1. The number of personal tragedies mount as ICE conducts gestapo raids on immigrants all across the United States; hundreds of people have been injured or killed trying to circumvent Trump's wall at the US-Mexico border

2. What can a one-day strike accomplish? With a 19,000 strong workforce University of California workers are in a powerful position to carry out a fight against the assault on the working class, but the question at hand is a struggle against the Democratic party and the trade union apparatus

3. The US Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi is seeking the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December, 2024

 The high-profile case against Mangione is being seized upon by the Trump administration to advance its bloodthirsty drive to revive the federal death penalty. However, any misguided public sentiment that has held up Mangione’s actions as a justified response to the evils of the profit-hungry healthcare system cannot counter the government’s reactionary drive to send him to his death. Individual violence is a retrograde reaction that does nothing to reform the healthcare system or ameliorate any of the scourges of American capitalism. This requires a unified, working class response based on a revolutionary socialist program.

4. Economic insanity-- US President Donald Trump's tariff measures have been launched under the banner “Made in America,” but there is not a single commodity, in the US or anywhere else, which is not the outcome of a global production process

5. European Union officials respond to global tariffs imposed by the US Trump administration by moving to impose tens of billions of euros in tariffs on US products

6. Germany's foreign minister assures Ukraine of further military aid; meanwhile a preliminary German Panzer brigade is commissioned in Lithuania, the first deployment of German combat troops to Eastern Europe since the end of World War II

 Eighty years after the fall of the Third Reich and the most horrific crimes in human history— the Holocaust of 6 million Jews and Hitler’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union— nothing less than the complete unleashing of German militarism, including nuclear armament, is on the agenda once again. In particular, the warmongers in the media leave no doubt about this.

7. France's Overseas Minister returns to New Caledonia for "discussions" about the health of the island's future-- of a variety that could hardly be worse than it already is and one that would not detract from France's geopolitical interests in the Pacific Region

8. Among the issues a report from the Committee for Public Education in Australia addressed in a recent international online meeting are the unprecedented challenges facing Australian schools, and the financial cuts to public education in the United States taking place under its president, Donald Trump

9. The official Australian election campaign, as it’s being waged by the major parties and the corporate media, is a fairy tale. The Socialist Equality Party is alone in sounding the alarm about the danger of a global war, and in fighting to build a movement of the working class against it

10. The multinational automotive company Stellantis answers Trump tariffs by idling manufacturing plants and laying off workers across North America

11. In the latest of actions by the Trump administration to decimate public education in the United States, the Department of Education abruptly ends billions in pandemic relief funding, throwing ongoing programs in school districts across the US into chaos

12.  By nearly doubling the money to be spent on army recruitment campaigns, the UK Labour government under Sir Keir Starmer is using unemployment and cuts to welfare to drive young people into the armed forces as cannon fodder

13. A recent report from the National Institute for Economic and Social Research reports that while some in the United Kingdom enjoy a standard of living comparable to the most prosperous regions of Europe, the poorest are now poorer than the poorest parts of countries like Slovenia and Malta

Here is a direct link to the report

14. As a strike of video game performers in Hollywood enters its ninth month chiefly over Artificial Intelligence (AI) issues, what workers want is one thing, what their union will agree to is another

15. The Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality will hold public meetings in Colombo, Jaffna, and Matara as part of their campaign for the May 6 local government elections in Sri Lanka.

Jaffna
Meeting venue: YMCA Auditorium (Near Government Agent Office) in Jaffna
Date and time: April 7 at 3.30 p.m.

Colombo
Meeting venue: Colombo Public Library Auditorium
Date and time: April 9 at 4.30 p.m.

Matara
Meeting venue: Post Office Auditorium in Matara
Date and time: April 26 at 3.00 p.m.

16. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

17. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. The United States sends six of its B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean— within striking distance of Iran

A 2021 description of the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit 

2. Aimed at extracting hundreds of billions of dollars to shore up the ever-worsening trade and financial position of the United States and increasing manufacturing capacity for the military, the imposition of the new tariff regime unveiled by President Trump is a declaration of economic war against the rest of the world

3. As part of its preparations for a broader crackdown on all opposition to its policies at home and abroad, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government is moving to dispense with all constraints on its powers and get rid of its political opponents

4. The initiation of mass firings of over 20,000 scientists and public health workers at the Department of Health and Human Services marks an historic turning point in the collapse of American democracy

5. The fortunes of United Auto Workers union bureaucrats rocket upward while the fortunes of the autoworkers they are supposed to defend plummet

6. An absurd court ruling ends a 17-day strike by Santa Clara Valley Transportation transit workers' in an area of California that includes San Jose and much of Silicon Valley

7. Under conditions of exploding income inequality, widespread poverty and inflation-driven real wages cuts, Canada's establishment parties campaign for April's federal election by offering phony “affordability” measures that don’t even amount to a Band-Aid

8. As lecturers conclude a three-week strike, the management of Dundee University in Scotland announces as many as 632 job losses-- around one fifth of the university's entire work force

9. Several university administrations in the United States announce that they will fully cooperate with a right-wing congressional committee formed to attack student anti-genocide protesters by labeling them "anti-Semitic"

10. Bellwether elections in the US: within the political straitjacket of the US two-party system, the only alternatives to the fascist Republicans are right-wing, pro-corporate Democrats

11. Amid soaring social inequality, brutal austerity measures and the integration of New Zealand into US-led war preparations against China, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters gives his support to an extreme right-wing campaign making lurid and baseless insinuations that Green MP Benjamin Doyle is a pedophile

12. The Transport Action Workers Committee in Germany issues an open letter to Berlin public transit workers to resist establishment efforts aimed at preventing them from organizing an all-out strike

11. Brazil recently marked the 61st anniversary of the US-backed military coup in Brazil that overthrew the elected government of President João Goulart and established a brutal dictatorship that remained in power for 21 years. Why does the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva continue to impose a silence about it?

12. Virtually no one believes that the last-minute election pledges-- proposed by the main parties of the political establishment—Labor, the Liberal-National Coalition and the Greens—  would make any real difference to the lives or prospects of workers and  their families in Australia

13. After two days of a censure debate in the National Assembly, Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra survives a no-confidence vote

14. Workers Struggles in Europe, Middle East & Africa:

• Metalworkers walkout for 8 hours in major cities across
  Italy
• About 20,000 teachers in Spain strike 48-hours
• Workers that make mechanical engineering seals strike in England
  
• School support staff at a primary school in London, England begin a strike
• Train drivers employed by Hull Trains in the UK strike
• Teachers in Lebanon strike 24-hours for a living wage even as their economy is collapsing
• Farmers and workers across Iran protest or strike as the country's economic and social conditions deteriorate
  
• Health workers and teachers strike over minimum wage in Nigeria
• Municipal workers in Eastern Cape, South Africa strike
• School students stage a protest on behalf of their unpaid teachers in Liberia
• Unpaid health workers in South Sudan walk off their jobs

15. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

16. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. All UN bakeries are closed-- for nearly a month, Israel has prevented all food, fuel, water and electricity from entering the Gaza Strip as part of a deliberate policy of starvation and ethnic cleansing aimed at killing or displacing Palestinians in Gaza and annexing their land

2. Falling in line with the witch-hunting campaign directed by the Trump administration against pro-Palestinian students and academics, the Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut fires Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi in violation of her basic democratic rights

3. A perspective by Joseph Kishore: Cornell University Ph.D. student Momodou Taal is forced to leave the United States where dissent is being criminalized and a dictatorship is being constructed

Momodou Taal

4. Trade union bureaucrats fall in line with the Sri Lankan government's imposition of unjust IMF-directed austerity measures

5. NY Representative and DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sheds her previous "left" lip service to advance the interests of US imperialism in an interview with the New York Times

6. On April 10, the Socialist Equality Party in Australia will hold a public online meeting to discuss what is at stake in Australia's upcoming federal elections

7. As falling oil revenues and military-industrial expenditures blow a hole in Russia's budget, the country's oligarchs are torn over their hopes to keep ruling and their desire for immediate economic relief should a negotiated settlement with the United States over the war in Ukraine succeed

8. US railroad workers contact the World Socialist Web Site to speak out about their oppressive working conditions

9. The Australian government’s attitude toward working people at home is in line with its callous indifference to the plight of earthquake victims in Myanmar

10. Through its mass firing of federal workers without cause, the US Trump administration promotes widespread fear as it systematically dispenses with thousands of years of collective knowledge and expertise

11. Massive wildfires, described as the worst in the South Korea’s history, kill 30 people and ruin almost 120,000 acres of land before being extinguished 

12. Lower global growth and the impact of Trump tariffs exacerbates a growing crisis within Indonesia's already-squeezed economy

13. Almost 40,000 young people aged 15–24 in Australia requested homelessness services in 2023–24

14. With an expired contract and grueling working conditions, Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital nurses in Northern California get little relief from their employer, their union, or the government

15. Teachers Union officials, Mayor Johnson and the news media in Chicago, US, conspire to conceal the full impact of Trump's historic cuts on the city's public schools

16. 1970s film comedies shown during the  Retrospective section of this year's Berlin International Film Festival convey a more nuanced and accurate view of the the former German Democratic Republic that dissolved after the fall of the Berlin Wall

17. Emerging evidence suggests that a 2019 Assembly bill, passed by the Democratic Party-dominated California legislature and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, was a bipartisan handout to powerful utility corporations, ensuring their profitability at the expense of public safety, and a significant factor in contributing to this year's devastating wildfires in Los Angeles

18. The growing opposition of UK mail delivery workers to advancing reforms which will transfer control of the Royal Mail to the Czech billionaire, Daniel Kretinsky, provokes panic within their official union's leadership 

19. Kenya’s recently appointed Chief of Defense Forces, publicly threatens youth who have voiced opposition to the government of William Ruto

20. The outcome of a refuse workers' dispute with the city of Birmingham, England will test the UK Labour government's ability to impose greater restrictions on the working class and appease the banks and big business

21. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

22. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. Ordinary Australians are hostile to the program of war and dictatorship embodied by US President Donald Trump, but Australia's establishment parties are in a competition over who can work best with the would-be dictator in the White House

2. Beginning tomorrow, according to a US Trump administration directive, any country that produces or buys Venezuelan oil directly or through third parties will face 25 percent tariffs on all goods imported into the United States, potentially for a year after the last recorded purchase

 The stated aim of the order is to “sever the financial lifelines” to the government of President Nicolás Maduro to provoke its downfall. But the executive order claims in the most unambiguous terms to date that the United States is fighting an armed invasion launched by the Venezuelan government itself.

3. The New York Times publishes an extensive article on US
involvement in the Ukraine war entitled “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine,” which admits that “America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.”

 The article is an admission that the United States waged, and is waging, an undeclared, unauthorized and illegal war against Russia. It makes clear that American officers, some deployed inside Ukraine, have been selecting targets for attack and authorizing individual strikes, making them, for all intents and purposes, combatants.

4. The Health Workers Union is asking its more than 200 members at Australian Clinical Laboratories in Victoria, Australia to vote on an agreement that would further slash the real wages of most workers and do nothing to address their concerns 

The HWU is telling ACL workers that the only possible response to the attack on their legal right to strike is to give up and accept whatever crumbs the company offers.

5. The barbarity of the US-backed Israeli genocide reaches a new level with the recovery of the bodies of 15 emergency and aid worker from a grave in the sand south of the Gaza Strip

The Israeli military murdered and then bulldozed the bodies and ambulances of Palestinian and UN aid workers, who attempted to retrieve casualties after Israeli forces launched an offensive in the Tel al-Sultan district of the southern city of Rafah.

6. Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto, a former general in the Suharto regime, is taking a step towards dictatorial rule, amid a massive social crisis and an international political shift to the right by the ruling class 

What is being revived is the total control of every aspect of society by the military apparatus that existed under Suharto, known as dwifungsi (dual function). Military officers held leading positions not only in government, but in the state-owned enterprises, banks, the media, cultural institutions and elsewhere

7. Winston Peters, New Zealand’s deputy prime minister, leader of the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party, and foreign minister, delivers a Trumpian “state of the nation” speech in Christchurch

 The media and political establishment’s promotion of identity politics as “left wing” has enabled the far-right parties to hypocritically posture as the champions of “equal rights”— even as the government accelerates the assault on living standards and public services, embraces the fascist Trump, and seeks to demonize anti-genocide protesters

8. After just one week, an industrial action by workers at two plants in Victoria, Australia operated by Nestlé are shut down by their unions, although none of the workers' demands were met

9. Financial backers of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States spend nearly $100 million to back rival candidates in today’s special election for a vacancy on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court

The most heavily publicized event of the campaign has been the intervention of President Trump’s top financial backer, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the spearhead of Trump’s effort to slash federal jobs and programs. Musk handed out a one million-dollar check to a supporter of the Republican campaign on Thursday, then two more on Sunday, after the state supreme court turned down a lawsuit by the Democratic state attorney general to block it.

10. In the latest blatant attack on free speech in the United States, the administration of the Rhode Island School of Design shuts down an exhibition by 20 artists expressing support for the Palestinian people and opposition to Israel’s mass murder in Gaza

11. The US Trump administration stops the deliveries of millions of dollars’ worth of food intended to be distributed as charity to hungry people... allowing it to spoil

12. Johannes Stern introduces World Socialist Web Site editorial chairman David North's newly translated book, Sounding the Alarm: Socialism Against War, at the Leipzig International Book Fair

13. In a powerful statement, Momodou Taal, a Ph.D. student at Cornell University, announces on social media that he is leaving the United States to escape political persecution by the Trump administration 

"This is of course not the outcome I had wanted going into this, but we are facing a government that has no respect for the judiciary or for the rule of the law"

14. A so-called “antisemitism” resolution passed by the German parliament in the midst of the recent federal election campaign makes clear that the ruling class intends to continue its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza

15. By suspending his state's landmark environmental regulations to fast-track utility infrastructure rebuilding in wildfire-affected areas, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom once again reveals his true allegiances

16. The Chicago Teachers Union backs the shutdown of two Acero charter schools and layoffs of its members

17. In advance of an April 13 runoff election being held under conditions of martial law and amid preparations for the deployment of US troops his country, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa meets with Donald Trump at the US President’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida

18. Alberta’s far-right United Conservative Party premier, emboldened by US President Donald Trump, issues an ultimatum to the federal government that will take office after Canada’s April 28 national election

19. Workers Struggles: The Americas:

Brazil oil workers carry out a one-day protest strike; Argentina tire workers hold a 24-hour strike; Thousands in Chile protest new pension legislation; a California judge orders Silicon Valley transit workers back to work; University of Southern California janitors prepare to strike for wages and benefits; University of Illinois faculty could strike April 4; Alberta education workers end job-actions as their union imposes a sellout “pattern” deal

20. Last week Skadden Arps, the world’s fifth largest law firm, capitulated to Trump while two smaller firms obtained temporary restraining orders against his fascistic executive decrees

21. Much of Belgium is brought to a standstill as millions of workers strike in opposition to the austerity program of the federal coalition government led by Flemish nationalist Bart De Wever

22. The Socialist Equality Party Assistant National Secretary in the UK, Tom Scripps, visits the foreign office in London to help defend Momodou Taal

23. Turkey: hundreds of thousands protest İmamoğlu’s arrest in Istanbul as CHP and Erdoğan accuse each other of being “pro-imperialist”

24.  French courts convict National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen and two dozen other leading RN members of embezzling European Parliament funds

 While the RN is an utterly reactionary party, descending from the French collaboration with Nazism in World War II, this ruling is bankrupt and deserves no support. Workers cannot stop fascism, militarism and police-state rule by supporting bans imposed by the courts. The far right can only be fought politically through the mobilization of the working class in struggle

25. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

26. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help