Media

The Onion has a new plan to take over Infowars

A new deal, which would allow The Onion to use the Infowars name and website address, must be approved by a Texas judge.

The Onion, a satirical news outlet, wants to convert the right-wing Infowars site into a parody of itself. Jamie Kelter Davis/The New York Times

By Benjamin Mullin and Elizabeth Williamson, New York Times Service

April 20, 2026 | 4:29 PM

2 minutes to read

When Infowars, the website founded by right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones, came up for sale two years ago, an unlikely suitor stepped up. The Onion, a satirical news outlet, planned to convert the site into a parody of itself.

That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has reemerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.

On Monday, Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’ Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Guerra Gamble approves it, and Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”

Jones had no immediate comment.

The battle over Infowars has been a long and fraught saga, and Jones — a notorious peddler of lies and invective — has used his bully pulpit for more than a year to crusade against The Onion’s efforts to take over the platform. The site is in limbo because of a series of defamation lawsuits against Jones filed by families of victims of the mass shooting in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which Jones falsely claimed was a hoax.

People who believed his lies that the shooting was staged subjected the families to years of online abuse, harassment and death threats.

The Onion plans to turn Infowars into a comedy site with satirical echoes of the fringe conspiracy theories that Jones is known for. Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially planned to parody Jones’ “whole modus operandi.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.