Billionaire heiress who backed Mamdani shovels cash to House Dems in hopes of party takeover

 Billionaire heiress Elizabeth Simons is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Democratic Party’s campaign to retake the House — even as she bankrolls the socialist causes and candidates that have Democrats’ establishment leaders increasingly on edge.

Simons, who previously cut a $250,000 check to a super PAC backing Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has donated $354,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the party’s chief House campaign arm — and thousands more to individual House candidates this election cycle.

The donations, ironically, put Simons behind the same Democratic leadership forces trying to prevent the party’s increasingly powerful progressive wing from taking over.

Elizabeth Simons has been pouring campaign contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and individual candidates, after backing “woke” causes over the years.Getty Images

“I can see why a lot of the very woke left is lining up with Hakeem [Speaker Jeffries] because the goal is winning the House,” said one longtime Democratic fundraiser.

The DCCC is headed by Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), a member of the party’s centrist New Democrat Coalition, which is the under guidance of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is positioned to take power if Dems snatch back the House. Republicans rule by a narrow 218-212 majority.

Simons is hardly a conventional Democratic establishment donor — she has has poured millions into progressive education initiatives while backing candidates like Mamdani.

Simons is chairwoman of the board of directors of the Heising-Simons Foundation, which she co-founded with her husband, Mark Heising. Her father James Simons founded the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, and was worth an estimated $31.4 billion at the time of his death in 2024.

Last August, she cut her quarter million dollar dollar check to New Yorkers for Lower Costs, which made it the largest contribution to the group backing democratic socialist Mamdani’s bid against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Her “woke math” support came in the form of $1.7 million in contributions by the foundation to the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project at Chicago’s Erikson Institute.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is on track to become House Speaker if Dems can seize control of the chamber, which Republicans control by a narrow margin.Anadolu via Getty Images

She and three other California heavy hitters have given to such causes as anti-incarceration prosecutors and cash bail opponents — donating $22 million to ballot measures and candidates in the 2022 election cycle, according to Politico.

“Democrats aren’t just embracing a socialist, anti-police agenda, they’re being bankrolled to do it. Every Democrat backing this radical, pro-crime platform will answer to voters this fall,” blasted Emily Tuttle, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP’s campaign arm.

Simons and three other California megadonors — Patty Quillin, Quinn Delaney and Kaitlyn Krieger — have contributed nearly $4 million to House Democrats and Democratic committees this election cycle, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data.

Simons and her foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on her contributions and strategy.

Quillin is founder of Meadow Fund, a donor-advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and is married to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Krieger is married to Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, and the pair run a nonprofit focused on criminal justice issues.

Delaney is founder and board chair of the Akonadi Foundation, which “supports the development of powerful social change movements to eliminate structural racism and create a racially just society.” She is married to California real estate developer Wayne Jordan.

During the same period, Quillin gave more than $300,000 to the DCCC — but also contributed $650,000 to the Working Families Party, which is one of several groups committed to taking down the party establishment.

The group crowed last week in a release about adding Michigan House primary winner Will Lawrence and US Senate primary winner Abul El-Sayed “to the growing list of WFP-backed candidates winning grueling primaries in purple seats.”

https://nypost.com/2026/08/08/us-news/billionaire-heiress-who-boosted-mamdani-shovels-cash-to-house-dems/

Oculis to buy full global rights to Privosegtor, ACT‑02 from Accure for $3.8M plus up to 2.05M shares

 

• Deal converts Oculis’ prior royalty-bearing license with Accure into an outright asset purchase agreement.
• Transaction covers lead neuro‑ophthalmology candidate Privosegtor and preclinical compound ACT‑02 from Accure Therapeutics.

https://finviz.com/stock?t=OCS&p=d

US, S. Korea to hold major military drills next week

 The militaries of the United States and South Korea announced in a statement on Monday that next week, they will be conducting major joint military exercises.

The annual drills, known as the Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercises, will take place from August 17 to August 27, with the goal of further strengthening "the allies' readiness and capabilities through combined, joint, all-domain operations."

The exercises will give the two a chance to back "ongoing preparations for a conditions-based wartime operational control (OPCON) transition," South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/US-S.-Korea-to-hold-major-military-drills-next-week/66885672

'Iran FM spox: Mecca defense pact could help regional security'

 Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on Monday that the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement reached between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan is a sign that the countries in the region are no longer looking to rely on outside help for security, noting that the defense pact could help bring stability and security to the Middle East.

"America itself has been part of the cause of insecurity in the region. We believe that security in the region is inseparable and that any plan that is based on the geopolitical and historical realities of the region, is comprehensive and inclusive, and correctly identifies the enemy and the threat, has a chance of helping to strengthen security and prevent instability and abuses by the Zionist enemy and its allies in our region," Baghaei said.

The spokesperson added that the recent developments in the region showed that security is "not a commodity that can be purchased from false brokers."

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Iran:-Mecca-defense-pact-could-help-regional-security/66886640

UK said to be preparing blueprint for tokenized gold

 The United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is preparing a framework for tokenized gold, and has contacted industry members on how it could go about regulating it so as to promote growth in the market, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the plans.

The regulator has been looking for input on ways tokenized gold could be utilized as collateral in wholesale markets and is expected to unveil its announcement on developing regulatory guidelines in the next few months, the report said, citing one of the unnamed sources.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/UK-said-to-be-preparing-blueprint-for-tokenized-gold/66884980

Poland's Conservatives Propose Deporting Unemployed Ukrainian Men Of Military Age

 by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Poland’s opposition Law and Justice party (PiS) has proposed deporting Ukrainian men of military age who are living in the country without legal employment.

The measure was presented by PiS MEP Tobiasz Bocheński during the party’s “Towards a New Government” policy conference and would be pursued if PiS returned to power.

“It is not about deporting everyone, only those who are here, do not work legally and are of military age,” party chairman Jarosław Kaczyński told journalists, as cited by Do Rzcezy.

PiS has defended the policy by arguing that men who are not working legally in Poland should return to Ukraine, where they could contribute to the country’s defense and ease pressure on its armed forces.

“This is helping Ukraine in terms of mobilization,” Kaczyński said, claiming Kyiv faces a serious shortage of military personnel, and should Russia seek to mobilize further after legislative elections in September, Ukraine must be prepared.

PiS spokesman Rafał Bochenek said similar proposals were being discussed elsewhere in Western Europe.

“Men who don’t work in our country should work and be active on the front lines, because that’s where their homeland is,” Bochenek said.

“It’s not Poles or other nationalities who should be sent to the front lines, but Ukrainians who should defend their homeland.”

Relations between Poland and Ukraine have deteriorated over Kyiv’s commemoration of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and nationalist figures linked to the massacres of Poles in Volhynia during World War II.

In June, Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, of the Order of the White Eagle after Ukraine named a military unit in honor of the “heroes of the UPA.”

Zelensky later announced plans for a National Pantheon that could include Ukrainian nationalist figures connected to the Volhynia massacres.

Ukraine’s parliament subsequently backed draft legislation supporting the project.

Read more here...

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/polands-conservatives-propose-deporting-unemployed-ukrainian-men-military-age

UK Intelligence Suddenly Warns Of 'Civil War' Plot Against Migrants... Convenient Demonization?

 by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Intelligence officials are warning that a group of Republican extremists in Ireland, known as the New IRA, is preparing a campaign of violence to drive migrants out of the country, complete with talk of civil war and 24-hour ultimatums.

The claims, amplified across major outlets this weekend, arrive at a moment when frustration with mass migration and the crimes linked to it has reached boiling point on both sides of the border.

Whether the threat is as advanced as portrayed, or whether the timing serves to tar ordinary opposition to open borders with the brush of terrorism, remains an open question.

Security sources told the Mail on Sunday that the New IRA has two aims: Irish independence and "all migrants out."

One source stated: "The New IRA have been very active this year in the North in attacks against the Police Service of Northern Ireland, at Lurgan police station and a car bomb at Dunmurry. They have two aims: Irish independence and all migrants out. We believe it is part of a power struggle going on between factions within the group of the old IRA, the Real and the New IRA, with the new incarnations advocating a campaign of violent intimidation."

A video circulating on a far-right platform featured an unidentified man declaring: "They will take control, and they will give an ultimatum, not to politicians but to the illegal migrants who are in the country."

He added: "It is now going to be time for civil war, and that is exactly what these guys are going to be doing and can you blame them? This will be a major wake-up call for the authorities. These guys will show them how it's done and give them 24 hours to leave."

UK officials are said to be on alert that any such campaign could push migrants north across the open land border into Northern Ireland and then into Great Britain. The Home Office offered its standard line: "We have a close and collaborative working relationship with Ireland on migration and border security. This includes a mutual commitment to protect the Common Travel Area from abuse, delivered through joint work to identify and tackle migration trends as they emerge."

The New IRA has been active this year. In July, 25-year-old law student Isobella Perrie Sullivan was charged with possessing explosives after a device was found in a vehicle in the Republic.

The group maintains social-media links with Scottish nationalist circles. Yet the sudden prominence given to its alleged anti-migrant turn sits against a backdrop of repeated, graphic failures of the migration system that the same authorities have struggled to address.

In June 2026, the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie in Belfast, allegedly by Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid, triggered serious disorder. Earlier that month an African migrant was filmed in a north Belfast street attack, straddling a local man and attempting to saw his head off with a Stanley knife. Bystanders had to stop him. Official descriptions reduced it to a "stabbing."

The previous summer saw three nights of anti-immigration riots across Northern Ireland after alleged sex crimes involving non-native teenagers in Ballymena. Homes burned, more than thirty officers were injured, and residents marked doors with Union flags simply to avoid being targeted.

Footage of two-tier policing continues to surface. In Dungannon, a group of armed foreign youths appeared in a Protestant area carrying knives and sticks. A local man picked up a stick. Police ran past the armed group and arrested him.

Against this record, the rapid elevation of a New IRA "civil war plot" risks collapsing legitimate public rejection of mass migration into the same category as paramilitary activity.

The framing is neat. It allows officials and media to present the choice as between "terrorists" and the status quo, while the underlying drivers of anger remain largely untouched.

That pattern sits inside a wider set of warnings that have been issued for years. Professor David Betz of King's College London has stated that many European countries are already in a pre-civil war condition. "Europe is on track for civil war," he has said, adding that societies are "past the tipping point."

Retired Colonel Richard Kemp has been equally direct. He has predicted "not just civil unrest but civil war in the UK in the coming years" because governments lack the will to confront the causes. "The people will feel they have no option than to take action into their own hands," he has warned.

Elon Musk told an interviewer that civil war in Britain is "inevitable" once a large, rapidly growing population holds beliefs antithetical to Western norms. "If you have a large and growing, rapidly growing, group of people whose beliefs are antithetical to western beliefs, at some point there will be a reckoning," he said.

Meanwhile the British state continues practical preparations. Households have been urged to stockpile food, water and medicines. Major home-defence wargames are scheduled for 2027. Official explanations point to hybrid threats and Russia. Analysts note the overlap with the internal risks Betz and others have described.

Britain's path has not been accidental. Decades of elite-driven demographic change, two-tier enforcement and refusal to maintain borders have produced the conditions now being exploited.

The sudden focus on a New IRA anti-migrant campaign allows the conversation to shift from those failures to the more comfortable territory of "extremism."

Ordinary people who simply reject the scale and consequences of mass migration find their concerns quietly folded into the same narrative.

The Common Travel Area once symbolised cooperation. Combined with uncontrolled inflows it has become a pressure valve. Violence or intimidation in one jurisdiction simply moves the problem into the other. Carefully worded assurances about "joint work" do not reverse the changes already locked in.

What is unfolding is not solely a republican revival. It is one more indication that the open-borders experiment has broken the social contract. When street-level reality includes beheading attempts, sex attacks and selective policing, while official messaging pivots to paramilitary threats against migrants, public trust evaporates further.

The New IRA may be small. The decision to elevate its alleged new focus at this precise moment still serves a useful purpose: it reframes resistance to mass migration as something darker than simple self-preservation.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uk-intelligence-suddenly-warns-civil-war-plot-against-migrants-convenient-demonization