In March 2020, I took down Popular Information's paywall. Since then, each edition of Popular Information (655 newsletters!) has been freely available to everyone. And over the last three years, we've been able to produce journalism that rattles the cages of the powerful and creates change. Here are a few examples from the last six months:

• Popular Information broke the news that Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) secretly purchased a $600,000 home in Nashville. Our reporting forced Sexton to admit his family lives in Nashville and raised serious questions about whether Sexton can legally represent a district two hours away. The news generated a flurry of national and local media coverage, including a lengthy piece in the Tennessean, the state's largest paper. Based on our reporting, residents of Sexton's district filed a civil complaint with the Tennessee Attorney General based, and a non-profit watchdog group called for state and federal criminal investigations into Sexton's conduct.

• Popular Information exposed how Walgreens, which is refusing to dispense abortion pills in several states where abortion remains legal, financially supports the anti-abortion movement. Our Twitter thread on Walgreens quickly went viral, and Walgreens became the #2 trending topic on Twitter. A few hours later, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that his state would stop doing business with Walgreens.

• Popular Information revealed that a conservative group had launched a brazen plan to exploit a Michigan statute that allows parents to opt kids out of sex education, using the law to force schools to erase LGBTQ people. Four days later, the Michigan Department of Education released a memo telling schools that parents are not legally entitled to opt children out of "programs, practices, and resources" outside of sexual education. The memo was first reported by the Detroit Free Press, which linked the publication of the memo to Popular Information's reporting. 

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Last month, Popular Information was featured in the Washington Post as one of a handful of "news outlets reimagining political journalism in smart ways," commending our work for "addressing some of political journalism’s long-standing shortcomings." 

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