Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. California’s 2025–26 budget: A devastating assault on workers and immigrant families
On July 1, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a draconian $321 billion budget passed with strong Democratic support in the state legislature. The budget was presented as a pragmatic solution to a projected $12 billion deficit.
Despite public statements framing the budget as balanced and protective of vulnerable populations, a detailed examination reveals approximately $5 billion in targeted reductions. These reductions primarily affect Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, and disproportionately impact undocumented adults, older adults, people with disabilities and foster youth.
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California is home to nearly 200 billionaires and over 1,200 centimillionaires. In a state with the world’s fourth-largest economy, there is no objective reason for any budget cuts. The wealth exists, but it is hoarded at the top, and the entire political establishment is committed to protecting this vast inequality.
2. Texas flood disaster: A crime of capitalism
As the grim work of search and recovery continues, mounting evidence makes clear that this is not a “natural” disaster, but a crime of capitalism—a social order in which every aspect of life, including the most basic safety precautions, is subordinated to profit and the interests of a corporate-financial oligarchy.
At every level of government—county, state and federal—the interests of big business and the strategic concerns of American imperialism have blocked any effort to protect the population from deadly storms and floods.
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Next month will mark 20 years since Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf of Mexico, devastating the coasts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The storm breached the levees of New Orleans, flooding the iconic city and claiming the lives of more than 2,000 people.
At the time, the WSWS condemned the criminal indifference of the Republican administration of George W. Bush and the fecklessness of the Democrats, who constituted his nominal opposition and controlled both the city government in New Orleans and the state government in Louisiana. We wrote:
The decisive components of the present tragedy are social and political, not natural. The American ruling elite has for the past three decades been dismantling whatever forms of government regulation and social welfare had been instituted in the preceding period. The present catastrophe is the terrible product of this social and political retrogression.
The past two decades have been years of unrelenting counterrevolution. Under Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump again, the American ruling class has transferred staggering sums of wealth to the financial oligarchy. The net worth of US billionaires has ballooned from just over $1 trillion in 2005 to more than $6 trillion today. Over the same period, the US has spent more than $14 trillion on its military, building up a vast apparatus of violence and repression to wage war all over the world.
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Now this process has reached a culmination. The Trump administration is scrapping what remains of the social infrastructure and funneling every available resource into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. The tax and spending bill passed last week, slashing more than $1 trillion from health care, food assistance, and education to finance massive tax cuts for the rich, is only the latest example of a government at war with its own population.
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The Socialist Equality Party fights for the expropriation of the financial oligarchy and the transformation of the banks and major corporations into publicly owned utilities, democratically controlled by the working class. The drastic shift toward fascism in the ruling elite is a response to its growing fear of the mass radicalization of the working class. The task facing working people is to deepen their understanding of the social and historical roots of this crisis and to build the revolutionary leadership required to carry out the socialist transformation of society.
3. Ruto locks down Nairobi to stop Kenyan protests, police kill ten
Just 12 days after orchestrating a bloodbath that left 19 dead and over 400 injured across the country, President William Ruto again deployed armed police to brutally suppress protests. In Nairobi’s working-class districts and informal settlements, police opened fire with live ammunition, tear gas, and water cannon, killing 10 and wounding many others.
This year’s protests, driven largely by working-class youth, erupted across Kenya’s major cities and towns, including Nairobi, Nakuru, Nyeri, Embu, and Ongata Rongai, despite the government’s massive security deployment. In Nairobi, police blocked all roads leading to the Central Business District and erected at least 25 barricades across surrounding working-class towns. Central Nairobi was transformed into a ghost town. Schools and shopping malls were shuttered in anticipation of violent repression.
Kenya’s crisis is being closely watched by the global financial elite. The Economist, the mouthpiece of the “aristocracy of finance” as Marx described it, issued a warning titled, “William Ruto is taking Kenya to a dangerous place.” Ruto’s “authoritarian instincts are propelling a spiral of violence,” it wrote, lamenting that the “spiral of riot and repression is eroding civil liberties and may jeopardise economic reforms.” The magazine expressed concern that “Ruto’s inability to create a consensus could delay or derail much-needed economic reforms,” and called for him to step aside before the 2027 elections in favour of a less discredited figure capable of enforcing austerity.Kenya’s deepening crisis is not a product of one man or one government. It is the outcome of decades of capitalist rule by a corrupt bourgeois elite, subservient to imperialism and utterly hostile to the interests of the working masses. The brutal crackdown ordered by Ruto, the complicity of figures like [Raila] Odinga, and the mounting repression point to one conclusion: the capitalist class has no progressive role to play in Kenyan society.
Twenty-nine people have been arrested in the UK on suspicion of terror offenses for holding up signs with the words “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
These are the first victims of an order—rushed through parliament in less than two weeks—which criminalizes the free speech of millions and is aimed at spearheading a total outlawing of opposition to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.
The cultural impact was spelled out by Irish author Sally Rooney, whose statement explained, “I will effectively be prevented from speaking at any future public events in the UK, since I could not in good conscience disguise or lie about my principles in public.”
She asks, “Will bookshops go on stocking the work of an author the Home Secretary has branded a ‘terrorist’ simply for supporting a protest group? … [W]ould the BBC continue to screen and promote my work?”
The consequences for an artist living in Britain will be tested by the principled stand of musician Roger Waters, who posted a video after the proscription order went into force stating, “I support Palestine Action. It’s a great organization. They are non-violent, they are absolutely non-terrorist in any way.”
5. ICE abducts student in New York City as anti-immigrant campaign intensifies
Late last month, ICE thugs arrested and detained Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema, a 20-year-old student and asylum seeker from Ecuador, as she left a routine immigration hearing. Though a federal judge had set a new court date and left open the possibility that Chipantiza-Sisalema could stay in the United States, ICE agents seized her as soon as she left the courtroom.
Chipantiza-Sisalema was soon thrown into a cell on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza with 50 other women. Because the cell has no beds, Chipantiza-Sisalema has been sleeping on the floor. She has no access to a shower and has been wearing the same clothes for more than a week. Since she was detained, she has been allowed to speak to her parents only three times. Each call lasted no longer than one minute.
After Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), won the Democratic primary in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, Trump falsely asserted that he might be “here illegally.” Calling Mamdani a “pure communist,” the president threatened to arrest him, strip him of his citizenship and deport him.
This extraordinary outburst underscores the fact that the anti-immigrant campaign is in fact an attack on the democratic rights of the entire working class. This is necessary to implement the untrammeled rule of the richest Americans. In the form of Trump’s budget bill, Congress has just enacted one of the largest transfers of wealth to the corporate and financial oligarchy in US history. The oligarchy, represented by Trump, understands that it cannot enact its agenda of class war by democratic means.
6. A further comment on Brian Wilson's life and music
During the years 1962 to 1967, Wilson was a supernova in the world of popular music that, thanks to a steady access to musical and financial resources, managerial and media promotions and a healthy competitive spirit, was able to burn brightly.
Thus far, Microsoft company management has not admitted openly to any connection between the layoffs this year and the introduction and development of generative AI technologies. However, media observers, analysts and online commenters generally take it as a given that the job cuts are part of a large-scale restructuring of the tech industry related to AI. The company plans to invest $80 billion in AI-related development in fiscal year 2025 alone.
At the Build industry conference in May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demonstrated AI software tools that could, with relatively very little human direction, very quickly perform tasks previously carried about by entire teams of engineers. At present, about 30 percent of software coding work at Microsoft is done by AI.
On May 31, more than 75 percent of Indianapolis Kroger workers voted down a tentative contract agreement negotiated by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 700 with the grocery giant.
Despite the overwhelming rejection and the simultaneous approval of immediate strike action, the UFCW apparatus has kept workers on the job, fueling growing awareness among the rank and file that another betrayal is underway.
The vote is part of an expanding rank-and-file rebellion against the union bureaucracy by grocery store employees. Many workers now openly accuse the UFCW’s corporatist leadership of collaborating with management to push through concessionary contracts.
Across the country, Kroger workers in Colorado, Southern California, Washington and other states are engaged in similar contract battles, all marked by demands for better pay, improved staffing, and decent healthcare and awareness by the rank and file that workers are fighting a battle on two fronts.
The UFCW has systematically kept these struggles isolated, refusing to coordinate strike action or build solidarity across locals. The World Socialist Web Site has reported extensively on this pattern, highlighting the urgent need for rank-and-file workers to organize independently of the union bureaucracy and wage a real fight against the corporation.
As it enters its second week, the strike by 9,000 Philadelphia city workers has reached a crossroads. Whether the strike will be won or lost depends on the ability of rank-and-file workers to seize control from the union bureaucracy and take the offensive by mobilizing the working class across the city and the country.
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On Monday, AFSCME President Lee Saunders traveled from Washington to deliver a press conference full of empty bluster. Saunders—until recently a member of the Democratic National Committee and chair of the AFL-CIO’s Political Committee—personifies the corrupt nexus between the union bureaucracy and the pro-corporate Democratic Party that that the striking workers are fighting.
The Democrats were AWOL during last month’s “No Kings” protests and rolled over on Trump’s trillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid and other vital social programs—because they are the other party of Wall Street. In nearly every major city across the country, Democratic administrations are imposing similar “doomsday” austerity measures aimed at bleeding the working class dry to bankroll Wall Street and fund war.
When asked, “Is your Palestinian relocation plan still on the table?” Netanyahu praised Trump’s “brilliant vision” to expel the Palestinians from Gaza. “I think President Trump had a brilliant vision. It’s called free choice,” Netanyahu said.
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When Trump first proposed his plan to “own” Gaza and expel the Palestinian people to other countries earlier this year, it was dismissed by the US media as a flight of fancy with no connection to actual US and Israeli plans.
In reality, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza has been a long-term aim of the Netanyahu government, which used the events of October 7, 2023 as a pretext to carry out this plan. Trump, in contrast to his predecessor Biden, openly stated the actual Israeli policy the US was supporting.
Now, six months after it was first proposed, the Israeli government is making far-reaching plans to carry out this ethnic cleansing policy, using its takeover of the provision of starvation rations as a means to lure the population of Gaza to the enclave’s south, where they will be herded into concentration camps and then expelled from the country.
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When asked about the statement made five months ago by Democratic New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani that he would enforce the ICC’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu were he to be elected mayor, Trump and Netanyahu launched into a tirade against Mamdani, calling him a communist. Netanyahu dismissed the war crimes charges against him as “silly” and “not serious.”
The blood-curdling remarks by the two men turned into a farce when Netanyahu presented Trump with a letter he sent to the Nobel Prize Committee nominating Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, declaring, “He’s forging peace, as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other.”
After Netanyahu called for the American president to be given the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump could not resist boasting about dropping “the biggest bombs ever, the biggest bombs that we’ve ever dropped on anybody, when you think non-nuclear” on Iran just last month.
In another tragic confirmation that India’s industrial sector remains perilously unsafe for workers, a devastating explosion at a pharmaceutical factory on June 30 in the southern state of Telangana has claimed the lives of at least 42 workers and left many others injured.
Around 143 workers were inside the facility at the time of the blast which started a fire that rapidly engulfed the premises. Several bodies were charred beyond recognition, forcing authorities to rely on DNA testing for identification.
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The tragedy occurred at Sigachi Industries, which is located in the Pashamylaram industrial area of Sangareddy district in Telangana. Established in 1989, the company is a major manufacturer of microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) derived from wood pulp—a key ingredient in pharmaceutical capsules. The company also produces other inert pharmaceutical components and exports its products to more than 65 countries from facilities across India.
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The Sigachi Industries explosion is the latest in a string of deadly incidents in India’s pharmaceutical sector. Since 2024, at least three major industrial accidents have occurred.
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India is often referred to as the “world’s pharmacy” due to its leading role in producing affordable generic medicines and vaccines. In 2022, India’s pharmaceutical industry had a turnover of $50 billion, supplying over 20 percent of global generic drugs and around 60 percent of vaccines worldwide. With over 3,000 pharmaceutical firms, India exports to more than 200 countries.
While India’s cost-effective pharmaceutical production has benefited millions—especially in low- and middle-income nations—gross violations of safety and quality standards, driven by profit motives and government indifference, have had deadly consequences both domestically and internationally.
Yesterday he sent letters to 14 countries saying the massive tariff hikes announced on April 2 would be imposed on August 1.
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The imposition of the hikes came after the three-month pause announced by Trump following the severe market reaction to the initial announcement which saw a spike in interest rates and a fall in the value of the US dollar.
The pause was supposedly to allow negotiations to take place and the announcement of deals and agreements. But apart from a limited agreement with the UK and one with Vietnam announced last week, nothing eventuated.
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The blanket “reciprocal tariffs” have been invoked under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the president powers to impose in a national emergency.
In May the Court of International Trade based in New York ruled the tariffs were illegal as there was no “national emergency.” But this was set aside the following day for further adjudication by a higher court on appeal. This allowed Trump to proceed, confident that if the issue goes to the Supreme Court, he will receive a favorable ruling.
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The UK agreement also pointed to another aspect of the trade war—the stipulation that Britain had to align itself with US “national security” considerations regarding the sourcing of components from China. This issue will also be at the centre of any “deals” with the strategically important countries of southeast Asia.
Apart from China, the biggest issue in the tariff conflict is with the EU. At a press conference last week, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said a final deal was “impossible” before the deadline.
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Trump’s April 2 announcements upended all the international trading relations of the post-war period—never to return.
Yesterday’s decisions bring into clearer focus what will replace it—the return, at a higher level, of the conditions that characterized the disastrous decade of the 1930s, when the world was divided into rival trade and currency blocs which played a major role in creating the conditions for world war.
The “Growing Social Housing” report stated that, “Victoria is in a housing crisis.” This crisis is an Australian-wide one, affecting working class and vulnerable communities in every state and territory. The social housing deficit is however especially acute in Victoria. The report uses the term “social” housing which is the umbrella term for public housing (fully owned and operated by the Victoria government), community housing (operated by not-for-profit housing associations) and Aboriginal Housing.
Victoria has 2.8 million homes but just 86,000 social housing units, representing 3.1 per cent of all housing. This is the lowest proportion of any Australian state, with the average 4.5 percent—itself well below most developed economies.
As of December 2024, more than 55,000 Victorian households were on the waiting list for social housing, up from 50,732 in December 2023.
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While the report provided detailed scenarios of the numbers of social housing units required to meet demand, its conclusions appealed to the Victorian government. Successive state Labor and Liberal governments, however, have presided over decades of underinvestment in, and privatization of, social housing. The current plans of the Labor government of Premier Jacinta Allen are at diametric odds with the recommendations of the Victorian Housing Peaks Alliance report.
Ryan Starnes, a 23-year old construction worker from St. Clair Shores, Michigan, was killed on the job on June 30 while working on a road expansion in Brighton. Starnes was hit by a large excavator bucket as he was working in an excavated hole, according to Michigan State Police. The young worker was taken to the University of Michigan hospital, according to reports, where he later died of his injuries.
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Starnes had a fiancée and a five-year-old son who is nonverbal and autistic. His fiancée, Ky-El McRae, described him as a hardworking and loving father: “Every single night, he would come home from work and he would cuddle with our son and hold him and play with him. He worked really hard to make sure that Luke [their son] had everything that he needed.”
As they mourn this sudden and devastating loss, Starnes’ family has started a GoFundMe page to help them to cover funeral expenses, as well as to help to continue to care for his child who has special needs.
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The unsafe conditions which are commonplace in America’s factories, warehouses and other workplaces are the product of the capitalist system and the relentless drive by the corporate and financial oligarchy to maximize profit.
All operational considerations in both heavy and light industries—including safety protocols, the hygienic state of workplaces, the handling of toxic, hazardous or explosive substances, the operation of potentially deadly machinery and the logistical arrangements for all tools and supplies needed for work—are subordinated under capitalism to the interests of profit, not the needs of the working class, which produces society’s wealth.
Another contributing factor to industrial accidents is the physical and mental state of workers, who are systemically exposed to economic conditions that make adequate daily rest virtually impossible. Many workers, like Ryan Starnes, pick up extra shifts and work multiple jobs due to the low wages or the lack of sufficient health care coverage.
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Before Trump’s second term, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) employed fewer than 2,000 inspectors to cover a workforce of 161 million, meaning it would take 185 years for OSHA to inspect every US workplace. With the passage of the new Congressional budget, OSHA is expected to conduct 10,000 fewer workplace inspections next year than they conducted during the last fiscal year on record. This is due to a significant drop in funding of $50 million for the agency.
At the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 880 of 1,100 employees were fired earlier this year by the Trump administration, with more firings reportedly planned. This eliminates research into mining safety, chemical exposure, and hazardous protocol observations.
Although the fascistic Trump administration is spearheading the attack on workers’ safety, as it did during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, this drive represents the interests of the entire ruling class, as American corporations seek to make up for a loss in their competitive edge in global markets by intensifying the exploitation of the working class. In this, they enjoy the support of the Democrats and the union bureaucracies, the latter functioning as the enforcers of deadly workplace conditions.
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16. Australia: Police invoked “anti-riot” laws in assault on pro-Palestinian protestThis makes all the more important the independent investigation initiated by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees into the April 7 death of Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. at the Dundee Engine Complex in southern Michigan. The 63-year-old machine repairman, a well respected and skilled worker, and a father and grandfather, was crushed to death when a overhead gantry suddenly engaged and pinned him to a conveyor while he was doing maintenance work in an enclosed factory cell.
The inquiry, which is being led by rank-and-file workers independently of the United Auto Workers bureaucracy, is aimed at uncovering the truth and arming workers with the information and organization they need—rank-and-file factory committees—to enforce safety standards and protect their lives.
It was revealed yesterday that the New South Wales Police invoked sweeping “anti-riot” powers to justify their violent dispersal of a small pro-Palestinian protest in Sydney on June 27.
That decision, which had to involve the top levels of the NSW Police command and the state Labor government, is a warning of advanced moves to criminalize any public opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The legislation cited enables the police to impose conditions that are akin to martial law.
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17. Workers Struggles: The AmericasThere are editorials and opinion pieces in the major publications everyday demanding an end to pro-Palestinian protests, while the state Labor administrations are moving to outlaw chants condemning the genocide and denouncing Zionism.
This is occurring under conditions where fascistic US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are carrying out their “final solution,” involving the full-scale ethnic-cleansing of Gaza, in a war crime that is increasingly being extended into the West Bank. Labor’s crackdown on opposition is one component of its ongoing political, diplomatic and logistical support for the Israeli atrocities.
But more broadly, the assault on democratic rights is directed against the entire working class. There is mass hostility to the entire political establishment, and explosive opposition to the social crisis, enormous social inequality and the broader program of imperialist militarism, of which the Gaza genocide is a part. The measures directed now against opponents of the genocide will in the future be deployed against strikes by workers and social struggles raising all of these questions.
Argentina:
Retiree protests continue in in the face of hunger and lack of heat
CN Tower workers in Toronto locked out
Vancouver Sheraton Hotel workers strike
Health workers protestUnited States:
California hospice workers carry out two-day strike over stalled contract negotiations and threat of private equity takeover
WellSpan Health nurses at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania hospital vote for strike authorization over safe staffing and wages
Police attack protest by fishermen20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
