/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Bill to establish statewide oversight of jails in Washington dies in Legislature
The effort reflects the extreme reluctance some hawkish Democrats have towards voting for the resolution introduced by anti-interventionist Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Unlike the Khanna-Massie measure, the centrist Democrats' alternative resolution would give the administration 30 days to end hostilities with Iran. It would also allow them to maintain "a troop presence in the region for defensive purposes."
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/03/democrats-iran-war-powers-trump-vote-house
https://archive.ph/5Mfjt

DoJ renews fight against law firms that stood up to Trump in abrupt reversal
The US justice department abruptly reversed course on Tuesday and decided it would defend executive orders made by Donald Trump to try to penalize law firms that represented clients or causes the president did not like.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/03/doj-drop-law-firms-case-trump-executive-orders

Tech giant Google is behind controversial data center proposal in Hermantown
The tech giant behind a massive and controversial proposed data center in the northeast Minnesota community of Hermantown has been revealed to be Google, which just last week announced that it is also behind the development of another controversial data center near Rochester, in the small community of Pine Island.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/03/03/google-behind-controversial-data-center-proposal-in-hermantown

Mamdani, Hochul unveil first New York City neighborhoods to get free child care for 2-year-olds
The first four communities that will receive 2,000 2-K seats this fall are Washington Heights and Inwood, Fordham and Kingsbridge, East Brooklyn including Canarsie, Brownsville and Ocean Hill, and Ozone Park and the Rockaways.
https://abc7ny.com/post/mamdani-hochul-unveil-first-nyc-neighborhoods-get-free-child-care-2-year-olds-fall/18671485/

Florida public universities temporarily halt hiring foreigners on H1-B visas
Florida's public universities will temporarily halt hiring foreign faculty members using the H-1B visa program, which ​allows employers to recruit highly skilled professionals in ‌specialized occupations. The move comes after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis directed schools last October to crack down on what he described as "visa abuse" in ​higher education.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/florida-public-universities-temporarily-halt-hiring-foreigners-h1-b-visas-2026-03-03/

Newsom threatens California counties for failing to use his new mental health court
CARE Court rolled out in eight counties at the end of 2023, and was adopted across the entire state by December 2024. The idea was to help some of the most vulnerable Californians – people who are in the grip of psychosis, languishing on sidewalks and unable to take care of themselves because all other treatment programs have failed them. But a CalMatters investigation found CARE Court has served far fewer Californians than initially anticipated, and many families who had counted on the program to help loved ones with a severe mental illness have been disappointed.
https://apnews.com/article/gavin-newsom-courts-kim-johnson-mental-health-california-01aecbcbd3928c65e8879446ad11a810

San Francisco Mayor Lurie's office cutting 500 City Hall jobs due to budget shortfall
The city's health department alone is expected to cut roughly $20 million in staff costs, equal to about 100 staff members. Last month, the mayor announced legislation for a new sobering center moved forward. The so-called RESET center (Rapid Enforcement, Support, Evaluation and Triage) will be overseen by the Department of Public Health and the SF Sheriff's Office. The center is scheduled to open this spring.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-francisco-mayor-luries-office-cutting-500-city-hall-jobs-due-budget-shortfall

Bill to establish statewide oversight of jails in Washington dies in Legislature
Washington is one of 12 states without enforceable statewide jail standards or oversight, according to state data and corrections oversight experts. Senate Bill 5005 would have changed that, but a watered-down version that had removed all but one mention of the word “oversight” from the original bill language died in the Ways and Means Committee.
https://apnews.com/article/prisons-washington-general-news-77faa681916e6957537c1846f79a9ccb

The Attack on Iran Is an Attack on All of Us
The US and Israeli attack on Iran is morally repugnant. It is calculated only to benefit an elite of racist, Islamophobic warmongers. It will not benefit Iranians or ordinary people anywhere on earth. There are genuine grassroots movements resisting the Iranian government, which is a blood-soaked authoritarian regime—as are the US and Israeli governments that are attacking it. But participants in Iranian social movements do not want Donald Trump to attack Iran. As some of them wrote last month, “Any military or imperial intervention can only weaken the struggle from below and strengthen the Islamic Republic’s hand to carry out repression.” Social movements in Iran have been resisting an oppressive government for decades. But the establishment of a puppet regime serving the US and Israel will not help them. In attacking Iran, Trump does not necessarily seek to overthrow the government, but simply to subordinate it to his will, unseating the top figures in order to put himself in place of them. He did precisely that in Venezuela in January 2026. The kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro did nothing to change the distribution of power in Venezuelan society; the chief result of Trump’s intervention has been that he has put the pieces in place to loot the country of its natural resources for the benefit of elements of the ruling class of the United States. Like other autocrats around the world, Trump aims to sideline ordinary people, reducing all politics to a matter of tyrants contending for power at the expense of those they rule. He will gladly sacrifice the lives of Iranians, Israelis, and US citizens for his own benefit.
https://crimethinc.com/2026/02/28/the-attack-on-iran-is-an-attack-on-all-of-us

The Left Could Learn Something From Trump’s Tariff Gambit
Trump’s presidency, for both better and worse, has been a real-world experiment in, and live demonstration of, the power of the presidency and its ability to affect change even when it doesn’t have Congress’s slow, grinding legislative work on its side. Tariffs are not the first time Trump has done this, acting quickly in total disregard for the legal niceties or future opinions of judges. Liberals, progressives, and socialists don’t like the purposes he’s put this strategy to, but there’s no doubt that it has worked for him. A future president certainly shouldn’t go as far as Trump, who has repeatedly walked right up to the edge of constitutional crisis by finding too-cute-by-half ways of defying the courts. Nor should they do it for the nakedly authoritarian and reactionary ends that he has put this strategy to. But given the tangle of crises they’ll inherit, there is no reason a future president should be constrained by institutional norms that Trump and members of his party couldn’t care less about.
https://jacobin.com/2026/03/trump-tariffs-supreme-court-executive-power

V. I. Lenin: The Position of the Bund in the Party
Absolutely untenable scientifically,[2] the idea that the Jews form a separate nation is reactionary politically. Irrefutable practical proof of that is furnished by generally known facts of recent history and of present-day political realities. All over Europe, the decline of medievalism and the development of political liberty went hand in hand with the political emancipation of the Jews, their abandonment of Yiddish for the language of the people among whom they lived, and, in general, their undeniable progressive assimilation with the surrounding population. Are we again to revert to the exceptionalist theories and pro claim that Russia will be the one exception, although the Jewish emancipation movement is far broader and deeper-rooted here, thanks to the awakening of a heroic class- consciousness among the Jewish proletariat? Can we possibly attribute to chance the fact that it is the reactionary forces all over Europe, and especially in Russia, who oppose the assimilation of the Jews and try to perpetuate their isolation? That is precisely what the Jewish problem amounts to: assimilation or isolation?—and the idea of a Jewish “nationality” is definitely reactionary not only when expounded by its consistent advocates (the Zionists), but likewise on the lips of those who try to combine it with the ideas of Social-Democracy (the Bundists). The idea of a Jewish nationality runs counter to the interests of the Jewish proletariat, for it fosters among them, directly or indirectly, a spirit hostile to assimilation, the spirit of the “ghetto”. “When the National Assembly of 1791 decreed the emancipation of the Jews," writes Renan, “it was very little concerned with the question of race…. It is the business of the nineteenth century to abolish all ‘ghettos’, and I cannot compliment those who seek to restore them. The Jewish race has rendered the world the greatest services. Assimilated with the various nations, harmoniously blended with the various national units, it will render no lesser services in the future than in the past." And Karl Kautsky, in particular reference to the Russian Jews, expresses him self even more vigorously. Hostility towards non-native sections of the population can only be eliminated “when the non-native sections of the population cease to be alien and blend with the general mass of the population.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/oct/22a.htm

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