Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Over 100,000 protest against ICE occupation in Minneapolis; ICE murders Minneapolis nurse day after mass demonstration; Stop ICE murders and repression! Build a rank-and-file movement for a general strike! Live updates
2. The January 23 mass protests in Minneapolis mark a turning point in the fight against dictatorship
The massive demonstrations in Minneapolis on January 23 mark a new stage in the development of the class struggle in the United States.
On Friday, more than 100,000 people in Minneapolis, Minnesota, braved sub-zero temperatures and a windchill of -30 degrees Fahrenheit (-34 degrees Celsius) to join the “Day of Truth and Freedom” protests against the murder of Renée Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent and the ongoing federal occupation of the city.The protest drew in broad layers of the working class—healthcare workers, educators, postal workers and many others—alongside many students and sections of the middle class. Immigrant and native-born protesters marched side by side.
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In addition to the main rally, smaller demonstrations were held throughout the city. Street corners in neighborhoods became centers of protest, involving dozens to hundreds of people, including families with children.
The massive turnout came in the face of relentless slanders, from Trump and the gang of fascists in the administration, of protesters as “insurrectionists” and “terrorists.” Protests were also held in over 100 cities across the country, including walkouts by hundreds of high school students in Georgia and other solidarity actions in major urban centers.
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The most important feature of the January 23 protests was not simply the turnout but the popularization of the concept of a general strike. The demand for mass coordinated action has emerged not from trade union officials or politicians but from below. Across the US, a mood of defiance is building, driven by the growing realization that a different power must be mobilized—the power of the working class.
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While the ICE rampage was the immediate catalyst, the protests have erupted amidst an intense and accelerating crisis of American society. The United States has reached a point where the scale of political breakdown and the ferocity of class tensions are generating profound shifts in consciousness. The protests, moreover, have centered on issues of state violence, which is leading the working class into a direct confrontation with the capitalist state itself—not only in Minneapolis but across the country.
Coming out of the January 23 protests, the task now is to build this movement into a conscious, coordinated industrial and political struggle.
The Trump regime is not backing down. Its response to opposition is escalation and violence. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Minneapolis on the eve of the demonstration to defend ICE and downplay the threat of military intervention, even as the administration threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act to justify the use of federal troops.
As many as 1,500 active-duty soldiers from the 11th Airborne Division are on standby. ICE raids continue daily, with footage emerging of agents threatening to label protesters “domestic terrorists” simply for recording arrests. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a memo asserting sweeping powers to override the Fourth Amendment and raid homes without judicial warrants.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis is the spearhead of a broader conspiracy to criminalize dissent and establish a military-presidential dictatorship. Trump, acting on behalf of the financial oligarchy, is dispensing with democratic forms of rule. In Davos, he declared: “It is sometimes good to have a dictator.” He meant it.
The protests of January 23 mark the beginning of a movement in the working class against Trump’s dictatorship. But this power will not develop through the institutions of the Democratic Party or the union bureaucracy. It must be developed from below, through new forms of struggle rooted in the workplaces, neighborhoods and schools where workers and young people can organize their collective strength.
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If the unions had called a strike, many workers said, everyone would have walked out. This, indeed, is precisely what the [trade union] apparatus is determined to prevent. Many workers who participated wore union logos, but there were no organized delegations because the union apparatus explicitly opposed strike action.
The Democratic Party, for its part, has spent the past year doing everything possible to contain, suppress and divert mass opposition to Trump. While posturing as critics of the administration, the Democrats agree with the fundamental premises of Trump’s domestic policy, especially on issues of immigration and “national security.”
In the week leading up to the January 23 protests, while masses of workers and youth were preparing for demonstrations, the Democratic Party was busy ensuring the continued operation of the Trump government. In a series of votes in the House of Representatives, the Democrats helped pass critical appropriations bills, including full funding for the DHS and ICE—the very agencies spearheading the assault on Minneapolis.
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The return of Trump to power, as the World Socialist Web Site explained, marked a violent realignment of American politics to bring it into conformity with the oligarchic structure of society. Now, the other side of that same historical process is beginning to emerge: The working class is entering into struggle. The events of January 23 must be the foundation for a sustained and coordinated counter-offensive, armed with a clear understanding of the nature of capitalism, the role of the state and the historical tasks now posed before the working class.
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The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has been established to provide the structure and leadership for such a global counteroffensive. It fights to connect opposition to fascism and dictatorship with the struggle of the working class against war, job cuts, inflation and social misery.
The Socialist Equality Party urges workers and young people to take this discussion into every workplace, school and neighborhood. Talk with your coworkers and classmates. Begin forming rank-and-file committees to plan and coordinate mass action, share information and prepare for the next stage of the struggle.
The development of the class struggle against dictatorship must raise the fundamental political questions: This is not only a fight against a criminal government but against the social forces that stand behind it. The entire state apparatus—ICE, the DHS, the police, the military—exists to defend the wealth and power of the capitalist oligarchy. To defeat dictatorship, war and repression, the working class must take up a conscious struggle against the capitalist system itself and fight for socialism.
In his 1845 work, The Condition of the Working Class in England, Friedrich Engels defined a phenomenon that describes with chilling precision the current state of maternal and infant health in the United States: social murder. Engels wrote: “When society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death ... its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of a single individual.”
The preventable death of a mother in the 21st century is not a “tragic accident” or an act of God; it is a calculated result of a social order that subordinates human life to the accumulation of private profit.
The recent death of Dr. Janell Green Smith, a 31-year-old certified nurse-midwife and doctor of nursing practice, casts a grim light on this crisis. Dr. Green Smith had dedicated her life to a solution to maternal mortality, assisting in over 300 births with a particular focus on helping African American women navigate a healthcare system that frequently ignores their pain. Despite her expertise, her credentials did not shield her from the systemic failures of American medicine.
After being admitted with severe preeclampsia, she underwent an emergency C-section and subsequent surgery for a ruptured incision. On January 1, 2026, her heart stopped beating. Her death underscores the barbaric reality that in the United States, black women—regardless of education, income, or professional expertise—face disproportionate risks that are 80 to 90 percent preventable.
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The United States stands as a staggering outlier in maternal mortality among industrialized nations. While global maternal mortality rates dropped by 40 percent between 2000 and 2023, the rate in the US has spent decades climbing. Each year, 18.6 mothers die for every 100,000 live births, a figure nearly double the average for other high-income countries. In Norway, the maternal mortality rate is a mere 1.9 per 100,000 births; in Canada it is 9.4 per 100,000. If the US performed at the level of California—the state with the nation’s lowest rate—nearly 2,700 deaths could have been avoided in a recent four-year window under study.
The conditions are even more stark for black mothers, with the mortality rate for black women in the standing at 3.5 to 4 times higher than that of white mothers. In 2023, this rate reached a staggering 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births. While African American women make up only 14 percent of the female population, they account for approximately 40 percent of all maternal deaths. This is not a matter of “lifestyle choices” or genetics; it is the result of systemic factors, including implicit bias and the dismissal of symptoms by a medical establishment that views the marginalized with indifference. It is also a reflection of higher mortality rates among poor women. In the US, 30 to 35 percent of black women are in the lowest economic quintile, according to US Census Bureau estimates, compared to 20 percent of the overall US population.
This crisis extends to those who have not yet had the chance to live. In the US, black infants are twice as likely to die as white infants. The infant mortality rate (IMR) in the US is calculated as the number of deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000 live births in a given year or cohort. The IMR for black children stands at 10.9 per 1,000 births, compared to the national average of 5.6. In Mississippi, the overall infant mortality rate recently hit 9.7, the highest in over a decade. This death of the innocent exposes a society that cannot even guarantee the most basic requirement of any civilization: the survival of its children past one year of age.
Beyond the headlines of death lies a “silent burden” of maternal morbidity—debilitating conditions such as preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and postpartum depression that erode the quality of life for decades. In 2025 alone, these conditions are projected to result in the loss of 350,000 healthy life years for black women. On average, a woman who gives birth in 2025 will spend 10 days every year for the rest of her life dealing with a disability connected to pregnancy.
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The policy response from the ruling class is not to expand care, but to dismantle what little remains of the safety net. Medicaid, the program for the poor jointly administered and financed by the federal government and the states, is the cornerstone of maternal care in the US, financing 41 percent of all births and 64 percent of births to black women, yet it is currently under a massive legislative assault. H.R. 1 (also known as Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill), signed into law on July 4, 2025, calls for systematic funding withdrawals from public safety net programs, including over $900 billion to $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade.
Under the guise of “fiscal responsibility,” the law institutes onerous 80-hour monthly work reporting requirements. While pregnant mothers are technically exempt, they are caught in a web of frequent and complex recertification hurdles that will inevitably lead to a loss of coverage for millions. Simultaneously, the law bans Medicaid funding for community hubs like Planned Parenthood for one year. This is a counter-intuitive strike against primary care; two out of three Planned Parenthood patients consider the clinic their regular doctor, and 60 percent of these centers are located in underserved or rural areas.
These cuts will exacerbate the growth of maternity care deserts, which already affect 36 percent of US counties. Rural hospitals are closing their obstetric units at an accelerating rate because low Medicaid reimbursement rates make the service “unprofitable.” Furthermore, critical policy levers that could save lives—such as doula reimbursement, the removal of prior authorization for maternal mental health treatments, and home-visit programs—are being systematically defunded. In Indiana, the state recently cut $225 million from local health departments, disrupting home-visit initiatives that were successfully preventing preeclampsia.
The ruling class has even attempted to obscure the scale of the carnage. While the full implementation of the “pregnancy checkbox” on death certificates in 2018 led to better counting, it also revealed a horrifying trend: age-standardized pregnancy-related death rates climbed by 28 percent between 2018 and 2022. This is not just a statistical adjustment; it is a real-world surge in death.
A significant portion of this loss occurs after the hospital discharge. A third of maternal deaths—so-called “late maternal deaths”—take place between 42 days and one year after the pregnancy ends. This highlights the six-week “cliff” in the American healthcare system for mothers, where insurance coverage and clinical attention vanish just as life-threatening complications like postpartum depression or cardiovascular issues often peak.
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The maternal health crisis is the inevitable result of a social system that treats medical care as a commodity and the lives of working class mothers as an expendable overhead cost. Ruthlessly, the assault on life begins in the womb. For far too many women, what should be a joyous time becomes a nightmare, and their deaths leave their children motherless.
The struggle for the right to a safe pregnancy and a healthy child is, at its core, a struggle against the capitalist system. Only by reorganizing society on a socialist basis—where healthcare is a fundamental human right and the vast resources of society are directed toward the preservation of life—can this “social murder” of mothers and their babies be brought to an end.
In a brutal act of corporate restructuring, Tyson Foods laid off nearly 5,000 workers on January 20, announcing the closure of its Lexington, Nebraska, beef plant and a reduction to a single shift at its Amarillo, Texas, facility.
According to state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices, all 3,212 employees at the Lexington plant and 1,761 workers at Amarillo are losing their jobs. Management has described the moves as “right-sizing” after the company’s beef segment posted a large loss in fiscal year 2025. Framed as a business necessity, the decision will in fact be a social catastrophe for workers and entire communities.
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US beef processors are shedding jobs primarily because there are far fewer cattle available to slaughter. Prolonged drought, sharply rising feed and input costs, pandemic-related supply chain shocks, and ongoing threats from pests and animal disease have driven cattle inventories to decades-low levels. As a result, procurement costs have surged, margins have been squeezed, and facilities built for much higher volumes are operating far below their intended scale. Rather than absorb these costs, companies have responded by closing plants, cutting shifts, and consolidating operations to better match output with reduced livestock supply.
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This relentless pursuit of profit has also contributed to higher rates of workplace injury and death. Conditions worsened sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, when meatpacking was declared an essential industry, forcing workers to remain on the job even as illness and fatalities mounted.
Tens of thousands of workers were infected and hundreds died, further reducing the available workforce and delaying recovery. According to the Food Environment Reporting Network by November 2020, 235 meatpacking workers had died from COVID and 49,000 tested positive.
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Meat prices swung wildly at the onset of the pandemic, as slaughterhouses slowed and demand shifted abruptly from restaurants to grocery stores. Comparisons between March–April 2020 and February 2020 show dramatic price changes across product lines. Retail beef cuts rose by about 39 percent, while primal beef values fell roughly 42 percent, reflecting the collapse of food-service demand. Fresh beef prices climbed about 26 percent by May–June 2020, pork nearly 18 percent, and chicken about 10 percent. In some cases, ground beef prices briefly spiked by close to 100 percent.
In the years since, prices have remained well above pre-pandemic levels. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis indicate that retail prices for 100 percent ground beef rose from roughly $3.88 per pound in December 2019 to about $6.32–$6.69 per pound in 2025—an increase of roughly 45 percent.
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The closure of processing facilities and the erosion of already inadequate federal oversight—combined with the approval of so-called “forever chemicals” under the Trump administration—have left the food system more fragile, placing both workers and consumers at greater risk.
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In response to mass layoffs and the broader assault on public health, the United Food and Commercial Workers union has taken no action. It has neither called strikes nor organized coordinated mobilizations against the destruction of livelihoods. This inaction reflects the deep integration of union bureaucracies into corporate management and the state, where concessions are routinely accepted at workers’ expense.
The Tyson layoffs are part of a broader, global assault on jobs, democratic rights, and living standards. In the United States, this offensive finds one of its sharpest expressions in the policies of the Trump administration, which has encountered no serious opposition from the Democratic Party.
5. New Ukrainian Defense Minister reveals scale of desertions, draft dodgers
Mykhailo Fedorov, the newly-appointed Defense Minister of Ukraine, publicly revealed the widespread scale of troop desertions and draft dodgers in comments made to parliament last week during his own confirmation hearings.
According to Fedorov, around 2 million Ukrainians are evading the draft while some 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers have deserted their positions without permission.
Information on desertions, along with the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed as a result of the now four-year-long NATO proxy war, has been closely guarded by the right-wing government of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Government officials rarely comment on such figures. When they have done so in the past, they were obviously lying. For instance, Zelensky absurdly claimed in December 2024 that just 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed compared to 198,000 Russian soldiers killed.
Despite Fedorov’s seemingly candid admission, these numbers too are likely an understatement of the huge number of Ukrainians who often risk imprisonment or worse to avoid being killed in the imperialist proxy war against Russia.
As the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office reported to Ukrainska Pravda last October, from January 2022 to September 2025 law enforcement officials opened 290,000 criminal cases against Ukrainian soldiers for unauthorized abandonment of a unit or outright desertion. Such numbers clearly exceed Fedorov’s claim of 200,000 desertions and do not take into account many more who deserted but have yet to be prosecuted.
Nevertheless, Fedorov’s admission underscores the fact that despite a massive pro-war propaganda operation being carried out both within Ukraine and the West, working-class Ukrainians privately hold very different views.
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In comparison, just 50,000 US soldiers deserted during World War II, largely in the European theater of the war, while the United Kingdom reported 100,000 during its entire six-year history in the deadliest war of the 20th century.
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Fedorov also reported that the defense ministry is facing a shortfall of $6.9 billion in funding, despite receiving over $100 billion in military aid from its Western backers since the start of the war in February 2022.
Zelensky’s previous defense ministers have been directly or indirectly forced to resign following a series of corruption and kickback scandals involving military procurement, making it clear that for the ruling class in Ukraine, the war has served as a means to get rich quick.
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Earlier this month, law enforcement officials arrested two Lviv residents for running a trafficking operation in which they assisted Ukrainian men fleeing the war for the cost of $13,000 to illegally cross the border into Hungary.
The average monthly salary in Ukraine is just $600, making a sum of $13,000 equivalent to nearly two years of wages.
Under current Ukrainian law, all men between the ages of 18 and 60 must register with the military, while only those aged 25 to 60 are subject to forced mobilization.
Ukraine’s martial law also forbids all men aged 23 to 60 who are suitable for military service from exiting the war-torn country. Prior to August of last year, men 18-22 were generally prohibited from leaving the country.
Despite these rules, in December 2023 BBC Ukraine estimated that 768,000 Ukrainian men had fled the country to the EU.
Earlier in August of last year, the country underwent another mass exodus after it relaxed rules on men 18 to 22 from leaving the country after being previously banned.
Just two months later in October, the Telegraph reported that 100,000 men had rapidly left the country in the wake of the changes using data from the Polish border guard.
6. Merz in Davos: A call for European great-power politics under German leadership
The speech by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos was an aggressive tirade in favor of European great-power politics under German leadership. Barely concealed, Merz presented a program of militarism, rearmament and economic nationalism that stands squarely in the tradition of German world-power fantasies on the eve of the First and Second World Wars.
Merz framed his entire speech around the leitmotif of a new era of “great power rivalry.” The world, according to the chancellor, is shaped by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—an invasion that was in reality provoked by NATO’s anti-Russian encirclement—by the rise of China, and by the United States, whose “global pole position is being challenged and Washington reacts by radically reshaping its foreign and security policy.”
This formulation is a deliberate whitewashing of the increasingly violent rampage of US imperialism, which is attempting to offset its historic economic decline through ever more brutal force. At the beginning of this year alone, Washington attacked Venezuela and abducted its elected president, Nicolás Maduro. This was followed by open threats of a military strike against Iran and the announcement of plans to bring Greenland under US control.
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With regard to Greenland, Merz emphasized that Germany and Europe are prepared to assert their interests aggressively in the future—not only against Russia, but also against the United States. While praising Donald Trump’s temporary retreat from a direct annexation, he added pointedly: “Any threat to acquire European territory by force would be unacceptable.” He issued a similar warning over possible US tariffs: “If they are put in place, Europe’s answer would be united, calm, measured, and firm.”
This language reflects a certain tactical restraint. As long as Europe needs time for massive rearmament and remains dependent on US support in NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, Merz is seeking to avoid an open confrontation with Washington. But he leaves no doubt about the strategic objective: the transformation of Europe into an independent military great power under German leadership.
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Merz boasted that the government had decided right at the start of his term in office “to increase Germany’s defense spending up to five percent of GDP.” Such an increase represents a massive transfer of social resources into the military, the arms industry and the security apparatus—at the expense of education, health care and social services. The scale of rearmament and war preparation is comparable only to the unleashing of German militarism on the eve of the two world wars. “Boosting our military capabilities means to assert our sovereignty,” Merz declared bluntly.
How far these plans actually extend is underscored by the current cover story of Der Spiegel titled “Donald, enough: What Europe must do to counter Trump’s hunger for power.” It openly discusses modern combat aircraft, European credit-card and AI corporations, and even a “credible common nuclear deterrent.”
The magazine also openly acknowledges that the breakdown of the transatlantic alliance is intensifying tensions among the European imperialist powers themselves. Der Spiegel reports on resistance in France to German participation in French nuclear weapons and concludes that there is “only one real alternative: A coalition of the willing under German leadership builds its own nuclear force and thereby protects the continent.”
While the authors note that Germany is bound by international treaties such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Two-Plus-Four Agreement to remain non-nuclear, and that German nuclear armament would trigger a nuclear arms spiral, they provocatively add that “inaction” would make Europe “vulnerable to blackmail.” In other words: once A is said, B must follow—ultimately, there is no alternative to the German bomb.
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Merz’s speech in Davos confirms what the World Socialist Web Site has long analyzed—and what the political leaders of the ruling oligarchy are now more or less openly stating themselves: the capitalist world system has entered a new phase of explosive crisis. The return of open great-power rivalry is inseparably bound up with militarism, authoritarianism and social devastation.
There is only one way to stop this madness: the international unification of the working class—in Europe, in the United States and worldwide—on the basis of a revolutionary socialist perspective. It is for this perspective that the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) and the International Committee of the Fourth International are fighting.
7. Momodou Taal detained and interrogated by UK police at Heathrow Airport
On Friday, UK police used “anti-terror” powers at Heathrow Airport to detain, interrogate and profile pro‑Palestinian activist and Cornell University graduate student Momodou Taal in a blatant act of political intimidation directed against his outspoken opposition to the Gaza genocide.
According to Taal’s account published on X, three officers were waiting for him as he stepped off his flight at Heathrow and immediately informed him he was being detained under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. He was then held and interrogated for six hours, the maximum permitted period, with officers insisting the operation was about “keeping the UK safe,” a claim Taal correctly denounced as absurd.
During the examination, officers subjected him to a sweeping fishing expedition into his personal and political life, questioning him about his childhood, religious background, mosque attendance, friendships and political views. His phone and laptop were seized, his DNA taken and retained, and he was explicitly told that under Schedule 7 he had no right to remain silent, with refusal to answer questions criminalized.
Taal stressed that this was already his fourth return to Britain since leaving the United States, underscoring that nothing in his conduct justified the sudden deployment of terror powers at the border.
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The Terrorism Act 2000 is the UK’s core framework for state “counter‑terrorism” powers, enacted by a Labour government as part of the escalation of repressive legislation in the run‑up to and aftermath of the so‑called “war on terror.” Section 1 defines “terrorism” in sweeping terms as the use or threat of action involving serious violence, serious damage to property, danger to life, serious risk to public health or safety, or serious interference with electronic systems, where such action is intended to influence government or intimidate the public “for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.”
The deliberately vague definition has provided the legal foundation for a battery of powers aimed at criminalizing political activity and protest under the charge of “extremism.” Schedule 7, under which Taal was held, grants police, immigration and customs officers the authority to stop, question, detain and search anyone passing through UK ports and borders to determine whether they “appear” to be someone that is or has been “concerned” in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism.
Officers do not need any prior suspicion at all to exercise these powers, making Schedule 7 a regime of lawless border interrogation. Schedule 7 permits detention for up to six hours beginning from the start of questioning, the searching of the person and all property including electronic devices, compulsory provision of device passwords and unlocking, seizure and copying of data, and taking and retention of fingerprints and DNA, which can be uploaded to the same databases used for convicted terrorists.
Individuals must answer all questions and provide documents on demand; refusal or obstruction constitutes a criminal offense, even though anything said under questioning generally cannot be used as evidence in later criminal proceedings.
Civil liberties organizations have warned for years that Schedule 7 violates basic due process and privacy rights and has been used as a tool of racial and religious profiling, disproportionately targeting Muslims and people of Asian and other minority backgrounds. It has been noted that around 70 percent of those stopped at UK ports under anti‑terrorism legislation, including Schedule 7, since 2021, have been from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.
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These powers are being maintained as a permanent infrastructure for the state to monitor, intimidate and, where it deems necessary, criminalize political opposition to imperialist war crimes. The Heathrow detention of Taal is a use of this machinery against someone who has denounced the US-backed Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
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Momodou Taal is a 31‑year‑old Gambian‑British citizen who emerged as a prominent representative of the student and youth activists who were radicalized by the Gaza genocide and the eruption of imperialist violence around the world. Holding dual nationality in the United Kingdom and Gambia, he pursued graduate studies at Cornell University in the United States, where he also worked as an instructor.
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Cornell twice suspended Taal—in April and September 2024—for his participation in campus protests, while carefully calibrating the formal sanctions so as not to trigger immediate visa revocation. University officials allowed him to continue remotely, with full access to be restored only in spring 2025, creating a protracted limbo that left him vulnerable to attack by the state while ostensibly keeping him “enrolled.”
As the anti‑genocide movement spread, the Trump administration launched a vendetta against Taal’s legal status and attempted to deport him. He filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive orders targeting pro‑Palestinian protesters, a case that posed a direct constitutional challenge to the administration’s attempt to criminalize political opposition under the guise of immigration enforcement.
In response, federal authorities intensified surveillance and intimidation: law enforcement agents from an unidentified agency were repeatedly seen parked outside his Ithaca residence; one individual, when confronted by staff from his former residence at Telluride House, displayed a law‑enforcement badge before leaving the private property.
Taal’s attorneys warned a federal judge that the government was preparing to detain him preemptively and remove him to a distant jurisdiction, citing the precedent of other activists such as Mahmoud Khalil who had been seized in New York and transported to remote immigration prisons hundreds of miles away from their legal counsel.
Their fears were confirmed when the Justice Department informed them that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was “inviting” Taal to appear at an HSI office in Syracuse to be personally served with a Notice to Appear and to surrender to ICE custody.
Faced with the imminent threat of incarceration and deportation before his legal challenge could be heard, Taal made the difficult decision to leave the United States and return to Britain rather than walk into ICE custody. His departure was a tactical withdrawal forced on him by the state’s attempt to strip him of even the possibility of a legal defense.
It is precisely this act—refusing to submit quietly to an obviously political deportation—that US and UK authorities are now seeking to punish through continued harassment at the border.
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By treating a returning British citizen—whose supposed “offense” consists of opposing mass murder and challenging anti‑democratic executive orders—as a terror suspect at the border, the UK government is signaling its willingness to function as an extension of the Trump administration’s anti-democratic rampage. Taal’s Heathrow detention is intended as a warning: anyone who refuses to be brow‑beaten into silence on the question of free speech and the defense of the Palestinians will be subjected to arbitrary detention, profiling and the permanent association with “terrorism.”
8. The EPA sets the value of human life and health at zero: A further comment
As the World Socialist Web Site reported earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the Trump administration, has made a fundamental change to how it evaluates air pollution regulations. According to internal agency emails and documents, the EPA plans to stop calculating the monetary value of health benefits—such as avoiding premature deaths, heart attacks and asthma attacks—when setting limits for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone. At the same time, the agency will continue to fully account for the compliance costs faced by industry. The result is a regulatory framework in which pollution controls are systematically framed as economically unjustified, regardless of their impact on public health.
This change is not a technical adjustment but part of a broader rollback of environmental regulation. The EPA has also moved to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which established that greenhouse gas emissions threaten public health and welfare and provided the legal basis for regulating climate pollution under the Clean Air Act. In addition, the administration has proposed eliminating the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) for most industrial sectors, removing a key source of facility-level emissions data relied upon by regulators, researchers, and the public.
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The health effects of these policy changes are well-documented. The EPA’s own regulatory analyses have previously shown that stronger PM2.5 standards prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths each year. Rolling back these protections is therefore expected to result in thousands of additional deaths annually in the United States, with the greatest burden falling on Black and low-income communities located near highways, refineries, ports, and power plants. Over time, weaker air-quality standards, reduced emissions monitoring, and limits on climate regulation will contribute to higher greenhouse gas emissions and increased exposure to harmful pollutants across both entire urban and industrial regions.
Taken together, these measures mark a shift away from managing the health impacts of industrial pollution. The likely outcome is a steady increase in preventable illness and death in the United States, alongside a growing contribution to global health risks related to climate change. By mid-century, the cumulative effects of these policies are expected to add substantially to the global burden of disease, particularly among working-class populations and poorer countries that are least equipped to absorb the consequences.
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The modern environmental regulatory system in the United States took shape in the 1970s under intense public pressure. Landmark laws such as the Clean Air Act directed the federal government to set pollution standards that would protect public health with an “ample margin of safety.” The law’s language was clear: protecting human health came first. From the beginning, however, these health-based mandates came into conflict with the economic interests of major industries whose profits depended on continued pollution.
To manage this conflict, federal regulators—particularly the Environmental Protection Agency—increasingly relied on cost-benefit analysis. This approach compares the financial costs imposed on industry by pollution controls with the economic value assigned to the health benefits of regulation, such as avoided illness and avoided premature death. Rather than eliminating pollution, cost-benefit analysis provided a way to justify how much harm would be allowed to continue. Pollution was no longer treated as a failure to protect public health, but as a trade-off that could be economically managed.
A central tool in this framework is the “Value of a Statistical Life,” or VSL. The VSL is not the value of any individual life. It is a number derived from labor market data that estimates how much workers are paid, on average, to accept small increases in the risk of injury or death. Federal agencies use this figure to place a dollar value on lives saved by regulation. In practice, the VSL allows regulators to ask whether preventing deaths is “worth it” when weighed against the cost to industry. Mortality thus becomes a line item in economic calculations rather than an outcome to be prevented.
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While the EPA’s new regulatory approach [under the Trump administration] treats the health effects of pollution as uncertain or assigns them a value of zero, it does not change the physical harm that pollution causes. What changes is how that harm is handled inside the regulatory system. By removing the monetary value of health benefits from cost-benefit analysis, the administration has made premature death and disease administratively invisible in rulemaking. The damage has not disappeared, but it is absent from the calculations that determine whether pollution controls are adopted or enforced.
Fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, is among the most dangerous forms of air pollution regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These particles are smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter and are produced by coal-fired power plants, diesel engines, refineries, ports, freight corridors, and other industrial sources now targeted for deregulation. Because of their size, PM2.5 particles penetrate deep into the lungs, pass through the air–blood barrier, and enter the bloodstream. Once inside the body, they trigger inflammation and oxidative stress, damage blood vessels, and increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer, and chronic respiratory disease.
Large-scale epidemiological research has repeatedly shown that there is no safe level of exposure to PM2.5. Studies reviewed by the World Health Organization and incorporated into the Global Burden of Disease framework demonstrate that mortality risk rises even at concentrations previously considered acceptable under U.S. standards. Air pollution is consistently identified as one of the leading risk factors for death worldwide, contributing to millions of premature deaths each year through cardiovascular and respiratory disease.
Exposure to this pollution is structured by class. Industrial facilities, highways, ports, and logistics hubs are disproportionately located in or near working-class neighborhoods, where lower land values, housing insecurity, and long-standing patterns of disinvestment have made these areas sites for industrial siting. Research cited by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health shows that older adults living in areas with higher soot concentrations face sharply elevated mortality risk, underscoring how proximity to pollution sources translates directly into reduced life expectancy.
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As a result, the economic savings produced by deregulation are paid for in reduced life expectancy and increased illness among those least able to avoid exposure....*****
Treating these outcomes as externalities valued at zero is not a neutral policy choice. It reflects a decision to prioritize lower production costs over the biological well-being of the working class. The COVID-19 pandemic established this hierarchy clearly, demonstrating that the financial system would embrace mass illness and death so long as profits and market stability were preserved. The health damage does not disappear when it is excluded from regulatory analysis. It accumulates in bodies, workplaces, communities, and healthcare systems, producing long-term consequences that extend far beyond the short-term savings claimed by deregulation.
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The changes now underway at the EPA are aimed not at refining environmental policy, but at redefining the agency’s role altogether. Internal planning documents and public rulemaking proposals show an agency preparing to step back from climate regulation by narrowing its legal authority and dismantling the tools required to exercise oversight. The objective is not to resolve scientific uncertainty, but to remove climate regulation from the EPA’s mandate entirely.
The legal centerpiece of this effort is the proposed withdrawal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which established that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. That finding provides the statutory basis for regulating carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act. By seeking to rescind it, the EPA is asserting that climate change does not fall within the category of harm Congress intended the agency to regulate.
This position draws support from a series of Supreme Court decisions that have narrowed the scope of federal regulatory authority....
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Taken together, these actions redefine the function of the EPA itself. By relinquishing its authority to regulate climate pollution and dismantling the capacity to do so, the agency is positioning itself to assert that it cannot be held responsible for climate regulation. Responsibility is shifted to Congress, where action has long been stalled. The result is not simply deregulation, but the deliberate hollowing out of the EPA as a governing institution capable of responding to climate-related environmental and health harm.
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The past five decades of environmental regulation in the United States were not the product of benevolent governance or abstract concern for social welfare. It emerged from sustained worker struggles, mass opposition to industrial pollution, and popular pressure that forced limits on corporate activity. These regulations represented concessions—hard-won and contested—that constrained profit-making to blunt its most destructive effects on health and social life.
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What is being dismantled is not merely a regulatory framework, but the legacy of struggles that once imposed limits on capital in the name of human survival. The EPA’s retreat signals a turn toward authoritarian governance in which those limits are no longer recognized, and in which the defense of public health and environmental stability is treated as incompatible with the priorities of the financial system. Reversing this course will require not technical adjustments but renewed social and political resistance capable of reasserting those limits under conditions that are now far more dangerous than when they were first won.
As the Trump administration proceeds with the military-police occupation of Minnesota in the face of mass resistance, and wages war all over the world, the majority of Democrats have joined with Republicans to pass a record military spending bill.
On Thursday, the House passed the combined defense and consolidated spending bills (H.R. 7148) by a vote of 341-88, with 149 Democrats voting yes and only 64 voting no. A separate bill funding the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (H.R. 7147) passed 220-207, with seven Democrats crossing the aisle to vote yes.
Republicans made no secret of what Democrats were voting for. After the vote Thursday, Representative Tom Cole, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, declared the legislation would “champion American military power, ensuring that our brave warfighters have the tools, weapon systems and capabilities to meet any foe anywhere in the world at any time.” He summarized the bill’s purpose in three words: “America First, Fully Funded.”
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The House Appropriations Committee issued a statement hailing the “Republican-led funding that puts America First. These bills advance President Trump’s agenda.”
Despite Republicans openly proclaiming that the legislation would fund Trump’s fascistic agenda, nearly two-thirds of House Democrats voted in favor of the defense and consolidated spending bill.
An “opposition” party that votes this way is not in opposition, but an active collaborator. The Democratic Party is an instrument of the same ruling class that stands behind Trump.
The total defense appropriations amount to $839 billion, some $8.4 billion above what even Trump requested. The bill funds $27.2 billion for 17 warships, including a Columbia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine and two Virginia-class fast attack submarines. It allocates $7.6 billion for 47 F-35 stealth fighters, $3 billion for the Air Force’s sixth-generation F-47 fighter, $1.9 billion for the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, and $4.5 billion for hypersonic weapons systems. The legislation fully funds the ongoing “modernization” of the nuclear triad—the B-21, the Columbia-class submarine, and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile.
The Department of Homeland Security receives $64.4 billion, with approximately $10 billion earmarked for ICE. While the vote totals differed between the two bills, the fundamental intention is the same: the Democratic Party is systematically enabling the Trump administration’s assault on democratic rights and its preparations for global war.
The seven Democrats who voted for the DHS funding bill—Don Davis, Henry Cuellar, Laura Gillen, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Vicente Gonzalez, Jared Golden and Tom Suozzi—voted to fund the military occupation of Minnesota currently terrorizing immigrant communities. More than 2,000 ICE officers have been deployed across the state. Earlier this month, Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman and US citizen, was shot dead by a federal immigration agent. A 5-year-old boy was detained by ICE officers. On Wednesday, whistleblowers leaked an internal ICE memo authorizing agents to enter homes without judicial warrants.
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Trump has demanded that the military budget for 2027 reach $1.5 trillion. In a post on Truth Social, he wrote, “For the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board enthusiastically endorsed Trump’s demand in an editorial Friday titled “A Serious Defense Budget, at Last.” The subtitle declared: “A $1.5 trillion military will cost much less than a war with China.” The editorial insisted that “the U.S. military is too small to prevail decisively in a war with a peer” and that “the real choice today is between guns and runaway entitlements.” It concluded, “The best way to go down as a peacemaker is by building a military no one wants to fight.”
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The Democratic Party’s vote to fund Trump’s military buildup continues a pattern of systematic collaboration. Throughout 2025, Democrats voted to fund the military, refused to oppose regime change operations, and accepted the consolidation of authoritarian executive power. They represent no opposition because they serve the same class interests as their Republican counterparts.
The working class cannot rely on the Democratic Party, on Congress, or on any faction of the political establishment to oppose the drive to war and authoritarianism. Opposition must come from below—from the independent mobilization of workers in the United States and internationally against the capitalist system that produces war, dictatorship and social inequality. The building of a mass socialist movement is the only way to halt the catastrophe being prepared by the American ruling class and its political servants in both parties.
10. Chile’s Julia Chuñil case: violent arrest of Mapuche leader’s adult children fuels trial by media
Chile’s corporate media reached a new low this past week saturating the airwaves with sensationalist and lurid headlines following the detention of the three adult children of Julia Chuñil, the 72-year-old Mapuche Indigenous leader who went missing on November 8, 2024, more than 13 months ago.
Beginning with the violent arrest of Pablo San Martin Chuñil, Jeannette Troncoso Chuñil, Bermar Bastías Bastidas and Javier Troncoso Chuñil the entire media has devoted more than a week to pouring through the lives of the family to blacken their name, reporting as fact every accusation and allegation leveled against them by public prosecutors. Not only the right-aligned television and press, but also the so-called liberal media got into the act after for months burying the family’s accusations and evidence incriminating a businessman in agroforestry with longstanding political and economic ties to the region.
At 5:00 am last Wednesday hundreds of police descended on the Chuñil family home in Máfil, in the southern region of Los Ríos, smashing through doors and brutally detaining Javier, Jeannette and Bermar and their 11- and 4- year-old children. Pablo was arrested at his home in Temuco, in La Araucanía region. The massive contingent, including Carabineros Special Forces (GOPE) and other specialized units, was sent by the regional prosecutor of Los Ríos, Tatiana Esquivel, who Chuñil family lawyers accuse of sustaining a prejudicial attitude against the family from the beginning of the investigation.
In July 2025, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) intervened in the case issuing a precautionary measure against the Chilean state, calling on it to increase its efforts to search for Chuñil and to keep her family informed at all stages of the investigation, measures which were in the main ignored.
At a press conference on the day of the arrests last Wednesday, one of the family’s lawyers, Karina Riquelme, denounced the complicity of the media in the state set-up. “This media coverage of the case, this incrimination of the family, is very serious, and that is why we organized a hearing for tomorrow with the United Nations committee, under the Escazú Protocol, because of the persecution that the family is experiencing. And it turns out that the day before, the family is arrested.” She added that the charges lacked “serious evidence to incriminate.”
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Los Rios Prosecutor Tatiana Esquivel charged Pablo, Jeannette and Javier with aggravated murder and parricide, while Bermar, Julia Chuñil’s ex-son-in-law, was charged with aggravated murder. Esquivel also charged the four with robbery with violence and intimidation of a 90-year-old man. She also ordered excavations around the family home after geo-radar and other search methods found traces of human blood.
According to the Public Prosecutors Office (PPO) Julia Chuñil was strangled by Javier in the presence of Jeannette, Bermar and Pablo. Supposedly, on November 8, 2024 at 11:00pm, Javier arrived “drunk and angry” at the property he shared with his mother, Julia, as well as Jeannette, Bermar and Pablo, and a 90-year-old man who lives in a shack apart from them but is cared for by the family.
At some point, according to the allegation, Javier lunged at the 90-year-old, punched him in the face and placed a knife to his throat, demanding that he hand over his pension money, some 212,000 pesos (US$230). The PPO alleges that at that moment the 72-year-old Julia Chuñil intervened to defend the 90-year-old and was killed by strangulation in the ensuing struggle with Javier.
The media, with its well-heeled talking heads and opinion makers, went into overdrive. “Prosecutor’s Office confirms Julia Chuñil was murdered: Three sons and her former son-in-law arrested for parricide,” reported El Mercurio.
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Lawyer Karina Riquelme, who is representing all three siblings, explained the significance of the appeals court ruling. “The PPO’s claims have not been proven. The court says that there was no evidence” incriminating Jeannette and Pablo. “The judge said that they did not commit this crime, nor did they commit the alleged robbery with intimidation… that allegedly took place on the same day that Julia was murdered.” She added she would next appeal the ruling of preventive detention against Javier.
The lawyer also shed devastating light on how the prosecutor relied upon questionable evidence and compromised and invalid witnesses, including Bermar, Julia Chuñil’s ex-son-in-law who allegedly has some cognitive impairment and who gave a statement to the police without his defense attorney present.
In the case of Bermar, Riquelme raised the obvious point that “a statement without a defense attorney is not valid.” More significantly she intimated in a January 16 press conference that Bermar gave his testimony after the first court hearing: “A person who was in court in front of everyone and said absolutely nothing, but just when neither the judge nor his defense attorney is present, he makes a statement. Don’t you find that striking?”
What Riquelme would only intimate, the World Socialist Web Site can say outright; Carabineros of Chile have acquired a worldwide reputation for their murderous and lawless methods. Interrogations, especially involving marginalized and vulnerable witnesses, can easily slip into torture to extract false testimony or confessions.
Just last week, in a case involving a Carabineros Special Forces operative who was acquitted after incontrovertible evidence demonstrated that he had blinded Gustavo Gatica, a student involved in the 2019 demonstrations, Amnesty International Chile director Rodrigo Bustos noted that only 1.9 percent of the more than 11,500 complaints of human rights violations filed with the Public Prosecutor’s Office between October 2019 and March 2020 resulted in convictions. With such levels of impunity, the repressive state apparatus has carte blanche.
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The family’s lawyers have documented an extraordinary list of irregularities by the Chilean police and PPO from the moment they began the investigation. The family’s version of events has all but been discounted by the state as very early on they became the main suspects.
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Last September 30 the Chuñils’ lawyers leaked an intercepted phone conversation in which agroforestry businessman Morstadt is heard saying that Julia Chuñil “had been burned.” They presented this extraordinary piece of evidence before Amnesty International and other human rights groups. The lawyers leaked the call under conditions where the defense lawyers couldn’t access the PPO case file, despite the IACHR warnings against the Chilean state last July. Nothing came of this evidence as it was quickly discounted as irrelevant.
The actions of the Chilean state stink of a cover-up and a frame-up. Incompetence, indifference, racist bias all come into play. It would be wrong, however, to leave it at that. Far more is at work.
In an earlier article, the World Socialist Web Site accused pseudo-leftist President Gabriel Boric and his accomplices in the Broad Front, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and Party for Democracy that constitute his government, of being politically responsible for the disappearance of Julia Chuñil and the treatment meted out against her family.
This accusation stands. The case bears all the hallmarks of a set-up whose aim is to prejudice and criminalize the Mapuche family before public opinion amid conditions where the Chilean state—acting on behalf of lucrative mining, forestry, landed and real estate interests—continues to use all the instruments of national security and “internal enemy” doctrines against the historically dispossessed, persecuted and impoverished indigenous population struggling to reclaim ancestral lands in the southern regions of Chile.
In fact Boric, while posturing as a “progressive” and “radical,” has gone further than any previous government since the restoration of civilian rule 35 years ago, declaring a permanent state of emergency in Mapuche territory, using the authoritarian State Security Law against dozens of Mapuche leaders, invoking laws to restrict land claims and revamping Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s Anti-Terrorist Law. Such measures against a marginalized layer are always a dress rehearsal for imposing police state rule against the whole working class.
11. Turmoil in Japanese bond market
Is Japan heading toward a “Liz Truss moment?” That is a question increasingly being raised in financial circles amid a sharp rise in the yield (interest rate) on government bonds this week.
The reference is to the crisis that was sparked in September-October 2022 when the UK bond market went into turmoil after the Truss Tory government sought to fund major tax cuts for the corporations and the wealthy by increasing debt.
The crisis required intervention by the Bank of England and resulted in the rapid end of the Truss government.
The situation in Japan is not as serious, at least not yet. But there are concerns that the stimulus package of the government of the recently installed prime minister Sanae Takaichi has the potential to create a fiscal and financial crisis.
After taking office in October, Takaichi announced a $135 billion stimulus package in November. This week she doubled down and announced the calling of an election on February 8 in which she would seek a mandate for further measures, including a cut in the consumption tax.
Announcing the election, Takaichi said she was seeking a mandate for what she described as a “major policy change.”
Japan had to break free of old fiscal constraints and end excessive fiscal austerity and implement large scale investment and tax cuts to stimulate growth, she said.
But with no plan as to how the tax cuts were to be funded, the $7.6 trillion bond market went into turmoil. The clear implication was that it would be funded through increased debt, which already stands at over 200 percent in relation to GDP.
Last Tuesday, the day after the election announcement, the yield on 10-year bonds hit 2.35 percent, their highest level since February 1999. The yield on the 40-year bonds went to 4.2 percent, the first time it has gone over 4 percent since it was introduced in 2007.
The Japanese Government Bond (JGB) markets experienced significant volatility with some traders describing it as the “most chaotic trading day in years.” Matters were not improved when there was a very weak auction for 20-year bonds, leading to a cycle of “selling, heightened anxiety, and more selling.”
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Problems are emerging for Japan’s financial institutions. The Bank of Japan is caught between pressure to keep interest rates low while at the same time needing to keep them high enough to control inflation which has started to rise after years of stagnation and even deflation.
The country’s life insurers, which are heavy investors in government bonds, face paper losses on their holdings as the price of bonds falls and their yield rise. (The two have an inverse relationship.)
Bloomberg [News] reported that four of Japan’s largest life insurers said they had around $60 billion of unrealized losses on their domestic JGB holdings for the latest fiscal year which was four times higher than for the previous year. It should be recalled that potential major losses by insurance companies were at the center of the UK crisis in 2022.
Japan has the highest debt to GDP ratio of any major economy and perhaps may be considered to be something of an outlier. But its bond market is being closely watched both because it plays a major role in the global financial system and because the rise of debt is afflicting all the major economies.
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[T]he ability of the US to maintain record debt levels—increasing at a rate that all major financial institutions say is unsustainable—depends on the inflow of money into the US debt market from the rest of the world.
And that is being called into question as reflected in the ongoing fall in the value of the dollar and the move into gold which is continuing to reach record highs and is now pushing to $5,000 an ounce.
While no action has been taken, it was significant that a research note from Deutsche Bank this week raised the prospect that the European powers could use the “capital weapon” rather than trade and tariffs, by withdrawing money from the US Treasury market in response to US President Trump’s attacks over Greenland.
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The Financial Times reported this week that European governments were increasingly turning to the shorter end of the market, where yields are lower, to finance their debts “to limit the damage from a rise in borrowing costs.” According to Barclays, the average maturity for debt issued across the euro zone will go below 10 years for the first time since 2015.
The move to the shorter end lowers costs but it leaves the government debt market more exposed to fluctuations in interest rates because the borrowings must be refinanced more frequently.
The Wall Street Journal has also pointed to the significance of the events in the Japanese market in an editorial published earlier this week. It gave the thumbs down to the proposed stimulus package saying such measures had done little or nothing to boost the economy in the past and only added to debt.
It then went on to highlight the international implications saying Tokyo’s normalization of monetary policy and its dire fiscal situation “rank among the more serious threats to global financial stability.”
As a leading proponent of the savage measures demanded by finance capital to be implemented against the working class in the US and rest of the world, it concluded: “Japan is an extreme case of a high-debt low-growth policy model that infects most other Western economies. How Tokyo does or doesn’t fix this will serve as a lesson—and perhaps a warning—the world over.”
12. Up to nine people killed in New Zealand landslides, flooding
Six people are unaccounted for and three others are confirmed dead after severe storms caused flooding and landslides across northern parts of New Zealand this week.
States of emergency remain in place for Whangārei, Thames-Coromandel and Hauraki districts and for Bay of Plenty and Tairāwhiti-Gisborne regions due to severe rainfall, which was most intense on Wednesday and Thursday.
In a horrifying and tragic incident, six people, inclEmergency crews continued to dig through the dirt and debris on Saturday, and police announced shortly after midday that human remains had been found, with the operation moving from a search for survivors to the recovery of bodies.
Adding to the toll, two people—a child and his grandmother, originally from China—were killed in another landslide in Pāpāmoa, another suburb of Tauranga. On Thursday their bodies were recovered from a house which sustained major damage.
A search continues for a 47-year-old man, a migrant worker from Kiribati, who was washed away in his vehicle on Wednesday while trying to cross the flooded Mahurangi River at Warkworth, north of Auckland.
Shock and grief over these events is already turning to anger. Critical questions are being raised, in particular, about why campers at the Mount Maunganui site—located at the foot of the small mountain, a popular tourist attraction—were not evacuated despite severe weather warnings being issued well in advance.uding two teenagers, were buried by a landslide at the Beachside Holiday Park in Mount Maunganui, a suburb of Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty. At about 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, a large chunk of the sodden hillside collapsed and smashed into campervans, tents, vehicles and toilets.*****
Emergency crews continued to dig through the dirt and debris on Saturday, and police announced shortly after midday that human remains had been found, with the operation moving from a search for survivors to the recovery of bodies.
Adding to the toll, two people—a child and his grandmother, originally from China—were killed in another landslide in Pāpāmoa, another suburb of Tauranga. On Thursday their bodies were recovered from a house which sustained major damage.
A search continues for a 47-year-old man, a migrant worker from Kiribati, who was washed away in his vehicle on Wednesday while trying to cross the flooded Mahurangi River at Warkworth, north of Auckland.
Shock and grief over these events is already turning to anger. Critical questions are being raised, in particular, about why campers at the Mount Maunganui site—located at the foot of the small mountain, a popular tourist attraction—were not evacuated despite severe weather warnings being issued well in advance.
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In the 12 hours until 6:00 a.m. on Thursday, Tauranga recorded 198 millimeters of rain (7.8 inches)—the equivalent of two-and-a-half months’ worth of rain—making it the city’s wettest night on record. Yet there was no evacuation order given for the campground at Mount Maunganui (also known as Mauao), where hundreds of holiday-makers were staying.
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The full extent of the damage from this week’s storms is not yet clear. It appears to be less widespread than Cyclone Gabrielle, which inundated thousands of homes, farms and businesses in 2023. Many small towns, however, including in Northland and Tairāwhiti remain isolated due to landslides and flooding. Strong winds are forecast for storm-hit regions over the weekend, threatening more destruction.
At a press conference on Friday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said it was yet to be determined what financial support the government would give to disaster-affected communities. The aftermath will inevitably compound the social crisis facing the working class, which will be forced to bear the cost of rebuilding. Workers are already being driven into poverty as a result of brutal austerity measures imposed by the National Party-led government and the previous Labour Party government.
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Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common throughout the world because of climate change. Earth Sciences NZ principal scientist Chris Brandolino told Radio NZ that the intensity of this week’s storm was linked to “extremely high levels of oceanic heat content.” Victoria University of Wellington scientist James Renwick warned that if governments do not act to reduce climate emissions “the future cost is going to be huge and ultimately, it’ll be overwhelming. It will destroy our economy.”
Human-induced climate change threatens billions of people with catastrophe from rising sea levels, flooding, hurricanes, droughts, fires and the loss of biodiversity. Yet capitalist governments everywhere, including in New Zealand, refuse to take the actions necessary, because bringing down emissions would affect the profits of the resources industry and other powerful business interests.
The climate emergency can only be addressed through a socialist reorganization of society. This requires taking the major corporations and the fortunes of the super‑rich into public ownership under the democratic control of the working class, so that resources can be directed toward flood and disaster protection and a rapid transition from fossil fuels to genuinely sustainable energy.
13. New Zealand Labour Party offers no alternative to austerity and war
Following Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s “State of the Nation” speech and his announcement that New Zealand’s general election will be held on November 7, opposition Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins delivered a characteristically vacuous response, devoid of anything substantive to address the deepening social crisis facing the working class.
Speaking from the party’s caucus retreat in Auckland, in his first major public statement of the year, Hipkins feigned opposition to the National Party-led coalition government’s brutal austerity measures. He declared that Labour was committed to “getting Kiwis back into work, dealing with the crisis in our health system, making healthcare affordable for all New Zealanders… restoring the dream of home ownership,” improving conditions for those who rent, and “tackling the cost of living, where the government have failed over the last two-and-a-half years.”
Yet the Labour Party leader did not announce any policies to reverse the government’s attacks, which have included thousands of public sector job cuts, pay cuts for hundreds of thousands of workers, and the refusal to adequately fund hospitals, schools and welfare services.
So far, the Labour Party has only announced one election policy: a modest capital gains tax on profits from the sale of investment properties. The revenue would be used to fund three doctor’s visits per year for every person in the country. Even if implemented, this will not solve the public healthcare crisis that included long waiting lists for surgical procedures due to the severe shortage of doctors and other healthcare workers.
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Labour’s real agenda was indicated at the party’s conference last November, where the party’s finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds declared: “Getting the economy growing and balancing the books means we can’t say yes to everything, and I make no apology for that. Responsibility must always come first.”
In other words, a Labour-led government will prioritise “economic growth,” i.e. maximising profits for big business by keeping taxes low and maintaining “fiscal responsibility”—code for austerity—in public services.
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The aim of the ruling elite and the entire parliamentary establishment is to fully integrate New Zealand into US-led war plans against China, which are already far-advanced.
Hipkins, well aware of widespread anti-war sentiment in the population, tried to obscure this reality by telling journalists: “New Zealand should be principled and independent in its foreign policy… The United States’ threats against Greenland are a threat towards international law. What they have done around Venezuela is also in breach of international law, and New Zealand should continue to be principled in calling that out.”
Asked if the US was “a rogue nation,” however, Hipkins merely said it was “pushing the boundaries.” In fact, the Trump regime is seeking to create a fascist police state within the US while asserting the right to bomb and invade any country it chooses.
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In a sign of Labour’s continuing lurch to the right, Hipkins refused to rule out forming a coalition with the Trumpian, anti-immigrant New Zealand First Party. NZ First is part of the National-led coalition government, but was a coalition partner with Labour and the Greens in the 2017–2020 government. Labour adopted many of NZ First’s policies, including its demands for draconian restrictions on immigration.
During the 2023 election campaign, Hipkins described NZ First’s statements attacking Asian immigrants and Māori as “racist” and denounced Luxon for being willing to work with the party. Hipkins said in one Newshub debate that he would “never” again work in government with NZ First leader Winston Peters. But with recent polls showing that NZ First (with about 10 percent support) could be in a position to decide which of the two main parties leads the next government, all this is being buried.
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As is the case internationally, the working class in New Zealand is moving to the left in response to the deepening crisis of world capitalism—including the assault on living standards and the eruption of imperialist violence. On October 23, more than 100,000 workers joined the country’s biggest strike since 1979 in opposition to attacks on public healthcare workers and educators. The union bureaucracy is seeking to prevent further strikes and impose sellout agreements—partly by encouraging the illusion that workers can improve their conditions and wages by electing a Labour-led government.
The Socialist Equality Group warns that regardless of the outcome of the election later this year, the assault on workers’ living standards, democratic rights, and the militarization of society will only escalate. The fundamental task facing the working class is not to choose between the parties of big business and war, but to break decisively from them and build an independent revolutionary leadership capable of leading the struggle for socialism.
14. Far-right Reform UK, leading polls, prepares a cabinet of war and austerity for British capitalism
The defection of leading Conservative Party figure Robert Jenrick to the far-right Reform UK is the latest step in leader Nigel Farage’s preparations for government. Jenrick was sacked by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch on January 15 after it emerged that he was plotting to leave the Tories and was unveiled by Farage as a member of his party later that day.
Farage has recruited a number of senior Tories since entering parliament as a Reform MP in the 2024 general election and climbing to the top of the polls of UK voting intentions. But Jenrick is by far the most high-profile, holding shadow and cabinet position under four previous Tory leaders.
Under Badenoch he was Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor from 2024 until 2026. In Rishi Sunak’s government he was Minister of State for Immigration from 2022 to 2023. Jenrick held Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government from 2019 to 2021 in the first and second Johnson ministries and was a health minister under the short-lived Truss government.
Jenrick cut a particularly anti-immigration figure even within a Tory party shifting sharply to the right. This culminated in his support for and participation in a far-right demonstration outside the Bell Hotel in Epping last summer—the epicentre of a series of national demonstrations demanding the deportation of tens of thousands of asylum seekers.
He also promoted another far-right campaign, “Raise The Colours”, in which England’s St George’s flag and the Union Jack were hung in their thousands on lamp posts, buildings and in public spaces around the country.
Jenrick was the fourth sitting Tory MP to defect to Reform, joining more than 20 former Conservative MPs—among them former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi, who joined just days ahead of Jenrick.
Exploiting Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s unprecedented collapse in support—having provided no respite to millions of workers struggling with the cost of living and shattered public services—Reform UK has led the polls by around 10 points for most of the 18 months since Labour took office. It is currently sitting at 26 percent, with the Tories and Labour tied on 18 percent.
Increasingly feted by the right-wing media, Farage has been tasked by the ruling elite with assembling a “credible” party of government; he has praised the former cabinet members Jenrick and Zahawi for their “front-line experience”.
For the ruling class, it is essential that Reform be primed to serve as a replacement for the crisis-ridden Starmer government, ready to hit the ground running with an agenda for slashing welfare and overall public spending, while vastly increasing military spending with the proceeds.
Inspired by billionaire Elon Musk’s vicious cost-cutting operation in the US Trump administration, Farage has nominated former Reform UK chair Zia Yusuf—previously a luxury concierge tycoon—as the leader of a “UK DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency) team.
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Were Reform in government today it “would rapidly boost defence spending. By cutting waste and slashing the overseas aid budget, we would reach that 3 per cent figure by 2030.”
The mouthpieces of the ruling class in the Times and Telegraph, welcoming Farage’s military spending pledges, are keen to ensure any populist pretensions over living standards—always coupled with nationalist xenophobia—are done away with. To this end, the Tory Party is still being backed as a disciplining force.
15. Watch: A tribute to Australian Trotskyist Ken Mantell
On January 18, the Socialist Equality Party held a memorial meeting to celebrate the life of Ken Mantell, a member of the Trotskyist movement for more than 40 years.
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The meeting featured main speakers SEP (Australia) National Secretary Cheryl Crisp and Ken’s brother Martin Mantell, as well as contributions from SEP members including Nick Beams, Warwick Dove, Luch Lopez and Morgan Peach, as well as written condolences from representatives of the International Committee of the Fourth International’s sections in Britain, Germany and the US.
We encourage all our readers to watch and share this video, which is a powerful tribute to a committed worker-revolutionary who dedicated his life to the fight for socialist revolution.
16. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia:
South Australian public health nurses and midwives to strike in February
Bangladesh:
India:
Pakistan:
New Zealand:
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.
