Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
Workers must fight for workers’ power and workers’ control over production, harnessing the surplus created by new technologies to improve, not lower, the standard of living for the masses.
Members and supporters of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) have distributed thousands of leaflets and put up 1,500 posters to promote the event with David North, “Where is America Heading? Socialism or Barbarism?”, to be held today, Tuesday, at Berlin’s Humboldt University. The event is also being promoted on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and X.
The politics of the oligarchic government of President Donald Trump are being discussed intensely at workplaces, universities, and in Berlin’s neighborhoods. It quickly becomes clear in the numerous conversations that the establishment of a presidential dictatorship in the United States is not a development limited to America. The US-backed genocide in Gaza, the proxy war in Ukraine, the preparations for war against Venezuela, and the global trade war waged by the most powerful imperialist country affect the entire world.
Berliners are following with concern the raids by the ICE Gestapo in major American cities, as well as the Trump administration’s attacks on democratic rights and the remaining social programs on which millions depend. The socialist and internationalist perspective that North will discuss at the event is attracting great interest.
3. Zelensky government embroiled in massive corruption scandal
The Ukrainian government is directly implicated in a massive embezzlement scandal that threatens the continued existence of a Zelensky presidency.
Trump has shown visible signs of his 79 years, both mentally and physically, although the ruling class has made do with senile occupants of the White House—both Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden, for example—when their policies conformed to those demanded by Wall Street. In Trump’s case, his wild swings from imposing massive tariffs to lifting them, from threats to attack Venezuela and even Nigeria to seeming indifference towards the outcome of the Ukraine war, have undermined his support both on Wall Street and in the national-security establishment.
The Democrats have chosen Epstein as their preferred battleground, within days of bailing out Trump on the federal budget shutdown, because sex scandals can be used to conceal the real issues being fought out within the ruling elite and thus forestall any movement from below. As the WSWS warned last week:
The working class must not be drawn behind either faction in this struggle within the ruling class. The Epstein case does not indict Trump alone—It indicts the entire bourgeoisie. It lays bare the corrupt physiognomy of a ruling class that long ago abandoned any connection to democratic principles or social progress. It has handed power to gangsters, frauds and predators.
The working class must intervene in the mounting political crisis on the basis of its own interests, through its own program. The crimes of Epstein are manifestations of a social system that defends private property, class privilege and the political monopoly of a corrupt elite…
What is required is a movement of the working class—armed with a revolutionary socialist program—to put an end to the rule of oligarchs and to build a society based on equality, truth and human dignity.
5. US government begins deportation of longtime US residents to Ukraine war zone
On Monday, the Trump administration began deporting some 83 people to Ukraine, where they face conscription and dictatorship.
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The deportations are flagrantly illegal under international law. In 1951, after the horrors of the Second World War and the refusal of capitalist governments to protect Jewish refugees and other victims of fascism, the United Nations held the Refugee Convention to establish rights and protections for refugees.
The core principle agreed to at the convention was that a refugee should not be returned to a country where they face “serious threats to their life or freedom.” It also outlined basic standards for refugees, including the right to “housing, work and education.” There is no question that those facing deportation to Ukraine will face “serious threats to their life.”
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Not a single politician has spoken out against the deportations. This includes the “democratic socialists”: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Mayor-elect of New York City Zohran Mamdani. The Democrats, a party of the CIA and Wall Street, have supported war against Russia long before the 2022 invasion and throughout Biden’s presidency. Last year, Ocasio-Cortez declared in Congress that “US military assistance” to Ukraine “should be one of our top geopolitical priorities.”
The silence of these phony socialists underscores that the fight to defend democratic rights and end imperialist war must be waged outside of, and in opposition to, the parties of big business and war. If longtime US residents can be deported to a war zone, it will not be long before any and all workers, regardless of citizenship status, are rounded up and sent into the meat grinder to generate profits for the warmongers and banks.
6. Philadelphia transit workers vote to strike as union officials seek to block action
The Transport Workers Union seeks to stall and handicap workers as they voted unanimously to authorize a strike amid stalled contract talks.
7. Prospective students hit by cuts to Australian university courses
8. HRW report highlights impact of pro-market policies on public education in Sri Lanka
Extensive tax exemptions handed to big business by successive governments over decades have deepened the country’s social crisis and undermined public education.
9. Australia: Hundreds attend memorial service for Cobar mine worker Ambrose McMullen
The large attendance, more than filling the stands of the Tom Knight Memorial Oval, reflected the fact that McMullen’s death is a loss, not just to his family, but to the whole town.
12. Framed-up University of Michigan researcher Yunqing Jian sentenced and deported
The University of Michigan has refused to defend its scholars, acting as a compliant arm of the government. It remained shamefully silent as its researchers were vilified and it actively participated in their persecution.
10. The Barnes group and the decline and fall of the Socialist Workers Party
This lecture examines the steady degeneration of the SWP in the aftermath of the ICFI's launching of the Security and the Fourth International investigation.
World Socialist Web Site reporter and political analyst Patrick Martin, who often writes on United States political affairs, delivers the third part of a fascinating three-part lesson at the 2025 Socialist Equality Party Summer School. In this lecture, Martin examines the steady degeneration of the Socialist Workers Party in the aftermath of the International Committee of the Fourth International's launching of the Security and the Fourth International investigation. Workers and youth must learn this history if they are to defend and promote genuine socialism.
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Patrick Martin:
"As has been emphasized throughout this school, Security and the Fourth International was not primarily a forensic exercise. It arose organically out of the defense of the political principles for which the Trotskyist movement has fought throughout its existence, and particularly our insistence on the counter-revolutionary character of Stalinism and, accordingly, the need to defend the revolutionary movement against the danger of infiltration, surveillance and violence, whether perpetrated by the capitalist state or by the Stalinists."
11. Trump’s tariff war devastating major Indian export industries
The Trump administration’s imposition of 50 percent tariffs on most Indian exports has led to devastating job losses in numerous industries in just the past three months.
12. Postal worker Russell Scruggs Jr. dies at Palmetto, Georgia distribution center
Russell Scruggs Jr. was 44 years old and had just started work at the USPS distribution center three weeks earlier.
12. Chicago workers speak out against ICE neighborhood arrests (with videos)
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to workers and young people in the Chicago neighborhoods being targeted by ICE, as well as Ford workers at the Chicago Assembly Plant.
13. Deadline to make schools safe from crumbling concrete shifted to 2029 by UK Labour government
Decades of neglect and lack of investment in education have left UK school buildings a danger to life and limb.
14. UK Labour government unveils far-right anti-immigration program
The Socialist Equality Party warned in May, weeks before the fascist-led mobilizations outside hotels housing asylum seekers began, “Shorn of its name, conjuring images of a long-abandoned connections to reformism, the Labour government is a far-right formation.”
16. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Brazil:
Canada:
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island water workers continue strike
Locked out Windsor Titan Tool and Die workers hit by truck on picket line
Dominican Republic:
Mexico:
Peru:
Generation Z protest demands reforms
United States:
Maine nurses slated to launch two-day strike over unsafe staffing
Strike authorized at Las Vegas Casino after two years of failed negotiations
Skilled tradesmen strike Michigan project seeking union representation
17. 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.
