/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Judge snaps at DOJ lawyer arguing Trump executive order targeting Big Law firm can't be illegal
Lawson appeared to struggle through arguments, at times not giving direct responses to questions from the judge. Lawson said Trump could target Jenner & Block, the Big Law firm, because the president said "Jenner discriminates against its employees based on race" — even though no court or government agency had come to that conclusion.
https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-doj-lawyer-defending-trump-executive-order-targeting-jenner-block-2025-4

Washington State Lawmakers Vote to Limit Rent Increases
After a protracted battle, Washington State lawmakers voted Sunday to limit annual residential rent increases to no more than 10 percent, positioning the state to become the third in the country to adopt statewide rent regulations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/us/rent-increase-washington-state.html
https://archive.ph/NS1al

Mob of Orthodox Jewish men chased Brooklyn woman after mistaking her for protester against Israeli security minister
“They were shouting at me, threatening to rape me, chanting ‘death to Arabs.’ I thought the police would protect me from the mob, but they did nothing to intervene,” she said. … Video shows two of the men kicking her in the back, another hurling a traffic cone into her head and a fourth pushing a trash can into her. “This is America,” one of the men can be heard saying. “We got Israel. We got an Army now.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/mob-of-orthodox-jewish-men-chased-brooklyn-woman-after-mistaking-her-for-protester-against-israeli-security-minister

Texas lawmakers want to exempt police from deadly conduct charges
Texas lawmakers are now working to make that kind of sentence impossible. House Bill 2436 would exempt law enforcement officers from being charged with deadly conduct for actions taken in the line of duty. The lower chamber is expected to vote on the bill Monday. The Senate approved a nearly identical bill, Senate Bill 1637, earlier this month.
https://apnews.com/us-news/law-enforcement-texas-austin-legislation-general-news-4df5fc016676375c043101c9d9345485

"Fed up" Los Angeles County workers set to hold two-day strike over contract negotiations
Several Los Angeles County services could experience temporary interruptions when workers represented by the Service Employees International Union go on strike starting Monday night.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/la-county-workers-set-to-hold-two-day-strike/

Episode 454: Dogecau (TrueAnon)
We talk about the outrageous bullshit the Amerikkkan government is doing in El Salvador, a little Salvadoran history, CECOT, DHS…
https://soundcloud.com/trueanonpod/dogecau

“I Don’t Make a Fetish Out of Nonviolence.” Interview With Ray Luc Levasseur on the United Freedom Front
>Editorial disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect the views of Unity of Fields.
On 16 April 2025, Unity of Fields interviewed Ray Luc Levasseur, a former political prisoner. In 1975 Levasseur co-founded the Sam Melville-Jonathan Jackson Unit, which later renamed itself the United Freedom Front. They carried out dozens of expropriations and anti-imperialist bombings until their capture in 1984, after being on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Levasseur was sentenced to 45 years and served his time in some of the most brutal and repressive prisons in the country, USP Marion and ADX Florence, including thirteen years in solitary confinement. He was released in 2004 after serving 20 years, and now lives in his home state of Maine. The interview transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/18717/

Rebuilding local labour movements is key to defeating the far right
THE Scottish TUC has given a steer to the whole British labour movement in identifying the rise of the far right as the biggest challenge we face. As Trademark Belfast’s Stiofan O Nuaillain told the TUC’s anti-racism summit last December, we have a four-year window to defeat the far right. By the next general election, something needs to have shifted dramatically if we are to ensure that some combination of Reform UK and an increasingly hard-right Tory Party do not shape the political agenda: something they already do to an extent, given Labour’s pandering to anti-immigrant scaremongering at home and Donald Trump abroad. The combined Reform-Tory vote was higher than Labour’s last July and Keir Starmer’s nine months in office have only made his party more unpopular. Scotland’s trade unionists indicate the way forward in two respects. One is the insistence on opposition to the far right being rooted in opposition to the status quo, rather than in defence of it. This dilemma was highlighted in Scotland by the summit called by First Minister John Swinney: inviting all sizeable parties bar Reform to a government-sponsored event allows Nigel Farage to continue to pose as “the one that’s different” and lump other parties together as representatives of a broken system.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/rebuilding-local-labour-movements-key-defeating-far-right

Massive power outage in Spain and Portugal leaves thousands stranded and millions without light

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — An unprecedented blackout brought much of Spain and Portugal to a standstill Monday, stranding thousands of train passengers and leaving millions of people without phone and internet coverage and access to cash from ATMs across the Iberian Peninsula.

The sudden crash of the power grid also left authorities searching for its cause. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez addressed the nation and said that almost 11 hours after the nation ground to a halt, government experts were still trying to determine what happened.

“We have never had a complete collapse of the system,” Sánchez said, before detailing that at 12:33 p.m. on Monday Spain’s power grid lost 15 gigawatts, the equivalent of 60% of its national demand, in a matter of five seconds.

Spanish power distributor Red Eléctrica’s head of operations Eduardo Prieto said the event was “exceptional and extraordinary.”

Spain had recovered more than 92% of its power by 5 a.m. on Tuesday, according to Red Eléctrica, and the prime minister pledged that the entire country of 48 million would have lights back on by the end of the day.

It was the second serious European power outage in less than six weeks after a March 20 fire shut down Heathrow Airport in the U.K., and it came as authorities across Europe gird against sabotage backed by Russia.

The Portuguese National Cybersecurity Center in a statement said there was no sign the outage was due to a cyber attack. Teresa Ribera, European Commission executive vice president in charge of promoting clean energy, indicated the same to journalists in Brussels and called the power outage “one of the most serious episodes recorded in Europe in recent times.”

“We are analyzing all the potential causes without discarding any hypothesis,” Sánchez said.

…

Emergency services and rail workers in Spain had to help evacuate some 35,000 people from over 100 trains that stopped on the tracks when the electricity was cut. By 11 p.m. passengers from 11 trains still needed evacuating, Sánchez said.

In Madrid, hundreds of people at a bus stop that takes travelers to the airport tried to hitchhike as buses didn’t come by or arrived full of passengers. Many held improvised signs and tried to convince drivers to take them. Some drivers were helping some of them.

“I’ve been here for almost three hours, trying to get someone to take me to the airport because my family arrived today and I can’t talk to them,” Jessica Fernández told The Associated Press. “This is terrifying.”

The subway systems shut down.

“I don’t know how I am going to get home,” Barcelona resident Ivette Corona said as she watched a large group of people fail to get on a bus that briefly stopped to squeeze in a couple of passengers.

Hospitals and other emergency services switched to generators and gas stations stopped working. It wasn’t possible to make calls on most mobile phone networks, though some apps were sporadically working. People searched for battery-powered radios.

It is rare to have such a widespread outage across the Iberian Peninsula, with a combined population of about 60 million people. Spain’s Canary Islands, Balearic Islands and the territories of Ceuta and Melilla, located across the Mediterranean in Africa, were not affected.

After an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Council, Sánchez said the army would distribute generators and other material to the hardest-hit areas on Tuesday.

The Portuguese Cabinet convened an emergency meeting at the prime minister’s residence. Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said he had spoken several times to Sánchez and expected power to be restored by the end of the day.

Portugal’s government said the outage appeared to stem from problems outside the country, an official told national news agency Lusa.

Electricity was being pulled from Morocco and France to restore power to southern and northern Spain, Spain’s prime minister said, thanking their governments. Spain was also increasing the production from hydroelectric and combined cycle thermal power plants.

read more:

apnews.com/article/spain-portugal-power-outage-electricity-b0c5fbca49b8422248c4f933e20303b3

>>489118
Certain myopic analysts have been quick to blame this on renewable energy.

>>489118
>It was the second serious European power outage in less than six weeks after a March 20 fire shut down Heathrow Airport in the U.K., and it came as authorities across Europe gird against sabotage backed by Russia.
<It's Russian gremlins
Groan. Sigh. Not this again.

Most electrical grids only have fly-wheel momentum of large steam-turbines from large thermal power-plants as energy buffer. And that's not a lot. Many Solar and wind-power parks were installed without batteries, and that's not particularly helpful for grid stability either. So without knowing what Spain's energy grid looks like, i'm guessing this is most likely a case of too many unfavorable conditions happening all at once. The solution probably is to install more buffer capacity.

If this was foul play, i wonder who's got motivation to fuck with Spain. I don't have any real guesses, the Spanish show a lot of solidarity with Palestinians, maybe Israel ? IDK

There's simple explanation, maybe they just over-taxed the system, and they have to expand it.

>>489127
I'm for nuclear plus renewables too, but we have to be realistic, renewable energy sources cause grid instability if they lack sufficient battery buffer. There's a lot of smart-copium, where we pretend that we don't have to install buffer capacity if only all the stuff was smart. We're not doing our selves a favor trying to cheat.

>>489128
The article isn't blaming this on Russia.

This did coincidentally happen days after Spain canceled a major bullet purchase from an Israeli arms company though.

>>489130
>This did coincidentally happen days after Spain canceled a major bullet purchase from an Israeli arms company though.
Yeah the timing is kinda sus.
I wonder if we'd find out about it, if it was so, or whether Mossad agents would just get murked in the shadows as retaliation.