/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

US weighs new limits on Cuban travel at the UN as Havana decries Trump’s economic squeeze
Even as a sizable Cuban delegation was approved to come to the U.N. General Assembly this week, the State Department is now weighing “strict controls” on the officials who plan to return next month for an annual U.N. vote on the decadeslong U.S. economic embargo on Cuba.
https://apnews.com/article/cuba-oil-embargo-united-nations-trump-cdf46e89c7b33077efd0d8d31e265c18

Senate narrowly votes down resolution calling for end to Iran war
All but four Republicans voted against the measure despite concerns that GOP candidates will face fallout in November’s midterm elections from the war’s economic costs. Some Republicans running in tight races have recently broken with President Donald Trump and called for an end to the war to bring gas prices down, a sign of potential voter discontent over the war’s impact on the economy. The Republicans who voted for the resolution were Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Maine’s Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the lone Democrat to vote against it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/24/iran-war-powers-senate-vote-fuel.html

Marking One Year of NSPM-7, Rights Advocates Call On Congress to Rein In FBI’s Spying Capabilities
The 19-page report, titled “7Can the FBI Spy on the First Amendment?,” was sent to every congressional office by the advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent (DRAD), exactly a year after the president signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/fbi-national-security

Federal court says Pentagon can label Anthropic a supply chain risk
The decision allows the Pentagon to continue to remove Anthropic’s Claude models from its systems and bar the use of its products for Defense Department work. Judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 in the Pentagon’s favor. “Today’s DC Circuit Court ruling completely validates the Department’s position,” the Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, wrote in a social media post.
https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-supply-chain-risk-lawsuit-pentagon-95c3c9874989ad6f6f52f1744dbe2245

Supreme Court allows Trump administration to use expanded database for potential voter purges
he Supreme Court on Friday permitted the Trump administration to use an expanded federal database containing citizenship information, as the president encourages states to purge people from voter rolls.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-trump-administration-use-expanded-database-potent-rcna596611

Oklahoma must allow taxpayer-funded religious charter school, judge rules
A federal judge in Oklahoma cleared the way on Thursday for a Jewish organization to establish the ​nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a case over religious rights in American education that could eventually ‌reach the US Supreme Court.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/oklahoma-must-allow-taxpayer-funded-religious-charter-school-judge-rules-2026-09-24/

New Jersey lieutenant governor resigns after sexual harassment accusation
The 61-page report said it found credible evidence that Caldwell made romantic advances toward a female staffer’s friend, tried to secure a promotion for his girlfriend and gave tickets to personal guests without reimbursement. The New Jersey Globe was the first to report on Caldwell’s resignation.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/25/new-jersey-lieutenant-governor-resigns-dale-caldwell

US appeals court rules against Kalshi, says states can regulate prediction markets
The ​6th US Circuit Court of Appeals said ​Kalshi has ​not shown that its sports ‌event ⁠contracts are "swaps" that should be regulated exclusively by ​the ​federal ⁠Commodity Futures Trading Commission. ​It also ​said ⁠federal law did not preempt Ohio's ⁠or ​Tennessee's ​gambling laws.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-appeals-court-rules-against-kalshi-says-states-can-regulate-prediction-2026-09-25/

(Chapo Trap House)1073 - Unsafe, Illegal, and Common feat. Kylie Cheung (9/21/26)
Journalist and author Kylie Cheung joins us for a survey of abortion rights in the post-Dobbs landscape. We discuss the anti-abortion surveillance state, the medical establishment’s failure to meet the moment, and the right’s construction of a broadly pro-rape politics. We also discuss the Democratic Party’s failures in protecting abortion and their continual usage of reproductive rights to hold voters hostage despite funding genocide—including genocide of pregnant women—abroad.
https://podbay.fm/p/chapo-trap-house/e/1790054513

A Union Feud Shouldn’t Sink California’s Billionaire Tax
While much of the discourse around Prop 40 has understandably been devoted to what it means to tax the billionaires, it is saving Medi-Cal — and not some vague notion of “punishing the rich” — that is the central purpose of the initiative. However, rather than support this pragmatic solution to a looming crisis, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California has officially remained neutral on the initiative, which was put forth by one of their own member unions, SEIU United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW). Now investigations commissioned by SEIU California and the international union allege that SEIU-UHW’s president, Dave Regan, the man widely acknowledged as the architect of the tax, has attempted to “extort” support for Prop 40 from them, according to the inflammatory headline in the Los Angeles Times, a newspaper owned by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong. Coming less than two months before the election in November, the allegations against Regan bear all the hallmarks of a politically timed campaign — an attempt to chip away at Prop 40’s popularity. Now SEIU will have to decide which path to take: save health care coverage for nearly fifteen million Californians, or surrender to the billionaires. The key allegations against Regan are that he attempted to “extort” support for Prop 40 from SEIU California by threatening to investigate governance issues at the state council, and that this action was part of a pattern of “bullying,” directed at women in particular. At issue are Regan’s interactions with SEIU California’s then president, David Huerta, and its executive director, Tia Orr, who claims Regan attempted to “intimidate” her into supporting Prop 40. The most serious allegation is that Regan assaulted one of Orr’s predecessors, Courtni Pugh, in 2009. According to Pugh, Regan kicked open her office door, cornering her against the wall, and pressed his fingers to her chest, swearing at her. “I told my colleagues and organization leaders when it occurred,” Pugh said in a statement. “I was asked to participate in the later investigation because so many people had heard about the 2009 incident over the years.”
https://jacobin.com/2026/09/billionaire-tax-seiu-regan-california

Leon Trotsky: Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay
There is one common feature in the development, or more correctly the degeneration, of modern trade union organizations in the entire world: it is their drawing closely to and growing together with the state power. This process is equally characteristic of the neutral, the Social-Democratic, the Communist and “anarchist” trade unions. This fact alone shows that the tendency towards “growing together” is intrinsic not in this or that doctrine as such but derives from social conditions common for all unions. Monopoly capitalism does not rest on competition and free private initiative but on centralized command. The capitalist cliques at the head of mighty trusts, syndicates, banking consortiums, etcetera, view economic life from the very same heights as does state power; and they require at every step the collaboration of the latter. In their turn the trade unions in the most important branches of industry find themselves deprived of the possibility of profiting by the competition between the different enterprises. They have to confront a centralized capitalist adversary, intimately bound up with state power. Hence flows the need of the trade unions – insofar as they remain on reformist positions, ie., on positions of adapting themselves to private property – to adapt themselves to the capitalist state and to contend for its cooperation. In the eyes of the bureaucracy of the trade union movement the chief task lies in “freeing” the state from the embrace of capitalism, in weakening its dependence on trusts, in pulling it over to their side. This position is in complete harmony with the social position of the labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy, who fight for a crumb in the share of superprofits of imperialist capitalism. The labor bureaucrats do their level best in words and deeds to demonstrate to the “democratic” state how reliable and indispensable they are in peace-time and especially in time of war. By transforming the trade unions into organs of the state, fascism invents nothing new; it merely draws to their ultimate conclusion the tendencies inherent in imperialism. Colonial and semi-colonial countries are under the sway not of native capitalism but of foreign imperialism. However, this does not weaken but on the contrary, strengthens the need of direct, daily, practical ties between the magnates of capitalism and the governments which are in essence subject to them – the governments of colonial or semi-colonial countries. Inasmuch as imperialist capitalism creates both in colonies and semi-colonies a stratum of labor aristocracy and bureaucracy, the latter requires the support of colonial and semicolonial governments, as protectors, patrons and, sometimes, as arbitrators. This constitutes the most important social basis for the Bonapartist and semi-Bonapartist character of governments in the colonies and in backward countries generally. This likewise constitutes the basis for the dependence of reformist unions upon the state. In Mexico the trade unions have been transformed by law into semi-state institutions and have, in the nature of things, assumed a semi-totalitarian character. The stateization of the trade unions was, according to the conception of the legislators, introduced in the interests of the workers in order to assure them an influence upon the governmental and economic life. But insofar as foreign imperialist capitalism dominates the national state and insofar as it is able, with the assistance of internal reactionary forces, to overthrow the unstable democracy and replace it with outright fascist dictatorship, to that extent the legislation relating to the trade unions can easily become a weapon in the hands of imperialist dictatorship.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htm