Breaking: FBI Raids George Soros-Linked Org — Massive Vote Fraud Probe
The FBI’s June search of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative has become a major political flashpoint ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, but the most important facts remain more limited than many viral accounts suggest: federal agents did search the group’s Cleveland office, a fraud-related investigation is underway, and electronic devices and other materials were seized. What federal prosecutors have not done publicly is accuse the organization itself of committing widespread voter fraud.
Federal agents executed a search warrant at the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s Cleveland office on June 11. CBS News reported, citing multiple people familiar with the matter, that the search was part of an ongoing fraud-related investigation. The Washington Post reported that the warrants appeared to focus on the group’s 2024 voter-registration work, while the Associated Press said a person familiar with the investigation described the inquiry as examining potential fraud violations.
Prentiss Haney, a former executive director who sits on the organization’s board, said roughly 25 agents entered the Cleveland office and seized computers and other materials. Haney also said federal agents visited the homes of people connected to the organization across Ohio seeking interviews. He estimated that more than 100 FBI and Department of Homeland Security personnel participated statewide, but that number came from the organization and has not been independently confirmed by the Justice Department.
The Justice Department has declined to disclose the evidence underlying the warrant. A department official told reporters that search warrants are authorized by judges and cautioned that public claims about the investigation are speculative because a target normally does not receive the search-warrant affidavit while an investigation remains sealed.
That distinction matters. A federal judge’s approval of a search warrant means investigators established probable cause to search for evidence described in the warrant. It does not amount to a finding that the organization, its officers or its donors committed a crime. As of August 24, no public indictment or criminal charge against the Ohio Organizing Collaborative stemming from the June operation has been announced.
The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is a long-running progressive civic organization that works on voter registration, criminal-justice issues, labor organizing and economic policy. The Washington Post reported that the group registered more than 100,000 Ohioans ahead of the 2024 election. The organization describes itself as nonpartisan, although it has played a prominent role in progressive ballot campaigns and political organizing in a state with major Republican and Democratic contests this fall.
The group’s funding has also become part of the political debate. Public nonprofit records show documented financial ties to organizations associated with George Soros’s Open Society network. A 2019 tax filing from the Foundation to Promote Open Society lists a $350,000 general-support grant to the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. Grant databases also show substantial additional support in later years. The related Ohio Organizing Campaign received $1 million from the Open Society Action Fund in 2021 and another $1 million in 2023, according to grant records compiled from nonprofit filings.
Those financial relationships are legitimate subjects for disclosure, but they are not evidence that Open Society funding financed criminal activity. The federal investigation and the organization’s donor history should be reported as separate facts unless investigators establish a connection between them.
There is some prior history involving fraudulent voter-registration forms connected to people working in Ohio registration drives. In 2017, a paid canvasser who worked for the Ohio Organizing Collaborative pleaded guilty to state charges involving fraudulent registrations. That individual case is relevant background, but it does not establish that the organization as a whole committed fraud in 2017 or in the 2024 cycle.
More recent reporting has shown that federal interest in related registration activity predates the June raid. Signal Ohio reported that FBI agents questioned Cuyahoga County elections officials in early 2025 about voter-registration forms submitted by canvassers working for Black Fork Strategies, a firm owned by an Ohio Organizing Collaborative founder and used as a vendor by an affiliated organization. County election officials had previously raised concerns about some forms submitted in 2023 and 2024.
Again, those inquiries do not by themselves prove a criminal scheme. They show that investigators had been asking questions about registration practices for more than a year before the high-profile June operation.
The organization and its allies have described the searches as political intimidation. Civil-rights groups and Democratic officials argued that aggressive federal action against a voter-registration organization during an election year could discourage volunteers and eligible voters from participating. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative has denied wrongdoing and says it intends to continue its work.
Republicans and supporters of the investigation have taken the opposite view, arguing that allegations involving registration forms deserve rigorous enforcement regardless of the political affiliation of the organizations involved. They have also pointed to the 2017 canvasser case and more recent complaints as reasons the government should follow the evidence.
The unresolved question is what that evidence actually shows. The warrant affidavit remains unavailable to the public, federal officials have not identified specific defendants or charges, and the investigation has not yet produced a public court case that would allow the allegations to be tested.
For now, the strongest defensible description is narrower than the most dramatic headlines: the FBI searched the Cleveland office of a major Ohio voting-rights organization as part of a fraud-related investigation focused at least in part on voter-registration activity. The group has significant progressive donors, including Open Society-linked entities. But no public evidence currently establishes a massive vote-fraud conspiracy, and no criminal guilt can be inferred simply from the execution of a search warrant.
Mamdani-Backed Progressive Wins New York Primary as Housing Fight and Oath Controversy Collide
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s growing influence inside Democratic politics is facing scrutiny from two very different directions: a long-running fight over thousands of rent-stabilized apartments and a Republican effort to turn the constitutional oath of office into a campaign issue against one of Mamdani’s congressional allies.
The two controversies have often been combined in political commentary, but they involve separate events and different timelines. The bankruptcy fight involving the former Pinnacle Group apartment portfolio largely unfolded in January, while the dispute over congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier intensified after New York’s June Democratic primaries.
In the housing case, Summit Properties won a bankruptcy auction for a portfolio of roughly 5,150 residential units formerly controlled by Pinnacle Group. Court and company disclosures put Summit’s winning bid at approximately $451.3 million. Most of the apartments are rent stabilized, and the portfolio includes buildings across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
Mamdani’s administration and tenant groups tried to stop or delay the sale, arguing that the court should require stronger assurances that the buyer could address thousands of housing-code violations and protect residents from further instability. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David S. Jones ultimately allowed the transaction to proceed.
That decision was a setback for the new administration, which had made the Pinnacle bankruptcy one of its earliest housing battles. But describing the ruling as a new August defeat would be inaccurate. The sale was approved in January, and by June the fight had shifted from whether Summit could buy the buildings to whether the company was meeting its repair commitments.
Summit said in June that it had cured more than 3,000 violations that existed at the time of the bankruptcy proceedings. Tenant advocates disputed the company’s broader progress, pointing to a subsequent city inspection campaign that uncovered thousands of additional violations. The dispute therefore remains an active test of whether the new ownership can improve conditions in a portfolio that had already drawn intense tenant complaints.
A separate political battle involves Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who defeated longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District on June 23. Reuters described her victory, along with other Mamdani-backed wins, as evidence of the mayor’s expanding influence over the city’s Democratic politics.
Avila Chevalier now advances to the November 3 general election. A recent El País profile described her as a rising Afro-Latina socialist candidate focused on housing, economic inequality and child poverty. Winning a primary, however, does not make her a member of Congress; she must first win the general election and then take the constitutionally required oath before exercising the powers of the office.
Rep. Greg Steube of Florida injected himself into the controversy after the primary, saying he wanted a House rule making clear that a member-elect who refuses to swear the oath to support the Constitution should not be seated. He specifically invoked Avila Chevalier while discussing the idea and criticized her past activism.
The central factual problem with some versions of that story is that Avila Chevalier has not publicly announced that she intends to refuse the oath. Steube’s proposal is therefore aimed at a hypothetical future refusal, not an actual refusal that has already occurred.
The oath itself is not optional. Article VI of the Constitution requires federal and state officials to be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution, and members of the House are sworn in at the beginning of a new Congress. A member-elect who does not take the oath cannot simply begin exercising the privileges of the office as though nothing happened.
At the same time, the House’s power to exclude a duly elected member for ideological reasons is constitutionally constrained. The Supreme Court held in Powell v. McCormack that Congress cannot add qualifications for House membership beyond those established by the Constitution. Congress retains disciplinary powers over members after they are seated, including expulsion by a two-thirds vote, but a simple House rule cannot freely create new substantive qualifications for elected representatives.
That makes Steube’s proposal more complicated than the slogan surrounding it. A rule addressing the mechanics of administering the oath is one thing. A rule allowing the House to bar someone based on an assumption that past political statements prove the person cannot take the oath in good faith would face much more difficult constitutional questions.
Avila Chevalier’s activist history has nevertheless ensured that the issue will remain politically potent. The New York Post reported that she was involved in the formation of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition that played a prominent role in pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University. CUAD later published extreme statements, including language about the 'total eradication of Western civilization.' Those statements can accurately be attributed to the organization, but they should not automatically be presented as direct quotations from Avila Chevalier unless a source establishes that she personally wrote or endorsed the specific language.
The same caution applies to viral claims that she is already 'barred' from taking a House seat. She is not. She is a general-election candidate. If she wins in November, she will be subject to the same constitutional oath requirement as every other incoming member.
The larger political story is clearer. Mamdani’s allies have demonstrated that democratic socialists can defeat established Democrats in safe blue districts, giving the movement more leverage in New York. That success is also giving Republicans a national target, allowing them to highlight the most controversial statements and affiliations associated with progressive candidates.
For Mamdani, the housing dispute and the Avila Chevalier controversy present different forms of the same governing challenge: translating activist politics into institutions constrained by courts, statutes and constitutional rules. His administration could not stop the Pinnacle sale simply because it opposed the buyer, and his political allies cannot be denied elected office simply because opponents object to their ideology.
Both fights will continue, but the record is narrower than the viral framing. The Pinnacle sale is an older bankruptcy battle with an ongoing repair dispute. Avila Chevalier won a Democratic primary and is favored by geography, not yet entitled to a congressional seat. And Steube has proposed a rule tied to a refusal of the oath that, so far, has not happened.
Sanders and Omar Face New Questions Over 'Defund the Police' as Democrats Revisit 2020-Era Positions
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ilhan Omar are facing renewed scrutiny over how the Democratic left talks about policing, prisons and immigration as candidates backed by democratic socialist groups win important primaries ahead of the midterm elections.
The latest debate began during an August appearance by Sanders on Pod Save America, where host Jon Favreau asked whether unpopular positions associated with some Democratic Socialists of America candidates could damage the broader progressive movement. Favreau specifically cited proposals to defund or abolish police departments, abolish prisons and eliminate national borders.
Sanders rejected the idea that those positions define the candidates he considers serious contenders for office.
“No serious person that I know who is running for office believes in, quote-unquote, ‘defunding the police,’” Sanders said. He added that police officers perform difficult work, while arguing that departments still require reform and that mental-health or addiction specialists could take over some responsibilities currently handled by officers.
Sanders also rejected prison abolition as an immediate governing position and dismissed open borders. He said he wants fewer Americans incarcerated but acknowledged that dangerous people must sometimes be imprisoned. On immigration, he said most progressives he knows support comprehensive reform rather than eliminating borders.
The comments were notable because they marked an effort by the movement’s best-known national figure to draw a line between broad progressive goals and some of the most sweeping slogans that became prominent after the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
They also created an obvious factual tension: candidates and activists on the left have, in fact, used the language of defunding or abolishing police. Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, for example, wrote in 2020 that she supported defunding police as a first step toward abolition. In a recent interview, Hong said her views had evolved and emphasized practical public-safety policies.
That history does not necessarily contradict Sanders if his point is about what serious candidates are proposing now. It does mean his wording is broader than the historical record if interpreted to mean that no credible progressive candidate ever supported those ideas.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed Omar on exactly that distinction during the August 7 edition of The Source. Collins played Sanders’s remarks and asked the Minnesota Democrat whether it was true that no serious candidate supported defunding police.
Omar responded by placing the issue in the context of Minneapolis after George Floyd’s death. She said her city had needed a deeper conversation about public safety because of serious problems in the Minneapolis Police Department, but argued that the debate became distorted when it was nationalized.
When Collins asked again about Sanders’s specific wording, Omar narrowed the question to current legislation.
“When he says that, I think he’s talking about someone putting forth a piece of legislation,” Omar said. “And, to that regard, I would say that he is right. I haven’t seen any pieces of legislation or ordinances come through, in the United States, since 2020.”
That answer is different from saying the slogan never had support. Omar herself represented a city where activists and elected officials spent years debating structural changes to policing. Her response instead suggested that the practical legislative agenda in 2026 is not centered on abolishing or eliminating police departments.
The dispute comes as Democrats are trying to understand what lessons to carry forward from the politics of 2020. Progressive activists argue that the protests forced overdue attention on police misconduct, racial disparities and the overuse of armed officers in situations involving mental illness, homelessness and addiction. Moderates counter that slogans such as 'defund the police' were politically damaging, imprecise and easily used to portray the entire party as hostile to public safety.
Sanders’s comments indicate that he wants the movement’s national message centered on economic populism, health care, wages and working-class politics rather than the most expansive abolitionist demands associated with a smaller segment of the left.
That does not mean the ideological differences have disappeared. The Democratic Socialists of America continues to support major structural changes to policing, immigration enforcement and other institutions, and individual candidates differ substantially in how closely they follow the organization’s national positions.
Omar’s response similarly avoided a wholesale repudiation of the post-Floyd debate. She defended the need for Minneapolis to rethink public safety while acknowledging that national messaging can blur the differences between reform, budget reallocation and abolition.
One headline circulating with the controversy asks how people would feel about Omar being deported. Nothing in the Sanders interview or the CNN exchange supports that framing. The actual news is a policy and messaging dispute inside the American left, not an immigration proceeding involving Omar.
The strongest conclusion is therefore more modest: Sanders is trying to define the modern progressive agenda in a way that distances serious 2026 candidates from calls to abolish police, prisons or borders. Omar agrees that no current legislation she has seen is advancing a 'defund the police' agenda, while still defending the legitimacy of the deeper public-safety debate that followed George Floyd’s death.
Whether voters accept that distinction may become an important midterm question, especially in swing states where Republicans are already using candidates’ older statements to argue that the left has changed its language more than its underlying beliefs.
Ossoff Rejects 2028 Presidential Bid as Trump Signals Preference for Vance but Keeps Rubio in the Conversation
The 2028 presidential campaign is still more than two years away, but both parties are already dealing with a problem familiar to ambitious politicians: every high-profile speech, donor meeting and national interview is being treated as an audition for a race that has not formally begun.
On the Democratic side, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff is trying to shut the speculation down.
Ossoff has repeatedly said he has no interest in running for president in 2028 and wants attention focused on his 2026 Senate reelection campaign. During an August interview on MS NOW with Jen Psaki, he made the denial unusually explicit.
“I have zero interest in running for president in 2028 and, frankly, zero interest in the 2028 fantasy football right now,” Ossoff said.
He argued that the midterm elections are the immediate priority and said Democrats should concentrate on restoring congressional checks and balances rather than debating a presidential field years in advance. Ossoff made similar comments in April and again in July, so his August answer was not a sudden announcement but a reiteration of a position he has maintained for months.
The denials have not stopped speculation because Ossoff’s national profile has grown rapidly. He is young by Senate standards, has become a strong fundraiser and has drawn national attention for increasingly aggressive attacks on President Donald Trump. A recent Wall Street Journal report described the Georgia senator’s public posture as one that many political observers see as a possible presidential audition, even though Ossoff continues to reject that interpretation.
The Republican succession picture is more developed, but still far from settled.
Vice President JD Vance is widely treated as the early favorite to inherit Trump’s political coalition. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also emerged as a serious potential alternative after taking on a central foreign-policy role in the administration and improving his standing in several early polls.
Trump has encouraged the speculation while refusing to issue a formal endorsement.
The Washington Post reported on August 6 that Trump told donors during a private Oval Office meeting, “At the end of the day, we need to elect JD.” Two people familiar with the conversation described the remark to the paper. Advisers cautioned, however, that Trump has not made a final public choice and continues to ask allies for their views on Vance and Rubio.
That private comment is the clearest reported signal so far that Trump leans toward Vance as his successor. It is not the same as an official endorsement.
Trump has repeatedly praised Rubio as well. In June, he said a ticket combining Vance and Rubio would be extremely difficult to defeat and described the two men as talented allies who work well together. Reuters reported that both men have downplayed 2028 ambitions even as their public roles naturally fuel speculation.
Rubio, for his part, has publicly indicated that he would support Vance if the vice president seeks the nomination. Axios has reported that Rubio’s posture has remained consistent and that he does not currently have a presidential campaign operation waiting to launch.
That makes the most dramatic 'Vance versus Rubio' headlines premature. Vance has political infrastructure, fundraising relationships and the institutional advantage of the vice presidency. Rubio has high visibility, extensive foreign-policy experience and evidence of growing appeal, but he has not positioned himself as a declared challenger.
Recent polling shows why the discussion persists. An Emerson College national survey conducted August 16 and 17 found Rubio performing somewhat better than Vance against several hypothetical Democratic nominees in general-election matchups. Those results do not determine who Republican primary voters would choose, but they give Rubio supporters an argument that he could be competitive nationally.
Other Republican-primary polling continues to show Vance with an advantage, while Rubio has established himself as the most plausible second-place alternative. The combination of Vance’s institutional strength and Rubio’s improved numbers has created a genuine succession conversation even without either man formally entering the 2028 race.
Trump benefits from leaving that competition unresolved. A president who names a successor too early risks creating a second center of power inside his own party. Donors, activists and administration officials can begin organizing around the future nominee rather than the sitting president. Keeping Vance and Rubio both in the conversation lets Trump encourage loyalty without surrendering control of the party’s political attention.
The 2026 midterms may matter more than any current presidential poll. Vance has tied himself closely to Republican fundraising and campaigning. A strong Republican performance would strengthen the argument for continuity with the Trump-Vance coalition. A major setback could reopen the succession question and make alternatives such as Rubio more attractive.
On the Democratic side, Ossoff’s own immediate political survival comes first. He is running for reelection in Georgia, a state that remains competitive, and a presidential flirtation could allow Republicans to portray him as more interested in national ambition than in serving his constituents. His repeated rejection of 2028 talk therefore makes political sense whether or not observers believe the subject is permanently closed.
Political history also counsels against treating any 2026 denial as irrevocable. Candidates routinely change plans when circumstances change. A midterm result, health issue, foreign-policy crisis, party rupture or unexpected opening can transform a race long before the first presidential primary vote is cast.
But reporting should distinguish that possibility from the evidence available now.
Ossoff says he is not running for president in 2028. Rubio says he would back Vance if Vance runs. Vance has not formally announced a campaign. Trump has privately signaled support for Vance while publicly keeping both Vance and Rubio in the conversation.
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The strongest defensible conclusion is therefore straightforward: the Democratic race remains open despite growing interest in Ossoff, while the Republican succession discussion currently begins with Vance. Rubio is a serious potential alternative, but a true two-man primary will not exist unless Rubio changes his stated position — or events change the political calculation for him.
