1. Atlanta, Georgia: gunman opens fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
On Friday afternoon, August 8, 2025, the Trump administration’s war on public health led to deadly violence. An assault by a distraught gunman on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta terrorized hundreds of employees, claimed the life of a police officer, and laid bare the lethal consequences of years of political incitement, institutional dismantling, and the deliberate spread of anti-vaccine propaganda. This was not an isolated act of violence. It was the result of a long campaign that attacked scientists, cut resources, and created a climate where lies led to bullets.
*****
Investigators soon learned that White believed the COVID-19 vaccine had made him depressed and suicidal. Neighbors described him as “unsettled” and consumed by anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, convinced that vaccines were harming him and others. His fixation reflects the toll of the sustained campaign of disinformation by the quacks and charlatans that Trump has now placed in positions of authority in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Since the pandemic began, scientists and health officials have endured death threats, armed protests, doxing, and assaults at their homes. These attacks have not emerged in a vacuum but have been fueled and legitimized by political figures, none more prominent than Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
*****
Since assuming office, Kennedy has moved from inflammatory rhetoric to concrete actions that have gutted public health capacity. Most recently he canceled nearly $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine research, undermining decades of scientific progress. He has also fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with anti-vaccine advocates, laid off nearly 2,000 CDC employees, and proposed a fiscal year 2026 budget that would cut the agency’s funding in half. He has also threatened to dismantle the entire US Preventive Taskforce panel, which will have long-term dire consequences. Critics argue that these actions have systematically dismantled the CDC’s ability to monitor, respond to, and mitigate disease outbreaks, while sending a chilling message to the remaining workforce.
In the aftermath of the shooting, CDC employees joined internal calls to demand answers about how the agency would address “the misinformation—the disinformation—that caused this issue” and what would be done to protect staff in the future. Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams said employees contacted him directly because they “felt under attack” and wanted someone with a public voice to condemn the violence. CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry voiced a shared sentiment, “We’re mad this has happened.”
Kennedy’s own heedless response to the shooting has only deepened outrage. For more than 18 hours after the shooting, he said nothing publicly, instead posting fishing trip photos on his personal social media. When a statement finally came, it was viewed by many employees as “tepid and inadequate.”
2. International statements of solidarity to IWA-RFC hearing into the death of Ronald Adams Sr.
The World Socialist Web Site continues to publish statements of support for the IWA-RFC investigation into the death of Dundee Engine worker Ronald Adams.
3. Israel murders 6 journalists, as Netanyahu says annexation of Gaza will proceed “swiftly”
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu held a phone call with US President Trump on Sunday and announced that the complete seizure of Gaza would be carried out “fairly quickly,” as an airstrike was launched on a clearly marked tent of Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza City.
4. Fight Starmer’s police state—Build a movement in the working class!
The arrest of over 530 people this weekend was the most significant mass political arrest in post-war British history. It is a major step towards a police state being established by the Labour government.
It appears the US government is doing everything in its power to ensure that Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez, a 38-year-old Venezuelan who nearly died last week at the Florida Everglades concentration camp after being denied medical care, does not survive.
New details revealed in phone calls made public by one of Rivas Velásquez’s attorneys, Eric Lee of Lee & Godshall-Bennett LLP, confirm that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and ICE contractors are not only lying about the criminal and inhumane conditions at the Florida detention center, but they are continuing to deprive Rivas Velásquez access to his attorneys and to doctors at the detention center in El Paso, Texas, to which he has since been moved.
*****
Since “Alligator Alcatraz” began operations last month, those at the Florida detention camp have reported deplorable conditions, including backed-up toilets, insufficient and inedible food, indifferent and sadistic guards and limited access to legal help or leisure activities. Water has to be transported to the camp, and refuse removed from it, as there is no onsite plumbing. This has led guards to impose limits on baths and water usage, leading to sickness and disease, which appears to be running rampant throughout the camp.
*****
Following the call on August 7, ICE blocked Lee and other attorneys from contacting Rivas Velásquez for two days. On August 9, Rivas Velásquez managed a brief call from inside the El Paso Enhanced Hardened Facility in Texas, where his health was again deteriorating due to continued denial of medical treatment. His last words before the line was cut off were, “Help! I don’t want to die here.”
Later that day, the El Paso Fire Department dispatched a medical team to the facility, but ICE agents barred them from entering or seeing the detainee.
Any objective observer would conclude that ICE and DHS are doing everything in their power to ensure that Rivas Velásquez dies in their custody. His death would mark at least the twelfth killing in ICE detention this year, following the August 5 death of Chaofeng Ge at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania.
The deplorable conditions inside America’s immigration gulag are not unintended but the deliberate result of government policies aimed at dehumanizing large swaths of the population in order to prepare the working class to accept mass death from preventable disease, climate change-induced catastrophes and imperialist war.
6. Vote No to the UFCW’s sellout tentative agreement with Safeway in Northern California!
On July 27, the UFCW released a two-page “highlights” leaflet for the tentative agreement covering 25,000 Safeway grocery workers in Locals 5, 648 and 8-Golden State. The summary is filled with claims of “victory” and “recommendation.”
Not a single worker has been provided with the full text of the tentative agreement. The union itself admits that “full details of the agreement will be released following ratification.” This is aimed at preventing workers from scrutinizing the deal before they vote on it.
*****
Northern California is one of the most expensive regions in the United States. Rents, food prices and transportation costs are at record highs. California’s latest budget includes sweeping cuts to social programs, especially for immigrants.
Many Safeway workers are immigrants, now facing intensified raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration, even in hospitals and grocery stores. The tentative agreement contains no provisions to defend these workers from such attacks.
The UFCW’s conduct reflects the bureaucracy’s class position as a privileged layer of officials whose incomes and careers are tied to their role in enforcing corporate demands. By controlling and limiting struggles, they ensure that the wealth produced by workers flows upward to the executives and shareholders of Albertsons and other corporations.
7. Trump ends collective bargaining for 370,000 federal workers
The Trump administration announced last week it was terminating collective bargaining at two federal agencies, Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency, effective immediately.
With approximately 370,000 workers directly affected, the move is among the largest assaults on collective bargaining rights ever carried out. Beyond striking a blow at a trade union apparatus that nominally opposed him, Trump seeks to facilitate the purge of the federal workforce, remaking the civil service into one where loyalty to the president is a condition of employment.
The elimination of collective bargaining at the two agencies is just a start. Trump targeted more than a dozen additional cabinet-level and independent agencies in an executive order issued in March. In all, the administration aims to remove collective bargaining for around one million federal workers, or about 1 out of every 15 workers covered by a union contract currently in the United States.
*****
The ability for the administration to carry out the effort was cleared by a federal appeals court, which on August 1 lifted a preliminary injunction that had frozen the administration’s efforts. This decision in the Ninth Circuit was another in a series of rulings by federal courts rubber-stamping the Trump administration’s anti-democratic attempts to reconstruct the federal government, including Supreme Court decisions last month that allowed the disbanding of the Department of Education and mass layoffs without Congressional authorization.
In moving forward with eliminating collective bargaining, the Trump administration is reneging on its assurances it made in court and contradicting guidance issued by the Office of Personnel Management that it would not formally terminate union contracts until the conclusion of litigation.
*****
Meanwhile, Trump is pushing ahead with new job classifications and hiring criteria that will enable him to politicize much of the nominally non-political civil service. Trump’s Office of Personnel Management has proposed a rule to convert potentially tens of thousands of jobs into a new category of at-will employees whose employment is dependent upon the preferences of the president. It is also revising the employee performance evaluation system. It’s notable that the administration falsely used the charge of poor performance to implement the mass firing of probationary employees earlier this year.
Trump is also revamping the hiring process to ensure that only the most “patriotic Americans are hired to the Federal service” and prioritizing those “passionate about the ideals of our American republic.” Under conditions where Trump has denounced political opponents as traitors, these are clearly coded references in an attempt to fill the civil service with right-wing ideologues.
8. Australia: nearly 400 “voluntary redundancies” sought at Western Sydney University
This is another warning of the scale of the job cuts and sweeping restructuring being demanded throughout Australia’s 39 public universities.
9. Canyon Fire ignites in Southern California, echoes January’s devastating Los Angeles wildfires
The Canyon Fire sounds the alarm that austerity cuts, climate change, and political neglect continue unchecked, fueling more frequent and destructive wildfires with devastating consequences for working class communities.
*****
The relative containment of the Canyon Fire, compared to past megafires, was due to the unusually fast initial response—an implicit recognition by authorities of the public outrage over recent firefighting failures in Los Angeles, from deadly slow responses in West Altadena to the deployment of private fire crews for the wealthy, like real estate magnate Rick Caruso.
But the core conditions that made the Canyon Fire so explosive—climate change, underfunded public services and the destruction of environmental safeguards—remain unaddressed and are worsening.
California’s 2025–26 budget avoided the politically incendiary step of cutting forest and fire services outright in the aftermath of the devastating Los Angeles fires but implemented shifts and reductions that undermine long-term resilience.
A $1 billion transfer from climate programs to CAL FIRE operations increased dependency on volatile cap-and-trade revenues, jeopardizing multi-year forest health projects. Grants for forest health and local fire prevention were preserved but reduced to $82.2 million and $59.1 million, respectively, far below previous peaks. Community home-hardening programs fell to $12.5 million.
Key allocations from the state’s Cap-and-Invest climate program—often used for forest restoration—were deferred, delaying critical prevention projects. Climate and water initiatives overall suffered a 26 percent cut.
Local departments, including the Los Angeles Fire Department, reduced vacant civilian positions and overtime, limiting training and preparedness despite nominal funding increases. The state’s plan to make 3,000 seasonal firefighters permanent is a step forward in suppression capacity, yet prevention and resilience investments remain far more vulnerable to budget raids.
At the federal level, proposed fiscal year 2026 cuts to the US Forest Service threaten to gut staffing and fire suppression funding by 10 percent, imperiling both firefighting and prevention efforts such as prescribed burns and forest thinning. Large fires like the Canyon Fire require unified, multi-agency coordination. Federal retrenchment will undermine California’s already strained resources.
*****
The Canyon Fire stands as another warning: the conditions that produced it are not exceptional but permanent. Without a fundamental break from the profit-driven priorities that dominate state and federal policy, California will face ever more frequent and destructive fires, each exacting a higher toll in lives, health and resources. The fight against wildfire devastation is inseparable from the broader fight against climate change and the capitalist system that drives it.
Some 182 members of the ballet and opera company, including dancers, singers, musicians and staff across artistic, creative, technical and administrative departments, sent an open letter August 1 to management expressing “deep concern and moral conviction” in response to the “actions and decisions taken” by the RBO “in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
On Wednesday, Alex Beard, the company’s chief executive, told CNN that the Tel Aviv Tosca production had been canceled, but claimed the decision had been taken “before the recent staff letter was received” and out of “concerns about the safety of company members in the region, in light of the ongoing conflict.” There is no reason to give Beard’s claim the slightest credence. RBO management was obviously taken aback by the surge of anger its tacit endorsement of Israeli actions provoked. (OperaWire disposes of the fiction, writing firmly, “Following the [staff open] letter the Royal Ballet and Opera canceled its collaboration with the Israeli Opera for a production of Tosca.”)
The outrage and resistance were no doubt intensified by an incident that occurred during a curtain call at a July 19 performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. One of the performers, dancer Danni Perry, unfurled a Palestinian flag in protest against the Israeli government’s policy of starvation and mass killing in Gaza. Director of Opera Oliver Mears entered the stage and attempted to seize the flag from Perry, although he failed. According to Perry, Mears said to him, “You will never work at the opera house again,” to which Perry asserts he replied, “I don’t give a flying f**k.” A witch hunt was thereupon launched against Perry in the right-wing British media.
*****
The tense situation at the RBO is representative of conditions in cultural institutions and industries in Britain and throughout the world: a state of war, open or covert, exists between management, tied to its respective government and the latter’s support for the massacre of the Palestinians, and an increasing radicalized and restive workforce.
11. Australia: inquest into the police killing of Aboriginal teenager Kumanjayi Walker
12. Tunnel collapse kills 6, leaves 9 injured at Chile’s El Teniente copper mine
Six subcontract workers were killed in a deadly mining incident when a section of tunnel collapsed deep inside an underground copper mine in the O’Higgins region, 90 kms south of Santiago, on Thursday 31 July. The multi-fatality took place at a new site within the El Teniente mine, the largest copper mine in the world, accounting for more than a quarter of the Chilean National Copper Corporation’s total production. It is no accident that the six workers who died last week were all subcontractors. Rather, it is the inevitable byproduct of labor cost-saving measures, speed ups and corner-cutting in safety that miners have been denouncing.
*****
The tragedy has shaken and angered miners (and the whole working class) who in their majority are employed by the countless contractor companies to which the State-owned Codelco outsources its operations.
At the transnational mining conglomerates, BHP Billiton, SQM, Albemarle, Anglo-American, KGHM International, Glencore, Freeport-McMoRan, Teck, Antofagasta Minerals, which control more than 70 percent of mines in Chile, outsourcing is even more widespread, accounting for close to 80 percent of the workforce.
*****
The outsourcing of labor, along with precarious and dangerous practices and working conditions, are not merely the result of carelessness or errors, but are direct products of the insatiable drive to increase profits amid the inherent tendency of the rate of profit to decline.
This contradictory process is made very clear in El Teniente itself, the largest underground mining site in the world, which has been exploited for more than 120 years.
*****
El Teniente is an engineering feat and an extremely dangerous operation. It consists of 4,500km of tunnels and underground galleries that extend more than 900 meters deep into the El Teniente Ravine in the Andes. Each year at least 20 km of new tunnels are added to this extraordinary maze.
*****
Last year, El Teniente’s output was 356,000 tons of fine copper. In 2021, it was 460,000 tons. This massive preponderance of constant capital over human labor power, from which surplus value and ultimately profits are derived, drives capital to increase the ways and means of exploiting labor. At a certain point this reaches the level of outright criminality.
13. Lebanese government agrees to US diktat to disarm Hezbollah
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s cabinet has publicly committed to disarming Hezbollah, in a move that threatens explosive consequences for Lebanon. The tiny country is caught in the crosshairs of US imperialism’s efforts to eliminate Iran’s remaining influence in the Middle East.
Hezbollah is an Islamist group allied with Tehran that has the support of Lebanon’s Shi’ite party Amal and the impoverished Shi’ite masses.
Hezbollah (Party of God) was formed in the 1980s, dedicated to “the armed struggle” against Israel amid its occupation of Lebanon during the 1975-90 civil war—a proxy war for the competing regional and imperialist powers—and brutal suppression of the Palestinians. Backed by Syria and Iran, the bourgeois religio-nationalist movement drew its support within Lebanon from the impoverished Shi’ite masses to whom it provides vital welfare services. The party advocates corporatism, paternalism and religious obscurantism as a counterweight to the class struggle. With its Shi’ite and Palestinian allies, Hezbollah constitutes the largest bloc in Lebanon’s sectarian-based and fragmented political system.
*****
The cabinet’s decision follows visits to Beirut by US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria and Lebanon Tom Barrack, French President Emmanuel Macron and head of US Central Command General Michael Kurilla making clear that without the government and Hezbollah committing to disarm no aid or loans would be forthcoming to the bankrupt country. It gives the lie to any notion that the six-million strong state has any political independence or sovereignty.
14. This week in history: August 11-17
15. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
