Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trotsky and the British General Strike of 1926
This is the second part of a four part lecture “Internationalist Socialism vs. Nationalist Reformism” delivered by Chris Marsden to the 2025 Summer School of the Socialist Equality Party (US) on the history of the Security and the Fourth International investigation.Part 1 was published here.
The World Socialist Web Site is also publishing two primary source documents written by Leon Trotsky to accompany this lecture, “The Period of Right-Centrist Downsliding” from The Third International After Lenin, and Chapter 8 from “Where is Britain Going?” We encourage our readers to study these texts alongside this lecture.
2. The attack on Gaza City and the imperialist logic behind the ethnic cleansing of Palestine
Israeli tanks are rolling into Gaza City, the last portion of Gaza left undemolished, imploding buildings one by one and forcibly expelling the starving population at gunpoint.
Gaza’s government media office reported that Israeli forces had detonated more than 80 explosive robots inside buildings in Gaza City as they advanced, in what it described as a “scorched-earth policy.” The onslaught is taking place in the midst of a man-made famine that has already starved hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children to death.
The conquest of Gaza City will place the entire Gaza Strip under Israeli military occupation, creating the conditions for what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the “concluding moves” in Gaza: the ghettoization of the Palestinian population in concentration camps and their expulsion from their ancestral homeland.
When US President Donald Trump announced in February that the United States would “take” and “own” Gaza, expelling the Palestinians to “other countries,” his statements were dismissed in the US and international media as “unrealistic,” “unworkable” and “unserious.”
Seven months later, it has become clear that Trump’s plan is not only deadly serious but is the concrete strategy guiding the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza.
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The vast crimes being committed by US and international imperialism in Gaza are a warning of the horrors capitalism has in store. If American imperialism is prepared to exterminate millions in the opening skirmish of its plans for war with China, how many billions will it be prepared to kill in the event of full-scale war? The workers of the world cannot afford to find out.
3. US State Department halts visa approvals for all Palestinian passport holders
News reports on Sunday revealed that the US State Department has expanded its policy of suspending visa approvals for Palestinians to include all passport holders, regardless of their location or reason for travel.
The unprecedented and sweeping measure, which was formally spelled out in a cable sent by the State Department on August 18 to all US embassies and consulates worldwide, covers every type of nonimmigrant visa, including for medical treatment, university studies, visits to friends and family and business travel.
The cable instructed diplomats to halt visa approvals for all Palestinians holding passports issued by the Palestinian Authority (PA), effectively blocking any legal means for Palestinians to enter the US. Despite the extreme nature of the policy, the Trump administration did not provide an explanation for the expanded visa ban.
However, multiple news sources reported that the move is widely viewed as a preemptive response to the declaration by several countries, including France, Britain, Canada and Australia, that they intend to formally recognize an independent Palestinian state within the coming weeks. In coordination with the Zionist state of Israel, the blanket visa ban would thus isolate Palestinians diplomatically and cripple Palestinian political presence abroad.
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The State Department revoked visas for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and over 80 Palestinian officials ahead of the United Nations General Assembly scheduled for September 9, barring them from participating in UN sessions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified this unprecedented measure with a hypocritical statement that said the leaders of the PA and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) “must repudiate terrorism, lawfare campaigns at the ICC and ICJ, and the pursuit of unilateral recognition of statehood.”
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The US visa ban unfolds within the context of the ongoing terrorist and genocidal assaults on Gaza and the West Bank by the Israel military, where over 63,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023 and more than 160,000 have been wounded. According to UNICEF, more than 17,000 children have been killed during the continuous bombings and missile strikes, an average of 28 children per day.
With details of the US-Israeli plan for the “final phase” of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza recently published, the suspension of travel to the US further implicates the Trump administration in crimes against humanity. The plan includes the “voluntary” departure from Gaza or internment into southern “humanitarian cities” within the enclave of the entire population of 2 million people.
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By blocking Palestinians from access to safety or international platforms, the US government is directly participating in the genocide aimed at transforming the Gaza Strip into a US-owned seaside resort, erasing all traces of Palestinian habitation and sovereignty.
In doing so, the Trump administration is also reprising the role played by US imperialism during World War II as a facilitator of the Nazi Holocaust. By maintaining and tightening quotas on the number of Jews allowed to enter the US during the 1930s and 1940s, despite increasing evidence of atrocities, the American government assisted the Nazi extermination program.
In sum, the expanded suspension of visas for Palestinians marks an intensification of US policy aimed at criminalizing and isolating the Palestinian people amid the Israeli genocide, closing urgent humanitarian channels, silencing political opposition and facilitating war crimes.
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Charities, such as HEAL Palestine and a coalition of human rights advocates, strongly condemned the US order, warning that it would harm wounded Palestinian children who had been evacuated for life-saving treatment in the US. Journalists and advocacy groups have reported that visas for medical evacuees, including children maimed in Israeli strikes, were being denied.
Palestinian officials and international law experts have strongly condemned the measures against travel by Abbas and others as a violation of diplomatic agreements with the UN.
4. Cal/OSHA “reform” bill is a fraud: Workers must organize independently to fight corporate killings
Assembly Labor Chair Liz Ortega (Democrat-San Leandro) recently announced a proposed bill to increase criminal prosecutions of employers when workers die or are seriously injured on the job.
The bill’s announcement comes less than three months after 19-year-old worker Brayan Neftali Otoniel Canu Joj was killed while cleaning an industrial meat grinder at the Tina’s Burritos frozen food plant in Vernon, California.
The legislation is being hailed by Democrats, the trade union bureaucracy and their media allies as a bold step toward “accountability.” In reality, it is nothing of the sort. It is a cynical maneuver aimed at covering up the Democratic Party’s central role in creating the very conditions responsible for the wave of workplace deaths and injuries across California.
Ortega’s announcement came in the wake of a devastating state audit last July exposing systemic failures within Cal/OSHA, the state agency supposedly tasked with protecting workers. The findings were staggering:
82 percent of investigations were handled by mail, not through on-site inspections.
Over 8,300 employers received fine reductions averaging 56 percent, even in cases involving deaths and life-altering injuries.
Only 1.7 percent of serious cases were ever referred for criminal prosecution.
In one notorious case, Alco Scrap Metal, where three workers have died in just three years, the company paid a mere $18,000 in fines—a sum so negligible it barely registers as a rounding error in its operating costs.
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The catastrophic state of workplace safety in California is the outcome of a deliberate program under successive Democratic administrations, from Jerry Brown to Gavin Newsom, dismantling protections and turning regulatory agencies into instruments of corporate power.
Cal/OSHA’s skeleton workforce, antiquated procedures, lack of enforcement power and simply inadequate resources are not accidental. Budgets have been slashed year after year while employer fines have been systematically reduced, leaving corporations free to treat preventable workplace deaths as an acceptable cost of doing business.
Ortega’s proposal comes not from a position of genuine opposition to this system but from her role as one of its key enablers. As the first Latina to serve as Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Alameda Labor Council and a longtime political director for AFSCME Local 3299, Ortega is deeply embedded in the union bureaucracy—a structure that has consistently protected corporate profits at the expense of workers’ lives.
The California Labor Federation and other union bodies backing Ortega’s bill are equally complicit in the death toll. For decades, the unions have subordinated worker safety to maintaining their cozy relationships with management and state regulators.
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Increased criminal penalties will almost certainly be wielded selectively, targeting smaller firms and marginalized contractors, while the largest corporations—the Amazons, Teslas, and Disneys of California—remain immune.
The Cal/OSHA audit has exposed a system in terminal crisis. The agency is incapable of protecting workers because it was designed to serve the corporations it regulates and is grossly underfunded. Ortega’s proposed bill cannot change that.
These toothless fines and performative legislative gestures will not prevent future workplace deaths because this crisis is the inevitable outcome of an economic system where the lives of workers are increasingly sacrificed for profit.
Workers confront an urgent reality: the organizations and politicians that claim to represent them have betrayed them. The Democrats defend corporate interests as ruthlessly as the Republicans, and the union apparatus functions as a partner of management and the state.
5. Far-right rallies in Australia feed off official demonization of immigrants
A nationally-coordinated “March for Australia” on Sunday was the largest mobilization by the country’s far-right in years, possibly eclipsing anti-lockdown demonstrations early in the pandemic and anti-Muslim rallies held under the “Reclaim Australia” banner a decade ago.
According to police estimates, up to 15,000 participated in Sydney, with slightly lower numbers in Melbourne. Protests were held in most other capital cities as well as in several regional and rural centers.
The event highlighted the growing threat posed by the far right in Australia. It closely mirrored international developments, including in the US and Europe, where fascistic forces have won a following by exploiting a deepening social crisis and a political vacuum caused by the transformation of the old social-democratic parties and trade unions into the unalloyed instruments of the corporate and financial elite.
As with the growth of far-right forces globally, the central target of the marches was immigrants and refugees, who were vilified and scapegoated for virtually all social problems.
In Australia, the extent to which fascistic forces are capitalizing on and giving expression to a broader lurch to the right of the political establishment is particularly clear.
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The press gave the marches an inordinate amount of coverage in the lead-up. Massive protests over the past two years against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and Australia’s complicity in it have never received anything like that sort of de facto promotion. Instead, they have generally been blacked out both in the leadup and following the protests, even as tens of thousands take to the streets, or else slandered as antisemitic.
The “March for Australia” was largely built through various far-right social media pages. But national and state politicians also promoted and spoke at the event.
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Notwithstanding, in both the Sydney and Melbourne protests, black-clad members of the National Socialist Network (NSN), an explicitly Nazi group, were permitted by organizers to lead the marches. Speakers made false claims about immigration numbers, blaming “foreigners” for the housing and cost-of-living crisis.
A preponderance of those in attendance at both were middle-aged or older men. Many were draped in Australian flags. The moronic “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, oi, oi!” was repeated ad nauseam.
The speakers presented variations of the racist great replacement theory alleging the “white race” was being replaced due to immigration.
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The condemnations of the protest and its violence by Labor are utterly hypocritical. The far-right is pitching to a social crisis caused by Labor’s pro-business policies, including its rejection of any relief amid the soaring cost of living.
What the fascists are doing in seeking to scapegoat immigrants for that crisis is what Labor has actually carried out in government. It has demonized not only refugees, but also immigrants, particularly international students, blaming them for the growing financial hardships.
Today, as the fall semester begins at Columbia University in New York City, nearly 140 graduate student instructors at Columbia will not teach classes as a part of a calculated anti-worker strategy by the administration. While the university will still pay the student workers, it has hired adjuncts to cover their teaching duties.
Federal labor law requires the university to maintain existing wages and benefits during contract negotiations. By paying graduate workers but hiring adjuncts to replace them, Columbia avoids a clear lockout charge while weakening workers’ position at the bargaining table and seeks to intimidate student workers and all other faculty and staff.
The graduate students received word of their removal from teaching positions just weeks ago amid allegations by the university that the graduate student workers union, the Student Workers of Columbia, United Auto Workers Local 2710 (SWC-UAW), “is not bargaining in good faith, in violation of the National Labor Relations Act.”
The student workers’ current contract with Columbia expired on June 30. On July 10, the university offered a one-year contract extension with an insulting 2 percent raise—a pay cut when adjusting for inflation. Columbia filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the SWC-UAW with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on August 8.
In the charge, Columbia complains that the SWC-UAW is “conditioning bargaining on the presence of an expelled student,” Grant Miner, the president of the union, who was expelled for his participation in the pro-Palestinian occupation of Hamilton Hall in April 2024.
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The SWC-UAW leadership, for its part, has downplayed the significance of the Unfair Labor Practice charge. In a statement on Instagram, it wrote that the charge “is very unlikely to result in decertification,” suggesting that it is merely intended to “stoke fear” and sway the “wider public.” The union has denied that it directed students to occupy Butler Library and has not defended student workers’ right to strike even as their jobs are taken by scabs.
Students, staff and faculty must recognize what is really happening: Columbia has launched a serious attack on the basic democratic right to organize. What emerges is a picture of a university administration that, having capitulated in the face of Trump’s assault on academic freedom, cannot tolerate any semblance of workers’ organization on campus.
The July 23 deal between the university and the Trump administration has set the stage for the coming academic year. After suspending nearly 80 students for participating in the occupation of Butler Library, Columbia agreed to pay $200 million to the federal government and $21 million to supposed victims of “antisemitism” on campus to obtain restoration of $400 million in federal research funding illegally frozen by the White House.
The deal committed Columbia to increase its cooperation with law enforcement, ban masks at protests, remove all students from its disciplinary panel, adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism—institutionalizing the grotesque lie that criticism of Zionism and the Israeli state is equivalent to antisemitism—and appoint a new senior vice provost to supervise Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies.
The university pledged to take steps to “decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment,” develop materials to indoctrinate students and, effectively, to discriminate against international student applicants based on their political views. Other provisions are designed give the Trump administration further means to make demands regarding course content, admissions and hiring.
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Trump intends to use the deal at Columbia as a template to bring other universities throughout the country to heel. As the WSWS wrote in March, “Trump is implementing an American version of Gleichschaltung—the Nazis’ ‘synchronization’ of all elements of intellectual and cultural life, including the revision of university programs and the purging of scholars, to correspond with state ideology.”
Student workers have every right to fight for their jobs and a living wage; every right to organize in defense of academic freedom, democratic rights and the rights of international students; and every right to organize against fascism and genocide, which pose existential threats to the working class.
But student workers cannot fight inequality, authoritarianism and war within the straitjacket imposed by the United Auto Workers (UAW) bureaucracy. While working with the UAW apparatus may serve the careerist aspirations of budding trade-union bureaucrats, it has proven a complete disaster for rank-and-file student workers.
In 2021, during a three-week strike in the spring semester, rank-and-file student workers exploded in opposition over the union leadership’s efforts to impose a contract that did not meet the their demands. The UAW bureaucracy sought to isolate Columbia student workers and fought tooth and nail to prevent the Columbia strike from taking place at the same time as a student worker strike at New York University.
The SWC-UAW leadership made a show of reforming itself. After a ten-week strike in the fall semester with minimal strike pay, student workers ultimately voted to approve a contract that failed to meet their demands. The union leadership hailed the contract as a “historic victory.”
The inclusion of a no-strike clause was among the WSWS’s central criticisms of the contract in 2022. In 2025, the SWC-UAW’s adherence to the no-strike clause amounts to an effort to disarm the membership in the face of ruthless attacks on their jobs, the suspension and expulsion of their members by the university and even the detention of UAW members, such as Columbia graduates Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, by Trump’s immigration enforcement apparatus.
As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in its Labor Day statement, “What are called ‘unions’ today bear no resemblance to the organizations that once fought to defend workers’ interests. They function instead as appendages of the corporations, a labor police force that blocks struggle rather than organizes it. UAW President Shawn Fain has openly aligned himself with Trump’s tariffs, while many other union leaders have rallied behind Trump, embracing the nationalist poison designed to divide the international working class.”
In 2022, graduate student workers formed an important base of support for Mack Trucks worker and socialist Will Lehman, who ran for president of the UAW on the platform of abolishing the UAW bureaucracy and transferring control of the billion-dollar assets of the UAW to rank-and-file committees on the shop floor.
Today, this program takes on a new urgency. To defend and extend their right to organize, student workers must form rank-and-file committees connected with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). They must unite with workers across New York City and throughout the world in a revolutionary struggle against the source of authoritarianism and war, the capitalist system.
7. Leaders of China, Russia and India gather for Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit
The two-day gathering of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) leaders finished yesterday in the Chinese city of Tianjin. The host, Chinese President Xi Jinping, put forward his vision of a multi-polar world in opposition to “hegemonism and power politics”—a barely veiled criticism of the US.
The grouping has its roots in what was dubbed the “Shanghai Five,” formed by China and Russia with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in 1996 to counter US interventions in Central Asia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The SCO was formally established in 2001 and expanded to include Uzbekistan. India, Pakistan, Belarus and Iran have subsequently been included as full members, while 14 other countries including Saudi Arabia, Trkiye and Egypt are dialogue partners.
While the attendance of many of the 20 leaders at the summit was unremarkable, the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—his first visit to China in seven years—triggered alarm bells in Washington. US imperialism has carefully cultivated economic and strategic relations with India for well over a decade, as it has accelerated its preparations for war with China, which it regards as the chief threat to US global dominance.
Modi had previously signaled that he would not be attending the summit, citing his necessary attendance at a sitting of India’s parliament, in what could only be construed as a calculated snub to China. Although a thaw had begun, relations between the two countries were frosty following military clashes along their disputed border in 2020 that left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead.
Modi abruptly changed his plans amid a standoff with the Trump administration over India’s purchase of oil from Russia. In early August, Trump attempted to bully India into submission by doubling tariffs on Indian exports to the US to a massive 50 percent. Modi refused to cave in and the final 25 percent of the tariff hit came into effect last week. Indeed, Reuters reported last Thursday that India plans to increase purchases of Russian oil by between 10 and 20 percent.
Trump had been pressing India and China to end imports of Russia oil as a lever to strongarm Russian President Vladimir Putin into making concessions to Ukraine as part of negotiations over a ceasefire in the ongoing war. The fact that Trump had not imposed a similar tariff punishment increase on China to that on India was no doubt doubly galling for Modi, given India’s longstanding strategic partnership with the US.
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Efforts were made to present an atmosphere of conviviality and bonhomie. Modi and Putin arrived together in Putin’s vehicle to yesterday’s meeting after a lengthy discussion and joined Xi for a photo opportunity holding hands in a close circle. The Indian and Russian leaders also publicly praised their own discussions.
An editorial in the Washington Post entitled “Trump’s white-knuckling with India could backfire” expressed the alarm in US ruling circles that the White House’s crude attempt to use hefty tariffs to bludgeon New Delhi into submission and break up longstanding Indian ties with Russia had failed.
“Beijing remains Washington’s most powerful rival. In purely economic terms, China is already a far more formidable adversary than the Soviet Union ever was,” it noted, then concluded:
“Trump’s zero-sum approach is to not leave any money on the table in negotiations. Even in business, that’s arguably a mistake. Goodwill has value. Trump’s talks with China might yet turn out to be every bit as bruising as those he is having with allies. Maybe that’s when he might appreciate better relations with friends.”
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Like the other SCO members including China and Russia, India aggressively pursues its economic and strategic interests amid worsening international economic turmoil, exacerbated by Trump’s trade war measures, along with heightened geo-political tensions and an emerging world war. Wracked by social tensions at home and divided by many unresolved disputes, none of them has a progressive solution to the global eruption of imperialist violence and deepening crisis of the capitalist system.
Rank-and-file doctors in Australia have stepped up their calls for medical colleges and indemnity insurance providers to defend local colleagues targeted by Zionist elements determined to silence all opposition to Israel’s imperialist-backed mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza.
Beginning in late 2023, Australian medical practitioners protesting Israel’s war crimes have been subjected to a barrage of online harassment, doxxing and threats. The Albanese Labor government and its state counterparts, who have unwaveringly backed Israel, have aided and abetted these attacks.
According to one media report, an estimated 60 health workers were falsely accused of antisemitism and reported to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) between October 2023 and April 2024. Thirty-nine of those named were formally investigated by the regulatory body.
While the health regulator has not deregistered any doctors thus far, it refuses to publish any figures on the number of false allegations of antisemitism against medical practitioners it has received. Nor has it released any details on the outcome of its “investigations” into those targeted.The Australian Medical Association (AMA), the health unions, and medical colleges have turned a blind eye to all this, refusing to publicly condemn the Zionist witch-hunting. As a Melbourne doctor told the Guardian last week, medical practitioners had been “quietly struggling” against the “covert silencing of people who speak out against violence or criticise Israel” since October 2023.
After two years of calls from its members, the Royal Australasian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) finally wrote to AHPRA last month, raising a series of timid concerns about the intimidation of its members.
This year, the rabidly Zionist Murdoch media has stepped up its harassment of health workers and other prominent figures—academics, artists, writers, musicians—publicly opposing the Gaza genocide.*****
With mass opposition to the Gaza genocide now at unprecedented levels—shown in the Sydney Harbour Bridge protest and other huge demonstrations across Australia and internationally during the past month—doctors have made clear that they are not intimidated by Zionist lies and are determined to fight back.
This is reflected in a recent open letter sent to the RACGP’s Paediatrics and Child Health Division and endorsed by 13 percent of the college’s 5,400-strong membership. Four hundred surgeons have signed a similar letter to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.
The letters demand that the colleges publicly condemn Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in Gaza, voice their solidarity with Palestinian healthcare workers, call for diplomatic and economic sanctions against Israel and defend fellow workers subjected to Zionist doxxing and the associated weaponisation of AHPRA.*****
Notwithstanding the determination of doctors and health workers in Australia to oppose Israel’s war crimes and defend their colleagues in Gaza, they must draw sharp political lessons from their experiences since October 2023.
What is needed is not more appeals to the organizations that have divided and isolated health workers but a working-class industrial and political offensive against the Albanese government and its unwavering support—including the supply of F-35 parts and intelligence data from Pine Gap—for Israel’s mass murder in Gaza.
The struggle against the Gaza genocide, the greatest war crime of the 21st century, requires a new perspective and the independent mobilization of workers globally on a socialist and internationalist program.
9. Australia: Deep course and job cuts at University of Technology Sydney
Despite protests by staff and students at public universities around Australia, damaging cuts to courses and jobs are continuing under the Albanese Labor government.
Among the most shocking cuts are at University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). There is outrage there because UTS management has suspended and stopped new enrollments for nearly a fifth of its courses, notably in international studies, social sciences, education and public health, and threatened to sack 400 staff—about a tenth of the workforce.
The UTS offensive has only deepened since about 200 people, mostly UTS staff, joined a campus rally in March to fight the looming job cuts, including a delegation of about 50 staff from the nearby University of Sydney.
The scale and thrust of the restructuring at UTS is an indication of the depth of the assault on university education everywhere. At least 19 of the country’s 39 public universities have unveiled similar attacks, in one form or another, in the past 10 months.
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Staff members have a warranted mistrust of management. One UTS worker told the WSWS: “For years, management have told us that the financial basis of the university is strong. Now they are telling us the university is in financial crisis. They were lying earlier, or they are lying now. Either way, they are lying.”
10. As Texas governor approves gerrymandered map, dozens more reactionary laws follow
Just days after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a new congressional map gerrymandered to maximize Republican representation in the state’s 38 US House districts, a series of reactionary laws Abbott signed during the Texas Congress regular session went into effect on September 1.
The new map, initiated by Abbott at the behest of Donald Trump, has been a point of contention on a national scale, sparking what has been dubbed as a “redistricting war” as the two American capitalist parties fence over the narrow party split in the US House of Representatives ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
By dismantling Democratic voting bastions around Texas’ three major metropolitan centers, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas-Ft. Worth (“the triangle”), the new map would hand up to five additional US House seats to the GOP (“Grand Old Party,” the Republican Party). Two currently Democrat-held seats on the US-Mexico border have additionally been redrawn to favor Republicans, while all 25 districts already held by Republicans remain safely theirs.
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The GOP’s far-right rampage in Texas has not been limited to gerrymandering, however. Redistricting was only one of many items on Abbott’s agenda for the special session, including bills that would curb mail-order abortion pills sent from out of state, further protect police violence from public scrutiny and regulate the use of bathrooms by transgender people. Other laws signed earlier in the year, such as bans on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies in K-12 schools, also went into effect over the weekend.
Many of the right-wing laws failed to pass during previous regular sessions but sailed through the Texas legislature after Trump’s intervention.
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On Thursday, the state legislature passed the “bathroom bill,” an anti-transgender measure which regulates the use of male and female restrooms in public buildings, such as schools, parks, colleges and courthouses, based on reproductive anatomy. Immediately after, the Texas House passed a law to stop out-of-state shipping of abortion medications by inviting lawsuits against manufacturers and shipping companies.
Senate Bill 1 concretizes the state’s new $338 billion two-year spending plan, including spending to maintain and provide property tax cuts and a new school voucher program. The bill also contains a provision vetoed by Abbott that included a $60 million measure that would have let Texas enter a federal summer lunch program for low-income kids.
Senate Bill 2 will create one of the country’s largest school voucher programs, a scheme to strip funding from public schooling in favor of private schools.
Senate Bill 10 lays out strict requirements for the visible display of the Ten Commandments on posters that are at least 16 by 20 inches in public school classrooms, which are attended by around 5.5 million Texan students. An August 20 ruling from US District Judge Fred Biery temporarily blocks the measure from taking effect in nearly a dozen school districts, including Austin, Houston and Plano.
Senate Bill 12 bars schools from offering any programs and guidance dealing with sexual orientation or gender identity. Senate Bill 13 grants parents and school boards more control over what students can access in public libraries. This is of particular concern as Texas was already among the top states for book bans in recent years.
Senate Bill 37 expands the attack on academic freedom by allowing politically appointed regents more say over public universities, including by granting them more power in the hiring of administrators.
House Bill 33 further integrates the police into public schools, compelling school districts and local law enforcement to meet annually in order to assess their emergency operations plans, resources and capabilities.
One of the most reactionary bills this year is House Bill 229, which defines gender based on biological reproductive systems and applies that definition across the state code. This is in open defiance of scientific agreement on the complexity of gender identity in a state which is home to one of the largest populations of transgender people.
11. Sacked Fed governor initiates significant legal case against Trump
Cook has filed a lawsuit against Trump’s actions in what is seen as a major legal battle involving the independence of the Fed from direct political control.
Whatever Cobb’s decision, the case will almost certainly go to the Supreme Court and so the immediate issue will be whether Cook can continue to remain at her post in the interim.
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The response from academic circles and some finance representatives has been to warn that Trump’s move to take control of the Fed risks undermining confidence in US institutions, the global role of the dollar and financial stability.
Comments by Douglas Rediker, a former US representative at the International Monetary Fund and the founder of a financial advisory firm, to the New York Times were typical of many.
“It sends a message that is more akin to a chaotic, dysfunctional system than what the markets in the US and globally have always assumed of the Fed, which is that is the gold standard for governance, for independence, for prudence and policymaking.”
A survey by the Financial Times (FT) of 94 economists in the US and Europe found only one who said Trump’s actions did not constitute a “meaningful risk” to the economy.
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Despite such warnings, of which there are many, there has been no market reaction so far. This in contrast to the earlier threats to sack Powell and turbulence in April in response to the initial announcement of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs when the interest rates on Treasury bonds moved up sharply and, contrary to normal experience, the dollar fell.
One explanation is that the markets have adapted themselves to what has been called a new paradigm where central banks are subject to so-called “fiscal dominance” under which rising debt in US and Europe means they are subject to the demands of governments to keep interest rates low, as demanded by Trump, and there is still money to be made.
A recent FT article on why corporate and business leaders in the US had so far not publicly opposed Trump cited the anonymous remarks of a senior finance executive and longtime Democrat donor.
“I find what he is doing abhorrent, but the truth is I’ve been a beneficiary of Trump’s policies. The ‘big beautiful bill’ cut my taxes, boosted cash flow for my company, and pumped stimulus into the market—so my portfolio keeps growing.”
When Elon Musk opened the huge Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide with a ceremony in the spring of 2022, then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Green Party Economics Minister Robert Habeck showered him with praise. The IG Metall trade union, which is attempting to expand into the plant, announced that it had “every interest in seeing this plant flourish and enjoy lasting success.”
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It is therefore not surprising that the plant was able to be built in a designated water protection area—despite massive protests from residents and environmental groups. Underpaid migrant workers from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America toiled on the construction site for 10 to 12 hours a day, often without adequate safety precautions. These conditions did not only apply to the “construction phase,” they set the tone for later production.
At the opening, Musk boasted about the production of 500,000 vehicles per year, up to 40,000 jobs, and an expansion to include a battery factory and supplier plants.
Three-and-a-half years later, little remains of this. In the summer of 2025, rarely more than 5,000 cars per week left the factory, and even those are being put on hold because sales markets have collapsed by 58 percent in the first six months of 2025.
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The international workforce—the plant employs people from 150 nations—is being literally burned out in Tesla’s bone-crushing mill. For the most dangerous and strenuous tasks—assembly lines at “breakneck speed,” work on melting furnaces, hazardous painting facilities—Tesla wears out physically resilient but often low-skilled workers in no time, only to replace them with new, poorer recruits. They are promised training or German language courses, but what they get is immediate deployment under maximum stress.
Toxic fumes and fine aluminium dust in the air, faulty machines—the list of hazards is long. In the first twelve months after production started, emergency services had to respond 247 times. The most common injuries were falls, cuts, nosebleeds, chemical poisoning and burns.
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Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, cold-bloodedly subordinates the health and lives of his workforce to his profit interests and stops at nothing to achieve his goals. As a result, staff turnover is extremely high: in Musk’s factories worldwide, 40 to 70 percent of workers are often replaced each year.
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If it had its way, IG Metall would also play its role as factory police at Tesla. In all other German car factories, the metalworkers’ union and its works councils have taken on the task of enforcing the profit interests of the corporations against the workforce. They ensure that wage cuts and massive job cuts take place as smoothly as possible. If they are occasionally forced to take protest action or go on strike, they use these measures only to absorb the workers’ anger and sabotage any serious industrial action.
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Musk, whose oligarchic activities span the US and internationally, is a neo-Nazi who has publicly supported the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany, right-wing hardliners in the US, and, until recently, US President Donald Trump. As head of Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), he pushed through mass layoffs in the public sector. Musk is hated worldwide, which is one of the reasons why sales of Tesla models are declining.
But IG Metall is offering to work with him. Their service: if Tesla finally brings IG Metall on board, they and their works councils will ensure that production runs smoothly and that the workforce stops rebelling. Sick leave would be kept low even without illegal pressure tactics—as IG Metall has demonstrated at VW, Daimler, BMW, etc.
13. FedEx in Memphis lays off 611 amid an accelerating logistics job cuts
FedEx Supply Chain has issued a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice in Tennessee that 611 workers in Memphis will be permanently laid off on October 11, 2025, after car parts manufacturer Cummins Inc. decided to shift a large share of its aftermarket parts distribution to a different provider in Indianapolis. The cuts affect two sites in the area.
FedEx Supply Chain is FedEx’s third-party logistics (3PL) division, distinct from FedEx Express (air) and FedEx Ground (parcel). As a 3PL, it runs customer-dedicated warehousing and fulfillment, receiving and storage, inventory management, pick-pack-ship, kitting/labeling, and returns.
Because these facilities are tied to specific client contracts, jobs rise or fall with the client’s decisions. When a client moves its business to another provider or city, the jobs move too.
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FedEx has said affected employees were notified and may be offered placement assistance, transfers, relocation help, or severance. In practice, even when a transfer is on the table, workers face longer commutes, potential pay and schedule changes, loss of seniority, and the personal costs of uprooting households.
Like the rest of FedEx, these sites are nonunion; therefore, workers lack “bumping rights,” that is, the seniority protection that allows a more-senior, qualified worker to displace (‘bump’) a less-senior worker in another job or shift to avoid layoff and keep pay and seniority.
What is happening in Memphis is not isolated. Earlier this year, FedEx Supply Chain laid off 305 employees in Fort Worth, Texas after a client transferred its logistics operations to a different provider. The company is also shuttering a FedEx Supply Chain facility in Jacksonville, FL, laying off 87 employees at that site.
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The massive culling of logistics jobs is unfolding in the context of uncertainty and destabilization caused by Trump’s tariff program and the acceleration of his fascistic attacks on democratic rights.
With the Trump administration’s protectionism receiving the support of the unions themselves, every aspect of the logistics network is in flux, which for workers, means overtime one week and shortened shifts or layoffs the next as global manufacturers, shippers, importers, and transportation companies navigate Trump’s tariff gambit.
The cost of all of this falls entirely on the working class. Trump’s measures have already driven up the prices on consumer goods. Job cuts will increase across all sectors and cause worsening working conditions and deteriorating workplace safety as workers are doing more work with fewer hands and less oversight and safety regulations.
14. Germany: “United-4-Gaza” holds mass demonstration in Frankfurt am Main
The horrific news from Gaza City—where bombing and starvation are now being followed by military obliteration—has brought millions of people onto the streets worldwide. In Frankfurt am Main, the “United 4 Gaza” demonstration on Saturday mobilized up to four times as many participants as had registered.
Estimates ranged between 15,000 and 20,000 participants (5,000 had registered). This was undoubtedly the largest Palestine demonstration in the city since October 2023.
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Speakers reported first-hand from Gaza City. They described recent targeted killings of doctors and journalists and the impact of the famine catastrophe on the Palestinian population. Among them was a doctor and a Palestinian resident of Hesse who has lost almost his entire family in the Gaza genocide. He said: “This is no conflict, no war–this is systematic annihilation. The so-called disgusting ‘state policy’ means that Germany, not even 100 years after the Holocaust, is now pursuing the same genocide on Israel’s side.”
The mood was unanimously for the immediate halt to the genocide, for an end to German arms deliveries, and against the persecution of those who protest. Participants carried cardboard placards, T-shirts and posters with slogans such as: “Germany, you have learned nothing! Yesterday perpetrator, today sponsor”; “Stop the dirty work! No to state policy”; “Israel starves 2 million people”; “18,500 children killed”; “Nothing justifies war crimes”; “Boycott Israel Apartheid”; “Make Israel Palestine again”; “Never again? You must be joking!”; or simply: “Free Palestine!” Many Jewish participants were present, and one worker had written on his placard: “Genocide is not kosher.”
A women’s group from Ingelheim am Rhein carried a large placard: “We are not free until everyone is free!” They expressed the general mood for equality and justice, as one of them said: “Justice will only prevail when everyone in the world can live in freedom.” Two workers from Mannheim emphasized to the World Socialist Web Site that what mattered most to them was to stop every war and all violence: “Mass murder does not bring peace!”
15. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Argentina:
Police assault anti-genocide protest in Buenos Aires
President Milei expelled by angry workers
Brazil:
Protest-strike by natural gas workers in the Amazon region
Canada:
British Columbia government workers set to strike
British Columbia government workers set to strike
Paraguay:
Police attacks students asking for bus to get to school
Police attacks students asking for bus to get to school
United States:
Toledo, Ohio Libbey Glass workers enter second week of strike
One-day strike at West Nyack, New York healthcare facility
Suburban Chicago teachers grant strike authorization
Suburban Chicago teachers grant strike authorization
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