The satirical news outlet The Onion is back with a new plan to take over the Infowars platforms of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones as his company faces liquidation over more than $1 billion in defamation judgments owed to relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Under a proposal submitted Monday (April 20, 2026) to a state judge in Texas, The Onion would be granted an exclusive, temporary license to the intellectual property of Infowars' parent company, Free Speech Systems, allowing the outlet to put its own content on the Infowars website and social media accounts.
Ben Collins, chief executive of The Onion, said the deal could be in place around April 30, if approved by Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin. He said The Onion has already hired people to run Infowars as a parody site including Tim Heidecker, one half of the comedy duo Tim and Eric known for their work on the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” shows.
“We’ll build this into a bigger comedy network,” Collins said in phone interview Monday, adding the Sandy Hook families would receive profits from the new operations.
“A big part of it for us is that the way people consume news now is they see somebody who has no idea what the [expletive] they’re talking about staring into their camera and just like coming up with conspiracy theories or telling you health hacks that will actually get you poisoned, things like that," he said. "We’re going to create a bunch of characters and worlds around those kinds of things."
