The working class must oppose Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran!
During the past hour, Donald Trump has issued yet another threat against the people of Iran.
He has said, “an entire civilization will die tonight.”
This crime, if carried out, will implicate the United States in an act of absolutely monstrous dimensions, comparable only to the crimes committed by the Nazis during the Second World War.
Even at this late hour the working class throughout the world must declare its opposition to this monstrous crime. It must be stopped. It cannot be allowed to happen.
We declare our solidarity with the people of Iran. We will not allow this action to take place and for those who are responsible for it to go unpunished.
This is the responsibility of the working class, indeed it is the responsibility of all of humanity.
Other headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump sets Tuesday night deadline for the massive war crime against Iran
Last fall, a group of Democratic senators and representatives issued a video appeal to US military personnel, advising them of their responsibility not to obey illegal orders. But now that illegal orders are raining down from the White House and Pentagon, they have fallen silent. They have not told the military brass that a future Democratic administration will prosecute those responsible for war crimes, because that future administration would be engaged in its own imperialist schemes for which it will require the full services of the armed forces.
If Trump carries out his threats, today—April 7, 2026—will live in infamy. It will be remembered as one of the great crimes of the modern era. Whatever the next turn in the war, a line has been crossed. This war has demolished, for all time, the pretense that the United States is a democracy. It brands the Trump administration as an outlaw regime. It condemns the oligarchy as a ruling class that has outlived any historical justification. It must open up, in short, a period of social revolution.
One year ago today, Ronald Adams Sr. went to work and did not come home. The 63-year-old skilled trades worker—a machine repairman with 19 years at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Complex in Southeast Michigan—was performing maintenance on an industrial washer in the early morning hours of April 7, 2025, when an overhead gantry crane suddenly activated without warning, plunging down with massive force and crushing his upper torso. He was pronounced dead at Trinity Health Ann Arbor. He is survived by his wife, Shamenia Stewart-Adams, his children and his grandchildren.
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“A year has passed and no information has been provided to our family,” Shamenia Stewart-Adams told the WSWS. Her family, she said, is honoring Ronald’s memory—and “we will not stop demanding the truth.”
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According to the autopsy report, obtained by the WSWS through a Freedom of Information Act request, Adams sustained catastrophic injuries: 18 of his 24 ribs were broken, his sternum was crushed, he suffered spinal fractures, and roughly 20 percent of his blood volume was found in his lungs. A surgeon who reviewed the report told the WSWS that the trauma was comparable to injuries sustained in an airplane crash or a combat explosion. A 63-year-old man went to work to repair a machine and was killed as if on a battlefield.
The only serious investigation into the conditions that produced this death was carried out not by MIOSHA, nor by the UAW, nor by Stellantis, but by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), which presented its initial findings at a public hearing in Detroit on July 27, 2025. What that investigation uncovered was damning. Workers testified that management, with the acquiescence of the UAW, had circulated “cheater keys”—devices that trick safety gates into registering as closed, bypassing lockout/tagout (LOTO) protections entirely.
After Adams’ death, plant management ordered the keys returned, threatening workers with termination. Popcorn tins were placed around the plant to collect them. One tin outside the UAW local union office was reportedly half full. A former OSHA compliance officer who reviewed the findings told the WSWS that conditions at Dundee amounted to virtually no functioning lockout/tagout system—and that the scale of the violations approached criminal negligence.
Workers also reported that signs indicating lockout points on machines—known as placards—were never updated after the gantry was physically relocated within the plant. A worker could believe a machine was locked out when it was not. Meanwhile, contractors from Fives Cinetic, who programmed the washer and gantry system, and who could have examined its fault history and determined exactly what signal caused it to activate while Adams was inside, were never contacted by Stellantis, the UAW or MIOSHA. The control boards that held that data have since been restarted, and the information may be gone.
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Asked by the WSWS to explain why its investigation into the death of Ronald Adams Sr. remains incomplete after a full year, a MIOSHA spokesperson offered the following: “The length of time required to complete a fatality investigation can vary depending on the complexity of the case and the ability to obtain necessary information. In some instances, MIOSHA must pursue additional legal or administrative steps to obtain information, which can extend the timeline. These factors are outside of MIOSHA’s direct control.”
This statement requires plain translation. “Additional legal or administrative steps to obtain information” means that someone has refused to provide it voluntarily. MIOSHA has been compelled to seek compulsory disclosure—meaning that a party to this investigation, in all likelihood Stellantis or the UAW or both, has refused to cooperate through normal channels. The WSWS asked MIOSHA to specify the nature of the obstruction and to identify the parties responsible. A spokesman replied saying, “MIOSHA cannot comment on the specifics of an open investigation.” Letters were sent to both Stellantis and the UAW requesting comment. Neither responded.
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The death of Ronald Adams Sr. was not an isolated incident. His death is part of a pattern of eliminated safety guards, bypassed lockout procedures, accelerated production timelines, and the systematic subordination of workers’ lives to quarterly output targets.
Seven months before Adams was killed, 53-year-old Antonio Gaston was crushed to death on the assembly line at Stellantis’ Toledo Assembly Complex, with workers charging that the company had deliberately removed safety guarding from a conveyor, exposing workers to pinch points. OSHA eventually cited Stellantis for a serious safety violation and imposed a fine of $16,000—minutes of profit for a corporation of Stellantis’ scale. Stellantis appealed even that.
Gaston’s widow, Renita Shores-Gaston, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in August 2025, saying she still had not been told the truth about how her husband died. “It was the hardest day of my entire life to hear that news,” she said, “and then to have to call my children and tell them that their dad died at work.”
Less than three weeks ago, on March 16, 2026, Gregory Knopf—a 64-year-old plumber and pipe fitter at Ford Motor Company’s Sharonville Transmission Plant in Ohio—was killed when a press machine activated during routine maintenance and pinned him against equipment. His death bears a direct and grim resemblance to the death of Ronald Adams Sr.: a skilled tradesman, performing maintenance, killed by machinery that should have been locked out.
Knopf is survived by his wife, three children, and eight grandchildren. His daughter Miranda remembered him as selfless. His son Corey called him the best man he knew.
Shamenia Stewart-Adams, on this first anniversary of her husband’s death, said she extends her solidarity and deepest sympathy to Renita Shores-Gaston and to the family of Gregory Knopf. “I don’t want this to happen to another family. No wife should be left without answers. No child should grow up without knowing why their father did not come home.”
She concluded, “I encourage workers not to be afraid to speak out and stand up to defend the lives and you and your co-workers. I especially appeal to workers at the Dundee plant to come forward with information about the conditions in the factory.
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Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker running for UAW president, issued the following statement marking the first anniversary of the death of Ronald Adams Sr.:
One year ago, Ronald Adams Sr. was killed because the safety systems designed to protect him had been systematically dismantled—with cheater keys, incorrect placards, bypassed lockout procedures—and the union that was supposed to represent him stood by and said nothing. Today, MIOSHA has still not released its investigation results. Stellantis and the UAW refused to answer questions from Adams’ family and co-workers. That is not a coincidence. That is a cover-up—and it must end now. I am calling for the immediate and unconditional release of the MIOSHA investigation results, and for the full disclosure of every act of obstruction by Stellantis and by the UAW that has delayed this investigation for twelve months.
But the deaths of Ronald Adams Sr., Antonio Gaston, and Gregory Knopf make something else absolutely clear. We cannot wait for Stellantis to act. We cannot wait for the UAW bureaucracy to act. We cannot wait for MIOSHA. Every day workers remain dependent on a union apparatus that enforces management's production dictates rather than protecting our lives, more workers will be killed. The only answer is for workers on every shop floor to build rank-and-file safety committees—democratically controlled, answerable to workers ourselves and not to management, with the real power to halt production over unsafe conditions and the authority to conduct our own independent investigations. Workers must assert control over safety and production ourselves. No one else will do it for us.
For a full year, the UAW bureaucracy under Shawn Fain has issued no public demand for accountability from Stellantis over the death of Ronald Adams Sr. It has made no public demand of MIOSHA. It moved as quickly as possible to resume full production at Dundee Engine. The plant now runs three shifts, producing engines on the site where Adams was killed, with UAW approval.
These deaths are not accidents. They are the predictable, measurable product of the capitalist system. The US Department of Labor reported that 5,070 workers were killed on the job in 2024. That figure itself vastly understates the true toll, as it excludes most deaths from occupational illness—the AFL-CIO estimates that workplace disease claims an additional 135,000 lives annually. Across American industry, roughly 15 workers die on the job every single day.
Our lives are sacrificed for corporate profit, and the institutions that are supposed to protect us—the unions, the regulatory agencies, and the corporations themselves—participate in the cover-up when things go wrong. Now Trump makes the agenda plain: gut OSHA, defund every protection workers have, and pour the money into war. This slaughter must stop. Workers must stop it. The life of Ronald Adams Sr. demands it. The lives of every worker who will go to work tomorrow demand it.
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The killing of Ronald Adams Sr. did not occur in a vacuum. For decades, Democrats and Republicans alike have overseen the gutting of workplace protections while handing endless sums to the rich and expanding the machinery of war. Under the Trump administration this class policy has entered a new and more openly ruthless stage.
Since taking office, the administration has moved to destroy what remains of even minimal federal protections for workers. It has frozen new rulemaking—including a proposed heat illness and injury prevention standard—slashed inspection staffing to historically low levels, and rolled out the so-called “OSHA Cares” program, replacing enforcement and penalties with “voluntary compliance” by employers.
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Just days ago, Trump’s FY2027 budget request proposed $1.5 trillion for military spending—a 40 percent increase over already record Pentagon outlays, and the largest such request in modern history—arriving as the administration wages war against Iran. To finance it, the administration proposes $73 billion in cuts to domestic programs, including further reductions to an already eviscerated OSHA, cuts to housing, health care and education, and the explicit targeting of core social programs.
At a closed Easter lunch last week, Trump stated with blunt clarity: “Don’t send any money for day care. … We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care,” and went further: “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare. … We have to take care of one thing: military protection.” The logic is undisguised: every dollar that might fund a safety inspector, a heat standard or a lockout/tagout enforcement action—every protection that might have kept Ronald Adams Sr. alive—is to be redirected to feed the war machine. Workers are to be sacrificed twice: first on the shop floor, then on the battlefield.
Ronald Adams Sr. was a husband, father and grandfather. He was a skilled tradesman who worked at Dundee for 19 years, who knew machines, who cared about safety, who was respected by coworkers and loved by his family. He went to work in the early hours of April 7, 2025 and was killed because a corporation treated his life as expendable, because a union bureaucracy treated his death as an inconvenience, and because a regulatory apparatus—shaped by the priorities of corporate-controlled parties—bows to the dictates of profit.
Adams’ family is still waiting. They deserve the truth. So do the workers who will go to work today at Dundee, at Toledo, at Sharonville and at every plant in America and around the world where the same conditions exist and the same catastrophe waits.
The defense of workers’ lives cannot be left to the parties of big business or the agencies they oversee. It requires a political struggle for a society organized around social need and the rights of the working class—including the most basic right of all: the right to life, health and a safe workplace.
3. United Kingdom: Labour’s Universal Credit Act set to throw hundreds of thousands into deeper poverty
Hundreds of thousands of people who rely on disability benefits will be thrown into deeper poverty from April 6, as the Starmer Labour government’s Universal Credit Act (2025) comes into force.
Universal Credit is Britain’s main welfare benefit system, combining financial support for housing, children, and disability into one monthly payment.
The new rules for claiming Universal Credit Limited Capability for Work Related Activity (UC LCWRA) will affect those with the most severe forms of disability. They will now enter a two-tier system that penalizes those with chronic conditions, with eligibility based on the date they applied for the benefit, and not the nature of their condition.
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Most new claimants will see their extra payment cut, reducing their additional monthly benefit from the current £432 to £217.
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The cuts to welfare are part of a broader ruling class offensive. Labour’s budget priorities are for a massive increase in military spending to fund war and rearmament, tax breaks and privatization drives. The disabled, sick and the working class will bear the brunt of a new period of war escalation through the gutting of social services that millions rely on.
Despite efforts to normalize attacks on the disabled and those dependent on benefits by the Labour government, public opposition has forced repeated U-turns on attacking pensioners, capping child benefits and attacks on PIP. There is deeply felt hostility to targeting the most vulnerable. But Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves are proceeding with their offensive. The emergence of strikes by National Health Service staff, educators, and rail and transport workers against below inflation pay rises and privatization, coupled with mass demonstrations against war, shows the basis for a unified and organized fightback by the working class.
Workers must demand the immediate restoration of benefits, and the necessary funding made available for comprehensive, publicly provided health and social care, the repeal of the DWP’s brutal disability assessment regimes and the reallocation of spending from rearmament and corporate handouts to social need.
US War Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday, March 29, outlined a new strategic doctrine dubbed “Greater North America,” explicitly redefining the Western Hemisphere as an exclusive US security perimeter under President Donald Trump’s leadership.
Speaking at the US Southern Command headquarters in Doral, Florida, Hegseth declared that “every sovereign nation and territory north of the equator, from Greenland to Ecuador and from Alaska to Guyana,” falls within this “immediate security perimeter” of the United States.
This announcement was coupled with the State Department’s call last week for a June or July conference of allied governments to coordinate intelligence sharing and operations against leftist organizations under the banner of fighting “Antifa.” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed a task force “to focus on the threat posed by Antifa,” signaling domestic repression fused with hemispheric domination.
This doctrine amounts to the Monroe Doctrine on steroids—a preemptive blueprint for hemispheric recolonization and US-backed police state regimes aimed at crushing imminent social explosions fueled by skyrocketing gas, fertilizer and food prices driven by the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran.
While Hitler invoked the fight against Bolshevism to justify subjugating Europe, Trump and Hegseth demand the Americas unite as “Christian nations under God” against “radical narco-communism.”
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The timing is no coincidence. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has unleashed what analysts have called a “financial bomb” across import-dependent Latin America, with oil prices surging as much as 75 percent in countries like Peru amid currency devaluations against the dollar.
Fertilizer costs, critical for the region’s massive agro-export economies in countries like Brazil, Argentina and Chile, have jumped 30 percent since late February, with urea—the most widely used fertilizer—up 74.67 percent due to the war.
These shocks recall the 1970s oil crisis, which ignited two of Latin America’s largest mass movements: the 1978-80 Brazilian strikes involving over 100,000 metalworkers that nearly toppled the military dictatorship, and the revolutionary movements against US-backed dictators across Central America.
Hegseth’s vision explicitly continues Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” coalition of far-right Latin American regimes, launched in early March. The World Socialist Web Site has described this as a modern Operation Condor—a CIA-orchestrated network of military dictatorships that coordinated repression and coups across the continent in the 1970s and 1980s.
This counterrevolutionary program is already in motion. Venezuela has been transformed into a US protectorate following the January 3 operation that ousted Nicolás Maduro, handing its oil riches to Chevron and Shell. Cuba faces strangulation through a fuel blockade, as Trump openly threatens that “Cuba’s next” for military action. US forces have bombed small fishing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing 163 men in what Pentagon sources call “preemptive strikes” against drug smuggling. In Ecuador, recent joint military operations with the Pentagon have involved torturing agricultural workers and burning small farmers’ homes under the pretext of fighting narcoterrorism. Threats to invade and bomb Mexico, annex Greenland, seize the Panama Canal and even absorb Canada have escalated, alongside endorsements of far-right regimes in Honduras, Argentina, Costa Rica and Chile.
The White House earlier this year lionized the 1846-48 Mexican-American War—during which the US stole half of Mexico’s territory to expand slavery—framing it as a guiding precedent for today.
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The new strategic aim, rooted in lessons from the 1970s oil crises, is to crush any repetition of mass uprisings that could challenge imperialist control over key minerals, resources and access to cheap labor. Hegseth’s framework builds on initiatives from Trump’s first term, such as the 2017 Atlantic Council report on the “Alliance for Prosperity” in Central America, co-chaired by war criminal John Negroponte and presented by Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly. It emphasized “public-private supply chain security” for physical goods transport—code for militarizing cheap-labor corridors across North, Central and South America to secure them for war production against China and Russia, while undercutting ostensible European “allies.”
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During a World Socialist Web Site May Day online event in 2019, Bill Van Auken stressed the “domestic component to the waving of the sullied flag of the Monroe Doctrine” by the first Trump administration, aimed at promoting fascism and a police state within the US itself. The entire US foreign policy establishment—from Democrats to Republicans—backs this hemispheric Anschluss. The New York Times and Washington Post have cheered the Venezuela operation, the Cuban blockade and the “Shield of the Americas.”
This is not mere rhetoric. It is the first stage of World War III, fusing the Ukraine war, the Gaza and now Iranian genocides, hemispheric subjugation and dictatorship at home, into a single counterrevolutionary offensive.
Trump’s offhand remark at an investors’ forum last week—“I built this great military. I said you will never have to use it but sometimes you’ll have to use it. And Cuba’s next by the way. But pretend I didn’t say that please”—reveals the casual normalization of aggression.
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The working class, objectively united in transnational production chains, confronts common enemies: Wall Street banks, transnational corporations, US imperialism and Latin America’s national oligarchies. As Van Auken concluded in 2019, “the working class ... can find a way forward only through the conscious unification of US and Latin American workers in struggle to defeat their common enemies.”
From the JBS meatpackers’ strike in Greeley, Colorado, to GM Silao and Tornel in Mexico, from Chilean pot-bangers to Argentine tire workers and Brazilian metalworkers, the objective basis exists for an international counteroffensive. Rank-and-file committees, independent of all pro-capitalist unions, must coordinate across borders to defend jobs, crush the war drive and expropriate all major corporations.
The alternative is dictatorship and recolonization. The Greater North America doctrine is a declaration of war on the working class of the hemisphere. The response must be a unified socialist movement to abolish the profit system that breeds it, establishing the United Socialist States of the Americas.
Germany’s Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer is pursuing his rampage against freedom of art and expression. The Office of the Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM) has announced a new measure to sharply intensify censorship. According to Weimer’s instructions, all members of juries in the field of cultural funding are to be recorded in lists to be handed over to the government.
Apparently, this measure is intended to enable a comprehensive review of juries by the Verfassungsschutz using the controversial Haber method, in order to purge juries in a timely manner before they decide on cultural funding measures that do not align with Germany’s “national interest.” Such a selection of juries would, under certain circumstances, make it unnecessary to reverse awards, scholarships or funding decisions after they have been made—with the involvement of the Verfassungsshutz —as was recently the case with the German Bookstore Prize.
Since Weimer’s censorship measures in regard to the Berlinale and the Bookstore Prize, calls for his resignation or dismissal have been mounting. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Claudius Seidel justifies such calls by arguing that Weimer is not up to the task, because he understands too little about culture or is simply overwhelmed. In fact, Weimer’s course is in alignment with the reactionary, anti-democratic concept the ruling CDU/SPD government (a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union CDU, Christian Social Union CSU and Social Democratic Party SPD) has assigned to cultural policy.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz has confirmed this. Weimer’s actions meet with “broad approval” not only from him but also “across the entire cultural and media sector,” though “not from everyone and not at all times,” Merz claimed. Weimer is fulfilling the task for which he was appointed, i.e., enforcing a backward-looking policy and eradicating left-wing tendencies in the cultural sector.
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Another of Weimer’s recent actions has also caused outrage. He intends to halt the planned expansion of the German National Library in Leipzig. The National Library is the country’s central archival library and national bibliographic centre. It is legally obligated to store, preserve and protect all German and German-language publications—both in print and digitally—with the support of the federal government.
The planned storage facility at Deutscher Platz in Leipzig was intended to serve the long-term archiving of the National Library’s holdings. Designed as a highly functional and climate-controlled repository, it was intended to ensure the secure storage of approximately 35.5 million media works for about 30 years.
Weimer justified halting the project by arguing that the collection of physical media works was no longer appropriate for the foreseeable future; the National Library should focus more on its digital collection.
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While the legal battle surrounding the Bookstore Prize and the debate over the National Library were still ongoing, a new front opened up for the Minister of State: the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial.
Two Buchenwald associations have issued an open letter calling on Weimer to refrain from appearing at the commemoration of the liberation of the concentration camp on April 12. The letter was signed by the chairpersons of the Buchenwald-Dora Camp Working Group and the Buchenwald Camp Community, Katinka Poensgen and Horst Gobrecht.
The letter accuses Weimer of failing to engage positively with the legacy of the survivors of Buchenwald and other camps. Among other things, it cites Weimer’s repeated misuse of a quote by Heinrich Heine as evidence of his lack of understanding.
The famous Jewish-born German writer Heine (1797–1856) had allowed himself to be baptized as a Lutheran so he could practice law after passing his bar exam, which was forbidden for Jews at the time. He commented on this with the words: “The baptismal certificate is the ticket to European culture.” As is well known, Heine abandoned this plan, chose the profession of a writer (becoming a friend of Karl Marx in the process) and later regretted having been baptized.
Weimer, however, turns Heine’s scathing indictment of the oppression and exclusion of Jews upside down, claiming that Christianity, the “baptismal certificate,” is the true and sole foundation of European culture.
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The Weimer Media Group’s business model is based on brokering contacts with political decision-makers for large sums of money. For instance, it organizes the Ludwig Ehrhard Summit every year at Gut Kaltenbrunn on Lake Tegernsee and awards the “Media Freedom Prize” there. Participation comes at a cost: €1,000 to €3,000 for regular attendees, and between €20,000 and €100,000 for partner companies to participate in panel discussions.
For these hefty sums, participants gain exclusive access to high-ranking politicians or other prominent figures who can advance their careers or economic success.
Politically, Weimer’s views certainly overlap with those of the far-right Alternative for Germany, AfD. For instance, he has criticized what he considers Germany’s overly lax migration and integration policies as “a form of reparations through cultural self-destruction.” He referred to the basic income security benefits as “migrant money.” He has also cast doubt on whether climate change is manmade and railed against “compulsory fees” for public broadcasting.
6. Fortress Europe claims 70 more migrant lives in mass drowning in the Mediterranean
The European Union’s (EU) murderous anti-immigration agenda claimed the lives of scores more people over the last week.
On Saturday, at least 70 migrants died in the Mediterranean Sea after their boat capsized off the coast of Libya. Only 32 survived on the small wooden vessel that was filled with at least 100 people who left Libya hoping to enter Europe. Those who survived said they were rescued not by any coastguard, but by a commercial ship which took them to the island of Lampedusa.
There is no end to the grotesque suffering faced by desperate migrants attempting the perilous journey across the Med.
In the early hours of April 1, the Italian coast guard recovered 19 bodies from a migrant boat adrift around 85 miles off Lampedusa. 58 people were rescued but five were reported to be in critical condition. A spokesperson for Doctors without Borders (MSF) and the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said they appeared to have died of hypothermia.
Survivors said that after their boat broke down, they were drifting for several days in severe weather. The boat left western Libya around March 30, containing migrants from African countries including Sudan, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Nigeria, Ghana, and Ethiopia.
Europe’s governments have all but ceased monitoring and assisting small boats attempting the crossing. This task is largely being carried out by a few charities run by volunteers such as Sea-Watch. The organization said a recent surge had seen at least 100 deaths in just the three days to April 1. Among these were another 19 victims of hypothermia, including a baby, that drowned when their inflatable boat capsized off western Turkey on April 1. According to Deutsche Welle, 21 were rescued.
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Vast numbers of deaths take place after boats leave Libya headed for Europe, as its ports operate as transit points for refugees fleeing Asia, the Middle East and Africa—leaving behind home countries devastated by imperialist war and grinding poverty. Those who manage to escape the shores of Libya represent a small minority. Fully 70 percent of the world’s refugees never get further than a neighbouring state, with most contained in hellish conditions in slums and refugee camps throughout Africa and Asia.
Libya is nothing more than a massive dungeon for refugees, paid for by the European Union. In February, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya and Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a harrowing report noting: “Across the country, migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees are forcibly rounded up, abducted, separated from their families, arbitrarily arrested and detained, and transferred without due process – often at gunpoint – to official, unofficial, or illegal detention facilities. There, they endure prolonged detention and are coerced through torture and inhumane treatment into paying for their release.”
The most recent Mediterranean deaths are part of a gruesome toll, making 2026 the “deadliest start to a year” since 2014, when the IOM began to record this data.
That assessment was made on February 23, by which point at least 606 people had already been reported dead or missing trying to reach Europe. The IOM updated the death toll to 683 on April 5.
Such figures underestimate the actual death toll in the Med. Over the past year, there have been reports of hundreds more missing at sea that cannot yet be verified. In just two weeks in February, 23 human remains were washed up on southern Italian and Libyan coasts not associated with any reported sinking.
According to the IOM’s Missing Migrants dataset, a staggering 34,570 refugees have lost their lives in the Mediterranean since 2014.
The rising toll of mass deaths is the inevitable result of the “Fortress Europe” policy enacted by the continent’s major imperialist powers for more than a decade.
Anti-immigrant policies once associated with the far-right have been adopted by parties of the ruling class, whether nominally conservative or social democrat. Fascistic forces spewing xenophobia and scapegoating asylum seekers for all social ills—such as Italy’s Mussolini-admiring Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen in France, the Alternative for Germany, and Reform UK—are all now part of mainstream bourgeois politics.
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Europe’s onslaught on immigrants and asylum seekers is one foul expression of a global process. Everywhere, impoverished migrants face closed borders and state-sanctioned demonization designed to divert social anger over poverty, unemployment and cuts in vital social services away from the super-rich oligarchy despoiling the planet.
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Workers and youth must not allow this brutality against asylum seekers and migrants to continue. It is the spearhead of a right-wing assault—led by fascist and far-right forces—aimed at the destruction of the social position of the entire working class, and the bitter product of wars that threaten the destruction of humanity.
“Fortress Europe” must be torn down and replaced by the United Socialist States of Europe, with the defense of immigrants, migrants and asylum seekers a clarion call in this struggle. This is conceivable only as part of a unified struggle by the international working class to end the division of a global economy into antagonistic nation states based on the private ownership of the essential means of production, which the root cause of wars, economic exploitation and oppression and the destruction of democratic rights.
7. After our contract rejection we must strike Nexteer to win our demands!
Last week, workers at Nexteer Automotive in Saginaw, Michigan, voted by more than 96 percent to reject a concessions contract pushed by United Auto Workers Local 699 and the UAW International. In the days since, UAW officials have kept 1,300 workers at the key auto parts supplier on the job despite the massive no vote and expiration of their five-year agreement in mid-March.
The following is a statement from the Nexteer Rank-and-File Committee:
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
We have rejected the UAW-backed sellout contract—by 96.2 percent. This near-unanimous vote is a powerful statement of unity and determination by workers in every department, tier and age group. We rejected a deal that expands tiers, locks newer hires into poverty wages and raises healthcare costs, while Nexteer and the big automakers continue to profit from our labor.
With one voice, we are saying: We will not accept anymore sellout deals from the UAW International and their toadies in the Local 699 leadership! Now we must decide what comes next—and we must do it on our terms, not theirs. A “no” vote is only the beginning. If the same officials who brought this agreement back from closed-door “negotiations” remain in control, they will do what they always do: stall, delay and try to force revotes until they get the outcome they want.
We cannot leave power in their hands. Workers must enforce the principle of “no contract, no work” and prepare strike action now. Any delay will only give management the opportunity to stockpile parts and time to prepare its strikebreaking plans.
The most dangerous illusion we could have is that the rejection of the sellout contract will convince UAW officials to bring back something better. Their contract surveys are for show only. UAW President Shawn Fain and Local 699 officials know exactly what we want—but they are opposed to our demands because they cut across their cozy relations with the corporate bosses.
Everything depends on what we, the rank-and-file workers on the shop floor, do. We are forming the Nexteer Rank-and-File Committee to outline the concrete steps to put workers in control of the struggle. This is what we demand:
- Hold a mass membership meeting now to vote for an immediate strike. The membership has spoken. We must enforce the will of the membership by preparing for strike action now. Nexteer and the Big Three automakers behind them will not make any concessions unless we use our collective power, halt production and cut off the source of their profits.
- Double strike pay to $1,000 a week to ensure we have sufficient resources to sustain our fight. The UAW’s nearly $1 billion strike and defense fund, financed through our dues money, belongs to the membership, not to the highly paid bureaucrats.
- Remove the Bargaining Committee that brought back this pro-company contract. Elect a rank-and-file committee, consisting of the most militant and trusted workers, to oversee bargaining and fight for our non-negotiable demands, including the abolition of all tiers, fully paid pensions, healthcare benefits and inflation-busting wage increases and COLA for all.
- Full transparency—Release all information. Every proposal, company demand and bargaining update must be reported to the membership in real time. No secrecy, no backroom deals.
- Mass meetings and democratic oversight. Decisions must be made in regular membership meetings where workers can discuss, propose demands and vote. No intimidation, no pressure, no union bureaucrats hovering at the voting site.
- No return to “vote first, read later.” No tentative agreement should be brought back without the full text distributed in advance, with a full week for members to study, discuss and vote on it. Rank-and-file oversight of the ratification process to ensure the integrity of the vote.
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The Rank-and-File Committee proposes the following minimum demands for a contract workers can accept—demands that should be discussed, expanded and voted on by the membership:
- Abolish all tiers—Equal pay and benefits for equal work.
- Major wage increases for all and COLA to keep up with inflation—No more stagnation while executives enrich themselves.
- A real living starting wage and a sharply reduced progression to top pay.
- Affordable healthcare for every worker and family—No premium hikes, no doubled weekly contributions.
- Enforceable limits on overtime and scheduling abuse, including binding notice requirements (ending contract violations like the “ninth hour” manipulation).
- Job security and anti-outsourcing protections—Full transparency and the right to oppose shifting work to lower-wage operations.
- Real grievance rights with enforcement, not a toothless process where the company faces no consequences.
- Workers’ control over safety and staffing, with elected rank-and-file safety reps empowered to halt unsafe work.
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We understand that Nexteer will threaten to shift production to lower wage countries if we strike. That is why the Nexteer Rank-and-File Committee fights to link up with workers in Mexico, Canada, Poland and everywhere Nexteer operates. We all face the same corporate bosses and have the same interests.
We have taken an important first step. Now we must organize our power—democratically and independently—to win the contract we need and deserve. Join the Nexteer Rank-and-File Committee, help build communication across shifts and departments, and prepare for a real fight for workers’ power.
8. Minneapolis shooting video exposes ICE lies, frame-up of Venezuelan immigrants
Newly released government camera footage has demolished the official account used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI and the Trump administration to justify the January 14 shooting of Julio C. Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the felony prosecution of Sosa-Celis and Alfredo A. Aljorna.The shooting of Sosa-Celis took place at the height of the federal occupation of the Twin Cities by federal immigration agents. It occurred one week after ICE thug Jonathan Ross murdered Renée Nicole Good on January 7, and it would end up being the second of three shootings conducted by federal agents that month in the city. The third was the murder of Alex Pretti on January 24. The shootings provoked mass protests from Minnesota residents on January 23 and January 30.
The New York Times and local outlets obtained the video and published it Monday. The tape, which does not include audio, directly contradicts the ICE agent’s claim that he was beaten by three men wielding a shovel and broom for roughly three minutes before opening fire. Instead, the confrontation shown in the footage lasts about 12 seconds, shows only two men struggling with the agent, and shows no sustained attack with a shovel.
The reason the street camera was pointed in that direction in the first place was because Valentina Tiapa, Alfredo A. Aljorna’s partner, called 911 after Aljorna told her ICE agents were chasing him on Interstate 94 and appeared to be trying to cause a collision. Begging the dispatcher for Minneapolis police to intervene, Tiapa said through an interpreter, “They are coming” and “They are just five minutes away.” The city camera that later captured the shooting was positioned at the nearby intersection, recording the route of the chase as it came off the highway and onto their block.
The report exposes not only the lies of the agents involved, but the criminal character of the entire federal operation. The federal government had access to the city-owned camera footage within hours of the shooting, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told the Times. Yet prosecutors filed felony charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna without watching the video, relying instead on an ICE agent’s statement and an FBI agent’s affidavit describing the footage. Nearly three weeks passed before a prosecutor actually viewed the recording, by which point the government’s case was already collapsing.
The two Venezuelan men were jailed and prosecuted on the basis of a narrative the government either knew was false or made no serious effort to verify. The U.S. Attorney’s office moved to dismiss the charges only days before the deadline to secure a grand jury indictment, cynically describing the footage as “newly discovered evidence,” even though authorities had possessed it from the beginning.
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While Sosa-Celis was not seriously injured after being shot, workers and young people continue to die at alarming rates inside ICE custody. On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Democrats reported that another person has died in ICE custody, bringing the number of deaths this year to 15 and to more than 45 since Trump took office again. This mounting toll is the foreseeable outcome of a fascistic system built on overcrowding, medical neglect, abuse and profit.
Over the weekend, the funeral for Royer Perez Jimenez, a 19-year-old Mexican immigrant from Chiapas who died on March 16 in ICE custody in Florida, was held. Speaking to CBS, Jimenez’s family denounced the charges that led to his detention as fabricated, insisting he had been confused during his arrest because he did not speak English fluently. His uncle, Manuel Perez, declared, “He was unjustly accused as a criminal. ... They fabricated a crime.”
As in Minneapolis, the government has advanced an account that serves only to shield itself from responsibility. ICE claims Jimenez died of an apparent suicide, but the official cause remains under investigation, and the family categorically disputes that version, demanding a full inquiry and stating that they suspect homicide. In their announcement on Jimenez’s death, ICE noted that he had been screened by medical staff and answered “no” to all suicide-risk questions when he entered the detention center.
While Democrats periodically denounce the worst outrages, they do not fundamentally oppose these attacks on immigrants, which are being used to destroy the democratic rights of the entire working class and establish a presidential dictatorship. Last month, New York Senator Chuck Schumer boasted that Senate Democrats had secured a deal to fund TSA, FEMA and other DHS functions and that Democrats would continue fighting for “serious reforms” at ICE, not for its abolition, which is supported by a majority of self-identified Democrats.
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The defense of immigrants, democratic rights and the lives of all workers requires the abolition of ICE and the entire apparatus of repression. That task cannot be entrusted to either capitalist party. It falls to the working class, immigrant and native-born alike, united across borders in a common struggle against the ruling class and the capitalist system.
9. Concerns over private credit deepen as war on Iran intensifies
Concerns about the stability of private credit and its potential for triggering a financial crisis via its connections to insurance companies has reached the top level of the US financial system.
Last week the US Treasury announced that it would initiate a series of meetings with domestic and international insurance regulators starting this month and continuing into the summer. This would “allow participants to survey recent market events, emerging risks, risk management practices and outlooks for the sector.”
Central to the concerns in the Treasury is the rapid, largely opaque and unregulated growth of private credit and its intertwining with insurance companies, which have turned to private credit to try to boost their returns, as well as with banks which have financed them.
The head of JP Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, who last October warned of “cockroaches” in the financial system following the failure of two companies backed by private credit, has again pointed to emerging dangers in his annual letter to shareholders issued yesterday.
“I do believe that when we have a credit cycle, which will happen one day, losses on all leveraged lending in general will be higher than expected, relative to the environment,” he wrote. He said inflation could lead to a rise in interest rates, which would act “like gravity” on almost all asset prices, leading to a “flight to cash.”
The rise and rise of private credit is one of the most significant changes in the financial landscape since the 2008 global financial crisis. The global private credit market has expanded from around $500 billion in 2008 to about $3.5 trillion today.
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The financial risks arising from the explosive growth of private credit have now increased with the US war on Iran and its flow-on effects through inflation not only in oil but across commodity markets, pressures on already stretched government finances and the prospect of interest rate rises, according to a report by the Bank of England (BoE) at the start of the month.
The report of the central bank’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) said while the financial system had been resilient so far, the shock of the war “will weigh on growth, increase inflation and tighten financial conditions.”
“This is likely to interact with vulnerabilities previously identified by the FPC in sovereign debt markets, risky asset valuations and risky credit markets, notably in private credit.”
It noted that many sovereign debt markets, where government bonds are bought and sold, have been “characterized by a relatively high use of leverage by a small number of hedge funds pursing similar strategies across jurisdictions.”
The similarity of the strategies employed meant that all the heavily involved hedge funds react in the same way to an adverse event increasing the risk of what the BoE report called a “disorderly unwind of positions causing a jump to illiquidity in core markets.”
This is what happened in the freeze of the US Treasury market in March 2020 when no buyers could be found for US bonds for a number of days requiring a massive intervention by the US Federal Reserve to the tune of around $4 trillion.
The report made clear that because of the interconnectedness of financial markets and the involvement of a small number of major hedge funds a crisis could start anywhere and then spread everywhere.
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On the issue of AI, the report noted that it had the potential to raise productivity and promote long-term economic growth but pointed out that valuations for US technology companies focused on AI remained “particularly stretched.” What it called “AI repricing,” that is a fall in the market valuation of these companies, “could transmit widely throughout the financial system and impact the real economy.”
“The conflict in the Middle East posed additional threats to AI company valuations, given the energy-intensive nature of the supply chain for key components and the operation of data centers. In addition, supply chain disruption for key input chemical elements and materials could similarly act as a bottleneck on the buildout of infrastructure capacity.”
The report highlighted the extent of growth of private credit markets and warned that they had not been tested by “macroeconomic stress at their current stage.”
It said concerns about “opacity, valuation methodologies and asset quality deterioration amplified by structural liquidity mismatch [a reference to the desire by investors to have short-term access to their funds which are tied up in long-term investments], were central to recent redemption episodes.”
The report concluded that the UK banking system and by implication that of other major economies had the capacity to support households and businesses “even if economic and financial conditions were to be substantially worse than expected.”
But as the saying goes: They would say that wouldn’t they.
10. Historical issues in Supreme Court argument on birthright citizenship
Last week’s oral argument on Trump’s executive order to revoke birthright citizenship raised historical questions dating back to the Civil War on whether the offspring of immigrants have full citizenship rights.
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D. John Sauer, who as Trump’s personal attorney argued for immunity in the attempted coup of January 6, 2021, defended the order as U.S. Solicitor General. Trump attended—a first for a sitting president—glaring with his arms crossed like a Mafia boss trying to intimidate a turncoat witness. He left during the hearing, after Sauer was sliced and diced, including by several of the right-wing justices.
Trump then posted, “Kangaroo court!!” and, falsely, that “We’re the only Country in the World Stupid enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” There are at least 30 others, including Canada and Mexico.
Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified three years after the Civil War. It states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
The Citizenship Clause ingrains jus soli into the Constitution, that all persons born on US soil are vested with equal citizenship, in contrast to the hereditary rights of jus sanguinis, citizenship by blood, the reactionary conception still in use by European capitalism, Middle Eastern monarchies and much of the rest of the world to deny immigrants and their offspring rights of equal citizenship, thus creating an oppressed caste of workers for increased exploitation.
Trump’s executive order is based on a novel theory that children born in the US to non-citizen parents are not subject to federal jurisdiction, an absurdity that would strip millions of their US citizenship.
The jurisdictional exception has only been applied to offspring of foreign diplomats, who inhabit a jurisdictional bubble when in the US and, prior to the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, certain Native Americans.
Trump’s crude and ignorant assertion that the Citizenship Clause protects “the babies of slaves,” but not immigrants, is based on the Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford that people of African descent imported as slaves cannot be US citizens. During the run-up to the Civil War, however, official discrimination extended to the waves of European immigrants. Representatives of the Know Nothing Party enacted state laws barring them from government employment and imposing other legal disabilities.
During the Civil War, those same immigrants, many whose families fled the defeats of the 1848 democratic revolutions in Europe, enlisted in the Union Army. One example is Patrick Henry “Paddy” O’Rorke, born in Ireland but named after the Revolutionary War hero. Rising to the rank of colonel, he died at Gettysburg leading the 140th New York Regiment, comprised largely of immigrants, in defense of the key Union position on Little Round Top, fighting next to the 20th Maine regiment led by Joshua Chamberlain.
Given this historical background, the Supreme Court in 1898 emphatically rejected any contention that the Citizenship Clause applied only to “babies of slaves,” ruling in favor of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese nationals, traveled abroad and then was denied reentry to the United States.
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The argument by ACLU National Legal Director Cecillia Wang, who represents a class of children and families affected by Trump’s executive order, went smoothly, suggesting sympathy among most justices.
The exception was Alito. A supposed “textualist,” he found the Citizenship Clause undecipherable, telling Wang, “‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ is like the puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery.”
“A boy is born here to an Iranian father who has entered the country illegally,” Alito continued. “That boy is automatically an Iranian national at birth, and he has a duty to provide military service to the Iranian government. Is he not subject to any foreign power?” Alito asked.
Wang responded, “Again, Justice Alito, that would have meant that the children of Irish, Italian, and other immigrants, to which Wong Kim Ark refers … would not have been citizens either because, if the only test is whether that US-born child is considered a citizen by another country under their jus sanguinis laws, then no foreign national’s children would be included in citizenship.”
Wang ended her argument with a ringing endorsement of the democratic principles at stake, explaining that the Citizenship Clause’s framers rejected concerns that the offspring of immigrants “characterized as invaders, trespassers, and-law breakers” will become birthright citizens “without regard to parentage.”
Wang pointed out that when the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted, “there had just been 15 or 20 years of unprecedented immigration from Ireland,” and in response “the Know Nothing Party was dominant in the 1850s, just a decade earlier, and they were vehemently opposed to Irish immigration.
“Contrary to the government’s arguments now,” Wang concluded, the framers of the Citizenship Clause “had an intuition that was consistent with the founding aversion to inherited rights and disabilities.”
The written decision is expected before the July 4 holiday.
11. NASA’s Artemis II completes lunar flyby
The new aspects of spaceflight being probed by Artemis II largely concern the impacts of radiation on the spacecraft and the astronauts themselves. The dangers of radiation beyond Earth’s protective magnetic field, above all coming from our Sun, were poorly understood a half-century ago, and almost cost the lives of the crews of Apollo 16 and 17. Today, the different types of energy output from the Sun, broadly grouped under the term space weather, are far more studied, but the impacts they might have on humans traveling in deep space have only been theorized since no humans have traveled past low Earth orbit since 1972.
To that end, Orion carries six active Hybrid Electronic Radiation Assessors at various positions inside the crew module, supplemented by individual Crew Active Dosimeters worn by each astronaut, the same equipment used on the International Space Station. Germany’s DLR space agency contributed an updated version of its M-42 radiation sensor, the M-42 EXT, which is six times more sensitive than the version flown on Artemis I. Four of these sensors are affixed at points around the cabin. Together they will measure total radiation dose and distinguish between different types of energetic particles, including the heavy ions considered most hazardous to human tissue at the cellular level.
The mission is also serving as a live test of two forecasting models for space weather developed by researchers at the University of Michigan. One is a machine-learning system that uses satellite imagery of the solar corona to estimate the probability of a dangerous solar particle event up to 24 hours in advance. The second is a physics-based model designed to simulate particle acceleration in the Sun’s outer atmosphere itself and predict how particle storms will propagate toward Earth and the Moon.
These forecasting tools are being evaluated by NASA’s Space Radiation Analysis Group, and their performance during Artemis II will determine whether they are incorporated into mission planning for future flights.
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Artemis II’s reentry is scheduled for Friday. The heat shield problem carried over from Artemis I, in which portions of the char layer separated in fragments rather than ablating as designed, has not been fixed. NASA instead altered the reentry trajectory. The crews’ safe return is dependent on how well that decision holds.
12. Cover-up of British nuclear testing in the Pacific exposed
In 1957–58, during what was called Operation Grapple, Britain deployed some 14,000 servicemen, supported by 276 Fijian troops and two New Zealand Navy frigates, to Malden Island and Kiritimati (Christmas) Island in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. These are now part of Kiribati, which has a population of about 138,000 and is spread across 33 atolls, halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
The UK conducted nine atmospheric nuclear explosions involving atomic and hydrogen bombs. The program culminated in the UK becoming the third recognized nation to possess thermonuclear weapons and saw the restoration of the nuclear Special Relationship with the United States in the form of the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defense Agreement.
The US also carried out 24 nuclear tests near Kiritimati in 1962 in Operation Dominic.
Through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, McCue Jury has obtained a 2014 internal report by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), part of the UK Ministry of Defence, (MoD) titled Review of environmental monitoring data for Christmas Island (CI) 1957–1958.
Writing on Substack on March 20, Oli Troen, a senior associate acting for test veterans and their families, argues the document points to a long-running institutional effort to deny the extent of radioactive fallout at Kiritimati.
The paper reveals that environmental data from the 1950s in fact showed alarming fallout levels in areas where troops were stationed and indigenous populations lived. Elevated radiation readings were taken at Port Camp, where Royal Navy personnel were based during one detonation. None of this had ever been disclosed. Troen writes that officials classified the paper as a “draft” and then buried it.
For decades, the British ruling elite maintained that there was no dangerous fallout. The MoD claimed that few people were exposed to any radiation or contamination and that studies had shown little or no health effects. Successive governments dismissed repeated claims for compensation.
*****
Operation Grapple was a crime carried out by British imperialism to further its interests. The British ruling class sought nuclear status at the expense of poisoning the Pacific and its people. The tests were bound up with boosting the geopolitical position of Britain as its empire and economic strength waned by proving to Washington that Britain had a place among the nuclear powers.
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In the wake of the criminal World War II bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Pacific islands were treated as expendable nuclear laboratories. Between 1946 and 1958, the US carried out 67 atmospheric and underwater nuclear explosions and biological weapons tests in the Marshall Islands. France, in defiance of intense local opposition, conducted 193 tests in French Polynesia from 1966–1996.
Throughout the Cold War, the imperialist powers sought to assert their strategic domination against the USSR with the construction of potentially catastrophic nuclear weapons. The colonial territories in the Pacific were cynically used as dumping grounds for radioactive contamination, while workers and island populations bore the health, environmental, and social consequences.
This history is a stark reminder that nuclear weapons remain fundamental instruments of predatory state power. The entire Indo-Pacific region is being re-militarized by US imperialism and its allies in preparation for war against China. Last October Trump announced the resumption of US nuclear weapons testing, escalating the threat of a nuclear war.
13. United States: Teamsters announce last‑minute agreement for 17,000 First Student school bus drivers
On March 31, the Teamsters announced a tentative agreement (TA) with First Student covering more than 17,000 school bus drivers, thereby preventing a nationwide strike that had been scheduled to begin on April 1.
The union issued a statement praising a new “national foundation for economics” while withholding the full text of the agreement, leaving rank-and-file members to wonder what exactly had been agreed upon.
The Teamsters’ press release claims the deal will deliver “stronger retirement benefits, improved access to healthcare benefits, and robust contractual protections for all members,” and asserts these national minimums will “boost bargaining on important issues at the local level.”
The refusal to release concrete details is a typical sign that the deal is worse than the bureaucrats let on. If it was a major victory, they would be shouting the details from the rooftops.
This was the second strike the Teamsters blocked in two days. On March 30, the bureaucracy announced a new deal to block a strike by 6,000 DHL Express workers.
*****
Budget crises are proliferating across the country.
In California, districts have warned of layoffs affecting thousands of classified employees, including bus drivers. In San Diego, more than 200 positions have already been cut, with routes consolidated and workloads increased. In San Francisco, school closures are being advanced as a cost-cutting measure due to funding shortfalls. In North Carolina, the state has yet to pass a budget for the 2025–2026 school year, leaving teachers and staff without raises amid rising costs.
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When asked for specifics, a union official replied that members “will know prior to when you vote.” This would keep workers in the dark about key details until right before the vote, allowing the bureaucracy to control the narrative.
Drivers should insist that the full text of the TA must be published immediately and distributed to every member. There must be a meaningful review period and open, democratic meetings in every depot and local to debate the terms. Any ratification vote must follow such democratic discussion.
More fundamentally, core conditions must be secured in binding national language. Guaranteed hours, overtime standards, paid sick leave and holidays, and protections against surveillance must not be left to local negotiation.
But legal language and demands are not enough. The only reliable safeguard against bureaucratic betrayals is organization from below. Drivers must build rank‑and‑file committees in every terminal that are: elected, recallable and accountable to the membership.
14. Poll underscores crisis of Australia’s two-party system, rise of One Nation
Polling published by the Australian yesterday has underscored an historic crisis of the official two-party system, of Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition, that has been in place and politically-led the capitalist order for the past 80 years or more.
As with all polling, the data undoubtedly has its limitations. It is, however, a quarterly analysis collating and cross-referencing the results of four Newspolls conducted between January 12 and March 26, meaning that the figures have some longer term significance than a one-off poll.
The data shows a continuing plunge in support for the Liberal-National Coalition, which has been in a meltdown particularly since its disastrous loss in the May, 2025 federal election. But it also reveals growing disaffection with Labor, whose primary vote was already nearing record lows at that election of just 34 percent. And the data confirms the rise of the far-right One Nation, which is capitalising on widespread social discontent.
The latter of the polls encompass the period since the US launched its utterly criminal war on Iran, which has been fully supported by the Labor government. As a consequence of the war, fuel prices have surged to record levels, with some analyses indicating that families are spending up to $60 more on petrol per week.
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The consolidated polling has One Nation, at 30 percent of the primary vote, leading both Labor (27 percent) and the Liberal National Party (23) percent in the north-eastern state of Queensland.
That is the only state in which One Nation is ahead of both Labor and the Coalition parties. But even still, it is potentially unprecedented in modern polling for a “third” party to be ahead of the two parties of government in any state poll. Other “minor” parties that have at times capitalized on discontent with the two-party set-up, such as the now-defunct Democrats, the Greens and One Nation in its first, 1990s iteration, have never come close to such a polling result.
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The Australian reported that “Dissatisfaction with Mr Albanese’s performance as prime minister has spiked across all age groups, genders, states, education backgrounds, wage classes, homeowners and renters.”
The polling has underlined the existential character of the Coalition’s crisis. As the WSWS has previously analysed, its 2025 election result was not an aberration. The Liberals, the urban component of the Coalition, received their lowest vote since their founding in 1944 and retained just nine of 88 metropolitan seats across the country.
That was an expression of a collapse in the sizeable middle-class of the post-World War II period, which had formed the base of the Liberals, after decades of social polarisation. It had already been reflected in the emergence of “Teal” independent candidates, who took traditionally Liberal seats on the basis of a pitch to affluent layers of the upper middle-class, and in a deepening factional warfare between “moderate” and more hard-right elements.
Since the May election, those ructions have only deepened, expressed in a federal leadership change and two breakups of the Coalition, both of which were patched up but only tenuously.
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The Coalition’s status as the second party of Australian capitalist rule is now questionable. It was outpolled in every single state bar Victoria by One Nation. And some 35 percent of people who voted for the Coalition at the 2025 federal election, have now swung behind the right-wing outfit.
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While elements of the Coalition are seeking to compete with One Nation, by calling for a more populist and Trumpian pitch, that hardly seems likely to resolve its increasingly intractable crisis. Such a shift would only further alienate “moderate” Liberals, strengthening the hand of the Teals.
The Coalition’s competition with One Nation risks ceding further supporters to that party, by depriving it of any point of distinction And in any event, the Coalition, as an establishment party par excellence, simple cannot make the phony anti-establishment pitch that One Nation as a “third” party is able to.
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One Nation, supported and funded by the wealthiest person in Australia, Gina Rinehart who has led the support for Trump and the MAGA movement in Australia, is a frothingly anti-immigrant and right-wing party that defends capitalism and is hostile to the working class. The ability of such an outfit to pitch to widespread discontent is above all an indictment of Labor and the unions.
Both are thoroughly corporatized entities that abandoned any connection to the working class decades ago, instead inflicting decades of cuts to jobs, wages and social conditions in the interests of the corporations. At the same time, Labor, founded on the racist program of “White Australia,” has spearheaded a persecution of refugees and immigrants and a promotion of militarist nationalism that One Nation taps into.
Under conditions of a crisis of capitalism globally and immense social tensions, the two-party system is in breakdown and there is an immense social vacuum. To prevent it being filled by the far-right, it is necessary to build a socialist movement of the working class, against Labor, the entire political establishment and their capitalist program of war and austerity.
15. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Bolivia:
Brazil:
Canada:
Strike by produce distribution workers begins to empty Quebec produce shelves
Mexico:
Telephone and university workers support striking tire workers
United States:
Harvard graduate students overwhelmingly vote to strike
Venezuela:
16. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!Food industry workers rally
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
