Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Communist Party Marxist-Kenya leader Booker Omole faces fraudulent charges as detention continues
The political persecution of Booker Ngesa Omole, General Secretary of
the Communist Party Marxist–Kenya (CPM-K), has entered a new and
dangerous stage.
The Kenyan regime’s so-called “broad-based
unity” government under President William Ruto, an alliance between the
United Democratic Alliance (UDA) and the Orange Democratic Movement
(ODM), founded by the late political fixer Raila Odinga, is escalating
politically charged criminal accusations against him, as reports of
degrading conditions spark outrage in Kenya and internationally.
In
its latest update today, February 26, the CPM-K reports that Omole “has
been transferred to Kitengela Remand Prison with a broken arm. The
court has acted with open hostility, denying him both cash bail and
urgent medical care.” The transfer and denial of treatment underscore
the increasingly punitive character of his detention.
*****
Only after his detention did the authorities begin to assemble the
series of allegations now being levelled against him. According to an
official statement of the CPM-K, “Booker is accused of attempting to
kill the police, assaulting the police and having connections with the
now jailed President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro in the US drug cartel,
this is as a result of organizing a demonstration at the US Embassy
demanding the release of Nicolás Maduro.”
Among the most
sensational is a claim linking him to a “drug cartel.” His and the
CPM-K’s official account has categorically rejected the accusation,
stating: “Linking Booker to a ‘drug cartel’ is pure political theatre.
His only link to Venezuela is solidarity with Nicolás Maduro.
Internationalism is not narcotics. Anti imperialism is not crime. When
the state lacks evidence, it manufactures lies.
*****
Washington has pursued narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges
against Maduro and his inner circle under the claim that he led the
“Cartel de los Soles”. The sensational narrative was central to US
justifications for the military invasion of Venezuela in early January,
and the subsequent killing of civilians and the abduction of its elected
president. The illegal intervention was made to seize control over
Venezuela’s vast oil resources and limit China’s and Russia’s access to
them.
Now, the Kenyan regime attempts to attach Omole to drug
trafficking, using Washington’s playbook, to criminalize the CPM-K in an
operation whose ultimate target is the Kenyan working class.
Regarding
the charge of assaulting police officers, the CPM-K has explained:
“They allege assault. Truth is simpler. Plain clothed men grabbed him
without identifying themselves, no badges, no warrants. Any fracas arose
from an illegal abduction, not resistance to law.”
For many
Kenyans, this account describes a familiar reality. Plainclothes
security forces frequently carry out arrests without identifying
themselves, presenting no badges, warrants or official documentation.
The police have a longstanding reputation for corruption, extorting
ordinary Kenyans daily through bribes, arbitrary fines and intimidation.
Officers regularly plant drugs on individuals in order to fabricate
charges and then demand payment for their release.
Most importantly, they have been repeatedly implicated in enforced
disappearances. In the past year-and-a-half alone, they have been linked
to more than 80 reported cases, with some victims never seen again.
In
such an environment, it is entirely understandable that citizens
hesitate or resist when unidentified men attempt to seize them, fearing
criminal gangs, rogue officers, or abduction.
*****
Omole’s detention has sparked solidarity campaigns demanding his immediate release. The International Committee of the Fourth International
(ICFI) has issued a statement supporting this demand, which has been
endorsed by its Socialist Equality Party sections internationally.
Within
Kenya, the Pan-Africanist Kongamano la Mapinduzi issued a statement
demanding his unconditional release. Human rights and anti-corruption
activist and potential 2027 presidential contender for Ukweli Party
leader, Boniface Mwangi, endorsed calls for his freedom. Prominent
online commentators that have tens of thousands of followers, including I Am Chege, Wanjiru, yoko have amplified these calls.
According to activity on X, more than 15,000 posts have circulated discussing his case and demanding his release.
In contrast, Kenya’s major capitalist media outlets have remained silent. Neither The Standard, Daily Nation nor The Star
has provided coverage of Omole’s abduction. It underscores the extent
to which the capitalist media, despite its criticisms of the Ruto
regime, closes ranks when the fundamental interests of the ruling class
are at stake, withholding scrutiny when state repression is directed to
the left.
The ICFI reiterates its demand for the immediate and
unconditional release of Omole. All politically motivated charges must
be dropped, and full legal and medical access guaranteed without delay.
The
escalating campaign of intimidation, fabricated allegations and
degrading treatment directed against Omole forms part of a broader
persecution of left-wing opposition in Kenya and internationally against
IMF-austerity, war and attacks on democratic rights. This repression
must end and the democratic rights of CPM-K members and supporters,
including freedom of speech, assembly and political organization, must
be upheld.
2. UN report warns of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, West Bank
The
UN human rights office said the cumulative impact of Israel’s military
conduct during its war against the Palestinians, along with its blockade
of the territory, had inflicted living conditions “increasingly
incompatible with Palestinians’ continued existence as a group in Gaza.”
3. Right-wing New Zealand blogger suggests becoming part of Australia to build a war machine
The
proposal by David Farrar, who is close to the New Zealand government,
reflects concern in ruling circles that NZ may be sidelined by the US
and other imperialist powers in the violent redivision of the world.
4. United States: Lorain County Ohio Jobs and Family Service workers entering second week of strike
The
140 social service workers, members of the UAW, walked out February 18
for better wages and benefits as Democrats and Republicans make massive
cuts to social spending.
*****
The strike unfolds against the backdrop of ongoing and massive cuts
carried out by both Democrats and Republicans at the local, state, and
federal levels that are leaving millions without basic necessities.
In 2023 and 2024, the Biden administration cut what remained of COVID pandemic relief benefits.
The
failure of Congress to extend enhanced tax credits for the Affordable
Care Act has led to higher costs and at least 8 million people losing
their health coverage.
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashed
$186 billion from SNAP benefits over 10 years. That amounts to a 20
percent reduction, marking the largest cut in the program’s history,
according to the Harvard Kennedy School.
In response to the
federal cuts, Ohio’s legislature and governor have approved changes to
SNAP and Medicaid eligibility requirements that will increase the
workload on already overburdened JFS employees while forcing tens of
thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, off these vital programs.
5. Imperial College London staff strike over pay: “Our effective pay has been cut by 9 percent since 2018”
Staff have taken three one-day strikes in February. They have now held 13 strike days since a ballot in September last year.
6. United Kingdom: CWU leader Martin Walsh uses restricted consultation exercise to claim backing for restructuring at Royal Mail
Comments
from postal workers on the CWU’s Facebook questioned whether the
rejection of ODM at pilot offices signified support for the union’s
proposal, which involves absorbing additional work by reducing existing
duties and positions within the “Heavy and Light” model.
7. UCLA, Los Angeles schools chief targeted by Trump administration
On the day of President Trump’s fascistic State of the Union address,
the Department of Justice officially filed an 81-page federal lawsuit
against the University of California system, focusing on the University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
The suit alleges that UCLA
violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by engaging in a
“pattern or practice of discrimination” by failing to prevent and
correct an “antisemitic hostile work environment” for Jewish and Israeli
faculty and staff in light of the campus protests over Israel’s
genocidal war in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks.
The
complaint claims that the spring 2024 encampment protesting the
slaughter in Gaza functioned as a “Jew Exclusion Zone.” It alleges that
UCLA ignored complaints of antisemitism from Jewish and Israeli faculty
and staff, permitted harassment and ostracism and failed to prevent
assaults, vandalism including swastikas, and the blocking of campus
access. According to the DOJ, some employees took leave or resigned as a
result. The lawsuit seeks court-ordered policy changes and monetary
damages.
Also on Wednesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
raided the headquarters of Los Angeles Unified School District and
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, an outspoken critic of Trump and ICE
raids. Together, they constitute an extraordinary and coordinated
intervention by Trump, aimed at intimidating opposition and reasserting
state authority amid a rapidly intensifying class struggle.
*****
Los Angeles and the state of California are becoming a flashpoint of
the class struggle. A four week strike by 31,000 Kaiser Permanente
workers was ended this week without a contract, only through unilateral
action by the union bureaucracy. Around 40,000 graduate students in the
University of California system have voted for strike action; in 2024,
the same workers struck against police assaults against student Gaza
protests. In LAUSD, some 65,000 workers, including teachers and support
staff, have authorized potential strike action.
The UCLA lawsuit
represents the latest stage in a protracted offensive. By the summer of
2025, federal authorities had escalated from investigation to open
financial punishment. Roughly $584 million in UCLA research grants, nearly 800 awards from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, were frozen.
*****
Last August, Trump demanded $1.172 billion from the University of
California, including a $1 billion fine and a $172 million compensation
fund. The move was pure coercion. Federal Judge Rita Lin later issued
injunctions restricting the government’s use of grant freezes as
leverage, underscoring the legally dubious character of the
administration’s tactics.
Separately, UCLA reached a $6 million settlement
with several Jewish students and a professor who alleged discrimination
during the protests. The new DOJ lawsuit insists that this was
inadequate and that broader judicial enforcement is required.
The narrative advanced by the federal government inverts reality.
The
defining event at UCLA in spring 2024 was a violent attack on the April
encampment by a far-right mob, not the alleged creation of a “Jew
Exclusion Zone.” On the night of April 30–May 1, pro-Israel vigilantes,
some armed and masked, assaulted participants with wooden planks, metal
bars, chemical irritants and incendiary devices, causing fractures,
burns, lacerations and alleged sexual violence.
The attack
unfolded in full view of campus security and law enforcement, which
failed to intervene. When the mob withdrew, police targeted the
encampment, using flashbangs, less-lethal projectiles and mass arrests,
while no attackers were detained. Injured students and faculty later
filed legal action, citing UCLA’s failure to protect them.
The
lawsuit is a brazen attack on political dissent. It rests on the premise
that sharp criticism of Israel, Zionism or US foreign policy can be
treated as unlawful discrimination.
*****
A $1 billion fine would devastate an already strained university
system. Public higher education in California has been subjected to
years of underfunding, tuition hikes, privatization and the erosion of
working conditions. Under Democratic administrations, the University of
California has imposed austerity on staff and students.
In fact,
California Democrats have played a central role in preparing the
ideological and administrative groundwork for this attack.
For
years, leading Democratic politicians and university administrators have
conflated anti-Zionism and criticism of Israeli state policy with
antisemitism. Under the banner of combating “bias,” they have expanded
bureaucratic oversight, created task forces and adopted vague
definitions that blur the line between genuine antisemitism and
political speech.
The unanimous passage and signing of California’s AB 715
exemplifies this trend. Framed as antisemitism prevention, the law
establishes new state offices and broad standards empowering
investigations and sanctions for supposed bias. In reality, such
measures erect an apparatus for monitoring and policing political
expression.
Within the UC system, administrators adopted “zero tolerance” protest
policies, restricted encampments and tightened conduct rules. These
measures were often justified as necessary to curb antisemitism,
normalizing the idea that political protest constitutes a civil rights
violation.
Democrats also legitimized the use of “civil rights”
complaints and disciplinary investigations to target critics of Israeli
policy. Universities developed bureaucratic internal investigations,
event restrictions, expanded policing and more, that the federal
government now exploits on a far larger scale.
The trade union apparatuses have functioned as accomplices in this process.
The
UAW bureaucracy, representing many academic workers, repeatedly stalled
and limited action. Strike authorization votes were announced only
after intense rank-and-file pressure.
At UCLA, union officials who
claimed to support the encampment were present as police prepared to
clear it. Video and eyewitness accounts indicated that union
representatives permitted police access through barricades, facilitating
the sweep.
Other unions representing campus and public sector
workers, including affiliates of the AFT, NTEU, AFSCME and SEIU,
discouraged coordinated strike action and sought to channel opposition
into safe, procedural avenues.
By isolating struggles and
subordinating them to the Democratic Party, these organizations have
helped create the conditions in which the federal government can
intervene with sweeping repressive measures.
*****
As inequality deepens and social conflict intensifies, the ruling
class is moving to curtail democratic forms of rule. Academic freedom,
free speech and the right to strike are increasingly incompatible with a
social order dominated by oligarchic wealth and permanent war.
The
defense of these rights requires the independent mobilization of the
working class, uniting university workers, students, healthcare workers
and educators in a common struggle. Only through such a movement,
directed against the subordination of society to profit and militarism,
can public education and democratic freedoms be secured.
8. Your Party leadership elections put Corbyn in charge
Your Party’s leadership election confirmed the political character of
the organization: a vehicle for advocating timid reforms, driven by
Jeremy Corbyn and a narrow clique of ex-Labour Party officials.
The
results were a rout for the opposed Grassroots Left faction led by
Zarah Sultana. Its declared aim of pushing Your Party to the left,
rejecting a Labour Party 2.0 in favour of building an anti-Zionist,
anti-imperialist party dedicated to nationalizing the economy, suffered a
bruising rejection.
Corbyn’s faction, The Many, secured 14 of the 24 seats available on
the Central Executive Committee leadership body, including Corbyn and
former Labour MP and current independent councilor Laura Smith as
public office holders. Sultana and Grace Lewis, a former Labour councilor turned independent, take up the other two public office
holder posts. Across the 24 seats, however, Grassroots Left won only
seven positions.
The unavoidable conclusion is that Your Party’s
members are overwhelmingly satisfied with Corbyn’s perspective for the organization to serve as his vanity project and a meek participant in a
loosely defined anti-Reform UK “left”, including not only Zack
Polanski’s Green Party but also sections of the Labour Party.
If, as is expected, Keir Starmer is removed as leader, there is nothing preventing a wider “tactical alliance” with Labour.
Corbyn
and his allies can now implement any policy decisions they see fit. The
Many, led by Corbyn’s witch-hunter in chief Karie Murphy, has already
been using its control of the party’s apparatus to suspend and expel the
more prominent members of pro-Sultana groups, such as the Socialist
Workers Party. It will now inevitably extend this purge.
The
Many’s manifesto declared existing “proto-branches” illegitimate, “run
by the Socialist Workers Party and other sectarian groups… seeking to
exert control of the party through control of the branches” and leaving
“ordinary individual members… effectively excluded”. They will be
replaced by “official” branch structures.
Corbyn’s camp also
immediately announced that he would assume the position of the party’s
“leader in parliament”, despite no such position existing under its
constitution.
*****
The Socialist Workers Party, the largest outside group active in Your
Party and whose membership has suffered the most expulsions, made
Sultana’s declaration appear grounded. Socialist Worker’s
post-election article was headed, “After Your Party leadership results,
time to get the project back on track”. The phrase takes up The Many’s
own slogan, using it to advocate a course from now on of “welcoming all
socialists”.
*****
Once again Britain’s pseudo-left has confirmed that nothing will push
them to conflict with the wider labor and trade union bureaucracy,
waging a serious struggle for a socialist alternative to Starmer’s
government of austerity and war.
Corbyn’s victory has a pyrrhic character, however. He heads a rump organization with most of those
initially attracted having long since turned their backs on it.
The
wave of enthusiasm generated by the announcement of Your Party last
July, which saw 850,000 people express an interest in joining, was, by
the time of the founding conference in late November, whittled down to a
declared 55,000 members. The leadership elections saw 25,000 people
vote, out of 41,000 validated members.
*****
As richly deserved as Corbyn’s declining political stature is, more is
at stake for the working class. Once again, Britain’s pseudo-left, in
gravitating around Corbyn, Sultana and Your Party, has worked to
disorient those seeking a genuine socialist alternative, perpetuating
rather than remedying the crisis of leadership and perspective facing
the working class.
*****
In contrast, the Socialist Equality Party has argued that the working
class needs a new party of an entirely different character: a
revolutionary socialist party opposed to the Corbynites and to illusions
that social gains can be defended through a program of protest
politics and parliamentary pressure—however radically presented.
9. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital nurses seething after end to 6-week strike
Nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan began returning
to work Thursday after a lengthy six-week strike. They face not only a new contract
that fails to satisfy their demands, but also a new round of attacks
and harassment from management, according to nurses who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site. Their names have been changed to protect their anonymity.
In
recent days, the hospital held return-to-work sessions to allow the
nurses to vent after the strike and to connect them with “psychological
support services.” A bad atmosphere hung over the sessions, said
Samantha, an experienced nurse. “They stopped the two-hour meeting after
one hour because people were so upset. It was awful.”
The nurses
are furious, she added, because having struck for six weeks without
strike pay, many nurses are in financial difficulty. Older nurses
expressed their frustrations during the session, while many younger
nurses remained silent, she said.
10. United States: SAG-AFTRA negotiations begin: What are the issues facing actors and other industry workers?
Negotiations between the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of
Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the Alliance of Motion
Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) began February 9.
The conditions today are even more tense and fraught than those that
led to a 118-day strike in 2023. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs
in the “Great Hollywood Contraction,” with technologies and mergers
threatening tens of thousands more. Entire crafts and professions face
elimination.
American society as a whole faces unprecedented
circumstances, as the Trump administration, assisted by the Democrats,
is building a police-state dictatorship that will shoot protesters down
on the streets and launch criminal wars against any perceived enemies.
SAG-AFTRA
and its new president Sean Astin talk and act as if it were “business
as usual,” leaving actors and other union members entirely unprepared
and disoriented. This is a recipe for disaster. The conglomerates have
their ruthless plans worked out, but actors and film and television
workers are left in the dark by a well-heeled, complacent union
bureaucracy.
*****
Since the ratification of the last contract (with only 38 percent of
the membership voting), there has been a jobs bloodbath in the industry.
Nothing in the “historic” contract or the union leaders’ actions have
slowed this contraction down in the slightest.
The “informed
consent” clauses in the 2023 contract did nothing to prevent the
destruction of jobs through the further integration of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) into the Hollywood production process.
The
latest report from FilmLA—the official film office for the City and
County of Los Angeles—revealed that the number of shoot days (SD) for
2025 stood at 19,694, a decline of 16.9 percent from 2024. With the
Feature Film category sinking 19.7 percent in the fourth quarter year
over year and 31.7 percent below the five-year average for this
category.
*****
Instead of preparing workers for a major struggle against the
conglomerates, the response of SAG-AFTRA to the continued loss of jobs
has been to either pit workers in California against workers in other
regions (#StayInLA), or to team up with management to beg for incentives
and subsidies from the state. These funds only line the pockets of
management, while doing nothing to stifle the wholesale destruction of
jobs.
The release earlier in February of ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 is a glaring
demonstration of the existential crisis that artists face in the next
few years, as AI continues to develop and becomes fully integrated into
the production process, while protections for artists are either
non-existent or lag behind. The new technology allows companies to
create completely synthetic performers that are unrecognizable from
existing artists.
*****
Only the intervention of the rank-and-file can turn the situation
around. Actors only went on strike three years ago because artists,
sensing a betrayal was in the works, sent a last-minute open letter to the union tops denouncing their plans.
As
the World Socialist Web Site said at the time: “The actors’ letter warns the union not to
surrender and expresses a determination to fight the corporations
without compromise. A strike, they write, brings hardships to many, ‘but
we are prepared to strike if it comes to that.’ In unusually stern
language, the signatories insist this ‘is not a moment to meet in the
middle.’”
Certain realities have to become more widely understood.
The interests of actors and other film and television industry workers
stand in direct opposition to those of the giant conglomerates. The plan
of the latter is to slash jobs and eviscerate benefits in the interests
of corporate profits.
The companies, with Trump behind them, will do everything in their
power to impose the full burden of the current crisis on the backs of
actors and film and television workers. SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild
(whose own staff is on strike at present!), Teamsters, IATSE and the
other union officialdoms will facilitate the corporations’ agenda. They
act as an extension of management.
Moreover, the fate of Hollywood
film and television is not merely a wages and benefits question. The
popular cultural life of the US is now largely in the hands of
reactionary oligarchs of the Ellison variety. For the economic and
cultural good of the industry and the American people as a whole, this
corporate chokehold has to be broken. Actors, writers and crew members
will have to begin discussion on what future they would like to see for
the powerful technologies. Under workers control, the sky would be the
limit.
11. UAW presidential candidate Will Lehman calls for rank-and-file slate as delegate elections begin
Will Lehman
In an open letter
to members of the United Auto Workers (UAW), rank-and-file autoworker
Will Lehman has called for the formation of an “insurgent slate” of
delegates to the UAW’s Constitutional Convention, scheduled for June
15-18 in Detroit.
Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker in Macungie,
Pennsylvania, is running for UAW president for the second time. In his
letter, he warns that a decisive stage of the election is already
underway—in delegate nominations and elections at the local level that
most UAW members do not know about.
“Many members may not yet be
aware that a new election is taking place this year for UAW president
and other national offices,” Lehman wrote. “But it begins now—through
delegate nominations and elections in every local. If the rank and file
doesn’t organize to win those delegate elections, the bureaucracy will
control the Constitutional Convention in June and make sure only those
loyal to the apparatus can run for top officer positions.”
*****
In November–December 2021, UAW members and retirees voted by 63.7
percent in a court-ordered referendum to replace the union’s delegate
system of choosing national officers with direct elections—widely known
as “one member, one vote.” The vote followed a sweeping federal
corruption investigation that exposed a network of bribery, embezzlement
and labor-management collusion at the highest levels of the union.
Under
the old system, delegates—largely loyal to the apparatus—were elected
at the local level and then voted for approved candidates at the
Constitutional Convention. This tightly controlled mechanism led to the
installation of former UAW presidents Dennis Williams and Gary Jones,
along with former Vice Presidents Joseph Ashton and Norwood Jewell—all
of whom were later convicted on corruption-related charges tied to
corporate bribes and the misuse of union dues.
The referendum was
widely understood by rank-and-file workers as a mandate to break the
grip of this entrenched bureaucracy and establish genuine democratic
control.
But the 2022–23 election, the first direct membership vote in UAW
history, was marred by what Lehman showed in lawsuits were widespread
violations by the UAW apparatus of the right to vote.
“In the
last UAW election, there was systematic voter suppression,” Lehman wrote
in the letter. “Many members never received ballots, information was
withheld, and the process was dominated by an apparatus that does not
represent us.”
In lawsuits filed during the election, Lehman
documented how large sections of the membership were effectively
disenfranchised. The UAW apparatus failed to adequately inform workers
that an election was taking place. Mailing addresses were not updated,
leading to a significant number of ballots being returned as
undeliverable. Certain categories of workers, including part-time
temporary employees, were falsely told they were not eligible to vote.
The
result was an election with historically low participation. Only 9
percent of eligible members cast ballots in the first round—one of the
lowest turnouts in any major union election in the United States.
Out
of this process emerged Shawn Fain, a longtime official in the UAW
International and former assistant to Norwood Jewell in the UAW-Chrysler
Department—identified by federal prosecutors as the center of a
“culture of corruption” within the union.
*****
The current nomination procedures are tightly controlled. Locals hold
meetings often with little or no notice to the members, where candidates
for delegates are nominated. Then in a matter of weeks, the nominations
are closed. With little or no notice to the members, snap elections are
held. This structure virtually guarantees that those already integrated
into the local apparatus are elected as delegates.
Lehman cites the example of UAW Local 2209 at the GM Fort Wayne
Assembly plant in Indiana, where he says nominations began on February
12 and were closed February 17 in a process that few workers knew about.
The plant’s roughly 4,000 workers account for nearly 10 percent of the
active UAW membership at GM.
“If we leave this election in the
hands of the bureaucracy, they will use the same methods as before to
block genuine opposition and keep control,” Lehman warned. He called on
workers to demand well-publicized meetings, full notice to the
membership, clear rules and an end to what he describes as backroom
maneuvers.
*****
The open letter outlines a program centered on reversing decades of
concessions and dismantling labor-management collaboration, abolishing
tiers, winning major wage increases, ending layoffs and plant closures
and establishing workers’ control over safety, staffing and line speed.
Lehman also demands secure healthcare for active workers and guaranteed,
fully funded retiree benefits, including protection of pensions and
cost-of-living increases.
The letter links the struggle within the
UAW to broader political questions. “The same corporate-state forces
attacking living standards are escalating repression at home and war
abroad,” Lehman writes. He calls for mobilizing the “social power of
workers—through independent organization and united action—to defend
democratic rights, oppose militarism, and put human needs ahead of
profit.”
Lehman concludes his letter with a direct appeal to
workers to get involved by supporting or running as part of a delegate
slate. “The rank and file must take power out of the hands of the
entrenched apparatus and put it where it belongs: in the hands of
workers on the shop floor,” he wrote.
12. Trump backers prepare executive order to seize control of US midterm elections
Trump’s efforts to rig the 2026 midterm elections are proceeding on
several tracks. In his State of the Union address, he called on the
Republican-controlled Senate to pass the “Save America Act,” which has
already cleared the House. The bill would require proof of citizenship
to register to vote and a photo ID at the polls. It would also restrict
voting by mail to invalids, soldiers deployed overseas and those
traveling for business on election day.
The purpose of such
measures is not to combat fraud—for which there is no evidence—but to
suppress voting among those layers least likely to have passports, birth
certificates and driver’s licenses. This includes the very poor, racial
minorities and the elderly, but the impact could be even broader: Only
about half the population has a passport, and many married women have
birth certificates in their maiden names, not the names under which they
would register and vote.
*****
In his State of the Union speech, Trump gave a preview of his efforts
to rig the 2026 election, claiming that the Democrats were opposed to
the Save America Act because they could only win elections through vote
fraud. He bellowed, “They wanna cheat. They have cheated. And their
policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. And
we’re gonna stop it.”
The substance of this declaration was that
Trump will not accept any outcome of the midterm elections in which his
supporters are defeated. This is in the face of opinion polls showing
his approval rating at below 40 percent. Democrats are heavily favored
to win control of the House of Representatives (where the Republicans
have only a three-seat margin), and Republican control of the Senate is
also in danger.
Given the likelihood that Republican standing in
the polls will slip even further, as Trump escalates his attacks on the
working class and his program of worldwide military aggression, these
statements would lead logically to a White House effort to cancel the
elections entirely, something which Trump has already begun to suggest.
13. Mamdani deepens collaboration with Trump in second White House meeting
Getting along - President Trump embraces NYC Mayor Mamdani's stunt
Unlike Mamdani’s first visit with Trump, this one was not announced
in advance and was only confirmed by Mamdani after it was leaked to the
press. Mamdani traveled to Washington on Thursday, supposedly to pitch
the real estate swindler in the White House a housing proposal for New
York.
Demonstrating his contempt for the population of New York,
Mamdani did not publicly disclose the proposal that he made to Trump
behind closed doors. His communications director, however, said Trump’s
response was “very enthusiastic.”
Mamdani, renowned for his social media stunts, had his team put together a photo-op of the two with Trump holding a mock New York Daily News
front page with the headline, “Trump to City: Let’s Build,” a spoof of
the 1975 issue referencing Gerald Ford’s refusal to provide aid during
the city’s financial crisis.
Mamdani also reportedly raised the ICE abduction early Thursday of
Columbia University student Ellie Aghayeva. Trump’s immigration Gestapo,
lacking a warrant, lied to gain access to the visa holder’s dorm and
kidnapped her. Aghayeva was released from custody on Thursday afternoon.
To
the extent that Mamdani played a role in her release, it was achieved
by giving Trump cover to do far worse. Aghayeva is but one of the more
than 3,000 people arrested by ICE in New York City since last year.
Mamdani’s meeting with Trump took place less than 48 hours after
Trump’s State of the Union address, a nearly two-hour-long tirade packed
with lies, racist filth and imperialist thuggery. Trump outlined plans
for dictatorship, including undermining the midterm elections in
November, if they are even held, by asserting that the Democrats are
preparing to rig the vote.
Trump also boasted about massive cuts
to social programs during his speech, including cutting 2.4 million
Americans off of food stamps, effective between March and June this
year. Somewhere around 200,000 New York City residents may be affected, a
staggering number under conditions in which the cost-of-living crisis,
including grocery prices, drove Mamdani’s victory.
At another point during the State of the Union address, Trump
denounced the entire slate of Democratic Senators and Representatives as
“crazy” for refusing to give him a standing ovation for his xenophobic
comments. Overnight, Trump posted on Truth Social calls for the
deportation of Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Trump also
referred specifically to Mamdani during his remarks, calling him a
communist but adding, “he’s a nice guy, actually. Speak to him a lot.”
It’s
not an exaggeration to say that Mamdani, thanks to the services he is
providing to Trump, has become the fascist president’s favorite
Democrat. At least for the moment.
*****
The emptiness of Mamdani’s verbal appeals to tax the rich was reinforced
by the mayor’s endorsement earlier this month of Hochul for reelection,
despite her intransigent opposition to tax increases. Mamdani’s
endorsement dealt a fatal blow to the primary challenge from Lieutenant
Governor Antonio Delgado, who selected India Walton, a member of the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), as his running mate. Delgado
dropped out days after Mamdani endorsed Hochul.
Mamdani also boycotted a rally on Wednesday in Albany intended to
pressure state lawmakers to raise taxes on the wealthy. The rally was
planned for months by Mamdani’s own DSA and Our Time, an organization
formed directly out of Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. Mamdani refused to
attend to avoid antagonizing his ally, Hochul. In the end, no major
political figures participated, and attendance fell well short of
expectations.
*****
His embrace of Trump is not simply political expediency. It reflects a
class outlook and serves definite class purposes. Mamdani and the DSA
represent an upper middle class layer that is more afraid of
revolutionary struggle by the working class than they are of fascist
dictatorship.
Mamdani’s alliance with Trump, a “Red-Brown”
coalition in action, exposes him as an unprincipled fraud who is
attempting to politically disorient and undermine the developing
opposition to Trump’s dictatorship.
14. Australian government plans “tough” austerity budget
Albanese’s
ministers are seeking to satisfy a drumbeat of demands by the corporate
ruling class for much sharper cuts to social spending.
15. Australia: Police confiscate anti-genocide placard at Ramadan festival in Lakemba
The
police theft of a placard featuring the face of Israeli war criminal
Netanyahu and the caption “wanted” was a provocation that would have
been approved at high levels of the NSW government and police command.
13. Cuba repels armed provocation as US tries to starve island into submission
No amount of spin from Washington can change the basic character of
this operation. It is the product of decades‑old networks of Cuban exile
terrorists and US‑based paramilitaries cultivated and funded by the CIA
and other agencies since the 1960s. These networks are now being
activated under conditions in which the Trump administration has openly
moved to strangle Cuba’s economy, declare the island a “national
emergency” for the United States and threaten any country that sells it
oil with punitive tariffs.
Whether or not the White House
directly ordered this particular mission, it is inconceivable that the
heavily armed gang trained on a farm in South Florida, recruited members
through TikTok—as relatives and friends of the attackers boasted to
Univision journalist Javier Díaz—launched from Florida and entered Cuban
waters without coming to the attention of US intelligence and law
enforcement. At the very least, the provocation received a green light
from US authorities.
The hypocrisy of US officials is staggering.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has spent months championing the
kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and the
tightening of the fuel blockade against Cuba, now declares that “we are
going to have our own information” before drawing conclusions.
Florida’s
attorney general, James Uthmeier, snarls that “you can’t trust the
Cuban government” and vows to “hold these communists accountable,” while
Senator Rick Scott demands that “the Communist Cuban regime must be
held accountable.”
The aggressors are presented as victims, those
fending off an armed attack as the real criminals. Is there any doubt
what the response of the US national security apparatus would be to a
boatload of heavily armed foreign gunmen entering US waters to carry out
terrorist attacks?
*****
The timing of the incident underscores its political purpose. It
occurred as Rubio traveled to Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis, for a
Caribbean Community (Caricom) summit where Washington faced criticism
over the kidnapping of Maduro and the fuel blockade against Cuba.
Caribbean governments have long-standing trade and political ties with
both Venezuela and Cuba.
Saint Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister
Terrance Drew, a doctor trained in Cuba, warned bluntly: “A destabilized
Cuba will destabilize all of us.” Caribbean leaders also raised
grievances over US demands that they accept deportees from third
countries expelled from the US, reject Cuban medical missions, cool
relations with China and accept that Trump has torn up even limited
commitments on climate change as rising seas and storms devastate their
islands.
Confronted with this discontent, Rubio adopted a
defensive tone on Venezuela. “Irrespective of how some of you may have
individually felt about our operations and our policy towards
Venezuela,” he said, “Venezuela is better off today than it was eight
weeks ago.” He dangled the prospect of Caracas becoming an
“extraordinary partner” for regional energy.
At the same time, the
US Treasury theatrically announced that it would “support the Cuban
people” by allowing limited gas and other oil products, including
Venezuelan fuel, to be exported to private Cuban entities and
individuals, explicitly excluding the Cuban state.
As Mexico’s La Jornada
notes, these restrictions “in practice, exclude any Cuban entity with
the capacity to coordinate and receive the shipments.” US Cuba expert
William LeoGrande told the Washington Post that, in any case, private actors will not import enough oil “to really make a significant dent in the humanitarian crisis.”
The real aim is apparent: to further cultivate a layer of capitalists
and middle‑class business people as Washington’s favored social base for
regime change, while the broader population is starved and blackmailed.
It is a textbook regime‑change operation under the Monroe
Doctrine—today openly invoked in practice as the “Trump Doctrine.”
*****
Since 1959, Cuba has been the target of countless CIA‑backed
operations: bombings, assassination attempts against Fidel Castro,
economic sabotage, the arming and funding of exile terrorist groups and
the Bay of Pigs invasion.
The men killed and captured Wednesday
fit squarely within this history: long‑time residents of the United
States, with known records of violent opposition to the Cuban
government, training on US soil and organizing openly (in this case on
social media) in the name of “liberating” the island through
paramilitary action.
This terrorist provocation unfolded as the
Cuban people were confronting an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe
engineered by Washington. Trump’s January 29 edict has imposed a US
blockade, an act of war, to stop all energy supplies to the island.
Fuel shortages have brought blackouts of 20-30 hours to many areas,
decimated public transport and food distribution, and wrecked
refrigeration and water systems. Medicines are scarce, malnutrition is
growing and children go to bed hungry. This is a calculated attempt to
starve the remaining 8 million people in Cuba into accepting a
US‑dictated political settlement.
It must be said clearly: the
primary responsibility for this disaster lies with US imperialism. But
it does not follow that the Cuban regime represents socialism or an
alternative to capitalism. From the outset of the 1959 Cuban Revolution,
Fidel Castro was a bourgeois nationalist who sought an accommodation
with US capitalism. Four months after coming to power, he declared:
I
have stated in a clear and definite manner that we are not communists.
The doors are open to private investments that contribute to the
development of industry in Cuba. It is absolutely impossible for us to
make progress if we do not reach an understanding with the United
States.
Only when Washington rejected even limited
reforms did Castro turn to nationalizations and approach the Moscow
Stalinist bureaucracy for aid, in exchange for tying Cuba to the
Kremlin’s foreign policy and suppressing independent working class
politics on the island. After the dissolution of the USSR, the Cuban
leadership responded by opening ever more widely to foreign capital.
The severe crisis created by the US embargo is seen by sections of this
elite not so much as a threat, but as an opportunity to push through
full‑scale “shock therapy” and integrate themselves as competitive
partners in a US‑dominated order.
16. Drop
Site investigation reveals Israeli surveillance and security system
installed at Epstein-controlled Manhattan apartment building
Emails released in the last batch of Epstein files by the Department of
Justice show that Israeli officials began installing security equipment
in early 2016 at 301 East 66th Street. The building contains 200 units
and “has been home for years to young models, girlfriends, pilots and
lawyers” associated with Epstein, Business Insider reported on August 5, 2019, just days before Epstein’s life ended inside New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.
*****
The building itself was technically owned by a company tied to
Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, but court filings and property records
show that Jeffrey Epstein exercised effective control over multiple
units in the building. As previously reported by Business Insider
and documented in sworn depositions, apartments at 301 East 66th Street
were used to house underage girls, associates and employees connected
to Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
The building was also
where former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak frequently stayed while
visiting Epstein. The emails uncovered by Drop Site show that officials
from Israel’s permanent mission to the United Nations coordinated
directly with Epstein’s staff to install alarms, window sensors and
remote access controls at what was referred to in the email’s as “Ehud’s
apartment.”
*****
The implications of the Drop Site reporting are profound. By 2016,
Jeffrey Epstein was not an obscure “financier.” He was a registered sex
offender in Florida following his “sweetheart” federal non-prosecution
agreement. Court filings, sworn depositions and police reports had
already linked apartments at the 66th Street building to underage girls
and individuals accused of facilitating Epstein’s sex trafficking
operation.
Business Insider documented that multiple
units in the building were used to house young women, including foreign
minors recruited through Jean-Luc Brunel’s MC2 Models. Brunel, who also
had an apartment inside the building, died in jail in France in February
2022, while awaiting trial on charges of rape of a minor over 15 and
trafficking. Records show that several women later named as
co-conspirators shared the address as well.
*****
The building itself traces back to billionaire Les Wexner, Epstein’s
only publicly acknowledged client for decades, who transferred
significant New York real estate assets to Mark Epstein in the early
1990s. Wexner famously granted Jeffrey Epstein sweeping power of
attorney over his finances.
Wexner has maintained that his
relationship with Epstein was strictly professional. However,
photographs and public records show a longstanding and close
association, including joint appearances at social events.
*****
The attempt by the corporate press to squash the files comes as Trump’s
Justice Department continues to obscure and remove images and documents
that damage the administration. Files that were previously accessible
through the Department of Justice’s Epstein Transparency Act portal are now returning “Page not found” errors.
17. Trump poised to launch criminal war on Iran behind smokescreen of talks
Having amassed vast military power in the Middle East, spearheaded by
two aircraft carrier strike groups and scores of F-35, F-22 and F-16
warplanes, US imperialism is locked and loaded to unleash a criminal war
on Iran in the coming days, if not hours.
Such a war would have
catastrophic consequences for the beleaguered people of Iran, and
quickly set the entire region ablaze. In off-the-record briefings, Trump
administration and Pentagon officials say they are preparing for a
months-long bombardment of Iran. This would dwarf the 12-day unprovoked
war that the US and Israel waged on Iran last June, which killed more
than a thousand Iranians, most of them civilians.
*****
Unless it submits to a series of sweeping demands, Iran—an
historically oppressed country that has already been subject to years of
punishing economic sanctions, themselves tantamount to war—is
threatened with imminent attack by the largest deployment of US
imperialist firepower since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
To
underscore the point, as the Geneva talks began, the Pentagon ordered
the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, to leave
Crete, where it has been docked since Monday, to move closer to Israel
and Iran. Israeli forces have been on high alert in anticipation of a US
strike on Iran for weeks. They are only awaiting Washington’s
greenlight to join an attack.
*****
In recent interactions with the press, Iranian officials have
repeatedly claimed that a “win-win” deal is within reach, if the
negotiations are restricted to Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions
relief.
Tehran has let it be known that as a part of any deal with
Washington it is ready to make sweeping economic concessions to the US,
including ceding rights to American companies to develop oil and gas
and critical minerals projects. One unnamed official said they
constituted a “bonanza” of investment opportunities. It is not known
whether Tehran formally presented these proposals at Thursday’s talks.
*****
Were Iran’s Shia-clergy-led bourgeois nationalist regime to accept
Washington’s demands, Iran would be rendered effectively defenseless in
the face of US or Israeli aggression. Their imposition would constitute
de facto imperialist-imposed regime change, regardless of who remained
at the helm of the Islamic Republic and its leading institutions.
In
his State of the Union address Tuesday evening, Trump spewed a series
of lies about Iran, aimed at concocting a casus belli for war. These
include that Iran has refused to state that its nuclear program is
solely for civilian purposes and that it is working to build missiles
that “will soon reach” the USA.
All of this turns reality on its head.
*****
American imperialism has never reconciled itself to the 1979 Iranian
revolution, which overthrew the tyrannical, CIA-installed,
monarchical-dictatorship of the Shah. For decades the Pentagon has been
planning to wage war on Iran. In 2003 and again in 2007-8, the George W.
Bush administration actively considered attacking Iran. Obama
repeatedly insisted “all options were on the table” as he used the
nuclear issue to bully Iran, and sought to reassert Washington’s
dominance over the Middle East after the Iraq war debacle and the Arab
Spring uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
The current war drive
against Iran arises directly out of the post-October 2023 US-Israeli
drive to impose a “final solution” to the Palestinian question as part
of the assertion of unbridled US imperialist hegemony over the Middle
East through war, regime change and, in Gaza, outright genocide.
In
recent days, major media outlets with close connection to the US
military-intelligence apparatus have reported that senior Pentagon
officials have cautioned Trump that Iran has significant military
capabilities and that any conflict with Iran will be protracted and
could result in major US reversals and casualties.
Tehran, for its part, has vowed to strike US military bases and warships
across the region and warned that a war will quickly engulf the region.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the other Gulf States are
claiming they will not allow the US to use its bases in their countries
and airspace to attack Iran. This is partly in hopes of averting Iranian
retaliation, but no less importantly because they fear the reaction
among their restive populations to their complicity in an unprovoked and
illegal US-led, Israeli-backed assault on Iran.
*****
However it starts, a war on Iran will be a war of aggression, the
“supreme international crime” as defined at the Nuremberg trials, waged
by a criminal regime, that on behalf of America’s capitalist oligarchy
is intent on imposing unfettered US domination over the world and
dictatorship at home.
*****
The working class in the United States and around the world must
mobilize against the impending attack on Iran. It will have untold
consequences for the people of Iran, and the world. From the standpoint
of the strategists of US imperialism effecting regime change in Iran and
establishing domination over the Middle East—the world’s most important
oil exporting region and the strategic hinge between three
continents—is only a stepping stone toward war with China.
Protests and strikes must be organized demanding “Hands off Iran,” the
withdrawal of all US and other imperialist forces from the Middle East,
an end to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the lifting of all sanctions
against Iran. Such action must be animated by the fight to link
opposition to imperialist war with the growing struggles of the
international working class against the evisceration of its social and
democratic rights, and infused with a revolutionary socialist program
and perspective to put an end to capitalism—the source of war,
dictatorship and oligarchy.
18. From wellness grifter to surgeon general: Trump nominates anti-science quack Casey Means
On Tuesday, Casey Means—a wellness influencer with no active medical
license—appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
(HELP) Committee for her confirmation hearing as Donald Trump’s nominee
for Surgeon General. Over more than two hours, Means systematically
refused to recommend measles or flu vaccination to parents, declined to
rule out a vaccine-autism link despite decades of refuting scientific
evidence, and defended past statements attacking hormonal birth
control—all while insisting, in a formula repeated like an incantation,
that she “believes vaccines save lives.”
The hearing took place
against the backdrop of a national measles emergency—982 confirmed cases
in 2026 as of late February, with tracking data indicating the total
had surpassed 1,000, on pace to far exceed 2025’s three-decade record of
2,281—and the most sustained assault on public health infrastructure in
American history, waged over the past year by Health and Human Services
(HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. If confirmed on a party-line
Republican vote, Means would become the first surgeon general in US
history without an active medical license—the nominal head of the
nation’s public health at the very moment public health is being
systematically destroyed.
The spectacle of Democratic senators
posing “tough questions” to a nominee they are powerless to stop
epitomizes the bankruptcy of bourgeois politics. The hearing was not an
exercise in democratic accountability. It was theater, staged amid the
ruins of a public health infrastructure that both parties, over decades,
have starved of funding and subordinated to corporate interests.
*****
Born in 1987 to a politically connected Washington family, Means
graduated from Stanford Medical School and began a surgical residency at
Oregon Health and Science University before quitting. She has since
built a career as a wellness influencer, with 845,000 Instagram
followers, co-founding a health app called Levels and holding equity in
Truemed, a company owned by her brother Calley Means, a senior adviser
at HHS on food and nutrition policy.
According to a Public
Citizen report filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on February
4, Casey Means failed to disclose financial relationships in 79 out of
140 instances (56 percent) of promoting affiliated products on social
media, an obvious conflict of interest violation.
The Means
nomination is only the latest episode in the most far-reaching assault
on public health in modern American history. Since Kennedy’s
confirmation as HHS Secretary on February 13, 2025, the Trump
administration has waged a systematic war on American public health.
*****
The consequences are measured in children’s lives. The United States
recorded 2,281 measles cases in 2025—the highest since 1991—with three
deaths: two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico. These figures
are set to be dwarfed in 2026, with over 1,000 measles cases already
tracked. National kindergarten MMR vaccination coverage has fallen to
92.5 percent, below the threshold for herd immunity, with 39 states
failing to meet the standard. In November 2025, the Pan American Health
Organization declared the Americas had lost measles elimination status.
The
largest ongoing outbreak, in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, has
devastated a working-class community with more than 900 confirmed cases.
A second outbreak tore through the Dilley Immigration Processing Center
in South Texas, where detained immigrant children were held in
conditions that guaranteed the spread of a vaccine-preventable disease.
The World Socialist Web Site warned in July 2025 that the
Trump-Kennedy attacks “will kill millions globally,” with USAID cuts
projected to cause 14 million additional deaths through 2030 and the
Gavi withdrawal threatening 75 million unvaccinated children.
*****
The bipartisan character of this catastrophe did not begin with
Trump. For decades, under both Democratic and Republican
administrations, public health has been starved of funding and
subordinated to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. These
processes have only accelerated since the start of the ongoing COVID-19
pandemic, which has killed over 1.5 million Americans and over 30
million people worldwide, while debilitating hundreds of millions more
with Long COVID globally.
The defense of science and public
health—the defense of the lives of the working class against a ruling
class that treats mass infection and death as acceptable policy—is
inseparable from the fight for socialism. This requires the independent
mobilization of the working class, through rank-and-file safety
committees, in opposition to both capitalist parties.
19. Workers Struggles: Africa & Europe
Africa
Liberia:
Police attack mine workers protesting pay and conditions
Nigeria:
Academics and workers strike at Rufus Giwa Polytechnic in Akure, Ondo State
South Africa:
Protest in Tembisa township against electricity cutoffs
Europe
Belgium:
Firefighters hold strike and demonstration in Brussels against cuts
Greece:
Actors and theater technicians strike over pay and conditions
Isle of Man:
Bus workers on walk out over pay and entitlements
Spain:
Port workers in Avilés, Spain strike for job security
Turkey:
Public sector bus drivers in Çanakkale strike over unpaid wages and poor working conditions
United Kingdom:
Teachers’ strikes in Kent, England over specialist needs service, and Rochdale, over staff shortages
Mental health workers in southwest England hold further walkout over pay
Infrastructure workers on a London overground rail route strike over pay
