/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

U.S. officials defend deal with controversial Venezuelan oil baron
In 2018, Betancourt was listed as an unnamed "conspirator" in a federal indictment of his cousin and seven others in a $1.2 billion international money-laundering scheme involving manipulated currency exchange rates between U.S. dollars and Venezuelan bolivars. Betancourt was never charged in the crimes, which largely occurred between 2014 and 2016, because his attorneys successfully argued he was unaware of the scheme.
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/01/us-officials-defend-deal-venezuelan-oil-baron
https://archive.ph/7VmWs

Forest Service chief faces scrutiny over logging ties as Trump plans to scrap protections
Donald Trump this month announced plans to rescind a landmark rule that has protected old-growth forests in the US for 25 years. If finalized, the rollback is expected to benefit the companies that Tom Schultz, chief of the US Forest Service, represented in his previous roles as a timber industry lobbyist and executive, according to research by consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/01/trump-roadless-rule-old-growth-forests

House Democrats fume about GOP's anti-socialism bill
House Democrats are grumbling that Republicans are setting one last political trap for them before November by attaching language touting their marquee voter ID legislation to a resolution denouncing socialism. This is a classic election-year tactic by the majority party in Congress, but centrist Democrats say it is also a missed opportunity for a genuinely bipartisan vote to denounce socialism.
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/01/democrats-house-socialism-republicans-save-act
https://archive.ph/IG3aF

BofA vice president killed in Times Square stabbing
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the attacks, ‌which took ⁠place on August 31 around 4:24 p.m. ET in the vicinity of West 42 Street and Seventh Avenue, appeared to be random and unprovoked. "The investigation remains ongoing by the NYPD Force Investigation Division," the NYPD said in a statement. The suspect, Pamela Cisneros, a 49-year-old woman, was killed on Monday as officers responded.
https://www.reuters.com/world/bank-america-vice-president-killed-times-square-stabbing-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-09-01/

‘Blood Is On Their Hands’: Haitian Student Dies In Apparent Suicide After Trump Ends Deportation Protections
His family told the Post that Bel had become distressed in recent weeks after the US Supreme Court allowed Trump’s termination of TPS for Haitians and Syrians. Although he had a pending asylum case and a hearing scheduled for October, Bel was required to report to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of terminating TPS. Officers placed an electronic monitoring device on his ankle.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/springfield-ohio-haitian

SNAP Benefit Changes Delayed in Two States Over Legal Challenges
South Carolina and North Dakota had been preparing to implement new SNAP food-purchasing restrictions around the beginning of September. Both will now wait until November 1, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) directed the states to postpone the changes while it responds to the court decision and goes through a public notice process.
https://www.newsweek.com/snap-benefit-changes-delayed-in-two-states-over-legal-challenges-12386526
https://archive.ph/StsvS

Clovis teachers call union petition ‘suspicious.’ What’s next for unionization efforts?
In a press release, ACE called ICUE’s filing “suspicious” because the petitioner was not a local educator, but a partner of a private law firm based in Sacramento. The petition also listed Clovis Unified’s district headquarters as one of its mailing addresses, according to a copy of the petition provided by ACE.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/education-lab/article317070584.html
https://archive.ph/2JPl5

UnitedHealthcare to drop prior authorization requirements for range of conditions from Oct. 1
Health insurers have been ​taking measures to simplify their requirements for prior authorization on medicines ‌and ⁠medical services after complaints from patients and doctors over excessive paperwork that can delay or even deny needed care.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/unitedhealthcare-drop-prior-authorization-requirements-range-conditions-oct-1-2026-09-01/

>BofA vice president killed in Times Square stabbing

Awesome

Burnham must stop housing back-sliding
IF IT is too early to come to any rounded judgement regarding Andy Burnham’s programme and policies – that should wait until the budget next month — it is not too soon to express concern about his government’s course in relation to the vital issue of housing. Here he is in danger of following Keir Starmer in under-delivering. One pledge after another has been discarded or diluted. First, a suggestion of introducing a private-sector rent freeze was dropped without explanation. This would have been a far more substantive measure to tackle the cost-of-living crisis than anything else the new government has announced, and would have indicated whose side Burnham is on – working people rather than rapacious landlords. Second, a clear commitment to promote council housing has been watered down in favour of more amorphous concepts of social or “affordable” housing. Only three of the more than 30 bodies to get new government funding for construction are actually councils.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/burnham-must-stop-housing-back-sliding

Rosa Luxemburg: Down With Reformist Illusions—Hail the Revolutionary Class Struggle!
Proposals to hold out “the open hand to good will” marked the beginning of the nineties; promises of an inperceptible, “gradual evolution” into Socialism marked their end. Crises, wars, and revolutions were considered outworn theories, mere swaddling clothes of modern society; parliamentarism and trade unionism, democracy in the State and democracy in the industry were to open the gates to a new and better order. …. The actual course of events played frightful havoc with all these illusions. In place of the promised mild social-reformist development of culture there has set in since the end of the nineties a period of the most violent, extreme sharpening of capitalist conflicts, a period of storm and stress, of crashes and turmoil, of tottering and trembling in the very foundations of society. The ten-year period of the economic upward curve of development was compensated for in the following decade by two world-convulsing crises. After two decades of world peace there followed in the last decade of last century six bloody wars and in the first decade of the new century four bloody revolutions. Instead of social reforms—sedition bills, imprisonment bills and jailings; instead of industrial democracy—the powerful concentration of capital in cartels and employers’ associations and the international practice of giant lockouts. And instead of the new upward development of democracy in the State a miserable collapse of the last remnants of bourgeois liberalism and bourgeois democracy. In Germany alone the destinies of the bourgeois parties since the nineties have brought: the rise and immediate hopeless dissolution of the National Social Party, the break-up of the liberal opposition and the re-uniting of its fragments in the morass of reaction, and finally the transformation of the Center from a radical people’s party to a conservative government party. And the shifting in party development in other capitalist countries has been similar. Everywhere the revolutionary working class today sees itself alone confronted by the compact, hostile reaction of the ruling classes and by their energetic attacks, which are aimed at them alone.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/04/30a.htm

Volunteers Were the Key to NYC-DSA’s Socialist Sweep
Since the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) swept the New York primaries in June, conservative and liberal media alike have tried to make sense of DSA’s meteoric rise by tying them to ascendant New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his “kingmaking” abilities. Beyond a cursory nod to the army of volunteers knocking doors and making phone calls, far less has been made of the why behind the volunteer effort that propelled these candidates to victory. Across NYC-DSA’s slate of endorsed candidates, roughly 8,500 volunteers showed up to knock more than 750,000 doors, with over 810,000 attempted door knocks — for an off-year electoral cycle. Many of these volunteers were part of Mamdani’s 100,000-strong volunteer base, who, still electrified from last year’s win, rolled right into volunteer work for the slate’s ten state-level campaigns. “I canvassed for the slate in general because I was super excited to capitalize on the momentum from last year with the Zohran primary and general win. That’s how I got started in electoral work in the first place,” said Caroline Hill, a field lead for Samantha Kattan. But it wasn’t just Mamdani’s previous volunteers who showed up to knock doors and make phone calls. New volunteers inspired by both Mamdani’s successful campaign for mayor and this new slate of candidates grew its ranks. By May, the largest source of new volunteers came from those who were neither DSA members nor previous Mamdani volunteers. Jacobin spoke with some of the most prolific door-knockers and most highly engaged volunteers from NYC-DSA’s slate of endorsed candidates to find out why they continued to show up for their chosen candidates and how they think we can keep the wins coming.
https://jacobin.com/2026/08/nyc-dsa-elections-canvassing-volunteers
https://archive.ph/qeIvl