1. Trump’s Fort Bragg rant: A declaration of war on the American people
The instrument of violent repression used by American imperialism all over the world will now be used at home, Trump declared: “Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness here at home, like is happening in California.”
For the fifth consecutive day, significant protests were held in several cities across the United States in opposition to President Donald Trump’s ongoing fascist mass deportation operation and Republican efforts to establish a presidential dictatorship. In many cases, demonstrations that began with only a few dozen people in the afternoon quickly swelled to hundreds, or even thousands as workers got off the job.
3. Seven Days in May (1964): When American filmmaking envisioned a military coup
4. Ukraine war escalates, as Russia warns of nuclear war should peace talks fail
The escalation of the fighting, sought by NATO, risks instigating nuclear war. The European powers are vehemently opposed to any America-led peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, which threatens to shatter the Euro-Atlantic alliance and is likely to be made at their expense.
At the same time, the Trump administration is in no way encumbered by the president’s promises to end the war “within 24 hours” of taking office. It has its own calculations as to what is profitable for US imperialism and what concessions, if any, it is willing to make on the Russian front in order that it may concentrate on the Chinese one. Despite overtures to Moscow, the White House may retreat from efforts to settle the conflict.
5. Mass protests across Europe after Israeli forces seize Freedom Flotilla boat with aid for Gaza
In the early hours of Monday morning, Israeli quadcopter drones and warships surrounded the UK-flagged Madleen, shooting it with white paint, and illegally boarded it in international waters, seizing everyone aboard and its cargo. Those kidnapped and taken to Israel included Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and France Unbowed (LFI) legislator Rima Hassan.
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The assault on the Madleen exposes not only the barbarism of the Zionist regime, but the ongoing collusion of the imperialist powers with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Last month the French, British and Canadian governments issued an empty condemnation of the escalating drive to ethnically cleanse Gaza using starvation as a weapon of war. But aside from such rhetoric, nothing has changed.
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As mass outrage mounts across Europe, protests were held internationally after the Israeli seizure of the Madleen. In Switzerland, protesters marched in Geneva and Lausanne, occupying train stations and blocking traffic by standing on railroad tracks. There were protests in Britain and in Spain, whose government—though it has shipped millions of euros in arms to Israel during the genocide—called in the Israeli chargé d’affaires to the Spanish Foreign Ministry and cynically delivered a formal letter of protest.
In France, where Marseille dock workers refused to load a shipment of arms bound for Israel shortly before Israel seized the Madleen, LFI organized protests in several dozen cities that won mass support in Paris, calling for the release of the Madleen’s crew and appealing to Macron to take action.
Emergency protests took place across the UK Monday night against Israel’s interception of the Madleen aid ship bound for Gaza, and the kidnap of its crew. The largest demonstration, in London, mobilized roughly 1,500 people.
Rapper Doechii, vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, singer-songwriter Finneas O'Connell, actress Hilary Duff, singer and actress Reneé Rapp, actress Florence Pugh, model and television personality Chrissy Teigen, actress Eva Longoria, singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams, and others publicly denounce the US Trump administrations' ICE raids.
Slandering the Socialist Equality Group (the Turkish affiliate of the Socialist Equality Party) and the mass movement of the working class and youth in Turkey, the bourgeois-aligned Workers Cause Party in Brazil openly advocates a dictatorship by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
9. Despised ex-Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison awarded highest official honor
Morrison was prime minister for three and a half years from 2018 to 2022, before his increasingly discredited government was thrown out of office at the May 2022 election. Above all, Morrison has been honored for deepening the integration of successive Australian governments into the war plans of US imperialism, while assaulting the conditions of workers and welfare recipients, and laying the foundations for the current Labor government to intensify the agenda of the ruling class.
10. Devastating hospital fire in Hamburg, Germany raises issues of safety and staffing
On Sunday night, June 1, a devastating fire broke out in the geriatric ward of the Marienkrankenhaus hospital in Hamburg. A 72-year-old woman and three male patients, aged 84, 85 and 87, died; 55 other patients were injured, some seriously.
Kennedy’s insistence that pharmaceutical involvement invalidates vaccine safety represents a calculated effort to erode public trust. His demand for randomized controlled trials for every vaccine—despite ethical constraints against withholding proven interventions—manufactures doubt under the guise of scientific rigor. Vaccine development and approval depend on a robust mix of evidence, including RCTs, observational studies and post-marketing surveillance.
The evidence supporting vaccination has always been and remains overwhelming. In the US alone, childhood vaccinations for those born between 1994 and 2023 prevented 1.1 million deaths, 32 million hospitalizations and over 500 million illnesses, saving nearly $3.7 trillion in societal costs. COVID-19 vaccines saved 20 million lives globally in 2021 and averted trillions in economic losses.
12. Australia: Electricity prices to rise by up to 10 percent
Household electricity prices are set to rise across most of Australia from July 1, in a further hit to working-class living standards, on top of years of real wage cuts and rising costs, especially for essential goods and services. In some areas, the increase will be more than 10 percent.
13. American Postal Workers Union announces sellout tentative agreement
The American Postal Workers Union announced a tentative agreement with the United States Postal Service last Friday. While the full contract language has not yet been released, even the self-serving highlights make clear that the deal paves the way for deeper attacks on wages, working conditions and the very existence of the public postal service.
On June 5, around 400 Birmingham bin workers returned an overwhelming vote to continue their strike in defense of jobs and in opposition to sweeping pay cuts by the Labour-run city council. But the strikers continue to be isolated by the Unite union under General Secretary Sharon Graham as the strike-breaking operation intensifies, backed by the Starmer Labour government.
René Lichtman in July 2024
On Sunday, June 8, a memorial was held for Holocaust survivor and pro-Palestine activist René Lichtman in Detroit, Michigan. Lichtman, 87, died from heart failure at a Detroit-area hospice care center on January 28.
The event at St. Matthews & St. Peters Episcopal Church brought together a cross-section of René’s comrades, friends and family, young and old, including those from Jewish and Arab backgrounds. Addressing different aspects of Lichtman’s history and political activity, the speakers highlighted how his childhood experiences in Nazi-occupied France produced a life-long hatred of fascism and imperialist war.
16. Cummins engine and parts workers in Wisconsin and Indiana vote down concessions contracts
Workers are continuing a three-month strike at the Cummins plant in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, after they rejected a second contract proposal brought back by the United Auto Workers by a vote of 46-34 on June 2.
The defiant stand follows the overwhelming defeat of a pro-company agreement by their fellow workers at the much larger Cummins plant in Columbus, Indiana on May 23. Cummins workers in Columbus—members of the Diesel Workers Union—voted by a massive 97 percent to reject their proposed contract.
17. Union calls off strike of 350 New Jersey nurses, attempts to impose contract
Having kept workers on the job without a contract for almost six weeks, the Health Professionals and Allied Employees union now seeks to rush its members into ratifying an agreement that they have not had time to study.
18. Framework deal to maintain US-China trade truce
If the US has been forced to make concessions to China in the London talks, it will not mean any lessening of its economic war against Beijing. Whatever tactical shifts it may be forced to make, the guiding strategy of suppressing China remains and the increasing failure of economic measures to achieve this goal, means military measures will be intensified.
19. No censorship of anti-war events! Defend freedom of expression at Berlin’s Humboldt University!
While the German government is massively rearming, reintroducing conscription and supporting genocide in Gaza, the Humboldt University administration is prohibiting students from protesting against it. It has banned the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, which is represented by five members in the student parliament, from holding anti-war events on campus.
Until now, university groups and student initiatives have been able to organize political events at the university without any problems. The IYSSE has held dozens of events against militarism and the threat of war over the past 10 years, often with hundreds of participants and always involving controversial discussions. Now, the university administration claims that students have no right to discuss general political issues at the university. Instead, they must limit themselves to “study and university policy issues.”
20. Texas Republicans strip immigrant college students of eligibility for in-state tuition
On Wednesday June 4, the Republican-led state government of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, in coordination with the federal government, ended the state policy of allowing undocumented immigrant college students to pay in-state residency tuition rates. The policy, based on legislation called the Texas Dream Act, had been in place since 2001.
21. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, 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.
