Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev warned on Thursday that Finland is now "on Russia's nuclear target list," accusing the country of lifting the ban on hosting nuclear arms on its territory.
"Rejoice, Finland, you’ve reached peak security!" Medvedev wrote on X. In June, Finland's parliament officially voted to repeal the ban on nuclear weapons, opening the door to potentially hosting such weapons or allowing their transfer through its soil. Formerly a neutral country, Finland joined NATO in April 2023, in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine a year before, prompting a crisis in relations with Moscow, which decried the move.
Moreover, Russia deployed its own nuclear weapons in Belarus in 2023, with Minsk subsequently agreeing to host the novel Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM), which could potentially reach major European cities within minutes if launched from the country, as tensions between Russia and NATO continued to rise.
Who are the so-called Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow travelers?
While it is difficult to generalize, many current and would-be socialist officeholders share several common traits.
Most of them represent a relatively small slice of American life. Almost all are urban, with little knowledge of small-town or rural existence.
Their world is subways, buses, high-rises, Uber, taxis, and proximity to corporate, academic, and financial institutions—yet often with little understanding of where their food, fuel, water, or everyday goods originate, or where their waste and sewage ultimately go.
Their worldview is shaped more by consumption than production, as though goods simply arrive in and depart from cities on autopilot.
A disproportionate number of our most prominent radicals are either first- or second-generation immigrants, most originating from failed or illiberal states in what was once called the Third World.
They or their parents left their homelands in search of wealthier countries, fairer societies, greater opportunity, and, in many cases, safety and freedom.
Yet once here, many of their families have prospered, often aided by extensive educational and institutional support from the generous American host.
Few have even tried to explain the paradox of fleeing failed states, only to become virulent critics of the charitable nation that they chose to join.
Many are college-educated, often with degrees in fields that did not translate into the professional pathways they believed they were entitled to.
They are often glib but otherwise poorly educated. Few possess any real grounding in history, literature, or the STEM fields.
Most of their major and minor courses of study are in the social sciences—political science, sociology, psychology, community relations, and the like—or the infamous “studies” programs.
When they graduate from left-wing universities, they emerge strikingly arrogant and ignorant at once. As elite radical egalitarians, they proudly brandish their degrees and constantly reference their university training. Yet for all the time and money poured into college during what were supposed to be the best years of their lives, prolonged adolescence and bitterness appear epidemic among the new young socialists.
In college, they rubbed elbows with leftist elites—wealthy students, tenured professors, and lavishly paid administrators. They came to believe they had earned their membership in this exclusive club. When that sense of belonging didn’t properly materialize, rage and shame drove them to find cosmic solutions for their own poor choices and personal disappointments.
Many of them—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Melat Kiros, James Talarico, Graham Platner, Claire Valdez—are either childless, single, or both. For all their sermonizing about diversity, it is relatively rare to find a Democratic Socialist who is suburban, married with children, and therefore has a direct personal stake in local school curricula, charter schools, vouchers, crime, law enforcement, and basic urban safety.
They are overtly obsessed with tribal identity. AOC and Rashida Tlaib fixate on “white privilege” and “white supremacy.” Darializa Avila Chevalier has denounced white women who date non-whites as “ugly colonizer women.”
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks openly of targeting “whiter” neighborhoods for higher taxes. Most of them know whites only as fellow left-wing bicoastal elites, not as working-class and poor whites who live in the nation’s interior.
While they damn the nation’s founding as a settler-colonial white supremacist project and dismiss its first 250 years as a grim catalogue of -isms and -ologies, they never explain why they or their parents would have chosen to come to such a cesspool in the first place.
Or why do they not leave now for more authentically non-white paradises in Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Middle East?
So many are rank hypocrites.
Mamdani rails against “settler-colonialist” Israelis. Yet he was born into the 1 percent elite, non-indigenous, “settler-colonialist” Indian population that migrated to Uganda and still controls over 60 percent of its gross domestic product.
Ilhan Omar loudly denounces “genocide” in Gaza. Yet she rarely mentions that her family fled Somalia because they—and thousands like them—were tied to the genocidal regime of Siad Barre, which murdered multitudes before he was deposed and his supporters poured into America.
The new socialists decry the wealthy. Yet their most visible leaders are rich. Ilhan Omar once listed a net worth of $30 million on her congressional financial disclosure.
Mamdani is the son of well-off elites. Bernie Sanders owns three homes. Ro Khanna, now a fellow traveler, is a multimillionaire many times over thanks to family trusts. Graham Platner’s affluent parents subsidized both his home purchase and his business.
Socialists claim to despise billionaires—except when they are happily taking millions from their financial patrons: speculator George Soros, billionaire Neville Roy Singham (who relocated to Communist China), or onetime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, Reid Hoffman.
In sum, Democratic socialism is a top-down movement run by insulated elites who have little understanding of—or genuine interest in—the lives of millions of ordinary Americans living outside the walls of their parochial cloisters.
The Trump administration has declared a power emergency for the nation’s largest energy grid in advance of a dangerous heat wave that threatens to strain electricity infrastructure.
The emergency order issued by the Energy Department Tuesday authorizes power plants in the PJM Interconnection LLC region, which serves 67 million people across 13 states, to operate at maximum levels and exceed some environmental requirements.
A second Energy Department order authorizes the use of backup generators in the PJM region “as a last resort,” PJM said. Both orders run until 11:59 p.m. New York time July 3.
PJM requested the move Monday, warning of the potential for record power demand amid temperatures forecast to exceed 100F (38C).
Triple-digit temperatures are forecast to spread from Washington to Boston as a wedge of high pressure known as a “heat dome” locks warm air in place. Hundreds of daily temperature records are set to be tied or broken, according to the National Weather Service, which has issued excessive heat alerts across more than two dozen states.
This summer is already proving to be a challenging one for America’s power system, which is striving to meet a surge in demand from data centers. Last month, the DOE issued an emergency order authorizing deployment of backup generation resources in PJM to help mitigate blackouts in the Mid-Atlantic.
Up until now, when it comes to real estate, Blackstone was best known in recent years for dumping many of its trophy office properties - which in the aftermath of work from home never recovered their projected cash flow potential - at ahuge discount. Now, it may be pulling a page from its old,pre-Lehman playbook by calling the top in yet another commercial real estate segment: data centers.
Two days ago we reported that Blackstone was selling its stakes in a trio of data centers across Northern Virginia for $3.5 billion, cashing out of part of a bet it made less than three years ago. According to Bloomberg, Digital Realty Trust would pay $1.2 billion of cash and offer $2.3 billion of its shares (which the PE giant has largely cashed in by now) to Blackstone funds; in exchange, the data center company will acquire Blackstone’s 80% interest in two 96-megawatt data centers in Manassas, Virginia, and a 50% interest in a 96-megawatt center in nearby Sterling.
We said that "the question is why did Blackstone decide to pull the cord now, just as fresh doubts are creeping whether the Mag 7s will continue funding the AI expansion with virtually unlimited capex."
Two days later we have an answer.
The digital ink is barely dry on its Virginia data center sales, and we learn that Blackstone’s QTS (QTS Realty Trust) is again quietly fading its AI exposure by walking away from plans to build its portion (which at this point is the only portion left after its partner already pulled out days ago) of a 2,100-acre data center campus in Virginia - also known as Prince William Digital Gateway which would house as many as 37 data-center buildings - handing a win to residents who fought for years to topple the project.
The data center developer had planned to transform more than 800 acres in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County, a project that would have spanned 22 million square feet, making it the largest data center campus in the world. Located on the edge of an historic Civil War battlefield and on what used to be land protected from development, the project ignited strong pushback from homeowners and has been stalled by lawsuits.
As part of Wall Street’s broader push into data centers, investment has poured into Northern Virginia, which is considered the country’s largest data center market, and is better known as "Data Center Alley"
But in a strategic U-turn, in recent days QTS executives decided that it isn’t worth pressing forward in court, the Bloomberg sources said. The firm’s attorneys plan to inform the court of their decision as soon as this week, the people said, asking not to be named discussing non-public information.
QTS’s rapid growth has made it a poster child of how private equity has fueled the data center industry’s breakneck expansion. Those ambitions are colliding with public anxiety over strains to electricity grids and home prices from AI data centers.
The retreat may be the final blow to Virginia’s “Digital Gateway” project, a mega site roughly twice the size of New York’s Central Park with city-sized power needs. The initiative was supposed to bring in some $100 billion in spending and create one of the world’s largest technology corridors. Not any more.
The project had sparked contentious, drawn-out public hearings. A clerical blunder related to a key zoning meeting created setbacks for developers. Already, Brookfield-backed Compass Datacenters, which was supposed to build on more than 800 acres at the site, had pulled out in May.
The U-turns by both firms, Bloomberg writes, amount to one of the most dramatic retreats by developers from a data center project.
It’s a reminder of how tech firms’ race for the computing infrastructure to support AI advances is increasingly facing the same bottlenecks, from power shortages to supply crunches, we have been warning about for the past two years and which Citadel Securities warned about just yesterday.
Organized opposition is mounting, forcing firms and developers to be more deliberate about where they choose to build. This is precisely what we warned one year ago would happen as more grassroots organizations pushed back against the relentless data center rollout. At least we haven't gotten to the arson stage (yet).
To account for the costs of such build outs, Virginia recently passed a budget with an energy consumption tax on data centers, and more states are threatening moratoriums on new development. Data centers - and how their costs and benefits are shared - are now emerging a major swing issue in the lead up to the US midterm elections. These hurdles raise questions for investors over whether the AI build out can keep going at this pace.
For community organizers and residents that spent the last five years opposing the Digital Gateway, QTS’s pullout will now validate a playbook that involved pressure campaigns on local politicians and legal attacks. It will also unleash even more powerful blowback nationwide against these unwanted developments.
As Bloomberg recalls, hundreds of proponents and critics showed up at a 27-hour zoning hearing in 2023 to lobby authorities on the project. After county officials narrowly voted to approve the conversion of agricultural and semi-rural land for data centers, community organizers and residents pursued lawsuits.
The outcome of the meeting - and whether the county properly advertised the event - was at the center of legal challenges. The lawsuits hinged on one detail: The first two newspaper notices publicizing the hearing weren’t separated by at least six days, as state and local codes required at that time. While it is unclear if Blackstone agents had tried to "grease" the zoning board's palms to quietly fast-track the data center, in the end the outcome was catastrophic to the builders.
In March, Virginia courts upheld an earlier ruling that the zoning approvals were invalid because the public notices for the meeting fell short of rules.
“While we still believe this project offered significant benefits for the region and our neighbors, recent legal actions and compounding regulatory hurdles have effectively closed a viable path forward,” Compass Datacenters President AJ Byers said in a statement following the ruling.
After Compass bailed on the project, that left QTS as the lone developer. It was the only party that petitioned for an appeal of the case in Virginia’s Supreme Court.
Originally, the firm’s executives were concerned about the prospect of setting a legal precedent on the back of an administrative oversight. After Compass’s retreat, QTS lost a partner who would share the costs of upgrading various utilities needed for the massive developments, said one of the people familiar with the matter. QTS decided it was not worth proceeding with the project.
Blackstone, which acquired QTS in 2021, is a major financier of data centers, with a portfolio of more than $150 billion of such assets around the world.
The increasingly bitter political and grassroots pushback against new data center construction explains why Blackstone has been getting cold feet just as the AI bubble is peaking, first selling existing data centers and now walking away from upcoming projects. A recent Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor.
Half of opponents mention data centers’ excessive use of resources, including 18% each mentioning their use of water and energy. Sixteen percent mention a related environmental concern of pollution, including noise pollution and air and water pollution.
About one in five opponents are concerned with the impact on local quality of life, including increased population, increased traffic and preferring that the land be used for other purposes. A similar share mention potentially negative economic consequences, including higher utility bills, cost-of-living increases, and the cost of building the data centers (which could involve the use of taxpayer funds).
Most of the remaining opposition stems from general or specific concerns about artificial intelligence.
Blackstone, which manages more than $1.3 trillion, bills itself as the largest global provider of data centers, and also owns some of the utilities that power them. It acquired QTS in 2021 and bought Australian computing provider AirTrunk in 2024. In May, the firm held an initial public offering for Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust Inc., its data center acquisition vehicle, which aims to buy already built and leased properties benefiting from the artificial intelligence boom.
And now that the protest movement knows how to push back against uninvited Wall Street occupants, thanks to the BlackStone capitulation, expect an exponential increase in legal (and other) attempts to hinder the rollout of data centers across the US, assuring that the AI supercycle, which is already years behind schedule with just half of the data centers meant to be built in progress and on time, will expect to see an avalanche of delays and cancellations assuring that the return on debt-funded capex will be even less as eventual launch dates gradually move ever further into the unknown future.
Readers have been well ahead of both the federal government and the mainstream news cycle in asking whether there is a"Cuba connection"behind the radicalization of the Democratic Party and its aligned billionaire-funded nonprofit universe.
What was once dismissed as speculation is now beginning to look more like a foreign influence operation, one tied to an alarming rise of anti-American socialist networks that openly seek to dismantle capitalism and the American way of life.
Even mainstream Democrats are now sounding alarms over the socialists hijacking their party. Meanwhile, the federal government appears to be putting more pieces of the complex puzzle together, only now recognizing that some of these radical networks may be connected to foreign influence campaigns aimed at subverting the country from within.
On Wednesday, the State Department revealed that the three Cuban nationals were detained by federal agents after Secretary of State Marco Rubio terminated their legal status.
Carlos Antonio Lloga Dominguez, his wife, and his son are now in federal custody pending removal, according to the press release.
The department accused Lloga Dominguez of spending more than a decade working for the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, or ICAP, which Washington describes as Cuba's top influence and intelligence front group in the U.S.
And where have we heard ICAP before? Let's revisit our December 2025 note in which we pointed out:
According to a defected Cuban intelligence officer and corroborating intelligence reporting, legacy Castro-aligned groups such as the Venceremos Brigade and the National Lawyers Guild have been controlled by Cuba's Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) since at least the 1980s. That influence is exerted through ICAP (the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples).
ICAP is an official Cuban government organization, founded in 1960, that promotes international solidarity and cultural exchange. On paper, it organizes delegations, volunteer brigades, educational tours, and international conferences that oppose U.S. sanctions and support Cuba's political system. It appears benign - almost quaint.
But declassified CIA documents dating back to the Cold War describe a consistent operational method: foreign recruits were brought to Cuba for training in intelligence tradecraft or guerrilla sabotage and were received by DGI officers posing as ICAP officials. ICAP functioned as the intake valve - political cover for intelligence operations designed to cultivate long-term assets rather than short-term spies.
What exists today is not a single organization but a complex ecosystem.
ICAP sits at the center, functioning as a coordinating hub. Orbiting it is the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a deliberately loose coalition that links 77 organizations of activists, nonprofits, and campaigns while minimizing legal exposure or clear command structures. The National Lawyers Guild serves as the lawfare and agitation arm, training protesters, facilitating delegations, and litigating against U.S. institutions under the guise of civil rights.
Funding and infrastructure come from the Neville Roy Singham Network, a web of organizations tied to Chinese Communist Party-aligned capital that provides money, logistics, and professionalized organizing capacity. Public narratives are amplified by legacy anti-war organizations like CODEPINK and the ANSWER Coalition, which are also now under the Singham umbrella. They frame U.S. foreign policy as illegitimate while defending authoritarian adversaries. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) functions as the political activation channel, translating activist energy into electoral and legislative influence on behalf of the Cuban regime.
Last month, Rubio sanctioned ICAP under Executive Order 14404, calling it a central node in a Cuban intel and influence network that claims links to more than 2,000 organizations across 150 countries.
The State Department said ICAP has maintained close ties to Cuban intelligence, noting that its current president, Fernando González Llort, was convicted in the U.S. for his role in the Wasp Network, a Cuban spy ring uncovered in Florida in the late 1990s.
Bloomberg noted that Lloga Dominguez was one of the individuals who brought far-left streamer Hasan Piker and parts of the Neville Roy Singham Network on a recent trip to Cuba.
It should be noted that Piker, the unofficial spokesperson for the DSA, has told millions of his followers "to kill capitalists. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood."
Alongside its Cuba focus, the Trump administration is also investigating China-based billionaire and self-described Marxist Neville Roy Singham over allegations that his NGO networks have helped sow chaos and propel far-left, anti-American movements across the U.S.
Earlier this week, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York, authorized by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, launched an investigation into whether Singham, NGOs he funded, or their leaders committed wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, or other financial crimes.
What is becoming increasingly obvious is that the pieces of the puzzle are coming together very quickly, giving readers a rough framework for understanding why the radical left has become so radical and why its rhetoric often sounds as if it were not organically born in the U.S.
That is because these movements may be operating within or adjacent to foreign influence networks with one main objective, as the DSA itself lays out: the destruction of the US.
With Democrats increasingly alarmed that socialists and Marxists are hijacking their party, Republicans may now have a simple and highly recognizable target: communism. For the first time in decades, the GOP has a message that can cut across partisan lines, because most Americans, regardless of political affiliation, still broadly understand one thing: communism is bad.
States that adopt the updated 2024 International Energy Conservation Code could see building costs for a typical single-family home go up by $14,000, the Department of Energy (DOE) warned on June 26.
The International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) is a model code developed by the Washington-based International Code Council (ICC) for setting minimum energy efficiency requirements for commercial and residential buildings.
While the ICC doesn’t mandate its code, states and local jurisdictions can choose to mandate the code in their building standards. The IECC is the most adopted across the United States as it is recognized in federal law as the national model energy code for low-rise residential buildings.
The DOE takes part in the ICC’s consensus process to update energy efficiency provisions of the IECC. The code is revised once every three years.
Regarding the latest IECC codes published in 2024, the DOE has determined that adoption of the code “would increase residential construction costs by more than $9.2 billion annually compared to the 2006 code levels, adding more than $127 billion in cumulative costs nationwide.”
The IECC model regulation forces “American families to pay thousands of dollars more upfront for a new home, while projected energy savings may take decades to materialize. In most states, estimated payback periods exceed 10 years, with some exceeding 20 years—locking American families into decades-long repayment timeframes and restricting consumer choice.”
According to the National Association of Home Builders, the 2024 IECC contains several provisions related to energy efficiency, including heat or energy recovery ventilation systems; installation of energy-efficient appliances such as refrigerators, dishwashers, and clothes washers; and the deployment of renewable energy resources on building sites.
In March 2024, when the 2024 IECC codes were approved by the ICC’s Board of Directors, the ICC said that the new codes were anticipated to improve energy efficiency for commercial buildings by roughly 10 percent, and for residential buildings by around 6.5 percent.
On Feb. 15 this year, the DOE sent a letter to the ICC, raising “serious concerns” about the trajectory of the IECC.
The purpose of IECC is to provide model building codes that can be adopted to provide energy efficiency gains for communities. However, in recent years, IECC has expanded its scope to focus on areas such as energy generation infrastructure requirements and greenhouse gas emissions. This shift risks undermining existing DOE objectives, the letter said.
The department’s priorities for building energy codes involve ensuring affordability for American households and businesses, and safeguarding consumer choice to opt for their preferred appliances and equipment.
The DOE urged the ICC to return its codes to its traditional focus on building energy efficiency that would provide both “clear cost savings and beneficial efficiency advances” to consumers.
In its recent statement, the DOE said it encouraged the ICC to omit requirements related to onsite energy generation and greenhouse gas avoidance, which raise construction costs.
“This analysis shows how unnecessary regulations and ineffective building codes have drastically increased housing costs with little to no benefit for homeowners or communities,” Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson said.
“Standard-setting bodies should take note: we prioritize the American homeowner and will not allow erroneous building requirements to push homeownership out of reach.”
The Epoch Times reached out to ICC for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Ensuring Housing Affordability
The DOE said in its recent statement that it would continue implementing President Donald Trump’s March 13 executive order titled “Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction.”
In the order, Trump wrote that unnecessary regulatory barriers and “onerous mandates” have delayed construction and driven up the cost of new homes, making housing less affordable for Americans.
One of the provisions in the order directed the Secretaries of Energy, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Agriculture to take “appropriate action to reform and, where appropriate, eliminate unduly burdensome or costly energy-efficiency, water-use, or alternative-energy requirements regarding housing.”
This shall include reviewing and revising residential building energy codes, energy efficiency standards for certain new construction, and energy conservation standards for manufactured housing.
In a March 13 statement, HUD said that regulatory costs make up almost $94,000 in the final price of a new single-family home, with green energy mandates in building codes alone raising construction costs by $30,000.
As such, cutting red tape, including “onerous” energy and water requirements and “woke” green building codes, will boost housing stock and bring down the cost of newly built homes, the department said.
In April, HUD and the Department of Agriculture rescinded a policy related to energy standards, which HUD said would have pushed home construction costs by $20,000 to $31,000.
