Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Socialist Equality Party holds International Summer School on Security and the Fourth International
Between August 2 and August 9, the Socialist Equality Party (US) held its biennial Summer School, attended by members of the SEP in the US along with delegates from all the sections and sympathizing groups of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).
The subject of the 2025 Summer School was Security and the Fourth International, the investigation initiated by the ICFI in May 1975 into the assassination of Leon Trotsky—co-leader of the Russian Revolution and founder of the Fourth International—who was murdered by Stalinist agent Ramón Mercader on August 20, 1940. As the investigation revealed, the Stalinist GPU prepared and organized the assassination through the systematic infiltration of agents into the Trotskyist movement, including the Socialist Workers Party in the United States.
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The school began with lectures on Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution, the strategic foundations of the 1917 October Revolution and the program of world socialist revolution. These lectures established the continuity connecting the perspective that led the October Revolution to victory, Lenin’s “last struggle” against nationalism and bureaucracy in the Soviet state, and the Left Opposition’s fight against Stalinism and the theory of “socialism in one country.” From there, the lectures traced the vast and horrific consequences of the Stalinist repudiation of international socialism. The betrayal of the 1926 General Strike in Britain and the Chinese Revolution of 1925–27, the catastrophic defeat of the German working class in 1933, and the betrayals in Spain and France in the 1930s paved the way for the triumph of fascism in Europe and the outbreak of the Second World War.
Of exceptional significance was a lecture which documented the immense influence within the Soviet Union of the Trotskyist opposition to the Stalinist bureaucracy well into the 1930s.
The school then examined the Stalinist campaign of political genocide against the revolutionary Marxist vanguard. The Moscow Trials and the Great Terror of 1937–38 were the centerpiece of a vast purge aimed at eradicating every surviving representative of the October Revolution. Between 1935 and 1940, nearly 2 million people were arrested on political charges in the Soviet Union, of whom 688,503 were shot. Thousands of socialist workers and the intelligentsia were annihilated: astronomers, biologists, physicians, historians, philosophers, musicians, writers and poets.
Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the October Revolution and founder of the Fourth International, was the central target of this campaign of terror. After a decade of relentless persecution and the murder of many of his closest collaborators—including his son Lev Sedov—Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico on August 20, 1940 by GPU agent Ramón Mercader.
The second half of the school provided a detailed account of the Security and the Fourth International investigation. “With the initiation of the Security and the Fourth International investigation,” David North explained in his introduction, “the Trotskyist movement passed onto the offensive against the counter-revolutionary bureaucracies.” Launched in the face of slanders, provocations and lies from the apologists of Stalinism, the investigation established—on the basis of meticulously documented facts—the truth of the allegations it advanced.
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Fifty years after its initiation, the Security and the Fourth International investigation has stood the test of time. Its conclusions have been confirmed and strengthened by new evidence, including material released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These documents exposed critical details of the assassination plot, such as the role of Robert Sheldon Harte—an SWP member sent to Mexico to serve as a guard—who was in fact a Stalinist agent. In the past five years, additional evidence, reviewed at the school, has shed new light on the role of Sylvia Ageloff, whose personal relationship with Ramón Mercader was used to facilitate Trotsky’s murder.
The fight for security has direct and urgent relevance to the present political situation. The SEP’s 2025 Summer School concluded just days before Trump deployed the military onto the streets of Washington D.C., a critical stage in the ongoing conspiracy to establish a fascistic dictatorship in the United States. This assault on democratic rights is part of a global trend, unfolding alongside the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the US-NATO war against Russia, and the intensifying preparations for war against China. In every country, the ruling oligarchy is pursuing a program of social counterrevolution, aimed at destroying the living standards and rights of the working class.
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All readers of the World Socialist Web Site are urged to study carefully the lectures from the SEP 2025 Summer School which will be published in the coming weeks, as an essential preparation for the political struggles now unfolding in the United States and throughout the world.
2. The place of Security and the Fourth International in the history of the Trotskyist movement
This report was delivered by David North, the National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US) and International Editorial Board Chairman of the World Socialist Web Site, to introduce the SEP Summer School, held between August 2-9, 2025. The WSWS will be publishing all the lectures at the school in the coming weeks.
David North reviews the history of Trotskyism "warts and all", including widely suppressed, but indisputable facts behind the failure to prevent the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Coyoacán, Mexico in 1940. North explains why it is critical for the Socialist Equality Party to be vigilant today against enemies intent on its destruction.
3. Trump seeks “long-term” military-police control of Washington D.C.
Encouraged by the absence of any significant opposition from the Democratic Party to his military-police takeover of Washington D.C., President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would ask Congress to give him “long-term” control of the police force in the US capital.
He added that he expected Democratic-led city governments to change their criminal justice laws. This could include rescinding restrictions on cash bail, treating juveniles as adults in court, and authorizing police to take a more aggressive role in relation to criminal suspects. US police already kill more than 1,000 civilians a year, far more than any other major capitalist country.
Trump made his comments at the end of a visit to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts venue, where he announced he was taking full control of the center’s fall awards program, including selecting the honorees and acting as the “host” for the televised ceremony.
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The pretext of a “crime wave” in Washington D.C. is a brazen lie, concocted by the White House to justify putting the US capital effectively under military-police rule. Attorney General Pam Bondi is in overall charge of the police, with a subordinate, Drug Enforcement Agency Director Terry Cole, acting as the day-to-day commander. Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll will direct the operations of the National Guard.
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Several Washington-area Democratic congressmen criticized the takeover as unnecessary, given the absence of any real “crime wave,” but none suggested that Trump was taking the next step in a worked-out plan to establish a presidential dictatorship.
The media response has similarly been muted, with the crisis in the District downplayed by Wednesday reporting in major newspapers and the television networks. The New York Times, the chief media organ aligned with the Democratic Party, did not even publish an editorial commenting on Trump’s seizing control of the US capital, while the Washington Post criticized it only from the standpoint that it would not be sufficient to stop crime.
Trump’s actions in the District, whether they end in 30 days or continue indefinitely, are setting a dangerous precedent. He has already threatened similar measures in cities like Chicago and New York. He is also testing out the machinery of repression that would be required either for a direct seizure of dictatorial power, or the suppression of mass resistance in major cities to his immigration raids or other provocations.
4. Netanyahu reiterates call for ethnic cleansing of Gaza
On Tuesday, in an interview aired on Israeli TV station i24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the statement that his government is “allowing” Palestinians to leave Gaza during the imminent military offensive. The offensive is aimed at forcing everyone out of the most populated areas of the Strip, including Gaza City, and driving them into the zone near the border with Egypt.
Netanyahu cynically framed this as an offer of “voluntary migration.” Speaking in a manner that reeked of supremacy, the prime minister said:
Give them the opportunity to leave! First, from combat zones, and also from the Strip if they want. We are not pushing them out but allowing them to leave.
The fascist leader’s words, delivered in the context of the Israeli military’s plans for the complete control and annexation of Gaza, were part of a strategy endorsed and supported by the imperialist powers with the completely lying rubric of “choice” and “humanitarian” concern. However, masses of people internationally recognize these as euphemisms for genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement on a massive scale.
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Since October 7, 2023, at least 61,700 Palestinian have been killed in a mass slaughter, thousands of them women and children, with over 154,000 wounded. These figures continue to rise daily as the siege, starvation, bombardments and military incursions persist. The death tolls from starvation have reached at least 235, including many children, while over 1,800 Palestinians have died while attempting to access aid since May 2025.
5. With union’s approval, Irvington, New Jersey letter carriers work in filthy, hazardous post office
Workers for the US Postal Service (USPS) have been ordered to return to a previously flooded and filthy building in Irvington, New Jersey. Pictures of the building reviewed by the World Socialist Web Site show floors streaked with black grime, rusted metal, shaky lighting fixtures and a large puddle. The building smells like sewage, according to a worker who spoke under condition of anonymity. The building has been condemned, he added.
The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) approved management’s decision to make its members work in these flagrantly unsanitary and dangerous conditions. The union neither consulted with the Irvington postal workers beforehand nor provided them with any protective equipment. NALC’s actions reveal the bureaucracy’s open hostility to its own members and its complicity with management.
Irvington is a mid-sized city that borders Newark, the largest city in New Jersey. After the 1967 riots, many Newark residents moved to Irvington, and the latter became a predominantly African American city. A high proportion of Irvington residents (36.5 percent) was born abroad, mainly in Latin America, according to Census data. Per capita and household income are lower in Irvington than in the US overall, and the city’s poverty rate is 18.1 percent.
6. Deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in low-income neighborhoods of New York City
An outbreak of deadly legionnaires’ disease, which causes severe pneumonia, is spreading in the Harlem neighborhood in New York City. First reported on July 25, at latest count the bacterial disease has so far infected more than 60 people and killed 3.
The disease is caused by the Legionella bacterium which grows in warm, stagnant water. While the bacterium is present in nature, certain man-made environments are especially conducive to its proliferation. It is suspected that the current outbreak is caused by water vapor emanating from rooftop cooling towers associated with building cooling systems. The bacterium can be carried long distances in the water droplets released by the towers, which, when inhaled, may cause disease.
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Not surprisingly, the highest frequencies of the disease occur in some of the poorer neighborhoods of the city—including parts of the Bronx and Harlem—where rates are between 10 and 20 per 100,000 people. Five zip codes in Harlem have been identified with the current outbreak, with some having a median household income of just $40,000. Many studies have shown that well over $100,000/year income is needed to live comfortably in New York City, the most expensive city in the United States.
Low-income neighborhoods are also characterized by poorer health in general, with higher rates of chronic diseases. These are also areas where plumbing and cooling towers tend to be poorly maintained.
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The leading source of Legionnaires’ disease—building cooling towers—can easily be suppressed by frequent testing and decontamination. That this is not systematically carried out is a consequence of the gross income inequality under capitalism. The recurring outbreaks of the disease in low-income neighborhoods are symptomatic of the dangerous conditions in which many workers are forced to live. Overcrowded, unsanitary living spaces, poorly maintained by unscrupulous landlords, are a breeding ground for a whole range of diseases which weaken people’s immune systems and are rampant in working class neighborhoods, not to mention other hazards like frequent house fires.
7. European imperialists dampen their conflict with US ahead of Trump-Putin summit
Two days before the planned meeting between US President Trump and Russian President Putin in Alaska, Europe and the US are trying to smooth out their differences.
After a video conference attended by Trump, Vice President Vance, several European heads of government, and the leaders of the EU and NATO, German Chancellor Merz spoke of a “constructive and good conversation.” Ukrainian President Zelensky, who traveled specially to Berlin to participate, said Trump had assured him that he would inform him immediately after his meeting with Putin about its outcome.
When US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff visited Moscow a week ago and President Trump subsequently announced a face-to-face meeting with Putin and proposed a “territorial exchange” between Russia and Ukraine, alarm bells rang in European capitals.
Media commentators accused Trump of “betraying” Ukraine and drew parallels with the 1938 Munich Conference, at which Britain and France ceded part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler without inviting the Czech government to the meeting.
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The events of the past week have shown how conflict-ridden the relationship between the US and the European powers is. Although NATO is still the most powerful military alliance in the world, accounting for 55 percent of global military spending, the cracks that are tearing it apart are growing deeper by the month.
This will remain the case even if tensions cool down somewhat for the moment and Trump does not strike a deal with Putin on Friday at the expense of the Europeans. The growing tensions stem from the nature of the war in Ukraine itself.
NATO is not defending “freedom” and ‘democracy’ in Ukraine against a “Russian war of aggression.” It is waging a war for the material resources of Ukraine and Russia as part of an imperialist struggle to redivide the world. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union three decades ago removed its last inhibitions, the US has waged one brutal imperialist war after another to defend its world domination—against Iraq, against Serbia, against Afghanistan, against Iraq for a second time, against Libya and Syria, to name only the most important ones. The European NATO partners have supported these wars in order to share in the spoils.
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Germany is the largest supporter of the war in Ukraine after the US. German imperialism has never come to terms with the fact that it had to take a back seat after losing two world wars. Now it is once again advancing militarily into regions—the Baltic states, Ukraine, Russia—that it tried in vain to conquer in two world wars, and is using the war in Ukraine as a pretext to rearm on a scale not seen since Hitler.
When Trump negotiates with Putin over the heads of Europeans and imposes punitive tariffs on friends and foes alike—including European “partners”—this is not the personal whim of a real estate dealer, but the result of the imperialist struggle to redivide the world, in which yesterday’s “partners” become today’s rivals and adversaries. Capitalism is heading toward the abyss of a third world war unless the working class puts a stop to it in time.
8. Germany’s media place the rapper Macklemore in its crosshairs
[Photo: Macklemore]
What has particularly distinguished Macklemore in the past two years, and placed him in the crosshairs of the bourgeois media, is his unequivocal and courageous stance against the imperialist war and genocide in Gaza. His recent works—beginning with the viral hit Hind’s Hall in May 2024, followed by Hind’s Hall 2 in September 2024, and most recently Fucked Up in February 2025—have become anthems of the global protest against Israel’s genocidal actions and the complicity of the imperialist powers.
9. Controversy over Trump’s new Bureau of Labor Statistics chief
The appointment, announced earlier this week, came after Trump sacked BLS head Erika McEntarfer following a BLS jobs report at the beginning of the month. It showed a slowing of the US labor market, with the previous estimate of the number of jobs created in May and June revised down by 258,000.
Without providing any evidence, Trump declared the numbers had been “rigged” to make him and the Republican Party look bad.
The elevation of Antoni to what is supposedly a non-partisan position in the administration is another significant step in Trump’s efforts to establish a personalized regime.
In contrast to McEntarfer, who had 20 years of experience in the gathering and analysis of statistics at the US Census Bureau before taking the BLS post, Antoni has no background in this area. He has spent most of his working life as an economist in right-wing think tanks, most recently as chief economist at the Heritage Foundation. The Foundation authored the Project 25 document that has formed the basis for much of Trump’s second-term agenda.
The political character of Antoni was revealed in the lead up to the presidential election when, while promoting Trump and Project 25, he posted video-podcasts of himself in front of the Nazi warship the Bismarck.
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The quality of Antoni was pithily summed up by one critic who said that “no credible economist would take a job in which you get fired for publishing accurate data.”
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Hailing his new appointment, Trump issued a social media post that declared: “Our economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the numbers released are honest and accurate. I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role.”
But Trump’s claims of a “booming” economy are based solely on the rise of the stock market to record highs. The data on the real underlying economy tell a very different story, one that threatens to blow apart his election claims of rising wages and living standards and lead to deepening opposition in the working class.
10. Teachers union executives maintain alliance with Zionist Anti-Defamation League
The July 2-6 Representative Assembly of the National Education Association (NEA), held in Portland, Oregon, passed a resolution calling for breaking off the “partnership” between the union and the Zionist Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The NEA, is, alongside the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), one of two major educators’ unions and is the largest trade union in the United States, with over 3 million members.
Within a week, the nine-member Executive Committee of the NEA quashed the resolution and maintained the status quo: educators in the NEA are to allow the right-wing, pro-genocide ADL to continue to implement its curriculum in schools and to sanction the ADL’s dishonest practice of posing as a legitimate civil rights organization to young people and their educators.
The NEA leadership’s action was entirely predictable. The flouting of the will of the membership is the rule, not the exception, and educators have repeatedly paid the price in jobs, wages and benefits – and in support for genocidal and warmongering governments.
11. New Zealand woman and 6-year-old son detained by ICE
On August 12, media outlets in New Zealand reported that Sarah Shaw, an NZ citizen living in the United States, was currently imprisoned in an ICE detention facility, along with her six-year-old son Isaac. They have been illegally detained since July 24.
Sarah and Isaac were kidnapped by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) while seeking to re-enter the US after a brief visit to Vancouver, where Sarah had accompanied her other two children to the airport for a flight to visit their grandparents in New Zealand.
The case is an example of the regime of terror that has been unleashed by the Trump administration against immigrants. Every day, thousands of people are being arrested, imprisoned, separated from their families and deported, including many who are legal US residents or even citizens.
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As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the fascistic assault on immigrants is aimed at scapegoating them for the deepening poverty and social inequality caused by the crisis of the capitalist system. The fight to defend immigrant workers, therefore, “can succeed only through the unified mobilization of the working class as a whole—black, white, native-born, immigrant, documented and undocumented alike,” as part of the fight for international socialism.
12. Fatalities in maritime industry show the urgent need for rank-and-file action
These incidents are only the tip of the iceberg. The global port and shipping network, which moves over 80 percent of the world’s traded goods, operates through a vast system of ships, terminals, warehouses and logistics hubs. Its apparent resilience to geopolitical shocks conceals an unrelenting human toll, borne daily by seafarers, dockworkers, truck drivers, and construction crews.
There is no global, real-time database for maritime and port workplace deaths. Reporting requirements vary wildly between jurisdictions, and multinational shipping corporations exploit these gaps to avoid scrutiny.
In many cases, deaths are simply categorized as “medical events” or “incidents under investigation” and disappear from the public record. The concealment is integral to a business model built on speed, minimal staffing, and maximum throughput.
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Fatalities in the sector are often blamed on what companies call the “human element”—fatigue, inadequate training, and procedural non-compliance. These terms obscure the underlying reality: workers are pushed beyond safe limits by economic pressures that prioritize profit over life. Long shifts, insufficient rest hours, and relentless “turnaround” schedules normalize corner-cutting. Training is truncated or skipped entirely to save time and labor costs.
A 2008 statement by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) admitted the essential point: the struggle for safety rules is fundamentally a struggle against these pressures. But in practice, even strong-sounding regulations are undermined by the economic dictatorship of the shipping and logistics giants with the collusion of the union bureaucracies.
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The hundreds of dockworker deaths are the result of a profit-driven regime in which the union bureaucracy is an integral part. On the U.S. coasts, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) in the East and Gulf and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in the West together cover more than 100,000 dockworkers.
ILA President Harold Daggett, who takes home over $1 million a year and who runs the union as his personal fiefdom with his son Dennis Daggett, personifies the degeneration of the unions into agencies of class collaboration. “America First” Trump supporters and militarists who backed the US airstrikes on Iran, the Daggetts and the ILA bureaucracy imposed a sellout contract after shutting down a three-day strike last year.
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The destruction of workplace safety in the maritime sector parallels a wider assault on worker protections across industries in the United States and internationally. On July 1, U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer (whose appointment was hailed by virtually the entire US union bureaucracy) announced the rollback of 63 worker protection measures, including an 8 percent cut to OSHA’s budget, the elimination of 223 staff, and a projected 10,000 fewer workplace inspections annually.
This bipartisan program of deregulation and pro-business policy leaves workers exposed to the most brutal consequences. The deaths of Stellantis autoworker Ronald Adams Sr., 19-year-old immigrant meatpacking worker Brayan Neftali Otoniel Canu Joj, seven killed in a fireworks warehouse explosion in Esparto, South Korean contractor Kim Jung Won at an LG Energy facility, and three killed in a Nebraska biofuel plant blast are all part of the same pattern: unsafe conditions, driven by the reckless pursuit of profit.
The Democrats no less than the Republicans bear responsibility. Under both parties, regulatory agencies have been gutted, oversight has been weakened, and unions have been integrated ever more tightly into corporate management.
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Workers internationally are beginning to form rank-and-file committees, independent of the unions and hostile to the corporate-state apparatus, as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
The fight for safety is inseparable from the fight against the capitalist system itself. These committees must take control over the immediate reporting and public disclosure of every workplace identified safety issue, death and serious injury; the establishment of a global, worker-controlled fatality register; comprehensive training for all new and existing hazards including green fuel handling; and the right to halt unsafe work without retaliation.
13. Supreme Court poised to revisit and potentially overturn marriage equality
A reactionary petition... seeks to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, threatening to strip hundreds of thousands of couples of legal protections and accelerating the bipartisan assault on democratic rights.
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The immediate implications would be substantial. Roughly 700,000 same-sex couples are currently married in the United States. Overnight, couples in large swaths of the country could see their marriages rendered void or unrecognized by their home states.
This would jeopardize a vast range of federal and state-based rights tied to marital status—including inheritance, joint adoption, parental rights, hospital visitation, tax benefits, and crucially, immigration status for binational couples. Many could face the forced separation of families, eviction from spousal health insurance plans, and the loss of legal protections in child custody disputes.
More fundamentally, a ruling in Davis’s favor, although unlikely according to most legal experts, would compromise the secular foundation of the state in favor of religious supremacy.
The attack on Obergefell is part of the same reactionary drive that culminated in the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturning Roe v. Wade. In that case, fundamental rights were stripped away by an unelected body acting as the political instrument of a capitalist oligarchy that increasingly dispenses with even the limited democratic protections of the past. As for anti-abortion “trigger laws,” they went into effect upon the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Like Roe, Obergefell rests on the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection and due process. Those same principles were the basis of Loving v. Virginia (1967), which struck down state bans on interracial marriage. Justice Clarence Thomas has already signaled in concurring opinions that he regards Obergefell—and by extension Loving—as wrongly decided, laying the groundwork for a frontal assault on both.
This is not merely a “social” or “cultural” issue. The assault on the rights of LGBTQ+ people is inseparable from a broader attack on the working class as a whole. The ruling class targets the most vulnerable layers first, testing methods of repression, creating legal precedents for the restriction of rights, and whipping up reactionary constituencies to divide workers along lines of sexuality, race, gender, and nationality.
The World Socialist Web Site warned in 2015 that the Davis case was used by reactionary forces as a way to drum up support from the Religious Right and that it was part of an attack on other fundamental rights. Reactionaries misuse the language of democratic rights as a way to restrict the rights of others, leading directly to the extreme Orwellian phrases echoed by today’s fascistic Trump regime.*****
Freedoms and rights fought for during the First American Revolution in 1776 and the Second American Revolution during the Civil War are all under attack. Now, as social inequality becomes increasingly incompatible with democratic rule, the same capitalist state that now threatens to eliminate marriage equality is simultaneously assaulting other basic rights.
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Religious obscurantism, deliberately cultivated by figures like Trump, is wielded as a political weapon to disorient and divide workers—despite the fact that these same forces are steeped in corruption and scandals, including their connections to Jeffrey Epstein’s vast network of sexual abuse.
The Democrats have proven entirely unwilling to mount any serious defense of these rights. Under Biden, Dobbs was handed down without any meaningful resistance. The administration had months between the leaked opinion and the official ruling to mobilize public opposition or push legislation to codify abortion rights—yet did nothing.
Their only legislative response to the threat against Obergefell was the Respect for Marriage Act, a toothless measure that does not prevent states from banning same-sex marriage but merely requires them to recognize marriages performed elsewhere.
14. CBO report: Trump’s Robin Hood-in-reverse law takes from the poor and gives to the rich
An analysis of Donald Trump’s tax and spending act issued Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirms that the measure, signed into law last month, transfers trillions of dollars in income from the poor to the wealthy.
In a letter responding to a request from top Democratic lawmakers for an analysis of the “distributive effects” of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the CBO reported that the top 10 percent of income earners will see an average annual increase of $13,600 over the next decade, representing a 2.7 percent rise in income. The gains will come primarily from the extension and expansion of the 2017 tax cut, enacted during Trump’s first term, which overwhelmingly benefits the super-rich. It is estimated that the top 0.1 percent will see an average income increase of 3.9 percent ($389,000) per year.
The lowest 10 percent of income earners will lose about $1,200 per year, a decrease of 3.1 percent in their average annual income of $39,464. Losses are due to cuts in social safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps), and new work requirements that will limit access to these benefits. This loss will impact the ability of low-income households to make rent or car note payments and plunge many into destitution.
Middle-income households can expect a modest annual resource increase between $800 and $1,200, according to the CBO.
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The Democrats carried out various maneuvers to stall passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” and voted against it, but have never called for mass protests, let alone strikes, to oppose its implementation. Like the Republicans, they are a party of the capitalist ruling class and its military-intelligence apparatus. The Democrats support brutal cuts in social programs to pay for ever-widening military aggression and to help offset US capitalism’s economic crisis. They offer no resistance to Trump’s moves to dictatorship, which they fear far less than the emergence of a movement of the working class against capitalism.
15. Sri Lankan army suspected over death of Tamil man in Mullaitivu
Last Friday evening, the body of 32-year-old Ethirmanasingham Kapilraj, a married man, was found floating in an irrigation tank (reservoir) at Muthaiyankattu village in the northern Mullaitivu district. His body bore scars and injuries, indicating that he had been brutally beaten.
Relatives and an eyewitness told the media that he had been captured and beaten by soldiers from the 63rd Division camp of the Sri Lanka Army in Muthaiyankattu.
This village is in the northern Vanni area, which was devastated during the final battles of the Sri Lankan military’s 26-year communalist war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. The occupying military maintains a large army camp near the Muthaiyankattu tank.
Kapilraj was among several young people who occasionally worked at the camp, sometimes receiving wages for jobs carried out there.
According to reports, five youths from the village were lured by some army soldiers to the camp on Friday evening with claims that they could collect and remove scrap metal from the site, which was being dismantled.
After entering the camp, the young men were surrounded by soldiers, who accused them of theft and began beating them with wooden and metal poles. Four of them managed to escape.
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When he did not return home, villagers searched for him throughout the night and returned to the army camp. The camp commander reportedly said that one man had jumped into the tank and suggested that searchers look for him there. Kapilraj’s body was recovered from the Muthaiyankattu tank the next day.
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The Sri Lankan military and police are notorious for such atrocities, particularly in the Northern and Eastern provinces, which have been under military occupation for nearly four decades. Arrests of young people, along with torture and killings, are frequently reported in these areas.
Even though the war ended in May 2009, over 100,000 army, navy and air force personnel remain stationed in large camps, with police and military intelligence units maintaining constant surveillance over the population.
16. United Kingdom: Labour doubles down on criminalizing opposition to Gaza genocide
Britain’s Labour government has insisted there will be no retreat from its onslaught on democratic rights following the mass arrests over the weekend of people opposing the proscription of the Palestine Action (PA).
The group was proscribed in early July under the Terrorism Act. The order makes it a criminal offense for a person to belong to, invite support for, recklessly express support for, or arrange a meeting in support of Palestine Action—all carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment. Wearing clothing or displaying an article that suggest support is punishable by up to six months in prison.
Since then over 700 peaceful protesters have been arrested mainly for holding up signs reading, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” Over 530 were arrested for this on Saturday alone in Parliament Square.
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For Starmer’s police state to be defeated a mass mobilisation in defense of democratic rights, rooted in the working class must be organized. Above all the working class must turn to the building of a new political party based on a socialist program and opposed to the entire rotten parliamentary political set-up.
The fight must be taken up for the demands outlined in this week’s statement by the Socialist Equality Party:
Organize meetings in your workplaces and neighborhoods to discuss these issues.
Propose and pass resolutions opposing the police crackdown and pledging to prepare coordinated action against it.
Oppose the trade union bureaucracy’s blocking working class action against the Gaza genocide and attacks on democratic rights.
17. Demand the freedom of Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site have initiated a global campaign to demand the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk. The fight for Bogdan’s freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
