Arrest records from recent demonstrations outside Newark’s Delaney Hall immigration detention facility show that many of those taken into custody were not New Jersey residents, according to The New York Post. According to information reviewed by The Post, only a small number of the arrested individuals were from the state, while others had traveled from locations including Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, and New York.

The arrests stemmed from a series of confrontations between protesters and law enforcement that took place during ongoing demonstrations at the facility. Authorities accused some participants of offenses such as damaging property, obstructing access to the detention center, failing to disperse, and assaulting federal officers. The demonstrations have drawn national attention as activists continue to challenge immigration enforcement policies and conditions at the facility.

Observers critical of the protests argue that the presence of participants from across the country suggests a coordinated effort rather than a purely local movement. They point to the involvement of activist organizations that have publicly campaigned against Delaney Hall and called for broader changes to federal immigration enforcement. Some arrested individuals were linked through social media activity to groups that have promoted protests at the site and encouraged supporters to participate.

The Post notes that among those arrested were people from a variety of personal and professional backgrounds, including students, artists, healthcare professionals, and longtime activists. Publicly available information and social media profiles indicate that several had previously participated in political or social justice campaigns on issues ranging from climate activism to racial justice and immigration reform.

One organization frequently mentioned in connection with the demonstrations is the Sunrise Movement, a progressive activist group that has publicized its involvement in actions outside Delaney Hall. The group has shared updates, photos, and videos from the protests on social media and has described its organizers as being actively engaged at the site for an extended period.

Supporters of the demonstrations maintain that the protests are a response to concerns about the treatment of detainees and conditions inside the facility. Critics, however, contend that the protests have become increasingly confrontational and have been supported by well-funded activist networks capable of mobilizing participants from outside the region.

The standoff at Delaney Hall has continued for weeks, with repeated clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement. As investigations and legal proceedings move forward, the arrests have become part of a broader debate over immigration policy, protest tactics, and the role of national activist organizations in local political conflicts.

The first Iranian ships crossed the area of the US naval blockade without obstruction after a memorandum of understanding was reached to end the war between Washington and Tehran, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency reported Tuesday.

At least three Iranian oil tankers and two cargo ships carrying essential goods broke through the US naval blockade following an accord between the countries. 

A large Iranian VLCC and another vessel used to transport livestock moved from open waters toward Iranian ports, the agency said. Another Iranian tanker carrying oil also crossed the Gulf of Oman toward its designated export port, Fars said, without providing further details about the destination.

BREAKING: CRUDE OIL DEPARTS IRAN FOLLOWING A TWO MONTH LONG NAVY BLOCKADE

According to AIS data which we corroborated yesterday (2026-06-15) by satellite imagery, at least two National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) VLCC supertankers named DIONA (9569695) and HERO2 (9362073) have… pic.twitter.com/tSesQTcC6K

— TankerTrackers.com, Inc. (@TankerTrackers) June 16, 2026

The crossing followed a WSJ report that under the agreement expected to formally end the war between the United States and Iran on Friday, Tehran would be allowed to immediately resume oil and fuel sales. The sanctions relief takes effect as soon as the agreement is signed and extends beyond crude exports to include the banking, shipping, and insurance services needed to move those barrels to market.

That detail may prove to be one of the most consequential parts of the entire agreement.

Oil sanctions are only effective if buyers can’t pay, tankers can’t ship, and insurers won’t touch the cargo. By waiving restrictions across the entire supply chain, Washington is effectively giving Iran access to international energy markets from day one rather than months down the road, according to OilPrice.com.

Iran holds some of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves and was producing well over 3 million barrels per day before the conflict. Much of that production has remained constrained by sanctions, infrastructure limitations, and wartime disruptions. The prospect of Iranian barrels returning to global markets in meaningful volumes could reshape supply expectations just as consumers and governments remain focused on energy security after months of turmoil in the Middle East.

The move also marks a striking shift in U.S. policy. Washington spent years tightening restrictions on Iran’s energy sector. Now, the Trump administration appears prepared to use oil revenues as a financial incentive to secure a lasting end to the conflict.

The oil could potentially start flowing the moment the ink dries without the expected waiting period.

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times,

Fifteen suspects are accused of conspiring with two Minneapolis-based Antifa groups to violently interfere with federal immigration enforcement, authorities announced on Tuesday. 

Daniel Rosen, who heads the U.S. attorney’s office for Minnesota, told reporters at his Minneapolis headquarters on June 16 that agents arrested 12 of the 15 suspects; one was already in custody for other offenses.

Two defendants remain at large. Rosen said both are aware that federal agents are seeking them in connection with an indictment that was unsealed just before the news conference.

“We expect they will surrender peacefully,” he said.

The 15 suspects—all from Minnesota—are charged with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, interstate threats, interstate stalking, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of government property.

“These defendants have been charged not for what they said, but for what they did. They all joined an agreement, a conspiracy to interfere with lawful immigration enforcement operations,” Rosen said.

“The conspiracy was not to interfere by their voice, but to do it by force. That’s a crime, and it will not be tolerated in the United States.”

A group called “Direct Action Minnesota” is tied to many of the allegations, Rosen said, while another group, Black Cat Workers Collective, is connected to other allegations

The new cases are part of a “broad federal effort to address organized lawless behavior,” he said.

Michael McCarthy, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, said the announcement followed “a thorough and months-long investigation into a deeply concerning trend—coordinated violence targeting federal law enforcement officers and facilities.”

“There is a clear line that cannot be crossed” between peaceful protesting and violence, he said, adding, “some groups have crossed that line.”

He noted that many of the violent actions opposed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.

The new charges were filed months after President Donald Trump’s administration announced that it was probing Antifa groups.

After some reporters questioned whether the new Antifa-related cases would hold up in court, given that a number of other cases involving anti-ICE activists have been dismissed, Rosen replied: “You watch how this case plays out; you watch how this evidence plays out, and the evidence will prove it all out.”

Antifa, short for “antifascist,” is a far-left extremist group that originated under the Soviet Union and functioned as the violent wing of Germany’s Communist Party to target political rivals. Antifa adherents label their enemies as “fascists” and often say they will use “any means necessary” to stop people from spreading messages they oppose.

Trump had issued a directive to disrupt and dismantle Antifa, which he designated a “domestic terrorist organization” in September 2025. The following month, Trump held a roundtable discussion with journalists and commentators who alleged that Antifa targeted them with threats or violence. 

Minnesota became a hotbed of resistance against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sometimes involving Antifa, after federal agencies ramped up immigration enforcement in that state. That happened partly in response to accusations that networks of immigrants were defrauding government programs on a large scale.

In two separate January incidents, ICE opponents Renee Good and Alex Pretti were fatally shot by federal agents during protests, but there was no reported Antifa connection to either of those shootings. Rosen said investigations into both shootings are ongoing.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 15 declined to hear a legal challenge to tariffs imposed on Chinese imports by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term in 2018.

The decision follows an appeal by HMTX Industries and other businesses after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last year upheld the tariffs, which Trump previously imposed on Chinese goods under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 in response to China’s unfair trade practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation.

The plaintiffs petitioned the Supreme Court to review the ruling, but the high court denied the request on June 15, keeping the tariffs in place. The justices did not provide any explanation for the decision.

According to a Feb. 20 petition filed by the importers, the first Trump administration imposed an initial round of tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports under Section 301 of the Trade Act.

The administration later expanded the tariffs in response to China’s retaliatory tariff measures by invoking Section 307 of the Trade Act, which allows the president to modify existing tariffs to address unfair trade practices.

“But Congress nowhere gave USTR [Office of the United States Trade Representative] the vast power to engage in an open-ended trade war under that modest modification provision. Yet that is precisely what happened here,” the importers said.

“That USTR’s ‘modification’ continues to impose billions of dollars in taxes on the American public each month is enough to warrant this court’s review.”

In a May filing, the administration argued that the case did not merit Supreme Court review and said the law allows the USTR to modify tariffs as long as the changes “are not radically transformative.”

“Accordingly, modifications imposed under Section 307(a) necessarily comport with the Act’s scheme because they are limited to actions appropriate to address the same problem that the original Section 301 actions addressed, as that problem has evolved over time,” it stated.

After taking office for a second term last year, Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on trading partners, citing the need to regulate international transactions to respond to an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security.

The Supreme Court struck down the tariffs in February, ruling that the IEEPA does not clearly authorize the president to impose tariffs.

The Trump administration has been looking at alternative legal avenues following the Supreme Court ruling.

USTR Jamieson Greer said on Feb. 20 that his office would launch new Section 301 investigations covering most major trading partners.

The new trade investigations will cover various areas, including industrial excess capacity, forced labor, pharmaceutical pricing practices, discrimination against U.S. technology companies and digital goods and services, digital services taxes, and ocean pollution.

The latest cracks in the data center buildout story arrived this month from opposite ends of the energy-rich West. Crusoe paused development activities on its 1.8 GW “Project Jade” campus near Cheyenne, Wyoming, at the explicit request of its customer. 

Just days later, Avista announced it was pausing processing of a 500 MW data center request in Spokane County after more than 5,000 community complaints, a proposed city council moratorium, and concerns over ratepayer costs and legacy contamination at the former Kaiser Aluminum smelter site.

This all fits the pattern we’ve documented for over a year with proposed US data center capacity colliding with local political reality, transmission bottlenecks, and raw NIMBY resistance that now appears more intense than the peak opposition nuclear power plants faced in prior decades.

71% of Americans oppose construction of an AI data center in their local area, with 48% strongly opposed. 

By comparison, opposition to a nuclear plant in the same backyard stands at 53%. 

Data centers have managed to poll worse on local acceptance than nuclear facilities ever did at the height of their controversy. 

We have been pounding the table on this long enough that we’re frankly surprised the table is still standing. Half of the US data center capacity originally slated to begin operations in 2026 faces delays or outright cancellation, according to Sightline Climate analysis we covered in April.

Contested projects are seeing roughly 40% cancellation rates in some analyses. Eminent domain fights over transmission lines have erupted in Maryland, Georgia, and elsewhere. Brookfield-backed Compass withdrew from a major Northern Virginia corridor. Community revolts have already killed or delayed billions in projects from Texas to the Midwest. 

The Avista and Crusoe cases simply add fresh, high-profile confirmation that even brownfield sites with existing power infrastructure and willing utilities are not immune.

The investment implications for the nuclear sector are direct and near-term negative for sentiment, even if the long-term logic remains intact. The explosive AI-driven power demand narrative that helped lift names such as Oklo (OKLO), NuScale (SMR), NANO Nuclear (NNE), Cameco (CCJ), and the broader sector via URA, NLR, and NUKZ, has always rested on the assumption that hyperscale load growth would translate into contracted, financeable nuclear capacity on accelerated timelines. 

When marquee data center campuses pause or reconfigure, that assumption gets stress-tested. Equity volatility in the nuclear complex has reflected exactly this uncertainty with profit-taking and narrative recalibration whenever friction in the demand side becomes visible.

None of this changes the structural math. The US still adds essentially zero new large reactors while China commissions multiple units per year. AI training and inference loads are real and growing. But the notion that private capital and hyperscaler demand alone would bulldoze through local opposition and grid constraints was always optimistic. 

These latest pauses demonstrate that the problem is not unique to nuclear permitting. It is a systemic feature of American infrastructure development in the current political and regulatory environment.

Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

The New York Post reported on Tuesday the identity of the Southern Poverty Law Center official who, according to court records, was in a relationship with one of the SPLC’s paid neo-Nazi informants.

According to the Post, the SPLC official is Heidi Beirich, who was the group’s director of intelligence between 2012 and 2019. The Post noted that the “Employee-2” named in the Justice Department’s indictment matches Beirich’s profile.

“One figure, referred to as ‘Employee-2’ in the indictment is described as a ‘person who would become Director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project,’” the Post noted.

“It also describes how ‘Employee-2’ wrote an article based on material stolen from National Alliance headquarters in 2014 and then paid off an informant to take the blame for the robbery.”

According to the DOJ, Employee-2 was in a relationship with an SPLC informant who infiltrated the neo-Nazi organization National Alliance.

The informant has yet to be identified. He’s referred to in the indictment as “F-9.”

SPLC boss funneled $1.2 million to lover in neo-Nazi group — pair even had joint bank account https://t.co/NiRLOt5bhC via @nypost

— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) June 16, 2026

The DOJ indictment says F-9 and Employee-2 shared a house and two bank accounts.

“Between 2015 and 2021, approximately $140,000 in donors’ money flowed from the SPLC operating account … and was ultimately deposited into the joint bank accounts held by F-9 and [Beirich],” court records state.

“This amounted to approximately 66% of all money ever deposited into their joint bank accounts. [Beirich] then used donors’ money to pay the couple’s personal living expenses.”

The DOJ also said F-9 stole 25 boxes of documents from the National Alliance. The Post noted that Beirich wrote an article allegedly based on the stolen materials in 2015.

Another informant was paid to take the blame for F-9’s theft. In April, Headline USA revealed the likely identity of that informant, who’s referred to as ‘F-39’ in the indictment. He is likely former National Alliance accountant Randolph Dilloway. The indictment says F-39 was paid $6,000 to take the blame for F-9’s theft. That information aligns with a lawsuit from around that time accusing Dilloway of being paid over $5,000 by the SPLC to steal documents.

The Post said Beirich and the SPLC did not respond to requests for comment.

The SPLC has a pending motion to dismiss the DOJ’s indictment, arguing that the case is one of vindictive prosecution.

Major League Baseball on Monday issued a warning to three players who represent the gayest city in America, but who dared to write references to a biblical passage on their Pride Night uniforms. The three San Francisco Giants teamed up for the subtle gesture at Friday night’s home game, which they lost 5-1 to the visiting Chicago Cubs.  

“The writing on the cap violates our rules and, consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” MLB chief communication officer Pat Courtney told Outsports, which bills itself as “your home for all things LGBTQ+ sports.” (Um… all things???)  Outsports said the players “disgraced themselves” and accused them of “weaponing [sic] the Pride rainbow and attacking the LGBTQ community.“

In 2026, only the Texas Rangers are abstaining from Pride Night observations. The Giants’ Pride Night featured the national anthem being performed by members of an “LGBTQ-affirming nondenominational church,” and homosexual married couples renewing their vows under the approving eye of a drag queen. Three Giants pitchers had their own idea for the festivities.

Starter Landen Roupp and relievers JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker wrote “Genesis 9:11-16” next to the rainbow “SF” on the special hats issued for the occasion. Within those verses, God promises he’ll never again unleash a mass homicide in the form of a flood, as he did in the story of Noah, and he says the rainbow will serve as a recurring reminder of that commitment: 

“And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

After the game, Roupp told reporters he wanted to lead fans to “God’s covenant and the promise that He makes to us,” adding, “There’s no hate at all. It’s just what I stand for, and what I stand in. I believe in God…As a believer, I would push [LGBTQ people] to read the Bible.” A fourth Giant, Sam Hentges, refused to wear the cap at all, and said, “It’s just something that I feel like I was forced to support, when I don’t morally support it.” 

San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Ann Killon railed against the pitchers for “defacing” their uniforms with…a bible verse. “On a night that was supposed to be about inclusion, they hijacked the event for their own purposes. In the name of Christianity, they took a decidedly un-Christian stance of exclusion and judgment.” Sounds like Killon’s version of inclusion has no room for Christians. 

The Giants pitchers didn’t pioneer the use of the Genesis passage to “re-claim” the rainbow as a religious symbol. The verses have been used that way for some 20 years or more, as evidenced by a 2007 article, “Taking Back the Rainbow,” which lamented that, “sadly, the colors of the rainbow are…used on a flag for the gay and lesbian movement.”

Last June, the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw stirred controversy by writing the same verse-reference on his cap. In his biography, Kershaw explained his thinking: 

“I put a lot of thought into it, and talked to a lot of different people…I just came to the conclusion that the Dodgers really put us in a horrible position. It’s not an LGBT issue. It’s just, like, [the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are] pretty rough. And I’m all for funny, and satire, but that goes way beyond it. So I did feel like I needed to say something…

If you ever doubted the fading US empire is wading ever deeper into Caligula levels of depravity that targets everyone in our society, the Dodgers’ embrace of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at Pride Night observations helps provide clarity. The fiendish-looking group of drag queens wears nun garb and makes vulgar mockeries of Roman Catholicism, Christianity and traditional values, adopting names like “Sister Anita Blowjob” and “Sister GladAss of the Joyous Reserectum.” 

Let’s be thankful that players like the quartet of Giants, the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw and others are pushing back against LGBTQ being force-fed to people who just want to watch a baseball game. 

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

By any measure, California is a failed state—and a national embarrassment.

• Taxes? It has the highest income and gas taxes in the nation.

• Roads? A Reason Foundation survey ranks it 49th among the states.

• Mass flight? Between 250,000 and 350,000 more Californians leave the state than move in each year. Housing, gas, insurance, and electricity prices? The highest in the continental U.S.

• Illegal aliens, the poor, the homeless, the foreign-born, and welfare recipients? The largest numbers in the U.S.

• Public K–12 schools? Test scores in the bottom quartile.

• Poverty? Twenty percent live below the poverty line.

So, what happened to the nation’s most richly naturally endowed—and once best governed—state?

The Left took total control—after millions of the embattled middle class fled.

Millions more impoverished immigrants, legal and illegal, took their place.

Left-wing Silicon Valley spawned some of the wealthiest elite liberal enclaves in the world.

The result was a neo-feudal society that was hardly democratic.

Millions of subsidized poor compose the bottom.

A beleaguered middle continues to shrink.

An ultra-rich apparat of left-wing coastal professionals and investors rules from the top.

As upper-bracket taxpayers fled, taxes rose on those who remained to fund expanding entitlements for newly arrived poor would-be residents. In turn, even more of the middle class left.

The remaining pyramidal economic structure ensured a Democratic monopoly—further entrenched by changing balloting laws, gerrymandering voting districts, vote harvesting, fueling public employee unions, and ignoring or undermining popular referenda.

In 2014, Californians voted for Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion water bond designed to solve the state’s chronic water storage deficit.

Included was $2.7 billion specifically designated for new reservoirs, as the last major reservoir had been built in 1980, when California had roughly half its current population.

Despite the people’s vote, bureaucracies, elected officials, and green activists blocked all new reservoir construction.

Adding insult to injury, Governor Gavin Newsom instead used $250 million from the Proposition 1 fund to blow up four dams on the Klamath River. They had once provided storage, electrical generation, recreation, and flood control.

Californians have twice voted in referenda (for Proposition 209 and against Proposition 16) to bar the use of racial preferences for contracting, admissions, and promotion in public institutions.

Most public universities simply ignored the law. They continued their “diversity” quotas under new names, relying on left-wing elected officials and judges to ignore again the will of the people.

Preferential admissions, along with racially segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies, continued under euphemisms and denials. “Theme” houses, “affinity” graduations, and “safe spaces” practice “affirmative” discrimination.

California voters in 2008 passed Proposition 11 to stop political gerrymandering by creating a supposedly nonpartisan state redistricting commission of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four Independents. Two years later, the commission took over redrawing congressional districts as well.

But Democratic lobbyists and lawyers sabotaged the goal of disinterested redistricting according to population and geography. Instead, racial preferences and the interests of the Democratic majority of incumbents prevailed to warp the intent of the voters.

Although Republicans usually achieved nearly 40 percent of the California vote in national elections, two decades later there were only seven Republicans in the 52-person congressional delegation, or a mere 13 percent of the state’s representatives.

But even that tiny contingent was considered too generous by the Left. Thus, in 2026, it will likely be further redistricted down to four or five seats.

The balloting mess in the recent Los Angeles mayoral race further reminds the nation and the world just how dysfunctional and anti-democratic California has become.

Democrats warp elections without the need for the old Chicago way of outright ballot theft or destruction. Instead, they do so in a “legal” manner by passing insane laws that ensure fraud and Democratic victories.

The winners in the strange jungle primaries—usually both Democrats—were not announced until a week after the polls closed. One of the eventual winners in mayoral race, the socialist Nithya Raman, had already given her teary concession speech after coming in well back at third on election night.

The Republican Spencer Pratt was comfortably ahead of her in second place on Election Day—only to lose, as expected, when large numbers of late ballots that broke roughly 90 percent Democratic were counted.

Remember, every registered voter is sent a mail-in ballot. If it is postmarked on election day, it can arrive at vote centers up to seven days after the election.

No one really knows whether the ballots are mailed to the dead, to former or nonexistent addresses, or to legally eligible voters—by design. In 2024, when losing presidential candidate Kamala Harris won the state by 20 points, only 0.09 percent of all ballots cast were rejected.

Anyone can register and receive a provisional ballot on the same day.

Ballot harvesting and ballot curing are legal.

Campaign operatives can round up voters, gather their ballots, and deliver them en masse to a voting center.

They can register anyone to vote, provide a ballot, and then deposit it immediately afterwards.

There is no requirement to provide proof of U.S. citizenship to get a driver’s license. Yet a license is not even needed to register.

Any credit card without a picture suffices.

And it gets worse still.

If the potential voter has no license, no Social Security number, no proof of U.S. citizenship, and no credit cards, he still will be registered—once harvesters provide him with a “unique identifier” number.

He can then vote that very day without any ID at all.

If, in California, you claim you are illiterate and cannot write your name—no problem.

You simply make a mark—anything from an X to a happy face. No one asks whether an illiterate can read the names on the ballot.

Then your handler serves as a “witness” and signs his name. Such witnesses are almost always vote harvesters, and they can sign as many ballots as they wish.

If all that doesn’t work, ballot “curers” can be called in help remedy rejected partisan ballots post facto.

Democrats now rely on the system to ensure supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, no statewide Republican officeholders, a tiny vestigial Republican congressional contingent, and almost exclusively Democratic-appointed liberal judges.

The more Democrats control the state, the more socialist, anti-democratic—and autocratic—California becomes.

Their gift to the nation is a third-world failed state, now in danger of societal collapse.

• Fires rage—given ideologically driven prohibitions on brush and forest management, cuts in fire departments, and sheer bureaucratic incompetence.

• Multibillion-dollar boondoggle rail projects rust.

• Billions of welfare dollars are stolen with impunity. Illegal aliens who cannot speak or read English are given passes to obtain commercial trucking licenses—as if California’s critical road signs are written in some language other than English.

• A quarter of residents can’t pay their sky-high power bills on time—and correctly assume that the state and the utility companies will mostly foot their delinquent bills.

• Since 2020, over 100,000 criminals have been released early from state prisons—and most have little fear that their present and future crimes will earn them another prison sentence.

• Half the state’s births are paid for through state-supplied welfare coverage.

• And now the homeless without addresses or IDs can determine elections.

In sum, import poverty; romanticize illegal immigration; demonize the middle class; drive out private-sector capital; and exempt elites from the consequences of their own ideology—and you’re left with a state where democracy dies, along with everything else.

Chip stocks tumbled even further in late Tuesday trading following a report that Microsoft just walked away from talks with Oracle about leasing the company’s cloud infrastructure because of concerns over security and compliance. 

The deal, according to Business Insider, would have been worth over $3 billion – as large Silicon Valley tech companies are running short on computing power (more on that later). 

The plan was to move some Microsoft workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, but Oracle’s public cloud did not have the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a standardized security framework that ensures cloud services are secure enough to handle U.S. government data. Oracle was not willing to add this framework, one of the people said. -BI

Oracle has denied the scoop.

“The details mentioned in the article are inaccurate,” an spokesperson said, declining to specify the inaccuracies. “Microsoft is both an OCI partner and a customer. We have a tremendously collaborative and fruitful partnership, where we often talk about ways we can expand upon our ongoing work together.” 

The report sent Oracle and the semiconductor basket lower in what was already a dismal day for the sector.

Developing…

Via American Greatness,

Federal investigators executed search warrants at the headquarters of a Soros-aligned voter mobilization organization in Ohio as part of what sources described as an ongoing fraud investigation.

FBI agents searched the offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative on June 11 and conducted interviews with members of the organization across the state, according to reports. Some agents reportedly served subpoenas or sought to seize electronic devices during the operation.

Multiple sources familiar with the matter later told CBS News that the federal action was tied to a fraud-related investigation.

The Department of Justice declined to discuss the specifics of the case.

“Search warrants are authorized by a judge and anything said by any organization or others in the media is unfounded speculation, as the target of any investigation is not privy to the search warrant affidavit until after indictment,” a DOJ official told Fox News Digital.

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is a nonprofit group involved in voter registration and voter mobilization efforts and works closely with Democrats in Ohio. The organization has also played a prominent role in statewide ballot campaigns and referendum efforts.

The investigation is part of the Trump administration’s effort to increase enforcement of election-related laws and allegations of voter fraud.

Tax records show the organization reported more than $10 million in revenue during 2024.

Funding for the group has come from several major Democratic-aligned organizations and labor unions, including entities connected to the Soros family, the New Venture Fund, the Tides Foundation, the American Federation of Teachers and the Service Employees International Union.

According to the report, the Soros family’s Foundation to Promote Open Society provided approximately $1.9 million to the organization between 2019 and 2020.

The Open Society Action Fund later contributed an additional $1 million to a related organization in 2021 and another $1 million in 2023.

The organization has been active in recent Ohio political battles.

It spent $250,000 in 2023 opposing a Republican-backed effort related to abortion policy and another $300,000 the following year opposing a Republican redistricting proposal.

Organization leaders criticized the federal investigation and suggested it was politically motivated.

“How can they distract and intimidate civil rights leaders and voters and community leaders who are helping people get registered to vote, and create a national spectacle about it?” OOC board member Prentiss Haney told MS Now.

“That is the only reason why they would choose to do that, do it now, in the middle of a contested political election in the state. There’s no other reason. They have no evidence of that.”

The group has previously faced scrutiny related to voter registration activities. In 2017, a paid canvasser working with the organization pleaded guilty in connection with a fraudulent voter registration operation.