The Onion's InfoWars relaunch kicks off with cash for the Sandy Hook families

InfoWars relaunches today with the help of Tim Heidecker, and with a $100,000 payment to the victims' families.

By Drew Gillis  |  July 2, 2026 | 9:10am
Graphic from The Onion/InfoWars
Aux News The Onion
The Onion's InfoWars relaunch kicks off with cash for the Sandy Hook families

After more than 18 months of back and forth, The Onion is finally ready to relaunch InfoWars as a parody (and thus better version) of its old self. The relaunch will kick off in earnest at 8 pm ET today with an Emergency Broadcast from Tim Heidecker and The Onion‘s Jim Haggerty. (The Onion was a sister site of The A.V. Club until 2024.) The details about this broadcast are still a little vague (and we asked!) but we did get some more concrete information this morning about the financial side of things. Both NBC News and the Associated Press report that the return of InfoWars will kick off with a donation of $100,000 to the families of Sandy Hook victims, an obvious improvement from the harassment they endured from Alex Jones and his supporters for years. 

Per the AP, the money will go to the families from merch revenue generated by The Onion‘s merchandise sales. InfoWars creator Alex Jones was ordered to pay $1.4 billion after smearing the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax and the parents and children involved as crisis actors. In the years since the judgement, Jones hasn’t paid anything, declaring bankruptcy and finding other avenues to avoid the payment. Even though the legal machinations on Jones’ side have interfered with The Onion‘s relaunch, CEO Ben Collins is still moving forward with his parody and repayment plans. As Collins told The A.V. Club‘s William Hughes last week, “The families, they’re on our side. They want us, desperately, to take this thing over and to get paid anything.”

 
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