Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. July 4, 2025: Trump, the oligarchy and the American counter-revolution
July 4, 2025 marks 249 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which asserted the right of the people “to alter or to abolish” any government that becomes “destructive” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Independence Day is celebrated with parades, barbecues, picnics and fireworks. All that is well and good. It is necessary, however, to put aside some time for serious thinking about the fate of the American Revolution and the state of the country. As the United States begins the 250th year of its existence, it is in the throes of a political, social, intellectual and cultural counterrevolution. All the great democratic principles that were proclaimed in Jefferson’s immortal document and which inspired not only the struggle against the British monarchy, but also the Second American Revolution of 1861-65 that abolished slavery, are under violent attack.
2. House passes Trump bill, which robs working people to give tax cuts for the super-rich
The bill cuts taxes for the wealthy by $3 trillion, slashes more than $1 trillion from social spending on Medicaid and food stamps and pours $300 billion more into military violence abroad and domestic repression, particularly against immigrants.
3. Sri Lanka’s Tamil parties back US-Israel war against Iran
Tamil oppressed workers and the poor in Sri Lanka have faced discrimination and violence by Colombo regimes for decades, which continues under the current Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power government. Just as the Tamil elites contemptuously treat the oppressed masses in Iran and Palestinians in Gaza, so they regard the Tamil masses with the same contempt.
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Workers, youth, and students must reject both Tamil and Sinhala capitalist parties' cynical, bankrupt and pro-imperialist positions and should take a bold stand against the imperialist criminal war drive.
The working class in Sri Lanka—Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim—stand in the same trench as their class brothers in Iran, Gaza, throughout the Middle East, including Israel, and internationally, including in the US. What is unfolding in Europe, in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific is a global conflict between nuclear-armed powers that threatens humanity with catastrophe.
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The SEP and the IYSSE have organised public meetings on the theme: Oppose US-Israel war on Iran!
4. Philadelphia transit board votes to enact “doomsday budget,” to “dismantle” transit system
Chicago’s transportation system is also facing devastating cuts of around 40 percent. Democrats have controlled the city and state for years, and despite numerous warnings about the current budget crisis, they have done nothing to prevent it. Instead, they are now bracing the public to “do more with less,” as stated by Democratic Mayor and former teachers’ union organizer Brandon Johnson.
In New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is currently facing a $1.5 billion operating budget gap, with as much as a $35 billion dollar shortfall for its four-year capital plan. It is currently seeking $14 billion in emergency federal dollars to assist it.
5. Philadelphia city workers defiant as strike continues though third day
In a sign the strike is gaining public support, rapper LL Cool J announced yesterday that he would not perform as scheduled at the city’s “Welcome America” July 4 festival if it meant crossing picket lines.
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Among workers there is a defiant response to the strikebreaking efforts of the city government. Numerous reports suggest strikers are either ignoring or skirting around the injunction limiting pickets to eight people. In several instances earlier this week, eight picketers were backed by anywhere from 10 to 40 or more strikers present but standing or sitting behind them.
6. Stateless Palestinian Ward Sakeik released after five months in ICE custody
Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old stateless Palestinian newlywed, was released late Tuesday from the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas after enduring nearly five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
While her release marks an important victory for immigrant rights, it is a warning that the lawless and punitive policies of the Trump administration continue to target thousands with no criminal record, in open defiance of basic legal protections and constitutional rights.
7. Los Angeles declares fiscal emergency, prepares mass layoffs amid $1 billion deficit
What is unfolding in Los Angeles is part of a nationwide wave of fiscal crises in major cities. In Philadelphia, 9,000 municipal workers are on strike in a city where the school district has a $300 million deficit, and the transit system is preparing “doomsday” cuts. The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority is billions of dollars in the red. Chicago is preparing similar “doomsday” transit cuts in addition to education cuts.
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Los Angeles is home to 56 billionaires with a combined net worth of over $240 billion. Yet city officials, both Democrat and DSA-aligned, insist that there is “no alternative” but to slash jobs and services. Their real concern is maintaining the city’s credit rating and securing the confidence of the financial markets.
8. Over 600 Palestinians killed at US-Israeli “aid centers” in Gaza
At least 600 Palestinians have been killed over the past five weeks at food distributions operated by the US and Israeli-backed “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), Gaza’s government media office said this week.
The killings took place in over 20 separate massacres, which have become an almost daily occurrence as a critical component of the ongoing Gaza genocide.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the Associated Press and BBC published reports, based on firsthand interviews, that American private military contractors working for the GHF opened fire on Palestinian civilians, contradicting claims by the GHF, the US, and Israel that the contractors had not taken part in the mass killings.
The reports by the Associated Press and BBC present a picture of the aid distributions as a type of dehumanizing target practice, in which the “humanitarian” employees laugh at killing civilians and egg each other on to commit violence.
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Last week, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an investigation featuring interviews with Israeli troops, who said they were repeatedly ordered to open fire on unarmed crowds of aid seekers in an operation whose name apparently references the homicidal “red light, green light” game in the fictional Squid Games television series.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Dr. Mads Gilbert, an emergency medicine doctor who has practiced in Gaza for decades, said that the operation of the GHF “is part of the [Israeli military forces] and the Israeli government plan to ethnically cleanse and to fulfill their goal of genocide in Gaza.”
9. Dana Fort Wayne autoworker reports on brutal conditions at his workplace
“The company pushes back on safety rules. They wiggle out of the rules and, like with anything else, the company says, ‘what are you going to do?’ During the contract the union let the company always talk first. They’re like puppets of the company. There’s just one guy that tries to help us, but the company and the United Steel Workers go against him. We had almost 30 people go to the plant manager to get him to write up a superintendent, Don Radar, that harasses everyone. Of course nothing happened. Don targets people and is racist towards some others. Anyone who doesn’t agree with him has a target on their back."
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The worker went on to connect the conditions inside the plant with the broader attacks on the working class. “There are cuts to OSHA and then EPA cuts. I knew it was over when those things were cut. It’s another Erin Brockovich situation. Social Security cuts are not fair, you live your whole life working, then no retirement. He cuts all this and gives the family of one of those who stormed the capital $5 million. We have to overthrow Trump. The cost of the war is coming out of our pockets, when we didn’t vote on it. Just like when we opposed the contract here by 11 votes, they rammed it through anyway.
Describing the vote on the sellout contract he said, “When the majority voted against it, the reps Greg and Antonio told us it was only 11 votes. We put years of blood into this place while the union left us out to dry, then give us the BS about ‘brothers and sisters.’ Don’t get in our faces when you don’t take care of your workers. We all remember when that man had a heart attack, no moment of silence, nothing. Most people didn’t know about it.”
10. New Zealand PM affirms support for NATO military escalation
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attended the NATO summit at The Hague on June 24-25 during an overseas trip that included a stopover in Beijing to meet with Chinese President XI Jinping.
Luxon was at the summit as part of NATO’s Indo-Pacific 4 (IP4) grouping which consists of Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia. The four non-member countries have since 2021 been regular invitees as NATO forges closer ties with its so-called “partner” countries in the Indo-Pacific to prepare for war with China.
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New Zealand, a minor imperialist power, relies on Washington’s backing for its own neo-colonial operations in the Pacific. Successive NZ governments have supported US-led wars over the past 30 years, including the criminal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and endorsed the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. Luxon has not criticized, let alone condemned, the Trump administration’s criminal bombing of Iran.
11. German government expands arms cooperation with Ukraine
While the US government is scaling back its military aid to Ukraine, and even halting previously promised arms shipments, the German government is intensifying its military cooperation with Kiev.
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The fact is, with the partial withdrawal of the United States, Germany has become Ukraine’s most important trading and military partner. At the same time, the war-ravaged country is increasingly being swallowed up by Germany. Its rich natural resources, strategic location, and above all, its cheap labour, are once again to benefit German capital. According to auditing firm KPMG, monthly personnel costs per worker in Ukraine amount to only €367 gross—compared to an average of €4,400 in Germany.
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The German government—comprised of the CDU/CSU and SPD under Chancellor Friedrich Merz—is pushing not only to supply German weapons systems to Ukraine, but increasingly to utilize low-cost Ukrainian production directly. This is the purpose of the deceitful propaganda portraying Ukraine as a “bastion of freedom” bravely resisting the authoritarian Russian aggressor. In Kiev, Wadephul declared: “The freedom and future of Ukraine is the most important task of our foreign and security policy.”
That the Zelensky regime has nothing to do with “freedom” is demonstrated by the fact that Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, has held 26-year-old socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk in prison for over 14 months, along with numerous other political prisoners. Accused of “high treason,” Syrotiuk’s only “crime” was to oppose the war and advocate unity between Ukrainian and Russian workers.
12. Canada’s Liberal government lashes out against the working class
Negotiations between Prime Minister Mark Carney, top aides in his Liberal government, and the White House on a new Canada-US “economic and security framework” resumed this week after US President Donald Trump abruptly canceled them last Friday.
In a brief social media post, Trump pulled the plug on the talks citing the impending entry into force of Ottawa’s new digital services tax. The Trump administration, like that of the Democrat Joe Biden before it, has vehemently opposed the tax, which would force Meta, Alphabet (Google), Amazon and other US-based tech giants to pay taxes on the enormous profits they generate in Canada from their online services.
Stung by Trump’s action, Canada quickly retreated. On Sunday evening, Carney announced the tax was being withdrawn. The White House gloated about Trump’s negotiating prowess in response, with his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, declaring Canada “caved.”
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In the United States of America, "homelessness is business."In opposition to the corporatist alliance of the unions, government, and big business for austerity and war, the Socialist Equality Party has stood alone in advancing a fighting program for the working class to oppose Trump and all sections of the Canadian ruling class on the basis of a socialist-internationalist program. As the SEP declared in its election statement in April,
Trump is a menace to the workers of Canada and the world. But workers can’t fight him and all he represents—oligarchy, dictatorship and imperialist war—by lining up with the Canadian bourgeoisie, any of its rival factions or political representatives.
Rather, they must assert their independent class interests by forging a movement for workers’ power and fighting to fuse their struggles with the mass opposition to Trump now emerging within the American working class. Canadian workers must assist their American colleagues in breaking free of the Democratic Party, which no less than Trump’s fascist Republicans is a party of Wall Street and the CIA, and its trade union allies.
The cross-border movement must spearhead the struggle for a united socialist North America.
14. Under extreme heat, Turkey continues to struggle with wildfires
Since June, the whole of Europe, including Turkey, has been hit by scorching temperatures. Spain, Britain and Portugal, among many other countries, have experienced record-high average and daily temperatures.
The extreme heat has disrupted daily life and caused deaths, and has also caused wildfires in many countries. In Turkey, many fires are still not fully under control and further fire risks are present.
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Although high temperatures and strong winds directly impact the initiation and spread of fires, these annual disasters are not primarily the result of natural phenomena.
Wildfires are a direct product of climate change, aggravated by a capitalist system in which profit comes before human life, and the social costs are becoming increasingly severe with each passing year. Disasters such as fires, floods, droughts and storms are increasing in both frequency and devastating effect. Governments around the world have largely abandoned the fight against global warming and the climate crisis.
This is accompanied by increasing cuts to social funding for disaster response. Forestry workers, firefighters, rescue workers and volunteers are putting their health and lives at risk by fighting the flames. However, inadequate staffing and infrastructure, resulting from decades of underfunding and cuts, are hindering an effective and rapid response to the fires.
15. Job cuts spread and deepen at Australian universities
16. Seven missing and feared dead after massive explosions at California fireworks warehouse
Seven workers are missing after a fire triggered a series of massive explosions at a fireworks warehouse Tuesday evening in the northern California town of Esparto, in a largely rural area about 30 miles northwest of Sacramento. In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, authorities said the scene remained too dangerous for firefighters and emergency workers to extinguish ongoing fires and search for the missing workers.
17. Trump-Kennedy attacks on vaccines and public health will kill millions globally
In an extraordinary breach of scientific protocol, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) chief vaccine official appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has personally overruled the recommendations of approximately 30 FDA scientists in order to restrict access to COVID-19 vaccines. Internal documents released this week reveal that FDA staff had concluded the benefits of both Moderna’s mRNA and Novavax’s protein-based vaccines outweighed the risks for all Americans 12 and older, following analysis of extensive clinical trials.
Instead of following established scientific procedures, Prasad issued “override memos” limiting these vaccines to Americans 65 and older and those with underlying health conditions. He justified this with the lie that “even rare vaccination related harms both known and unknown now have higher chance of outweighing potential benefits.” These claims directly contradict the scientific evidence reviewed by his own staff, including CDC data which show that COVID-19 continues to cause 32,000 to 51,000 official deaths annually in the US alone.
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The Trump administration’s assault on science extends far beyond US borders, threatening to unleash a global health catastrophe that is set to kill millions in the coming years. Three simultaneous withdrawals—from the World Health Organization, USAID and the Gavi vaccine alliance—represent a coordinated abandonment of America’s role in global health initiatives which will have devastating consequences for the world’s most vulnerable populations.
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While USAID has delivered vital aid and saved millions of lives, it has always functioned as an instrument of US imperialism—using “soft power” to secure American dominance, suppress popular movements and impose pro-corporate policies worldwide. The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID does not represent a break with this legacy but rather the lifting of any pretense of humanitarianism, with catastrophic consequences for the world’s poorest as famine and disease spread unchecked.
The Trump administration’s 83 percent cut to USAID programs threatens to reverse two decades of public health progress in low- and middle-income countries. The Lancet study projects that if current cuts continue through 2030, over 14 million additional deaths will occur, including 4.5 million children under five—equivalent to 700,000 excess child deaths annually. As the study’s authors noted, “For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be similar in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict.”
Cardiff’s cuts were announced on June 18, just days after a High Court Injunction targeting protest against the Gaza genocide on university property. The injunction means that students and staff must seek permission for any protest, occupation or other form of assembly, including literature stalls, or risk a two-year prison sentence.
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Over 5,000 job cuts across UK universities have already been announced this year, with thousands more in the pipeline, according to figures from the University and College Union (UCU). But the UCU is isolating struggles on a campus-by-campus basis, allowing major cuts to proceed, while citing agreements negotiated over no forced redundancies to call off action.
19. Workers Struggles in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa
Airline workers in fresh strike for pay increases
Pharmacists work-to-rule in protest at government reduction in subsidized medicine
Taxi drivers protest extortionate commission charges by Uber and Bolt platforms
Paint workers in Izmir strike for pay increase to meet rising cost of living
Walkouts by steel workers in Lisburn, Northern Ireland over pay
Phlebotomists at Gloucestershire hospitals to hold rally to mark hundredth day of strikes over pay
Academic staff at Bradford University, England walk out over job cuts
Teachers at UK school trust take further action over plans to extend teaching day
West Bank general strike in protest at settler killings
Teachers and council workers in Federal Capital Territory continue pay stoppage
KwaDukuza Municipality workers in strike over pay and conditions
Women farm workers in protest march in KwaDukuza Municipality to demand emergency housing
Zimbabwe:
University of Zimbabwe fires four union leaders as strike continues
20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
