/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Leaked State Department Memo Reveals Profound Restructuring
According to the memo’s dictates, what remained of USAID has been thoroughly warped and fully woven into the State Department where it no longer serves its former stated purpose of cultural diplomacy and soft-power humanitarianism. Instead, the State Department has explicitly centralized executive command and control and effectively militarized the executive’s approach to disaster response, population control, and national security. Toward this end, new offices will be created to monitor emerging threats, enforce migration controls, and consolidate foreign aid oversight under political leadership. “There is a true command and control of it in a way that there wasn’t,” Rep. Mast told Drop Site. “That command and control will take place under the political branches.”
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/state-department-memo-congress-budget

Inside the MAGA vs. hawk battle to sway Trump on bombing Iran
During a private lunch with the president at the White House last Wednesday, conservative talk show host Mark Levin told Trump that Iran was days away from building a nuclear weapon, an argument Trump’s own intelligence team has told the president is not accurate, according to an intelligence official as well as another Trump ally familiar with the matter. Levin urged Trump to allow the Israeli government to strike Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would torpedo the diplomacy.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/10/iran-trump-maga-hawks-00394820
https://archive.ph/mtcO4

Leaders of sex-focused women's wellness company that promoted "orgasmic meditation" convicted in forced labor trial
The leaders of a sex-focused women's wellness company that promoted "orgasmic meditation" were found guilty Monday in what has been described as an abusive scheme to coerce their employees into performing traumatic and demeaning tasks with little or no pay, authorities said. A Brooklyn jury deliberated for less than two days before convicting Nicole Daedone, 57, and Rachel Cherwitz, 44, on federal forced labor charges, following a five-week trial.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/onetaste-sex-wellness-company-convicted-forced-labor-trial/

David Hogg defies DNC leadership by wading into another primary for open seat
The Virginia Democratic Party is holding a “firehouse” primary (meaning the party, not the state, runs it) on June 28 to determine who will be its nominee in the September special election to finish Connolly’s term, which runs until January 2027. Shin has served in the Virginia House of Delegates since 2022. The former nonprofit organizer won her first election by defeating a Democratic incumbent in the primary after calling for “strong progressive leadership.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/10/hogg-group-endorses-gerry-connolly-democrats/
https://archive.ph/i4GW3

LAUSD will deploy school police to set up safe zones around campuses, graduations amid ICE raids
President Trump reversed a Biden administration policy that largely exempted schools and other potentially sensitive areas such as churches from immigration enforcement. In recent days, federal agents also have not targeted local schools. But in April federal agents were turned away by staff at two elementary schools. Carvalho did not rule out the potential for a standoff involving school police if federal officers attempted to enter a school or an off-campus school event — such as a graduation ceremony — without a judicial warrant.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-09/los-angeles-unified-school-police-set-up-safe-zones-amid-graduations-ice-raids
https://archive.ph/UrJ6v

Florida agency tells newspaper to halt reporting angle on foundation associated with governor’s wife
The Orlando Sentinel received the letter on Friday from the state Department of Children and Families, whose top official is appointed by the governor. The letter claimed that the newspaper’s Tallahassee reporter had used threats to coerce foster families into making negative statements about the Hope Florida Foundation when he contacted them about the welfare nonprofit behind the signature initiative of Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady.
https://apnews.com/article/orlando-sentinel-florida-desantis-welfare-9636452a8bf8eb230489513db64d86f7

New polls show a Cuomo-Mamdani face off in a tightening New York mayoral race
Data for Progress, which conducted its text and web poll of 819 likely Democratic voters between May 30 and June 4, found Cuomo starts the ranked-choice race with a seven-point edge. He wins it in the eighth round by a 51-49 split — within the three-point margin of error. It was conducted on behalf of the super PAC New Yorkers for Lower Costs, as well as the national PAC for the Working Families Party — whose local arm is backing the democratic socialist state lawmaker.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/09/cuomo-mamdani-in-nyc-mayoral-race-00395013
https://archive.ph/UkWyv

‘The Families Wanted Boeing to Face Real Accountability’: CounterSpin interview with Katya Schwenk on Boeing deal
Janine Jackson: There’s no need for me to rewrite the AP story on how Boeing and the Justice Department got together and decided no crime was committed when Boeing’s 737 Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. So I’ll just cite it: "Boeing did not tell airlines and pilots about a new software system, called MCAS, that could turn the plane’s nose down without input from pilots if a sensor detected that the plane might go into an aerodynamic stall. The Max planes crashed after a faulty reading from the sensor pushed the nose down and pilots were unable to regain control. After the second crash, Max jets were grounded worldwide until the company redesigned MCAS to make it less powerful and to use signals from two sensors, not just one. The Justice Department charged Boeing in 2021 with deceiving FAA regulators about the software, which did not exist in older 737s, and about how much training pilots would need to fly the plane safely. The department agreed not to prosecute Boeing at the time, however, if the company paid a $2.5 billion settlement, including the $243.6 million fine, and took steps to comply with anti-fraud laws for three years. Federal prosecutors, however, last year said Boeing violated the terms of the 2021 agreement by failing to make promised changes to detect and prevent violations of federal anti-fraud laws. Boeing agreed last July to plead guilty to the felony fraud charge instead of enduring a potentially lengthy public trial." But now that we’re up to speed, here’s a reporter whose work, unlike that of AP, is not headlined with a little ticker telling you how Boeing stock is doing. Katya Schwenk is a journalist whose work appears at the Lever, the Intercept and the Baffler, among other outlets. Welcome to CounterSpin, Katya Schwenk.
https://fair.org/home/the-families-wanted-boeing-to-face-real-accountability/

The Bad News About the May Jobs Report
The economy added 139,000 jobs and the unemployment rate remained at 4.2 percent, a historically low level. Wage growth also continued at a healthy 3.9 percent year-over-year pace, with the annualized rate over the last three months, a nearly identical 3.8 percent. All looks pretty good. But it is possible to tell a more negative story. To be clear in what follows I am 100 percent guilty of cherry-picking. I am looking for evidence of a weakening labor market and ignoring factors that could go in the other direction. The reason is that we have seen many data points elsewhere, notably indexes measuring consumer and business expectations, that paint a very negative picture of the economy. The reality and threat of massive tariff hikes has clearly scared people, as have the threatened and actual cuts in federal spending and employment. It also has changed behavior in measurable ways, notably the surge in the trade deficit following the election and then the plunge reported for April. The deficit went from $74.3 billion in October to a peak of $138.3 billion in March and then fell back to $61.6 billion in April. People stockpiled items they expected to be subject to tariffs in these months and then cut back sharply after they had made their purchases and the tariffs started to take effect. So, the negative story is not based just on people’s speculation about the future, it can be seen very clearly in real world data. I’ll also make an important point about the sort of recession we should be expecting.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/10/the-bad-news-about-the-may-jobs-report/

There is No Other Path But Revolution for the Liberation of the Working Class and the Oppressed: MLKP Statement PKK 12th Congress
Our party, which considers it a revolutionary duty to share its thoughts on the two key strategic decisions and some of the theses adopted by the Congress with the peoples of Kurdistan and Turkey, with the Arab, Persian, and Azerbaijani peoples, and especially with the revolutionaries of the region and the communist, revolutionary, and anti-fascist parties and organizations worldwide, has come to the following conclusions in its assessment of the PKK’s 12th Congress decisions:
1) Ending the armed struggle and free organization, as well as the formal handover of weapons to this or that interlocutor through an unwritten agreement, that does not guarantee fundamental national-democratic rights such as mother tongue education and national autonomy, and essential rights such as the unconditional release of prisoners of war and the unconditional return of all guerrilla forces and political exiles to Northern Kurdistan, is the acceptance of a peace that is neither just nor democratic. 2) Apart from the fact that certain legislative changes expected by the fascist chief regime are based on keeping collective national democratic rights under lock and key, the aim is not to shed light on the fascist colonial crimes against humanity and hold the criminals accountable, but on the contrary to bring the guerrillas as individuals and persons who have committed crimes before the colonial justice system. This is intended to pave the way for the policy of the fascist colonialist enemy, which is organizing the mood and practice of capitulation. 3) The new strategic line, based on the theses and beliefs that armed struggle, illegal means and methods of the party have lost their validity and that the colonial yoke cannot be overthrown in a revolutionary manner, that a struggle cannot be waged outside the boundaries drawn by denialist colonialism, is liquidationist and reformist. 4) The same thesis, based on the claim to transform colonialism and conquer the fortress from within, making it inherently reformist because it bypasses the economic core of the problem and reduces colonialism to the policies of the ruling national bourgeoisie or governments. … 6) The thesis of “democratic socialism versus nation-state socialism” seeks to provide ideological ammunition for the reformist line, which is based on the idea that revolution is unnecessary. It detaches socialism from the reality of classes and has a reformist character based on the denial and rejection of the Union of Soviet Republics, which is the achievment of the October Revolution and is based on the full equality of nations.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/19586/

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