Michigan Daily Reports $200-a-Head Group-Chat Offer to Boo El-Sayed in Flint, Calls America Next the PAC Financing It

The Michigan Daily’s story by Glenn Hedin, dated October 2, 2026, rests on group-chat messages. Students affiliated with the University of Michigan College Republicans were offered $200 each to travel to Abdul El-Sayed’s Saturday town hall in Flint and target him with boos and difficult questions. The Daily’s headline calls it a conservative PAC’s offer, and its text says the student who posted the offer in the GroupMe chat was “claiming to be working on behalf of America Next, the conservative political action committee financing the initiative.” One message read: “We are going to coordinate questions to ask him and spread out to increase the chances we’re called on. We’re gonna boo him.”

The Daily’s evidence, as it describes it, is the group-chat messages, which its headline says seem to show the offer. America Next did not respond to requests for comment, and the Daily could find no evidence that Rogers’ campaign had any direct involvement. We found no filing or other document showing that America Next made or funded the offer, and this entry does not assert it. The paper labels America Next a political action committee, but in its IRS and FEC filings it is a nonprofit that files independent-expenditure reports as a non-committee.