/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Lawmakers urge Education Department to add nursing to ‘professional’ programs list amid uproar
The Trump administration’s list of professional programs includes medicine, law and theology but leaves out nursing and some other fields that industry groups had asked to be included. The “professional” label would allow students to borrow larger amounts of federal loans to pursue graduate degrees in those fields.
https://apnews.com/article/nursing-professional-degree-704cbceb9c09c75ca5e2b889bbf322c4

TSA renews push to end collective bargaining agreement for airport security screeners
The agency said Friday the move is based on a September memo from Noem that says TSA screeners “have a primary function of national security” and therefore should not engage in collective bargaining or be represented by a union.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/tsa-renews-push-end-collective-bargaining-agreement-airport-128362718

TSA is giving airline passenger data to ICE for deportation push: NYT
The Transportation Security Administration is giving U.S. immigration officials the names of every airline traveler as part of the Trump administration’s widespread deportation program, The New York Times reported Friday.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/12/ice-deportation-airline-passengers-tsa.html

Hawleys launch dark money group to revive anti-abortion politics
The Hawleys, who started dating when they were Supreme Court clerks, are launching the Love Life Initiative this week. They plan to run pro-family national ad campaigns. "If you look at the reason that most women think they need to have an abortion, most of those reasons are lack of support," Erin Hawley, a senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, said in an interview. She wants the focus to not just be on abortion, but also policies providing broader support for families
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/12/hawley-abortion-ballot-measures
https://archive.ph/etp0f

Commander overseeing U.S. forces in Caribbean relinquishes command early amid U.S. buildup near Venezuela
Holsey, who has served in the Navy for 37 years, stepped down as the head of U.S. Southern Command after announcing in October he'd retire early, just one year into what is typically a three-year term leading a combatant command. He gave no reason, but at the time, CBS News reported there had been tensions between Holsey and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over deployment decisions in the Caribbean.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/commander-u-s-military-forces-caribbean-relinquishes-command-venezuela/

Does Swarm of Lobbyists at Governors Summit Help Explain Democrats’ Silence on Trump AI Order?
According to the report, lobbyists and governors—some of whom “are teasing White House bids in 2028 or rumored to be in the mix”—gathered for a closed-door meeting. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore were among those who reportedly met with the lobbyists.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/democrats-ai-regulation-stance-2025

Trump administration threatens to take $73 million and all trucker licenses from NY
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened to freeze $73 million from New York on Friday for allegedly issuing commercial driver's licenses for immigrants "illegally," which could result in the "total decertification" of the state's CDL program.
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/12/trump-duffy-truck-drivers-license-revoked-new-york
https://archive.ph/hdwfN

Bolivia quickly returns to the path of neoliberalism
THE recently inaugurated Rodrigo Paz has wasted no time in embarking on his project to neoliberalise the Andean country. According to the president, Paz proposes cutting public spending by almost 30 per cent in 2026, equivalent to four points of GDP. In addition, he has proposed eliminating a series of taxes, especially for the wealthiest. One of these is a special tax on large fortunes, which Paz has promised to eliminate. The special tax is levied on those with fortunes of more than $4 million (less than 1 per cent of the population) in a country where the basic salary is less than $400. The Confederation of Private Entrepreneurs has quickly and publicly welcomed the decision, which is complemented by a series of measures to make foreign investment “more attractive.” The elimination of taxes on gambling businesses has also been announced.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/bolivia-quickly-returns-path-neoliberalism

The Secret Plot to Raise Meat Prices
According to private and federal lawsuits, the country’s biggest meat processors have been using a secretive data company to share sensitive information, enabling them to hike up prices and suppress wages for decades. The revelation comes as meat prices have increased precipitously. Since 1985, the price of ground beef has increased by over 400 percent, far outpacing inflation. Meanwhile, meat-industry workers’ wages have largely stagnated. Despite growing scrutiny and public outcry over algorithmic price-setting of consumer goods and services, critics say meatpackers are settling these collusion lawsuits without admitting guilt or paying substantial penalties, meaning they’re free to keep using the data analytics firm to fix prices and drive down workers’ earnings. “[The meatpackers] win with their settlements, and never once do the packers have to admit guilt,” independent rancher Mike Callicrate told the Lever. “What’s happened is these law firms now have just gone around filing cases, knowing that they can take money out of the packer’s pocket, while the packer retains the ability to take it right out of the producer’s pocket and the consumer’s pocket.” And while President Donald Trump has promised to crack down on price-fixing in agriculture, he’s financially benefited from some of the companies he’s criticized. Agri Stats, a forty-year-old, Indiana-based data analytics firm, is named in four recent private lawsuits and a 2023 Department of Justice suit filed under former president Joe Biden, alleging anticompetitive practices by many of the company’s largest meat companies.
https://jacobin.com/2025/12/meat-data-price-fixing-lawsuits

Wes Streeting’s ‘Overdiagnosis’ Crusade Isn’t Going to Help Anyone: Introducing the latest culture war.
When health secretary Wes Streeting announced an upcoming review into supposed mental health “overdiagnosis”, I felt my chest tighten. Streeting’s pending investigation, conveniently launched days after Keir Starmer announced upcoming reforms to welfare, was clearly intended to push sick and suffering people back into work. This is an economic agenda disguised as a moral one – taken straight out of the Tories’ playbook. Labour, however, is making this neoliberal policy sound vaguely benevolent. Young people are being “written off”, Starmer and Streeting have said, and are getting trapped in poverty because they think they can’t work. There is historical precedent for the line that this rightwing Labour party is taking around mental health. Around the 1960s, the anti-psychiatry movement began to challenge the foundations of psychiatry, which held a strong foothold in the form of hundreds of mental hospitals peppered across Britain. While the movement spanned both left and right, its proponents were united in their critique of psychiatric diagnosis, and, at their most extreme, suggested that mental illness itself wasn’t real. When Margaret Thatcher rose to power, she translated these ideas to policy. She capitalised on widespread anti-psychiatry sentiment by closing state mental hospitals in favour of supposed “community care”. Although the closure of these segregationist and violent institutions was a good thing, the move was part of a larger agenda of austerity and privatisation. Thatcher didn’t close asylums to replace them with kinder forms of mental healthcare, reallocating resources to community care. Rather, deinstitutionalisation was a cost-cutting measure that relinquished state responsibility for the mentally ill. People were now free from the harms of asylums. But they were freshly exposed to the harms of the capitalist labour market, and, without state support, were pushed into low-paid work, homelessness and the prison system.
https://novaramedia.com/2025/12/10/wes-streetings-overdiagnosis-crusade-isnt-going-to-help-anyone/

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