollywood elites ritually murder and cannibalize children.

“[W]hy doesn’t Fox News do a ‘feature’ on what a pedophile Podesta is,” Zacharia posted on her verified Truth Social account on September 7, 2022, tagging Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity.

This followed a similar post from Zacharia on September 4, 2022: “Pedo Podesta. #pedoPodesta.” (These posts were apparently in response to the news that Podesta was joining the Biden White House as an advisor on climate change.) On the same day, Zacharia posted, “The radical left Hollywood elitists are sick pedo cannibals. Change my mind.”

The post was commenting on a story in Variety about the movie “Bones and All,” in which Timothée Chalamet plays a cannibal.

Zacharia continued her campaign for Pizzagate coverage in an October 17, 2022 post, tagging Hannity again and writing, “[W]here’s the feature on John Podesta?”

Several months earlier, on April 8, 2022, Zacharia posted a “ReTruth” from Ali Alexander, a far-right activist and conspiracy theorist: “Democrats want to mask and rape your children. That’s their satanic platform.”

On November 18, 2022, Zacharia honored conspiracy theorist Robert David Steele, who had died of COVID. Steele, a regular guest on Alex Jones’ show, claimed that “there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride.” The Mars colony, Steele asserted, was connected to an elaborate pedophilia ring.

“He was exposing the pedo rings of the elite cabal,” Zacharia posted. “May he Rest In Peace and the work of his hands not have been in vain.”

Zacharia also posted openly about QAnon, the related conspiracy that contends Trump is secretly fighting a Satanic, cannibalistic, child-abusing cabal made up of elites in the Democratic Party, Hollywood, and “the deep state.” The details of all of this, according to QAnon adherents, are revealed through online postings through an anonymous account known as Q and coded signals from Trump himself.

On November 16, 2022, a Truth Social user, “mistercho,” posted, “Did you notice Trump drinking bottled water last night during his announcement. He drank at least 2-3 times. I have not seen him do that at his speeches or rallies. It reminds me of Q posts 765, 767, and 847. Or was it a signal for something else; by land or by sea.” Zacharia responded “I was wondering the same thing…”

Zacharia also posted about her beliefs on “devolution,” the QAnon theory that, after leaving office in 2021, Trump retained control over the military. In response to an April 3, 2022 post asking for evidence of devolution from “patelpatriot,” Zacharia suggested the military signaled that Biden wasn’t really in charge by not giving him a real 21-gun salute on Inauguration Day. “On Biden’s inaugural day, he received a 3 cannon, ~ 9 shot every 8-9 second gun salute versus a true presidential 21 gun salute,” Zacharia wrote.

Four days later, Zacharia posted a “ReTruth” of the same account suggesting that Trump would have been “derelict in his duties” had he not retained control of the military after leaving office.

In response to a request for comment, the White House Press Office referred Popular Information “to the President’s TRUTH on Katie.” In his post, Trump called Zacharia “outstanding” and praised her as “a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning.”

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.