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While the UFC’s White House event grabs headlines, the bigger story is a bill that could hand MMA tycoon Dana White unprecedented influence over professional boxing.

The FBI raided the offices of an Ohio pro-democracy organization in Cleveland Thursday and questioned employees across the state, asking about voter fraud.The Ohio Organizing Collaborative, which promotes voter registration and voting rights, was targeted by over 100 agents who showed up at the homes of the organization’s leadership and employees, seeking electronic devices and in some cases carrying subpoenas. The bureau also had a search warrant for the organization’s Cleveland office.“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders’ and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask,” Prentiss Haney, an OOC board member, told MS NOW. The agents “asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.”Haney told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that the agents who approached the organization’s staff at their homes in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Youngstown didn’t have warrants, calling their approach “just straight-up intimidation tactics.” He said the OOC is not involved in voter fraud in any way.“It was terrifying,” Haney said. “I’ve never seen this sort of force from a federal agency against regular people, regular Ohioans, who are helping people participate in elections.”The FBI and the Department of Justice have not commented publicly about the raid or any investigation into the OOC, but Democratic Representative Shontel Brown, who represents Cleveland and much of northeastern Ohio, said in a statement that she was “alarmed and outraged by reports that Trump and Kash Patel’s FBI has raided the Ohio Organizing Collective in Cleveland.”“This appears to be a blatant effort to suppress and deny the vote of people in Northeast Ohio. These raids must end immediately,” Brown said on X.The FBI’s raids bring to mind the right-wing smear campaign in 2009 to bring down ACORN, a national organization that also advocated for voting rights, among other efforts aimed at low-income Americans. Even though investigations found that ACORN staff broke no laws, the organization lost almost all of its funding, depriving many communities of a valuable organization and hurting voter registration. Thursday’s raids seem aimed at depressing voter registration and creating panic about nonexistent voter fraud in a state where Democrats stand to make gains in November.

Remote work, multi-location operations, and fraud risks are pushing businesses to strengthen internal payroll verification processes and. The post Why More Companies Are Tightening Internal Payroll Verification Processes appeared first on DCReport.org.

A federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” on Friday, demanding the Trump administration release signed proof that the president’s pet project is really dead. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia issued a preliminary injunction against the president’s slush fund, but said she was willing to drop the case altogether if acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signed a document under penalty of perjury saying they would not move forward with the fund. The judge gave Blanche and Bessent one week to provide their sworn testimony. Last week, Blanche insisted publicly that “we are not moving forward with the fund,” and claimed it wasn’t necessary to release a document reversing the DOJ’s position. It turns out Blanche’s pinky promise won’t be good enough.Staffers in the Justice Department and White House have reportedly been telling the president’s MAGA allies they can still expect to receive some form of payment, and Trump has continued to talk up the fund, later telling NBC’s Meet the Press he and Republicans thought it was a “great idea.” (Spoiler alert: They did not.)Trump’s fund had attracted the attention of some of his most notorious allies, as well as one top DOJ official. This story has been updated.

President Trump threatened Washington, D.C. mayoral front-runner and Democratic Socialist Janeese Lewis George with a federal takeover if she were to win next week’s primary.“Here in Washington, D.C., there’s a Democratic primary for mayor. One of the two leading candidates, Janeese Lewis George, is running a Zohran Mamdani campaign—focused on socialist policies,” Trump was asked at a Thursday afternoon press conference. “How would you feel if she emerged victorious?”“Well I wouldn’t like it. Maybe we’ll take back Washington and run it on a federal basis,” Trump responded bluntly. “We won’t put up with it. We’re not gonna lose our businesses.”Q: Here in Washington DC, there's a Democratic primary for mayor. One of the two leading candidates is running a Zohran Mamdani campaign focusing on socialist policies. How would you feel if she wins?TRUMP: Maybe we take back Washington and run it on a federal basis. We won't… pic.twitter.com/H3E69bXzdW— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 11, 2026Lewis George responded on X.“We are not going to get ICE off our streets or protect Home Rule by fearing this President. Threatening DC because you do not like how our residents vote is an attack on democracy itself,” she wrote. “The people of DC elect the Mayor of DC. And they want someone who will stand up to Trump.” While the extent of Trump’s threat is unclear, he is no stranger to “federal takeovers” of the nation’s capital. He instituted one last summer, which current Mayor Muriel Bowser largely cooperated with. As for home rule, Trump would need 60 Senate votes to end it—something he’ll likely never have in this term.

The country’s first World Cup appearance in 52 years has been complicated by travel restrictions and limits on supporters heading to the tournament.

The president’s preference for who fills the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reportedly comes down to a casual disregard for the role in its entirety.Donald Trump tapped Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, on Thursday as his pick for Tulsi Gabbard’s permanent replacement. It was a shocking about-face for the typically stubborn commander in chief: Trump had earlier this week doubled down on his temporary pick for the job, real estate developer Bill Pulte, though his nomination quickly became a headache in Congress.Lawmakers argued that Pulte’s appointment, even just as acting DNI, was effectively illegal, as his resume lacked requirements for the job that had been written into the law.To prevent Pulte becoming permanent DNI, Democrats blocked efforts to renew FISA Section 702, a statute that allows federal agencies such as the NSA and the CIA to surveil people without warrants, which is set to expire Friday.Clayton rose to the top of a second round of considerations to, in part, “quell all the bitching,” one administration official told Politico Friday. Other Hill staffers speculated to the publication that Trump may not have understood—or cared about—the tight timeline that Congress was facing with regard to the FISA section renewal. The whole ordeal may have just been another irritant to a president that has little interest in the office.Trump has “always hated the ODNI role,” one Capitol Hill aide told Politico.If he passes muster with the FBI and the Senate, Clayton will enter ODNI with zero relevant experience in national security. He has previously worked as a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, providing counsel on corporate crisis management. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school. He was similarly handed his role atop the Southern District of New York without any prosecutorial experience.Yet Clayton has passed countless litmus tests proving his loyalty to the MAGA movement. He has seeded doubt in America’s election integrity, defended Trump’s $1.8 billion taxpayer-bankrolled slush fund for the president’s aggrieved political allies, and unquestioningly done the president’s bidding in the Southern District of New York.Former Attorney General Pam Bondi tasked Clayton with probing Jeffrey Epstein’s social connections—so long as they tied back to former Democratic President Bill Clinton, former Obama administration adviser Larry Summers, and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.

Palestinian activist and green card holder Mohsen Mahdawi, who was targeted by the Trump administration last year as part of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism, faces a new deportation threat. A federal immigration judge has sided with the administration and renewed removal proceedings against him, reviving a case that had been dismissed by an earlier immigration judge. Now he is taking his case directly to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, telling Democracy Now! that he is “technically without a backup plan” and relying on the federal courts for justice “because I believe that what the Trump administration has done is unconstitutional.”

The Trump administration is continuing its assault on higher education, but in a departure from its earlier high-profile fights with individual institutions like Harvard, it is now rewriting the federal rules that govern all universities and colleges. Rules are being proposed by the Education Department and other agencies to impose the administration’s preferred policies on thousands of schools — including on racial equity, transgender rights, immigration and antisemitism — or face funding cuts and possible disaccreditation. The pressure from the federal government comes at a time of intensifying austerity at many schools. Last week, one of New York’s most iconic universities, The New School, laid off 19 full-time faculty and 68 staff members. Along with coerced “voluntary” separations and early retirements since December 2025, these mass firings constitute a major gutting of The New School’s full-time faculty. “It’s a chilling message to all of academia,” says Jeremy Varon, professor of history at The New School and president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “We fear that the number will grow as universities act more and more like corporations, concerned above all with the bottom line.”