On Monday, Popular Information revealed that Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, who President Trump nominated to permanently head the department, took multiple trips to China in 2015 as an attorney where he pitched Chinese nationals on investment projects in Florida. These events emphasized that investors would be eligible for green cards and would have access to “America’s Comprehensive Welfare.”
Last year, Popular Information broke the news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stopped paying for third-party medical care for detainees on October 3, 2025. Eleven months later, ICE still has no system in place to pay for third-party medical care. Hospitals and other providers who have continued to treat detainees are owed millions of dollars.
During this year’s Super Bowl, State Farm went all out for an ad riffing on Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” poking fun at rival insurance companies for only going “halfway there” with their coverage. This week, the ad was cited in a lawsuit brought against State Farm by Los Angeles County. The lawsuit alleges that State Farm failed to pay benefits to victims of the 2025 LA wildfires and seeks at least $160 million in restitution.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC supporting Senate Republicans, put out an ad last month featuring a father talking about the 2024 murder of his son. The ad connected the murder to the policies of Roy Cooper, the former Democratic governor of North Carolina who is now running for Senate. In an interview with Popular Information, the father in the ad, Ronald Hayes, said that SLF led him to believe he was being interviewed for an ad about gun violence and did not disclose its political affiliation. Hayes called the ad “deceitful.”
The best of the rest
A Mother Jones investigation found that “[m]ore than a dozen local law enforcement agencies across the country have used opioid settlement money to procure Flock cameras and other AI-powered automated license plate readers.” Advocates wanted the money to be used for underserved communities affected by the opioid crisis. (Mother Jones)
ProPublica reported that United States Postal Service (USPS) officials assigned to create new rules on mail-in voting “expressed concerns in internal meetings about how the rules they were drafting could delay or block ballots from reaching large swaths of eligible voters for the upcoming midterms, but the rules moved forward anyway.” (ProPublica)
The U.S. Department of Commerce quietly cut language from its scientific integrity policy that banned political interference from reports issued by the department’s umbrella of agencies, which include the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This change comes as the Census Bureau prepares for the 2030 national census, which could change the distribution of political representation. (NPR)
Numerical information
6 months: Last Friday marked six months of the war with Iran. There is currently no end in sight.
$61: The price of a roll of 25 $1 coins with Trump’s face on them, according to the U.S. Mint website. A bag of 100 coins costs $154.50.
Nearly $253,000: The value of a new contract for lighting renovations at the White House’s Harry S. Truman Bowling Alley.
Quote of the week
“The way the president is playing Iran… there haven’t been American deaths. It’s really just an economic choke-out…”
– U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick during a Wednesday interview with CNBC, ignoring the 18 Americans who have died during the war with Iran. Lutnick apologized for his statement on Thursday.
Photo of the week
Apple Maps changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America for U.S. users following Trump’s executive order changing the name last week. An official White House X account celebrated the change.
Shame on Apple for bending the knee to trump.
I shudder to think how much more potent the mis/disinformation pollution would be if not for independent reporting like this. Thank you :)