The contradictions are piling up around New York City Democratic Socialists of America co-chair Gustavo Gordillo, whose claims about his working-class credentials — from being a “union electrician” to his housing and family story — have increasingly collided with public records and other evidence.

Gordillo has repeatedly invoked his family’s immigrant success story while explaining his support for socialism.

“My parents came here, they had nothing,” Gordillo told the New York Times in a profile piece earlier this month. “Their first jobs were in fast food and cleaning houses. They built success in this country. And they’re absolutely the exception.”

According to Gordillo, he advances the cause of socialism because he believes it can “build a world” where his parents’ success story is “not exceptional.”

LUXURY TRAVEL, SHOPPING, SIX-FIGURE INCOME: BATTLEGROUND DEMS RIPPED FOR ‘PHONY’ WORKING-CLASS NARRATIVE

A 2021 obituary for Gordillo’s paternal grandfather, however, raises questions about the family history behind that account.

Manuel Gordillo, Gordillo’s grandfather, immigrated from Peru to the United States to practice medicine in 1958. After settling in the United States, Manuel met his future wife in St. Louis, and the couple later had Gordillo’s father, Gustavo.

The obituary also notes that Gordillo’s grandfather built a successful life as a psychiatrist in Ohio, at one point serving as the president of the Ohio Psychiatric Association, casting doubt on the socialist’s claim that his parents grew up in poverty.

“My dad, his first job in the United States was working at Wendy’s, my mom’s first job was a house cleaner, and they did make a living for themselves, and they had success,” Gordillo told Fox News in July.

Gordillo and the New York City Democratic Socialists of America did not respond to requests for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Monday.

The questions surrounding Gordillo’s account of his family history come after discrepancies emerged over how he has described his occupation and living arrangements.

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST HEADED FOR $142K LEGISLATURE SALARY BEGS FOR RENT HANDOUT, DELETES POST AFTER BACKLASH

The 38-year-old socialist, for example, told the New York Times that he was renting a modest apartment in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn only for it to be revealed that he was actually living in a $1.4 million townhouse owned by his father in a trendier part of the borough.

“Not only did DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo’s parents buy him this rowhouse, they converted it from a two family and renovated it into a luxury single-family home for him,” New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino said on X. “Exactly the kind of ‘greed’ the DSA rails against on a daily basis, and reducing valuable housing inventory by one more unit, which is supposedly something the DSA cares very deeply about.”

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Also undercutting Gordillo’s working-class image is his continued self-identification as a “union electrician” despite the fact that he hasn’t been a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers since March, when he was fired for not showing up to his apprenticeship.

“After learning of Mr. Gordillo’s prolonged absence from and failure to participate in required work and classes, the trustees of the Joint Apprentice Training Committee terminated Mr. Gordillo from the program,” the IBEW said in a statement.

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Even with the IBEW publicly stating that Gordillo is not a member of their organization, the socialist leader still identifies himself as a “union electrician” on social media.

In mid-July testimony before Congress, Russell Vought boasted that, as the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he’d refashioned the agency’s approach to pursuing banks and other financial companies accused of exploiting Americans — the role Congress had created for the agency after the 2008 economic crash.

Vought had spent the first 18 months of the new Trump administration trying to dismantle the bureau, much as he and other appointees had done with the U.S. Agency for International Development. At CFPB, he’d ordered mass layoffs, tried to choke off the bureau’s funding and ended the lease on its headquarters, attempting to make good on his vow to put civil servants “in trauma.” But federal courts blocked Vought’s efforts to close the CFPB, with a judge at one point saying the administration had acted with “complete disregard” for Congress. 

So Vought, who is one of President Donald Trump’s top advisers, switched tactics: If there had to be a watchdog, theirs would be more of a golden retriever, friendlier to industry and less aggressive. Vought had accused the bureau of “thuggery” in the past, and said the “new” CFPB would focus on deregulation, embrace “humility” and adopt a “collaborative approach” to its dealings with companies that harm consumers.

As evidence of the success of this new approach, Vought singled out one company by name in his testimony, a buzzy startup called Bilt. The company, which offers credit cards used to make rent and mortgage payments, had fumbled a critical transition, leading to confusion and financial stress for its customers. In the past, the CFPB might’ve deployed examiners to ensure that every consumer harmed got relief, investigated Bilt’s technology platforms for potential flaws, questioned its third-party contractors or issued subpoenas — with the goal of finding the root causes of whatever went wrong and preventing it from happening again. 

The Trump-era CFPB took a different tack. “We reached out to the company,” Vought told Congress, “and before it got to the adversarial part of the process, they were able to fix their issues.” The CFPB even posted a feel-good statement on its website, touting its new approach and telling consumers that information provided by Bilt “appears to show” the firm was “back on track.”

Yet two weeks after Vought’s testimony, Bilt failed customers again. This time, Bilt cardholders received mistaken debt collection notices and saw their credit scores go down as a result, sparking more embarrassing news stories and angry complaints. It was Bilt’s second fiasco in six months, and as its customers scrambled to understand what had gone wrong, the CFPB was nowhere to be found.

The Bilt controversy offered an early test of CFPB’s new approach, and the results suggest that an ask-nicely strategy to consumer protection isn’t likely to protect consumers. What’s more, current and former CFPB officials say the bureau could’ve caught the issues that caused the second of Bilt’s two screw-ups had the previous playbook still been in use.

ProPublica sent the CFPB a detailed set of questions about its handling of the Bilt complaints and what actions it took to protect consumers and prevent future problems. The bureau did not respond to any questions or requests for comment.

The whole episode drives at a bigger question, according to consumer advocates and current and former CFPB employees: If the Trump administration can’t eliminate the CFPB, what will become of it in the hands of Trump officials, such as Vought, who have long believed the agency is unnecessary? (Vought termed out as acting director in early August but remains a senior adviser. The administration’s nominee for full-time director, Brian Johnson, is an executive at Capital One bank and a former CFPB appointee. At his confirmation hearing, Johnson said he could not think of a single decision that he disagreed with made by Vought at the CFPB.) 

“What we saw Vought do with Bilt is innovative — and I don’t mean that as a compliment,” said Mike Pierce, a former CFPB official who runs the consumer advocacy group Protect Borrowers, which has criticized Vought’s tenure at the bureau. 

A Rocky Transition

Bilt’s business rests on a simple premise: Consumers should build credit and earn rewards for what’s typically their single biggest expense — their rent or mortgage payment. “Prior to Bilt, that payment didn’t build anyone’s credit history, which is crazy,” Bilt co-founder Ankur Jain said in March. Jain added that it was “silly that you can earn rewards buying a round of drinks at a bar, but not paying your rent every month.”

Founded in 2021, Bilt is one of the hottest startups in the personal finance industry. Bilt says it has 7 million customers and has raised nearly $1 billion in venture capital investments, at a $10.75 billion valuation. Investors include private equity giant Blackstone, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and a venture capital fund chaired by former American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault. 

Forbes estimates Jain’s wealth at $3.4 billion. People magazine published exclusive photos of Jain’s 2024 wedding to Erika Hammond, a former WWE wrestler and cast member on the upcoming season of “The Real Housewives of New York City.” The event took place near the Great Pyramid of Giza; one photo shows the couple kissing at sunset with the Sphinx and pyramids in the background.

Earlier this year, Bilt suffered a serious crisis. The startup had signed a seven-year partnership with Wells Fargo to offer Bilt-branded credit cards that could be used to pay rent. Under its deal with Bilt, Wells Fargo agreed to absorb processing fees associated with rent transactions and make payments to Bilt because it saw the partnership as a way to attract new customers who might one day seek a mortgage from Wells Fargo, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

But revenue fell short of Wells Fargo’s projections, and the bank was losing so much money — as much as $10 million a month, the Journal reported — that it ended its partnership with Bilt four years early. (A Bilt spokesperson said at the time that the Journal’s reporting was “an inaccurate representation” of the Wells Fargo partnership.)

In February, Bilt relaunched its credit cards with new financial partners. But the rollout of “Bilt 2.0,” as the company called it, was a debacle.

Customers said their rent payments were paid late, double-charged or not paid at all. Credit limits had been lowered from one card to the next. Their cards were inexplicably frozen. “This unexpected double charge has caused significant inconvenience and financial distress,” one Bilt customer wrote to the CFPB in February after Bilt paid her rent twice in the same month. (A Bilt spokesperson said, “As soon as we were made aware of this issue, we resolved it and made the member whole.”)

Bilt’s customer support department struggled to keep up as tens of thousands of messages poured in. Customers fumed that they were unable to bypass chatbots and reach a human being for help. They also bombarded the CFPB’s website with complaints, which included accounts of how Bilt’s AI support system gave information that was “completely wrong” and “demonstrably … false.” (In a statement at the time, Bilt said its new card had “attracted unexpectedly high demand, and some of our members experienced gaps in service that are simply unacceptable to us.” The company told ProPublica it resolved all problems related to the new cards “months ago.”) 

In March, the consumer group Protect Borrowers sent a letter to the CFPB, demanding that the bureau’s supervision or enforcement divisions take “immediate action.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote to Bilt, pointing out a 1,300% increase in complaints about the company submitted to the CFPB in February and seeking answers about the Bilt 2.0 transition. Warren also said that Bilt’s practice of immediately debiting rent payments may have run afoul of the 2009 Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act’s disclosure requirements for credit cards. A Bilt spokesperson said Warren’s assertions were “incorrect.”

It’s common for lawmakers and advocacy groups to fire off outraged letters about a company’s alleged wrongdoing.

The strange part is what the CFPB, then led by Vought, chose to do about it.

“Air Cover for the Company”

The law that established the CFPB, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, envisioned two tracks for the bureau’s work. 

On the supervision track, CFPB employees would periodically visit banks and other financial institutions to monitor their business practices and ensure compliance with the law. Supervision would be confidential, giving companies the ability to adjust their operations without public scrutiny. Contrary to Vought’s accusations, current and former CFPB staffers say the traditional supervision process has long been collaborative and nonpublic. Congress designed it that way when it wrote the law.

Supervision could examine the past or look in real time. In one notable instance, when two federal student loan servicers exited the industry in 2021, the bureau’s supervision division chose to proactively monitor the transition of more than 9 million borrowers’ accounts to new servicers. Bureau staffers caught problems mid-transfer, from inaccurate due dates to botched repayment schedules, and directed the companies to fix them. It later published a recap of what the CFPB did as well as a set of tips so that the rest of the industry could avoid the same mistakes.

On the enforcement track, CFPB lawyers would file lawsuits against or pursue consent decrees — binding settlements that courts can enforce — with companies that allegedly broke the law. By their nature, lawsuits and settlements are public, but the enforcement division didn’t speak publicly about its actions apart from its filings.

The Trump-era CFPB took neither of these tracks in response to Bilt’s first incident. A senior political appointee and Vought aide, Victoria Dorfman, took the lead in contacting Bilt and asking for information about the consumer complaints, according to a person familiar with the interactions who requested anonymity to share confidential communications. Dorfman was joined by Elie Greenbaum, another Vought adviser, and Deborah Morris, the deputy enforcement director. Having political appointees lead this process, instead of nonpartisan career executives and subject-matter experts, was “abnormal” for the CFPB “but is becoming normal” under the Trump administration, a current CFPB staffer told ProPublica.

Dorfman, Greenbaum and Morris met with Bilt’s executives, who explained how they were fixing the problems and supplied data to the bureau about the company’s customer communications and efforts to resolve problems. When Bilt assured the bureau it had fixed the issues, CFPB officials appear to have taken those assurances at face value, issuing a celebratory press release on the bureau’s website. 

But it was what the press release said, or didn’t, that alarmed some current and former CFPB officials. Nowhere does it mention whether the bureau dispatched examiners to help locate the root of Bilt’s problems, as it would have done in the past, or whether it conducted its own audit of Bilt data to ensure every harmed consumer got relief. 

Indeed, the CFPB’s statement stressed that the bureau did not open an investigation. Nor did it craft a consent decree or enforceable pledge to ensure compliance. Documentation provided by Bilt, the bureau said, “appears to show” that the company had fixed its problems and that its systems were “back on track.”

Austin Hinkle, a former supervision lawyer and section chief at the CFPB, said it’s easy for a company to identify a population of customers who were harmed, issue an apology and get them relief, as Bilt did. 

Understanding what caused the issue is more complicated — and arguably just as important. In a situation like Bilt’s, Hinkle said, CFPB examiners would normally conduct a root-cause analysis, asking, for instance, which system led to the late or double-charged rent payments and why had it failed. Financial technology companies often rely on third-party processors and banks, Hinkle said, so the bureau’s investigators would also scrutinize what outside firms Bilt uses and what the communications have been with those firms.

There’s none of that depth in the CFPB’s statement, Hinkle said. “The press release just looks like they’re providing air cover for the company without directing real fixes or systematic changes.”

The lighter touch appears, so far, to be a hallmark of the Vought-era bureau. It has brought just one enforcement action since Trump took office, which ended with a consent decree and a civil penalty of $1, while dismissing or resolving dozens of cases brought during previous administrations. A CFPB supervisor warned her subordinates that they would face “most unpleasant” consequences if they were too aggressive in their work, Reuters reported. Recently, the bureau announced it would no longer include narratives in consumer complaints that appear in the CFPB’s public database.

Meanwhile, a current CFPB staffer told ProPublica that the number of policy attorneys, who help direct supervision work and identify violations of law, had shrunk from typically between 40 and 50 lawyers down to five. The staffer said that examiners were no longer allowed to access the primary source level data and could only “check the checker now,” meaning they must rely on a company’s own findings. They also faced pressure to finish examinations as fast as possible, given only three weeks to complete their work when they used to have eight weeks.

The staffer added that, as far as they knew, the first time that front-line staffers on the supervision and enforcement tracks heard of CFPB’s handling of the Bilt case was either the public statement or when Vought mentioned Bilt in his Capitol Hill testimony.

Pierce, the Protect Borrowers director, said he viewed CFPB’s treatment of Bilt as an indication that the bureau had embraced a mindset similar to what Ronald Reagan’s presidency was known for: a wholesale deregulatory approach meant to strip away regulations and oversight of companies large and small. 

“It’s taking the government’s supervision and enforcement tools and figuring out how you can use them the way the Reaganites used them,” Pierce said.

“Sent Me Into a Panic” 

Roughly two weeks after Vought’s testimony, Bilt customer Jordan Carey, a 30-year-old who works in the hospitality industry, received an alert from Credit Karma, the credit-monitoring service. His credit score had dropped 50 points in a single day. The news “sent me into a panic,” Carey said. He had stellar credit and paid off his Bilt credit card the day charges were posted. “I was thinking there is no way this is real,” he said.

Carey dug deeper and saw that the hit to his score had happened after a debt collector, Tate and Kirlin, reported a supposed long-overdue payment. And when he looked at the collections notice, he saw it listed Bilt as the cause of the error.

When he alerted Bilt’s customer service to the problem, he said, “they were not aware of the issue [and] I’m pretty sure I was one of the very first people to report it.” A Bilt customer service agent initially laid the blame with Wells Fargo and told Carey to contact the bank for help. But when he posted on Reddit about his experience, he got a different response from Bilt about the source of the problem, blaming a different banking partner. He also heard from almost a dozen other people who said they had the same issue. 

Nearly 1,900 of Bilt’s customers received mistaken notices from a debt collector that said they owed hundreds or even thousands of dollars in unpaid credit card balances. On Reddit, people wrote about receiving one or multiple false collections notices, including, in one case, as the cardholder was closing on a new house.

Hinkle, the former CFPB section chief, said the more recent Bilt problem was the kind of situation the CFPB’s previous oversight model could’ve prevented or identified more quickly, instead of customers discovering the problem and self-reporting it. “The fact that there’s a seemingly related problem popping up now suggests to me that the normal supervisory process didn’t work here,” he said.

The CFPB has not made a public statement since Bilt’s second breakdown. 

Bilt, for its part, said the issue had to do with an earlier iteration of its credit cards that had stopped accepting customers. The company said it alerted the collection agency in question as well as the credit bureaus to the mistake. It also awarded customers an extra 2,500 points for their trouble, worth between $25 and $50. “We held the agency accountable, made things right for every customer involved, ensured each was notified directly and provided direct customer support along with courtesy Bilt Points,” a spokesman said.

Carey said his credit score had been restored within a few days but was unimpressed by the free points; 10,000, or about $100 to $200, would have felt more appropriate. “This is a multibillion-dollar company,” he said. “They can afford it.”

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy on Sunday teased an upcoming announcement about the Trump administration’s fraud crackdown.

In a post on X, Duffy said there would be “unprecedented fraud crackdown” announcement on Monday.

“TOMORROW: UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD CRACKDOWN,” the secretary wrote.

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In the post, he also tagged Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Justice and the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, suggesting a multi-department effort targeting fraud.

Duffy did not disclose details of the announcement, including when or where it will take place, what type of fraud will be discussed or whether any arrests have been made.

The announcement comes amid the administration’s broader crackdown on fraud. Trump established the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud in March to coordinate efforts involving federal benefit programs.

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The DOJ has also created a National Fraud Enforcement Division to investigate and prosecute the theft or fraudulent misuse of taxpayer dollars.

Duffy’s Department of Transportation has worked with DHS in recent months to crack down on alleged fraud and safety violations in the commercial trucking industry, including improperly issued commercial driver’s licenses, fraudulent driving schools and unvetted foreign drivers.

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The agencies announced a joint investigation in July into about 75 commercial driving schools suspected of fraud, including allegedly falsifying training records and improperly certifying drivers. The two departments have also conducted roadside enforcement operations targeting unqualified foreign commercial drivers.

Federal prosecutors have launched a rare special grand jury probe into D.C. public schools, zeroing in on truancy, graduation rates and attendance records.

The investigation, which was first reported by The Washington Post, is examining the supervision and oversight of young people in the nation’s capital, according to people familiar with the matter.

This is about “safeguarding youth in the District,” a law enforcement official told Fox News.

Teachers and other personnel at several D.C. Public Schools campuses have been contacted in recent days about student absences, graduation practices and the way attendance is documented, the Washington Post reported. At least one person has already testified before the panel, while others are expected to appear in the coming days, according to the outlet.

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The use of a special grand jury is unusual. Fox News is told a judge must approve the creation of such a panel, which can conduct a sweeping investigation and issue a detailed report on its findings even if prosecutors ultimately file no criminal charges.

A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office told the Washington Post it could neither confirm nor deny an investigation.

The office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said its focus remains on the new school year.

“Our focus remains on welcoming students and families back for a strong start to the new school year, and that is what we want our principals and teachers focused on as well,” the mayor’s office told the Washington Post. “We make all school data public and will continue to do so.”

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The Washington Post reported that senior prosecutor Steven Vandervelden, one of Pirro’s top allies in the U.S. attorney’s office, is overseeing the inquiry.

Pirro has repeatedly linked school truancy to youth crime and disruptive teen gatherings in the District. At a May news conference, she said authorities could take action when teens repeatedly break curfew or skip school.

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“We’re coming for you, and we’re coming for your parents,” Pirro said.

She also said her office wanted school records involving students accused of chronic truancy and curfew violations, according to the Washington Post. The outlet reported that the city did not voluntarily turn over those records.

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The new probe comes years after D.C. schools were rocked by a graduation scandal centered on Ballou High School. A 2018 city investigation found the school had awarded diplomas to students who failed to satisfy attendance rules or had improperly completed makeup coursework.

While the scandal initially centered on Ballou High School, it eventually spread to several D.C. high schools. The investigation found that about one-third of D.C. students who graduated in 2017 had not actually met the requirements for a diploma, according to the Washington Post. District officials later said they tightened enforcement of attendance standards.

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Absenteeism, however, has persisted. During the 2023-24 school year, nearly 16,000 D.C. Public Schools students, roughly one-third of K-12 enrollment, were considered truant after missing at least two weeks of classes without an excuse, the Washington Post reported last year.

The special grand jury’s work is unfolding as D.C.’s school system, which serves more than 50,000 students, begins a new academic year.

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Fox News Digital has reached out to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education for comment.

Icelanders voted Saturday on whether to reopen negotiations to join the European Union, with President Donald Trump‘s push for U.S. control of neighboring Greenland adding a new security dimension to a debate that has divided the NATO ally for years.

Iceland, strategically positioned in the North Atlantic and roughly 180 miles from Greenland, has no military of its own and relies on NATO and a longstanding defense agreement with the United States for its security, according to RTE and The Associated Press.

Trump’s repeated interest in acquiring Greenland has unsettled some Icelanders and raised questions about whether closer ties with the EU could provide another layer of security for the island nation, the AP reported.

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Roughly 275,000 eligible voters were asked whether Iceland should resume membership negotiations with the EU. As of Saturday evening, the result had not been officially called.

If the referendum passes, Iceland would resume negotiations with the EU, followed by another referendum on actual membership, RTE reported.

Iceland’s government, led by Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir, has vowed to respect the result, although the referendum is technically nonbinding.

“This has been a tight race, extremely exciting,” Frostadóttir said after voting Saturday.

She said the campaign had “lifted discussions about the EU, about Iceland’s place in the world, about our general geopolitical situation and status, to a higher level.”

While domestic and economic issues have played a central role in the referendum campaign, Trump’s ambitions for neighboring Greenland have also cast a shadow over Iceland’s debate about its place in Europe and the broader geopolitical landscape.

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Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory, previously saying the U.S. would obtain the strategically important Arctic island “one way or the other.”

The Trump administration has also previously weighed options for acquiring Greenland, including the potential use of military force. Such a move against territory belonging to Denmark, a fellow NATO member, would pose an extraordinary challenge to the alliance and its collective-defense commitments.

Trump has also mistakenly referred to Iceland while discussing Greenland on multiple occasions, according to the AP.

Iceland itself was drawn into the discussion earlier this year after former Rep. Billy Long, who is now Trump’s ambassador to Iceland, apologized for privately joking to House lawmakers that the country could become the “52nd state” with him as its governor.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A waitress running for Congress in Wisconsin’s third district was on the payroll of two left-leaning organizations with ties to billionaire investor George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

Rebecca Cooke has portrayed herself as a working-class outsider, touting her experience as a waitress, small-business owner and nonprofit leader raised on a dairy farm. But a personal financial disclosure released two days after Wisconsin’s Aug. 13 primary shows she received more than $5,000 apiece for work with Third Way and the Pipeline Fund, two left-leaning organizations with financial ties to George Soros’ Open Society network.

The Open Society network awarded $1 million to Third Way’s nonprofit research arm between 2023 and 2024, while the Pipeline Fund received $1.4 million directly from the Open Society Action Fund in 2024.

Through the Open Society Foundation, which serves as the umbrella organization for Soros’ philanthropy network, Soros has distributed tens of millions of dollars to nonprofits and groups championing left-leaning causes like policing reform, LGBTQ rights and drug decriminalization.

Soros has donated more than $32 billion of his personal fortune to the Open Society’s Foundation, which has been overseen by his son Alex Soros since 2022.

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The financial disclosure forms only report that the amount of money Cooke received from each organization was above $5,000, but they do not specify the exact amount. The personal financial disclosure form covered Jan. 1, 2025, through July 14, 2026.

A spokesperson for Third Way confirmed with Fox News Digital reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Cooke received $30,000 in payment “for a project focused on elevating the voices and concerns of working-class Americans that have too often been missing from the rooms where decisions are made.”

The Foundation to Promote Open Society, a grant making arm of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations network, donated a $500,000 grant to the Third Way Institute in 2023 and another one in 2024, according to IRS-derived grant records.

Third Way Institute serves as the 501(c) research arm of the Third Way. In 2024, Third Way Institute transferred $21.9 million to Third Way, accounting for roughly 98% of the institute’s total spending that year. The institute said the money was used to support charitable and educational work on economic, national security, energy and social policy issues.

SOROS NETWORK REBUILDS PROGRESSIVE PROSECUTOR PUSH AFTER STRING OF ELECTION LOSSES

Fox News Digital reached out to Third Way for comment.

Pipeline Fund is a organization that works to train, recruit and support progressive candidates running in state and local election races. It began operating independently in 2024 after spinning off from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a liberal nonprofit network that has received tens of millions of dollars from the Soros-founded Open Society network.

Tax records also show that the Pipeline Fund received $1.4 million directly from the Open Society Action Fund and approximately $2.26 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2024.

Scattered across the country, Pipeline Fund has a network of campaign consulting groups, including one in Wisconsin known as Wisconsin Progress.

“We can confirm Rebecca Cooke worked as a contractor for The Pipeline Fund in 2025 to help advance our mission of building a reflective democracy where working-class people, women, people of color, and other underrepresented communities are fully supported to run for office and advance the needs of their communities,” Pipeline Fund said in an emailed statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

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Prior to making a bid for Congress herself, Cooke opened up her own Democratic campaign consulting firm in 2015, in which she worked with eight state and federal campaigns from 2015 to 2021.

“Radical Rebecca Cooke is a paid political operative for far-left liberals and wants to push their socialist agenda. Commie Cooke may fit in at [a] Soros-funded consulting firm, but she is far too extreme to represent western Wisconsin,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Zach Bannon said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

Cooke’s personal financial disclosure was not released until two days after the Aug. 13 primary, following an extension she requested from the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives in April.

All candidates who spend or raise more than $5,000 for a House of Representatives race must submit a personal financial disclosure form 30 days before the election.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., blasted Cooke’s delay in releasing her financial records, saying it tells voters all they need to know about her.

“For months, Democrats and Republicans across the Third District called on Cooke to release her financial disclosures. She had every opportunity to be transparent with voters. Instead, she chose to keep them hidden until after the primary,” Van Orden said in a news release.

DEMOCRAT ESTABLISHMENT STRIKES BACK AS SOCIALIST CANDIDATE DOWNED IN BATTLEGROUND PRIMARY

“That tells Wisconsin voters everything they need to know about Rebecca Cooke’s character. She was willing to deceive her own party to protect the political persona she built and gain political power,” Van Orden said.

But Cooke said her financial forms reveal that she truly is a working-class American.

“I’ve always worn multiple hats to make ends meet and in addition to waitressing I worked on two projects related to getting more working class people to run for office and conducted research for an organization about how to better connect with working class voters,” Cooke said in an email to the Sentinel.

“There are unique challenges to running for office as a working class person with an hourly wage job and a full-time campaign schedule. For example, I’m one of the thousands of people in this district who can’t afford health insurance. I’ve been proud to help make it easier for the next generation of working class leaders to step up and take our fight to Washington D.C.”

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Fox News Digital reached to Open Society Foundation, Cooke’s campaign and Pipeline Fund for comment.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to pause funding Thursday for AI-powered Flock cameras, which have come under scrutiny nationwide amid privacy concerns.

Abbott’s office told Fox News Digital that the state was moving to cut off state-agency funding for the cameras, while noting that most funding for them comes from the federal government.

“Almost all Flock cameras in Texas are used by cities, and those cities are increasingly canceling their contracts with Flock,” Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement.

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“To the extent that cities get any funding for those cameras, most of it comes from the federal government,” Mahaleris continued. “To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras.”

Flock Safety is one of the most widely used providers of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in Texas. The cameras photograph passing vehicles and record identifying information. Using artificial intelligence, the cameras can detect vehicle characteristics such as make, model and color, as well as features including bumper stickers or dents.

Using the information collected, law enforcement agencies can search records across participating camera networks.

Supporters of the technology argue the cameras can help authorities quickly locate criminal suspects, stolen vehicles or vehicles connected to crimes. Opponents have raised concerns about privacy and data sharing, as well as the potential misuse of information collected by the cameras.

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Abbott’s move comes as a growing number of Texas cities and counties reconsider their relationships with Flock, citing concerns over data sharing, privacy and the potential for misuse.

Earlier this week, the Pflugerville City Council voted unanimously to end the city’s agreement with Flock, eliminating all 28 camera readers covered by the contract and disabling access to the system, according to the city.

In Hood County, the Commissioners Court also voted to end its relationship with Flock and later unanimously directed that the county’s three cameras be disconnected and covered until they can be removed.

Abbott said in a Friday radio interview that cities and counties have begun canceling contracts with Flock Safety amid pressure from residents, according to the Texas Tribune.

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In a statement to Fox News Digital, Flock Safety spokesperson Paris Lewbel defended the technology as an important public safety tool.

“Flock’s technology is an important public safety tool for law enforcement agencies across Texas, helping officers solve serious crimes, find missing people, recover stolen vehicles, and support safer communities,” Lewbel said.

“We support thoughtful legislation and strong privacy, transparency, and accountability guardrails that ensure technology is used responsibly while preserving law enforcement’s ability to use effective tools to keep people safe,” Lewbel continued.

The Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, a Texas state agency created to combat vehicle theft, burglaries and fraud-related motor vehicle crimes, helped state and local agencies install more than 3,000 Flock cameras since 2023, according to the Tribune.

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State grants for the cameras stemmed from a 2023 law that added $1 to vehicle insurance policies across Texas to combat rampant catalytic converter theft. Prior to the law, there had been no discussion in the state Legislature about using the money for Flock cameras, the outlet reported.

Earlier this month, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a Republican, penned an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle urging Abbott to halt new surveillance-technology purchases.

Scrutiny of Flock’s technology has also extended beyond Texas.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is demanding answers from Flock Safety.

“Flock has assembled an unprecedented national surveillance network,” Hawley previously told Fox News Digital. “They boast more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states and more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month.”

Hawley said he is investigating the company to determine who has access to data collected on hundreds of millions of vehicles.

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Fox News Digital’s Stepheny Price contributed to this report.

The first emergency call about a detainee trying to harm himself came about a month after Camp East Montana — an immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas — started to house immigrants. It was 2:50 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 12. 

“We have a patient currently in holding who is saying he’s got suicidal ideations, swallowed some foreign object, has refused our basic medical care here,” a nurse told the operator. In the audio, you can hear that someone is moaning and yelling in the background. 

“At this point he is unable to speak and rolling on the floor in agonizing pain, holding his stomach,” the nurse continued. “A preliminary X-ray was done and a foreign object was found. We just need to take him to the hospital that’s closest so that they can verify if the object is currently in his system and possibly to excavate the object.”

I’ve been reporting on Camp East Montana for months. It sits on barren military land and was supposed to be a model for how the Trump administration would carry out mass deportations. Instead, it became an example of what could go wrong. It remains in operation despite claims of inhumane conditions and abuse, which Department of Homeland Security officials have said are “categorically false.” ICE plans to keep the facility running at least through Sept. 30, 2027, The Associated Press reported.

In the span of six weeks between December 2025 and January 2026, three men died at Camp East Montana, making it one of the country’s deadliest detention centers at the time.

In July, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune published my investigation into the Jan. 3 death of one of those men, Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national with a history of mental illness. He died after an altercation with guards over his medication, and a medical examiner ruled Lunas Campos’ death a homicide. (The Trump administration initially claimed that he had experienced medical distress, but Department of Homeland Security officials later said guards had used force to keep him from killing himself.)

We found that Lunas Campos had repeatedly raised concerns about his mental health while detained at Camp East Montana. Records show staff didn’t transfer him to a facility that could better care for him, despite repeatedly saying they were working to do so.

I wanted to understand more about how the facility was responding to such incidents. I obtained, via public records requests, recordings of more than 160 emergency calls, and I spoke with staff, government officials familiar with the facility, detainees, lawyers and advocates who had spent time inside the detention center. 

I asked DHS about my reporting and some of the 911 calls. A spokesperson did not comment on the specific issues identified in the calls, but said the facility provides “comprehensive medical services, including mental health services.” If the detainee requires a higher level of medical care, they are referred to local emergency services as needed, the spokesperson said. The official also said that for many immigrant detainees, the healthcare they get while in custody is the best they’ve gotten in their lives.

Now I want to share some of those 911 calls with you. While they may be difficult to listen to or read about, they offer a glimpse into what’s happening in a place reporters don’t have access to. The calls and my investigation show failures in responding to mental health and medical emergencies that extend beyond those experienced by one man. (Note: In some cases, recordings were edited to remove long stretches where no one was talking.) 

Oct. 12, 2025: “They will not give them medical treatment.”

Two months after Camp East Montana began holding detainees, some were growing so desperate that they were having friends and relatives call 911 to seek medical help on their behalf. A man from North Texas called three times on Oct. 12, trying to get a detainee, whom he identified as his partner, emergency care for his kidney stones. 

“Why isn’t the facility calling?” the operator asked.

“Because they don’t care. They don’t care about any of the detainees. They will not give them medical treatment; they don’t care. … He does not like to go to the hospital. So when he is saying he is in emergent pain at a level of 10 out of 10 and he needs to go to the emergency room, it is no joke; it has got to be very, very serious.” 

In a declaration to lawyers, a 32-year-old Venezuelan man identified by a pseudonym, Xavier, who fits the profile of the man with kidney stones, said he had gone on a hunger strike because he was not getting any information about his case or about a court date. “Being here feels like torture,” he said. “I feel like this experience is finishing me emotionally and physically. I don’t feel like I can survive for another month at this place. They treat us like animals.” 

Nov. 2, 2025: “We don’t have any oxygen for her.”

In some of the emergency calls, the medical providers themselves lamented how little they could do for their patients.

A nurse at the facility dialed 911. She said she had a 46-year-old woman with COVID-19 who was short of breath and whose oxygen saturation was dropping. “But the issue is we don’t have any oxygen for her, especially if she does start desaturating even more,” she tells the operator. “She just doesn’t look good.” 

“OK. Let me request assistance, OK? Just bear with me,” the operator tells her.

“Apparently she’s been sick for the last couple of days and she’s asked to be brought into the clinic and they hadn’t brought her in,” the nurse explains later in the call. “She was just brought in today, bless her heart, so I’m just worried about her.” 

Feb. 28, 2026: “Was this accidental or intentional?”

By late February, three people had died at Camp East Montana. The first one was Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old Guatemalan man who died on Dec. 3, 2025, of liver and kidney failure. Then came Lunas Campos’ death on Jan. 3. Less than two weeks later, ICE reported that Victor Manuel Díaz, a 36-year-old Nicaraguan who had been detained during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, was found unresponsive and with a piece of fabric around his neck. His autopsy has not been made public. 

Still, the 911 calls kept coming.

“OK, we have a guy who’s overdosed. He’s a detainee,” a nurse told an emergency operator on Feb. 28. 

They didn’t know much about the 60-year-old man who had just arrived at Camp East Montana or about what he had taken about an hour ago, she said. Someone had seen him “popping pills” and stumbling around.

“Was this accidental or intentional?” the operator asked.

“Intentional,” she said.

A former Reagan administration national security official is sounding the alarm over what he calls a growing “red-green alliance” between radical Islamists and far-left socialists, warning the unlikely ideological partners are joining forces around a shared anti-American agenda.

Frank Gaffney sat down with Fox News Digital to discuss the growing influence of the Democratic Socialists of America and what he believes are the true intentions and potential threats to U.S. national security.

“One can argue that the Sharia supremacists are pursuing communism with a God, or at least a patina, a veneer of religiosity to it,” Gaffney explained. “Fundamentally, they’re at the hip in totalitarianism. Yes, with different outcomes in mind, but still perfectly willing to make common cause for the immediate shared objective of destroying the United States, which stands in the way of either of their ambitions.”

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“So that’s where we find ourselves at the moment — with a red-green axis that seeks the destruction of our country and is making that a goal being pursued now in the Democratic Party.”

Gaffney served as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy under former President Ronald Reagan and graduated from Georgetown University with a Master of Arts in international studies from Johns Hopkins University. He founded the Center for Security Policy think tank in Washington, D.C., in 1988 and currently serves as the president of the Institute for the American Future.

The “red-green alliance” describes the political cooperation between far-left movements, represented by the color red, and Islamist movements, represented by green.

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The Reagan-era official argued that while the far left and Islamists have different ultimate goals, they share a common adversary in the American constitutional system, which he said stands in the way of both movements’ ambitions.

These concepts were recently debated during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America” that took place earlier this month.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, questioned Kyle Shideler, director and senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, about whether the Muslim Brotherhood partners with groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America and characterized that relationship as the “Red-Green Alliance.”

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Shideler agreed with Cruz’s characterization and said he has seen evidence that the “red-green alliance” shares a “revolutionary objective” to squash Americanism, including the Constitution.

“This threat cannot be ignored because it is politically inconvenient,” Cruz posted to X. “A counterterrorism expert testified that the Muslim Brotherhood and the DSA are united by a shared hatred of America — and a revolutionary objective to overthrow the U.S. Constitution.”

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Gaffney agreed with the sentiment during his interview with Fox News Digital, taking it one step further to say the two movements are “perfectly willing to make common cause” around what he described as an “immediate shared objective of destroying the United States.”

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“What they have in common is much more important than their differences,” Gaffney explained.

The “red-green alliance” has also been scrutinized by some Muslim critics of radical Islamism.

In May, Fox News Digital spoke with Dalia Ziada, a Muslim scholar who was forced to flee Egypt after criticizing Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. She said that the nexus of radical Islamism with the radical left in the “red-green alliance” threatened the U.S., American politics and Western society.

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“For five or seven years now, we have been seeing some kind of a ‘sinful marriage’ between the radical left and radical Islamism, the groups that hate Western liberal democracies and desire to destroy them,” she told Fox News Digital.

A Fox News Digital investigation found roughly 425 organizations spanning communist groups, Muslim advocacy organizations and anti-Israel activist coalitions are part of a coordinated transnational protest network that collectively brings in about $1 billion in annual revenue.

When ProPublica recently investigated a rape crisis that surged through Syracuse University in the 1980s, we found evidence that the school had taken steps to suppress news coverage of the assaults. The university responded by portraying itself as a changed institution today, “committed to supporting the students who come forward and being there for them at every step of the process,” as a school spokesperson put it.

But the university’s recent actions in a lawsuit filed by a former student who was attacked on campus during that period appear at odds with that commitment. After the Syracuse Police Department agreed to provide old records to the victim, lawyers for Syracuse University intervened, seeking to block the victim’s access to many of the records. The school argued in legal papers that the subpoena sent to the police department was “overbroad” and suffered “from fatal geographic overreach” that rendered “it unreasonably burdensome and irrelevant.”

New York state court Judge Joseph Lamendola ruled in the university’s favor in February, dramatically limiting the records the victim could obtain to make her case that the school should have beefed up security in response to escalating crime in the area.

In June, her attorneys appealed that decision, sending the matter to a state appellate court.

“It smacks of the 1980s when SU quashed media coverage of sexual assault. It’s that all over again,” said Andrew Stengel, a former Manhattan prosecutor representing the victim. He accused the university of “retraumatizing” his client “by pretending sexual assault wasn’t a problem on campus and in the surrounding area.”

Stengel and his client, referred to as Jane Doe in legal filings, are suing the university under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that opened a one-year exemption from the statute of limitations for survivors of long-ago sexual assaults to pursue legal claims against alleged abusers and negligent institutions.

Sarah Scalese, Syracuse University’s vice president of communications, said in an emailed statement that “we do not comment on active litigation.” In response to ProPublica’s earlier story, Scalese said the university “has a robust structure in place to support those affected by sexual and relationship violence,” including “confidential counseling, advocacy and investigation and resolution services to students.”

Doe was attacked by a man with a knife inside a bathroom on the third floor of the university’s music building at about 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 27, 1987. Her assailant had entered the building through an unlocked door, according to her lawsuit, which contends that the university administration offered her “zero support” after the assault. The music program director, the complaint alleges, told her, “Men get raped, too,” and advised her to get “back on the horse.” (The director is deceased.)

Hers was one episode in a brutal saga of sexual violence that unfolded in and around the Syracuse campus throughout the decade. The scourge of assaults became so pervasive that it eventually inspired student protests, drew national press attention and contributed to the passage of federal legislation that now requires universities to publicly report crime statistics.

ProPublica’s earlier examination — rooted in the wrongful conviction of Anthony Broadwater for the rape of Alice Sebold, an author who wrote a bestselling memoir about being attacked on the last night of her freshman year at Syracuse University in 1981 — found that more than a dozen women, many of them students, reported being raped or attacked by strangers in a half-square-mile area near the campus over four years. Sebold’s was the third such attack in Thornden Park, which runs alongside the campus, in about seven months.

Some of the police reports from this time period were marked “NO PRESS,” which, according to the testimony of a former Syracuse detective, meant that the university had used its influence in the police department to “put their foot down and said no press for any kind of rape, robbery, burglary that’s anywhere in the area of Syracuse University.”

Last year, Stengel asked the police department for all police calls and reports tied to a variety of crimes from 1982 to 1987 within the ZIP code that contains the university, Thornden Park, various businesses, and a mix of student and nonstudent housing.

Emails filed as an exhibit in Doe’s case show that a lawyer representing the Syracuse Police Department suggested that Stengel focus his search on that ZIP code. The two of them agreed on the terms in August 2025, and the police department began gathering the records shortly thereafter.

A month later, the university filed a motion to “partially quash” the subpoena. Relying on case law that applies only to central and western New York state, university lawyers argued that it had standing to limit the request, even though it was not the recipient of Stengel’s subpoena. The university asserted that the subpoena would create unnecessary work for the police department, unearth irrelevant documents and waste the time of everyone involved.

The police department then reversed its earlier position and joined in the motion, estimating in a February brief that it would take 845 hours and $50,000 in staff time to provide the documents Stengel had asked for and the police department lawyer had initially approved. (A spokesperson said that “the City of Syracuse does not comment on ongoing litigation.”)

At a hearing, John Powers, an attorney hired by the university, seemed to play to Lamendola’s previous role as a lawyer for the city of Syracuse, reminding the judge that the city is “inundated with [Freedom of Information Law] responses and subpoenas, and it’s incredibly burdensome on the city, I think, as you know in your experience as well.”

The records were too old to be digitized, Powers told the judge, adding that, just as the judge once did, Powers represents the city in other matters. City employees, he said, would have to find them “the old way, Judge, the way we used to do it, crawling around in the dusty storeroom … trying to determine what ZIP code’s involved, looking at the crime. A lot of boxes, a lot of files. Very burdensome, very expensive for the city.” (Powers declined to comment, citing the litigation.)

Lamendola was persuaded. Under his ruling, none of the rapes that took place in Thornden Park or in the student apartments near it will have to be disclosed. The police will have to disclose only reports of crimes that took place on the campus itself, and not reports concerning burglary, larceny and other offenses, which the judge deemed irrelevant. He also directed Syracuse University, the defendant in the case, to assist the Police Department in identifying cases that occurred on its campus.

Doe’s team filed a 37-page appellate brief in late June that argues that the court’s decision to limit the disclosure to university buildings is “hard to justify” given that the campus is interwoven with the city. The brief, authored by appellate attorney Michael Steinberg, also takes issue with the decision to allow university personnel to act as “gatekeepers,” authorizing them to review the police files and decide for themselves which meet the judge’s criteria and which don’t. That, the appeal contends, presents a conflict of interest that would “give the defendant the power to control the evidence it will have to contest at trial.”

The university has until Sept. 23 to respond to the appeal.

Legal filings also show that university lawyers have sought to reduce its liability by raising the name of a onetime suspect in the case, Michael McKinney.

At the time of Doe’s rape, McKinney was on parole after attacking a woman in a downtown parking lot. According to police reports, two witnesses saw a man matching his description running out of the Syracuse music building the night of the attack. Doe later picked him out of a photo array.

Days later, police went to his home. Officers learned from his wife that he owned a Miller beer hat identical to the one the suspect was said to have been wearing at the time of the crime. She also said he had left abruptly, for another state. Police put the case in the “inactive file,” a common occurrence for rape cases in Syracuse at the time.

Months later, McKinney turned up in New York City. By then he had come under scrutiny for the violent robbery of another Syracuse woman. According to a newspaper article from December 1987, he was eventually found guilty of that robbery and given an unusually lengthy sentence of 20 years to life, with the judge noting his repeated crimes against women. McKinney was never prosecuted in the Jane Doe case.

McKinney served 30 years in prison on the 1987 robbery charge, records show. Then, in March 2025, he was arrested for the rape of a 46-year-old woman earlier that year. A grand jury indicted him in June 2026. He has pleaded not guilty.

While McKinney was in jail, Syracuse University lawyers filed a civil complaint against him, arguing that if the university is held liable in Doe’s case, McKinney should “contribute to any award in an amount equal to his equitable share” because of “his own culpable conduct.” Because McKinney did not respond to the suit, the university lawyers have asked the judge to find him in default. This could eventually affect a jury’s decision on the financial responsibility owed to Doe by the university.

Reached by phone, Donald Kelly, McKinney’s court-appointed lawyer in the new rape case, said, “It’s concerning that the university would serve a third-party complaint upon a prisoner to try to avoid liability,” noting that McKinney has “empty pockets.”

Reiterating that McKinney was never charged in the 1987 rape of Doe, Kelly added, “Either the university was negligent or it wasn’t.” (Kelly declined to make his client available for an interview.)

Jonathan Cardi, a Wake Forest University law professor who specializes in civil litigation and has researched negligence claims for rape, said it was not especially unusual for a defendant to try to quash subpoenas of third parties or to shift liability to others.

“These are litigation tactics,” he said. “But, at the end of the day, the university is the client, and very frequently a client’s business interests or morals dictate what they say their attorneys can and can’t do. If a university is trying to turn over a new leaf, they can tell their attorney that even though this might be the best litigation practice, this is not who we want to be.”