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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Staff have taken three one-day strikes in February. They have now held 13 strike days since a ballot in September last year.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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”.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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.
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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.
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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?
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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.”
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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.
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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
Nigeria:
South Africa:
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
Mental health workers in southwest England hold further walkout over pay
Infrastructure workers on a London overground rail route strike over pay20. 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.
