/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Trump signs order to make it easier to fire 8,000 federal workers
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday making it easier to fire 8,000 of ​some of the best-paid government workers, part of a broader effort to overhaul ‌the federal workforce. The order, released by the White House and the Office of Personnel Management, strips job protections from a mostly senior group of federal workers earning up ​to almost $200,000 a year and who are deemed to be "influencing" government policy.
https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-signs-order-make-it-easier-fire-8000-federal-workers-2026-06-03/

US House passes war powers resolution to curb Trump’s authority in Iran
The vote’s impact is largely symbolic, as it is unclear whether the House version, which is a concurrent resolution and does not need to be signed by the president, carries the force of law, even if it also passes in the Senate. But it was a striking demonstration of the nascent willingness among a segment of Republicans to defy Trump, who has kept a vise-like grip on the party on Capitol Hill, through his willingness to exact retribution against dissenters.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/03/house-passes-war-power-resolution-trump-iran

Democrats fume about Lebanon vote
Tlaib's two-page measure would direct President Trump to "remove the United States Armed Forces from Lebanon" within 7 days of when the measure is passed. … Tlaib's office said in a press release: "The United States is assisting this destruction through the weapons, intelligence, logistics, and diplomatic cover it provides the Israeli government, and Congress has the power and duty to put an end to this illegal invasion."
https://www.axios.com/2026/06/03/lebanon-war-powers-house-democrats-tlaib-israel
https://archive.ph/M66g6

NYC to install traffic sensors to track how pedestrians, bikers and drivers behave
Beaton said the DOT was trying to address privacy concerns by training the technology to anonymize the faces and car plates before a human accesses the data. “There's nothing that we ever touch or that anyone could ever touch that has anything identifying to any person or any vehicle,” he said.
https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-to-install-traffic-sensors-to-track-how-pedestrians-bikers-and-drivers-behave
https://archive.ph/nhXiG

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass pulled into a runoff in her race for a second term
More than a dozen candidates faced off in an all-party primary in the mayor’s race. Since no candidate is on track to earn more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers move on to a runoff this fall. Leading the pack behind Bass are former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, a Republican, and Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman, a Democrat.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/los-angeles-mayor-karen-bass-pulled-runoff-race-second-term-rcna347482

Blue Dog PAC Treasurer Gets $1.2 Million Backing From Affiliated Super PAC
The Blue Dog Coalition, who claim to represent “the center of the political spectrum” by pursuing “fiscally responsible” economic policies and a “strong national defense,” formed Blue Dog Action in 2025 for the upcoming election cycle. Federal election law requires that every political committee designate a treasurer, whose responsibilities include ensuring campaign finance reports are accurate, complete, and filed on time, before it can raise or spend money. An organization’s treasurer can thus, in some cases, be held personally liable for the committee’s actions.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/california-election-mike-thompson-blue-dog-pac

Philippines: Why The NPA In Negros Island Will Never Be Defeated
Once again, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) has dusted off its worn-out script, loudly proclaiming to the public that the New People’s Army (NPA) in Negros has suffered an “irreversible collapse” and is “totally defeated.” Following the encounters in Toboso and Cauayan, the reactionary state is desperately trying to convince the public, and perhaps themselves, that the flame of the People’s War on the island has been extinguished, to appease their imperialist masters and its local toadies. However, these premature victory celebrations are nothing new. As Comrade Jose Maria Sison said, the reactionary state suffers from a chronic, incurable blindness: it mistakes a temporary twist in the road for the end of the journey. For over fifty years, the ruling class has repeatedly declared the revolution dead, only to find themselves continuously haunted by its presence. Their declarations of “victory” are mere illusions, completely contradicted by the material conditions in Negros. The fundamental error of the NTF-ELCAC’ analysis lies in their mechanical and bourgeois worldview. They foolishly believe that a revolutionary movement can be eradicated by targeting individual cadres or liquidating specific command structures.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/33381/

No Babies? Blame Capitalism.
No longer just a problem of the industrialized North, birth rates are declining for everyone, everywhere, all at once. In its panic about the implications of below-replacement fertility and its search for a culprit, the global commentariat has cast a wide net. In an April 2025 article in the conservative Catholic First Things Magazine, titled “Feminism Against Fertility,” Darel E. Paul blames the decline in Western fertility rates on young women who wish to remain childless because “they have more important priorities or simply like being single.” In a May 7, 2026, guest essay for the New York Times, the insightful Anna Louie Sussman blames the baby bust on widespread anxiety about an uncertain future. Soon after, a piece in the Financial Times cited a University of Cincinnati study to posit that the emergence of smartphones bears the largest responsibility for the recent decline in youth romantic connections (and therefore fertility) worldwide. Last week, the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson noted that “birth rates have been declining in developed countries for a long time, as child mortality has declined, as women’s education has increased, as female labor-force participation has soared, as contraception use has proliferated, and as modern notions of feminism have empowered women to take more control over their bodies and their economic futures.” He also acknowledged the phones, the housing crisis, the internet, and the decline of in-person socialization. But like so many other commentators, Thompson left out the one obvious thing that unites each of these disparate factors: capitalism. Capitalism seems so inevitable to us that we sometimes fail to notice its explanatory power. In this case, it’s staring us right in the face. The incentive structures of capitalism run counter to those of child-rearing — and as market logics pervade deeper into every aspect of our society, the business of having babies makes increasingly little business sense.
https://jacobin.com/2026/06/birth-rates-capitalism-socialism-germany

Capitalist realism renewed: responds to a Mark Fisher article on 'neo-anarchism' - James Butler
Some quick thoughts on Mark Fisher’s recent piece for the Weekly Worker on the present state of things, and ‘neo-anarchism’ in particular. One brief thought on presentation: whoever the CPGB’s layout person is, they’ve thought it incisive to caption a photo of students at Millbank with ‘Neo-anarchism: how not to win’; in fact, this is probably the worst possible photo to choose to illustrate the point. Perhaps a better choice would be a series of inchoate hippies in Guy Fawkes masks. Anyway… 1. I don’t think it’s possible to quarrel with Fisher’s broad presentation of where we stand: I outlined a similar view of the current state of things ahead of October 20th. Where we would likely differ is over precisely how useful unions have been in the past; I suggest that much of the story of unions in the twentieth century has been one of tension between their administrative, representative and associative roles, with the administrative function ultimately winning out. Perhaps we would also differ on the usefulness of the mediatory function of unions, which I would suggest also exhibits a tendency to remain content in weakness, and often hobbles struggles before they begin. The other crisis to bring out here is the decline in party membership across all parliamentary factions: I suggest that this is a symptom of a generalised sense of disengagement from formal politics which rests on the assumption that those who govern us merely exist to further their own ends, and administer capitalism in largely similar variations. A generalised but justified cynicism, in other words.
https://libcom.org/article/capitalist-realism-renewed-james-butler

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