Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. As Trump demands $200 billion for Iran, USPS announces it will run out of money next year
Less than 24 hours before the Trump administration demanded an additional $200 billion for the war against Iran, members of Congress from both parties convened a hearing to warn that the United States Postal Service (USPS) could run out of money by next February.
2. Trump’s $200 billion Iran spending request reveals scale of US war plans
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is seeking more than $200 billion to fund the war against Iran.
At a press briefing Thursday, a reporter asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “why a package this large is necessary?” Hegseth not only confirmed the $200 billion figure but suggested it could grow. “I think that number could move,” he said. “It takes money to kill bad guys. So we’re going back to Congress to ensure that we’re properly funded for what’s been done, for what we may have to do in the future.”
And what, exactly, are these unspecified things the administration “may have to do”?
In 2003, when 150,000 American soldiers invaded and occupied Iraq, Congress appropriated $51 billion—a quarter of what the Trump administration is requesting before a single ground soldier has entered Iran. At the height of the 2007-2008 surge, when nearly 170,000 American soldiers occupied the country, the war cost roughly $144 billion a year.
In reality, the $200 billion is not about “what we may have to do in the future” but about what the White House is actively conspiring to do in the present. The budget request comes as the administration prepares a ground invasion of Iran, deploying 5,000 Marines from the Pacific to the Middle East amid demands by the Wall Street Journal and leading Republicans for the seizure of Kharg Island and the Strait of Hormuz.
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Just as with the months and years of planning that preceded the US-Israeli attack on Iran, the ground invasion is being prepared behind the backs of the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose the war. Trump called the war an “excursion.” Vice President JD Vance promised it would not become a “quagmire.” At the same briefing where he confirmed the $200 billion request, Hegseth told reporters: “The media wants you to think, just 19 days into this conflict, that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss or a Forever War or a quagmire. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
In reality, the administration is planning the most endless of all endless wars—an open-ended invasion aimed at subjugating or destroying a country of 90 million people.
The administration sees the Iran war as a prelude to an effort to subjugate China, the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity. As former Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry put it on ABC’s This Week, the wars in Venezuela and Iran are “targets of opportunity to reshape the world.” He added: “Venezuela was in service to American energy dominance. The issue with Iran was a target of opportunity... The results here will mean that, with China, the president’s hand will be enhanced.”
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The waging of continuous wars, combined with the 2008 and 2020 bank bailouts, has produced an explosion of US debt. In 2000, before the Iraq war, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. By 2010, after the Iraq surge and the $700 billion TARP bank bailout, it had reached $12.3 trillion. By 2020, after $4.6 trillion in COVID bailouts, it hit $27 trillion. It now stands at $39 trillion—nearly seven times what it was a quarter century ago.
The United States credit rating has been downgraded three times—by Standard & Poor’s in 2011, Fitch in 2023 and Moody’s in 2025—each time because of military spending and the refusal of either party to cut the military budget. The Vietnam War destroyed Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and produced the inflation of the 1970s, which the ruling class broke through the Volcker shock—mass unemployment to crush wages. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were waged alongside tax cuts for the wealthy and the gutting of public services.
Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed last July, imposed $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade, $536 billion in cuts to Medicare and $186 billion in cuts to food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the largest cut to food aid in American history. The fiscal year 2026 budget slashed domestic spending by 22.6 percent—cutting the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by 44 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by 44 percent and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $18 billion—while increasing the military budget by 13 percent.
Within 24 hours of the administration confirming it is seeking $200 billion for the war, the Postmaster General testified to Congress that the United States Postal Service (USPS) could run out of cash as soon as October—with just $8.2 billion in reserves, enough to cover 33 days of operations. The USPS employs more than 500,000 workers and holds billions in pension and retirement obligations. The manufactured insolvency is a pretext for raiding those funds—taking workers’ pension money and spending it on the war.
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security represent trillions more. The ruling class sees these programs as money to be seized. The administration does not see pensions and healthcare as social programs. It sees them as collateral.
Trump has promised the economic pain will be a temporary “blip.” This will not pass in weeks. It will mean a permanent reduction in working-class living standards, just as the Iraq war did.
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The Democrats have systematically enabled Trump’s wars. In January, as Trump declared that a massive armada was steaming toward Iran, every leading Democrat in Congress voted for the $839 billion military budget—Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Whip Dick Durbin all voted in favor. Their criticism of the war has centered on procedural issues, along with demands that US imperialism direct its fire at Russia and China.
Opposition must come from below—from workers in the United States, in Iran, across the Middle East and around the world—organized independently of both capitalist parties, armed with a socialist and internationalist program, and fighting to build the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) as the revolutionary leadership of the working class. The fight against imperialist war is the fight against the capitalist system that produces it.
3. South Australian election: Reject Labor’s AUKUS war program!
Labor is turning South Australia into a militarized AUKUS hub at the center of US-led preparations for war against China amid a global conflagration, while social conditions for the working class sharply deteriorate.
4. Australian educators call for opposition to the war on Iran
A meeting of the Committee for Public Education (CFPE), the rank-and-file educators’ network in Australia, passed a resolution last week denouncing the barbaric US-Israeli assault on Iran and the Albanese Labor government’s participation in it.
The meeting called on educators, students and workers to move similar resolutions against this illegal war, the criminality of which “has been underscored by the targeting of schools and hospitals, as is still happening in Gaza.”
The meeting heard two reports from leading members of the CFPE. Mike Head, a member of the Western Sydney University Rank-and-File Committee, told the meeting: “As the World Socialist Web Site has warned for months, this war for total US-Israeli control over the oil-rich and strategic Middle East threatens to plunge humanity into a third world war.”
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) held a well-attended public meeting on March 17 under the title “Stop the US-Israel criminal war against Iran” at the Colombo Public Library Auditorium.
Despite travel disruptions caused by fuel shortages linked to the escalating war in the Middle East, about 75 people—including party members, supporters, workers, youth, and academics—attended the event.
The meeting was live-streamed via Zoom, with additional participants including groups from areas such as Jaffna and the plantation districts. It was also broadcast on the SEP’s Facebook page, where it garnered over 2,000 views and has been shared more than 100 times at the time of writing.
SEP Assistant Secretary Saman Gunadasa chaired the meeting, warning that the US and Israel have escalated their military offensive in the Middle East, extending it from the Gaza genocide to an illegal war against Iran. The assault on Iran, one of the oldest civilizations in the world with a population of 93 million, has a “fascist character,” he said. There were already over 1,500 deaths, including women and children, more than 50,000 buildings destroyed, and 3 million people displaced.
The war, Gunadasa declared, underscores the collapse of international law, with UN charters and legal norms “thrown into the dustbin.”
Its central aims—control over oil, trade routes and renewed forms of colonial domination—he continued, are fueling global opposition alongside intensifying class struggles. Gunadasa insisted that the US-Israeli conflict can only be halted by the independent intervention of the international working class, armed with a socialist program.
6. A week after ICE raid in South Burlington, Vermont, 1 detainee free, 2 remain in custody
An ICE raid in South Burlington, Vermont resulted in a chaotic nine-hour standoff, the discharge of a federal agent’s weapon and the detention of three individuals who were not the primary targets of the investigation.
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By Thursday afternoon, March 12, three different federal judges in Vermont had issued emergency restraining orders blocking any planned transfers of the three detainees out of state. This was a critical intervention, as federal authorities have previously relocated detainees to distant jurisdictions as a tactic to disrupt legal defense, placing them beyond the reach of local attorneys.
Chief Judge Christina Reiss noted in her order regarding Daysi Patin that the young woman had been arrested in her own home without a warrant, and that the basis for her detention was not clear. Attorney Connors, representing Daysi’s elder sister Johana, emphasized in court filings that Johana’s name appeared nowhere on the judicial document used to force open the front door—a point Judge Crawford found essentially undeniable when ordering her release Monday.
ICE charged all three with illegally entering the country. The sisters entered through the southern border in 2023 and have pending asylum claims. Jerez, who has lived in the US since 2015, is facing separate removal proceedings in a Boston immigration court. He has a child who is a US citizen.
ICE did not explain why it detained the three people who were not the targets of its warrant. The government’s position at the release hearings was that anyone who crossed the border without authorization is subject to detention, a stance judges have repeatedly rejected.
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A bipartisan effort is underway across the state, with Vermont Republican and Democratic politicians criticizing the federal operation while covering up the role of local and state police. Republican Governor Phil Scott called the operation “totally unnecessary.” He has since directed the Vermont State Police to plan uniform changes so that troopers are more visibly distinguishable from federal immigration agents.
The state’s federal congressional delegation is made up of Democrats and nominal independents such as Bernie Sanders. In a joint statement along with Senator Peter Welch and Representative Becca Balint, Sanders called the ICE action “irresponsible, reckless and unprofessional.” Sanders said only that ICE created a crisis and had failed to arrest the person they were pursuing, and instead arrested three people not named on the warrant.
Attempts to present local and state police as an opposition to ICE are as transparent in the Dorset Street raid as in ICE operations across the country. While the overwhelming majority of the population is hostile to Trump’s fascistic anti-immigration assault, these raids are not opposed by the Democrats. As Bernie Sanders said on The Tim Dillon Show podcast in October 2025, “Trump did a better job. I don’t like Trump, you know, but we should have a secure border. … Biden didn’t do it.” He added, “If you don’t have any borders, you don’t have a nation.”
Kaiser’s treatment of mental health workers has been particularly vindictive. In 2022, Northern California mental health workers struck for 10 weeks over heavy caseloads that made it essentially impossible to provide adequate care in the time allotted. Many reported working through lunch, breaks, or outside paid working hours to complete documentation or provide urgently needed care to patients, many of whom were in crisis.
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Kaiser’s callous indifference to mental healthcare was illustrated most bluntly in a $28 million settlement this February with the Department of Labor over its failure to provide timely in-network care, leaving thousands without access to necessary psychiatric and addiction treatment. Kaiser made no meaningful changes to its practices as a result, instead viewing the fine simply as a cost of doing business.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke with a striking Kaiser therapist, who has not been named in order to protect her identity:
There are two things that resonate most for me: [the threat to] replace us is one of the biggest things getting me out here, but additionally they also want to roll back everything we fought for during our last strike.
You know, every time that things in the world get scarier and more unstable, our patients start to struggle. And that shows up in very real life. So this was true back when Bush was elected, and it’s true now that we have Trump in power. And some of the things we see are that suicide rates go up—lost patients.
Very specifically, you’ll see suicide rates go up like the week of an election. And so folks who are already struggling or who don’t feel seen or respected or who are scared that their rights aren’t protected, absolutely.
So we see suicide rates go up, we see mental health symptoms worsen, we see fear increase, anxiety increase, depression increase, and it comes up with, I would say at least half to three quarters of all the patients that I work with who mention and speak about the stress of just the current environment and how it’s affecting the mental health and the physical being and safety.
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Kaiser’s attacks on mental health workers is part of a broader offensive against its entire workforce. Some 31,000 nurses, physical and occupational health therapists, midwives, and other healthcare workers under the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP) struck for nearly a month this year for safe staffing, 30 percent raises and other demands.
But the role of the union bureaucracy has been to undermine this growing movement, isolating different sections of the workforce from each other. UNAC/UCHP called off the strike at the end of February without even offering a tentative agreement, which was only announced last week. The new proposal includes 21.5 percent pay increase over four years—barely matching inflation—and more vague language around staffing.
During the 2022 strike, the NUHW bureaucracy kept mental health workers in southern California isolated on the picket line for over six months, primarily over safe staffing. Ultimately, the union bureaucrats forced through an agreement with no firm, enforceable staffing guarantees, instead settling for vague language around recruitment, retention and “improving access.”
The Northern California IUOE engineers who struck in sympathy yesterday were themselves isolated in a 90-day strike in 2021, with all other Kaiser unions ordering their workers to cross the picket line throughout the strike (excepting two one-day sympathy strikes). Ultimately, the engineers were starved into submission, returning to work without winning anything. Afterward, they continued working without a contract for over a year.
It is significant that this time around, the NUHW forced their members to remain on the job without a contract even as 31,000 of their coworkers in UNAC/UHCP were on strike. Kaiser’s healthcare unions, who collaborate openly with management through schemes like the Labor Management Partnership, have a long history of holding one-day protest strikes, often paired with campaign-style rallies addressed by Democratic Party politicians, as was the case Wednesday. Such limited strikes aim to demoralize workers who want to engage in a real fight.
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Kaiser mental health workers should form rank-and-file committees, independent of all trade union bureaucracies and the Democratic Party, to take the struggle into their own hands, link up with workers across the Kaiser system and healthcare workers across the country.
We call on all workers who agree with this perspective to reach out to the World Socialist Web Site today and begin forming rank-and-file committees.
8. Against the censorship of left-wing bookshops in Germany! Defend freedom of culture and expression!
Mehring Verlag, the publishing house of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party), strongly condemns the government’s recent censorship of left-wing bookshops. Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer has removed three left-wing bookshops from the list of bookshops that had been nominated for the German Bookshop Prize by an independent expert jury. He then summarily cancelled the ceremonial presentation of the award at the Leipzig Book Fair.
These measures represent a targeted political attack on freedom of expression. Booksellers who offer critical, socialist and anti-militarist literature—including books by Mehring Verlag—are being censored and criminalized.
The decision is not based on comprehensible, legally verifiable facts, but on secret information from the Verfassungsschutz (Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as Germany’s domestic secret service is called), the content of which is neither disclosed nor judicially verifiable. The fact that the Verfassungsschutz is involved in this—an agency that is itself known for its involvement in right-wing networks—underscores the explosive nature of this process. Intelligence service assessments are replacing transparent, democratic decisions. This shows that the Verfassungsschutz itself is a danger to democracy.
A precedent is being set here: State cultural funding is being tied to political loyalty. Anyone who distributes critical left-wing literature is to be excluded from public support, intimidated and economically weakened.
The book industry in Germany has experienced for itself where this development leads. After 1933, countless writers and intellectuals were forced to leave the country or were persecuted and imprisoned. Millions of books that did not fit into the dull and reactionary worldview of the Nazis ended up on the bonfire.
9. European powers prepare participation in war against Iran
The promise made by EU foreign ministers on Monday not to take part in the war against Iran (“This is not our war”) lasted just three days. On Thursday, the heads of state and government of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK and Japan issued a joint statement in which they pledged to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
The statement makes no mention whatsoever of the US and Israel, which attacked Iran 20 days ago in violation of international law and have been bombing it non-stop ever since. Instead, it blames the victim for the war and accuses Iran of breaking international law.
“We condemn in the strongest terms recent attacks by Iran on unarmed commercial vessels in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure including oil and gas installations, and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces,” the joint statement says. “Freedom of navigation is a fundamental principle of international law. … We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait. We welcome the commitment of nations who are engaging in preparatory planning.”
This can only be understood as an announcement of their own participation in the war, something the foreign ministers had rejected just three days earlier. Although the joint statement does not specify any concrete steps, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on the sidelines of the European Union (EU) summit that they would only participate once the fighting had ceased, the rapid escalation of the war tells a different story.
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The European powers made it clear from the outset that they do not fundamentally oppose involvement in the war and support regime change in Tehran. However, they are not prepared to subordinate themselves to the US and take part in a war over whose course they have no influence and which could end in an economic and political catastrophe for Europe.
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The brutal war of aggression against Iran did not spring from the twisted mind of Trump and his fascist Secretary of War, Hegseth. It is the culmination so far of 35 years of US efforts to compensate for its economic decline through the use of military force, which has devastated large parts of the Middle East and is supported by both Republicans and Democrats.
During the brutal, torturous reign of the Shah—whom Washington helped bring to power in a coup in 1953—Iran was the US’s most important stronghold in the Middle East. It was only after the 1979 revolution that it was replaced by Israel. US imperialism has never forgiven the Iranian people for that revolution.
Under Trump, US imperialism is now endeavoring to undo all the gains of the last 120 years—the social gains of the working class as well as the results of national liberation struggles. The multi-billion-dollar oligarchy, whose interests Trump represents, is attempting to throw the world back into the state of colonialism and boundless exploitation of the 19th century. Trump lays claim to the whole of Latin America, Cuba and the Middle East and is preparing for war against China.
German imperialism, which has already plunged the world into catastrophe twice, cannot stand idly by. Just as the First World War, which began with a conflict over Serbia and quickly escalated into a brutal struggle for the redivision of the world, involving 40 states and some 70 million soldiers, the war against Iran also threatens to become a global conflagration.
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International law, the violation of which by Russia served for four years as the justification for Germany financing the war in Ukraine with almost €100 billion, is now being trampled underfoot. Yet there is no doubt among serious legal experts that the war against Iran is contrary to international law—in other words, a war crime.
95 German law professors teaching at various universities have signed a statement accusing the German government of failing to “issue a clear condemnation of the actions contrary to international law” and thus of “contributing to the further erosion of the rules-based and institutional order in Europe and the world.” The legal experts explain in detail why the use of military force against Iran by Israel and the US constitutes “a violation of the prohibition on the use of force under international law.”
Foreign policy cannot be separated from domestic policy. With the same ruthlessness with which those in power flout international law when it stands in the way of their imperialist interests, they will disregard democratic rights when resistance to their policies of war and social spending cuts begins to stir.
10. Blues singer John Hammond dead at 83
Immensely talented yet humble, he loved the music he played and was grateful to be able to perform it. He described the blues as
probably the American folk music. It’s the music that seems to capture the American psyche somehow. It’s a music made up of many different cultures that are all somehow blended into America. Especially, it captures the depth of feeling of … and passion of a person.
Hammond was unapologetic that he was white and played authentically the songs of his musical idols who were black.
Usually an audience isn’t so conscious of your color, as they are your feeling and playing, and how good you feel about playing. It’s only the critics, the interviewers, that seem to dwell upon the racial aspect of things.
I think the people want to hear that good feeling they want to hear, you know, share that experience, that feeling.
11. New Zealand police given power to “move on” homeless people
Late last month New Zealand’s National Party-led coalition government announced it would give police the power to issue “move-on” orders in town centers across the country to people as young as 14 years old.
The amendment to the Summary Offenses Act will empower police to “move on” people who are displaying “disorderly, disruptive, threatening, or intimidating behavior.” The new powers, however, go further than existing laws against disorderly conduct: move-on orders can be issued to anyone impeding access to a business, begging, rough sleeping, or attempting to “inhabit a public place.”
This is a major attack on the rights of the most vulnerable people in society. Presented as a necessary tool to maintain “public order” and “safety,” the new measures criminalize poverty and homelessness, which are part of a deepening social crisis produced by decades of austerity and pro-market restructuring.
Someone ordered to “move on” must leave any area for a specified time, up to 24 hours, and at a distance determined by an officer. The person will be warned not to return to the area without a reasonable excuse. The maximum penalty for breaching an order is a fine of $2,000 or three months imprisonment.
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Despite government and media propaganda about homeless people behaving in an intimidating manner, Radio NZ (RNZ) reports that public order and health and safety offence proceedings in Auckland were at a 10-year low in 2025, with just 39 proceedings in December 2025 compared to 168 in December 2015. Nationwide, there were 428 such proceedings in that month, compared to 1,663 ten years earlier.
Last November, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told RNZ the Auckland CBD had to be “sorted out” because people did not “feel safe going into the central city.” He offered no evidence for this but made it clear business considerations were central, declaring: “We have a new convention center, increasing cruise ships and the launch of the CRL (City Rail Link), and we have to make sure that the downtown city is working well and is a safe place for people.”
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In effect, those without housing are treated not as people who need support, but as criminals to be managed or removed. Rough sleepers in urban areas are presented as a threat not because of any proven wrongdoing, but because they starkly expose the widening gulf between rich and poor.
12. Workers Struggles: Africa & Europe
Africa
Namibia:
Nigeria:
South Africa:
Europe
Belgium:
Workers in national strike against attacks on living standards and workers’ rights
Greece:
Thousands of health workers strike for improved pay and conditions
Spain:
Doctors hold week-long national strike for statutory improvements to pay and conditions
United Kingdom:
Striking health visitors at Welsh health board to extend stoppage over pay grading
Academic staff at several universities involved in stoppages over redundancies and conditions
20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
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.
