/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Senate fails to curb Trump’s war on Iran even as Republican opposition grows
The war powers resolution proposed by Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon, failed in a 49-50 vote. All Democrats with the exception of John Fetterman of Pennsylvania supported its advancement. Since the conflict began in February, Democrats have repeatedly offered such resolutions, without success. But for the first time on Wednesday, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski voted in favor, joining fellow Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine. All other Republicans in attendance voted against it.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/13/trump-iran-senate-war-powers

Democrats bypass Mike Johnson on Ukraine aid with GOP help
This is the eighth time in the last three years that a discharge petition has been used by some combination of Democrats and Republicans to do an end-run around GOP leadership. Just in the 119th Congress, lawmakers have succeeded in garnering the necessary 218 signatures to force votes on a half dozen bills covering everything from proxy voting in the House to releasing the Epstein files to extending Affordable Care Act tax credits.
https://www.axios.com/2026/05/13/ukraine-aid-discharge-petition-mike-johnson-kiley
https://archive.ph/tb3IL

House Progressives Demand Pentagon Answer for Alleged Abuse in US-Ecuador Operation
Backed by anti-war and human rights organizations, 20 “deeply concerned” progressives in the US House of Representatives sent a letter to the Pentagon on Wednesday demanding answers about “reports of serious human rights violations and the bombing of what appear to have been civilian facilities during joint US-Ecuador military operations conducted in northern Ecuador.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/ecuador-us-troops

REI union workers call for boycott of co-op’s biggest annual sale
The workers recently approved a decision to call for a boycott of the retailer’s anniversary sale, which will run from May 15 to May 25. They’re asking the public not to shop at REI over that time period. Employees will continue working as normal, and unionized stores will remain open, Rich Smith, spokesperson for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 3000, said Friday. But about 70,000 REI members have pledged to heed the boycott during the sale, he added.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/rei-union-workers-call-for-boycott-of-co-ops-biggest-annual-sale/
https://archive.ph/rm1WK

Kevin Warsh wins Senate confirmation as the next Federal Reserve chair
Kevin Warsh was confirmed Wednesday as the next Federal Reserve chair, in a 54-45 vote that was the closest in the modern era. President Donald Trump has made no secret that he expects Warsh to lower rates after having lashed out repeatedly at outgoing Chair Jerome Powell. Warsh has been a consistent critic of monetary policy and last year, in a CNBC interview, called for “regime change” at the central bank.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/13/kevin-warsh-wins-senate-confirmation-as-the-next-federal-reserve-chair.html

‘This Is War Profiteering’: Fertilizer Giants See Fortunes Boom as Trump Militarism, Tariffs Hurt Farmers
President Donald Trump’s illegal war of choice has resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 30% of the world’s fertilizer and 20% of its oil previously passed. In addition to increasing the risk of a global food crisis, the strait’s closure has sent fuel and fertilizer prices soaring, with US farm diesel costing nearly 50% more than it did on the war’s eve in February and nitrogen fertilizer rising by a similar percentage.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/iran-war-fertilizer-prices

Memphis residents claim harassment, arrest and abuse by Trump-ordered Memphis Safe Task Force
Since late September, hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement personnel tied to the task force have made traffic stops, served warrants and searched for fugitives in the majority Black city of about 610,000 people. The lawsuit says the task force has conducted over 120,000 traffic stops. “In the professed name of crime control, Task Force agents have stopped, menaced, and arrested Memphians engaging in routine, day-to-day activities,” the lawsuit states. “In response, Memphians encountering Task Force agents in public, including Plaintiffs, have stopped to gather information about and record Task Force activities.”
https://apnews.com/article/memphis-crime-task-force-trump-lawsuit-6175f596a6d7decaf2651fa0a6d11355

Vance announces suspension of $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California
Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration is withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California and is threatening to suspend federal funding to all states if they don’t aggressively prosecute fraud in their Medicaid programs.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/vance-announces-suspension-medicaid-payments-california-fraud-rcna344988

Ex-Brooklyn judge accused of swindling real estate investors out of millions of dollars
Edward Harold King, who left the bench at the end of last year, and Yechiel “Sam” Sprei, a politically connected real estate developer, were arrested by the FBI on wire fraud conspiracy charges after federal prosecutors say they duped a pair of investors into forking over $6.5 million for a bogus property bid and then failed to return all but a fraction of the money.
https://apnews.com/article/judge-real-estate-scam-arrest-brooklyn-7d590d695fadfe912dcbfa3ecdb8c155

Wartime Iran’s Political Transformation
For seven weeks, American and Israeli air power dominated Iranian skies. High-altitude surveillance, precision strikes on military infrastructure and apartment buildings in Tehran, and near-uncontested flight paths defined the opening phase of the conflict. Iran absorbed the blows and responded not with the guerrilla tactics of Baghdad’s roads but with long-range missiles, mass-produced drones, and a defensive posture that held the line. In the final days before the ceasefire, an F-15 and an A10-warthog were downed by optical tracking systems. Whether this was a replicable technical achievement or a fortunate anomaly remains to be seen. What was not ambiguous, however, was the fact that Iran was able to close off the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic. In response, global energy markets convulsed. The war had become a world event. Politics also shifted in Iran. Just a few months ago, in January, the main question there was economic. Inflation. Housing. The price of food. The Masoud Pezeshkian government’s austerity package had hollowed out household budgets and sent tens of thousands into the streets. Today the question is imperial. The war has not erased material suffering — it has reframed it. The choice presented to every Iranian is no longer about fiscal policy or subsidy reform. It is about sovereignty versus incorporation into an imperial order that already governs much of the region. Donald Trump’s ill-advised war has revealed Iran as a unique formation in modern history: a neoliberal anti-imperialist state. Austerity at home, resistance abroad. On paper, a contradiction, in practice, the state’s operating logic. This is why Iran oscillates between protests against austerity and displays of national solidarity — sometimes within the same month.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/starmer-toast-stop-farage-now-britains-left-wing-forces-must-unite

Starmer is toast. To stop Farage now, Britain's left-wing forces must unite
The architects of New Labour have eviscerated the Labour Party twice, once when former Prime Minister Tony Blair took Britain into the Iraq War in 2003, and now under the leadership of Keir Starmer. Unlike other Labour crises - such as the short-lived rebellion of the Gang of Four who defected in 1981 to create the Social Democratic Party, or the Brexit vote in 2016 - New Labour remained uniquely toxic to Labour’s brand. This is because it gained power through party purges. New Labour did not just define itself against the unions, the left and progressives in general; it ousted anyone who lay in its path, irrespective of ideology. The ends justified the means, however dirty. The same dark arts used to bring Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership down were applied to blocking Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s path back into parliament. At a high point in his campaign to stamp his authority over the party, ostensibly over the issue of antisemitism, Starmer said: “If you don’t like the changes that we’ve made, I say the door is open, and you can leave.” More than 200,000 members of the party which Corbyn assembled did just that. From a peak of 532,046 members at the end of 2019, Labour was left with 333,235 in 2024, and the haemorrhage of support continued even faster after that. Then, as now, New Labour took pride in not being able to place a cigarette paper between itself and Washington, whether this was in the form of Blair’s discovery that he used the same toothpaste as former US President George W Bush, or in former ambassador Peter Mandelson leaning over President Donald Trump’s shoulder at his desk.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/starmer-toast-stop-farage-now-britains-left-wing-forces-must-unite

Antonio Gramsci: War is war
Understanding and knowing how to accurately assess one’s enemy, means possessing a necessary condition for victory. Understanding and knowing how to assess one’s own forces, and their position on the battlefield, means possessing another very important condition for victory. The Fascists clearly want to carry out to full effect in Turin, a general plan that guaranteed them easy victories in other cities. Foreign contingents have been called up (from Bologna, troops have been chosen and trained). The number of parade spectacles has been stepped up, with the forces, lined up in rows in typical military style. They continually summon those needed out of the blue, given the order that they come to meetings armed; this just helps to create expectations around mysterious events and to establish a war psychology. Alarmist voices spread like wildfire (’the first to be killed will be a socialist student, we will set fire to “The New Order,” we will set fire to the Chamber of Labour, we will set fire to the bookshop of the Turin Cooperative Alliance’). This is a strategy with two aims; the first, to disassemble proletariat forces, through panic and the exasperating uncertainty of waiting; the second, to make the fascists familiar with the aim they're working towards. Will the fascists of Turin have the easy victory they got in other cities? We can see that their call for help is a sign of the inherent weakness of fascism in Turin. Here, fascists rely on, and can rely on, only one group of the petty bourgeoisie: shopkeepers, who themselves are clearly not well-known for their God-given, warlike virtues. The working class of Turin is clearly morally superior to the fascists and it knows it well. The counterrevolutionaries of the General Confederation of Labour continue in their affirmation (to discourage the masses and take away from them any capacity of offence or defence) that the workers, having not been involved in war previously, cannot fight and overcome fascism using armed violence.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/1921/01/war-is-war.htm

Man its been like 9 years of news anon
Thank you for your service