This week, Popular Information released PaidForBy.info, a web app that gives unprecedented insight into who is really sending you political mailers — and who is paying for it. Anyone can use it for free. All you have to do is take a photo of the front and the back of the mailer and upload it. It also works on YouTube and TV ads.
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
The joke is on the GOP because nobody reads their mail anymore. Americans don’t read in the first place and I only hope the printers and distributors of this matter are owned by liberals so they can make some cash. My home has a garbage can on the way from the mailbox so I can drop this stuff off before it even gets in the house.
Just want to say I think your "paid for by" app is a good idea and hope it proves successful in informing and enlightening to at least some extent some not completely insignificant number of voters, because I have my doubts about the rational and analytical abilities of the electorate writ large and that the desires of that electorate are too often now counter to the functioning of a true, working democracy.
But every little bit in the fight against the neo-Fascist forces now aligned against transparency in our democracy and therefore against that democracy itself must be brought to bear if we are to succeed in defending our country from the malign actors behind those forces. So, props for the app.
And for being one of the "good guys" in this fight.