A propaganda newspaper bankrolled by George Soros and Democratic operative David Brock falsely described Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed as a military veteran, a claim even his own campaign rushed to disavow.
The Michigan Independent, a state-based paper distributed across Michigan, ran a headline in its August 2026 edition calling El-Sayed a "veteran, doctor, and former health official." El-Sayed has never served in the military. His own campaign spokesman condemned the description after photos of the headline circulated on social media, and Fox News Digital obtained a physical copy of the paper in Michigan.
Cole Wozniak, El-Sayed's campaign spokesman, told Fox News Digital:
"Abdul has never claimed to be a veteran, he never would out of his respect for those who served, and any outlet or group writing about our campaign should do their homework and not allow this to happen again."
The disavowal raises an obvious question: if even the candidate's own team says the label is false, how did it end up in print, and who is behind the paper that published it?
The Michigan Independent is not an ordinary local newspaper. Its front cover lists the name and address of The American Independent Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit headquartered at 800 Maine Ave SW in Washington, D.C., roughly 500 miles from the Michigan voters it claims to serve.
IRS 990 disclosure forms show that in 2024, George Soros's Foundation to Promote Open Society gave The American Independent Foundation a $500,000 grant. The Washington Free Beacon first reported the Soros connection. Soros, a billionaire investor, has long been one of the largest individual donors to progressive and Democratic causes in the country.
The funding trail does not stop there. Each state-based website in the network identifies itself as a project of American Independent Media, a separate 501(c)(4) political activism organization. In 2024, AB Foundation, the 501(c)(4) arm of American Bridge, a group founded by Democratic operative David Brock, donated $23.5 million to American Independent Media. Brock also founded Media Matters, the left-leaning media watchdog group.
So the paper that falsely called El-Sayed a veteran operates inside a web of tax-exempt organizations funded by two of the most powerful figures in Democratic politics, headquartered in the nation's capital, and organized under structures designed for political activism. That is not community journalism. It is an influence operation dressed up as one.
The pattern recalls other recent cases in which powerful institutions have worked behind the scenes to shape political narratives for partisan advantage.
The Michigan Independent is not alone. Fox News Digital reported that at least 12 other state-based newspapers operate in the same Soros-funded network. The outlets span key swing states, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Maine, and Alaska, all of which feature competitive U.S. Senate races in the 2026 midterms.
At the time of Fox News Digital's reporting, both The Ohio Independent and The Pennsylvania Independent featured the same story on their sites: "Report: Trump and Big Oil see financial windfall as Americans pay more at pump." The shared content underscores how the network functions, a centralized operation pushing uniform messaging into local markets under the banner of independent state journalism.
American Independent Media's own stated mission is "to use journalism to educate the public, giving them the information they need about local and federal issues." Distributing a false headline about a Senate candidate's military service record is a strange way to educate anyone.
El-Sayed, who won the Michigan Democratic Senate primary earlier this cycle, spoke at the Michigan Democratic Party's nominating convention in Lansing on Saturday, August 29, 2026. Fox News Digital noted that while El-Sayed holds an M.D., he has never practiced as a physician, another layer of credential inflation that the Michigan Independent headline did nothing to clarify by lumping "veteran" and "doctor" together.
The American Independent did not return Fox News Digital's request for comment. No correction or retraction has been reported. The story in The Michigan Independent was authored by Alyssa Burr, who is listed on LinkedIn as a Michigan Politics Reporter at The American Independent. Before joining the outlet, Burr worked at MLive Media Group, which publishes Michigan Live, and before that at the New York Times.
The silence is telling. A legitimate newsroom that accidentally called a non-veteran a veteran would issue a swift correction and explain how the error occurred. The Michigan Independent has done neither.
El-Sayed's campaign has faced its own controversies beyond this episode. The candidate drew criticism from within his own party over a deleted social media post and his associations with progressive media figures. Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, has pointed to El-Sayed's alignment with the Democratic Socialists of America platform on healthcare and border policies.
Whether the false "veteran" label was an intentional attempt to boost El-Sayed's appeal with Michigan voters or a careless editorial mistake, the result is the same: a Soros- and Brock-funded paper distributed a provably false claim about a Senate candidate's military service in a critical swing state, weeks before a general election.
The broader network, thirteen papers, millions of dollars, two of the Democratic Party's biggest bankrollers, operates in the states where Senate control will be decided. Voters in those states deserve to know that the "local paper" arriving on their doorstep was printed with money from Washington, D.C., and that its very first big Michigan headline got a basic, verifiable fact wrong.
When the people funding your newspaper care more about winning elections than getting facts right, the product is not journalism. It is a campaign mailer with a masthead.
