Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: August 10-16
- 25 years ago:
50 years ago:
75 years ago:
American author J.D. Salinger publishes The Catcher in the Rye
100 years ago:
Mexican troops execute four Catholic rebels
2. As Iran crisis deepens, Democrats condemn Trump for having “lost this war”
Amid a deepening crisis of the US war against Iran, leading Democrats have intensified their critique of the Trump administration from the right, accusing it of having failed to secure the interests of US imperialism.
“Donald Trump has lost this war,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “America is weaker. Iran is stronger.”
Blaming US President Donald Trump for mismanaging the war, Murphy made clear: “I and my colleagues will be ready to provide the funding to replenish the stores of munitions.”
The war, he warned, has “allowed Russia and China to imagine things that they couldn’t have imagined earlier.”
Murphy’s statements echoed those of Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who demanded of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at a Senate hearing on July 21: “You don’t have a long-term plan to actually win this war. Win the war.”
Republican criticism follows similar lines, although Republicans are even more direct advocates of military escalation against Iran. Mark Esper, Trump’s defense secretary in his first term, told ABC’s This Week that Iran’s leaders “believe they’re winning” and proposed the siege of a country of 93 million people: a blockade “of all entry points, air, ground and sea routes,” to “slowly strangle it until they come back to the negotiation table in a serious way.”
Both parties are fully committed to the aims of US imperialism in dominating the Middle East and the escalating war with Russia in Ukraine. On Friday the Senate passed, 86-11, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which authorizes tariffs of up to 100 percent on the largest importers of Russian oil and gas—China and India among them—and strengthens sanctions on Iran’s energy sector. The vote joined the war against Iran and the war against Russia in a single bill.
*****
The war is in its sixth month, and the Iranian government has neither capitulated nor fallen. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed: 33 ships passed through from Monday to Thursday, against a typical 130 to 140 before the war, Reuters reported Friday, citing the tracker Kpler. Gasoline averages $4.01 a gallon, up from $3.15 a year ago, with the midterm elections less than three months away.
*****
Whatever terms emerge in the Persian Gulf, the content of American policy in the Middle East is visible in Gaza, where the killing continues under a ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025. Israeli forces have killed 1,257 Palestinians and wounded 4,131 since the truce began, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday; about 300 of the dead are children, according to UNICEF.
At his cabinet meeting Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the Gaza plan Trump’s Board of Peace put forward July 30 which Hamas has accepted: “I want to be precise here: Israel rejects the 15-point document.”
On Tuesday, mourners in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood buried 112 members of the Abu Sharia and al-Hasayna families, recovered from beneath the rubble where they had lain since an Israeli airstrike on November 22, 2023, which killed 308 members of the two families. Gaza’s Civil Defense called it the largest mass funeral in Palestinian history.
3. Ebola deaths near 2,000 as WHO concedes the outbreak is outrunning the response
This is the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded, behind only West Africa in 2014 to 2016, and the largest in the DRC’s history. It passed the 2018 to 2020 Kivu total of 3,317 confirmed cases around July 27. Kivu took 23 months to reach that threshold; this outbreak took 74 days. It is adding 75 cases and 35 deaths a day.
Contact tracing, the mechanism containment depends on, has thinned to the point of futility. At an August 6 press briefing, Kaseya reported that the response is registering roughly 10 contacts for every confirmed case, against the more than 40 Uganda listed before closing its outbreak on July 28 at 20 cases, and the 57 documented during the Kivu epidemic. The lists, he said flatly, “don’t mean anything because it is not accurate.”
*****
There is still no vaccine or treatment licensed for Bundibugyo, the strain of virus implicated in the current outbreak. Nineteen years after the species was named, the first candidates entered human safety testing only last month. On July 31 the WHO reversed the guidance it issued in May and called for Ervebo, licensed against the unrelated Zaire strain, to be put into a trial in the DRC, drawing on the 500,000 doses Gavi already holds in stock. This response means reaching for what is available on the shelf, not what is proven to work.
*****
The unchecked spread of the Bundibugyo virus is a conscious capitalist decision rather than a failure of science, and the final toll will be written in the dead. To end this cycle of preventable devastation requires a revolutionary socialist solution. The international working class must take the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries out of private hands and place them under their own democratic control, so that research answers to human need rather than shareholder return and biodefense threat designations. Public health must be taken out of the market entirely. The mineral wealth consumed in the imperialist wars over eastern Congo’s gold, cobalt and coltan must be expropriated and the proceeds directed toward the medical and sanitation infrastructure the Congolese population has been denied. This requires a unified political struggle by workers in Africa, Europe and the Americas against the imperialist order that has organized global medicine around national security, and the building of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
4. Outrage in Greece after police kill unarmed, autistic 20-year-old in Argos
There has been a huge outcry in Greece following the fatal shooting of an unarmed 20 year man, Theodoris Zavradinos Karampampas, by police in the early hours of July 8 in the town of Argos in the Peloponnese region in southern Greece.
*****
On July 25, a peaceful protest march against the killing of Karampampas through the town of Argos attended by hundreds of people was brutally attacked by riot police with batons, tear gas and stun grenades.
*****
Much of the political and media narrative has focused on the fact that Theodoris was disabled. Racism and bigotry do mean that certain groups are disproportionately affected by police violence. However, police violence affects all sections of the working class. Calls for sensitivity training and reform only serve to conceal the real role the police play in capitalist society as “armed bodies of men” who impose the class rule of the bourgeoisie.
*****
There is a long history of police killers receiving kid glove treatment by the Greek courts. In last year’s trial over the December 2022 police killing of Kostas Frankgoulis, the court accepted the police officer’s claim that he was only aiming at the vehicle’s tires and that the bullet in the teenage boy’s head was the result of “an accidental discharge caused by vibrations”. The charge was then reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor and the officer received a three year suspended sentence.
5. Trump administration moves to gut the National Historic Preservation Act
This latest move follows earlier budget cuts to the National Park Service and state and tribal agencies responsible for implementing Section 106.
Since its inception 60 years ago, Section 106 has been the principal mechanism for the identification, evaluation and preservation of historic properties, threatened by development, including architectural, archaeological and historically significant sites to determine whether they are eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NHPA). If they are found eligible, Section 106 mandates actions to protect them, either by preservation in place or mitigation of adverse effects via investigation and recording. More than a hundred thousand properties, ranging from well-known buildings such as the Empire State Building in New York City to small Native American archaeological sites, have been protected from damage or destruction by this process, preserving a cultural and historical heritage for the people of the United States and the world.
*****
First enacted in 1966, Section 106 has faced repeated attempts to curtail or abolish it by private entities and government agencies, which complained about the additional cost and time delay, usually relatively small in comparison to the project as a whole. Nevertheless, Section 106 has survived relatively intact, due to the great value of knowledge and history it has protected, until now.
*****
The proposed changes are of a piece with the Trump administration’s wrecking operation against scientific, environmental, cultural and historic programs in order to eliminate all constraints on private businesses’ drive to maximize profit and bring the entire government under its ideological control. At the same time, the administration is significantly shrinking federally protected properties such as Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah, which undoubtedly contain many as yet undiscovered archaeological sites, by nearly 3 million acres. Meanwhile, the president’s ego-boosting pet projects, such as the proposed triumphal arch in Washington, would be facilitated.
6. Senate confirms Trump’s legal attack dog Todd Blanche as attorney general
At 4:31 a.m. on Saturday, August 8, under the cover of darkness, the U.S. Senate confirmed Donald Trump’s former defense lawyer and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as the permanent attorney general. The vote was 50 to 49, with all Democrats plus two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voting “no,” and the rest of the Republicans who were present voting “yes.” Mitch McConnell of Kentucky missed the vote due to illness.
*****
Nevertheless, the formal elevation of Blanche to head the Department of Justice marks a significant further step in the consolidation of a personalist presidential dictatorship in the United States. It is the latest and perhaps most consequential in a series of moves to staff the top levels of the executive branch with Trump acolytes and purge the government of any and all office holders suspected of harboring doubts about Trump’s policies of escalating war abroad and destruction of democratic rights at home.
On June 29, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that the president of the United States has absolute authority over all agencies of the executive branch, including those explicitly established by Congress with limited independence. Trump can legally hire or fire all federal office holders at will. The court thus upheld the far-right theory of a “unitary executive,” for all intents and purposes transforming the president into a budding Führer.
The collapse of democratic forms of rule is not the product of the megalomaniacal mind of Donald Trump. The elevation of this criminal representative of the New York real estate and gambling mafia to head of state is itself the result of a crisis of American capitalism that has produced a financial oligarchy with unheard of wealth at one pole and an increasingly desperate and rebellious working class at the other. Trump is the agent of this oligarchy, which increasingly supports dictatorship. Democratic forms of rule are incompatible with these underlying social relations.
*****
As deputy and then acting attorney general, Blanche has shielded the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) murderers of pro-immigrant protesters Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, as well as the ICE killers of immigrant workers, including Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine, refusing even to charge them.
He has implemented Trump’s NSPM-7 (National Security Presidential Memorandum-7) order declaring left-wing protesters to be “Antifa” terrorists, as seen in the savage sentences, a combined 556 years, handed down against anti-ICE protesters in Prairieland, Texas, the prosecution of 15 anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota and the prosecution of eight anti-genocide protesters at the University of Michigan.
*****
Blanche has defended Trump’s pardon of the fascists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to overturn the election of Joe Biden. Under him, the Department of Justice has been populated with election deniers, including several who worked to overturn the 2020 result.
*****
Ex-Attorney General Bondi put Blanche in charge of the cover-up of the Epstein scandal, and he has diligently fulfilled this task. Compelled by congressional legislation, reluctantly signed into law by Trump, he released millions of pages of files, heavily redacted and carefully scrubbed to remove all evidence of Trump’s involvement in the sex trafficking of teenagers and to conceal the names of corporate oligarchs and politicians serviced by Epstein. At the same time, information was released identifying many of Epstein’s victims.
In July 2025, Blanche interviewed Epstein’s chief accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, over two days, publicizing her denials of any involvement by Trump. Roughly a week later, without any explanation, Maxwell was transferred from her low-security federal prison to a more comfortable minimum-security prison.
At Blanche’s hearing, a number of Republicans who threatened to oppose his confirmation focused on Trump’s proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate his allies, including the January 6 insurrectionists. They demanded that Blanche supplement his verbal statements that the fund would not go forward with written assurances, which he ultimately supplied. These, however, are not legally binding, and Trump refused to sign them, meaning he could revive the slush fund at any time. Meanwhile, an addendum remains in place barring tax and financial investigations into Trump, his children and his businesses—placing the president’s immediate circle above the law.
The Democrats focused almost entirely on Trump’s slush fund and the Epstein cover-up. They were virtually silent on the trumped-up prosecutions of anti-ICE and anti-genocide protesters and the savage sentences against the Prairieland 22 defendants. They said almost nothing about the violent rampage against immigrant workers, including the ICE and CBP murders, and said just as little about Trump's preparations to rig, block or overturn the upcoming elections. They thereby sought to politically disarm the population and downplay the erection of a presidential dictatorship.
7. Australia: Low turnout in vote on union sellout deal at Western Sydney University
The participation rates in the enterprise agreement votes at WSU were tiny—approximately 12.2 percent and 16.7 percent respectively of academics and professional staff.*****
8. Germany: Jobs massacre at Bosch: Appliance giant to close washing machine plant near Berlin
The corporation, with over 400,000 employees worldwide and revenues of over €90 billion, made a profit of €3.5 billion in 2024.
The Socialist Equality Party (US) held its Ninth National Congress from August 2 to 7, 2026. Delegates discussed and adopted resolutions on the fight against imperialist war, the breakdown of American democracy, the defense of immigrants, the escalation of class struggle and the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), the attitude of socialists to AI technology and the defense of the heritage of the two American Revolutions.
The SEP has held a national congress every two years since its Founding Congress in 2008. The Ninth Congress adopted the six resolutions unanimously. The congress also heard greetings and reports from the sections and sympathizing groups of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
*****
The reports, resolutions and contributions to the discussion of the Ninth National Congress will be published on the World Socialist Web Site in the coming days. They will play a significant role in the political education of masses of workers and young people, and they constitute the analysis and program with which the working class must arm itself in the struggles now opening up.
10. Following primary victory, Abdul El-Sayed backs US-NATO war against Russia
Less than a week after winning Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary as an opponent of the Gaza genocide and the party establishment, Abdul El-Sayed used a series of Sunday television appearances to affirm his support for capitalism, the US-NATO war against Russia and the Democratic Party’s imperialist program.El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens, a self-described “Zionist Democrat,” in the August 4 primary. He won 48.5 percent of the vote to Stevens’ 47.5 percent, a margin of fewer than 15,000 votes. Nearly 1.53 million ballots were cast, the largest turnout for a Michigan Senate or gubernatorial primary and nearly every presidential primary in the state since at least 1978.
*****
Stevens had already embraced El-Sayed at a Michigan Democratic Party “unity breakfast” on Thursday. She posted a photograph of the two hugging beneath the words “One team Michigan,” writing, “Now, it’s time to come together to make sure we beat Mike Rogers and keep Michigan blue. Let’s go win!”
*****
The basis of this unity is the defense of American capitalism and its predatory interests around the world.
*****
El-Sayed... touted a post-primary phone call from Barack Obama, describing it as “a really warm and inspiring conversation.” He praised Obama for serving “with a level of class, a level of elegance that we can only pine for now.”
Obama’s supposed “elegance” covered over eight years of war and state violence. His administration expanded drone assassinations, orchestrated the CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore to arm Islamist militias in Syria and provided billions of dollars in weapons to Israel as it repeatedly bombed Gaza. It backed the Egyptian military as it crushed the revolutionary movement that overthrew Hosni Mubarak and consolidated the dictatorship of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
El-Sayed also boasted during the primary that he had endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024. As vice president, Harris defended and enabled the Gaza genocide while the Biden administration supplied Israel with weapons and diplomatic protection. Her support, Obama’s advice and Stevens’ embrace expose the actual class and political content of the Democrats’ post-primary “unity.”
The US Postal Service's own watchdog agency released a plan on July 22 that lays out deep cuts to jobs, pay, and service. While rank-and-file postal workers urgently need to organize to save the post office, the union leadership is moving to block action.
Two weeks after the plan came out, delegates at the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) convention voted 2,583 to 694 against two resolutions that called for a campaign to win back the right to strike. The vote took place as union officials were getting ready to send the next contract to binding arbitration — a process where an outside panel decides the contract, not the workers.
On the convention's last day, USPS reported a $2.5 billion loss for the quarter. Postmaster General David Steiner warned that without Congress stepping in, the agency would have to close "thousands of unprofitable post offices" and raise prices. Yet revenue actually went up 6.1 percent. The loss shrunk in part because USPS cut 4 million work hours and put off $1.4 billion in pension payments.
Steiner said the biggest cuts would wait until after the holiday season. But if Congress does not act, USPS will start making them right after New Year's. In other words, management already has a date in mind — about four months from now — to begin the most severe cuts.
12. 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.
