There is a website called the Alaska Navigator. It calls itself "independent news covering the Last Frontier." It has headlines, a news section, and articles with no byline.

It is not a news outlet. It is owned and operated by One Nation, the dark money group that works hand in hand with the Senate Leadership Fund — the super PAC that exists to elect Senate Republicans. One Nation has handed that super PAC over $70 million this election cycle alone.

And the Alaska Navigator is not the only one. Popular Information found at least six of these fake local news sites, one in each state with a competitive Senate race. Four of them are built around Republicans we track: Dan Sullivan in Alaska, Susan Collins in Maine, Jon Husted in Ohio, and Ashley Hinson in Iowa.

If you live in one of those states and you have scrolled past one of these articles on Facebook, you were the target.

What the Alaska site told voters about Dan Sullivan

On June 10, the Alaska Navigator published a piece headlined "As Fentanyl Deaths Rise in Alaska, Sullivan Pushes Tougher Penalties and Enforcement." It has no author's name on it. It says Dan Sullivan "is leading efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and support law enforcement agencies confronting the epidemic."

Sullivan has been a senator for more than a decade. To back up the claim that he is "leading" on fentanyl, the article offers exactly one thing: his vote for the HALT Fentanyl Act in March 2025.

Eighty-four senators voted for that bill. Sullivan did not write it. He was not one of its 16 original cosponsors. He signed on about a week before it passed.

That is not leadership. That is being present.

The article also credits a retired Alaska Wildlife Trooper director with praising Sullivan — without a single direct quote from him, without explaining what Sullivan supposedly did, and without mentioning that the man is himself running for the state legislature as a Republican. Popular Information could find no record of him ever saying anything publicly about Sullivan on fentanyl or anything else.

Then One Nation spent tens of thousands of dollars pushing this article into Alaskans' Facebook feeds — with an ad announcing a "New Bill to Crack Down on Fentanyl Trafficking, Supported By Dan Sullivan." There was no new bill. The only bill in the article was signed into law in July 2025.

The site was built to look older than it is

The domain thealaskanavigator.com was registered on March 20, 2026 — a few months before it started flooding Facebook.

But the site carries an article dated January 2026, which makes it look like an outlet with some history behind it. According to the website's own source code, that article was generated with a WordPress plugin called FakerPress, which advertises itself as "a clean way to generate fake and dummy content."

They faked a back catalog so the propaganda would look like a newspaper.

Maine, Ohio, and Iowa got their own versions

The other sites run the same play with the same design and the same purpose.

Maine Policy Updates calls itself "Maine's News Source." Its front page is a wall of praise for Susan Collins: "Susan Collins Secures $150 Million+ for Maine Water Projects," "Senator Susan Collins Delivers $190M Lifeline for Rural Health Care in Maine," "Senator Collins Secures Record Diabetes Research Funding." It has been running since January — longer than any of the others.

Ohio Pulse bills itself as "your trusted source for local news, investigative journalism, and community stories across the Buckeye State." Its investigative journalism includes "Husted Announces $19.5M For East Toledo Project" and "Husted Announces $60 Million For Ohio Military Installations." Jon Husted is on the ballot in Ohio this year, and nearly every headline on the site is an announcement of money he says he delivered.

Iowa Voice — "Stay Informed. Stay Iowa" — is built around Ashley Hinson, including "Iowa Congresswoman Hinson Co-Sponsoring Bill to Limit Birthright Citizenship" and an item literally headlined "OPINION: Ignore The Lies; Ashley Hinson Bill Backs Farmers, Consumers."

There is one more detail worth knowing. The image files on these "independent" outlets are served from numbered folders on a single shared WordPress installation — Maine is site 2, Ohio is site 12, Iowa is site 13. Six local newspapers, one machine.

And at the bottom of each homepage, in small faint type, the same four words: "Paid for by One Nation."

The other two sites run the opposite play

Georgia and New Hampshire are the states in this group where the seat is held or sought by a Democrat. Those sites don't praise a Republican. They go after the Democrat.

Peach State Post — "Georgia's Premier News Source" — leads with a July 30 piece headlined "Jon Ossoff Tax Vote Renews Debate Over Expiring Tax Cuts and Their Impact on Georgia Families," which falsely suggests Georgia's Democratic senator opposes increasing the Child Tax Credit — the same attack running in a One Nation TV ad. The rest of the front page is Trump: his Georgia visit, his endorsements.

New Hampshire Daily — "an independent news organization dedicated to covering the stories that matter most to Granite State residents" — runs as its top story a letter to the editor headlined "Chris Pappas raises taxes, while John Sununu cuts." Below it: "Questions About Congressional Ethics Resurface Over of Rep. Chris Pappas Relationship With Amazon Lobbyist." (The garbled "Over of" is theirs.)

So the network has two settings. Where a Republican holds the seat, it's a praise machine. Where a Democrat does, it's an attack machine. Same platform, same funder, same disclosure buried in the footer.

The Iowa story that quoted no Iowans

Iowa Voice ran a piece headlined "Iowa Farmers Say Potential 'Death Tax' Threatens Family Succession Plans." It praises Hinson for being an original cosponsor of the Death Tax Repeal Act, which would wipe out the federal estate tax.

That part is true. Congressional records confirm Hinson signed on to H.R. 1301 as an original cosponsor on February 13, 2025, alongside 174 other Republicans.

Here is what the article leaves out. The federal estate tax barely touches farms at all. The USDA's own economists estimate that about 0.3 percent of farm estates — 141 estates in 2024 — would owe any estate tax. Repealing it is a tax cut for the wealthiest estates in the country, dressed up as saving the family farm.

And despite the headline claiming "Iowa Farmers Say," the piece does not quote or paraphrase a single farmer.

This is the same playbook Hinson's own campaign used when it attacked her opponent with three claims he had never made within an hour of him winning his primary. The difference is that an attack ad says who paid for it.

You are not supposed to know who is behind it

That is the whole point.

One Nation is organized as a 501(c)(4), which means it never has to say who gives it money. So nobody knows who is funding these websites. When One Nation buys a Facebook ad pushing one of these articles, the ad discloses that One Nation paid for it — but never that One Nation owns the website the ad points to. That fact appears only in small, faint type at the very bottom of each site.

The sites also borrow credibility from real journalists — and they do it more than once.

Peach State Post republished an entire 11Alive story about former Atlanta officials being denied clemency, presented it as its own work, and tacked "Read more here" onto the end — even though there was nothing more to read.

New Hampshire Daily does the same thing to public radio. Its story "Police on patrol in NH now have quicker access to bail information," bylined "Josh Rogers, Dan Tuohy," is NHPR's reporting, published by NHPR on June 29, 2026 — reporters' names and all, sitting on a site owned by a Senate super PAC's dark money arm.

That is the trick that makes the rest work. Real journalism from real newsrooms is used as ballast, so the paid attacks alongside it look like they came from the same place.

Across all six sites, One Nation has spent between $198,900 and $274,640 on Meta ads. One Nation did not respond to Popular Information's request for comment.

Why this matters more than a normal ad

Sullivan, Collins, Husted, and Hinson all have real records. Voters can look up how they voted on healthcare, on food assistance, on taxes, and decide.

These websites exist so that voters don't do that. They are built to intercept people who are trying to be informed — someone searching for local news about their senator, someone scrolling past what looks like a hometown paper. Real local newsrooms have been closing across all four of these states for years. Dark money moved into the empty space and put up a storefront.

None of these four senators has said a word about it.

We have written before about the money that surrounds them: the billionaire super PAC money flowing into Maine for Collins, and the utility and tech companies funding Husted while Ohioans' electric bills climb. Those are at least disclosed. This is the version where the spending hides inside something that looks like the news.

If you see a story about your senator on a site you have never heard of, check who owns it. In at least six states right now, the answer is a super PAC.

Source

Senate Republicans launch network of fake news sites — Judd Legum, Popular Information, August 6, 2026. Image: Popular Information.