1. Pakistan leaders threaten to use nuclear weapons if an "imminent" Indian military strike it fears takes place

Tensions between South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers have been aboil since India’s government, led by the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party, blamed Pakistan for a brutal April 23 terrorist attack near Pahalgam in Indian-held Kashmir that killed 26 tourists.

New Delhi has offered no proof for its claim of Pakistani state involvement in the Pahalgam atrocity, and has rejected out of hand Islamabad’s calls for an international investigation into the attack.

2.  Britain’s Royal Air Force joins the US in attacking Houthi forces in Yemen

As with the Tory’s previous military strikes on Yemen, which Labour as the main opposition party backed unreservedly, there was no parliamentary vote. But such is the unanimity among the main parties of the ruling class that this is now viewed as unnecessary. 

3. US President Donald Trump extends his illegal and unconstitutional attack on immigrants by threatening severe legal and financial consequences for "sanctuary" cities and states that do not fully cooperate with the crackdown being implemented by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

 Trump’s order instructs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to draw up a list within 30 days of state and local governments “that obstruct the enforcement of Federal immigration laws.” They are further instructed to notify the jurisdictions that they must end their defiance of the federal government or face the consequences.

4. A hearing in federal court sheds further light on the US Trump administration’s lawless campaign to deport Momodou Taal, a Cornell University Ph.D. candidate, for his political opposition to US and Israeli war crimes

Taal’s lead attorney, Eric Lee, noted that the government openly acknowledged Taal’s supposed “involvement in certain protests” as the formal justification for his removal proceedings.

“This is the apex of First Amendment activity,” Lee said during the hearing. “Mr. Taal attended a protest. There could be nothing more important to protect under the First Amendment than that.” 

Lee emphasized that “case law from the Supreme Court says very clearly that he has the protection of the First Amendment while he’s here and while that protest took place on US soil.” Lee noted that Taal was being targeted not for any crime, but for exercising his constitutionally protected rights to free speech and protest.

5. Comrades pay their last respects to veteran Trotskyist Nanda Wickremesinghe who cared about all children, not just his own

Nanda Wickremesinghe, "Wicks"

6. Cornell University in Ithaca, New York withdraws its invitation to singer Kehlani to perform at a campus event to avoid “division and discord”

Kehlani, 2025 

[Photo by The Come Up Show / CC BY 2.0]

Kehlani responded to Cornell’s disinvitation a few days later. “I am not antisemitic, nor anti-Jew. I am anti-genocide,” she said in a video on Instagram. “I am anti the actions of the Israeli government, I am anti an extermination of an entire people, I am anti the bombing of innocent children, men, women—that’s what I’m anti.” 

7. After winning Canada's federal elections, Liberal Party leader and former central banker Mark Carney will continue as prime minister

 Carney will head a vicious right-wing government that will pursue rearmament for imperialist world war, work with the European imperialist powers to ensure the war with Russia in Ukraine continues, and mount brutal attacks on the social and democratic rights of workers at home to bolster the “competitiveness” of Canadian capitalism.

8. As the world loses confidence in the financial power of the US state, a third fundamental shift is now taking place in the world economy

The present crisis is not merely the product of the madness of Donald Trump. He is the malignant personification of tendencies and contradictions that have been building up for decades. The crisis of the dollar and the financial system resting on it is a crisis of the entire capitalist system which has no way out unless war, fascism, depression and social devastation be considered a solution.

Confronted with this historic breakdown, not a threatening storm cloud on the horizon but a present reality, the international working class must adopt and fight for its own independent socialist strategy. That will at be the very center of the May Day meeting to be held on May 3.

9. Latest in a global wave of mass layoffs, the shipping giant, United Parcel Service, announces that it will eliminate 20,000 jobs and shut down 73 facilities in the US by June

 The layoffs are part of a wider social counterrevolution, spearheaded by the Trump administration. With the support of his Democratic Party enablers, who also serve Wall Street and are more afraid of the working class than fascism, Trump has cut over 100,000 federal jobs, is imposing sweeping consumption taxes on workers in the form of tariffs and is slashing Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security and other key social programs.

10. During an appearance by the fascist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir at Chabad-Lubavitch’s Brooklyn, New York  headquarters, a mob of Zionist-fascist thugs assault pro-Palestinian protesters, a bystander, and a police officer (video included)

The New York Police Department officers on the scene largely stood aside as the attacks occurred, and there is no clear evidence that any of the fascist rioters have been arrested or charged.

The fascist rampage was effectively endorsed by Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who condemned the victims as “pro-terrorist antisemitic anarchists” and accused them of “attacking Jews.”

11. Part One of two articles which examine the historical background behind Washington's abandonment of science under US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

12. President Donald Trump repurposes the US Department of Justice from its official mandate of opposing discrimination and curtailing police abuse to one encouraging police repression, targeting Trump’s political opponents, suppressing campus protests, and intensifying government control over universities

13. Ahead of May Day demonstrations in Turkey, more than 150 members of left parties, trade unions and youth organizations are detained by police in major cities

 This latest police-state repression is part of the government’s drive to crush social and political opposition by establishing a presidential dictatorship that ignores the constitution and the law. To this end, the government is using its control over the judiciary as a tool of intimidation.

14. The campaign message of the Socialist Equality Party candidate for Oxley, Australia, Mike Head, gets a warm public reception

15. The Socialist Equality Party in Australia holds public meetings in four key working-class electorates where it is running in the May 3 federal election

In contrast to the stage-managed campaign events of Labor, the Liberal-Nationals and the Greens, the SEP meetings provided an avenue for serious discussion about the political questions confronting workers, students and youth.

 

SEP candidate Max Boddy 

speaks at an April 27 public meeting in Sydney, Australia

16. World Socialist Web Site reporters listen to workers and young people responses to the Socialist Equality Party’s election meetings in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia

17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk

18. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

19. International Online May Day Rally this Saturday!

On Saturday, May 3, the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site will hold an annual International Online May Day Rally, uniting workers from across the globe in the fight against fascism, dictatorship, and war.

The return of Donald Trump to office marks a turning point in the global crisis of capitalism. His administration has rapidly advanced a fascistic agenda, dismantling democratic rights, escalating attacks on immigrants, launching a trade war, and preparing for military conflicts throughout the world. A chilling crackdown on student activists for opposing the genocide in Gaza has seen hundreds targeted, including Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal, and Rümeysa Öztürk, who have faced arrests, deportation threats, and visa revocations for their courageous protests.

Backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, Trump embodies the oligarchic rule driving staggering inequality and imperialist aggression. Trump’s policies reflect the global shift of capitalist governments toward authoritarianism in the service of oligarchy— from Germany’s AfD to Italy’s Meloni and Argentina’s Milei. The ruling class worldwide is responding to the economic crisis and social opposition with militarism and repression.

These developments underscore the urgent need for a unified international movement of the working class, which is increasingly mobilizing against war, inequality, and repression. This year’s May Day rally will present a socialist program to unify workers internationally in the struggle against capitalism. It will outline a revolutionary perspective to end imperialist violence and build a society based on equality and human need.

1. Joseph Kishore, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States, provides a perspective of US President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office

 From his first day in office, Trump has worked methodically to establish a presidential dictatorship, following a blueprint drawn up by his fascist advisors

2. A total of 55,000 LA County public workers with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 721 are set to strike today

 With May Day approaching, the holiday of international working class unity, workers in the United States must strive for unity with their brothers and sisters across the world, especially immigrant workers, rejecting “America First” poison being pushed by Trump.

3. Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass unveils a proposed budget that slashes 1,647 city jobs— the most severe round of layoffs since the 2008 Great Recession

 The layoffs, affecting nearly every department from sanitation and tree trimming to clerical and maintenance services, will have devastating effects on the city’s functionality and population. Even as Bass described these cuts as “a decision of absolute last resort,” it is clear that this move is not a reluctant necessity but a conscious political choice made in service of the city’s rich and powerful.

4. A US airstrike in Yemen kills 68 people is one of the Trump administration's greatest massacres of civilians to date

The US bombardment of Yemen was triggered by statements by the Houthi movement that it would block the passage of Israeli ships through the Red Sea, a waterway critical for US control of the region, in response to Israel’s deliberate mass starvation of the population of Gaza.

5. Thousands of people take to the streets in Oldenburg and other German cities to pay their respects to the latest victim of police violence in Germany, Lorenz A.

6. A massive blackout brings Spain and Portugal to a virtual standstill returning their 21st-century populations back to 19th-century conditions

While it is too early to determine with certainty what caused the blackout, initial analyses of the electrical grid suggest that the blackout had natural causes that interacted with a broader failure to make sufficient investments in the grid.

7. Finland’s right-wing government announces measures supporting NATO and the Trump administration’s expansionist agenda by leaving the Ottawa Treaty banning the use of landmines, selling the United States icebreaker ships to militarize the Arctic, and raising its military budget by billions of euros

8. Incoming government ministers signal Germany's continuing political and militarist shift to the right

9. New York Police Department officers and security personnel from the City University of New York harass and attack students at the City College of New York who attempted to establish a pro-Palestinian “liberated zone” encampment on the school’s campus

10. An event ostensibly organized to defend workers' jobs in Brazil is the latest demonstration of  how pseudo-leftists subordinate workers' interests to that of the nationalist state

11. Hundreds attend a funeral service in Detroit for Stellantis worker Ronnie Adams who was crushed to death by an automated crane in April

12. The Chicago, Illinois area Regional Transportation Authority warns of severe service cuts without state and federal funding

 The official explanation of the budget shortfall is decreased ridership that has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, resulting in a fall in fare revenue. But the transit system has long suffered from a lack of investment and has been burdened by laws requiring most parts of the system’s operating costs to be 50 percent funded by fares. Service has been maintained up until this point by federal pandemic relief funding amounting to approximately $3.5 billion. Now that this funding has been used up, states and municipalities around the country are bracing for a massive reduction in federal funding as the Trump regime is threatening to cut vital funding grants.

13. A Texas bankruptcy ruling leads to the planned shutdown of two hospitals, employing 2,651 people and serving 75,000 patients in suburban Philadelphia

The massive layoffs of the hospitals’ workforce is unlike anything seen in the region since the wave of layoffs associated with the bankruptcy of the Bethlehem Steel Company in the 1970s-1980s. It follows Volvo Group’s announcement less than two weeks ago that temporary layoffs would be hitting the Mack Trucks assembly plant in the Lehigh Valley due to worsening market conditions triggered by Trump’s trade war agenda.

14. Funded by various billionaires and multi-millionaires, far-right organizations are bombarding Australians with Trump-like advertisements, slogans and text messages

15. Socialist Equality Party candidates in Australia's May 3 elections, Max Boddy and Warwick Dove, hold a "speak-out" in a Sydney suburb (videos included) 

16.  A recent vote of teachers at the National Education Union in the United Kingdom, larger than any education union in Europe, reflects their continuing opposition to funding cuts and the relentless erosion of their working conditions

17. Unison, a public sector union in the United Kingdom, offers no concrete plan to halt the outsourcing of vital workers— porters, housekeeping, catering, and estates staff into a newly created privatization operation

Instead, Unison officials urged workers to spend their time writing to Members of Parliament--four from the Labour Party, two Conservatives and two Liberal Democrats)--NHS trust boards, and governors who are the architects of the privatization plan.

18. The World Socialist Web Site's International Amazon Workers Voice issues a statement about what Amazon workers must do take control of their workplace safety

19. Workers Struggles: The Americas

• Bolivia: 

Miners and members of miners’ cooperatives stage protest in La Paz

• Peru:

Indian farmers occupy oil pipeline station to protest spills

• Panama:
  

Teachers, with support of construction and trades workers, strike against government attacks on their social security rights and against US troops being stationed in the country

• United States:            
  

Maryland transit workers strike over wages and benefits 

Corning, New York healthcare workers vote to carry out informational picketing as contract expiration looms 

Workers grant strike authorization at Philadelphia hospital

• Canada:
  

Saskatchewan healthcare workers rally at provincial legislature        

20. This week in history:

• 25 years ago:

Actors and museum workers launched separate strikes across the US 

 In major cities, strikers displayed signs saying “Advertising Pays, Advertisers Don’t” and railed against corporate greed. It was the first major Hollywood strike since the over five-month long walkout by the Writers Guild of America in 1988. Well-known actors supported the strike such as Elliott Gould, Richard Dreyfuss and Tony Roberts, and so did the American working class.

• 50 years ago:
  

100,000 in Lisbon call for socialism after first election in 50 years

The events of Portugal in 1975 vindicated the analysis of the Trotskyist movement for the necessity of revolutionary leadership. Without a party independent of the Stalinists and Social Democrats, the working class could not take power into its own hands.  

• 75 years ago: 
  

At least 18 striking workers killed by police in South Africa on May Day

On May 1, 1950, a May Day mass strike in South Africa was violently suppressed, with police firing into multiple crowds of demonstrators, killing 18 and injuring another 38. Thousands of South African workers had gone on strike that day both to commemorate May Day (International Workers Day) and also to oppose the Suppression of Communism Act, proposed by the National Party which had come into power in 1948 and already begun implementing its program of apartheid. 

• 100 years ago:
  

Trade union federation formed in China

 The Chinese working class was then a small portion of the population, which was primarily made up of peasants, but industrial centers in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shanghai had grown, increasing the number of and social weight of workers.

21. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk

22. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

23. International Online May Day Rally this Saturday!

On Saturday, May 3, the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site will hold an annual International Online May Day Rally, uniting workers from across the globe in the fight against fascism, dictatorship, and war.

The return of Donald Trump to office marks a turning point in the global crisis of capitalism. His administration has rapidly advanced a fascistic agenda, dismantling democratic rights, escalating attacks on immigrants, launching a trade war, and preparing for military conflicts throughout the world. A chilling crackdown on student activists for opposing the genocide in Gaza has seen hundreds targeted, including Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal, and Rümeysa Öztürk, who have faced arrests, deportation threats, and visa revocations for their courageous protests.

Backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, Trump embodies the oligarchic rule driving staggering inequality and imperialist aggression. Trump’s policies reflect the global shift of capitalist governments toward authoritarianism in the service of oligarchy— from Germany’s AfD to Italy’s Meloni and Argentina’s Milei. The ruling class worldwide is responding to the economic crisis and social opposition with militarism and repression.

These developments underscore the urgent need for a unified international movement of the working class, which is increasingly mobilizing against war, inequality, and repression. This year’s May Day rally will present a socialist program to unify workers internationally in the struggle against capitalism. It will outline a revolutionary perspective to end imperialist violence and build a society based on equality and human need.

1. Relations between India and Pakistan, rival nuclear-armed powers, are on a knife’s edge after New Delhi rushes to declare Pakistan responsible for last week’s terrorist attack in Indian-held Kashmir

 Since the turn of the century, the India-Pakistan conflict has becoming increasingly enmeshed with that between US imperialism and China, adding a new and highly explosive dimension to both. Washington has showered New Delhi with strategic favors, including advanced weaponry, access to civilian nuclear technology, and real-time military intelligence-sharing, in exchange for India integrating itself ever-more fully into its military-strategic offensive against China. With this backing, India under Modi has moved aggressively to redefine its relationship with Pakistan, so as to assert itself as the regional hegemon. Pakistan, meanwhile, has doubled down on its “all-weather” partnership with Beijing, further antagonizing both New Delhi and Washington.

2. Due in part to the anti-science policies of the Trump administration, cases of potentially lethal whooping cough, or pertussis, surge in US Pacific, Mountain, and Midwestern states 

Since 2019, with the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a massive surge in anti-vaccination propaganda. Trump named one of the leading anti-vax charlatans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, to the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services, a clear signal of the intentional destruction of all public health programs.

3. Starve or "white slippers":  Ukrainian men have limited choices while awaiting an end to war, according to underground Ukrainian journalists

4. Operation Highmast, a UK aircraft carrier strike group and the largest maritime force of British combat jets since the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas war, will conduct military exercises with the US, India, Singapore and Malaysia, and other nations, in the Indian Ocean

5. Canada’s Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre is waging a Trump-style election campaign that includes plans for sweeping attacks on the democratic and social rights of workers, and a massive military build-up

 The Conservative program does distinguish itself from the other parties in its degree of hostility towards the fundamental democratic rights of the working class. On Wednesday, for example, Poilievre declared his intention to allow the police to forcibly clear homeless camps from all public spaces, a move that would impact hundreds of sites across the country that have sprung up under conditions of a huge housing affordability crisis. In almost all of Canada’s major cities, the rent for a single-bedroom apartment is well out of reach for some one working full-time on the minimum wage, let alone those in part-time work or currently unemployed.

6. In a blatant betrayal of California CVS drugstore distribution workers, the Teamsters union announces a contract and snap vote intended to sabotage the workers’ taking real action to address years of wage stagnation, grueling working conditions, and corporate contempt

7. The FBI arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is a brazen and chilling act of repression by the Trump administration in the United States

Just over three months ago, in one of his first official actions as president, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 fascist thugs and political supporters who engaged in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. Many of the ringleaders of this attack were convicted on charges of “obstruction of a federal proceeding” because they conspired to prevent Congress from carrying out the ceremonial counting of the Electoral College votes showing Trump’s defeat by Democrat Joe Biden.

While the fascist thugs that served as Trump’s foot soldiers in attempting to overturn the election were pardoned, Dugan was treated to a perp walk before television cameras and a possible prison term.

8. After seven weeks of a full blockade of food, water, medical supplies and electricity, the United Nations World Food Program warns that it had delivered its last remaining food stocks to hot meal kitchens in Gaza, raising the prospect of imminent mass starvation for the enclave’s remaining population

 The hot meal kitchens are the last functional food distribution system operated by the United Nations in Gaza. On March 31, all of the World Food Program’s bakeries were forced to shut down. The same week, all remaining food parcels distributed by the WFP, containing two weeks of rations, were exhausted.

9. The claims made by the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago's Democratic Party Mayor Brandon Johnson that a recently ratified labor agreement would protect educators and their students from massive federal, state and local spending cuts are already unraveling 

Claims that the four-year deal would “Trump-proof” the district and create a “force field” around the schools were cynical lies— and the CTU officials, the mayor’s office and their backers in the Democratic Socialists of America knew it. The overriding concern of CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Mayor Johnson, a former CTU official on leave from the union, was to prevent a strike by 28,000 educators. 

10. Denunciations are rapidly mounting in Europe of the ceasefire that factions within Washington are trying to broker to end the three-year NATO-Russia war in Ukraine

 US-European relations are suffering a historic collapse as the NATO powers vie for domination of Ukrainian and world resources and threaten each other with trade war tariffs that undermine the agreements that have governed their relations since the end of World War II in 1945. The European powers are launching a historic rearmament drive, including an €800 billion European Union military plan, to prepare to wage war independently of America. This underlies the vitriolic denunciations of the proposed US ceasefire in European media.

11. Decades of social welfare cuts-- made by the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Left Party, supported by the trade unions-- have allowed the far-right AfD to grow into the second strongest force in the German parliament 

 The ruling class’s shift to the right, its attack on the social gains and democratic rights of the working class and its turn to militarism and war are international developments taking place in every capitalist country. They are the result of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, of growing social inequality and the intensification of imperialist conflicts. They can only be stopped through the independent mobilization of the international working class on the basis of a socialist program.

12. Britain sends counter-terrorism police to investigate Kneecap, a popular anti-genocide rap group from Northern Ireland

“The reason Kneecap is being targeted is simple— we are telling the truth, and our audience is growing. Those attacking us want to silence criticism of a mass slaughter. They weaponize false accusations of anti-semitism to distract, confuse, and provide cover for genocide.”

“We do not give a f*ck what religion anyone practices. We know there are massive numbers of Jewish people outraged by this genocide just as we are. What we care about is that governments of the countries we perform in are enabling some of the most horrific crimes of our lifetimes— and we will not stay silent... The young people at our gigs see through the lies.”

13. Dilaxan Mahalingam, the Socialist Equality Party's representative in Karainagar, Sri Lanka, explains why his establishment political opponents break their promises to improve living conditions and defend the democratic rights of the electorate

14. Mike Head, the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for the seat of Oxley in Brisbane, Australia’s working-class western suburbs, speaks on the SEP’s socialist program at an election debate

Head said the Australian Electoral Commission had refused to register the SEP for the election despite the party submitting the names and details of more than 1,500 electoral members as dictated by the legislation. “We oppose this entire anti-democratic process,” he said.

Nevertheless, Head said the SEP was standing candidates in the election in order to take its socialist program out to the widest possible audience among workers and young people. It offered the only alternative to the global capitalist system’s plunge into trade war, war and dictatorship.

15. Morgan Peach, the Socialist Equality Party’s representative in the Melbourne suburb of Calwell, Australia describes how the problems his diverse electorate faces and the choices they have are hardly unique

16. The Socialist Equality Party is holding its final public meeting for the Australian federal election this Thursday

The meeting will be in the format of a panel discussion with our candidates from Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. They will speak on their experiences throughout the election, during which the SEP has been alone in campaigning in key working-class areas on the real issues that are being concealed by every other party.

17. Socialist Equality Party national secretary Cheryl Crisp explains in a short video why the SEP candidates are voters' genuine alternative and why they appear on the ballot papers for the parliamentary House of Representatives and Senate without their party affiliation

18. The national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the UK, Chris Marsden, exposes a studied refusal by the UK government to defend not only Momodou Taal, but, by extension, any British citizen who falls victim to the arbitrary and unconstitutional actions of the Trump administration in the United States

Momodou Taal

19. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

20. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

21. Please Join an International Online May Day Rally!

On Saturday, May 3, the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site will hold an annual International Online May Day Rally, uniting workers from across the globe in the fight against fascism, dictatorship, and war.

The return of Donald Trump to office marks a turning point in the global crisis of capitalism. His administration has rapidly advanced a fascistic agenda, dismantling democratic rights, escalating attacks on immigrants, launching a trade war, and preparing for military conflicts throughout the world. A chilling crackdown on student activists for opposing the genocide in Gaza has seen hundreds targeted, including Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal, and Rümeysa Öztürk, who have faced arrests, deportation threats, and visa revocations for their courageous protests.

Backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, Trump embodies the oligarchic rule driving staggering inequality and imperialist aggression. Trump’s policies reflect the global shift of capitalist governments toward authoritarianism in the service of oligarchy— from Germany’s AfD to Italy’s Meloni and Argentina’s Milei. The ruling class worldwide is responding to the economic crisis and social opposition with militarism and repression.

These developments underscore the urgent need for a unified international movement of the working class, which is increasingly mobilizing against war, inequality, and repression. This year’s May Day rally will present a socialist program to unify workers internationally in the struggle against capitalism. It will outline a revolutionary perspective to end imperialist violence and build a society based on equality and human need.

1. Pseudo-left and “progressive” outlets, including The Nation, circle the wagons around United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain to defend him from growing working class outrage over his embrace of Trump’s tariffs and “America First” policies

This is part of a broader support by the union bureaucracy for tariffs. Broad sections of the apparatus, including both the ILWU and ILA dockworker unions and the Teamsters, have lined up in support of trade war.

In backing tariffs, the union bureaucracy is supporting a fascistic administration which is using tariffs to prepare supply chains for world war, especially against China. They are promoting a policy which recalls the darkest period of the 20th century under the Nazis, where trade war preceded the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.

🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Because The Nation, the DSA, Labor Notes, and others continue to uphold the national arena as the only viable and legitimate one for the working class, they are now compelled to back Trump’s “defense” of the nation against foreign adversaries.

The pseudo-left’s arguments in defense of the UAW mirror fascist rhetoric from figures like top Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who denounce “globalists” while falsely identifying the interests of the working class with nationalism. The Nation is not fascist, but its politics bring it into alignment with extreme-right forces

🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

The working class must draw its own lessons. Not for nothing did Marx, even 180 years ago, raise the slogan “Workers of the world, Unite!” This meant that the interests of the working class, in contrast to the capitalists, were not tied to the national soil, and that the logic of its struggle against capitalist exploitation would lead to its overthrow, the end of all forms of exploitation, and the establishment of a global socialist commonwealth.

2. Teachers at the São Paulo, Brazil municipal public school system, one of the largest education systems in the Americas, continue an indefinite strike that began on April 15 for better wages and against the privatization of education

As part of the attack on public education by ruling elites across the globe, intensified by the worsening economic crisis over the last decade, working conditions in São Paulo’s municipal schools have become intolerable. Among educators, there is a growing sense of physical and emotional exhaustion resulting from exhausting working hours and the increasing precariousness of teaching work.

3. Backed by thousands of protesters, dock workers in Morocco this week refused to load Maersk container ships carrying parts for F-35 fighter jets Israel is using in its genocide in Gaza

4. Wednesday’s 6.2 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Istanbul, Turkey dramatically reveals the city’s complete lack of preparedness

 Turkey has experienced two major destructive earthquakes in the last quarter century: The Marmara earthquake on 17 August 1999 and the Maraş earthquake on 6 February 2023. According to official figures, more than 17,000 people died in 1999 and hundreds of thousands were left homeless. New building regulations were issued, a so-called “earthquake mobilization” was declared and taxes were imposed. But in reality, the Maraş earthquakes of 2023 made it painfully clear that the central and local governments had taken no action.

5. The Jones Road Wildfire, one of the largest wildfires in New Jersey in the last 20 years, still rages

 Regardless of the proximate cause of the Jones Road Wildfire, the conditions that promote such massive fires have been increasing for decades due to global warming. The frequency and intensity of wildfires have been growing around the world. Major fires have broken out in South Korea, Japan, California, Australia and Canada, to name but a few. 

6. Polls suggest that the trade-union backed New Democratic Party will suffer an historic debacle in Canada’s federal election to be held Monday

The NDP’s unstinting support for the Liberals’ wars and austerity measures has driven millions of workers to turn their backs on the social democrats. Beginning with the so-called “Orange wave” in 2011, when the party emerged as the official opposition amid the devastating impact of the 2008 economic crisis, the party’s vote has collapsed, falling from 4.5 million to just 3 million in 2021. It will be much lower this time around, if the polls prove correct.

7. The Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel justifies his having authorized widespread gestapo-like raids on anti-genocide political activists by claiming they were engaged in “coordinated criminal acts of vandalism and property damage"

 As the World Socialist Web Site stated in its initial report on the raids, they are part of a broader campaign by both the Democrats and Republicans to criminalize opposition to US imperialist policy in the Middle East and to suppress the growing movement against the genocide in Gaza.

8. The US Trump administration escalates its assault on constitutional government by instructing the FBI to arrest a county judge in Wisconsin based on allegations of obstruction and shielding an immigrant from being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers

 Making clear the fascist political agenda behind the apprehension of Judge Dugan, Attorney General Pam Bondi made an appearance on FOX News to boast about the FBI action and threaten other members of the judiciary, as well as the general public for opposing the Trump administration’s assault on the rights of immigrants.

9. In a stunning admission, lawyers for the US Department of Homeland Security admitted their immigration agents did not have a warrant when they seized Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and legal resident, outside his New York City apartment last month

In justifying this repudiation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures and requires that warrants be issued by a judge based on probable cause, Department of Homeland Security attorneys argued that immigration police do not need to obtain a warrant before disappearing people if there is a suspicion of “an offense against the United States,” NBC News reported.

10. The New Zealand Herald reports that the New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service had investigated Radio NZ journalist Mick Hall, whose edits of foreign news stories in 2023 resulted in him being publicly smeared as a “Russian agent”

Hall, who worked as a sub-editor for RNZ’s website, made legitimate factual corrections to articles about the war in Ukraine and other topics. He was witch-hunted because he incorporated into reports the role of neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s armed forces, and the fact that the 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine toppled a pro-Russian government, directly paving the way for Russia’s reactionary invasion.

Far from being “pro-Russian,” the edits inserted rarely-stated and necessary truths into the wall-to-wall barrage of pro-war propaganda which dominates the jingoistic media. A McCarthyite frenzy was whipped up to intimidate any opposition to the US-NATO war and the then Labour-led government’s involvement.

11. Videos: Morgan Peach, a Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for a seat in a suburb near Melbourne, Australia, gives several interviews in which he sounds an alarm on the threat of war, capitalist breakdown, dictatorship, and the SEP being entirely excluded from the official election campaign

12. Australia's ANZAC Day, which commemorates the disastrous 1915 landing of British, Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli, has always been a celebration of militarist reaction, but all the more today under conditions of the greatest threat of a world war in 85 years

Between the banalities, platitudes and empty condolences, mostly to young men sacrificed on the altar of capitalist profits more than a century ago, there was a chilling indication of what is being prepared.

Speaking at the Australian War Memorial dawn service, alongside Albanese, Rear Admiral Matt Buckley, Deputy Chief of the Navy, said he was confident a new generation of young people would be willing to make such sacrifices, i.e., of their lives, in a new war.

“If dark days should come again, I am confident that their generation and those who follow will do what is required,” Buckley stated.

13. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific   

• China:
  

BYD electronics manufacturing workers strike

• India:

Tamil Nadu power-generation workers strike indefinitely

Tamil Nadu rural sanitation workers demand higher pay

SJVNL hydro-power project workers in Himachal Pradesh protest

Samsung India household appliance factory workers protest in Tamil Nadu

Rural employment scheme workers in Tamil Nadu protest unpaid wages

• Pakistan:
  

Pakistani health workers continue to protest privatisation

• Bangladesh: 
  

Bangladeshi garment workers protest factory closure and unpaid wages

• Australia:
  

Public mental health workers strike in Victoria again for improved conditions

Boral Resources drivers in Queensland hold second strike

Cleanaway garbage collectors in Noosa walk out again for higher pay

Keolis Downer bus drivers in Newcastle strike for higher wages

14. Hundreds pay their respects to Trotskyist leader, Comrade Nanda Wickremesinghe in Sri Lanka

Funeral march for Comrade Wicks

15. Joseph Kishore, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States publishes a memorial of Wolfgang Weber, a distinguished Trotskyist

Wolfgang Weber

16. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

 

Bogdan Syrotiuk

 Internationally, major artistic figures such as Roger Waters and Ai Wei Wei as well as historians such as Mario Kessler and Christian Gerlach have supported the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk. Many political tendencies have also condemned his imprisonment and called for his release, despite their political differences with the Trotskyist movement. These include Jill Stein from the Greens in the United States, and several groups and websites in Russia and Turkey. Most recently, the website of the Socialist Laborer Party in Turkey, and that of the Partisan Defense Committee, which is affiliated with the Spartacist tendency, have issued statements in support of Bogdan.

17. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

18. Please Join an International Online May Day Rally!

On Saturday, May 3, the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site will hold an annual International Online May Day Rally, uniting workers from across the globe in the fight against fascism, dictatorship, and war.

The return of Donald Trump to office marks a turning point in the global crisis of capitalism. His administration has rapidly advanced a fascistic agenda, dismantling democratic rights, escalating attacks on immigrants, launching a trade war, and preparing for military conflicts throughout the world. A chilling crackdown on student activists for opposing the genocide in Gaza has seen hundreds targeted, including Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal, and Rümeysa Öztürk, who have faced arrests, deportation threats, and visa revocations for their courageous protests.

Backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, Trump embodies the oligarchic rule driving staggering inequality and imperialist aggression. Trump’s policies reflect the global shift of capitalist governments toward authoritarianism in the service of oligarchy— from Germany’s AfD to Italy’s Meloni and Argentina’s Milei. The ruling class worldwide is responding to the economic crisis and social opposition with militarism and repression.

These developments underscore the urgent need for a unified international movement of the working class, which is increasingly mobilizing against war, inequality, and repression. This year’s May Day rally will present a socialist program to unify workers internationally in the struggle against capitalism. It will outline a revolutionary perspective to end imperialist violence and build a society based on equality and human need.

1. 

Bogdan Syrotiuk, who has consistently called for the unification of the Ukrainian, Russian and world working class to end the war in Ukraine-- accused of "thought crimes" by his persecutors-- has now been imprisoned for a year for having expressed his socialist, anti-war views, and for having written for the World Socialist Web Site, including the following statement prepared for the 2024 International May Day Rally of the International Committee of the Fourth International:

On this day of international working class solidarity, we, the members of the Ukrainian branch of the Young Bolshevik-Leninist Guard and the entire YGBL, call for the unification of the Ukrainian and Russian proletariat with the proletariat of the imperialist countries to end this war! 

We call for the creation of branches of the International Committee of the Fourth International in all former Soviet republics.

We call on the proletariat of the whole world to unite under the banner of its leader, the International Committee of the Fourth International. 

Let the words of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ring out louder and stronger: “Workers of all countries, unite!”

2. India and Pakistan, South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers, are rapidly cascading towards war after India accused Pakistan of responsibility for a brutal terrorist attack in Indian-held Kashmir

 The Indo-Pakistani conflict is a reactionary conflict between rival capitalist states, rooted in the 1947 communal partition of South Asia into an avowedly Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu India. Out of fear of the growing anti-imperialist movement and, above all, the emergence of a combative working class, the bourgeois-led Indian National Congress abandoned its own program for a united, democratic, and secular India and made a sordid deal with London for a quick transfer of power, in which it assumed control over the colonial capitalist state erected by British Imperialism. This included working with its right-wing rival, the Muslim League, to communally partition the subcontinent, triggering mass communal violence in which as many as two million people died and the forced migration of some 20 million people, as Muslims fled India and Hindus and Sikhs, Pakistan.

3. Reacting to a 7-2 ruling to temporarily delay deportation flights of migrants to El Salvador, US President Donald Trump publicly attacks the Supreme Court for the first time

4. More than 1,500 student visas have been summarily revoked-- the US Trump administration presses forward with the illegal and unconstitutional apprehension, detention and deportation of foreign students, as well as the detention and arrests of students and workers opposing the ongoing US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza

 A reign of terror at US universities is being unleashed. The ruling class’s drive for censorship goes way beyond that of the dark period of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

5. David Walsh, the Arts Editor for the World Socialist Web Site describes four movies that were recently shown at the 2025 San Francisco International Film Festival:

Souleymane’s Story about two days in the life of an immigrant food delivery worker in Paris, France

Xoftex, about a refugee camp in Greece where residents keep their spirits up by imagining the countries they would prefer to end up in

Where the Wind Comes From about two ingenious young people of modest means trying to make a better life for themselves, 

and Fragmented, about a former Palestinian political prisoner of the Israelis and a retired journalist

Governments throughout the world have declared war on immigrants and refugees. The Trump administration’s agenda may be one of the most brazen, sadistic and transparently illegal, but the pursuit and persecution of the most defenseless members of the human community is the policy, stated or unstated, of every capitalist regime and leading party, far-right or nominally “left.”

Everywhere governments promote their racist and chauvinist anti-immigrant programs as the defense of native-born workers, but nothing could be further from the truth. The policies are merely meant to divide the oppressed and pit one section of workers against another in a scramble for the crumbs that the billionaires let fall.

6. The Spanish government, a coalition of the social-democratic PSOE and the pseudo-left Sumar, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, has announced a record €10.47 billion increase in military spending for 2025

 Sánchez plans to impose this increase by decree, bypassing the normal budgetary process out of fear that he lacks the parliamentary support to pass it through a full vote. This authoritarian maneuver underscores how militarism and war are inseparable from a drive to dictatorship at home.

7. With US President Trump’s tariffs on auto parts set to begin May 3, the United Auto Workers union leadership is betraying autoworkers by supporting the tariffs and by ignoring, or trying to downplay, the mounting attacks on auto jobs

The autoworkers around the world, including in China, are coming into struggle, underscoring the need to reject economic nationalism and unite workers across borders. According to the China Labor Bulletin, thousands of workers at electric vehicle giant BYD walked off the job at factories in Wuxi and Chengdu in late March and early April 2025, protesting steep pay cuts and deteriorating working conditions.

The impact of the tariffs will be felt at all levels of the automotive supply chain. Workers at part supplier plants, who already labor under some of the worst conditions, stand to be hit the hardest.

A letter sent to Trump and signed by a broad coalition of auto industry groups, including both domestic and foreign manufacturers warned, “Most auto suppliers are not capitalized for an abrupt tariff-induced disruption. Many are already in distress and will face production stoppages, layoffs and bankruptcy,” the letter added, noting “it only takes the failure of one supplier to lead to a shutdown of an automaker’s production line.”

8. Chinese government officials say that claims by the US Trump administration that there are “active” trade discussions between Washington and Beijing are “fake news”

9. Protesting being made targets by violent extortionist gangs, transport workers in Peru carry out their seventh and most extensive strike involving an estimated 20,000 drivers and 700 transport companies

The strike received overwhelming support from the population, which is increasingly hostile to the political setup in a country deemed by the World Bank as the fourth most unequal in the world, with seven out of ten inhabitants living in poverty or “at risk of falling into poverty.”

A constant throughout the seven transport strikes has been the disparity between the demands of the transport organizations’ leaders, centered on the call for increased police enforcement against the extortionist mafias, and the broader public, which is calling for the resignation of Peru’s unelected President Dina Boluarte and the corrupt Congress under the slogan “Throw them all out.”

10. Hailed by union bureaucrats, the Australian Labor government wheels and deals behind the scenes to trade off workers’ hard-won conditions for nominal pay increases

 To fight back, workers need to build new organizations, rank-and-file committees, completely independent of the union bureaucracy and Labor, and controlled by workers themselves. Through such committees, workers can link up their struggles across workplaces and industries, across Australia and globally, and prepare an industrial and political fight against the offensive on jobs, wages and working conditions.

11. Socialist Equality Party members and supporters campaigning across Australia for the May 3 federal election have encountered broad support from workers and young people, who are increasingly opposed to the pro-business, pro-war agenda of all the parliamentary parties

12. A memorial remembrance of Wolfgang Weber, an outstanding fighter for Trotskyism and a long-time leading member of the Socialist Equality Party in Germany

Wolfgang Weber

13. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

 

Bogdan Syrotiuk

 Internationally, major artistic figures such as Roger Waters and Ai Wei Wei as well as historians such as Mario Kessler and Christian Gerlach have supported the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk. Many political tendencies have also condemned his imprisonment and called for his release, despite their political differences with the Trotskyist movement. These include Jill Stein from the Greens in the United States, and several groups and websites in Russia and Turkey. Most recently, the website of the Socialist Laborer Party in Turkey, and that of the Partisan Defense Committee, which is affiliated with the Spartacist tendency, have issued statements in support of Bogdan.

14. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

15. Please Join this year's International Online May Day Rally!

On Saturday, May 3, the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site will hold an annual International Online May Day Rally, uniting workers from across the globe in the fight against fascism, dictatorship, and war.

The return of Donald Trump to office marks a turning point in the global crisis of capitalism. His administration has rapidly advanced a fascistic agenda, dismantling democratic rights, escalating attacks on immigrants, launching a trade war, and preparing for military conflicts throughout the world. A chilling crackdown on student activists for opposing the genocide in Gaza has seen hundreds targeted, including Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal, and Rümeysa Öztürk, who have faced arrests, deportation threats, and visa revocations for their courageous protests.

Backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, Trump embodies the oligarchic rule driving staggering inequality and imperialist aggression. Trump’s policies reflect the global shift of capitalist governments toward authoritarianism in the service of oligarchy— from Germany’s AfD to Italy’s Meloni and Argentina’s Milei. The ruling class worldwide is responding to the economic crisis and social opposition with militarism and repression.

These developments underscore the urgent need for a unified international movement of the working class, which is increasingly mobilizing against war, inequality, and repression. This year’s May Day rally will present a socialist program to unify workers internationally in the struggle against capitalism. It will outline a revolutionary perspective to end imperialist violence and build a society based on equality and human need.

1. The Wall Street Journal, an authoritative voice of the capitalist class, reports that the 19 richest households in America increased their wealth by $1 trillion in the year 2024

 As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the second election of Trump represented “the violent realignment of the American political superstructure to correspond with the real social relations that exist in the United States.” Trump, himself a billionaire, heads a government of, by and for the financial oligarchy, with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, overseeing measures to slash $1 trillion by firing federal workers and cutting the social benefits provided by the federal government.

It would make far more sense, from the standpoint of the working class, to oppose the Trump-Musk cuts with demands to seize the $1 trillion in additional wealth accumulated by just 19 super-billionaires in 2024 alone. More fundamentally, the entire wealth of the capitalist class, the trillions produced by the labor of the working class, should be expropriated to provide the basis for the socialist reorganization of economic life under a workers’ government.

 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

In recent weeks, the World Socialist Web Site has published several important commentaries on the American Revolution and the Civil War. These have been occasioned by anniversaries, but there is a more fundamental significance. Workers in the United States must learn the lessons of history. The first American Revolution of 1775-83 proclaimed the equality of man. The Civil War, the second American Revolution, acted on that principle by putting an end to slavery. This meant, in practice, depriving the slaveowners of their property, that is, their revolutionary expropriation.

There can be no solution to the great social problems of the contemporary United States without the expropriation of the billionaires.

2. More than 55,000 Los Angeles County workers, including healthcare professionals, social workers, public works personnel, clerical staff, park employees and countless other essential workers, are set to walk off the job on the evening of Monday, April 28

 The workers’ grievances include the county’s refusal to grant wage increases that match the soaring cost of living; chronic understaffing and overwork; rampant outsourcing to private contractors that extract handsome corporate profits at the expense of workers; unsafe working conditions, especially during the pandemic; and the complete disregard for their role as frontline staff who risked and, in some cases, lost their lives to COVID-19.

3. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis (1936-2025)

The media’s canonization of Bergoglio as the “Father of the poor,” “Man of the people,” and the “Progressive Pope” aims to place a last coat of “democratic” and “modern” varnish on the Catholic Church as it grants its blessing to the ruling elites’ global turn to fascist and dictatorial forms of rule. 

Speaking at the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday, the American would-be Führer called Bergoglio “a good man.” In a clear affront against the separation of church and state, Trump said, “We’re bringing religion back in America” as he ordered US and state flags flown at half-mast across the country.

4. By calling for closer trade relations with mainland China, whose “national interests” and “division of labor” do Taiwan’s social democrats and Stalinists embody?

 There can be no reformist or national solution to a deepening breakdown of the global capitalist system, of which the US-China rivalry is a malignant expression.

5. The boundless potential of a recent astronomical discovery contrasts sharply with the backwardness and reaction promoted by US President Donald Trump and the entire American oligarchy

6. Having cleared the way by denying a Texas prisoner's request for a stay of execution, Moises Sandoval Mendoza is put to death with a lethal injection

Death row in America is overwhelmingly populated by the poor, the mentally incompetent, and those of African American, Latino or immigrant backgrounds. As is the case with so many of the individuals sentenced to death in the US, there was no consideration given to Mendoza’s mental state, or any investigation of what in his background may have driven him to commit [his] brutal crime.

7. Harvard University sues the US Trump administration and demands an injunction against the government’s cutoff of over $3 billion in grants that are vital to its ongoing research and educational work

 The Harvard lawsuit highlights an emerging conflict between major US universities and the fascist agenda of the Trump administration. The attack on Harvard is part of an across-the-board attack on universities which the White House has accused of being overrun by “radical Left and Marxist maniacs.”

8. Because of a lack of corporate transparency— combined with silence from OSHA, Stellantis and the UAW— autoworkers are calling for an independent rank-and-file investigation into the death of 63-year-old Ronnie Adams at Stellantis Dundee Engine Plant on April 7 in Michigan

9. Taylor Hernan, a Socialist Equality Party standing as a congressional candidate in Victoria, Australia's state election on May 3, warns that the climate catastrophe is one of the “existential issues posed by the crisis of capitalism,” alongside the twin dangers of war and fascism

10. Socialist Equality Party candidate in Australia's May 3 federal elections, Mike Head, describes his party's socialist agenda on Queer Radio, a Brisbane community broadcast

11. In front of horrified Easter shoppers, police officers shoot a homeless man dead in the a Melbourne, Australia suburb

12. Washington launches the largest and most openly aggressive set of joint military exercises ever staged with the Philippines

 Termed Balikatan, or shoulder-to-shoulder, the exercises are the 40th iteration of the annual war games. Balikatan exercises used to involve domestic operations, largely targeting the Muslim population of the southern island of Mindanao. They were, in a sense, colonial affairs. Over the past decade, this character has utterly changed. Discreetly at first, now openly and explicitly, Balikatan has turned into joint preparations for war with China.

13. Over 100,000 people have been deported and more than 113,000 have been arrested as part of Trump's mass deportation drive

Every day, scenes reminiscent of 1930s Nazi Germany or Cold War-era US-backed Latin American dictatorships are unfolding across the United States. Immigrants, legal residents, tourists— even US citizens— are being arbitrarily detained and disappeared into a network of remote detention centers without due process.

14. Meeting with US lawmakers at US President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, the Israeli national security minister pledges to bomb food and aid distribution centers in Gaza

In a statement published April 17, a group of humanitarian organizations including Oxfam and Save the Children published a statement warning that the “humanitarian aid system in Gaza is facing total collapse.”

The statement declared that “This is one of the worst humanitarian failures of our generation. Every single person in Gaza is relying on humanitarian aid to survive. That lifeline has been completely cut off since a blockade on all aid supplies was imposed by Israeli authorities on 2 March.”

15. In a major escalation of state repression against anti-war and pro-Palestinian activists, US Federal Bureau of Investigation agents joined state and local police in gestapo-like raids on the homes of University of Michigan pro-Palestinian activists

16. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality at the University of Michigan issue a statement denouncing the firing of Zainab Hakim, a program manager in the Center for South Asian Studies, and four student workers

17. One of goals of Germany's coalition government is to pursue the militarization of the country's universities

18. World Socialist Web Site reporters distribute leaflets and listen to Birmingham, UK garbage collectors describe their determined strike, now in its seventh week

19. Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa

• Canary Islands:
  

Tourism workers strike and demonstrate for more pay

• Finland:

Government employees strike for pay increase

• United Kingdom:
  

Scottish Water workers strike over pays

UK civil servants strike over office closures

Train drivers at Hull Trains strike over colleague's dismissal  

• Iran:
  

Protests by workers and retirees continue

• Nigeria:

Striking teachers and council workers protest

Meteorological workers begin indefinite strike

• South Africa:

  Strike ballot at Transnet ports and freight company over pay 

20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

 

Bogdan Syrotiuk

 Internationally, major artistic figures such as Roger Waters and Ai Wei Wei as well as historians such as Mario Kessler and Christian Gerlach have supported the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk. Many political tendencies have also condemned his imprisonment and called for his release, despite their political differences with the Trotskyist movement. These include Jill Stein from the Greens in the United States, and several groups and websites in Russia and Turkey. Most recently, the website of the Socialist Laborer Party in Turkey, and that of the Partisan Defense Committee, which is affiliated with the Spartacist tendency, have issued statements in support of Bogdan.

21. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

22. Please Join an International Online May Day Rally!

On Saturday, May 3, the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site will hold an annual International Online May Day Rally, uniting workers from across the globe in the fight against fascism, dictatorship, and war.

The return of Donald Trump to office marks a turning point in the global crisis of capitalism. His administration has rapidly advanced a fascistic agenda, dismantling democratic rights, escalating attacks on immigrants, launching a trade war, and preparing for military conflicts throughout the world. A chilling crackdown on student activists for opposing the genocide in Gaza has seen hundreds targeted, including Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal, and Rümeysa Öztürk, who have faced arrests, deportation threats, and visa revocations for their courageous protests.

Backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, Trump embodies the oligarchic rule driving staggering inequality and imperialist aggression. Trump’s policies reflect the global shift of capitalist governments toward authoritarianism in the service of oligarchy— from Germany’s AfD to Italy’s Meloni and Argentina’s Milei. The ruling class worldwide is responding to the economic crisis and social opposition with militarism and repression.

These developments underscore the urgent need for a unified international movement of the working class, which is increasingly mobilizing against war, inequality, and repression. This year’s May Day rally will present a socialist program to unify workers internationally in the struggle against capitalism. It will outline a revolutionary perspective to end imperialist violence and build a society based on equality and human need.