Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. For a general strike to stop Trump’s occupation of Minneapolis!
On Tuesday, a coalition of local unions and community organizations in Minneapolis, Minnesota called a walkout for Friday, January 23, framed as a one‑day general strike and statewide economic shutdown to oppose the rampage by Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including the murder of Renée Nicole Good.
The Socialist Equality Party supports this action and urges the broadest possible participation by workers, students and youth. The call for a walkout has emerged under growing pressure from working people across Minnesota who are outraged by the paramilitary occupation of their city. Protests have spread over the 10 days since the brutal killing of Good, who, according to recently released reports, was shot twice in her chest and once in her forearm as she was driving away from ICE officials.
The call for the general strike can prove to be an important step forward in the fight against ICE’s reign of terror in Minneapolis. But this action must be conceived of as the beginning of a broader mobilization of the working class in the city, state and throughout the country against the Trump administration.
The call for action comes as Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota. This is a qualitative escalation in his conspiracy to establish a dictatorship.
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By branding protests and popular resistance as “insurrection,” the Trump regime is laying the groundwork for mass violence. The Insurrection Act gives the president the power to deploy the US military, overriding the Posse Comitatus Act. Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act against Minnesota’s population—absent any request from the state, and in response to peaceful protests—is blatantly illegal.
The stark reality of what is happening was acknowledged in the extraordinary statement by Democratic Governor Tim Walz Wednesday evening. He declared that developments in the state “defy belief” and that “News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities.”
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Walz described the operation as “a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.” Citing Trump’s fascistic threat that “the day of retribution and reckoning is coming,” the governor stated: “That is a direct threat against the people of this state.”
What Walz said about the situation in Minneapolis is true. But what is completely lacking is any serious strategy to stop Trump and ICE. Walz spoke about fighting “in the courts and at the ballot box,” but Trump has already made clear that he will ignore any legal decisions that challenge his authority. Moreover, the Supreme Court is controlled by a gang of fascists and reactionaries who ruled, in 2024, that Trump cannot be prosecuted for “official acts” carried out as president.
As for elections, Trump is making ever more overt threats to cancel or nullify the 2026 midterm elections, or—if they are held—conduct them under conditions of martial law. In an interview with Reuters published Thursday, Trump declared that he had accomplished so much that “we shouldn’t even have an election.”
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There is massive opposition within Minneapolis and beyond to the police-state occupation and Trump’s unfolding coup. In the week since the murder of Good, there have been daily demonstrations, high school walkouts, and acts of protest and resistance involving broad sections of the population.
But resistance will only succeed if it is grounded in the active mobilization of the working class, the immense social force that produces all wealth and holds the power to bring society to a halt. What is required is a shift away from the non-struggle and collaboration of the Democratic Party, and toward the independent organization of a mass movement of workers.
This is the significance of the action called on January 23. The World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly raised the need for a general strike movement in response to the occupation of Minneapolis. But a general strike is not a symbolic protest or consumer boycott. It means the complete shutdown of production and economic activity.
Workers must reject the threats issued by the governor‑appointed Metropolitan Council that participation in strike action is prohibited by public employee laws and collective bargaining agreements. The Trump administration is operating openly outside the bounds of legality. The defense of democratic rights cannot be subordinated to contract technicalities negotiated by the union apparatus to suppress the class struggle.
And the entire working class must be mobilized. While a number of local unions have endorsed the January 23 demonstration, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, closely tied to the Democratic Party, has thus far refused to do so. In the aftermath of the murder of Renée Nicole Good, the state labor federation issued a statement declaring itself “shocked, heartbroken and angry” but did not call for any action. Instead, it directed workers to place their confidence in a “full investigation” and in appeals to “elected officials.”
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The Socialist Equality Party calls on workers to organize independently through the formation of rank‑and‑file committees in every workplace, school and neighborhood. The fight of workers cannot be subordinated to the operations of the Democratic Party or trade union apparatus, which is hostile to a real struggle against Trump.
Workers should immediately hold emergency meetings at every factory, school, warehouse, depot and workplace, union and non-union. At these meetings, workers should elect representatives to form rank‑and‑file committees charged with coordinating and directing the struggle and the defense of the people.
Resolutions should be adopted endorsing open‑ended strike action. Such resolutions must articulate a concrete set of demands, including the arrest and prosecution of Renée Nicole Good’s killer; the immediate withdrawal of all ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Department pf Homeland Security (DHS) forces; the abolition of these paramilitary agencies that terrorize immigrant communities; and the immediate release of all detainees held in ICE custody.
Coordinating committees should be established to link these rank‑and‑file bodies across industries and regions, creating the structures necessary for common action on a mass scale.
There is a powerful precedent for such a movement in the history of the city itself. In 1934, Minneapolis was the site of one of the most militant and significant general strikes in American history, led by Trotskyist militants and the Teamsters. Workers defied the Citizens Alliance, the National Guard and police repression. Despite shootings and martial law, they won decisive victories and laid the foundation for industrial unionism across the country.
Today, the situation is even more urgent. Workers confront not only employers’ associations and National Guard repression, but a fascist president, the paramilitary forces of the state and an escalating war abroad and at home.
Minnesota is not, as Walz claimed in his remarks Wednesday, an “island.” What is happening in Minneapolis is the spearhead of a broader conspiracy to impose dictatorship. Trump speaks and acts as the political instrument of the capitalist oligarchy, which is dispensing with democratic forms of rule. The Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, is hostile to any genuine movement against this danger.
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The Socialist Equality Party urges all workers to take up a serious discussion in every workplace about what must be done. The situation is urgent. The way forward is not through appeals to courts or the next election, but through the independent political mobilization of the working class.
2. Revolutionary leadership and the Minneapolis general strike of 1934
This article was originally published on the 75th anniversary of the 1934 Minneapolis truck drivers’ strike. It is being republished today in light of unfolding events that have once again transformed Minnesota into a frontline in the struggle between the working class and the capitalist state.
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The events in Minneapolis in 1934 show what the working class can accomplish when it fights based on an independent class perspective.
3. Public health collapsing as COVID pandemic enters its 7th year
Soon after the emergence of COVID-19, the International Committee of the Fourth International made the correct analysis that the pandemic had to be understood as a trigger event in world history. It did not create a crisis in public health, but rather exposed and accelerated longstanding processes: the erosion of life expectancy, the dismantling of scientific institutions, and the subordination of human life to the profit requirements and military-strategic interests of the financial oligarchy.
The world has now entered the seventh year of the COVID pandemic, with the United States facing the 12th major wave of infections. Conservative estimates place cumulative COVID deaths in the United States at over 1.2 million, while excess-mortality analyses indicate a substantially higher toll. Globally, excess-mortality modeling places the true pandemic death toll in the tens of millions, with central estimates near 27 million worldwide, far exceeding official counts. Transmission continues at high rates—presently at roughly 1 million infections per day, with more than 240 million infections recorded in 2025 alone. Reinfections are widespread, and Long COVID remains a mass disabling condition affecting millions.
What has ended is not the pandemic, but any acknowledgement by the political and media establishment that COVID-19 remains a major threat. There is zero political commitment to even the meager combination of mitigation, surveillance and data-gathering. This was not and is not an oversight. It is a decision to conceal the ongoing harm that is affecting the entire global population.
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During the earliest phase of the ongoing COVID pandemic, life expectancy fell far more sharply among poorer and working class layers than among the wealthiest. Exposure risk, access to care, the ability to isolate and the burden of long-term disability followed class lines.
Now, barely six years later—a brief period in historical terms—international evidence confirms the devastation wrought by the COVID pandemic and how it continues to sicken population health.
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In the course of the 20th century, public health interventions—vaccination, clean water systems, sanitation, community water fluoridation and disease surveillance—produced some of the most dramatic gains in human longevity ever recorded. Vaccination alone is estimated to have saved tens of millions of lives globally over the past 50 years. In the United States, routine childhood immunization reduced infant and child mortality to a fraction of early-20th-century levels.
It is precisely these historic gains—achieved through collective action, scientific rigor and public investment—that are now under direct and conscious attack.
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On January 5, 2026, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unilaterally preempted the established scientific review process and imposed sweeping changes to the US vaccine schedule.
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On that day, federal health authorities revised the US childhood immunization schedule, reducing the number of diseases with routine universal recommendation from 17 to 11. Six vaccines—including influenza, COVID-19, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and certain meningococcal vaccines—were removed from routine universal recommendation and reclassified for high-risk groups or shared clinical decision-making. This action did not emerge suddenly. It followed earlier interventions, including changes to the hepatitis B vaccine, which served as a preliminary signal of the direction being prepared.
Taken together, these actions represent a deliberate rupture with evidence-based public health governance. In this sense, January 5 marks a “Welcome to 2026” moment for public health, just as the January 3 criminal attack on Venezuela was for American imperialist foreign policy and the January 7 murder of Renee Nicole Good was for Trump’s plans for dictatorship.
Just as the criminal attack on Venezuela has functioned as a harbinger of the abandonment of international law in favor of the openly stated law of force, the preemption of the vaccine schedule marks the abandonment of scientific truth and public health norms in favor of ideological rule. Peer review, evidence and population-level risk assessment are no longer constraints on policy.
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The consequences of inadequate prevention were already visible during the 2024–2025 influenza season, when more than 280 children died from influenza in the United States. Pediatric flu deaths are a recognized sentinel indicator of failure in vaccination and prevention systems.
Although these deaths occurred before the most recent changes to the vaccine schedule, they demonstrate the inherent danger of influenza under existing social conditions and provide a clear warning as the country enters another severe flu season.
Influenza is now well understood to be primarily an airborne disease, transmitted through aerosols in the indoor air. Despite this knowledge, no systematic airborne precautions—such as ventilation standards, air filtration or masking during surges—are being implemented. In this context, vaccination remains the only broadly available population-level measure shown to reduce severe illness, hospitalization and death from influenza. Under these conditions, the public health consequences are not uncertain or speculative; they are well understood in advance.
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This crisis cannot be attributed to any single administration. The Trump administration initiated the abandonment of pandemic mitigation, dismantling federal coordination and promoting mass infection in the name of economic reopening. The Biden administration did not reverse this course. Instead, it consolidated and normalized these policies despite vastly greater scientific understanding of the nature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Under Biden, emergency measures were dismantled while excess deaths continued. Masking guidance was withdrawn, surveillance was curtailed and responsibility for protection was shifted onto individuals and families. As a result, far more people died of COVID under Biden than under Trump. This was not ignorance. It was a political decision.
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The assault on public health must be understood within the broader framework of class rule under capitalism. From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the decisive priority of governments was not the preservation of life, but the protection of profit, financial markets and corporate interests. This orientation was articulated openly in calls to “reopen the economy” even as mass death unfolded.
In this context, the staggering death toll among the elderly and medically vulnerable was not an unintended consequence, but an outcome that was politically accepted and normalized. Sections of the population deemed no longer “productive” were treated as expendable. The refusal to suppress transmission, the dismantling of mitigation measures and the abandonment of population-level protection functioned to reduce life expectancy along class lines.
This process has not ended. The dismantling of public health institutions, the erosion of vaccination programs and the normalization of mass infection continue to operate in the same direction. The well-off retain access to private health care, early treatment and protection. The working class is left exposed—to infection, long-term disability and premature death. Disease itself becomes a mechanism through which social inequality is enforced.
The policies now being advanced under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must be understood in this light. The attack on vaccination, disease surveillance and scientific authority does not represent a defense of individual freedom, but a further degradation of collective protection. These policies function to weaponize disease against the population, particularly against those with the least capacity to shield themselves.
Central to this project is an ideological assault on science itself. By promoting the claim that scientists are corrupt agents of corporate interests, and that medical knowledge is inherently suspect, these forces cultivate distrust, fear and confusion. This anti-scientific outlook has a paralyzing political effect. It undermines rational understanding, fragments social consciousness and obstructs the development of a clear, class-based response to the crisis.
From a Marxist standpoint, this represents the antithesis of what is required. The working class cannot defend its interests without access to truth, scientific knowledge and a clear understanding of the social forces shaping its conditions of life. The defense of public health is therefore inseparable from the defense of scientific integrity and the political education of the working class.
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In sum, public health is a class question. The assault on vaccines, science and population-level prevention is part of a broader attack on the social gains secured by the working class over the 20th century. The COVID pandemic exposed these priorities with devastating clarity. What is unfolding now is the conscious continuation of that trajectory. The task before us is to make this reality understood and to orient the working class internationally to the defense of science, public health and human life itself.
4. Following Trump’s threat: European powers send troops to Greenland
US President Donald Trump’s persistent threats to take over Greenland have provoked strong reactions in Europe. After Trump repeatedly asserted his claim to the huge island—which belongs to Denmark as an autonomous territory—in recent days and a Danish-American meeting in Washington ended without a resolution, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany and France have sent military reinforcements to Greenland.
For the time being, only a few soldiers and ships have been sent to explore further options. The mission is justified by the need to allay Trump’s concerns that Greenland is not sufficiently protected against Russian and Chinese attacks. In fact, it is intended to deter the US from annexing Greenland by force, even though it would offer little resistance to an American military operation.
The US president has justified his claim to Greenland on the grounds of US national security, among other things. “We need Greenland,” he said, “to prevent Russia and China from owning it.” He added threateningly that the takeover could be done “the easy way” or “the hard way.”
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In Europe, outrage over Trump’s claim to Greenland has reached fever pitch. The media and all established parties are up in arms over his threat to forcibly seize territory from a NATO partner. Seven European heads of government—including Friedrich Merz (Germany), Emmanuel Macron (France), Keir Starmer (Great Britain), Giorgia Meloni (Italy) and Donald Tusk (Poland)—signed a joint statement against Trump’s annexation plans in early January. They emphasise that the island belongs to the Greenlandic people.
What motivates the European leaders is not concern for international law, and certainly not for the Greenlandic people. The same media and leaders who criticise Trump over Greenland have supported and continue to support his numerous other crimes—from the genocide in Gaza to the bombing of Iran and the attempt to forcibly bring about regime change there. They even welcomed the attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Maduro, which clearly violated international law, even though Trump openly boasted that his goal was to steal Venezuelan oil.
Nor do European governments raise any criticism of the destruction of democracy in the US, the terror of the ICE Gestapo, the instrumentalization of the judiciary, and the unpunished murder of peaceful citizens such as Renée Nicole Good, even though they are otherwise relentless in condemning human rights violations when it comes to Russia or China. Instead, the European governments are competing to flatter the fascist gangster in the White House.
Even with regard to Greenland, the Europeans’ claims are not as clear-cut as they pretend. Although the island belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark under international law, it enjoys a high degree of autonomy. Copenhagen only has a say in foreign policy and defense; the Greenlanders themselves regulate internal affairs. The 2009 Self-Government Act expressly guarantees them the right to self-determination: they can therefore decide for themselves at any time whether they want to remain part of Denmark or not.
Greenland is also not, as is often claimed, part of the European Union. In 1973, it became a member of the European Community (EC), the predecessor of the EU, as part of Denmark, even though 70 percent of Greenlanders had voted against it. After gaining internal autonomy, Greenland held its own referendum in 1982, in which 53 percent voted in favor of withdrawal, which was completed in 1985. Since then, Greenland has only been associated with the EU as an overseas country or territory.
Greenland’s relationship with Denmark, which exploited the island as a colony for over two centuries, is also not as close as the government portrays it to be. Between 1966 and 1991, the Danish government implemented a brutal contraception program on the island to reduce the birth rate. For a quarter of a century, every second woman, including many girls, had an intrauterine device inserted without their knowledge. The Danish government did not apologize for this crime until 2025—six years after Trump first laid claim to Greenland.
Greenland, which has a population of only about 55,000, is dependent on financial support from Denmark. However, at €80 million per year, this support is very modest. It is therefore quite possible that Trump will try to bring Greenland under his control with an “offer they cannot refuse”—a combination of threats, blackmail and incentives. This is likely to be the subject of the negotiations agreed upon by the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland with Vance and Rubio.
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No one should be carried away by this war propaganda under the guise of “defending Greenland.” Not only Trump, but also Merz, Macron, Starmer and Meloni are preparing new wars to defend imperialist interests in a world where only the law of the strongest applies.
The answer to Trump’s annexation plans is not European military strength, but the mobilization of the international working class against war and capitalism. The workers of Europe and the US are allies in this struggle.
5. New York City workers urge broadening strike of 15,000 striking nurses
The enormous support which the 15,000 strong nurses strike in New York City has received in the working class in the city, nationally and internationally, continues to grow. The nurses on the picket line feel this directly by visits from other workers and by the honking of cars and trucks that pass them. But the support is both more widespread and deeply felt by hundreds of thousands in the city that are not immediately present.
Hundreds of thousands of municipal workers, including 37,000 city transit workers, have contracts coming up this year. There is not only broad support but a growing feeling that a united movement of the working class is the only way to address skyrocketing cost of living.
In Minneapolis, a general strike has been scheduled for next Friday, January 23 in opposition to the rampage by ICE throughout the city and Trump’s threats to declare the Insurrection Act. The union bureaucracy had earlier canceled a teachers’ strike the day after the shooting of Renee Good; that it felt compelled to call a general strike is a sign of fear that workers may act with or without their approval.
Reporters for the World Socialist Web Site spoke to transit workers at one of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) subway stations.
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Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to nurses on the picket line during the fourth day of their strike Thursday. “The most important thing is patient safety for nurses,” one nurse said. “We care for our patients down to the core. Nobody knows the Bronx like the nurses here. These patients can be your grandfather, your grandmother, your brother, your sister, and no patient deserves to be in a hallway. Every patient deserves a bed and a room and proper care. The ED [Emergency Department] is completely overcrowded.”
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The response to the nurses’ strike on social media has been overwhelming. Hundreds of thousands of people have viewed World Socialist Web Site videos and articles published on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X, Youtube and Reddit. Thousands of spirited and enthusiastic comments have been posted there by users, including many nurses and other healthcare workers from around the world.
On a healthcare subreddit, one person remarked on the same video: “Awesome! The way they are overworked is insanely dangerous for both them and anyone in need of medical assistance. I hope this catches on in more places.” In response, anther user said, “The entire country should strike.”
6. Federal agents raid Washington Post reporter’s home in crackdown on press freedom
On Wednesday, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Virginia home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, in an unprecedented escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged leaks of classified information. The raid, ordered at the request of the Pentagon and approved by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, was carried out under the pretext of investigating a government contractor accused of improperly retaining national defense information.
The FBI seized Natanson’s phone, her personal laptop, a Post‑issued laptop and a Garmin smartwatch, effectively ransacking the basic tools of her work and sweeping up material that includes confidential communications with hundreds of current and former federal employees. Natanson, a Pulitzer Prize‑winning journalist who has been at the center of the Post’s exposure of President Donald Trump’s purge and restructuring of the federal workforce, was present when FBI agents arrived with a search warrant authorizing the seizure of her devices.
Officials have claimed that the journalist herself is “not a target” of the investigation, which they say is focused on Aurelio Perez‑Lugones, a Maryland‑based Pentagon systems administrator charged in federal court with unlawful retention of classified documents. But the real purpose of the operation is unmistakable: to intimidate whistleblowers throughout the federal government and to send a warning to journalists who expose the criminal conspiracies of the state.
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Attorney General Bondi boasted on social media that the FBI had executed a warrant at the home of a reporter who “was acquiring and reporting classified and illegally disclosed information,” cynically denouncing the exposure of government secrets as a threat to “national security,” concealing the illegal actions and intrigues being exposed.
News organizations and press freedom advocates condemned the search as a dangerous crossing of a line that even previous administrations, despite their own vicious pursuit of leakers, had hesitated to breach.
7. Federal agents in Minneapolis tear gas family, sending 2 children and a baby to hospital
A family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was forced to rush their 6-month-old baby and two young children to the hospital on Wednesday night after police forces doused a residential neighborhood in tear gas following the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa Celis by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The shooting prompted an instant protest by local community members that lasted well past 2:00 a.m. local time.
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The catalyst for the protest in North Minneapolis was the latest shooting by a DHS thug that left one man, identified by the agency as Julio Cesar Sosa Celis, wounded in the leg. DHS claimed their agent fired a “defensive shot” at Sosa Celis after the agent was attacked by two other people allegedly armed with a broom or shovel, who were trying to help Sosa Celis escape.
The two men DHS claims assaulted their officer were identified as Alfredo Alejandro Ajorna and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma. It is unclear if either of the men knew Sosa Celis prior to yesterday.
Nothing the liars and fascists at DHS or in the Trump administration at large say should be taken at face value. Cell phone footage from inside the home of Sosa Celis has already revealed a contradiction in the narrative put forth by the government.
As conflict continues over the legal action via the Department of Justice (DoJ) against Fed chair Jerome Powell, attention is being directed to a Supreme Court hearing next week which could have even more significant implications for the so-called independence of the US central bank.
Next Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether the Trump administration can sack Fed governor Lisa Cook “for cause.”
Cook was sacked “effective immediately” via a social media post by Trump at the end of August with claims that she had falsified information on mortgage applications for two properties she purchased in 2021.
The move sent a shock wave through the financial world. In the words of the Financial Times (FT): “Trump’s late-night putsch represents one of the gravest challenges to the Fed since it became independent 74 years ago, and marks a stunning escalation in the president’s attacks on the US economic establishment.”
In various legal actions, including a shadow docket ruling by the Supreme Court, Cook has successfully resisted moves to have her ousted from the Fed’s governing body before the issue was finally determined.
The case is regarded as potentially more significant than the attack on Powell because a decision against Cook would enable Trump to install an acolyte to the Fed. It would also create conditions where the threat of being removed “for cause” hung over every other member of the bank’s policy making body if they defied Trump’s demands for a major reduction in interest rates, possibly to as low as 1 percent.
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Powell has received support from key figures in the US financial establishment, including all living former central bank governors and from central bankers around the world who issued a statement declaring their “full solidarity” with the Fed chief. A significant omission was the central governor of the Bank of Japan, leading to conjecture this was because the government did not want a conflict with Trump.
The statement, organized by the European Central Bank, said the “independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve.”
The notion of “independence”—tied to the claim that central banks somehow serve the interests of the public or the people—is a fiction. Central banks serve the interests of financial capital.
The conflict has arisen because they consider that Trump’s push for lower rates—aimed at enhancing the interests of the most speculative sections of capital involved in crypto, real estate other risky areas from which Trump himself emerged—will set off inflation and spark a wages movement of the working class.
And they are also deeply fearful that under conditions where the US is the most indebted country in history—$38 trillion and counting—direct political control will lead to a collapse in confidence in the US dollar and undermine the American and global financial system.
So far finance capital has been able to withstand major economic storms—the crisis of 2008 and the March 2020 freeze of the US Treasury market—because of massive bailouts, running into many trillions of dollars, organized by the US government and the Fed. But if there is a crisis of confidence in the dollar that is no longer possible.
9. Reject BMA Scotland’s sellout deal: For a united fight by resident doctors and NHS workers
Resident doctors in Scotland should vote “No” to the divisive package cobbled together between the Scottish National Party (SNP) government and leaders of the British Medical Association Scotland, after they vetoed a four-day strike due to start January 13.
The cancelled action, which would have been the first doctors’ strike in Scotland this century, had overwhelming backing from resident doctors—a 92 percent strike mandate.
Had it gone forward, it would have strengthened the long-running dispute between resident doctors in England and the Keir Starmer’s Labour government in Westminster. It would have opened a new front in the struggle for pay restoration as an integral part of defending a well-funded, fully staffed National Health Service (NHS) and social care system.
More is needed than a “No” vote, however. To take forward any struggle, resident doctors, around 7,000 of whom work in Scotland, are posed with taking control of their own dispute.
The decision to cancel the strike last Friday breaches the basic principle that members have the right to vote on any agreement before mandated action is called off. The BMA had not even confirmed a date for the ballot at the time of this writing; its January 9 press release stated that a consultative vote “will open in the coming weeks.”
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Recent figures from Public Health Scotland report that 70,000 people have been waiting for treatment for over 12 months. Only 43 percent of those currently on the waiting list will be seen within the government’s target time of 12 weeks. 5,262 people have been waiting for outpatient treatment for over two years.
Figures from Public Health Scotland in 2024 underscore how cutting waiting lists is being used to justify increased outsourcing to the private sector, with the number of Scottish patients treated in non-NHS facilities reaching a five-year high in 2023–24. More than 7,200 inpatients and day patients and 3,700 outpatients were sent to private hospitals and other non-NHS providers, with sharp year-on-year increases.
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Rejecting the deal cooked up between the SRDC and the SNP government is the first step toward resident doctors in Scotland going on the offensive against the private interests and government underfunding pulling apart the health service. And it will strengthen the resolve of resident doctors in England as they re-ballot for strike action against attempts by the BMA to push through a sellout deal with the Starmer government.
Both struggles can be the signal a fightback against the substandard deals in Wales and Northern Ireland.
Mounting such a unified struggle, which the BMA leadership opposes, will require new centers of democratic organization among resident doctors: rank-and-file committees. These committees can draw strength from the ongoing fight of tens of thousands of nurses in New York and strikes by doctors in France and Spain (where a national strike involving up to 175,000 is taking place this week), confronting the same issues. They can turn the resident doctors’ struggle into the spearhead of a movement to secure the billions necessary for a modern health and social care service.
This is the perspective advanced by NHS FightBack. We urge all resident doctors and NHS staff seeking to oppose the rout being led by the union bureaucracy to make contact.
Workers at 17 Further Education (FE) colleges across England began a three-day walkout on Wednesday.
University and College Union (UCU) members at 33 colleges overwhelmingly rejected a non-binding pay offer of 4 percent from the Association of Colleges (AoC). However, by the time of the walkout, the UCU had already pulled action at half the colleges which voted to strike.
The union is splitting FE workers into a handful of local disputes, ending them one-by-one with pay deals that do not make up for years of real-terms cuts as workers seek to close the £9,000 gap between salaries in schools and colleges. Although the headline demand is for a pay rise of 10 percent or £3,000, whichever is higher, the UCU is boasting of pulling branches out of the strike when they have “won pay awards worth up to 8.7%.”
Low pay is a sector-wide problem caused by the cuts of successive Conservative and Labour governments. According to a 2025 report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), “[f]unding per student in FE colleges is 11 per cent lower than in 2010-11, while sixth form funding has fallen by 23 per cent.” Classroom-based adult education funding has been cut by 40 percent in real terms since 2009-10.
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After the three-day walkout this week, no further action is currently planned. Instead, there are weeks of delays while local branches meet and a special meeting of the UCU’s Further Education Committee is held on February 6 to “consider branch and member feedback” and “next steps”.
Even where pay increased by more than the last years’ 4.1 percent price rises (by the RPI measure of inflation), without further funding from central government it will come out of already stretched college budgets, raising the risk of workers’ paying for their own pay rise with job losses and increased work pressure.
Forcing through localized deals means the remaining striking workers, those who are last to even get an offer, are in an ever weaker position. The bureaucracy defends its actions by saying that FE colleges are responsible for setting their own pay terms, with no binding national bargaining, accepting this is a fait accompli. Claiming that it is “at this level, not the national level, where the power lays,” it tells workers to “react to the existing structural, legal, and power realities.”
All but admitting that its strategy is based on pre-emptively accepting defeat, the UCU states baldly that the “central premise of a New Deal for FE is that UCU is not yet ready to achieve fundamental change at sector level and any precipitate move will most probably take the union and our strategic demands backwards rather than forward.”
This flies in the face of the guiding principle of the workers’ movement that “an injury to one is an injury to all”. The true “power reality” is that it is FE workers who are the lifeblood of the sector, and who have the power, precisely “at sector level”, through a unified struggle, to enforce their demands for decent terms of employment and a high quality of education.
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Further Education workers must take steps to bring the dispute under their direct control through rank-and-file committees at each college, whose first principles are: firstly, to fight for what workers need not what the college groups and government say they must accept; secondly, that the struggle must be waged on a unified basis among as wide a section of the workforce as possible.
11. New Zealand, Japan strengthen military links
New Zealand’s Defense Minister Judith Collins signed two new defense and security pacts with Japan during a visit to Tokyo on December 19. Collins signed the agreements, which upgrade the countries’ bilateral and multilateral military activities, with Japan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Toshimitsu Motegi.
Collins’ Japan visit capped a year in which the far-right National Party-led government further integrated New Zealand, a minor imperialist power, with the expanding US-led alliance for war in the Pacific. In August she welcomed US FBI director Kash Patel to open the agency’s new office in Wellington, which he made clear is part of US war preparations against China.
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The agreements are aimed squarely at North Korea and above all China. The Japan Times observed they are key to expanding the “scope and scale” of joint military activities and to “boost joint training exercises and enhance interoperability.” Collins pointed to the growth of joint engagements such as naval patrols in the East and South China seas, often with the navies of “like-minded countries” including the Philippines, Australia and the United States.
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Japan’s military alignments accompany its remilitarization and involvement in US-led war preparations against China. The Japanese government aims to double military spending by 2027. This includes acquiring offensive weaponry capable of reaching China, in a clear breach of the “Pacifist Clause” of Japan’s post-World War II Constitution. Tokyo claims it has the right to engage in so-called “collective self-defense,” preparing to join wars alongside allies.
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The developments accompany a major expansion of NZ’s military presence in South East Asia. In April Collins visited the Philippines to sign a Status of Visiting Forces Agreement strengthening military cooperation. Washington and its allies, including Japan and Australia, are preparing the Philippines to serve as a staging ground for conflict over Taiwan.
12. Collapsing crane kills 32 people on train in Thailand
A large construction crane collapsed onto a passenger train in Thailand on Wednesday, killing at least 32 people and injuring 66 others, with at least seven in critical condition. Three people are listed as missing. The collapse of the crane demonstrates starkly the lack of safety measures throughout the country’s construction industry.
The crane, a launching gantry hoisting a concrete segment for a new elevated China-Thailand high-speed rail line, collapsed around 9:00 a.m. in the Sikhio district of Nakhon Ratchasima province. The crane operator, who was injured but survived, stated that he heard the sound of uneven concrete joints sliding against one another shortly before the collapse and had ordered workers off the platform.
The crane struck the second carriage of the express train traveling from Bangkok to Ubon Ratchathani carrying 171 passengers and traveling at 120 km/h. The impact cut the carriage in half while derailing the other cars. Train conductors and people nearby the accident site initially rushed to help victims before rescue personnel arrived.
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The line under construction was being built through the joint collaboration of the Italian-Thai Development (ITD) company, one of the largest construction companies in Thailand, and the China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC). It is meant to connect Thailand and China via Laos as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The exact cause of the accident is still under investigation. According to Pichet Kunadhamraks, the director-general of the Department of Rail Transport, ITD violated a Ministry of Transport safety regulation that requires construction on high-speed rail lines to halt when a train is passing underneath.
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ITD expressed regret over Wednesday’s accident and pledged to compensate the families of the dead and those injured. However, ITD has a long and notorious record of disregarding safety and causing workplace deaths. For big business, such payouts are the cost of doing business to keep costs low at the expense of safety.
This was driven home on Thursday when another crane operated by the same company collapsed on Rama II Road in Samut Sakhon striking two vehicles, killing two people, and injuring five more. The crane was being used for the construction of an expressway bridge. Rama II Road is the main route connecting Bangkok with the southern regions of Thailand and is known for frequent accidents related to construction.
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Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul of the ruling Bhumjaithai Party (BJT) and other government officials have ordered official probes into the exact causes of Wednesday’s accident, including the creation of a 15-day fact-finding committee. Anutin called on Wednesday for somebody to “be punished and held accountable.”
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However, even if any new laws are passed, they will do little more than paper over conditions that are not the result of one company or one government, but the capitalist system as a whole that places profits before people’s lives.
It is the same system that has made Thailand one of the most economically unequal countries in the world. The World Bank has reported that as of 2021, the richest ten percent in Thailand controls 74.2 percent of the wealth in the country. Under such conditions, big business openly flouts safety and the minimal regulatory laws as well as the needs of the public as a whole.
This therefore is another factor behind the government’s claims that it will address safety, keenly aware that it is sitting on a social powder keg as the working class’s economic conditions decline. The World Bank predicts that the Thai economy will have grown by only two percent last year and will slow to 1.6 percent in 2026. In 2025, prices for household essentials such as food, transportation, and utilities rose by 15.3 percent over the previous year, driving concerns over rising prices among workers.
13. Squid Game 3: Ending not with a bang, but a bleak (and lucrative) whimper
Unfortunately, the [Netflix] series that gained international attention for its cutting portrayal of the capitalist system as a rigged game show employing violence and social manipulation to prey upon the poor has been, to a considerable extent, remolded into its opposite.
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A Variety review of Squid Game 3 summed up the series’ retrograde conclusions, although approvingly:
The world is cruel, unfair and full of horrors, many of which will grow increasingly grotesque in our lifetimes. … Yet, even amid this dark and twisted final scene, creator Hwang has offered a path forward. Individually, we don’t have the power to fix everything. Yet, if we do our part in changing and affecting one thing, just like Gi-hun, Jun-ho and No-eul, it will add up to so much more.
The combination of nihilism and unconvincing hints at bright spots in the darkness is thoroughly inadequate for making sense of today’s convulsive realities.
Residents of East Palestine, Ohio say they have long-term health problems stemming from the massive derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in February 2023. In a bid to reopen the tracks as soon as possible, the company decided to burn off highly toxic vinyl chloride from chemical tank cars, citing a bogus risk of explosion.
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Jami Wallace is a lifelong resident of East Palestine and an outspoken critic of the handling of the disaster by Norfolk Southern, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as both the Biden and Trump administrations.
Jami is married and a mother of a daughter who was 3 at the time of the derailment. Jami was working as a Human Resource Director. Now she is working as a research assistant.
Jami spoke with the World Socialist Web Site about the disaster and the effect it has had on herself, her family and the community.
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On February 3, 2023, 38 cars derailed on a Norfolk Southern freight train near East Palestine, Ohio, 11 cars of which carried hazardous chemicals. The derailment was caused by an overheated wheel bearing that failed after warnings and alarms were ignored by the company.
Three days later, company and government officials carried out a so‑called “controlled release and burn” in which five tanker cars carrying 1.1 million pounds of vinyl chloride were punctured and set on fire.
This produced a towering inferno over 300 feet high and a black plume visible for miles that sent contaminants across the surrounding countryside. Chemicals that didn’t burn flooded into the ground and nearby creeks.
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Jami later became a leader of a community group, the Unity Council for the EP Train Derailment, which fought for residents to reject a class action settlement which left the railroad off the hook. She says, based on her connections with other residents, similar issues are affecting hundreds of residents throughout the area.
“A woman contacted me [that] her husband died of lung cancer about six months ago. She has just been diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast and now they want to biopsy her other breast.
“A man came down with a rare form of breast cancer after the derailment, and he had to have a double mastectomy. Now the cancer is moving to other parts of his body. Many people have had surgery on their thyroids and had their thyroid removed.
“A friend of mine called and her husband both got diagnosed with neuropathy. Another friend and her husband are on seizure medication.
“In the beginning,” Jami said. “There were more symptoms. We saw a lot of people with upper respiratory infections, chemical bronchitis or rashes.
“Then we started seeing things like seizures, so you could tell it was getting a little worse. Seizures, neuropathy, things like that. And now we’re seeing a lot of heart attacks and cancers and things of that nature. I just watched it move from symptoms to long-term illness and now we’re already seeing terminal illnesses.”
Asked if she knew for sure that these illnesses are caused by vinyl chloride exposure, Jami said no. She explains that when the testing is done to establish safe levels of exposure it is only done on one chemical at a time, not the soup of chemicals they were exposed to.
“We can learn from our past disasters. When you look at every other chemical disaster in the United States—they all have respiratory issues; they all have thyroid issues; they all have neurological issues; they all have gastrointestinal issues.
“There’s a profile. A lot of the symptoms we’re seeing in East Palestine are the same symptoms that our Gulf War veterans saw when they came home after being exposed to the chemical burn pits.”
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“We’re one of the poorest communities in the state of Ohio. We’re part of Appalachia and a lot of people don’t have any medical insurance at all. I feel like the very, very least we deserve to have is medical insurance, not just for ourselves but for our children. We don’t know what their medical issues are going to be in the future. They’re the ones that are going to truly pay and if my daughter gets sick and can’t work, she needs to have some kind of insurance.
“It affects me mentally. I get phone calls every single day from residents that are sick, some of them are terminal. These aren’t just random people. These are people that I grew up with. People that I love. My family. Mentally watching everyone’s health decline.
“I knew it would come. I just didn’t know it would come this fast. And it is being ignored by the government.
“We continue day after day to show evidence of how our government betrayed us, how we were fed lies, but there has been zero action from our government to right the wrongs for the community. Instead, they ignore us and continue to leave us sitting in contamination while they study us.”
15. Governments advance universal digital identification, mass surveillance and censorship
On December 11, 2025, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee advanced the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) 2.0, legislation that would effectively require age verification for access to social media and online services. Additionally, Republican Senator Josh Hawley and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced the Guidelines for User Age‑verification and Responsible Dialogue (GUARD) Act on October 28, 2025, a bill that would require AI chatbot providers to verify the ages of users and impose restrictions on minors’ access to AI systems.
Australia’s social media ban for minors under 16, passed in late 2024 under the Online Safety Amendment Act, officially took effect on December 10, 2025. Platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit and Snapchat, face fines of up to $49.5 million for non-compliance. In practice, verifying that users are 16 or older requires platforms to demand identification or biometric data from all users, including adults. The timing of this measure, following mass opposition among youth and workers to the Gaza genocide, underscores its political character.
The European Union is negotiating the final terms of the so-called “Chat Control” law, which would force messaging platforms to verify users’ ages and expose private communications, undermining encryption and online anonymity under the guise of “protecting children.”
All such systems permanently tie individual’s real-world identities to their online activity, making proof of identity a constant requirement for taking part in social and political life.
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The drive toward digital authoritarianism and online censorship is part of a broader assault on democratic rights. The same governments pushing universal digital ID are conducting mass deportations, criminalizing protests, expanding police powers, gutting press freedoms and waging wars of aggression abroad. The attacks on online anonymity by major imperialist powers are of a piece with the attack on the right to asylum, the right to strike and the right to oppose government policy without state surveillance.
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The claim that these measures protect children is a fraud. The same governments imposing age verification are arming Israel’s slaughter of children in Gaza, cutting funding for schools and healthcare and forcing youth into military service for imperialist wars. The target is political opposition. Brazil’s Aletheia system, scanning social media for prosecutable speech, shows the trajectory: from “protecting children” to criminalizing dissent.
The working class cannot defend democratic rights through appeals to the courts or capitalist politicians. US federal judges have blocked some state laws on First Amendment grounds, but the Supreme Court has ruled that age verification is constitutional. The EU has overridden objections from various civil liberties organizations. More fundamentally, the defense of privacy requires a political struggle against the capitalist system.
The same ruling class constructing universal digital identification is waging war abroad—invading Venezuela, arming genocide in Gaza, escalating toward conflict with Russia and China—and building a police state at home through mass deportations, attacks on the press and the gutting of constitutional protections. These are two fronts of the same war against the working class. Only the independent political mobilization of workers, aimed at the expropriation of the technology monopolies and the socialist reorganization of society, can halt the descent into digital authoritarianism.
16. Australia: Antisemitism Education Taskforce to attack democratic rights and academic freedom
In the aftermath of the December 14 Bondi terrorist attack, which claimed 15 lives and injured dozens, the political establishment is cynically exploiting the atrocity to implement a raft of anti-democratic measures.
The offensive is being led by the federal Labor government. Last week, it announced a Royal Commission, which has nothing to do with investigating the circumstances of the attack, but has the character of a witch-hunting body directed against mass opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and Australia’s complicity in it.
The Royal Commission is the spearhead of an authoritarian campaign that is to extend into every area of social and political life. The educational system is a particular target.
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Educators, students and academic staff must recognize this initiative for what it is: an attempt to establish conditions in the schools and universities that are of a police-state character.
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While suppressing mass opposition to the genocide is the immediate aim of this program, its purpose is broader.
The Labor government, as part of its lockstep alignment with US imperialism and the Trump administration, is seeking to subordinate universities to a war agenda, centered on the preparations for conflict with China. Funding and courses at universities are increasingly tailored to that aim, along with pumping out graduates who can meet the immediate workforce needs of the major corporations.
The material forces driving the taskforce go beyond the aims of the Zionists against the Palestinian people. but rooted in the deeper contradictions of capitalism. Central is the Albanese governments alignment with US-led wars, its commitments under AUKUS, and preparations for conflict with China, all of which demand ideological conformity and the suppression of dissent.
This government’s program, of war abroad and a war against social conditions domestically, is incompatible with basic democratic rights, including academic freedom and freedom of speech. As in 1930s Germany and in Trump’s America, the universities and schools are to be subordinated directly to the state, authoritarianism and war.
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Rank-and-file committees of staff and students must be built across campuses and schools to coordinate resistance. These committees should demand: no gag clauses tied to public funding, oppose victimizations and censorship, full restoration and expansion of funding for humanities and other courses, employ thousands of additional teachers, protection of jobs, workloads and tenure, and the repeal of anti-protest and politicized “hate speech” laws.
Above all, the defense of democratic rights and academic freedom must be tied to a broader struggle against war, and austerity. The task is not to reform capitalist institutions, but to mobilize the independent social power of the working class against them.
17. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, & Middle East
Africa
Namibia:
Mill workers striking over pay locked out
Nigeria:
Europe
Belgium:
Public waste collectors in Ghent strike against attacks on working conditions
Germany:
Non-medical workers at Red Cross hospitals in Berlin strike for pay increases and reduced hours
Italy:
Steelworkers strike over workplace death caused by company negligence
Spain:
Tens of thousands of doctors strike for better pay, hours and working conditions
United Kingdom:
Strike by Further Education lecturers across England over pay
Strike by teachers across 20 schools in West Midlands, England against compulsory redundanciesUK Diligenta staff hold one-week stoppage over pay
Israel:
Student strike in occupied East Jerusalem as Israel restricts access of West Bank teachers
18. 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.
