Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Amazon, UPS lead new wave of mass layoffs in 2026
A new and far-reaching wave of mass layoffs is sweeping the United States, marking a decisive escalation in the ruling class’s assault on the working class.
Two of America’s largest corporations, Amazon and UPS, have announced massive new cuts within days of each other. Amazon plans to eliminate roughly 16,000 corporate and technology jobs, bringing total layoffs since last autumn to approximately 30,000, as it restructures operations around artificial intelligence and automation.
UPS has announced plans to eliminate up to 30,000 additional jobs in 2026 through its so-called “Network of the Future,” a sweeping consolidation into fewer, highly automated mega-hubs. These cuts come on top of the 48,000 jobs UPS eliminated in 2025, underscoring the scale of the destruction underway in logistics and transportation.
According to the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, US employers eliminated more than 1.2 million jobs in 2025, the highest level since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Layoffs surged in the final quarter of the year, while hiring collapsed to its lowest level since 2010.
The jobs massacre is accelerating in the opening weeks of 2026. A Business Insider survey of announced job cuts in early 2026 cites layoffs at Google, Microsoft, Meta, Salesforce and IBM in technology; Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo in finance; Walmart and Target in retail and logistics; Disney, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery in media and entertainment; and Boeing, General Electric and 3M in manufacturing.
In addition, GM and Ford have laid off thousands of workers at EV assembly and battery plants in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, while Tyson Foods has eliminated 5,000 jobs in Nebraska and Texas.
In the past, major rounds of layoffs were typically associated with economic downturns, where companies claimed they had no choice but to shed jobs to survive. Today, however, the jobs massacre is being carried out amid record-breaking corporate earnings and the extraordinary enrichment of executives and shareholders.
*****
Amazon and UPS are deploying automated warehouses, AI-driven logistics and algorithmic management to eliminate jobs, impose brutal speedup and extract greater profits from a shrinking workforce. Revolutionary technologies, which in a rational society would be used to eliminate exhausting and dangerous labor, poverty and social misery, are under capitalism transformed into weapons against workers.
According to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, AI could displace half of all entry-level white collar jobs within the next one to five years, push unemployment to 10–20 percent and create “a permanent class of unemployed or very low-paid workers.”
There is mounting anger and resistance in the United States and internationally. This opposition has already found expression in a growing wave of strikes and protests. More than 46,000 nurses and healthcare workers have launched walkouts in New York City, California and Hawaii to demand increased staffing and improved coverage. Thirty thousand oil refinery workers are preparing for a national strike when contracts expire on February 1, fighting unsafe conditions and AI-driven job cuts.
The principal obstacle confronting this resistance is the trade union apparatus. Far from defending jobs and living standards, the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers and other unions have collaborated in the jobs slaughter while blocking any unified struggle by their members.*****
The mass layoffs by Amazon, UPS and other corporations make clear that the basic decisions governing society cannot be left in the hands of the financial oligarchy. The major corporations—built through the labor of millions and operating across the globe—must be placed under public ownership and democratic control. They must be run not for private profit but to meet human needs.
This struggle must be guided by an international strategy uniting workers across borders against global corporations. Amazon’s layoffs are hitting workers in the UK, India and Latin America. Swedish telecom giant Ericsson is cutting 1,600 jobs at home; Lenovo and Baidu are eliminating thousands of tech jobs in China; and in Germany, 50,000 auto jobs were wiped out in 2025 alone, with 41 percent of manufacturing and industrial firms expecting further cuts in 2026. Central to the fight for international working class unity is opposition to the witch-hunting of immigrants and to imperialist war.
The industrial struggles of the working class must be fused with a political fight against dictatorship and for democratic rights. The ruling class understands that permanent insecurity combined with obscene inequality is generating explosive resistance. In response, it is increasingly resorting to dictatorial methods to impose its agenda.
In the United States, this finds its sharpest expression in the Trump administration’s drive toward authoritarian rule. The state murders of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis mark a qualitative escalation: extrajudicial executions by federal agents operating with impunity.
It is significant that the same billionaire owners of Meta, Google, Apple and other tech giants who are destroying jobs are also assisting the Trump administration’s crackdown on apps and digital networks used by residents in Minneapolis and across the country to track ICE activity and defend immigrant neighbors and co-workers from kidnappings and violence.
2. Fascist assaults Ilhan Omar as White House escalates campaign against left-wing groups
The violent assault Tuesday on Representative Ilhan Omar, the Democratic congresswoman from Minneapolis, is an ominous development. A fascist Trump supporter ran towards her as she was reading a statement against the mass repression unleashed by the White House in her congressional district, spraying her with a pungent liquid that was later determined to be vinegar but could easily have been acid or a neurotoxin.
If the attacker, 55-year-old Anthony Kazmierczak, had used a gun, he could have killed Omar. Her personal security guards were too late to prevent him from reaching the congresswoman, although they eventually overpowered him and turned him over to police. While little has been made public of Kazmierczak’s political background, online reports indicate that he was a follower of numerous fascist social media accounts, including Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, Elon Musk and Tim Pool.
The attack came just after Omar spoke the words, “We must abolish ICE for good. And DHS Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or face impeachment.” While she was clearly shocked by the attack, Omar was uninjured and insisted on continuing her remarks after a brief pause to recover, asking her staff and audience not to let “people like this ugly man” prevail.
Even more ominous than the attack itself is the response of Donald Trump, who has been inciting his fascist followers against Omar for years. When ABC News asked him about the attack, he said, “I think she’s a fraud. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.” As for watching the video of the attack, he said, “I hope I don’t have to bother.”
In the hours before the Tuesday attack, Trump announced a Justice Department probe into Omar, claiming that she had gotten rich from corrupt practices allegedly involving the Somali community in Minneapolis and vilified her before a rally of several thousand supporters in the suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa.
Trump has made use of phony allegations of massive fraud by childcare centers in Minneapolis involving federal subsidies during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The supposed scandal was concocted by Nick Shirley, a fascist social media “journalist,” whose propaganda videos were heavily promoted by Fox News and other pro-Trump media outlets.
The Department of Justice promptly opened a criminal investigation into the fraud charges, and this became the initial pretext for mobilizing federal agents for the ongoing invasion of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.
Trump’s obsessive hate campaign against a black, female, Muslim, immigrant member of Congress is not just a product of his personal bigotry. The fascist president is whipping up his most frenzied followers for violent attacks on his political opponents and critics.
Omar is the second black Democratic member of Congress to be attacked by a fascist Trump supporter in five days. Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida, who is Afro-Latino, was attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah when he was punched by an attacker who said Trump would have Frost deported and yelled racial slurs as he ran away. The attacker, 28-year-old Christian Joel Young of Centerville, Utah, was arrested and faces assault charges.
*****
FBI Director Kash Patel announced Monday that the FBI was opening an investigation into the Signal group chat through which Minneapolis residents have been coordinating the “rapid response” campaign against the ICE violence and kidnappings. He made the announcement, not at a press briefing, but in an interview with fascist podcaster Benny Johnson. “You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way,” he said in the interview, although he did not explain how reporting illegal activities by the immigration Gestapo constituted entrapment.
*****
The FBI director made the announcement only hours after the publication by Fox News of a lengthy article—clearly based on government intelligence sources—which witch-hunted a half dozen left-wing groups, claiming they were in control behind the scenes of the protests in Minneapolis.
The language of the Fox report is typical of McCarthyite witch-hunting, claiming that after Alex Pretti was killed, “a national network of socialist, communist and Marxist-Leninist cells in the United States leveraged the tragic fatality into a nationwide protest operation.”
The report goes on to claim: “The Minneapolis activation marked the beginning of an almost instantaneous weekend surge by far-left organizations, including hardened socialist and communist groups operating in an ecosystem that national security experts describe as an insurgent-style operation designed to exploit tragedy to wage a domestic political war.”
Among the organizations portrayed as the evil geniuses behind the outpouring of mass resistance to ICE in Minneapolis-St. Paul are the Party of Socialism and Liberation, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Socialist Alternative, BreakThrough News, People’s Forum, the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, the local chapter of Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Socialists of America.
Regardless of the fundamental political differences that the Socialist Equality Party has with these organizations, we oppose and denounce this witch-hunting campaign as a threat to the democratic rights of the entire working class and all those politically opposed to the Trump administration. Every one of these groups has the democratic right to conduct political activity.
Similarly, we oppose any effort by the Trump administration to criminalize its bourgeois political opponents within the Democratic Party. Even as its own members come under attack, the Democratic Party seeks to downplay the danger posed by Trump and the developing conspiracy for dictatorship, seeking continuously an arrangement with the fascist president.
3. Striking Kaiser healthcare workers: “A general strike could be very powerful”
The open-ended strike by 31,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers finished its third day Wednesday as registered nurses, pharmacists and others across California and Hawaii continue to fight for improved staffing, benefits and inflation-busting wages.
Approximately 28,000 workers in Southern California, 2,800 in Northern California and 250 in Hawaii have gone on strike at more than two dozen hospitals and hundreds of clinics.
The Kaiser strike is part of a broader wave of healthcare workers’ struggles across the country. In New York City, 15,000 nurses began striking on January 12 in what has become the largest nurses’ strike in the city’s history. Nurses at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia, Mount Sinai and Montefiore are demanding protections against healthcare benefits cuts, improved staffing ratios, workplace violence protections and wage increases of approximately 40 percent.
In Michigan, hundreds of nurses at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc remain on strike over staffing ratios and wages. Nurses at Seattle Children’s Hospital voted to authorize a strike in December 2025, and healthcare workers at multiple Oregon facilities are either on strike or preparing authorization votes.
The Kaiser strike also began just days after the ICE execution of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit VA nurse in Minneapolis, and amid growing support for a national general strike against the Trump administration.
“A general strike could be very powerful if you have the commitment of the people because the power is with the people,” one striker told the World Sociaist Web Site on the picket line outside Kaiser’s Oakland Medical Center. “I mean, we do the work. We make the money. We’re those parts in the factory that produce the goods. You stop making the goods, that’s that. I mean there’s strength in numbers and at some point you’ve got to flip the board.”
*****
In Los Angeles, one midwife said, “I love doing what I do. It’s heartbreaking to know that they continue to have signs that say that Kaiser is leading the nation with maternity health, oncology, and whatnot. Who got him there? It’s the healthcare workers, the advanced practice practitioners, the midwives, the nurse practitioners, the PAs, as well as their registered nurses, as well as your CNAs, your housekeepers, maintenance, everybody. Everybody has gotten these big corporations to where they are now. We are out here fighting for our rights.
“It is shameful and it is heartbreaking what happened to Alex Pretti. We’re just trying to do the right thing. It’s in us to be able to help people, and we can’t even do that in our country today there’s so much violence and there’s so much hate. I don’t know where we live anymore it’s heartbreaking. … I feel like this administration has not done anything to really bring hope, to strengthen each and every one of us and all I can say is we just we really need to stand for what we believe in.”
*****
UNAC/UHCP bureaucrats continue to host various Democratic Party officials on the picket lines in an attempt to contain the quickly emerging support for a general strike back into the channels of bourgeois electoral politics. In National City, California Councilmember Jose Rodriguez visited the picket lines this morning asserting that the strike is “about more than a contract, it’s about patient care and community health.” He made no mention of the ICE murder of Alex Pretti or voiced support for a unified struggle of California and New York healthcare workers.
The Democrats’ “support” is aimed at preventing it from coalescing into a broader political movement against the corporate oligarchy, whom they represent as much as Trump.
Workers in healthcare and every other industry must fight to overcome this isolation. The strike against Kaiser, which has openly supported and directed billions of dollars to ICE operations, is ultimately a challenge to the profit interests that have degraded healthcare and society as a whole for decades. The murder of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti are only the most visceral examples that the ruling elite and its jackbooted thugs are more than willing to sacrifice human life on the altar of corporate profits.
The necessity of breaking with the Democratic Party and the trade union apparatus and forming rank-and-file committees is critical. Workers must put forward their own independent demands on their own independent initiative, including to abolish ICE and for the arrest of all those who are responsible for Pretti’s murder, from Trump on down.
4. Fed maintains rate amid indications further cuts are on hold
As expected, the US Federal Reserve kept its interest rate on hold at its meeting yesterday, with all indications that there will be no further rate cuts under chair Jerome Powell before he steps down in May.
*****
In justification of the decision, Powell said that with the cuts of 75 basis points, three-quarters of a percentage point, since last September, the Fed rate was now “within a range of plausible estimates of neutral”—that is, neither providing a stimulus to the economy nor restricting it.
The decision had “broad” support in the Fed’s policy-making body but there were two dissents. Christopher Waller, one of the four candidates being considered by Trump to be the next Fed chair, and Trump’s ally Stephen Miran called for a cut of 25 basis points.
Powell acknowledged that the inflation rate had not come down in 2025 and was around 3 percent, above the Fed’s target level of 2 percent. He claimed it would trend down once the effect of tariff increases had passed through.
After citing a weakening labour market as the basis for previous cuts, Powell changed course somewhat, saying conditions may be “stabilising after a period of gradual softening,” pointing out that the unemployment rate at 4.4 percent had changed little in recent months.
*****
Given the events since the last Fed meeting—most significantly, the decision of the Trump administration to launch a criminal investigation into Powell over whether he gave false testimony to Congress on cost overruns for renovations to the Fed building, and Powell’s response—there were attempts at his press conference to elicit further comment.
In an unprecedented video statement on January 11, Powell said: “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
The conflict, however, is not as Powell presents it. It is not a case of the “public” represented by the Fed versus the president, but is being fought out between different factions of the financial oligarchy.
In demanding lower rates, Trump represents the interests of those sections involved in more speculative operations, including real estate, cryptocurrency and sections of the hedge funds and private capital. The Fed represents the more traditional sections of Wall Street, which fear that the loss of so-called Fed independence will boost inflation, setting off wage demands and undermine the stability of the US financial system.
*****
The meeting took place in conditions of a weakening dollar and Trump’s statements that the fall in the dollar—now at its lowest point in four years—was a “great” development, prompting a further decline. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent then intervened to insist that the US still had a “strong dollar policy.”
Asked about currency movements, Powell declined to comment, saying this was not an issue for the Fed but for the US Treasury.
Apart from the immediate movements and their effects on financial markets, there are concerns about the longer-term significance of the dollar’s decline as the basis of the global monetary system.
It has been noted in periods of financial and stock market turbulence since 2000 that there has been a move into the dollar as a “safe haven.” That changed last year after the announcement of Trump’s “liberation day” tariff hikes in April when, in the midst of financial upheaval, there was a move out of US assets.
5. Sri Lankan president falsely postures as champion of “national unity”
Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake sought falsely to showcase his government as a champion of “national unity without racism” and “prosperity” during his recent visit to the war-ravaged northern district of Jaffna. The carefully organized visit centered on the inauguration of a national housing program and an anti-drug campaign.
*****
Addressing a gathering in Velanai, Dissanayake claimed that the past year under his government had marked a historic decline in “racially motivated conflicts,” and forces promoting racism had been “weakened.” Acknowledging widespread suspicion toward his party, he asked: “Even after one and a half years, do you still distrust us?”
Speaking in Kokuvil, the president alleged that communal tensions were being deliberately provoked by “some individuals [who] traveled to Jaffna during Poya days [full moon days], not for religious observance but to incite racism.”
He did not identify these “individuals.” His remarks were clearly directed at Sinhala Buddhist chauvinist groups, who provocatively mobilized their supporters to worship at the Tissa Vihara, built at Thaiyadi village near Jaffna town. He covered up the fact that this Buddhist temple was expanded with the assistance of the military.
At the same time, however, Dissanayake accused Tamil racist groups of exploiting the temple expansion. He was referring to Tamils who have been protesting over the seizure of their lands for the temple. The president said he had instructed intelligence agencies to investigate the protests.
Dissanayake’s repeated appeals for Tamil trust in his government underscore the burden of the JVP/NPP’s own history of Sinhala chauvinism. The JVP emerged in 1965 as a party rooted in radicalism combined with Sinhala patriotism, branding Indian-origin Tamil estate workers as agents of “Indian expansionism.”
The JVP fully backed the decades-long communal war by successive Colombo governments against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), unleashed in 1983 and which came to a bloody end in May 2009. Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were slaughtered in the final military offensives.
During the 2024 presidential and parliamentary election campaigns, the JVP/NPP promised Tamil voters the release of all political prisoners, the return of civilian land seized by the military, and the provision of information to families of the tens of thousands of missing persons. These pledges have since been abandoned.
The government now claims that political prisoners were convicted on criminal charges and therefore cannot be released. Some land has been returned, but an estimated 2,600 acres (about 1,050 hectares) still remain under military control, according to reports. Instead of revealing the fate of the disappeared, the administration simply proposes limited reparations to victims’ families.
At the UN Human Rights Council, Sri Lanka has rejected any international investigation into wartime atrocities, continuing the stance of previous regimes in favour of domestic inquiries that have exonerated the military. Around 100,000 heavily armed troops still occupy the North and East of Sri Lanka.
Dissanayake further sought to recast the civil war as the product of abstract “racist politics” of previous rulers, claiming that both Sinhala and Tamil populations were manipulated by power-hungry politicians.
This deliberately obscures the chief responsibility of the Colombo ruling elites, which have systematically whipped up anti-Tamil communalism in times of crisis to divide the working class along ethnic lines since being transferred political power in 1948. The Tamil nationalist elite also played a decisive role in provoking communalism among the Tamil population.
At the same time, the president is trying to cover up the JVP’s own reactionary communal record as an enthusiastic supporter of anti-Tamil racialist war.
Dissanayake’s claim that racism has been “weakened” under the JVP/NPP administration is a lie. Sinhala chauvinist groups remain very active, seeking to provoke communal tensions. There is widespread opposition among workers and young people alike to communalism, shaped by the bloody disaster of the 26-year war. The JVP, through its broad NPP front, seeks to exploit this sentiment, but the party remains rooted in anti-Tamil chauvinism.
*****
At Chavakachcheri, 10 kilometers south of Jaffna, Dissanayake announced plans to construct just 2,500 houses for war-displaced families, allocating a pitiful 2 million rupees ($US6,500) per unit. According to official figures, nearly 19,000 families in the Northern and Eastern Provinces remain without proper shelter, 16 years after the end of the war.
Tamil masses in the North and East continue to endure impoverished and insecure conditions that will only worsen as the Dissanayake regime imposes the IMF austerity measures. The World Bank reported that an additional 3.9 percent of the population fell into poverty in 2024 due to austerity, bringing the total to 23.4 percent, with conditions continuing to worsen.
Dissanayake announced proposals to renovate Palaly Airport, expand Kankesanthurai Port in Jaffna district with Indian assistance, and promote tourism along Jaffna’s coastline. The government also intends to establish “special economic zones,” including in the North and East. These projects are aimed at appealing to the Tamil elites to collaborate in opening up the region as a new ultra-cheap labour platform.
*****
The Socialist Equality Party insists that Tamil people cannot secure their democratic and social rights, obtain justice for war crimes, or end racist discrimination under the JVP/NPP or any other capitalist rule, as demonstrated by the bloody war and nearly eight decades of bourgeois governance. Likewise, the communal politics of the Tamil nationalist parties, including separatism—as preached by the LTTE—has proven to be a tragic dead-end for working people.
The SEP and its predecessor, the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), have from their inception explained that the reactionary capitalist class in belated capitalist countries cannot resolve democratic tasks, including ending discrimination against Tamil and Muslim minorities.
Based on Leon Trotsky’s seminal theory of Permanent Revolution, we call for the unity of the working class across ethnic lines, rallying the rural poor in the fight for a Sri Lanka-Eelam Socialist Republic (a workers’ and peasants’ government), as part of a Federation of Socialist Republics in South Asia and internationally.
The Trump administration’s paramilitary assaults, deportation raids and threats to invoke emergency powers are not isolated outrages but expressions of a capitalist ruling class prepared to discard democratic forms to defend profits and oligarchic rule. The federal occupation of Minneapolis, the ICE murders and the escalation of repression show the state preparing to crush dissent by terror and normalize extra‑legal violence (the WSWS analysis of the Minneapolis occupation). A general strike is not a symbolic protest; it is the only social force capable of shutting down the machinery of repression and forcing the withdrawal of these forces. That requires independent working‑class organization—not appeals to the Democratic Party or the union bureaucracy, which will seek to contain and neuter struggle (why unions will block a strike).
*****
Concrete steps to prepare a nationwide general strike and stop ICE terror:
1) Hold emergency workplace meetings and form rank-and-file committees
2) Create a coordinated strike readiness structure
3) Financial and legal preparation
4) Mass communications and counter-propaganda
5) Active outreach and solidarity across sectors and borders
6) Defensive community measures and documentation
7) Bypass union bureaucracies while engaging rank-and-file union members
8) Prepare for escalation: national strike date and sustaining a general strike
*****
A successful general strike must be linked to the international working class. Develop global networks through expansion of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA‑RFC), in order to coordinate solidarity actions, pressure multinational corporations and break the isolation that the nationalist union bureaucracies impose. The fight against ICE and dictatorship is inseparable from the struggle to overthrow the capitalist system that produces austerity, militarism and repression; the movement must develop a socialist program that fights to place workers in control of production and public life.
*****
If you are ready to form or join a rank-and-file committee, coordinate actions, or support strike funds and legal defense, the Socialist Equality Party urges immediate contact and participation in building a democratic, independent workers’ movement. For those who want to organize and receive strategic support, begin by connecting with the SEP and the IWA‑RFC and by sharing workplace reports and contact details through trusted networks.
The power to stop the terror and to defend democratic and social rights lies in the organized working class. Begin organizing now—every workplace, every neighborhood, every picket line.
On Wednesday afternoon, Texas police, alongside federal immigration agents, violently attacked a large group of protesters outside the Dilley detention center in South Texas. Video from the scene shows heavily armed Texas state trooper riot police aggressively shoving, assaulting and using tear gas against demonstrators who had gathered at the prison camp to demand the release of those detained, roughly a third of whom are children.
The protest began early Wednesday morning, as hundreds of workers and community members gathered outside the detention center. Demonstrators called for the release of those held inside, chanting “Free them all!” and denouncing the police as Nazis and kidnappers. Amid whistles, drums and maracas, protesters called out for “libertad” (freedom) and condemned ICE as “banditos.”
In a message to those held inside the facility—many of whom protested over the weekend against not only the deplorable conditions they face but also the denial of their basic civil liberties and democratic rights—demonstrators chanted, “No están solos,” Spanish for “You are not alone.”
Signs carried by protesters demanded “Liberty and justice for all” and denounced the immigration police with messages such as “History will remember you” and “Would you put your child in a cage?”
Reporters with the World Socialist Web Site spoke to protesters prior to the police attack. To protect the security and identity of those interviewed, their names have been changed.
*****
Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos being detained by ICE agentsAmong those detained at the prison camp is 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, a pre-school student kidnapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis last week and quickly sent to the facility with his father. Young Liam’s health appears to have deteriorated rapidly since being sent to the prison camp.
In an interview with MPR News on Monday, Erika Ramos, mother of Liam, said the situation “of my husband Adrian and my son Liam inside the detention center is deeply concerning. Liam is getting sick because the food they receive is not of good quality. He has stomach pain, he’s vomiting, he has a fever and he no longer wants to eat.”
Yvette told the WSWS that she came to protest because “I wanted to be a witness to what is happening. So often, we watch things on our phones, and it feels really distant. But my thought always goes back to, one day it could be me, recording somebody or somebody recording something happening to me. And when I saw the photo of Liam, it’s really heartbreaking because to me, growing up as a brown person in Texas, you look at an image like that and see yourself back. You see your cousins, your sisters and brothers. That’s just a little boy.”
Commenting on the protests waged by those detained inside the facility this past Saturday, Yvette said, “It’s really scary that, from inside a facility, you have people actively screaming for help, and you can’t see them and there’s aerial footage of it. It’s almost dehumanizing to hear a voice or hear a scream, and there’s no face behind it.
“When I saw that video, it just sounds like the voices of children, which out of all the like populations in this country, the way we’ve treated our children is heartbreaking in every aspect and every, in every class and every part of society.”
Immigration attorney Eric Lee first reported on Saturday’s protests from outside the facility after he was rushed out by guards while waiting to visit with his clients. Lee represents a family being held at the camp, Hayam El-Gamal and her five children, ages 5 to 18. The family has been detained for eight months.
*****
Lee reported that in response to the peaceful protests by detainees on Saturday, and by workers and community members outside the facility on Wednesday, ICE officials decided to punish those inside by placing the facility on lockdown.
*****
In an interview with PBS on Wednesday night, Lee confirmed that prison guards went through detainee rooms and confiscated anything that could be used in a future protest.
*****
Asked about the protests at the facility this past Saturday, Lee said that he understood detainees “inside saw the size of the general strike and the massive demonstration that took place in Minneapolis on Friday and they wanted to join this growing movement from below, a movement of the American population against the Trump administration’s effort [to establish a presidential dictatorship].”
Amelia, a protester outside of Dilley on Wednesday, told the WSWS she supports a general strike, “100 percent.”
“When you live under a capitalistic society, the true power lies in our ability to either continue to procure goods or not. And in this case, when you have a very small percentage actually holding the massive amounts of wealth, it really attests to the fact the power lies in the hands of the everyday person.
*****
“Minneapolis was the catalyst for socialism as we know it here in this country. I mean, when you talk about people seeing the importance of public goods being in the hands of the public, and who can benefit from that, that was the start. The withholding of labor is effective.
“For the people who previously weren’t aware of the power that strikes hold or just aware of the concept in general, I think many are really opening their eyes, because the question that remains with everybody I meet at these things is, ‘What can we do?’ I can’t think of a better response than a general strike. And I can’t think of a moment that is more perfect for it.”
8. 30,000 refinery workers face contract expiration amid growing working class struggle
The national contract covering roughly 30,000 oil refinery workers across the United States expires at midnight Sunday morning. These workers account for approximately two-thirds of total US refining capacity, placing them at the center of the country’s energy infrastructure and the global oil supply chain.
Workers are demanding substantial wage increases to offset years of inflation, as well as job protections amid the growing introduction of artificial intelligence and automation, particularly in maintenance operations. Safety, as always in the refinery industry, remains a central issue, with workers facing dangerous conditions intensified by understaffing, forced overtime and cost-cutting.
The expiration of of the refinery contract occurs amidst growing class sturggle in the US. Fifteen thousand nurses in New York City have been on strike for three weeks, while 31,000 Kaiser Permanente workers launched a strike this week. At the same time, support is growing for a general strike against the ICE rampage in Minneapolis, with major demonstrations planned for Friday and Saturday.
There is mounting anger against the corporate oligarchy, which is attacking jobs and living standards while trampling democratic rights. Refinery workers must consciously link up with this developing movement, combining their struggle into a broader fight against the corporate oligarchy. Workers should take the initiative by holding meetings, voting on non-negotiable demands, preparing for strike action and establishing lines of contact with workers in other industries.
Last year alone, 1.2 million layoffs were announced, including tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs concentrated in the auto industry. Tens of thousands more layoffs have taken place in logistics, with new rounds of cuts announced at UPS and Amazon. At the same time, workers are fighting to expose unsafe conditions and workplace deaths caused by reckless profiteering.
According to Bloomberg, total employment in the US oil and gas industry has declined by roughly 250,000 jobs since 2014, even as output has surged by 50 percent. Bloomberg attributes this to “new technologies to drill faster for cheaper, corporate mergers, and robots replacing humans on rigs.” Since the start of 2023 alone, the industry has carried out more than $500 billion in mergers and acquisitions, while rigs on average now produce four times as much as they did a decade ago.
*****
Refinery workers cannot wait for the United Steelworkers bureaucracy to organize a struggle. The union leadership has spent years isolating workers and imposing sellout contracts. With only days remaining before the contract expiration, the USW has not even called a strike authorization vote. There has been a remarkable silence from the union for months. The August conference of the National Oil Bargaining Program issued only a vague platform with no concrete demands, while talks with the lead negotiator, Marathon Petroleum, began only last week, with no significant updates as of this writing.
*****
The last national refinery strike in 2015 involved only a handful of facilities. Although safety was the central issue, the strike was shut down without any significant changes, aside from the establishment of toothless union-management committees.
The current contract provided only 12 percent in wage increases over three years, beginning with 2.5 percent upon ratification and rising to 3.5 percent last February. At the time, the USW openly boasted that the deal “did not contribute to inflationary pressures,” which was then at its highest level in decades. In plain language, this meant that wages lagged far behind price increases, amounting to a cut in real wages.
That contract was worked out in close consultation with the Biden White House, whose principal concern was keeping the industry operating during the lead-up to the war in Ukraine, with the Ukrainian military acting as proxies for US and European imperialism against Russia. The cutoff of Russian oil and gas exports to Europe greatly benefited American producers, who capitalized on the exclusion of their rivals from a major market.
Today, the Trump administration is not only dismantling regulations on the oil industry, he has kidnapped the president of Venezuela in order to seize the country’s oil resources and is preparing for war against Iran, another major oil producer. This shows that workers are engaged in a struggle not only against corporate executives but in a political fight against the entire political establishment.
*****
A genuine struggle cannot be waged through backroom talks, selective actions, or appeals to the union apparatus that has repeatedly enforced isolation and defeat. What is required is the formation of rank-and-file committees, independent of the USW bureaucracy, to transfer power directly to workers on the shop floor.
9. Australia: Lactalis to shut Brisbane milk plant, axing more than 200 jobs
Lactalis Australia announced this month that it will close its historic South Brisbane milk factory, located beside the river in the heart of the Queensland state capital, by July 2026, destroying the jobs of 202 workers, plus contractors.
This is yet another example of ruthless corporate restructuring at the expense of workers. Lactalis—the world’s largest fresh dairy company—only acquired the plant late last year. That was part of a deal to buy the facilities of another giant, Fonterra, for $3.4 billion and become the largest dairy company in Australia.
The South Brisbane plant, built in the 1930s, is the latest closure in Queensland by the company, which is transferring the production to the Nambour processing facility on the Sunshine Coast.
Lactalis owns several of Australia’s leading dairy brands, including Pauls milk, Ice Break iced coffee, Oak and Breaka flavored milk, Vaalia and Tamar Valley yogurt and Lemnos cheese.
The shutdown is part of a wider cost-cutting consolidation....
*****
Lactalis has framed the South Brisbane decision as a commercial rationalization—consolidating production into larger, more “efficient” sites—but there is an added corporate incentive. A lucrative sell-off of the site is likely for riverfront redevelopment prior to the Brisbane Olympic games in 2032.
What counts for nothing in these calculations are the hundreds of workers losing skilled employment, while local suppliers and small businesses also suffer.
10. The Pitt Season 2 and the challenges facing a serious television drama
The second season of The Pitt is being aired in the midst of explosive events that have thrust healthcare workers into the spotlight in an unprecedented manner.
The New York nurses’ strike involving 15,000 nurses is now entering its third week. Strikers are demanding safe staffing, fully funded healthcare benefits and protection against workplace violence. Some 31,000 registered nurses and other specialty healthcare professionals at Kaiser Permanente are on strike across more than 200 hospitals and clinics in California and Hawaii.
On January 22, the Trump administration completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), which will have disastrous consequences for public health, already under sustained attack. And, most dramatically and shockingly, on January 23, ICE agents assaulted and then executed intensive care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti while he was recording an ICE operation and attempting to help a woman up from the ground.
The continuing success of The Pitt is unquestionably bound up, along with the series’ own dramatic or artistic merits, with a growing mood of dissatisfaction and discontent, with a hunger for something “hard-hitting” and realistic about life in the US. The powerful response has something of a semi-oppositional character.
The second season premiere January 8 drew 5.4 million viewers in its first three days, a 200 percent increase compared to Season 1. The Pitt is currently the #1 show on HBO Max worldwide. Its popularity was bolstered by its win as Best TV Drama Series at the 2026 Golden Globes held January 12, along with Noah Wyle’s honor as Best Lead Actor. The show runs weekly and its last episode will be aired April 16.
*****
The second season continues with the one hour per episode format and is set in the future, significantly, on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” as “unalienable Rights.” Implicitly, the series poses the question, even if it doesn’t attempt to answer it directly: what is the current state of that “pursuit”?
*****
The Pitt is facing the inevitable difficulties and “growing pains” that all breakout hit television shows have to contend with in their second season and beyond. Many exhaust themselves and remain on the air through a certain kind of inertia, largely spinning their wheels. Series that have something to say, and continue to deepen and develop their themes are rare. It is too early to tell whether The Pitt will be among the ones that do.
*****
Arguably the biggest source of The Pitt’s popular appeal is that it highlights both the difficult conditions in the ER and, within those conditions, empathy, cooperation and the defense of science—in other words, some of the best of humanity. These general elements remain.
At the same time, the series offers healthcare workers (as well as patients) the feeling of being “seen,” because it depicts the backwardness and irrationality of the social circumstances in which they live. Unfortunately, this is not usually what gets emphasized during this season’s promotional tour, which often focuses on romantic dynamics within the cast and other superficial aspects of the series. Will the series veer toward “medical melodrama” or will it “stay the course” and stick to its original and compelling compassion and concern for suffering humanity? We will see.
11. Voices of solidarity from Germany in the fight against Trump’s drive to dictatorship
Anger at the dictatorial regime continues to spread, even beyond the borders of the United States. Millions of workers worldwide are following the fortunes of their brothers and sisters in the US with intense sympathy for their struggle. In Germany in particular, Trump’s actions vividly bring to mind Hitler, the Second World War and the Holocaust. More and more people are becoming aware that a third world war can only be stopped if we succeed not only in overthrowing the Trump dictatorship, but in eliminating the entire oligarchy for which he speaks and the dictatorship of capitalism as a whole.
This can also be seen in the messages from workers, students and members of the IYSSE that have reached the German editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site. Their messages express the solidarity of the authors with the striking workers in the US and the call for the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
[The World Socialist Web Site publishes several letters of solidarity.]
12. New Zealand politicians express outrage over Trump’s Afghanistan accusations
In a televised interview on January 23, US President Donald Trump denigrated NATO allies by claiming that, while they “sent some troops to Afghanistan,” these forces “stayed a little back” from the front lines, casting doubt on whether the alliance would stand by the US in a future war. The interview was broadcast amid escalating tensions with Europe over Trump’s bald attempts to annex Greenland.
The comments provoked a wave of outrage among Washingtonʼs traditional partners, particularly in Britain and Europe, where governments and sections of the military rushed to defend their record over the two decades of occupation. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer rebuked Trump’s “insulting and frankly appalling” remarks and called for an apology.
According to media reports, following an intervention by the UK’s King Charles via “appropriate back channels,” Trump backtracked, declaring that UK troops were “among the greatest of all warriors” and acknowledged that 457 British service personnel were killed in the conflict.
The uproar resonated in New Zealand, which participated as a US ally in the invasion and 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called Trump’s comments “incredibly disrespectful and wrong,” noting that with 3,500 Defense Force (NZDF) personnel deployed, and 10 combat deaths, NZ was among the nations which contributed most. Defense Minister Judith Collins declared that NZ “took great pride” in the professionalism, courage and commitment of the NZDF operating “alongside our partners” in “challenging and often dangerous conditions.”
The invasion was an illegal war of conquest aimed at securing US domination over a strategically important area in Central Asia. New Zealand’s Labour-led coalition government—which included the pseudo-left Alliance Party—was among the first to join the invasion in 2001, in a bid to fully restore relations with the US following the Labour-led “anti-nuclear” posturing in the 1980s, and as a quid-pro-quo for Washington’s endorsement of its own neo-colonial operations in the Pacific.
*****
The NZ special forces (SAS), which received a rare unit citation from US President George W. Bush, was complicit in serious war crimes. A commission of inquiry into Operation Burnham, a night-time raid on a village by the SAS in 2010, confirmed that a child and at least seven other people were killed. In 2020, the then-Labour government’s Attorney-General David Parker defended the killings, saying they were “undesirable” but “legal.”
The current furor around the deployment has centred on the blunt refusal of Foreign Minister Winston Peters to join the condemnation of Trump’s comments. Peters, leader of the right-wing populist NZ First Party in the ruling coalition, has avoided any criticism of Trump’s actions, including the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, illegal takeover of Venezuela and threats against Greenland and Iran. In parliament last week, Peters tacitly endorsed the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, labeling him a “terrorist” and “appalling for his own people.”
The strident defense of the NZDF’s role in Afghanistan is being led by the opposition Labour Party, which is seeking to defend its own contemptible record and steer widespread opposition to the government in a right-wing, “patriotic” and militarist direction.
Burmese immigrants and refugees in Indiana face an escalating campaign of repression as state lawmakers move to expand cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, even as courts temporarily block deportations and mass protests erupt across the state.
Fort Wayne—home to one of the largest Burmese refugee populations in the Midwest—has become a focal point of both the human consequences of immigration enforcement and growing popular opposition to it.
For more than three decades, refugees from Myanmar (formerly Burma) have been resettled in the city, many fleeing military dictatorship, ethnic persecution and civil war. Now thousands face renewed uncertainty following the Trump administration’s attempt to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Burmese nationals, a move only narrowly halted this week by a federal judge.
On January 26, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew F. Kennelly blocked the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to begin deportations, calling the decision to end TPS “arbitrary and capricious.” The administration had justified its action by citing planned elections in Myanmar later this year—an assertion belied by the ongoing civil war, military repression and mass displacement following the 2021 coup. The court’s ruling provides only temporary relief, with a status hearing scheduled for February 6, leaving tens of thousands in legal limbo.
The precarious situation of Burmese refugees is being deliberately exploited by Indiana’s Republican-controlled legislature. On January 27, the Indiana Senate passed Senate Bill 76, a sweeping immigration enforcement measure requiring local law enforcement and county jails to comply with ICE detainer requests and authorizing the state to punish noncompliant local governments by withholding funding.
Authored by State Senator Liz Brown, a Republican from Fort Wayne, the bill mandates that judges be notified when detainees are subject to ICE holds, establishes statewide jail standards for cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and shields police officers from civil liability when enforcing detainers. Despite claims that the bill merely enforces existing law, its purpose is clear: to integrate state and local law enforcement more fully into the machinery of deportation and repression.
The bill passed along strict party lines, with Democrats casting symbolic “no” votes while offering no serious strategy to oppose its implementation or defend immigrant communities. Expressing the passivity and complicity of the Democrats, State Senator Greg Taylor of Indianapolis declared, “We have a responsibility as legislators to put forward public policy that protects against those things,” referencing recent ICE-related killings in Minnesota.
Democratic Senator Shelli Yoder warned that county jails are already overcrowded and described the bill as “virtue signaling with real and devastating consequences.” Senator Fady Qaddoura cited opposition from local police unions, noting that enforcement would “break the trust between law enforcement and our communities.”
These remarks, however, amount to little more than handwringing. Democrats have advanced no concrete plan to block deportations or defund ICE. At the national level, Democratic leaders continue to support increased funding for border enforcement and policing, even as they posture as critics of Republican “excesses.”
*****
Opposition to immigration enforcement is increasingly emerging from below, particularly among young people and workers. On January 25, more than 150 protesters marched through downtown Fort Wayne in subzero temperatures at a rally organized by Indivisible Indiana, chanting slogans against ICE terror and state repression.
Days earlier, hundreds of students at Carmel High School walked out of classes and marched to city hall, denouncing deportations, family separations and the militarization of immigration enforcement.
The student protests were part of a nationwide “Free America” walkout marking one year since Trump’s second inauguration and responding to the January 7 killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis. While the administration has claimed self-defense, state and local officials dispute the account, further inflaming public anger.
Students articulated a growing recognition that appeals to the political establishment are insufficient. “We will not accept or allow fear, corruption and secrecy to go on any longer,” said Carmel student Maaike Alejandra Mora. Another student organizer emphasized the need to move beyond party labels, declaring, “Doing nothing is the greatest danger.”
*****
The growing wave of protests underscores a fundamental reality ignored by both Republicans and Democrats: immigration enforcement is not a matter of “policy balance” but a core component of the capitalist state’s assault on the working class. Immigrants—particularly refugees—are scapegoated to divide workers, suppress wages and expand police powers that are ultimately directed against all workers.
The defense of Burmese immigrants in Fort Wayne, and of immigrant workers nationwide, cannot be entrusted to the Democratic Party, which remains committed to the preservation of ICE, the border regime and the profit system they serve. What is required is the independent political mobilization of the working class—immigrant and native-born alike—against deportations, repression and the capitalist system that produces them.
14. Birmingham bin strike: Rank-and-file workers must decide a new strategy to end their isolation
For more than a year, Birmingham bin workers [sanitation workers] have waged a determined battle against the Labour-controlled authority headed by Councillor John Cotton fighting the imposition of brutal pay cuts of up to £8,000 a year, enforced downgrading and the elimination of safety-critical jobs.
Cotton leads the largest local authority in Europe, which is slashing £300 million from services over two years under a regime of unelected commissioners imposed by the Conservatives in September 2023, and maintained under the Keir Starmer’s Labour government.
Nearly 400 drivers and loaders at three yards across the city, members of Unite, began strike action on January 6, 2025. This was escalated to indefinite action from March 11. The strike initially opposed the deletion of 150 Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) safety critical roles among loaders, but drivers who have participated from day one in solidarity, have faced a similar downgrading of their roles.
Labour’s flagship authority responded by arming itself with extraordinary strike-breaking powers. On March 31, it declared a “major incident”, seeking to criminalize the strike, drafting in agency labour and enlisting support from neighbouring authorities and private contractors—all co-ordinated by military planners. Starmer pledged, “We’ll put in whatever additional support is needed.”
As reported by the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), Birmingham bin workers appealed for immediate solidarity action, warning they were being used as a test case for attacks on every worker.
In April, the WSWS wrote that Birmingham had ceased to be a local dispute “the moment Starmer took leadership of the strike-breaking operation.” We explained Starmer’s intention to establish a precedent and indicted Unite’s leadership, under General Secretary Sharon Graham, for refusing to mobilize its one-million-strong membership against the anti-worker attack in the UK’s second-largest city:
To prevent their strike being crushed, refuse workers must fight to mobilize solidarity action by all sections of the working class in Birmingham and nationally to defeat the conspiracy of the commissioners, local Labourites and the Starmer government. A rank-and-file leadership, operating independently of the union bureaucracy, must be formed to democratically discuss a new strategy, beginning with reaching out to all other council workers now under attack.
Instead of being turned into the spearhead of a working-class counteroffensive, the stand taken by Birmingham bin workers has been led to the edge of defeat. An honest and democratic discussion of the lessons of the struggle so far is needed to prepare a new course.
*****
Strikers can learn from the experiences of similar battles, hidden or distorted by Unite’s leaders. Most importantly, the seven-month 2022 strike by Coventry bin lorry drivers against another Labour council that ran a strikebreaking operation—through its wholly owned subsidiary Tom White Waste, now used to scab in Birmingham.
*****
Last June, the WSWS published an interview with a former union safety steward at the Coventry yard, one of three local reps who refused to sign the imposed contract, which Unite enforced without a ballot of its loader (collector) members. The union apparatus blocked loaders from joining drivers in a joint struggle after they voted for strike action at a mass meeting.
Written to warn Birmingham workers against a similar sellout, the interview has sparked widespread discussion despite efforts by Unite officials to suppress it.
Coventry shows that Labour’s strikebreaking methods were already battle-tested before being deployed on a far larger scale. It warns of what happens when strikes are isolated and workers not in control of the dispute.
*****
Birmingham bin strikers have won the respect of workers across the country. They have taken a heroic stand. But they cannot win on their own and so cannot let Unite’s leadership continue to suffocate their action.
A collective, free and open discussion must be held among all affected workers and decisions taken on the next steps in the struggle. It is for the rank and file to decide their red lines and how to enforce them against the employers.
As a first step, links must be established with other council workers across the city and refuse workers and Unite members across the country. It is here that the strength to win the dispute can be found, in the wider working class with their own long list of grievances against the government and their employers—a force far greater than Cotton, the commissioners and Starmer.
This is the real process of building solidarity, versus the pantomime of the third “mega-picket” organized for Friday. Previous events in May and July last year were a platform for union officials to spout empty phrases of support, while continuing to promote a strategy of pressuring Starmer and Cotton to “do the right thing.”
15. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, & Middle East
Africa
Nigeria:
South Africa:Municipal workers’ protest in Nelson Mandela Bay, Kariega highlights poverty
Europe
Belgium:
Rail workers in five-day national strike against government austerity course
France:
Bank workers strike against low pay and job cuts
Italy:
Workers for Vestas wind turbine makers strike against forced transfers
Turkey:
Warehouse workers at major supermarket chain strike over pay and conditions
United Kingdom:
Construction crane operators hold a 24-hour walkout over pay
Phlebotomists at hospital trust in Gloucestershire, England pass 300-day mark of strike over pay
Lebanon:
Hunger strike by prisoners in jail over “selective justice”
Iraq:
Walkouts and protests by university staff over cuts to allowances
16. 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.
