|
 |
Here are the facts:
In 2021, 34,594 people subscribed to Popular Information after seeing our reporting on Google, Facebook, and Twitter (now X).
We are well over halfway through 2026, and just 943 people have subscribed to Popular Information from those same platforms.
Our work is better than it was five years ago. (We were recently awarded the David Nyhan Prize for Public Policy Journalism by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center.)
But the billionaires who control Google, Facebook, and X have made the decision to choke off traffic to independent outlets like Popular Information. They are not interested in building an audience for stories like the one you are about to read.
This means that in order to survive, we need to decouple our success from the whims of tech oligarchs. That will require investing in new ways to spread the word about our journalism.
To do this, we need your help. If just a small percentage of free subscribers like you upgrade to a paid subscription ($50/year or $6/month), we can expand our reach and magnify our impact.
Thank you for your readership and consideration.
— Judd
In a speech to the Israeli Knesset on October 13, 2025, President Trump spoke at length on how he would deploy his son-in-law Jared Kushner to secure peace deals in Gaza, Iran, and Ukraine. “We always bring Jared when we wanna get that deal closed,” Trump said.
Prior to his work with the Trump White House, Kushner’s main professional experience was as a real estate developer. He almost bankrupted his family’s development company by purchasing an aging New York City skyscraper for $1.8 billion.
After assuming a broad foreign policy portfolio during Trump’s first term, Kushner leveraged his connections with autocrats in the Middle East to raise billions for a new private equity company, Affinity Partners, in 2021. Kushner then pledged not to be involved in a second Trump White House. “I’m an investor now,” Kushner said in February 2024. “I served in government, and I think my track record is pretty impeccable. Now I’m a private investor.”
Without explanation, Kushner broke that pledge and has been involved in nearly every consequential foreign policy negotiation since Trump returned to the White House in early 2025. But he has been pursuing these high-level negotiations as a side hustle, and continuing his role as an investor.
It has not been going well.
Since Trump’s October 2025 speech, the hotspots in Kushner’s portfolio have all deteriorated. Kushner has guided the United States into a substantially worse strategic position. In all cases, the prospects for a lasting peace are further away.
None of this seems to be bothering Kushner.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed, the fighting in Ukraine has intensified, and Israel is rejecting American leadership in Gaza. Meanwhile, Kushner is taking a family vacation in Iceland.
 |
Gaza peace deal crumbles
On Sunday, after months of negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a peace plan for Gaza touted by Trump. The plan would have involved Hamas “hand[ing] over its weapons in stages to a new Palestinian administration in Gaza” in exchange for Israel withdrawing its forces from Gaza.
The plan was negotiated by Trump’s “Board of Peace.” In January, Trump appointed Kushner to the Board of Peace’s Executive Board, as part of his “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.”
Trump celebrated the peace deal at the end of July, writing on Truth Social, “Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY.”
But now, the deal has hit a roadblock. “Israel rejects the 15-point document,” Netanyahu reportedly said in a cabinet meeting, stating that the military “will not make any withdrawal until Hamas is truly disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and citizens.”
At the beginning of August, an exiled Palestinian official alleged that Kushner was involved in the peace deal, writing on social media that “Kushner confirmed to us that he had agreed with the Israeli side to halt the attacks on Gaza beginning tomorrow morning,” the Jerusalem Post reported. (He later edited the post to state instead that “Kushner has informed us that he is working with the Israeli side to stop the attacks on Gaza.”)
Kushner has been involved in negotiations surrounding Gaza for months. Last fall, Trump called on Kushner to help negotiate a ceasefire agreement in Gaza. “We called in Jared,” Trump said in October 2025. “We need that brain on occasion. We gotta get Jared in here.”
Kushner has also been heavily involved in plans to reconstruct Gaza. In January, Kushner presented a plan to develop Gaza at the World Economic Forum at Davos. The plan involved building Gaza into a luxury urban development. Kushner described it as a “destination.” But in the months since, that plan has “shrunk dramatically from an ambitious blueprint for the reconstruction of the whole territory to a small pilot project in the south of the strip,” according to the Guardian.
A diplomatic catastrophe in Iran
Kushner has been one of the Trump administration̵