What to Know Ahead of the Misinformation Midterms
NewsGuard’s Guide to Staying Ahead of Midterms Misinformation
From Russian influence campaigns pushing bogus claims about candidates, to new secretly partisan-funded “pink slime” sites masquerading as legitimate news outlets, NewsGuard analysts have been separating truth from fiction ahead of the midterm elections on Nov. 3, 2026. Here is some of our coverage that you may have missed.
Social Media:
Pay to Say: Influencers Caught in NewsGuard Sting
NewsGuard reporters presented themselves as a political consulting firm and asked 60 influencers to run a paid political message without disclosing the arrangement. More than one-third agreed.
X’s Community Notes Flunk the Midterms
X’s crowdsourced fact-checking program failed to catch 93 percent of posts advancing false midterms claims, a NewsGuard analysis found.
OpenAI’s Compliant Midterm Fake Image Machine
OpenAI’s new text-to-image generator, ChatGPT Image 2.5, created compromising images of political candidates 80 percent of the time when prompted, a NewsGuard audit found.
Russian Influence Operations:
Russian Deepfake Accuses Talarico of Sexually Abusing Student
A Russian influence campaign created an AI-generated video targeting the Texas Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton. Top chatbots spread the Russian fake.
Russia Fabricates Sexual Assault Charges Against Sherrod Brown
A phony television news report concocted sexual assault allegations against the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio from four former staffers.
Russia Strikes Again, Targeting Maine’s Troy Jackson
A fabricated report claims that the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine was accused of threatening to kill campaign aides with an ax.
Russia Fabricates Celebrity Attacks on Democrats as Midterms Approach
A Kremlin-linked influence operation fabricated news video reports claiming celebrities blame Democrats for their relatives’ gender transitions.
Partisan “Pink Slime” Websites:
“Pink Slime” Oozes Into Battleground States
Networks of left- and right-wing websites masquerading as independent local news publishers are spending big on Meta to spread their “news.”
AI Chatbots Amplify PAC-Funded News About Midterms
POLITICO Magazine published a report by NewsGuard analysts finding that when asked about the midterm elections, AI chatbots cite secretly partisan sites disguised as independent outlets nearly half the time.
Partisan ‘Pink Slime’ Network Weaponizes TikTok
Courier Newsroom, a network of 20 state-focused news sites silently backed by millions of dollars from liberal groups, is making a major bet on TikTok ahead of the midterms.
Campaign Ads Cite Pink Slime ‘News’
In yet another indication that partisan “pink slime” news sites are seeping into the political discourse and media ecosystem, candidates and political action committees are citing these secretly partisan sites as if they were independent sources in political ads.
GOP-Funded ‘Pink Slime’ Targets Michigan
A Republican PAC launched a deceptive partisan website in the battleground state aimed at disparaging Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
How Major Advertisers Bankroll ‘Pink Slime’
NewsGuard found programmatic ads for nine top brands on pink slime sites, inadvertently funding highly partisan sites that masquerade as independent local outlets.
For a complete report on NewsGuard’s midterms-related coverage, see NewsGuard’s Midterms Misinformation Briefing.
For a continuously updated list of the false claims NewsGuard has debunked related to the midterms, see our 2026 Elections False Claims Tracker.
Become a Reality Check Premium Member and get NewsGuard AI for free. Click here.
This newsletter was edited by Sofia Rubinson and Eric Effron.
Reality Check is produced by co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
We launched Reality Check to shed light on the false claims spreading online, how they spread, and the forces behind them. Each day, we aim to bring you the story behind your news feed and help you stay informed about the false claims circulating in the news. Support our work by becoming a premium member.
Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.