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Restoration News, which covers topics ranging from abortion to diversity in the military to local school policies, calls itself the news source for the “America First movement.” It is also a line item in a political operation. The site is directly funded by Restoration of America, a right-wing nonprofit that brought in more than seventy-five million dollars in 2024 and spends much of that money on political projects and action committees. Unlike other “pink slime” sites that use AI or automation to produce stories, Restoration News employs human writers who make use of traditional journalistic methods, like Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. But they often fail to meet established journalistic standards. For instance, several subjects of Restoration News stories told the Tow Center they had not been asked for comment before articles about them were published. 

A Tow Center investigation analyzed three years of Restoration News coverage, reviewed tax filings and court records connecting the site to the Restoration of America PAC, and traced its distribution through a network of sites run by Metric Media, a pay-for-play, partisan pink-slime network that operates more than a thousand news sites in the United States. What we found is a new kind of right-wing media that is openly funded by political donors, with a distribution network that reaches prominent politicians and the courts. 

Restoration News began publishing stories in 2023, mostly authored by Hayden Ludwig, the site’s founder. In response to detailed questions from the Tow Center, Ludwig replied by email, “You’ll find all your answers here,” and linked to a published post under the byline of Dan Curry, Restoration News’s chief strategy officer. “They are attacking us because we are effective,” Curry wrote, defending the site’s content as “well-researched news the corrupt liberal media refuses to cover.” In response to a question about whether Restoration News staff or contributors are bound by any ethical guidelines, Curry called the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics “the most meaningless document ever produced,” adding: “We don’t answer to some empty code. We answer to God, who instructs us via Scripture to tell the truth, expose injustice, and don’t bear false witness.” 

Curry went on to criticize the Tow Center and its funding, claiming that Tow “receives millions of dollars from the Left’s top foundations, including the Ford Foundation and billionaire mega-donor George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.” Emily Bell, founding director of the Tow Center, called Restoration News’s statement a “mischaracterization,” and noted that Tow lists its funding sources on its website. “We are consistent and open about our sources of funding,” Bell said. While the Ford and Open Society Foundations “have supported work at the Tow Center in the past, neither is funding projects currently.”

A Politically Funded Newsroom

Doug Truax—who created Restoration of America, in 2015—describes it as the “premier nationwide coordinator of conservative outside groups,” noting that it has raised and spent “well over” a hundred million dollars. Nonprofits are exempt from listing individual donors, but we know that Restoration of America PAC’s main funder is Richard Uihlein, the owner and operator of Uline, the shipping-supply giant, and one of the largest Republican donors in the US. Uihlein has poured millions of dollars into political endeavors, including fake newspapers and election denial campaigns. In 2024, Restoration of America spent two million dollars on Restoration News, according to the nonprofit’s tax records, and contributed almost two million dollars to its own PAC, about half of which is classified as “in kind” contributions. (Federal Election Commission filings show that Restoration of America PAC has spent one hundred and twenty million dollars since 2023 to fund other PACs and political organizations, as well as more than thirty million on opposition to Kamala Harris in 2024.)

Restoration of America’s site offers users the opportunity to give “unlimited” donations to each of its organizations. The main organization is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which allows for participation in political activity like lobbying or campaigning as long as it is not the organization’s “primary activity.” 

Restoration of America has extensive connections to Metric Media. The Voter Reference Foundation, another Restoration organization, has published data drawn from voter rolls in an effort to challenge the results of the 2020 election, relying, in part, on a data-mining operation run by Metric founder Brian Timpone. The Restoration of America PAC paid almost two million dollars in 2021 and 2022 to two organizations associated with Metric Media’s stakeholders: Pipeline Advisors and Pipeline Media. Metric’s local news sites often cite Restoration News coverage, and records show that Edward Weinhaus, a lawyer representing Metric Media in several lawsuits related to records requests, also represented Restoration News in at least one FOIA lawsuit in Virginia. In response to a question about Restoration’s connection to Metric Media and Timpone, Curry wrote, “Is Brian Timpone the guy you and other liberal media outlets repeatedly associate with the pejorative, ‘pink slime?’” (Punctuation sic. Timpone spoke to CJR for a story published in February about Metric Media.) 

Restoration News sits within a growing class of right-wing media outlets that are explicitly connected to political funding. Similar organizations include The Lion, published by the conservative-Christian Stanley M. Herzog Foundation, and Turning Point USA, which advocates right-wing politics on college campuses and produces news-like products such as a livestreamed talk show, along with a watch list of “radical” professors. The goal of Restoration News is “to cultivate a right-wing interpretation of the world,” A.J. Bauer, a University of Alabama professor who studies far-right media, said.

When it started, three years ago, Restoration News regularly covered national stories on voting records, political influence, abortion, and schools. By 2024, its scope and volume had increased significantly; at its peak, in the run-up to the 2024 election, the site published almost twenty articles a week. Its investigations probe the influence of “dark money” on topics like abortion pills and immigration. It has also created several podcasts, such as Restoration Spotlight, in which Ludwig and Restoration News contributors discuss their work in episodes with titles such as “Stopping the Illegal Alien Crime Wave with Vicky Manning,” and Restoring America—hosted by Grace Reilly, Restoration of America’s media relations manager—which “helps Christians and conservatives understand culture, politics, faith, family, and freedom without losing sight of truth.” The site relies on a growing network of authors who frequently contribute to a slew of right-leaning outlets. Jacob Grandstaff, for instance, is an investigative researcher at Restoration News who has written more than two hundred articles. He has also written for The Federalist, RealClearPolitics, the American Conservative, the American Spectator, and more. Curry wrote that Restoration News chooses “people who are smart, resourceful, non-Leftist ideologues who can think on their feet.” 

Chronicling the ‘Woke Left’

Victoria Manning is one of Restoration News’s most prolific authors; only Ludwig has had more bylines. She covers topics ranging from Virginia politics to education and the military. Manning’s Restoration News bio identifies her as a senior investigative researcher who served for eight years as an elected school board member and has a master’s degree in law. In 2022, while she was on the Virginia Beach school board, she made comments suggesting that teaching English to students from South America was “not sustainable,” which, according to the Associated Press, led Virginia’s education secretary to remove Manning from a statewide working group on “innovative education and lab schools.” “Victoria Manning has made a huge difference in her excellent reporting,” Curry wrote in his public response to Tow’s questions, adding that she has “made no secret of her affiliation with the Virginia Beach School Board.” Manning “has held public officials accountable and exposed wrongdoing. Just like a real journalist. Please take notice.” Manning did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Manning’s coverage, like that of other Restoration News contributors, includes the names and faces of her subjects, sometimes pulled from social media and republished without seeking their input or even informing them that a story is coming. She has described some subjects as “extremists,” and others—including teachers, universities, various military officers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and realtors—as “woke.” In a January story about opposition to a Virginia Beach high school’s Turning Point USA club, Manning wrote: “Even after the violent political assassination of Charlie Kirk, these continued attacks against TPUSA are a continued reminder that leftists don’t care if conservatives die.” (In this case, Manning reported that she sought comment from two people who opposed the club. One told her that “there wasn’t ‘an organization, aside from perhaps the Ku Klux Klan, that is more out of touch with the teachings of Christianity’” than TPUSA, while the other refused to answer her questions and instead “disparaged [Restoration News] as ‘associated with harassment campaigns, intimidation tactics, and political violence.’”) “If we desire a future marked by stability, dignity, and true flourishing for both women and men, the path forward is not found in ideologies that discard timeless truth, but in returning to the wisdom God has already provided,” she wrote in a March piece titled “Marxist Feminists Were the First Supporters of Transgender Ideology.” In 2024, Manning wrote a story about Omekongo Dibinga, a motivational speaker who was hired to speak at an assembly at a school in Virginia Beach. “When Dibinga’s tweets and hateful blog posts were discovered, the community was outraged that he would be speaking to nearly 2,000 students at one of the largest high schools in Virginia,” Manning wrote, citing posts on Dibinga’s Substack that link capitalism to climate change and criticize Donald Trump and other MAGA leaders, as well as a post on X about the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. “Parents spoke up and ultimately the speaking engagement was called off.” Manning did not quote Dibinga in the story, nor did she indicate that she had tried to contact him for comment. Dibinga told the Tow Center he had “no idea” the story had been published. He said the school’s principal blamed school board members for the cancellation. Even though Manning’s Restoration News bio says she served as “an elected school board member,” it does not say that she was on the board in Virginia Beach, where the controversy over Dibinga’s speech occurred; Manning also failed to disclose in the story that she was a board member when Dibinga’s speech was canceled. 

Another of Manning’s stories focused on Uwill, an online therapy service that, according to its website, provides services to over four million students in schools and colleges worldwide. In 2025, the Virginia Beach school district contracted with Uwill to offer online counseling to tens of thousands of middle- and high school students. This appears to have outraged Manning, who included names and a social media photo of Uwill therapists who advertise their experience in and openness to working with LGBT kids. Uwill “brags that 25 percent of their counselors identify as LGBTQIA+ and some of their top therapists specialize in sexual identity counseling,” Manning wrote. “Yet they don’t offer support based on a student’s religious beliefs, a central tenet of mental health treatment for many Christians and other faith traditions.” The story makes no reference to attempts by Manning to contact either Uwill or the therapists she mentions by name. (Uwill did not respond to my request for comment.) One therapist named in the story, Jessica Edwards, confirmed she was not contacted by Restoration News prior to publication and said she “found the article to be ridiculous” and “will always advocate and fight for marginalized groups.” The story does include a statement from a school board member concerned about the contract and refers to an unnamed Virginia Beach school employee who attended a required Uwill training and “said it’s just another task added to their plates.” 

“Extremists are determined to permanently dismantle the traditional American family. Government schools impose their secular religion and advocate for raising children from ‘cradle to career,’” Manning wrote. “Big government is usurping parental rights and responsibilities—and establishing ownership over your kids.”

In 2025, Manning wrote about a Virginia school board member who failed to comply with a records request from Restoration News. The site, represented by Weinhaus, sued the school board member and won. (The Tow Center previously detailed Metric Media’s attempts to litigate a variety of rejected FOIA requests.) 

Restore the Military

Last year, Restoration News started Restore the Military, a website dedicated to outing military personnel who are “more focused on woke politics than on warfighting.” The site contains more than a hundred profiles and photos of “the worst offenders,” sometimes stamped with red “Retired” or “Fired” labels. One Air Force colonel is quoted as saying that “diversity is a strength” and noted to have spoken at a conference called “Celebrating Women Who Have Made Great Achievements.” An Air Force official is said to have participated in a Diversity and Inclusion Working Group and to have organized a Women’s Equality Day, while a Navy rear admiral is referred to as a “mask nazi” for his views on the COVID pandemic.

Restore the Military claims credit for having had a significant impact on its targets’ careers. A banner on the site says the Senate had stopped six senior military officers from being promoted “thanks to the work of the Foundation of the Restoration of America.” The Tow Center found that only one nominee, Air Force colonel George Hall Sebren Jr., was temporarily blocked, in July of 2025, by Indiana Republican senator Jim Banks, who cited concerns about Sebren’s views on diversity. A research paper Sebren published in 2017, in which he argued that the Air Force was “not drawing upon its full talent pool for leadership in its most senior positions,” had been posted on Restore the Military at least a week earlier, according to archived versions of the site. The Senate has since confirmed the promotions of all six officers, including Sebren. 

Undercover Journalism? 

In 2026, Restoration News began publishing articles by Chelly (C.K.) Bouferrache. Bouferrache, who describes herself as a “blue state dissident,” goes by the handle Honeybadgermom on X, where she posted a video of herself in a face-covering disguise known as black bloc. (In a recent piece about May Day protests in Portland, Bouferrache wrote that she took “precautions with our appearance that journalists covering these crowds have learned are necessary.”) She has also been at the center of altercations with demonstrators. Last October, for instance, an anti-ICE protester sued Bouferrache in Multnomah County Circuit Court after he said she pepper-sprayed him at a demonstration, according to The Oregonian. Bouferrache said she had used the pepper spray in self-defense. She “had a reasonable fear of imminent harm and used a proportional amount of force to protect herself,” attorney Julie Parrish wrote in response to the lawsuit, which is ongoing. Bauer, the University of Alabama professor, said the popularity of figures such as Bouferrache, who has more than sixty thousand followers on X, is akin to the rise of political influencers such as Nick Shirley, the right-wing YouTuber whose independent investigations into Somali-run childcare centers went viral last year. “The barriers to entry are extremely low now for just a random Twitch streamer or video blogger to go out to a protest and get in people’s faces and instigate,” Bauer said. (Restoration News did not directly respond to Tow’s questions about Bouferrache. Bouferrache did not respond to requests for comment.) 

In a story for Restoration News about a bombing at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland in May, Bouferrache quoted an unnamed source who described the bomber, Bruce Whitman, who was killed in the attack, as a “left-wing anti-capitalist antifa whack job.” (An editor’s note states that “some sources” were not identified “due to fear of retaliation.”) The story suggests that Whitman’s failed efforts to unionize the club, where he worked from 2012 to 2019 as a banquet server and bartender, according to The Oregonian, had triggered the attack. Bouferrache also blames pro-labor city councilors for having been complicit. Whitman’s “political views were consistent with that resentment—a Bernie Sanders supporter whose anti-capitalist worldview put him squarely in the ideological orbit that Portland’s radical Left has spent years cultivating,” Bouferrache wrote. The city councilors “helped build the world these people live in. They cultivated the rage. They legitimized the targets,” she wrote. “They said unions were ‘the compromise,’ leaving the rest unsaid.” The story does not include comments from anyone identified as being related to or even having personally known Whitman, nor does it reference any attempt to contact them. Other local reporting characterized Whitman as a man with severe mental health difficulties who years earlier had filed complaints about sexual harassment and unionization efforts at the club. 

“A professional journalist goes out to report on the world as it is, regardless of whatever they find,” Bauer said. “A right-wing reporter will go out into the world looking for things that affirm their priors, or details that might help them in bolstering their case, and then they report on that.” 

In its post responding to the Tow Center’s request for comment, Restoration News says it “simply reports on the legitimate stories the Left refuses to cover.” The site’s donors are told something different: “We are waging a Permanent Campaign to defeat the radical Left,” one of the site’s donation pages reads. “YOUR sustained support will ensure victory over Democrats.”

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