/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
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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,Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

House votes to nullify Trump order and restore bargaining rights for federal workers
Nearly two dozen House Republicans joined Democrats Thursday to pass a bill that would restore collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees, an attempt to overturn an executive order that President Donald Trump issued earlier this year.
https://apnews.com/article/democrats-trump-federal-worker-union-rights-republicans-1bbd71bb6236aa2ff2c3b816e54327a1

Drivers at Amazon warehouse in Woodside seek to unionize with Teamsters
Drivers at Amazon’s DBK1 warehouse in Woodside marched to the facility Dec. 9 to deliver the news to management, joining almost 10,000 Amazon workers across five states who have outlined plans to join the union, according to Teamsters.
https://qns.com/2025/12/drivers-amazon-warehouse-unionize-teamsters/

Noem accused of misleading Congress about early hearing departure to canceled meeting
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) moved to subpoena Noem to reappear before the panel, saying she shirked her duties and may have even lied about needing to attend a meeting of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Council convened to determine the future of the disaster agency.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/5644770-noem-dhs-thompson-fema/

Federal judge orders FEMA to restore billions in canceled disaster mitigation funding
The program’s disruption upended projects across hundreds of communities in both Republican- and Democratic-led states, thwarting plans to improve stormwater drainage, harden electrical lines and even help relocate households living in areas most vulnerable to disasters.
https://apnews.com/article/fema-bric-funding-disasters-trump-restore-50def95a599645b4fa3062c6547c6a3d
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60,000 multimillionaires own 3 times more wealth than half the world’s population
A new report from the World Inequality Lab, the product of four years of comprehensive research, finds that economic inequality on a world scale continues to increase by leaps and bounds, with vast wealth concentrated in a tiny handful of billionaires and centi-millionaires. As the report’s foreword declares: "The data presented here are striking. The richest 10% of the global population own close to three-quarters of all wealth, while the poorest half hold barely 2%. Fewer than 60,000 multi-millionaires now control three times more wealth than half of humanity combined. Within most countries, the bottom 50% rarely possess more than 5% of national wealth. "
The World Inequality Lab was established through efforts to investigate global inequality initially spearheaded by economists Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, co-authors of a series of studies on the concentration of wealth and income. According to the report, the wealthiest 0.001 percent have seen their share of the world’s wealth grow from 4 percent to 6 percent since 1995, while the bottom half of the world’s population controls only 2 percent. Multimillionaires have increased their wealth by approximately 8 percent each year over the past three decades, nearly twice the rate of the bottom half of the population.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/11/rzdx-d11.html

An AI-Powered Stock Market
The stock market is, plainly, no longer simply a concern of the elite. “We like to joke that the markets are not the economy,” Peter Atwater of Financial Insyghts recently told Bloomberg, “but we’ve reached a point now where the economy is the markets.” In past articles, I’ve covered the rise and risks of retail investing for everyday Americans. To recap: a majority of Americans now own stocks; young women are the fastest growing demographic of investors; and the onset of “commission free” trading has lured millions of us into high-risk trading in speculative stocks and the derivatives market. All of this has taken place under the guise of words like access, equality, and democratization. Yet recent weeks has seen a spread of predictions of a bubble — and cracks beginning to show in the consumer economy as well as private crePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

USA: RSF urges Puerto Rico governor to veto bill that would strip public's access to information
Rushed through Puerto Rico’s legislature in October without the opportunity for a public hearing, SB63 adds several bureaucratic steps to the process for requesting information. The bill was passed by the House in November and the governor must sign or veto it by January 4, 2026. Without any action, the bill automatically becomes law. On December 8, RSF and a coalition of 12 other civil society groups sent a letter to the governor urging her to veto the bill.
https://rsf.org/en/usa-rsf-urges-puerto-rico-governor-veto-bill-would-strip-publics-access-information

Pentagon Weighed Sending Boat Strike Survivors to Salvadoran Prison to Avoid Defending Bombings in Court
The goal, the officials said, was to avoid trying boat strike survivors in US courts, where the discovery process would compel the Trump administration—which has offered no concrete evidence to support its claims that the targeted vessels were carrying drugs—to provide legal justification for attacks that experts say are illegal.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/pentagon-boat-strikes

Republicans unveil health care plan to counter Democratic effort to extend ACA subsidies
The proposal would do away with the enhanced tax credits, and instead take the extra money from those tax credits and put it into health savings accounts for those who purchase bronze-level or "catastrophic" plans on the ACA exchanges. Republicans say this will help Americans pay for out-of-pocket costs.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republicans-unveil-health-care-plan-counter-democratic-effort/story?id=128214708

Tourists from 42 countries will have to submit 5 years of social media history to enter U.S. under Trump plan
Citizens of 42 countries enrolled in the visa waiver program can generally come to the U.S. for up to 90 days for tourism or business travel, wiPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

993 - From the Columbia River to the Sea feat. Andrew Hudson (12/8/25) (Chapo Trap House)
Andrew Hudson of E1 returns to talk about a grab bag of recent news: Marie Glusenkamp Perez’s war on pinnipeds, Alex Karp’s tweaked-out media hits, and another vaccine on the RFK’s chopping block. We then turn to Milo Yiannopoulos, who just recently made the equally outrageous claims that Charlie Kirk is still alive and Benny Johnson is actually gay. Finally, Tarantino’s unbearable public persona, the Ellison-Zaslav war over Warner Bros.’ future, and a lot of praise for a recent genre movie.
https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/993-from-the-columbia-river-to-the-sea-feat-andrew-hudson-12825

Unite and Untie Healthcare
We all know the story. Someone gets furious at the behavior of a health insurance company. Perhaps they are exceptionally irate at the words and actions that have come from the CEO and other leaders in the company. And then the moment of truth occurs and they take action. By this I mean, a group of shareholders of United Healthcare filed suit in May of this year against the company. This action was in response to a drop in shareholder value of around 22% after the death of their CEO. The shareholders were angry and felt they’d been misled when the company indicated that there would be no change in their profit forecast after this event. However, the suing shareholders distinctly believe that UHC started approving a tiny bit more care in response to their CEO’s death. This harmed their finances, they say, and in a fit that can only be solved through litigation, they went after the company. In this case, the bottom line and health of those shareholders’ finances is inversely proportional to the health of the bag holders who dismally have UHC insurance. You see, the rules are that you pay through the nose for high premiums and just wither away if you get sick. It’s a poor tax. You don’t get to ask them to fulfill their end of the bargain.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/10/unite-and-untie-healthcare/

A Sober Look at Amazon’s Automation Drive
Earlier this year, Amazon Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>492649
>South Korea's Lee calls for probe into links between religious group and politics
South Korean politicians and even actual presidents consulting shamans and religious cults. Yikes.

Starbucks workers’ strike approaches 4th week
A nationwide strike by Starbucks workers is approaching the start of its fourth week on Wednesday. The strike, which began on November 13 with walkouts at 65 stores across more than 20 cities, expanded to 120 stores on Black Friday. Workers are demanding higher wages, stable schedules, an end to understaffing and action on hundreds of unfair labor practice charges stemming from years of union busting.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/08/mjxv-d08.html

Trump says AI executive order targeting state laws coming this week
The executive order isn't likely to try to block state AI laws outright. Instead, it's expected to attempt to gut state AI laws by launching legal challenges and conditioning federal grants on compliance. This approach has far less teeth than legislation — and will certainly face legal challenges.
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/08/trump-ai-executive-order-state-laws
https://archive.ph/GUcoH

Florida governor declares Muslim civil rights group a terrorist organization
The order instructs Florida agencies to prevent the two groups and those who have provided them material support from receiving contracts, employment and funds from a state executive or cabinet agency. In an emailed statement, CAIR and its Florida chapter said the organization plans to sue DeSantis in response to what it called an “unconstitutional” and “defamatory” proclamation.
https://apnews.com/article/florida-desantis-muslim-group-terrorist-label-7113c982c43fed198cef9eaf85b23679

El Centro police fire dozens of rounds into 14-year-old Mikey Jimenez, body camera video reveals
Police claim they were responding to an automated license plate reader alert that flagged a white Hyundai sedan as stolen. Officers located the car in the parking lot of a local restaurant, then moved in with multiple vehicles to box in 14-year-old MikeyPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

When the Feds Come to Your City: Standing Up to ICE
Are masked agents showing up in your town to kidnap your neighbors? Want to do your part to protect each other, but don’t know where to start? We hope this guide will help you prepare to stand up to federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as they attempt to abduct people from your community. The guide is not exhaustive—it could not be—but it is based on the knowledge that an array of people have accumulated in Chicago over the past several months during “Operation Midway Blitz.” As federal agents expand their assaults on communities across the country, it is crucial to share and build on these practices. Because the mercenaries who work for ICE and other federal agencies are constantly updating their strategies in response to popular resistance, a guide like this is chiefly useful for getting started thinking about how to resist. We encourage you to draw on this guide for ideas while adapting them to the local context that you and your neighbors know best.
https://crimethinc.com/2025/12/03/when-the-feds-come-to-your-city-standing-up-to-ice-a-guide-from-chicago-organizers

42 Years of the EZLN, “One of the Hearts of the Anti-capitalist Movement”
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) recently celebrated its 42nd anniversary, marking its founding on November 17th, 1983, when a group established a camp in the Lacandon Jungle to begin the first stage of organizing the movement in indigenous communities of Chiapas. This silent movement burst onto the world stage a little over a decade later when it took up arms on January 1st, 1994, to demonstrate its radical opposition to the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed by Canada, the United States, and Mexico, then governed by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the political emblem of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Since then, the EZLN has shaken the global political scene by proposing an ideology that, contrary to the long tradition of Latin American guerrilla organizations, did not aim to seize control of the state apparatus but—in the words of the intellectual John Holloway, who masterfully defined it in a resounding phrase—”to change the world withouPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

I am getting a little tired of the writers for establishment media rags that TrueAnon keeps inviting on for interviews lately. Makes me a little bit suspicious.

>>492629
Who have the latest been?

Pilots' union blocks Allegiant Air bid to get US residency for foreign hires​
The union has refused to certify to the U.S. Department of Labor that the pilot positions, which start at about $50,000 a year, about half of what pilots at other regional airlines earn, meet "prevailing wage" standards. That certification is a crucial bureaucratic step and a requirement for the pilots' green card applications. Instead of hiring foreign pilots, the Teamsters Local 2118 has asked Allegiant to offer industry-standard compensation and improvements to scheduling to retain pilots who are leaving for rivals.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/pilots-union-blocks-allegiant-air-bid-get-us-residency-foreign-hires-2025-12-06/

Trump revokes licenses for thousands of CDL training centers, in sweeping attack on immigrant truckers
The federal Training Provider Registry lists roughly 16,000 providers nationwide. With nearly 3,000 removed and 4,500 more under review, the purge affects approximately 45 percent of all entries in the registry. More than 40 percent of listed CDL training providers could lose their ability to certify new drivers. Furthermore, graduates of any removed center will not be recognized as having completed federally mandated training, and many current CDL holders may find their credentials revoked.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/06/uagm-d06.html

San Diego agrees to pay $30m to family of boy, 16, shot dead by police
As seen on body-worn camera and surveillance footage released by police, Gold pulled out his gun and shot at Wilson’s back as he ran by within seconds of encountering him in the corridor. Footage captured Gold identifying himself as a police officer only after he opened fire. Wilson was pronounced dead at the hospital 35 minutes later.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/san-diego-settlement-konoa-wilson-police

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Statement by the Communist Party of Poland: "Our struggle continues"!
The shameful attempt of the Polish state to outlaw the Communist Party of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia Polski - KPP) has become a central front in the international struggle against anti-communism. In recent weeks, the Polish authorities escalated their decade-long persecution by bringing the case before the Constitutional Tribunal in an effort to criminalize the Party’s very existence. This heinous attack does not concern only the comrades in Poland. It forms part of a broader offensive by capitalist governments across Europe and the EU to restrict political rights, falsify history, and suppress communist organizations that defend the interests of the working class. In response, communist and workers’ parties from every continent mobilized immediately. Joint statements were issued, solidarity actions were organized, and protests were held outside Polish embassies worldwide on December 1st. This internationalist reaction demonstrated that the persecution of one communist party is a matter for the entire movement. Below is the official statement of the Communist Party of Poland, addressed to all fraternal parties, updating the movement on the latest developments and reaffirming its determination to continue the struggle.
https://www.idcommunism.com/2025/12/statement-by-communist-party-of-poland-our-struggle-continues.html

America Didn’t Have a Boom This Black Friday. It Had a Breakdown
Black Friday set another record this year. Reporters treated it as proof that Americans still have strength in their wallets and that the economy has life in it. The president called it the “Trump Bump.” The headlines bragged about an eleven point eight billion dollar day and analysts lined up to praise the numbers. None of it holds up once you look at how people paid for those purchases and how much strain sits underneath those sales. A record weekend in a hollowed out economy is not a sign of confidence. It is a sign of how far people will push themselves to give their kids one normal holiday in a year that left them with nothing extra.
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Most of your explanations seem to amount to "because they're the good guys". Unfortunately, capitalism is not about good guys and bad guys. As long as China continues to practice capitalism, the pressure to engage in imperialism for access to labor to exploit and resources to plunder will assert itself.

>>492587
They've resisted so far. However they did raise the age of retirement, and working hours are at an all time high, I understand that they need to exploit their own labor if they won't do imperialism to grow their economy, but socialism doesn't just mean more money for workers (although it's definitely that too).

China could not sell arms to Israel. I don't think not selling arms to Israel would require being imperialist.

I think we have to presume that what China does, even if it isn't imperialist, is in China's geopolitical interest - so they trade with everyone. Ok, I get that, that makes them money, and they avoid potential fallout from the zionist US gov't cutting off trade with China if China decides to veto a zionist resolution at the UNSC or stop selling arms directly to Israel. Ok, yes, I get that - except, China then has to face the fact that arms they sell to Israel will be used to militarily advance US/Israeli geopolitical/economic interests which are imperialist and will involve militarily destroying any allies China has who won't already bend to US pressure, and also causing huge waves of mass displacement. China also can realistically understand that the US doesn't actually presently have a viable option other than trading with China - if China chose not to trade with Israel, or at least chose not to directly sell Israel Chinese-made weapons while Israel attacks Chinese allies and wages genocide, then the US attempting to cut off trade with China would just accelerate US economic decline… and the fact that the US would do so over Israel would only make the decline even worse, as the economic unrest could only be blamed on the greed and corruption of US leaders.

I think, if I had to guess, that China could be wary of accelerating US decline out of a rational fear that the US is such an insane state, so devoted to zionism and empire and plunder, that it would quickly resort to war - but that's already the path the US is on, and China could be aiding the US and Israel in a campaign of destruction which is ultimately damaging China's own interests and China's future capacity to defend itself.

Is Iran even trying to get nukes?

>>490119
So far, no not really, they wanted nuclear power plants and the hole nuclear weapons stick was just meant as a bargaining chip for negotiations.

Although the message the US has send the world is this:
<Get nukes, or else we'll bomb your people and try to overthrow your government.

Whether Iran creates sufficient deterrent with conventional means or whether they go nuclear, i don't know, but I would be very surprised if this episode doesn't inspire a bunch of other countries to conclude that they need the nuclear stick because the neocon no-rules-based-order is scary as fuck. Unintended nuclear blow-back…

>>490137
right

Hopium status?
Trump says he wants to maintain nuclear limits with Russia
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/trump-says-he-wants-maintain-nuclear-limits-with-russia-2025-07-25/
>U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would like to maintain the limits on U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons deployments set in the 2010 New START agreement, which expires in February.

>"That's not an agreement you want expiring. We're starting to work on that," Trump told reporters as he exited the White House on a trip to Scotland.

>It was the first time since taking office that Trump has said he wants to maintain the treaty's limits on strategic nuclear weapons deployments when it expires on February 5.

>The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, is the last remaining nuclear arms reduction accord between the world's largest nuclear powers. It restricts Russia and the U.S. to deploying no more than 1,550 strategic warheads on 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines and bombers.

Nearly half of Americans believe US likely to enter nuclear war in next decade: Poll
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/nearly-half-of-americans-believe-us-likely-to-enter-nuclear-war-in-next-decade-poll/3756138

>Nearly half of Americans believe the US is likely to enter a nuclear war within the next 10 years, according to a new YouGov survey released Wednesday.

>The poll, done online between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2 among 1,148 US adult citizens, found that 46% think a nuclear conflict involving the US is "very" or "somewhat" likely over the coming decade, while 37% say it is not likely. The expectation of nuclear war was found to be higher among Democrats (57%) than Republicans (37%), likely reflecting Democrats’ anxiety over the policies of the Trump administration.

>The survey also found that 52% of Americans believe the odds of nuclear war are higher now than they were a decade ago.

>Meanwhile, at least 44% said they believe terrorists or criminals could use a nuclear device inside the US within the next decade.

>On nuclear policy, 56% say the US should only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack, while 21% say they should never be used. Americans remain divided on whether US nuclear weapons make them safer, with 33% saying they do and 26% saying they feel less safe.

<"IT'S THE HECKIN TERRORINOS AND CHEETO HITLER WHO ARE BRINGING US CLOSER TO NUCULAR HOLLYCOAST, OK?!??!!1"

Burgers are beyond slavation

Maoist style peoples war on Israel. Thoughts?

>>492494
What would that entail?

>>492495
Drawing IDF deeper and deeper into Gaza and wearing them down through gorilla warfare for max attrition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_war

>>492496
That is indeed what Hamas has been doing, but I don't think Gaza is large enough for the job.

New thread:
>>492498
>>492498
>>492498
>>492498
>>492498

Has this actually been working? It sounded like Italian strikes were compelling the state to do something for its ships in the flotilla last month, but then it seemed like Israel just went back to their usual attacks with impunity.

>>492327
It had the effect of directly blocking Italy from shipping weapons. I think it helped put some pressure on states (including the US) to try really hard to fool people into thinking the ceasefire was serious, just because of the economic impact, but that only amounted to a slowing down of airstrikes and a continued, intensified suppression campaign. Much more is necessary, especially in countries like the US and Germany which supply more of the arms to Israel, Italy is doing the right thing and should escalate.

Los Angeles City Hall, November 29, 1PM

Starts today!