Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
June 14, 2025 is a nodal point in the development of the political crisis in the United States, the greatest since the Civil War of 1861-1865. While millions protested against the right-wing policies and dictatorial methods of the Trump administration, in more than 2,000 locations and in every one of the 50 states, the US president brought tanks and thousands of troops to the US capital in a show of force directed against this outpouring of popular opposition.
The size and scale of the protests against Trump rank them among the largest, if not the largest, single-day protests in American history. Estimates of total participation range from 5 to 11 million. The higher figure would represent approximately 4 percent of the entire adult population of the United States.
The size of the protest is all the more significant in that they were not endorsed or promoted by any of the official institutions of American politics and were largely ignored or boycotted by the trade union apparatus.
*****
The size of the demonstrations was a cause for extreme nervousness within the Democratic Party and political establishment. There is a virtual blackout in the media. While publishing an initial article on the front page of its print edition, the New York Times removed any reference to the demonstrations from the front page of its website less than 24 hours after they occurred, setting the tone for the media as a whole.
*****
In the face of the mass outpouring, Trump’s military parade held the same day in Washington D.C. was a dismal flop. Despite the mobilization of 6,000 soldiers, hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters, along with lavish funding from the arms industry and corporate giants, the event failed to intimidate the American people.
The small turnout, estimated at less than 20,000, and palpable lack of enthusiasm underscored Trump’s isolation and the widespread revulsion he provokes among the vast majority of the population.
*****
Millions of people made important political experiences on June 14. The demonstrations were an objective answer to the claims, peddled by the Democratic Party, the corporate media and the unions, that Trump is all-powerful, widely popular and impossible to resist, let alone defeat. While the media has quickly dropped any reporting or analysis of the rallies, working people and young people, and all those genuinely committed to the defense of democratic rights, should reflect on the lessons of this day.
*****
The scale of Trump’s conspiracy is far beyond what was attempted by Nixon a half century ago, but no Democrat has demanded his removal from office. That demand arises inexorably out of the mass resistance to the fascist policies of this administration. The working class must take the lead of this mass movement, advancing the demand for a general strike to force out the Trump-Vance government and building an independent political movement to replace it, based on a socialist program.
The Socialist Equality Party held a meeting, titled, “Trump’s Coup and How to Stop It,” elaborating a perspective to oppose the drive to dictatorship. In summing up the lessons of the mass mobilization the day before, David North, national chairman of the SEP, declared: “What we are witnessing is the breakdown of a social order that is incompatible with the development of the productive forces on a global scale. We are in a revolutionary period. But social consciousness lags behind social being. We fight to align the social consciousness of the working class with the social reality they confront.”
Taking note of the incessant attempts of the corporate media to gloss over the significance of Trump’s policies, North concluded, “Fascism is being normalized. Our task is to normalize the struggle for socialism.”
3. Israel attacks civilian infrastructure in Iran as Netanyahu calls for regime change
The Trump administration was clearly intimately involved in Israel’s aggression, including its act of perfidy of promoting nuclear talks as the cover for the first round of attacks. Now, there are increasing calls within the US political establishment for the US military to directly join in the bombing of Iran.
In an editorial published Sunday, June 15, the Wall Street Journal called for direct US bombing of Iran, declaring, “Central to an Israeli strategic victory will be whether it can destroy Iran’s main nuclear-weapons sites, and that effort deserves American help.”
4. Egypt tries to sabotage Global March to Gaza
Egypt’s naked hostility towards the aid convoy confirms that the Arab masses are on a collision course with their leaders. It is the el-Sisi regime that is acting as Israel’s Gaza border guard, but the genocide of the Palestinians proceeds under the protection against popular outrage offered to Israel by all the Arab states.
*****
The actions of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi—whom US President Donald Trump once described as “his favorite dictator”—are of a piece with Egypt’s longstanding role, since the 1979 Camp David Accords, as a direct accomplice in Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians. In return for its role as border guard and regional policeman, Egypt receives the second largest US military aid in the world after Israel.
5. Two dead as far-right shooter targets Democrats in Minnesota
Democratic leaders have refused to assign responsibility for the murderous rampage to Trump or the White House. Their statements have focused on unity and the need to condemn political violence regardless of who is targeted and who is responsible for it. The Democrats shrink from addressing the role of incitement by Trump and his fascist supporters.
The Minnesota shootings took place amidst the rising use of violence, including the mass raids by immigration police and repression against critics of the Trump administration. In an overt attempt to silence opposition to Trump’s fascist agenda, on Thursday, Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) was attacked by the security team of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a press conference in Los Angeles.
6. Liberal government to force Canada Post workers to vote on company’s “best and final” offer
If the Liberal government can intervene yet again so brazenly on the side of the employer, and with the confidence that there will be no effective worker response, it is above all due to the sabotage of the postal workers’ struggle by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) leadership. Working in close concert with the Canadian Labour Congress, the CUPW bureaucracy has contrived to demobilize and isolate the 55,000 Canada Post workers at every stage of their 18-month-long contract battle.
The New South Wales Labor government’s latest miserly pay offer will be put to a formal vote early next month, despite token objections from one of the unions involved in negotiating the Sydney Trains and NSW Trains enterprise agreement.
*****
Rail workers should reject this sell-out union-management proposal! This means taking matters into their own hands. Rank-and-file committees need urgently to be built in every depot and workplace to lead this struggle. These committees must be democratically run by workers, not bureaucrats, and politically and organizationally independent from the unions and Labor.
8. The Eternaut: A Netflix miniseries inspired by the fight against Argentina’s dictatorships
The relationship between The Eternaut and politics is profound, both because of the content of the work and because of its author's biography. Oesterheld went from being an adventure writer to a committed left-wing intellectual before being assassinated by the last Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983) along with his four daughters. This background manifests itself in his most famous work and its interpretation in the miniseries.
The censorship of anti-war events organized by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at Humboldt University in Berlin has, for now, been defeated. A week ago, the university administration banned three events planned by our student group. Thanks to a strong campaign on campus, we were able to push back this sweeping attack on the democratic rights of students. On Thursday, the university leadership was forced to approve the scheduled events and provide rooms.
10. Two Palestinian humanitarian activists denied entry into the US and deported back to the West Bank
Hthaleen is an educator and Alhadlin is an artist. They come from Masafer Yatta, a collection of 19 villages located in the southernmost part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Masafer Yatta has been under illegal Israeli occupation since the end of Israel’s Six-Day War in June 1967. It has been designated an active military “firing zone,” giving Israel full military and civil control over the area ever since.
The village was featured in the critically acclaimed 2024 documentary No Other Land.
*****
The prevention of two valid visa holders from visiting and speaking to workers in the US is a continuation of efforts by the US ruling class to sabotage and disrupt anti-war organizations.
The deportation of Hthaleen and Alhadlin has provoked protests from the local population. Dozens of workers have shown up at SFO to assert Hthaleen and Alhadlin’s right to inform US workers of the war crimes committed against them in their home country and the effects they have had on their community’s children.
11. Loyalist anti-migrant pogrom in Northern Ireland
Five nights of anti-migrant protests, riots and attacks on property has left the streets of several Northern Ireland towns littered with debris and burnt out cars. At its height, following protests involving hundreds of far-right thugs, migrant houses were set on fire and a leisure center, in which migrants where thought to be sheltering, petrol bombed.
The riots followed an alleged sex attack on a teenage girl in the town of Ballymena on Saturday, June 7. Two Romanian teenagers have been arrested and have denied charges of attempted rape in Coleraine Magistrates’ Court.
12. The Ronald Adams investigation and the fraud of UAW-management joint safety oversight
The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees has initiated an independent, rank-and-file investigation into the April 7 death of Dundee Engine skilled trades worker Ronald Adams Sr. to uncover the truth about the conditions that led to this tragedy.
This investigation is completely independent from corporate management and the United Auto Workers apparatus, which is joined at the hip to Stellantis through a myriad of labor-management committees, including the National Joint Committee on Health and Safety.
As the World Socialist Web Site previously noted, in a perfunctory statement on Adams’ death posted for Workers Memorial Day on April 28, UAW officials said, “the incident is currently under investigation by the UAW-Stellantis Health and Safety Department with assistance from the International Union, UAW Health and Safety Department, and the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA).”
As this statement shows, there is not a millimeter of daylight between the UAW apparatus, Stellantis and the toothless and grossly underfunded state safety agency, MIOSHA. Long ago, the UAW traded in even a nominal role as an independent safety watchdog for a cushy seat at the table with corporate management.
13. Trade unions betray Cantabria metalworkers
Spain’s main trade union federations have betrayed the 22,000 metalworkers in Cantabria by forcing through a sellout deal aimed at preventing a unified national struggle of metalworkers and workers in other sectors, just as the class struggle deepens across the country.
*****
Everywhere, workers are fighting to claw back the wages lost over years of austerity and betrayals. The excuses used by the ruling class and the union bureaucracy—first the pandemic, then war—have worn thin.
Grocery workers across the US are under contracts which have expired or are set to expire:
Around 30,000 Kroger and Albertsons workers in Seattle authorized strike action earlier this month.
In Indiana, Kroger workers overwhelmingly rejected a new contract last week; three years ago, workers voted down repeated UFCW sellouts and formed a rank-and-file committee to fight the sabotage by union officials.
45,000 grocery workers in Southern California are preparing for strike action against grocery chains owned by Albertsons and Kroger.
And thousands of grocery workers in New Mexico, whose contracts expired June 14, are also prepared to vote for strike action.
All of these workers are members of the UFCW, but the union bureaucracy is doing everything it can to keep these struggles isolated from each other.
15. New Zealand Rich List exceeds $100 billion amid cost-of-living crisis
Commenting on the rapid increase in the concentration of wealth, Bryce Edwards, director of the Integrity Institute, noted: “We are witnessing inequality grow towards heights approaching those of the early 20th century.” He described it as “a roadmap of oligarchic power in New Zealand, complete with policy wish lists, political connections, and breathtaking displays of luxury that would make a Gilded Age robber baron blush.”
New Zealand is already an extremely unequal society. According to Statistics NZ’s Household Economic Survey in 2021, the richest 5 percent of individuals owned 43.1 percent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50 percent held just 2.1 percent.
16. Prize-winning Australian author Michelle de Krester condemns Israel’s war crimes
De Kretser’s comments were made after she was awarded this year’s Stella Prize for Theory & Practice, her seventh novel. The $60,000 prize for women writers was named after pioneering Australian author Miles Franklin (1879–1954), whose full name was Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin.
*****
De Kretser urged Sydney Writers’ Festival attendees to “fight the lie that equates our peaceful opposition to genocide with sympathy for terrorism. Help us fight the lie that equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Help us fight the lie that Palestinian lives don’t matter. Help us fight the undermining of democracy…
“We have two weapons that the powerful dread: words and the truth. That’s why truthful speech is being closed down, and why it’s essential to resist silence.”
Not surprisingly, de Kretser’s comments challenging the atmosphere of repression were, with a couple of exceptions, ignored by the establishment media.
25 years ago:
58 Chinese migrants found dead in the United Kingdom
50 years ago:
Organized crime boss and key witness to CIA crimes assassinated
75 years ago:
David Greenglass, key witness in Rosenberg frame-up, arrested by FBI
100 years ago:
First Vietnamese Communist organization founded
20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
