Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
The following statement will be distributed at protests organized as part of a national day of action on January 30, 2026.
Across Minnesota and throughout the United States, anger and outrage are growing over the ICE murders of Alex Pretti and Renée Nicole Good, the mass roundup of immigrants, the paramilitary occupation of American cities and the conspiracy by the Trump administration to establish a presidential dictatorship.
Last week’s massive demonstration of tens of thousands in Minnesota and the popular outrage over the murder of Pretti have shocked the political establishment, both Republican and Democratic. But the so-called “tactical retreat” by Trump is a maneuver. The danger of dictatorship has not receded. It is intensifying.
The Trump government operates as a criminal conspiracy against the democratic rights of the people. In justifying ICE murders, the Trump regime has declared the state’s unlimited right to kill. Vice President JD Vance stated this explicitly after Good’s killing, saying that the agent who shot her was “protected by absolute immunity … he was doing his job.” The principles invoked by Vance derive from the jurisprudence of fascism.
The drive to dictatorship is inseparable from the staggering levels of social inequality in the United States. Trump speaks and acts as the political representative of the capitalist oligarchy, which, faced with growing economic, social and political crises, is abandoning all democratic norms to maintain its wealth and power.
While working people struggle with skyrocketing housing costs, mass layoffs and collapsing public health systems, America’s billionaires gained $1.5 trillion in Trump’s first year back in office—an astonishing 22 percent increase—lifting their combined wealth to $8.2 trillion. ICE’s operations are one element of this war on society, aimed at terrorizing the population and suppressing resistance to exploitation and the destruction of basic social rights.
The oligarchy is not only defending its wealth through dictatorship, it is enriching itself through the machinery of repression. The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has created a multibillion-dollar windfall for major corporations, which now profit directly from ICE’s reign of terror. In the past year alone, companies like Palantir, Deloitte, Amazon and Microsoft have received over $22 billion in contracts with ICE and CBP as it terrorizes the population.
At the same time, the Trump administration is responding to a deepening domestic crisis and mounting political opposition by escalating its criminal actions abroad. This week, Trump threatened war against Iran if it did not accept a list of US ultimatums, declaring he was prepared to strike “with speed and violence.” These threats follow the illegal invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro on January 3.
The escalation of war is not only aimed at asserting US imperialist interests abroad, including preparing for a conflict with China, but will be used to justify the criminalization of dissent at home.
Under these conditions, the Democrats and media talking heads, who are presenting the tactical maneuvering of the Trump administration as a major shift, are peddling complacency and lies.
Minnesota Governor Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Frey are hailing their “productive” phone calls with Trump as the administration is overseeing ongoing raids in Minneapolis, assaulting protests in Texas against the roundup of children and drawing up databases of protesters. The fascist attack on Ilhan Omar on Tuesday, justified and inspired by Trump, was followed by an FBI raid on an election office in Georgia on Wednesday, part of the Trump regime’s efforts to undermine the 2026 elections.
On Thursday, Senate Democrats reached a deal with Trump to keep the government funded. The agreement includes full-year funding for most agencies and a separate continuing resolution to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operating for at least two more weeks while negotiations continue over meaningless “guardrails.”
In plain terms, the Democrats have agreed to keep ICE funded and operational while they work out a deal with the fascist president. At the same time, they voted for a military spending bill that places no limits on Trump’s war-making powers. The Democrats are co-conspirators, not opponents, in the campaign of terror at home and aggression abroad.
In the final analysis, the Democrats stand with Trump in defense of the capitalist system and the wealth of the oligarchs. Their greatest fear is not a military-police dictatorship but a working class movement that escapes their control and threatens the existing concentration of wealth and the organization of society on a capitalist foundation.
There is immense and growing opposition to the Trump administration’s fascistic agenda. But this movement must be armed with a political perspective, a strategy for victory, and new forms of organization rooted in the power of the working class.
It is enormously significant that the demand for a general strike is emerging—not from union leaders, Democratic politicians or any section of the official establishment but from below. Workers, students and progressive layers of the middle class are drawing the critical conclusion that protest alone is not enough and that only the mass, coordinated action spearheaded by the working class can defeat the Trump regime and halt the escalating campaign of state violence.
However, neither January 23 nor January 30 constitute a general strike. A general strike is not a consumer boycott or one-day protest. It is the organized shutdown of production by the working class.
The trade union apparatus is doing everything it can to block this from happening. While some state and local unions have endorsed protests, they have insisted that workers remain on the job, citing “no-strike clauses” in contracts that they themselves negotiated.
Alex Pretti was not only an ICU nurse but a member of AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees) Local 3669. The union apparatus, however, while issuing empty statements of regret, is proposing no strike action or doing anything to mobilize their members in collective action. The United Auto Workers released a brief declaration acknowledging Pretti’s union affiliation. While stating that “the labor movement must not be silent,” it proposed no action by the 400,000 active members of the UAW.
The political function of the well-paid operatives that staff the union apparatus is to maintain the domination of the Democratic Party over the working class and to preempt any development of an independent movement from below.
The Socialist Equality Party proposes the organization of a nationwide general strike with the following demands:
- The removal of ICE agents from Minneapolis and all cities; the disbanding of the organization; and the criminal prosecution of its officials and all agents responsible for murder and other acts of violence.
- The immediate end to the vicious persecution of immigrants living in the United States.
- The immediate release from detention of all immigrants who have been swept up in the ICE dragnet.
- The resignation and prosecution of all members of the Trump administration responsible for the violation of rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.
To fight for these demands, the SEP calls for the building of rank-and-file committees in every factory, depot, warehouse, office, school and hospital. Workers should hold emergency meetings, elect delegates, draw up demands and link together across industries and regions.
These committees must coordinate mass action, defend those under attack and lay the foundations for a general strike, that is, the complete shutdown of economic activity. This cannot be limited to Minneapolis. Trump’s conspiracy for dictatorship is national, and the response of the working class must extend across the entire country.
Opposition to dictatorship must be connected to the growing movement of the working class against inequality and exploitation. More than 46,000 nurses are on strike across New York City, California and Hawaii in opposition to intolerable conditions and the subordination of healthcare to corporate profit. At the same time, the national contract covering 30,000 oil refinery workers, who are responsible for two-thirds of the country’s refining capacity, is set to expire on Sunday, February 1.
The SEP and the International Committee of the Fourth International initiated the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) to provide the structure and leadership, not only in the United States but throughout the world. The IWA-RFC fights to connect opposition to fascism and dictatorship with the struggle of the working class against war, job cuts, inflation and social misery.
A general strike, however, is not a panacea. If its aim is merely to pressure the Trump administration or appeal to sections of the state, it will end in defeat. The central issue is not how to “influence” the existing institutions but who holds power and in whose interests society is organized.
The Socialist Equality Party is fighting to build a revolutionary leadership in the working class. The fight against the Trump dictatorship is the fight against the oligarchy, and the fight against the oligarchy is the fight against capitalism. The SEP is the US section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), which is leading a global movement to unite workers across all countries in a common fight to overthrow capitalism and establish workers’ power and
socialism.
We also call on students and young people to join the fight against dictatorship. There have already been walkouts at hundreds of schools and college campuses, which should be expanded. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), the student and youth movement of the SEP, urges students to go to the factories and warehouses. Build a unified movement of students and workers against repression, inequality and war.
To stop the march to authoritarian rule, repression and war, the working class must intervene as an independent political force. This requires the development of a mass socialist movement, rooted in the fight for equality and the democratic control of society by the vast majority. The struggle we face is not only against a criminal government but against the capitalist system that gave rise to it.
2. Artists voice growing opposition to Trump, call for “general strike” and “revolution”
There is growing and widespread popular opposition to the Trump administration and the entire political establishment, including the Democratic Party, and to the violent attacks on immigrants and protesters, as well as the fascistic policies of war and endless aggression. A deep-going radicalization is under way.
The upsurge of resistance, unlike anything that has been seen in decades, is beginning to find many important expressions, including among classical and popular musicians, actors, writers and even professional athletes.
Recent signs of outrage and disgust are coming from:
Award winning actor Edward Norton
Actress Olivia Wilde
Veteran performer Glenn Close
Popular television performer Pedro Pascal
Popular actress-singer Ariana Grande
Emmy-award-winning Hannah Einbinder
Singer Billie Eilish
Actress-comedian Patti Harrison
Actress Eva Longoria
Veteran actor Giancarlo Esposito
Actress Molly Ringwald
Veteran singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen
Singer Lady Gaga
Bright Eyes' frontman Conor Oberst
Singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash
Music legend Lucinda Williams
Composer Philip Glass
Famed soprano Renée Fleming
Popular novelist Stephen King
Veteran musician Neil Young
Indiana Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton
San Antonio Spurs' Victor Wembanyama
WNBA's Minnesota Lynx's DiJonai Carrington
Unrivaled WNBA star Breanna Stewart
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr
Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch
Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy
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Following reports that an ICE unit would provide security at the 2026 Winter Olympics, Milan’s Mayor Giuseppe Sala called the agency a “militia that kills” and declared its agents were “not welcome” in the northern Italian city.
3. Trump administration threatens new war against Iran
The Trump administration is preparing to launch a new and catastrophic war against Iran. “A massive Armada is heading to Iran,” Trump declared Wednesday on Truth Social. “Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.” Citing the June 2025 US-Israeli bombing campaign that killed over a thousand Iranians, he threatened, in the language of a Mafia boss, “The next attack will be far worse!”
The deployment of a massive armada to the Persian Gulf, combined with these public threats, makes clear that the course has already been set toward major military action.
The scale of the buildup is immense. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by three guided-missile destroyers, entered Middle Eastern waters this week after transiting from the South China Sea. The US now has 40,000 troops in the region, five air wings across five countries, F-35 and F-18 fighter jets, Tomahawk missiles and additional Thaad and Patriot air defense systems. Two destroyers have been positioned near the Strait of Hormuz.
On Thursday evening, the New York Times published an article, co-authored by five of the most prominent reporters covering the White House, Pentagon and foreign policy establishment, outlining Trump’s “new military options against Iran.” The Times, speaking for the Democratic Party, is actively involved in legitimizing and preparing public opinion for a criminal act of aggression.
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To avoid military attack, the Trump administration is demanding that Iran give up civilian nuclear technology that it is legally entitled to possess, hand over all of its uranium to the United States, abandon its regional allies and eliminate ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel—ensuring that Israel can attack at will without fear of retaliation. Under conditions in which decades of sanctions have already devastated the Iranian economy, acceptance of these terms would reduce Iran to a vassal state of the United States.
These “demands” recall those made by Austria-Hungary on Serbia in July 1914, ahead of the outbreak of World War I, crafted not to be accepted but to serve as pretext for a war already decided upon.
The socialist evaluation of this war is not determined by the Iranian government’s policies—however repressive they are—but by the historic character of both countries. The United States is the most powerful imperialist country in the world. Iran is a historically oppressed nation, subjected to a US-sponsored coup in 1953 that installed a tyrannical regime and decades of punishing economic sanctions and military threats. This is an imperialist war against a former colonial country, the purpose of which is to enslave the Iranian people.
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The protests in Iran caused by US-led sanctions have been seized upon by Washington and its allies as justification for regime change, while they cynically promote the Shah’s son, US-based Reza Pahlavi, as the potential leader of a “new Iran.” Claims that 30,000 protesters were killed have been promoted by Western governments and media, despite the highly dubious sourcing of these figures. The same imperialist powers denouncing Iran for its crackdown are allied with Saudi Arabia—which beheads political dissidents—and Israel, which has carried out a genocide in Gaza. The hypocrisy is obvious.
For its part, the bourgeois-clerical regime in Tehran, hostile to the democratic and social aspirations of the impoverished mass of the population, still hopes to strike a deal with imperialism to regain access to the capitalist world market and global investment.
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A new war would not remain confined to Iran. It would engulf the entire Middle East. Iran could respond by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a global economic crisis. How would China respond to such an act of aggression, which is clearly directed at it as well? To advance its predatory global agenda, American imperialism is setting the region ablaze and potentially igniting a global conflagration.
Beyond the deepening economic crisis, the Trump administration is confronting a growing social and political crisis at home. It faces mass opposition to its efforts to establish a police state in the United States. Millions have been shocked and galvanized into political action by the killings of Renée Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti on January 24 in Minneapolis.
The administration sees yet another war as a way out of these mounting crises. It intends to use war not only to pursue its imperialist aims abroad but also as a pretext for intensifying repression at home—branding Trump’s domestic political opponents as “terrorists.”
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The Democrats’ central concern is to preserve “stability” at home as the United States prepares to launch a new imperialist war. The entire political establishment supports American imperialism and its war aims. The working class cannot rely on the United Nations, international courts or any institution of the capitalist state to defend its interests.
The only viable basis for opposing war is the independent mobilization of workers in every country against the capitalist system and the financial oligarchy that it serves.
The struggle against war must be inseparably connected to the fight to defend democratic rights, jobs and living standards. The same administration preparing a criminal war abroad is carrying out mass arrests at home, gutting social programs and overseeing mass layoffs. War, dictatorship, austerity and repression are all expressions of the response of the financial oligarchy to the deepening crisis of capitalism.
A war against Iran would be a crime not only against the Iranian people but also against the American working class. The fight against imperialist war must be advanced through the mobilization of workers in every country in a common struggle to overthrow the capitalist system and establish socialism on a world scale.
A statement issued by the New York Healthcare Workers Rank-and-File Committee:
Three weeks on, the strike by 15,000 New York City nurses stands at a crossroads.
On the one hand, the strike has won immense public support and exposed the intolerable conditions produced by the subordination of healthcare to profit. At the same time, the open-ended strike by tens of thousands of Kaiser healthcare workers underscores that nurses’ demands are national in scope and that the objective basis exists for a unified, nationwide movement of healthcare workers. Broader opposition to repression and austerity is also emerging, including mass protests following the murder of Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents.
On the other hand, the bureaucracy of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) is preparing to shut down the strike on management’s terms. The union leadership has already retreated from its own stated demands, reducing the call for a 30 percent wage increase over 3 years to 18 percent, without any vote or explanation to the membership. NYSNA also claims it has reached a deal that would maintain healthcare “at current levels.”
Even if this were true, it would be totally inadequate. But it is not true. New York-Presbyterian has said the agreement creates a new committee which will examine “potential savings and programs” in the future. In other words, the cuts will be worked out after nurses have ratified the contract and no longer have any contractual say in it.
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For three weeks, NYSNA has tried to soften up nurses by leaving them on the picket line without strike pay; many do not even know that this is normal procedure during a strike. Meanwhile, the union is sitting on over $100 million in assets, paid for by nurses’ dues.
The strike can be won, but only if healthcare workers take matters into their own hands. That is why we are taking the step of founding the New York Healthcare Workers Rank-and-File Committee. This is an organization controlled by workers ourselves, independent of the union apparatus, to assert democratic control over bargaining and strike strategy.
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Genuine rank-and-file control means that workers themselves set binding demands, retain the right to override any proposal that violates those demands, and have the authority to halt negotiations and expand the strike when concessions are being prepared.
Our demands echo those of healthcare workers the world over. We are fighting for safe nurse-to-patient ratios, healthcare benefits, wage increases that allow us to afford the city we serve and protection against workplace violence.
From the beginning, management has responded aggressively. They have called us “reckless” and our demands “extreme.” Mount Sinai went as far as to fire three labor and delivery nurses on the eve of the strike. Hospitals have refused to concede anything on staffing and safety, while continuing to pour resources into executive compensation, real-estate speculation and financial operations.
In contrast, among workers there is immense support for the strike. At hospital after hospital, the consequences of running healthcare for profit are visible: dangerous staffing ratios, patients boarded in hallways, exhausted nurses working double shifts, canceled breaks and chronically deferred maintenance and supplies. These conditions endanger patients and impose unbearable workloads for caregivers.
The expansion of the strike is not a slogan; it is a practical necessity. If nurses at the hospitals where walkouts were canceled join the picket lines, if resident physicians, med-techs and other hospital workers refuse to cross, and if workers in other industries mobilize in solidarity, the balance of forces can be decisively shifted.
The Kaiser strike on the west coast confirms that the issues confronting New York nurses are shared by healthcare workers nationally, and that a unified struggle is both necessary and possible.
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Our call to action:
Expand the strike in New York now. Organize to bring out nurses at the nonprofit hospitals where strike notices were rescinded; coordinate stoppages and joint pickets to disrupt hospital operations until demands are met.
Hold an emergency meeting to agree upon contractual red lines, including specific, enforceable staffing ratios, wage requirements and other terms without which no agreement can be made.
Bring the full texts of all agreed upon terms for immediate study and debate among the membership. No end to the strike without a full tentative agreement and a democratic vote.
Provide immediate strike pay and other funding to ensure that workers can hold out until our demands are met.
Organize roving pickets to reach out to transit, logistics, education, public-sector and other healthcare workers to prepare coordinated, cross-industry actions.
Popularize and build for a sustained, nationwide mobilization, including an open-ended general strike, to defeat the Trump administration’s occupations and systematic violations of the Constitution.
This is a moment for decisive collective action. We urge you to join us in building rank-and-file committees now, and to organize, prepare and strike together in a movement that can win safe staffing, defend democratic rights, and challenge the profit system that ruins healthcare.
5. Kaiser workers join call for national strike, while union holds them back
More than 31,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers in California and Hawaii finished their fourth day on strike Thursday, which is a major part of expanding working class struggle across the United States.
At issue are wages, staffing levels, pensions and patient safety. These demands, however, raise the issue of inequality and the domination of American society by a tiny oligarchy, issues with which workers are beginning to grapple with. The walkout coincides with the ongoing strike by 15,000 nurses in New York as well as growing support for a general strike in response to the murder of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis.
The Kaiser strike involves a broad cross-section of healthcare workers, including registered nurses, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, rehabilitation therapists, physician assistants and midwives. These workers are employed by one of the largest healthcare corporations in the country, operating across multiple states and serving millions of patients.
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While workers are beginning to draw political conclusions, the UNAC/UHCP officialdom has sought to confine the struggle within narrow contractual limits. On multiple picket lines, WSWS correspondents were told to leave, and union officials shut down discussions of political implications. “We’re trying to separate the economic issues from other stuff,” one official said.
But such a separation is impossible. The struggle for safe staffing, living wages and retirement security collides directly with corporate power and state repression.
The growing support for a national general strike reflects an emerging understanding that workers face not only Kaiser Permanente or individual employers but an entire political and economic system. The expansion of rank-and-file committees, independent of the union bureaucracy and oriented toward unifying struggles nationally and internationally, is the decisive task posed by this strike. Now, more than ever, the struggle raises directly the question of political power itself.
6. New Zealand public health system in deepening crisis
After years of underfunding, staff shortages and expanding waiting lists —conditions worsened by both Labour and National governments and enabled by the trade union bureaucracy—New Zealand’s public health system is in a deepening crisis.
The desperate situation facing patients and staff has been highlighted by media reports over the holiday period. Witnesses at Wellington Hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) in the capital city told Stuff of “chaos” after the ward went into its most critical “code red” status four times over five hours on the night of January 20. A code red is instigated when patient demand outstrips available staff and beds.
One person said she saw 7 to 9 patients waiting in beds in corridors while hearing staff tell people there was “no space for anyone extra.” “Patients were yelling, ‘oh, I’ve been here for eight hours now, this is not fair,’” she said. A nurse told Stuff that 74 patients were still in ED the next morning with 41 not seen by staff. “We are always in a code red situation, we are never out of it really. As nurses we just learn to get on and do the job, we are regularly abused,” she said.
According to a recent Official Information Act release Wellington’s ED recorded 575 code reds, averaging nearly twice a day, between January and October last year. Only about half the patients were treated and moved on within six hours, the government’s supposed target. More than 3,200 patients left without being treated—around 10 people a day.
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The crisis is the product of decades of austerity measures under successive governments, including Labour. Thousands of nurses, doctors, ambulance personnel and lab technicians have over recent years taken industrial action over low pay, understaffing and deplorable conditions for both staff and patients.
Their struggles have repeatedly been sold out by the trade union bureaucracy. Following a mass strike by more than 100,000 healthcare workers and teachers on October 23 last year, the Public Service Association, the NZ Nurses Organisation and Association of Salaried Medical Specialists are all seeking to negotiate and impose deals that will not keep up with the cost of living nor address the staffing crisis.
The government is exploiting the crisis to systematically expand the private sector. Last June, Brown directed HNZ to establish long-term, 10-year contracts with for-profit private providers to increase capacity for elective surgeries. Over 10,000 surgeries were outsourced in 2025. The strategy includes $50 million to boost procedures for conditions like hip replacements and cataracts, with a goal of 21,000 extra operations. The scheme would “provide clear investment signals” to the private sector, Brown said.
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The defense of public health is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism, which subordinates social needs to profit. A decent, properly resourced health system can only be achieved on the basis of a socialist program. All private contracts or transfers to profit operators should be cancelled. The wealth hoarded by the billionaires must be expropriated and military spending must be ended in order to redirect funding to hospitals, schools and other essential services.
The health crisis is above all a global issue: Workers in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the US and elsewhere face identical cuts and privatizations. Health workers and their supporters need to establish rank and file committees—independent and opposed to the pro-capitalist unions—to connect internationally, coordinate strikes and oppose the machinations of capitalist governments and the entire private health industry.
7. An assessment of the ongoing toll of the COVID-19 pandemic
As the United States enters the seventh year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s public health infrastructure has been systematically dismantled through a deliberate campaign of ideological negligence. One year into the tenure of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this dismantling has taken concrete form in the removal of scientific oversight and the erosion of evidence-based policy, most notably through the dismissal of the entire Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The replacement of public health expertise with anti-vaccine ideology has severed the United States from established global safety standards and created conditions for the resurgence of preventable infectious diseases.
The consequences of these policy decisions are already measurable across the full spectrum of infectious disease. The United States is amid its twelfth major COVID-19 wave, with transmission largely unchecked as the cumulative infection baseline approaches five infections per person.
According to estimates from the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC), the United States experienced approximately 260 million SARS-CoV-2 infections in 2025, equivalent to 76 percent of the population. This unchecked transmission generated between 13-52 million new Long COVID cases and produced a level of excess mortality comparable to the nation’s leading causes of death.
In response to inquiries from the World Socialist Web Site, Michael Hoerger, who directs modeling for the PMC, estimated that COVID-19 was responsible for 81,000 to 175,000 excess deaths in 2025 alone, based on conservative assumptions that incorporate wastewater surveillance, actuarial projections and known undercounting of COVID-related mortality. Even at the lower bound, this death toll rivals or exceeds the annual mortality burden of chronic kidney disease (53,597), influenza and pneumonia (51,537) and diabetes (103,294), effectively placing COVID-19 as the seventh or eighth leading cause of death in the United States.
This ongoing, immense scale of death is now entirely covered up by the powers-that-be, with an ever-growing disparity between reality and public perception. During the 2025–26 influenza season, influenza has caused approximately 10,000 deaths through mid-January, drawing sustained media and public attention. By contrast, COVID-19’s annualized excess mortality surpasses that figure more than tenfold, demonstrating how the normalization of the pandemic has rendered socially acceptable a level of disease and death far greater than that posed by recognized endemic threats. This silence reflects the collapse of public health strategy, which has allowed the virus to circulate freely, disable millions and sustain a permanently elevated baseline of mortality.
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While COVID-19 mortality continues to eclipse that of influenza, with annual excess deaths exceeding flu-related deaths by more than tenfold, the 2025–26 influenza season has nonetheless imposed a severe and concurrent strain on the US health care system. Driven by the rapid emergence of the influenza A(H3N2) subclade K variant, which accounts for more than 90 percent of characterized viruses, the season has produced an estimated 18 million to 19 million illnesses and up to 250,000 hospitalizations through mid-January 2026.
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The erosion of public health authority has produced a historic reversal in the control of vaccine-preventable disease, most clearly demonstrated by the resurgence of measles. In 2025, the United States recorded 2,255 measles cases, the highest annual total since 1992. Transmission has accelerated further in the new year, with 607 confirmed cases so far in January 2026 alone.
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A similar collapse is unfolding with pertussis, or whooping cough, a highly contagious bacterial infection that poses a particular danger to infants. After reaching a decade-high level in 2024, pertussis cases remained elevated in 2025, with 28,783 reported infections and at least 13 deaths, primarily among unvaccinated infants under one year of age. This resurgence closely tracks declining immunization coverage. Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis (DTaP) vaccination rates have fallen in more than 75 percent of US counties, leaving some states, including Oregon, facing levels of disease not seen since the 1950s.
The breakdown of coordinated disease prevention extends beyond childhood vaccination. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) activity remains elevated, particularly in the South and Mid-Atlantic, threatening infants and older adults despite the availability of immunization products. At the same time, norovirus outbreaks are rising, with wastewater surveillance showing high viral levels across the Midwest and Northeast, driving widespread gastrointestinal illness and disrupting schools and health care facilities.
Together, these overlapping outbreaks expose a public health system that has been deliberately weakened. The dismantling of vaccination policy and disease surveillance has transformed preventable infections into recurring crises, replacing population-level protection with acceptance of mass illness as routine.
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Studies published in Nature Immunology in January 2026 show that Long COVID is driven by persistent immune activation and marked T-cell exhaustion, including the chronic upregulation of inflammatory pathways and the depletion of regulatory immune cells critical for antiviral defense. These findings demonstrate that Long COVID is not a transient post-viral condition but a lasting alteration of immune function. The data further establishes a dose-dependent risk: Individuals with three or more SARS-CoV-2 infections face a three- to ten-fold increase in the likelihood of developing Long COVID. With the average American now having experienced nearly five infections, the population is sustaining cumulative immune injury that undermines its ability to respond effectively to future pathogens.
This immune dysfunction is already manifesting through the reemergence of opportunistic and latent infections, which serve as potential biological indicators of widespread immunocompromise. Clinical reports and cohort studies document the reactivation of latent tuberculosis and Epstein-Barr virus following COVID-19, linked to impaired white blood cell function that normally suppresses these infections.
A similar pattern is evident in the rising incidence of herpes zoster, or shingles, long recognized as a marker of declining immune surveillance. Patients who develop shingles after COVID-19 face sharply increased risks of serious secondary infections, major adverse kidney events and autoimmune conditions such as systemic lupus erythematosus. COVID-19 pneumonia has also been shown to heighten susceptibility to severe secondary bacterial infections, creating a synergistic effect that significantly increases mortality risk. Together, these findings confirm that repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections are dismantling immune defenses that once protected the population from long-controlled diseases.
This biological erosion of immunity is now colliding with the deliberate dismantling of preventive health policy, producing conditions in which heightened vulnerability is met not with protection, but with continued exposure.
Following Kennedy’s dismissal of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the January 2026 overhaul of the childhood immunization schedule, which reduced universally recommended vaccines from 17 to 11, pediatric protection has sharply deteriorated. As of January 10, 2026, only 7.6 percent of children were up-to-date on the current COVID-19 vaccine, leaving the vast majority of the pediatric population exposed during an active wave of transmission. Influenza vaccination, which historically reached 55-65 percent of children, is now threatened by its reclassification under “shared clinical decision-making,” despite evidence that 90 percent of the 44 pediatric influenza deaths reported this season occurred in unvaccinated children.
The erosion extends to core childhood immunity. MMR coverage has fallen to 92.5 percent, below the herd immunity threshold in 39 states, while DTaP coverage has declined in more than 75 percent of US counties. These declines are directly driving the resurgence of measles and pertussis, reversing decades of public health progress and exposing children to diseases long understood to be preventable through universal vaccination.
Beyond the immediate human toll, the economic consequences of mass infection and disability are profound. Modeling by Bartsch and colleagues estimates that a single case of Long COVID generates annual costs ranging from $5,084 to $11,646, with more than 90 percent of the burden arising from lost productivity due to absenteeism and workforce exit. Even conservative estimates place the current societal cost of Long COVID at $2.01 to $6.56 billion per year, a figure that is certain to rise as cumulative infections increase. At current transmission levels, the economic burden of chronic post-COVID illness is approaching that of major diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, representing a permanent and growing drag on the US economy.
8. Democrats reach deal with White House to keep immigration Gestapo funded
On Thursday, Senate Democrats reached a deal with the Trump White House to extend funding for the Department of Homeland Security—which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—for two weeks as the two parties haggle over cosmetic changes to federal immigration policy that will do nothing to abolish the agencies or end their illegal and murderous operations.
The agreement underscores that the Democratic Party will do nothing to stop the growth of the immigration Gestapo or oppose the Trump administration in any meaningful sense of the word. In addition to ensuring funding for the same agencies responsible for the murders of Renée Nicole Good and Alex F. Pretti, the deal clears the way for the passage of five other major 2026 spending bills, including funding for the Department of Defense, Labor-Health and Human Services-Education, Transportation-Housing and Urban Development, and the State Department.
Crucially, the bill funds the Department of Defense through September 30. This is under conditions in which the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is steaming toward Iran less than four weeks after the US military illegally kidnapped Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The Democrats, a party of Wall Street and war, will do nothing to stop Trump’s attacks on workers in America or anywhere else, because they represent the same class interests as Trump and the Republicans.
The current proposal strips the existing DHS funding bill, which seven Democrats in the House voted in support of last week, and replaces it with a continuing resolution that will keep ICE and CBP funded and functioning under their current budgets for the immediate future. A temporary shutdown is still likely, as the House will have to return and vote, but the chamber is currently in recess until Monday.
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Asked Thursday evening by a reporter at a Washington, DC, screening for the Amazon-funded Melania “film” if he was considering scaling back immigration operations in Minnesota, Trump replied, “No, no, not at all.”
Under conditions in which a majority of self-identified Democrats and a plurality of independents support abolishing ICE, the short-term deal agreed to by the Democrats does not abolish or defund ICE or CBP. Senate Democrats are instead proposing a number of meaningless “guardrails” that will do nothing to end their criminal operations. Proposals floated by Democrats include requiring ICE and CBP agents to wear body cameras and be unmasked.
Prior to the murder of Pretti last Saturday, Democrats in the Senate were not planning even token opposition to funding DHS. However, the mass protest in Minnesota last Friday, and growing momentum for a nationwide general strike to abolish the immigration police and bring the murderers to justice, has forced the Democrats to posture as opponents of the immigration police.
Dozens of FBI agents entered the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in southwest Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday, seizing large quantities of ballots, election records and other documents from the 2020 general election.
A warrant issued by US Magistrate Judge Catherine M. Salinas claimed this material “constitutes evidence of the commission of a criminal offense” and had been “used as the means of committing a criminal offense.” The two offenses alleged in the warrant are failure to retain records for the required time and intimidating voters or procuring false votes or false voter registrations.
These are long-disproven allegations made by Trump and his coterie of fascist plotters between the November 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, in which several thousand thugs, summoned to Washington by Trump, stormed the Capitol and temporarily blocked Congress from certifying Trump’s election defeat.
The flimsy character of the claims of ballot-rigging in Georgia—and in Fulton County and Atlanta in particular—was demonstrated in the civil suit filed by two election workers against Trump’s top election lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, which ended in a verdict awarding the election workers $148 million for slander and persecution.
The FBI raid comes less than a week after Trump told an international audience of billionaires and government officials in Davos, Switzerland that it was now known to all that the 2020 election had been stolen and that he expected arrests shortly for this supposed crime.
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The raid was carried out without giving either Fulton County officials or the state’s top elections officer, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, any advance notice. It was Raffensperger who received the notorious phone call from Trump on January 2, 2021, in which the US president demanded that he “find” the exact number of votes required to overcome Democrat Joe Biden’s lead in the state.
Raffensperger’s refusal to bow to this pressure and falsify results made Trump his bitter enemy, and there are obvious personal political motives for the timing of the raid. Raffensperger is seeking the Republican nomination for governor in the upcoming May 19 primary, against Lt. Governor Burt Jones, a Trump-backed loyalist who has embraced the claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
The broader purpose is also clear: Trump has begun the process of rigging the 2026 elections by demanding voter rolls from numerous states to target Republican efforts at voter intimidation, such as concocting bogus cases of previous or current vote fraud. One of the demands made by Attorney General Pam Bondi, in an extraordinary letter last week to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, was that the state hand over its voter rolls to the Department of Justice in return for a reduction in the number of federal agents terrorizing Minneapolis.
The entire conduct of the Fulton County raid stinks of dictatorship. Only days before the raid, the FBI special agent in charge of the Atlanta field office, Paul W. Brown, was suddenly removed, according to the Associated Press. Instead, FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey was at the site of the raid, according to a report by the pro-Trump NewsNation network.
The Justice Department official who obtained the warrant is not the US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, but Thomas Albus, appointed by Trump as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. This St. Louis-based official received a secret, special appointment by Attorney General Bondi to investigate “election integrity” cases nationwide, which allows him to convene grand juries and obtain warrants in all 94 US attorney districts. The selection of Albus for this role only become public when his signature appeared on the Atlanta warrant.
Even more irregular and suspicious is the presence of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard during the raid. The former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii holds a position in the Trump cabinet which gives her responsibility to oversee the work of 18 agencies in the vast US intelligence apparatus, including the FBI. But previous holders of the position have focused on overseas operations, and have never accompanied FBI agents in a domestic policing activity.
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Gabbard, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Bondi will all appear Friday at the winter meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State. This assembly, bringing both Democratic and Republican state election officials to Washington, may well give another indication of the ongoing efforts by the Trump administration to rig—or even suspend—the 2026 elections.
10. What UK Labour’s leadership crisis means for the working class
The UK’s Andy Burnham saga has shone a light on plans in the ruling class for a more aggressive assault on social and democratic rights. It should serve as a warning to workers of the dangers they confront, and the fact that not a single politician in Parliament offers a solution.
Burnham, currently the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, was set to run for a seat as an MP after Andrew Gwynne resigned his Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton, triggering a by-election.
But Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) voted 8-1 to block what was widely understood as the first step of a party leadership challenge against Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Labour Party rules mean an elected mayor must seek NEC permission to stand down and become a parliamentary candidate.
With Burnham by some margin the least unpopular senior Labour figure, and Labour’s polling figures still dire, this prompted a host of angry anonymous briefings from within the party. Even Starmer’s most dedicated supporters admitted it looked desperately weak.
The tone in the bourgeois press is mournful, with the Financial Times best summing up the problem for the British ruling class: a prime minister failing to put through their agenda but who they are nervous about replacing.
Its editors wrote Wednesday of “Labour’s destructive infighting”, that “Since Starmer seems unable to hold Labour’s majority together whenever he tries to drive through difficult but necessary policies, he can arguably no longer fulfill a prime minister’s core function.” But, they added, “Unless they are certain they have a replacement capable of rebuilding Labour’s majority around a credible program,” Labour’s MPs “should think hard about what is best for them and even more so for the country”.
By “difficult but necessary policies”, the FT means cuts to social spending and a huge increase in the military budget.
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Increasingly despairing of Starmer, the ruling class is searching for a more competent right-wing successor, installed under conditions which keep popular sentiment excluded, Britain’s international investors happy and its imperialist interests secure. Alluding to the latter, an opponent of Burnham told Politics Home of his leadership challenge, “Given the international context Keir is dealing with, it’s nearly criminal.”
The FT editorial warns that “redemption is unlikely to lie in months of political infighting culminating in a rebellion that pulls the party leftward,” adding, “Any successful challenge is likely to produce a more leftwing leader, and unsettle financial markets. At best that will limit Labour’s room for maneuver; at worst, it could lead to bond market turbulence.”
This only goes to show how far to the right the agenda of the ruling class is, because not one of the candidates vying to replace Starmer represents anything like a step to the left.
Burnham spent his early years as a Labour MP as a committed Blairite, repeatedly backing the invasion of Iraq and blocking any investigation of the war crime. A health minister from 2006 and made health secretary in 2009, he helped to push through privatization measures in the National Health Service.
With some sense of the way the wind was blowing, he ran as a “soft left” candidate against Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 Labour leadership election—in which the acknowledged Blairite candidate Liz Kendall received 4.5 percent.
Burnham was still sure to let it be known that he would resign from any cabinet which questioned British membership of NATO. Around the same time, he abstained from a parliamentary vote on massive Tory welfare cuts, having told business leaders Labour needed to counter the perception that the party gave an “easy ride” to benefits recipients.
A longtime supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, Burnham has overseen multiple attacks on the right to protest in defense of the Palestinians in Manchester.
His time as mayor has otherwise been spent enriching property developers, handing them £1 billion in loans since 2015, and attacking the conditions of the city’s transport workers. Thousands have carried out strike action against his Bee Network project.
Burnham’s more recent criticisms of Starmer’s subservience to the bond markets are an entirely cynical attempt to win support for a leadership bid, and will be dispensed with immediately afterwards. They are also aimed, under conditions in which Labour is polling at less than 20 percent, at paving the way for an alliance with the Greens or Your Party.
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The reality is that Starmer’s most likely replacement is the Blairite attack dog and favorite of the private healthcare lobby Wes Streeting, currently the health secretary. According to the Times, his supporters “believe he would still command the support of up to 200 Labour MPs in a leadership contest” out of 404.
An outside shot is the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, currently leading an extraordinary crackdown on asylum seekers and a strengthening of police powers.
Labour’s nominal “left” is so prostrate that many of its members are not even particularly wedded to the facade of a “shift to the left” Burnham would offer. Writing of their preference for the Manchester Mayor, Guardian political editor Jessica Elgot nonetheless adds that while the “majority still will not countenance backing Streeting… others, mindful of the need to beat [Reform UK leader] Nigel Farage and hold together the party’s progressive coalition, have begun to warm to the health secretary as a possibility…
“And there are a few more—female ministers in particular—who say their preferred candidate is Shabana Mahmood, despite her hardline immigration reforms.”
Whichever candidate ultimately replaces Starmer as Labour leader, their task will be to accelerate the party’s right-wing program, with Farage’s Reform UK and Kemi Badenoch’s Tories lined up as a replacement when necessary.
The real left-wing challenge the capitalist press fears is a movement outside Parliament in the working class.
From a statement issued by the the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (Australia):
Young people today are living in revolutionary times. Capitalism is hurtling humanity into the abyss, and we do not have unlimited time. The crisis will not be resolved through protest alone, or moral appeals to the powers that be. Instead, youth need to dedicate themselves to building a revolutionary movement of the working class.
That means going to the factories, warehouses, logistics hubs, universities, and fighting for workers to build their own organizations of struggle, rank-and-file committees, completely independent of all capitalist parties and their supporters in the union bureaucracies.
Such a movement must be based on a socialist program, aimed at expropriating the enormous fortunes held by billionaires, banks, and corporations and placing them under the democratic control of workers internationally.
Above all, youth who are serious in taking up this fight must educate themselves on the historical struggles of the working class in the 20th century. Socialism AI, a powerful new chatbot launched by the world Trotskyist movement, of which the IYSSE is the youth wing, must be adopted as a tool for this education and for the building of socialist consciousness among workers.
We appeal to all young people to get involved in the fight against world war and fascism today. Take your part in the struggle for socialism and join the IYSSE!
12. First US execution of 2026: Charles Thompson dies by lethal injection in Texas
Texas carried out the first US execution of 2026 on January 28. Charles Victor Thompson, 55, died by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, marking another round in the state government’s endless pursuit of capital punishment.
Texas has executed 81 prisoners under Governor Greg Abbott (2015-2026). His two predecessors approved even more state killings: 152 under George W. Bush (1994-2000), and 279 under Rick Perry (2000-2015). Only two death sentences were commuted during this period.
Thompson was condemned to die for the April 1998 double murder of his ex-girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, 39, and her new partner, Darren Keith Cain, 30. Following an argument at Hayslip’s Houston-area apartment, Thompson returned hours later and shot both victims. Cain died at the scene, while Hayslip succumbed to her injuries in a hospital one week later.
Before the lethal dose of pentobarbital was administered, Thompson issued a final statement seeking forgiveness: “I hope the victim’s family ... can find forgiveness in their heart and that you can begin to heal and move past this.” He added a critique of the judicial process, stating, “There are no winners in this situation, it creates more victims and traumatizes more people 28 years later.” Witnesses noted that as the injection took effect, Thompson gasped loudly and snored before all movement ceased. He was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m., 22 minutes after the procedure began.
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Several high-profile appeals loom over Texas’ death row:
- Robert Roberson was convicted of killing his daughter Nikki in 2002. Just days before his scheduled execution on October 16, 2025, he was granted a stay by the TCCA, sending his case back to the district court for further review. Prosecutors argued his guilt based on the now-discredited theory of “shaken baby syndrome.” New evidence suggests Nikki died of natural causes, including pneumonia. Advocates also point to Roberson’s autism, noting that his “flat affect” at the hospital was misinterpreted by detectives as a sign of callousness rather than a symptom of his neurodivergence.
- Brittany Holberg was sentenced to death in 1998 for the 1996 killing of A.B. Towery, 80, in Amarillo. Her capital conviction was overturned by a federal appeals court in March 2025. The court cited the prosecution’s failure to disclose that a key witness, Holberg’s cellmate, was a paid informant for the police. The full US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held oral arguments on January 21, 2026, but has yet to issue a ruling.
- David Wood was convicted in 1992 for killing six young women in El Paso, between May and August 1987, and sentenced to death in 1993. Prosecutors relied on circumstantial evidence, including testimony from jailhouse informants. Wood has maintained his innocence, citing exculpatory DNA (excluding him from male traces on one of the victims). Wood’s execution was stayed in 2025 by the TCCA, and his case was returned to the trial court.
2025 saw 47 executions nationwide, the highest number since 2009. While Texas has historically led the country in executions since 1976, Florida carried out the most in 2025 with 19, followed by Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas with five each.
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There are 18 executions scheduled across the US so far in 2026. Ohio holds the highest number of upcoming dates (27 through 2029), largely due to a backlog and repeated reprieves granted as the state debates execution protocols and seeks supplies for lethal injections. In Texas, the number of scheduled executions has dropped to a historical low, with only four currently on the calendar for 2026, reflecting a broader decline in new death sentences.
The machinery of death continues to evolve as states seek alternatives to problematic lethal injection protocols. Of the 47 executions in 2025, 39 were by lethal injection, five by nitrogen hypoxia, and three by firing squad. Nitrogen hypoxia, used in Alabama, involves suffocating the prisoner with nitrogen gas and has been denounced by international experts as “cruel and inhumane.” Inmates executed by firing squad in South Carolina have suffered prolonged deaths as the shooters missed their precise target.
13. United States: NTSB findings: 2025 Potomac midair disaster was “entirely preventable”
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) held a hearing Tuesday into the midair collision over the Potomac River that killed 67 people in Washington D.C. one year ago. During her presentation, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy stated that the disaster was “entirely preventable” and characterized the attempt by the US military to brush aside the agency’s findings as “shameful.”
The NTSB’s “probable cause” finding centers on three interconnected failures. First, the Black Hawk flew significantly higher than it should have on a helicopter route that already allowed dangerously small vertical separation from airliners descending to Runway 33, a situation worsened by erroneous Army altitude instrumentation. Second, the Army had deactivated a key location‑indicating system that would have improved the helicopter’s visibility on radar and to other aircraft. Third, air traffic control failed to issue a safety alert even as a conflict developed between the two aircraft.
Contributing factors identified by investigators include chronic warnings from controllers and prior near‑midair events that were ignored by the FAA, the combination of local and helicopter‑control positions in the tower at a time of rising traffic, the use of night‑vision goggles that impaired the helicopter crew’s situational awareness and systemic shortcomings in collision‑avoidance protections at low altitude on approach to Reagan National.
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FAA records show that controllers had raised alarms for years about the mounting risk of a midair collision, citing a rising number of near‑midair incidents and close‑proximity events around the airport. One NTSB analysis found dozens of near‑misses involving helicopters and fixed‑wing traffic in the three years leading up to the crash and tens of thousands of recorded close‑proximity events in the same area.
Far from taking decisive action, the FAA left the route structure in place and allowed the Army to continue its night‑vision evaluation flights directly in the path of heavily loaded commercial approaches to the nation’s capital.
NTSB specialists also documented the antiquated and faulty nature of the Army’s equipment. Testing of altimeters from other Black Hawks belonging to the same unit as the accident helicopter revealed significant inaccuracies, meaning that crews could be hundreds of feet off their prescribed altitude without realizing it.
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The hearing also revealed the intolerable stress placed on air traffic controllers in a chronically understaffed tower. At the time of the crash, local control and the position responsible for monitoring helicopter traffic had been combined, even as traffic levels were increasing in the minutes before impact.
The NTSB found that the local controller recognized that the courses of the helicopter and regional jet were converging, and that a conflict‑alert function was active but did not issue the mandatory safety alert that should have warned both crews of the impending collision. FAA officials admitted under questioning that no safety alerts were issued, and an FAA manager conceded that the controller should have informed the PSA crew explicitly about nearby helicopter traffic—a failure the agency has tried to minimize.
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Behind the technical and procedural failures lies the central question: Why were known hazards allowed to persist? Budgetary constraints and decades of underfunding played a decisive role. The NTSB repeatedly testified to Congress that it lacks sufficient resources and staffing, even as it is tasked with overseeing investigations into increasingly complex aviation systems, while the FAA’s air traffic organization has long operated under staffing crises and delayed modernization programs.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army was allowed to conduct routine training and evaluation flights with defective or degraded equipment and manually disabled safety‑enhancing systems in crowded civilian airspace because no one in authority was prepared to challenge the “needs” of the Pentagon.
Instead of spending the necessary funds to ensure that military aircraft operating over a major city had modern, fail‑safe collision‑avoidance and altitude‑reporting technology fully enabled, Congress and the Pentagon funneled resources into overseas wars, weapons programs and the expansion of US militarism.
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The families of the 67 victims have responded with growing anger to the drawn‑out process and efforts by political and military authorities to downplay systemic responsibility. In public statements and congressional forums, relatives have emphasized both the entirely preventable nature of the crash and the intolerable delay in obtaining an official, comprehensive account of what happened.
Reports ahead of Tuesday’s hearing noted that family members were still, nearly a year later, fighting to force the military and FAA to release records, acknowledge the failures and accept binding safety reforms, even as lobbyists pushed to restore Army helicopter operations “just like before the crash.”
In its coverage immediately after the crash, the World Socialist Web Site identified the fundamental issues at stake that Tuesday’s hearing only partially exposed. The WSWS stressed that the collision between a commercial airliner and a military helicopter over the Potomac, within sight of the Pentagon and the Washington Monument, was a stark expression of the intersection of US militarism, the rundown state of civilian infrastructure and the reactionary politics of the Trump administration.
On the morning of January 16, at approximately 3:30 a.m., multiple fire crews responded to a call at the General Motors Lansing Delta Township Assembly Plant following what appeared to be a fire-related incident. In a statement, General Motors said the incident occurred in the plant’s body shop.
Both the body shop and the adjacent Lansing Regional Stamping facility were evacuated. It was reported that other facilities in the area continued operating as normal. According to GM, the evacuations were precautionary in nature, and no injuries or deaths have been reported at this time.
The fire was located on the roof of the structure; however, the cause of the fire has not yet been revealed. GM would also not reveal how long the evacuation lasted or how the fire affected production.
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The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and its allied committees have initiated a series of independent investigations into recent workplace deaths and systemic safety failures. One notable example of this was the investigation into the death of Ronald Adams who was killed at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Complex in Michigan back in August of 2025. This was an independent worker-led inquiry that uncovered a pattern of preventable failures and cover-ups.
In another example, the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee, under the IWA-RFC, recently launched an investigation of their own into the deaths of Nick Acker, Russell Scruggs Jr., Lucy Diaz and others. Calling on postal workers to submit testimony and documentary evidence and is assembling a worker-controlled dossier of facts and demands.
These workplace tragedies show that official investigatory bodies and corporatist unions cannot be relied on to protect lives. The IWA‑RFC investigation demonstrates the necessity of worker‑led, democratic rank‑and‑file committees that can preserve evidence, take testimony, insist on the shutdown of unsafe operations and link with workers internationally.
Workers at the GM Lansing Assembly Plant should build and expand the GM Lansing Workers Rank-and-File Committee, to organize the fight for safety at the plant as part of the network already being established under the auspices of the IWA-RFC.
15. Large “Invasion Day” protests held in Australia amid unprecedented assault on democratic rights
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated on Monday in “Invasion Day” rallies opposing the oppression of Indigenous people and the jingoistic Australia Day holiday which marks the anniversary of British colonization.
In Melbourne, at least 30,000 people turned out, with around 20,000 in Sydney and several thousand in other capitals across the country. In addition to registering their anger over the poverty, inequality and police violence inflicted on Aboriginal people, many were animated by opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the Australian government’s complicity in it.
This year’s Invasion Day was held under conditions where the Labor government, federally and in the states, is seeking to outlaw that opposition. Falsely blaming peaceful mass protests against the genocide for the reactionary December 14 terrorist attack in Sydney, the governments have passed a battery of anti-democratic measures directed against political dissent.
In the week before the Invasion Day rallies, Labor passed sweeping federal legislation, providing the government with the power to ban political groups and parties based on vague assertions that they promote “hate speech.” The discussion surrounding the bill made clear that the initial target is pro-Palestinian sentiment.
The Sydney rally was held under conditions of a de facto protest ban in the city. In the wake of the Bondi attack, the New South Wales (NSW) Labor government passed laws providing for demonstrations to be prohibited by the police for up to three months in the wake of a terrorist attack, a power that the state police command has enforced.
Fearing a backlash, the police permitted the Invasion Day rallies to occur. They also allowed competing March for Australia demonstrations to be held. Dwarfed by the official Invasion Day protests, the March for Australia events featured anti-immigrant racism and fascistic demagogy, including of a genuinely antisemitic character.
In a warning of the right-wing atmosphere that governments are cultivating, including through their vilification of peaceful protests, an individual threw a bomb into the Invasion Day event in Perth. The device did not detonate, but police have stated that if it had, there could have been mass casualties. Despite that, the individual has yet to be charged under terrorism laws.
At an official Australia Day event in Canberra, Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sounded his own anti-immigrant dogwhistle, instructing new citizens to “leave behind the burden of old prejudices and hatreds” and embrace “unity, not division.” NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns declared he would seek to pass further anti-protest laws, and depicted the peaceful mass protests against the genocide as an impermissible disruption.
The Invasion Day rallies unfolded against this backdrop, yet not a single prominent speaker on the official platforms advanced a perspective for fighting the assault on democratic rights. Instead, the platforms were dominated by a privileged layer of the Aboriginal upper-middle class—many of them integrated into state structures and bureaucracies—who framed the oppression of Aboriginal people almost entirely in racial terms and promoted the dead-end of Treaty, court cases, petitions and, above all, electoral support for the very Labor governments attacking democratic rights.
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In opposition to this line up, Socialist Equality Party campaigners raised the necessity for a political struggle against Labor and all of its defenders, including the Greens, pseudo-left organizations and the Indigenous nationalists.
They explained that the oppression of Indigenous people can only be fought through the development of a unified movement of the entire working class, directed against the source of poverty and exploitation, as well as fascism and war, the capitalist system itself.
Socialist Equality Party (SEP) members campaigned at Monday’s “Invasion Day” rallies in multiple cities around Australia. The events drew crowds of tens of thousands of workers, youth and middle-class layers who oppose the ongoing oppression of Indigenous people in Australia and other capitalist crimes including the Australian government’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The events are held on Australia Day, the nationalist celebration of the anniversary of British colonization. Read the World Socialist Web Site’s coverage of the events here.
In stark contrast to the organizers of the rallies who promoted divisive identity politics and claimed that better conditions for Aboriginal Australians could be won through appeals to and working with the capitalist state, the SEP campaigned on a socialist perspective of uniting the working class across racial and ethnic lines in a common struggle against the capitalist profit system which is the cause of poverty and war.
Attendees spoke to with the SEP campaigners.
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.
