Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump’s threats against food stamps: A weapon of class war
The Trump administration’s declaration that it will allow food stamp funding to expire on November 1 unless the Democrats surrender to end the shutdown is an act of sheer cruelty. Tens of millions of Americans could go hungry during the month of Thanksgiving, while the oligarchy behind Trump celebrates record share values.
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The Trump administration is using the lives of 42 million people who rely on SNAP as political blackmail. Two-thirds of recipients are in households with children. The program was estimated to lift 3 million people out of poverty in 2023. Already, 5 percent of US households are classified as suffering from “very low food security,” a government euphemism for households forced to reduce food intake or skip meals altogether. These figures would rise dramatically if food stamp funding expires.
Officials justified the decision not to use emergency funding on the bogus grounds that such a move would be “illegal” without congressional authorization.
Even if this were true, it has never stopped Trump before. It did not prevent him from redirecting $8 billion in federal funds, supplemented with a $130 million donation from a fellow billionaire, to pay soldiers to ensure their loyalty as they are deployed in US cities and as the White House prepares for war against Venezuela. That donation, as well as the $300 million gift from tech billionaires to build a new White House ballroom, expresses the erasure of any division between the oligarchy and the government.
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Scenes in Washington last week captured the growing desperation. Hundreds of furloughed or terminated federal workers lined up outside food pantries. Air traffic controllers, who will receive their first zero-dollar paychecks today, are dealing with nationwide flight delays and cancellations due to staffing shortages.
This is not the product of one man. It is the outcome of a capitalist ruling class whose interests are incompatible with even the most basic necessities of human life.
Beneath the surging share values and trillions added to the wealth of the billionaires, American capitalism is approaching the point of bankruptcy, with a new recession looming and federal debt reaching unsustainable levels.
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The crisis of American society cannot be resolved outside of a massive movement directed against the unchallenged privileges of the oligarchy, Trump’s real social base. The defense of democratic rights must be fused with the demand that workers possess inalienable social rights—the right to employment, to adequate food, to healthcare, to a stable environment and to all the basic necessities of a decent human life.
As the Socialist Equality Party explained in its statement, “After the ‘No Kings’ protests: What Next?”: “The task now is not to wait passively for the next demonstration but to use this opposition as a lever in the fight for a movement of the working class for socialism.”
2. SNAP cuts in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to intensify hunger crisis for millions of Americans
That the USDA does not consider the threatened hunger and starvation of millions of American adults and children a disaster or emergency is but one expression of the class war character of the government shutdown. It demonstrates that these policies have been explicitly designed to attack the basic social right of the working class to plentiful, nutritious food to maintain a healthy life.
After the government released its 2024 report in the “USDA Household Food Security” series on October 22, the White House said it would be the last such study. Key findings showed an overall rise in food insecurity, with nearly 47.4 million people living in food insecure households, including 13.8 million children. The USDA claimed, “These redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.” In a press release in September announcing the decision to scrap the report, the agency claimed:
The questions used to collect the data are entirely subjective and do not present an accurate picture of actual food security. ... The data is rife with inaccuracies slanted to create a narrative that is not representative of what is actually happening in the countryside as we are currently experiencing lower poverty rates, increasing wages, and job growth under the Trump Administration.
Democrats in Congress are appealing to Trump and their “Republican colleagues” to work with them to come to a bipartisan agreement to end the shutdown. But it is clear the Trump administration has no intention of entering into any serious negotiations and has seized on the shutdown to enact massive cuts to federal jobs and social programs.
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On July 4, 2025, Trump signed into law his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA), which faced no real opposition from the Democrats, who chose instead to plead with Trump for compromises. Most importantly, they failed to organize mass protests to a bill that includes permanent extensions to Trump era tax cuts, large increases to defense and border spending and sharp cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs. This is because the Democrats are far more fearful of the rising popular outrage over Trump’s policies than they are to the president and his cohorts’ fascistic drive to dictatorship.
Components of the OBBBA were put in motion beginning in July 2025, with most major elements applying through the remainder of the decade, with some expiring or phasing out after 2029. A particularly brutal aspect of the OBBBA is $186 billion in cuts and restrictions placed on SNAP benefits.
As of 2022, more than 1 in 10 people in the US received SNAP benefits, and 20 percent of children lived in families receiving SNAP. The program allows low-income individuals to pay for food at authorized food retailers, with restrictions on the type of items that may be purchased, up to a monetary limit. The average monthly benefit in practice is $187.20 a month per person, about $6 a day or $2 a meal.
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The US Department of Agriculture and other federal and state agencies are full of demeaning and patronizing advice to SNAP recipients for stretching their benefits: Buy staple food, such as rice, beans and pasta, in bulk; use coupons, store apps and loyalty programs to access discounts; avoid impulse purchases.
As far as the wealthy are concerned, however, the sky is the limit. In New York City, home to 72 Michelin-starred restaurants, the average price of a Michelin-starred meal is $258 per person, excluding drinks, service charges and gratuity, according to Chef’s Pencil. The website estimates that these additional costs could easily double the final bill. Japanese restaurant Masa, which features the Hinoki Counter Experience, was the first American restaurant to break the $1,000 meal mark. In other words, one super-rich diner could spend more on one meal than the poorest family of four receives in SNAP benefits in an entire month.
Even if the shutdown is ended and SNAP benefits are restored, the cuts and restrictions to SNAP in the OBBBA will result in 22.3 million families losing their SNAP benefits in part or whole and millions more being excluded in the future.
Food stamps were first introduced during the Great Depression but were discontinued in the 1940s and only reestablished by the Food Stamp Act of 1964. By 1979, 20 million people were using food stamps, and their use significantly reduced hunger and malnutrition. The program’s name was changed to SNAP in 2008.
Historically, food stamps have been shown to enable families to purchase healthier food and free up resources that can be used for health-promoting activities and medical care, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). It writes:
SNAP reduces the overall prevalence of food insecurity by as much as 30 percent, and is even more effective among children and those with “very low food security,” that is, when one or more household members have to skip meals or otherwise eat less during the year due to lack of money.
Restrictions were placed on these benefits, proven to reduce hunger, starting with the Reagan administration and continuing through successive Republican and Democratic administrations. Food stamps were made less accessible under the Clinton administration, along with its moves to “end welfare as we know it.” The cuts in the OBBBA, however, represent an unprecedented assault on SNAP, following the agenda laid out in the reactionary Project 2025, initiated by the Heritage Foundation. Trump’s budget director, Russell Vought, who is overseeing attacks on social programs and layoffs during the shutdown, co-authored Project 2025.
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In addition to the raw funding cuts of $186 billion, OBBBA puts into place restrictions and work requirements on those who receive SNAP benefits. The bill creates administrative roadblocks for those who need assistance and incentivizes states to restrict enrollment by shifting costs of the program onto the states. These include:
- Widening work requirements: The provision that requires recipients to work 30 hours a week and pursue work is introduced to new age groups and categories of recipients who were previously exempt, including those whose youngest child is under 18 but over 14, people aged over 55, veterans and the homeless.
- Waiver restrictions: States previously were able to waive work requirements in areas with poor employment prospects. Now most waivers are limited to areas with an official unemployment rate of 10 percent. The last time the official US unemployment rate reached 10 percent was in October 2009 during the Great Recession.
- New bureaucratic roadblocks to receiving SNAP, such as requiring recipients to document their utility costs.
- Federal funding for SNAP administrative needs slashed in half: This cut is in addition to increased funding penalties for administrative errors at the state level, incentivizing states to restrict the number of applicants.
All these changes will further complicate the efforts of those in need to qualify for and continue to receive SNAP benefits, threatening an upsurge in hunger in the US. As of 2023, 13.5 percent of Americans were already food insecure, and one in five children was hungry. These conditions will impact the entire economy, as food purchases by SNAP recipients have long tended to have a stabilizing effect on the economy, particularly the food industry.
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The ruling class, which can permit no checks or limitations on its accumulation of wealth, demands workers pay for the debts and decline of American capitalism. It is attempting to bring to life a reactionary blueprint in which workers are expected to labor for the absolute bare minimum in pay, while robbing workers and their families of the necessary nutrition to sustain a healthy life.
The cuts to SNAP in Trump’s bill, along with other policies that increase economic inequality and attack public health, are aimed at further reducing life expectancy and prioritizing profit over human need. The Socialist Equality Party says access to food, not only to meet basic nutritional needs but to thrive, is a basic social right that must be fought for by the working class as part of a socialist program.
3. Sri Lankan student leaders lament government refusal to meet demands
The Inter-University Student Federation’s so-called education campaign is completely bogus. It aligns with the government’s demand that students, young people, workers, and the poor wait for the economic recovery that will follow the government’s full implementation of International Monetary Fund [IMF] measures. It is an “economic recovery” that will never come amid the worsening global economic crisis.
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Sri Lanka’s low budgetary allocation for education is not an isolated issue but part of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government’s’s full commitment to the IMF’s demands. These include higher taxes, the restructuring of about 400 state-owned enterprises—through closures, privatization, and job cuts—and the destruction of thousands of public-sector jobs.
Federal investigators have concluded the initial phase of their inquiry into the catastrophic explosion that tore through the Accurate Energetic Systems (AES) facility in Bucksnort, Tennessee, on October 10, killing 16 workers and injuring at least four others.
Officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the National Center for Explosives Training and Research now estimate that between 24,000 and 28,000 pounds of high explosives detonated in a chain reaction that leveled the 15,000-square-foot building.
The blast was so immense that it exceeded the explosive power of a US GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, the so-called “MOAB,” “the largest non-nuclear bomb in the American arsenal, with a payload of 18,700 pounds of TNT equivalent.”
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To put the scale of the Bucksnort explosion in perspective, the 28,000-pound estimated detonation surpasses the payload of the US “MOAB,” which was designed for aerial deployment against enemy fortifications.
President Trump ordered the first-ever use of the MOAB, nicknamed the “Mother of All Bombs,” on April 13, 2017, ostensibly targeting an ISIS cave complex in the Achin District of Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. The bomb killed at least 94 Afghans, though journalists and independent observers were barred from firsthand reporting from the site.
That such destructive power has now been unleashed unintentionally inside a rural Tennessee workplace speaks volumes about the militarized character of US industry. AES is a private defense contractor supplying the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice, as well as NASA, under contracts reportedly worth $140 million. The same technologies designed for imperialist war are produced under sweatshop conditions by highly exploited, underpaid laborers in one of the poorest regions of the United States.
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The 16 dead, ranging in age from their early 20s to late 50s, were residents of small towns across Hickman and Humphreys counties. Families held private memorials as remains were identified, though some victims have yet to be laid to rest.
This tragedy lays bare the deadly intersection of militarism and capitalist production. In the drive to maintain US imperialist dominance abroad, corporations such as AES are handed lucrative federal contracts while cutting costs and corner-cutting on safety to maximize profit. The same government that spends $1 trillion a year on war leaves American workers to die in unsafe factories making the very weapons used in those wars.
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The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site call for an independent investigation, led by workers themselves, into the conditions at Accurate Energetic Systems and across the munitions industry. The corporate-government alliance that profits from militarism cannot be trusted to police itself. Workers must form rank-and-file safety committees and link their struggle with the growing opposition of workers worldwide to demand safe working conditions, full public transparency and an end to the exploitation that fuels both war abroad and death at home.
American officials are claiming that an agreement has been reached with China to extend the so-called truce on the imposition of massive additional tariffs on Chinese goods which would have all but severed trade relations between the world’s number one and number two economies.
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In an interview with ABC News, [the US] treasury secretary Scott Bessent said he expected that China would delay the controls on critical minerals for a year and Beijing would re-examine them.
The top Chinese trade negotiator, Li Chenggang, told reporters in Beijing that a “preliminary consensus” had been reached on the export controls, the drug fentanyl and an extension of the trade war truce.
US officials have said they expect the truce extension to be longer than 90 days as this would give certainty and stability to the global economy and the US-China relationship. In an interview with CBS, Bessent said the additional 100 percent tariff on Chinese imports was “effectively off the table” and that there had been a “very good two days” of discussions.
The Chinese state news agency Xinhua said a “basic consensus” agreement had been reached to address the “respective concerns” of the two sides.
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If a truce has been reached, then the motivations on the American side area clear. It is seeking to use the opportunity to build its stockpile of critical mineral products, vital for key sections of industry including military equipment, so that it can withstand retaliation by China if the trade war escalates.
There is also considerable talk from the American side that a “framework agreement” has been reached for a deal with China to be reached at the meeting between Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping in South Korea later this week. The statements from the Chinese side have been more muted because it is pressing for the US to make concessions on its restrictions, in particular on computer chips.
While the headlines are focused on the prospect of a truce extension, a “re-examination” of export controls, and a possible framework agreement, the US is setting in motion other mechanisms for extending its tariff war against China.
The office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) has said it will examine “whether China has fully implemented its commitments” in the trade deal it signed during the first Trump administration and “what action, if any, should be taken in response.”
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said China opposed the “false accusations” from the US.
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Apart from the talks with China, another outcome of the talks in Kuala Lumpur was the announcement of so-called trade deals with Malaysia and Cambodia and the continuation of negotiations with Thailand and Vietnam.
The use of the terms “deal” or “agreement” is very much a misnomer as the joint statement issued by the US and Malaysia makes clear. It is all one-way traffic in which, by threatening major tariffs, the US has imposed a series of diktats.
The only “concession” offered by the US is that it will maintain its tariff on Malaysian goods at 19 percent.
Among the key terms is a commitment by Malaysia to “provide significant preferential treatment for US industrial goods exports” as well as US agricultural products.
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A White House Fact Sheet said the agreements included “transformative deals that will deliver billions into the US economy.”
These include: purchases of up to $3.4 billion annually of US liquified natural gas; annual sales of $42.6 million of US coal; the sale of US telecommunications products and services valued at $119 million; the purchase by Malaysia of 30 Boeing aircraft plus a purchase option of 30 additional planes; and purchases of US semiconductors, aerospace components and data centre equipment with an estimated value of $150 billion.
In return Malaysia receives nothing, save an agreement by the US that it will not be hit by major tariffs that would cripple its economy and that around 12 percent of its exports to the US will be exempt from the general tariff rate of 19 percent.
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One of the key objectives of the Trump administration is to secure its supply of critical minerals and break the grip of China which mines 70 percent of them and processes some 90 percent.
Accordingly, critical minerals feature prominently in the joint statement which said Malaysia had “committed to refrain from banning, or imposing quotas on, exports to the United States of critical minerals or rare earth elements.”
According to the Straits Times, Malaysia has rare earth depots of more than 16 million tonnes and currently supplies 13 percent of the global demand for critical minerals. But as is the case with many other sources, all the rare earths mined in Malaysia are exported to China for processing.
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Nowhere is the predatory character of US trade policy better illustrated than in the provision of the Malaysian deal under which it has committed to supply $70 billion in investments in the American economy over the course of the next ten years.
It is not on the scale of the $550 billion worth of investment commitments it extracted from Japan, but it is yet another expression of the way in which the US imperialism is resorting to outright gangster methods in an attempt to counter its historic crisis.
6. Trump’s phony posturing as peacemaker in Asia
US President Trump landed in Malaysia on Sunday beginning a tour of Asia—the first since his second term in office commenced in January. While nominally present to take part in a summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the one-day stop was chiefly to grandstand as a peacemaker in the border clashes between Thailand and Cambodia and to formalise punitive US trade deals with ASEAN members.
Fighting between Thailand and Cambodia broke out in July, which, according to Thailand, was triggered by two landmine incidents that injured its soldiers. Clashes opened up along hundreds of kilometres of disputed border involving tanks, artillery and rockets in the fiercest fighting since 2011. At least 40 people, including civilians, were killed in the five days of conflict and some 300,000 civilians fled the border areas.
As Malaysia, which is the current ASEAN chair, brokered talks for a ceasefire, Trump stepped in with a big economic stick and threatened to call off trade talks with the two countries unless fighting stopped. Both countries, which are heavily dependent on exports to the US, were facing huge across the board tariffs. While Trump grabbed the limelight, China, which has close relations with Cambodia in particular, held talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and then acting Thai Prime Minister, Phumtham Wechayachai.
As soon as the truce was announced, Trump immediately claimed credit, absurdly declaring on social media, “I am proud to be the President of PEACE!” The price of his presence in Malaysia on Sunday appears to have been a televised appearance with the Thai, Cambodian and Malaysian prime ministers co-signing an updated truce agreement amid great fanfare.
On the same day, hundreds of people protested in the Malaysia capital of Kuala Lumpur against the presence of Trump and the backing of US imperialism for the Israeli genocide in Gaza. As one protester told Al Jazeera: “People who have a conscience know that Trump is a genocide enabler. Without him, Israel cannot kill all the children and people in Gaza.”
Trump’s so-called “peace” agreement in the Middle East signed on October 9 has rapidly been exposed as nothing more than another stage in the US-backed Israeli ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. It has sanctified the permanent Israeli occupation and annexation of a large part of Gaza, even as the daily mass killing and the deliberate starvation of the population continues.
The peace deal between Thailand and Cambodia is likewise a fraud. Heavy weapons and mines are to be removed from border areas, Thailand is to release 18 Cambodian soldiers held since July and Malaysian troops are to be deployed to monitor the ceasefire. However, while fighting has halted, temporarily at least, none of the underlying issues—the longstanding legacy of imperialist domination and intrigue—have been resolved.
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Trump has not the slightest concern for peace in South East Asia or the lives of Cambodians and Thais. His economic thuggery is being wielded in Asia and internationally to advance the economic and strategic interests of American imperialism. Trump is recklessly preparing for a far more dangerous conflict with China, which the US political establishment as a whole regards as the chief threat to American global hegemony.
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Trump used the remainder of Sunday to reach a series of agreements with Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam that impose reduced but still large tariffs on their exports to the US, boost sales of US goods to these countries and, in the case of Malaysia, mandates $70 billion of investment into the US.
Significantly, the agreements also sought to boost access to critical minerals whose production is currently dominated by China across the whole range. So essential are these minerals to the US economy and war machine that the Trump administration is desperately seeking to establish alternative supply chains as it prepares for conflict with China.
The US and Malaysia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to expand trade and investment on critical minerals, including in exploration, extraction, refinement, manufacturing, recovery and recycling. Malaysia also agreed to refrain from banning or imposing quotas on exports to the US of critical minerals or rare earth elements. Trump signed a similar agreement with the Thai prime minister.
Trump also made moves to strengthen security ties with Cambodia in return for halving the planned tariffs on its exports to the US and for removing the US arms embargo on the country, which has been closely aligned with China. The two countries will restart their annual bilateral Angkor Sentinel military drills last held in 2017 and the US will increase access for Cambodian officers to train at US military colleges.
All of these measures are geared towards war, not peace. As in the 1930s, global economic warfare is the prelude to a catastrophic global military conflict, which is already underway and intensifying in Europe and the Middle East.
In his glib, Orwellian doublespeak, Trump summed up his stop in Malaysia on social media: “Signed major Trade and Rare Earth Deals, and yesterday, most importantly, signed the Peace Treaty between Thailand and Cambodia. NO WAR! Now, off to Japan!!!”
In Japan, Trump will meet with the new right-wing, militarist prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, who has already pledged to accelerate the country’s remilitarisation in preparation for a US-led war on China. In South Korea, he will attempt to bludgeon concessions from Xi, who is not blind to US war preparations and is increasingly determined to trade economic blow for blow.
7. Boeing defense workers reject 4th company offer: Rank and file must take control of strike
On Sunday, Boeing defense workers in the St. Louis area voted to reject the company’s insultingly inadequate offer for a fourth time, extending the strike, which has now entered week 13. However, the slim margin of the vote—51 to 49 percent—puts the strike by 3,200 workers in real danger and has emboldened the defense contractor’s executives to press ahead with their concessionary demands.
The five-year offer was largely the same deal workers had rejected in three previous votes. The ratification bonus was lowered from $4,000 to $3,000, with workers instead being offered $3,000 in Boeing shares that vest over three years, and a fourth-year retention bonus of $1,000. Workers at the top of the pay scale would see slight improvements in the fourth year of the contract but at the expense of reduced hourly incentive pay.
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As late as Wednesday, the bargaining committee for International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 837 had suggested it would not be calling another vote, posting, “We’ve said it many times, and we’ll say it again: We will not vote on an insulting offer.”
On Thursday, the union did an about-face, calling for a vote on the deal, which they cynically claimed to oppose. It is wholly possible IAM officials thought they had worn workers down enough to obtain a narrow ratification vote. In any case, the IAM bureaucracy is calculating how much longer it will take to break the resistance of the rank and file and starve them into submissio
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During that strike, workers repeatedly rejected IAM-backed deals. Union officials had no intention of calling a strike in the defense division but had no choice after workers rejected the initial deal the union recommended.
The IAM bureaucracy does not have a strategy to win the strike but to defeat it. It has repeatedly brought back essentially the same agreement while filing a filing a toothless Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge with the Trump-controlled National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Like its Democratic Party allies, the union bureaucracy fears a mass movement of the working class far more than accommodating themselves to a fascist dictatorship.
The outcome of this struggle depends entirely on the initiative of rank-and-file workers themselves. The first step needed is the formation of a Boeing St. Louis Workers Rank-and-File Committee to put forward workers’ demands, oversee all contract talks and outline a strategy to win this struggle.
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The impact of the strike on Boeing’s finances will become more apparent on Wednesday, when the company is set to reveal third quarter earnings. Boeing’s defense division accounts for one-third of the company’s revenue, despite employing a workforce just a fraction of the size of the division producing commercial airplanes. The Trump administration has directly subsidized Boeing with billions in military contracts.
Company executives responded to the defeat of their contract by saying, “The union’s statement is misleading since the vote failed by the slimmest of margins, 51% to 49%. We are turning our focus to executing the next phase of our contingency plan in support of our customers.”
Boeing is actively hiring replacement workers and outsourcing work to third parties to break the strike. According to an internal company memo, cited by Reuters, Boeing executives said the first batch of replacement workers started training on October 2 for munitions and aircraft assembly positions.
At present, Trump is relying on the IAM bureaucracy to sell out the strike, and the administration has dispatched a federal mediator to oversee “negotiations.” But the fascist president in the White House is determined to resume full military production as soon as possible and is ready to use far more repressive measures if the strike continues. The state repression being directed against immigrant workers today will be directed against striking workers tomorrow.
That is why the fight of the Boeing workers to win their just demands is directly connected to the fight to establish rank-and-file committees in every factory, workplace and neighborhood to mobilize the enormous social power of the working class against fascist dictatorship and capitalist oligarchy.
GM Canada announced October 21 that it is ending operations at the CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, due to seriously slumping sales for its Chevrolet BrightDrop EV 600 and EV 400 cargo delivery vans.
A 2021 EV retooling at the plant to produce the new vans cost $2 billion, with about $500 million coming from the governments of Ontario and Canada.
The move by GM will see the loss of more than 1,000 jobs at the assembly operation. Jobs for another 200 workers at GM’s wholly-owned Ultium battery operation in Ingersoll remain in limbo. Workers at both facilities suffered sporadic downtime in recent years due to supply problems and low orders and had been on indefinite layoff for months.
The idling of the assembly plant comes 36 years after auto assembly operations began in Ingersoll. GM Canada president Kristian Aquilina said workers would receive full pay for six months along with some benefits.
Federal Industry Minister Melanie Joly told reporters that she had spoken with the local leader of Unifor as well as Ontario Premier Doug Ford and that they had agreed to create a response group to push for new production at the plant. For her part, Lana Payne, president of Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, joined with Ontario Premier Doug Ford to pressure Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government on the basis of a bogus cross-class appeal to common national interests between bosses and workers. “Canada must respond with a real industrial strategy that defends Canadian jobs, leverages our market, and pushes back on Trump’s economic bullying,” said Payne.
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The basis for the shutdown was laid by a deal ratified by 91 percent of the CAMI workforce in 2021. Unifor pushed it through after the union bureaucracy suddenly re-opened the contract with the GM subsidiary almost a year early and with no consultation with the rank and file.
With the internal combustion Equinox crossover vehicle slated to be soon discontinued, workers were told that only a $1 billion cash infusion to transition to EV production could save their livelihoods. At a snap Zoom meeting, workers learned that Unifor had agreed to give GM a free hand to determine staffing levels and working conditions at the plant. The self-serving contract “Highlights” brochure contained no written details on the impact of the proposed deal on work rules, scheduling, downtime layoffs and ultimate staffing levels.
In order to stampede the membership toward ratification, Plant Chairman Mike Van Boekel and Unifor Local 88 President Joe Graves painted a dire picture of an imminent “deathblow” to the plant if workers failed to ratify the tentative agreement. At the same time, they told the workers there would be significant changes to work rules and job classifications, jobs would likely be lost, and there would be no guarantees of final employment or production numbers when workers were recalled after a shutdown for a retooling of unknown duration.
A new “Competitive Operating Agreement” with all the details, they added, was not ready to be presented to the membership. It would have to be accepted unseen and apparently with key details yet to be hammered out.
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The global auto companies, including the Detroit Three in Canada and the United States, are waging a major onslaught on the workers who labor in their factories. The auto bosses are demanding that the switch-over to EV production be paid for by further reducing labor costs. It is projected that EV production requires only 40 percent of the labor for internal combustion vehicles.
But rather than mobilizing workers in a joint struggle against the Detroit Three on both sides of the border, Unifor is still pumping out the same nationalist “Team Canada” poison that has hamstrung autoworkers for generations, by splitting the workforce and allowing the companies to “whipsaw” jobs, wages and conditions back and forth across North American borders to the lowest bidder. During the 2023 contract negotiations, when agreements in both the US and Canada were coming due at nearly the same time, Unifor and UAW bureaucrats doubled down on their decades-long effort to pit workers on both sides of the border against each other and prevent a North American-wide struggle by autoworkers against the globally mobile corporations.
Unifor’s role as a cheap-labor contractor for corporate Canada flows directly from the social position of the bureaucrats who staff the union apparatus. Living on their six-figure salaries and lavish expense accounts, Unifor officials have far more in common with corporate executives and government ministers than they do with their members. Fervent advocates of Canadian nationalism and the interests of the capitalist elite, they work to secure a “competitive” advantage for their “own” businesses and investors.
The consequences of this nationalist outlook have been devastating on both sides of the border. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, and wages and conditions have been driven down in the name of “competitiveness.” Yet the Unifor and UAW bureaucrats remain committed to the same course, clinging to their alliances with “their” ruling classes to maintain their privileged positions as junior partners in corporate management.
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The closure of CAMI is a serious blow, but it is not the end of the story. The lessons drawn from this experience must serve as the foundation for a new, international movement of workers determined to assert their own independent interests and to organize production on the basis of social need rather than corporate profit.
As the Trump administration continues to carry out its mass deportation operation, separating families and disappearing long-time residents into a network of mostly privately run concentration camps, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders went on the far-right Tim Dillon Show last week to praise Donald Trump’s attacks on immigrants.
In the extraordinary interview, Sanders, a two-time Democratic nominee for president, not only praised Trump’s illegal closing of the border, which deprives immigrants and refugees the right to claim asylum in the US, but echoed Trump’s talking points in justifying the war on immigrants.
Sanders’ appearance on the program reflects the ongoing rightward shift of the entire ruling class and the Democratic Party. Dillon, like comedians Joe Rogan and Theo Von, backed Trump in the 2024 election. Dillon regularly associates with millionaire Republicans and previously admitted to having dinner with Vice President JD Vance this year.
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Sanders’ defense of the capitalist nation state and its increasingly militarized borders is not new. For years, Sanders has blamed immigrants and foreign workers, as opposed to the capitalist system, for destroying jobs and driving down the wages and living standards of native-born workers. Sanders’ support for Trump’s border policies mirrors that of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and the rest of the trade union bureaucracies, which use economic nationalism and jingoism to pit American workers against their class brothers and sisters around the world.
In a disgusting lie, Sanders claimed that immigrants who came to the US under the Biden administration “came in illegally. Period. Okay. It was illegal.”
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While Sanders’ congratulation of Trump for his fascist immigrant agenda was the most significant aspect of his appearance on the show, he also advanced several other right-wing and pro-imperialist positions. Asked to comment on the fraudulent “ceasefire” in Gaza, Sanders defended Israel’s “right to defend itself.”
Sanders said, “Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed an atrocity when it attacked Israel and killed 1,200 innocent men, women and a lot of young people, took hundreds of hostages.” In fact, many of those killed were massacred by Israeli military elements as part of the Hannibal Directive.
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Dillon noted that many young people oppose not just the genocide in Gaza but the ongoing US-NATO war against Russia and Ukraine. He noted that many younger people are wondering why the US government is spending billions on foreign wars while workers and young people can’t afford homes.
Sanders said he did not see the “two issues as comparable” while again reiterating Israel’s alleged right to “self defense.” Dillon pressed Sanders, saying they are “both foreign conflicts” and that many were wondering why billions were being spent over a “land dispute in Northern Ukraine.”
Sanders grumbled, “I don’t call it a land dispute.” A loyal lackey of US imperialism, Sanders launched into a rant against Russian President Vladimir Putin, “a disgusting human being.”
Sanders claimed European ambassadors told him that if Putin “is not stopped at the Ukraine other Eastern Europe countries will be next. … NATO will be involved and then maybe the United States and our troops as well.”
10. Number of homeless New York City public school students reaches a new high
Recently released data collected by Advocates for Children of New York documents that during the 2024-2025 school year, a total of 154,000 New York City public school students were homeless, a new record. The annual total has exceeded 100,000 for the last 10 years. The large majority of them, 65,000, slept in shelters, a record high, or lived in crowded multi-family homes. Out of more than 900,000 students in the public schools, nearly 1 in 7 were homeless during the last school year, the highest proportion on record.
This barbaric condition is a testament to the chronic lack of affordable housing in the city. To grasp the scale of the problem, the city’s homeless student population alone would itself number among the 20 largest school districts in the country.
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The situation in New York City is but one example of conditions across the country. A recent national survey found that more than 1.3 million students are homeless.
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he Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York reports that one in every three New York renters will soon have to pay at least 50 percent of their income for housing. This situation will only worsen due to the Trump administration’s cut in federal housing aid.
In New York City alone, as of August 2025 more than 350,000 men, women and children were homeless, based on data collected by the Coalition for the Homeless.
The baseless right-wing claim that a flood of immigrants is “destroying” the city, including by Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, causing, among other problems, the rise in student homelessness, is refuted by the fact that the escalating numbers of homeless children began long before the recent immigrant arrivals.
Not surprisingly, homeless students suffer academically from their impoverished and unstable living conditions. Recent state testing revealed that nearly 80 percent of homeless students in grades 3 through 8 were deficient in reading and math. Nearly 40 percent did not graduate from high school and one in eight dropped out, three times the rate of their housed peers. Half of homeless students have a high rate of absenteeism, which means that they missed at least one out of every 10 days.
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The extreme lack of affordable housing is just one manifestation of the sharp contrast between the city’s wealthy elite and its increasingly impoverished working class, in the world’s financial capital. A newly released report by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli finds that Wall Street’s profits could top $60 billion in 2025 if current trends continue. At the same time, another study, published earlier this year, found that a quarter of city residents do not have enough money to afford basic needs including housing, food and medical care.
11. EU’s murderous refugee policy leads to 40 people drowning in boat disaster off Tunisia
The boat disaster off the Tunisian coast on October 22, in which at least 40 people, including infants, lost their lives, is not an accident but a crime. The European Union (EU) and its member governments, including the Berlin coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), are responsible. With their inhuman refugee policy, they consciously accept such catastrophes.
It was no coincidence that on the very day that 40 refugees drowned off Tunisia in the early morning, that evening Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) once again described migrants in Berlin as “problems in the urban landscape.” The notorious EU agency Frontex recently boasted that “irregular border crossings” had fallen by 20 percent in the first half of 2025.
Politicians such as Merz in Berlin, President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels are responsible for the truly deadly conditions that have arisen at Europe’s external borders. What do these conditions look like in concrete terms? The latest disaster off Tunisia casts a spotlight on them.
Instead of doing what ordinary travellers do—buying a plane ticket or booking a passage by ship and reaching Europe via ports, airports and railway stations within a few hours—people were forced first to cross the Sahara on foot. They had to watch out for Tunisian border guards, notorious for seizing migrants and abandoning them in the desert without drinking water.
The people concerned likely paid thousands of euros to a smuggling network or a trafficker before they could set out for Italy. The coastline south of Mahdia around Salakta is an important departure point, as the distance from there to the Italian island of Lampedusa is only about 130 kilometres.
In the middle of the night, October 21–22, the people boarded an old wooden boat, grossly overloaded with around 70 passengers. The engine, too, was no match for the rough seas that night.
The boat capsized shortly after leaving, still in Tunisian waters, and horrific scenes must have unfolded. It was only in the early hours that the Tunisian coastguard reached the site of the disaster. Of roughly 70 people, it was able to rescue only 30. Among the drowned were families with small children, and an Italian source even reported a newborn among the dead.
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Under a Memorandum of Understanding, the EU provides financial support to the Tunisian government under President Kais Saied as long as it prevents migrant departures. The Saied regime is notorious for human rights abuses against migrants, as well as for domestic repression, suppressing critical journalists and the political opposition. None of this deters the EU from its cooperation with Tunisia.
12. Imprisoned CHP presidential candidate İmamoğlu arrested on charges of “espionage” in Turkey
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s use of the judiciary to attack democratic rights and build an authoritarian regime reached a new level with the “political espionage investigation” launched Friday. Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) Mayor and Republican People’s Party (CHP) presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu and his campaign director Necati Özkan, who have both been in prison since March on charges of “corruption,” have now been subjected to a new indictment. The immediate impact of the action is that it would keep the two men in prison even if the corruption charges were overturned.
Opposition journalist Merdan Yanardağ was also arrested, and a trustee was appointed to the TELE1 television channel, where he served as chief editor. TELE1 was one of the few opposition channels broadcasting nationwide, and Yanardağ and the channel had long faced government pressure.
The political nature of this operation was revealed in a statement by the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office declaring Yanardağ “guilty” and appointing a trustee to the channel on these grounds. The statement, made while Yanardağ was still detained on “espionage” charges, reads:
Merdan Yanardağ, the chief editor of the TV channel TELE1, who was detained on suspicion of espionage, has committed crimes through his words and actions many times; he is the real operator of the channel; official records show his son Alp Yanardağ as the company owner. Yanardağ used the TV channel TELE1 in these crimes. On these grounds, the Istanbul Criminal Court of Peace has today decided to appoint … [a] trustee to the ABC Radio Television and Digital Broadcasting Corporation, the owner of the channel.
The investigation is based on digital materials obtained from Hüseyin Gün—who was arrested on July 4, 2025, and who is alleged to have engaged in espionage activities on behalf of countries such as Britain, the US, and Israel—as well as on Gün’s conversations. It is alleged that Gün “transferred information he had gathered on matters related to Middle Eastern countries, African countries, and our country [Turkey] to individuals belonging to a foreign country identified as conducting intelligence activities.”
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A statement from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), which mediated the negotiations between the Erdoğan government and imprisoned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, said, “It is clear that another judicial operation has been launched, demonstrating how distorted the scales of justice are in this country. The role of the law should be to ensure justice. Unfortunately, however, judicial mechanisms in Turkey have long been used as a tool to shape politics.”
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The arrest of İmamoğlu and Yanardağ on suspicious “espionage” allegations and the appointment of a trustee to the TELE1 channel are a clear attack on fundamental democratic rights such as the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, and freedom of the press and expression.
Understanding the class nature of this attack is essential to understanding how to combat it. The acceleration of authoritarian regime building in Turkey stems from the crisis of the global capitalist system and is part of the process of authoritarian and far-right tendencies gaining strength worldwide.
The Erdoğan government’s gradual elimination of democratic rights is closely linked to the intensifying class war against the working class. With growing social inequality, mounting popular opposition, and developing global war conditions, the ruling classes everywhere are concluding that they cannot protect their interests, even to a limited extent, through democratic forms of government.
This trend has accelerated with the inauguration of fascist President Donald Trump in the US and his attempt to establish a presidential dictatorship in line with the interests of the financial oligarchy.
İmamoğlu’s arrest in March came a few days after Erdoğan’s phone call with Trump. This latest operation came after Erdoğan was hosted by Trump at the White House in late September. While Erdoğan gave his full support to Trump’s Gaza agreement, he ensured that Washington would not object to any steps he might take at home. This new colonial agreement was supported by the CHP and DEM Party.
Regardless of their tactical differences, all parties of the capitalist order are facilitating a turn to authoritarianism and war, allied with imperialist powers and opposed to the working class. Under increasing pressure from the government, the CHP is trying to find a compromise with Erdoğan and insistently emphasizes its own pro-NATO character.
The DEM Party, meanwhile, is perpetuating the illusion that the Erdoğan government can resolve the Kurdish issue and pursue democracy and peace. Both parties are attempting to channel the growing anger and opposition among the working class and youth into capitalist politics and an electoral dead end.
13. Sinn Féin backed Catherine Connolly wins Irish presidential election
Irish voters have elected Catherine Connolly as the 10th president of the Republic of Ireland in a landslide vote which has humiliated the Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil coalition government.
Connolly, an independent left member of parliament (TD), won 63.8 percent of first preference votes against 29.5 percent for Fine Gael’s Heather Humphries and 7.2 percent for Fianna Fáil’s Jim Gavin.
The Irish presidency is a high-profile but predominantly ceremonial role established in 1937. The Uachtarán na hÉireann is the official head of state and supreme commander of the armed forces and serves for seven years. The incumbent is Micheal D. Higgins.
Although turnout was only 49.5 percent, the result lays bare a tremendous gulf between the political views of Ireland’s working class and those of the ruling elite. Connolly has repeatedly opposed the genocide in Gaza, expressed a broadly left point of view on social and democratic issues and is a defender of Irish neutrality.
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As with similar figures internationally, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders both spring to mind, Connolly rarely mentions capitalism or socialism in her speeches. She is also carefully maneuvering. During her campaign, former allies Clare Daly and Mick Wallace were very little in evidence, while both Sinn Féin’s Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill and leader McDonald spoke alongside her.
While Connolly, Sinn Féin and the rest of the left managed to suppress their differences, and at least rhetorically address some of the concerns and aspirations of much of the population, the right-wing parties of government proved barely able to find viable candidates, let alone fight a campaign. Increasingly the poll became a referendum on the government itself.
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Connolly’s election is significant in that it shows the extent to which the anger provoked by the Gaza genocide has become a serious factor in Irish and world politics. The governments that have justified the crimes of the Israeli state are discredited.
But Connolly’s victory does not change the political character of the pro-capitalist alliance that formed the basis of her campaign. They are positioning themselves to replace the exhausted Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil coalition, where they would divert and dissipate the tremendous class tensions building up in Ireland along channels that offer no threat to its role as an investment platform.
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The task posed is not to cobble together a left-talking coalition devoted to pretending capitalism in Ireland can offer social reforms, but to fight for the mobilization of the working class to oppose austerity, anti-migrant witch-hunts, genocide and war in a struggle by the working class for political power in Ireland and internationally, for socialism.
14. Far-right stoke anti-migrant riot in Dublin
In what is an increasingly familiar pattern, an alleged sexual assault by a failed asylum seeker in Dublin, Ireland, was last week seized on as pretext for far-right agitators to call for mass violence against asylum seekers and migrants. At one point, during three nights of protests and confrontations with police, as many as 1,000 demonstrators besieged the CityWest Hotel in the village of Saggart, outside Dublin.
According to Irish broadcaster RTE, the first mention of an incident at the large CityWest Hotel was a post, Monday morning at 8.25 a.m., on X noting crime scene tape at the site. This post was viewed as many as 136,000 times. By early afternoon media reports stated that a man had already been arrested for an alleged assault on a young girl.
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For those inside the CityWest complex, which provides accommodation for around 2,400 asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees, the experience was terrifying. Residents were effectively curfewed by the riots, advised over WhatsApp by volunteers at the complex to be back before 6.30pm before the Tuesday protest.
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One man from Pakistan, Samir, said he could hear a crowd shouting as they walked by the avenue to the hotel. By 7.30pm this had become the roar of 1,000 people confronting a riot squad. Samir was worried for the safety of some of his friends who were still outside. They were eventually escorted to a nearby safe house. Samir praised the work of local volunteers who picked up centre residents in their cars and took them to a house nearby where they stayed until 1.00am when they could return to CityWest. “It was a frightening, dark night,” he said.
The CityWest complex, a 6.7 hectare site which includes a transit hub, has been leased by the Irish government since 2020. Since 2022 it has been used as accommodation for Ukrainians and people seeking International Protection. Some 1,200 Ukrainians still live there, including 350 families with children and older Ukrainians, many with complex health needs. Anatoliy Primakov, director of Ukrainian Action in Ireland said, “Families were told not to leave their rooms, not to go near windows; they were terrified. And they don’t know how long this is going to last”.
15. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Argentina:
University workers hold 48-hour strike
University workers hold 48-hour strike
Canada:
British Columbia government workers end strike after deal struck
Part-time faculty at two Halifax universities strike
Equador:
Dignity march in Cotacachi, Ecuador
Dignity march in Cotacachi, Ecuador
United States:
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area community college professors prepare to strike if talks fail
Santa Cruz, California city workers authorize strike as union and management enter mediated talks
16. 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.
