Michigan's 'Trusted Reporting' Site Is a GOP Super PAC Attack Ad

Senate Leadership Fund, the main Republican super PAC for Senate races, has spent $59,400 to $76,815 on Facebook and Instagram ads since September to put MichiganderNews.com in front of Michigan voters. Before launch, the site was built on SLF’s own development server. It publishes attacks on Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed under the motto “Trusted reporting for the state of Michigan,” with the Mackinac Bridge as its logo. The vote is November 3.

A voter scrolling Facebook sees a headline from what looks like a local outlet, clicks, and is reading a campaign ad. The only sign of who paid for it is a tiny footer line: “Paid for by SLF PAC.” NewsGuard found that the site never says what SLF stands for and has no About page, which is where a real news site tells readers who owns it. Its pre-launch test copy carried a different footer, “Paid for by One Nation”. That copy sat on a server at an SLF web address.

Mock local-news homepage with a tiny political funding disclaimer at the bottom.

The coverage runs in one direction. A September article carried the headline “‘I believe that we do need to defund the police.’ Abdul El-Sayed Comments on Police Funding and Prison Releases Draw Renewed Attention.” It told readers:

“That point of view has since become unpopular with working class Michiganders who have been victims of crimes by former inmates.”

An October follow-up, “Abdul El-Sayed’s Past Comments on Taking Guns from Police Officers and Early Prison Releases Resurface,” dug up a 2020 video in which he backed “any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons.” The article called this “the extreme far-left approach to public safety advocated for by Democratic Socialists like Abdul El-Sayed.” The comments “resurfaced” because the site published them.

Neither piece gives El-Sayed’s side. That includes his campaign’s July statement to CNN that his “perspective [on law enforcement] has become more nuanced,” as quoted by NewsGuard. Including it is the most basic step a newsroom takes, and the site skips it.

SLF is also paying to promote a twin site, TheNorthCarolinian.org, aimed at Democrat Roy Cooper. NewsGuard puts that spending at $71,400 to $101,346. It calls both sites pink slime: outlets that present themselves as professional news while partisan groups secretly back them. The name comes from the filler added to ground meat. Michigander News is the 22nd new one NewsGuard has found this year, and there are 1,181 nationwide. SLF and the site did not respond to NewsGuard.

The budget is small, and it does not need to be large. The North Carolina site had drawn more than 3.6 million views by late September on $34,700 to $46,715 in Meta ads, AFP reported. The label problem doesn’t stay on the page, either. AI chatbots have already been caught citing partisan news sites without naming their backers. A footer nobody reads becomes a source nobody questions.

The race is tight. In October polls El-Sayed led Republican Mike Rogers 48-47 in Quantus, 49-48 in YouGov and 48-46 in InsiderAdvantage, and he led 46-41 in CBS Detroit/Mitchell. The averages put him about three points ahead, 48.1% to 45.5% in RealClearPolitics as of October 17.

SLF is treating it as winnable. As of October 21 it had put $36.9 million into the race, and $36.5 million of that went to attacking El-Sayed. That is up from the $32.8 million NewsGuard counted, and it is headed toward the $51 million SLF has committed. In September, Elon Musk gave the PAC $158 million in two checks, according to the New York Times and FEC filings. Measured against SLF’s $36.9 million, the fake newsroom’s ad budget is about 0.16% to 0.21%. The disguise costs SLF very little.

Built on SLF’s own servers, in eight states

Michigander News belongs to a larger network. On August 6, Popular Information reported six state-branded “news” sites, including Ohio Pulse, Iowa Voice and Peach State Post. They were run by One Nation, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that has given SLF more than $70 million this cycle. The sites had spent $198,900 to $274,640 on Meta ads, and One Nation’s name appeared only in “small, faint type at the very bottom.”

Sixteen days later, Boho News found the Michigander News test site at michigandernews.slfsites.com, still filled with placeholder Latin. Its footer said “Paid for by One Nation.” By launch, the footer read “Paid for by SLF PAC.” The two groups are hard to tell apart. Alex Latcham is executive director of both, and SLF took $70.74 million from One Nation in 2026.

Boho tied the sites together through three things they share:

the same Google Analytics tag, G-MB5F8297KV
the same WordPress theme
the same vendor, Acquire Digital, which has been paid about $26,300 by SLF

The sites cover eight states. They are the same eight states as SLF’s $342 million Senate campaign, announced in April. Boho also found that 14 of the network’s 59 articles were backdated.

Elon Musk and One Nation fund the Senate Leadership Fund, which pays Acquire Digital and buys ads aimed at Michigan and North Carolina.

Federal rules require political committees to put disclaimers on their public websites. Under the regulation, 11 CFR 110.11, a communication that no candidate authorized must name the payer in full and say that no candidate authorized it. Michigander News shows “Paid for by SLF PAC,” per NewsGuard, and never spells out SLF.

The sites cover eight states. They are the same eight states as SLF’s $342 million Senate campaign, announced in April.

Michigan has seen this from both parties

Democrats do this too, and they have done it in Michigan. The liberal-funded Courier network has run The ‘Gander there since at least 2020. That year, Bridge Michigan reported that Courier spent more than $80,000 promoting coverage of Elissa Slotkin and that The ‘Gander spent $142,294 on ads in a single primary month. The same report counted 37 or more GOP-linked Metric Media sites in the state. Courier is no small player: it spent over $6 million on Meta ads in October 2024 alone. Aimee Rinehart of the misinformation research group First Draft described the problem in the Bridge report:

“The fact that it is owned by an organization that supports a candidate and a party…that’s not journalism.”

This year, the Michigan Independent, a newspaper-style mailer from the Democratic-aligned American Independent Foundation, wrongly called El-Sayed a veteran. Joe Conason, the foundation’s president, blamed a headline rewrite for print. El-Sayed’s spokeswoman said “Abdul has never claimed to be a veteran.”

It does not change what the record shows about SLF’s site. A super PAC built it on its own server. It belongs to a network laid out to match that PAC’s $342 million Senate map. And it is paid for out of an operation that has put $36.9 million into this race alone and took $158 million from Musk in a single month. On the outside-money ledger, the side it serves leads $117.5 million to $57.9 million.

Before trusting a local “news” site, check two things. Look for an About page naming an owner and an editor; Michigander News has none. Then read the footer and search the name in Meta’s ad library. That is what gives this site away.

The North Carolina twin went from $17,283 across 24 ads in August to as much as $101,346 by October.