Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. ICE gestapo murders woman in Minneapolis, sparking mass outrage
A federal immigration agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in south Minneapolis on Tuesday, unleashing mass anger across the city and nationwide and exposing the violent and lawless character of the Trump administration’s deportation apparatus. The woman has been identified by her mother as Renee Nicole Good.
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Ignoring video evidence, the Trump administration moved immediately to brand the killing as justified. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote on X that “one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle” and claimed the shooting was a defensive act that “saved” officers’ lives. Stephen Miller characterized the woman’s actions as “domestic terrorism,” as did DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference.
Trump personally intervened to justify the killing, issuing a statement that repeats and escalates the false federal narrative and openly endorses the actions of the shooter.
“I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota,” Trump wrote. He claimed that “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” He asserted that the agent “seems to have shot her in self defense.”
These claims are directly contradicted by the video itself, which shows the woman gesturing for federal vehicles to pass, attempting to steer away from the officer and being shot from the side as she was driving away. No federal agents are shown injured in the video. No officer is visibly struck by the vehicle in any of the footage that has been made public.
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Minneapolis Police, who are nominally barred from participating in federal immigration operations, deployed in force to the area and facilitated the removal of the ICE agents from the scene. The murderer has not been publicly identified, arrested or charged.
The shooting occurred only a few blocks from where George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police in May 2020. That killing, captured on video, triggered mass protests in the US and internationally against police violence. Those protests were diverted into the dead-end channels of the Democratic Party and identity politics, leaving intact the capitalist system and its repressive apparatus.
The Minneapolis killing follows other lethal shootings by federal immigration agents in the past year, none of which have resulted in criminal prosecutions.
2. ICE murder in Minneapolis: Trump’s war comes home
The Trump administration is seeking to use the Western Hemisphere as the base for projecting military force against the major rivals of American imperialism around the world: China, Russia, Iran and the European imperialist powers as well. Trump tweeted, only hours after the murder of Renee Good, that he wants to raise the military budget by 50 percent this year, to $1.5 trillion. That will require even more drastic cuts in social benefits, from education and healthcare to Social Security.
Such policies cannot be imposed democratically. That is why Trump is pouring money into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Gestapo-like paramilitary forces, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with plans to double the capacity of migrant detention facilities that are concentration camps in all but name. And such measures will be taken not just against immigrants but against all opposition from workers and youth.
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The Socialist Equality Party calls for those protesting the murder of Good to advance clear and uncompromising demands, including:
- The immediate arrest and prosecution of all those responsible for the murder of Renee Nicole Good
- The withdrawal of all ICE, CBP and DHS forces from Minneapolis and every other city
- The abolition of these Gestapo agencies that terrorize immigrant communities
- The immediate release of all detainees held in ICE custody and an end to all raids, renditions and deportations
- Full legal rights and protections for all immigrant workers and their families
These demands cannot be realized except through mass social struggle. The logic of events is moving inexorably toward a general strike against the Trump regime: a mass, coordinated intervention by workers across every industry to bring the machinery of repression and exploitation to a halt.
On Wednesday, January 7, hundreds of teachers staged call-outs, demonstrations and walk-ins at dozens of schools across North Carolina. They protested stagnant wages, soaring healthcare costs and the deliberate starvation of public schools. Parents and community members joined boisterous picket lines and brought hand-made signs. In Charlotte, protesters chanted, “fund public schools,” “pass the budget” and “pay your teachers.”
The North Carolina Teachers in Action, which sponsored the protest, reported between 650 and 750 educators participated at 52 schools, spanning counties from the Atlantic Coast to the Piedmont. Major concentrations were reported in Wake County (30 schools), New Hanover County (15 schools), Charlotte-Mecklenburg (five schools), and Gaston County (two schools), with protests held at intersections, school entrances and community gathering points.
The action was organized independently of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) bureaucracies. North Carolina Teachers in Action emerged out of the wildcat sick-out protests in the fall of 2025 against the state budget deadlock and worsening conditions in the schools. The organization said that it would continue actions on the seventh day of coming months.
The immediate trigger is the continued absence of a finalized state budget, meaning no raises for teachers, frozen step increases and the further erosion of already inadequate benefits. Teachers are also facing sharp increases in healthcare premiums, effectively transforming stagnant wages into pay cuts.
The state government, with a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled legislature, has provided huge tax giveaways with the richest 1 percent of North Carolinians receiving $4.9 billion in annual tax cuts. The top 20 percent receive $15.8 billion, an amount exceeding the state’s entire K-12 and community college budget combined. The funding crisis will only worsen under the impact of Trump’s massive cuts on federal spending for public school programs.
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North Carolina ranks 43rd in the nation in average teacher pay, according to the National Education Association, and is at or near the bottom nationally in per-student funding and funding effort. The state earned an “F” grade in the Education Law Center’s 2025 Making the Grade report, despite explosive economic growth and record corporate profits. The state is home to major banking and finance, pharmaceutical and biotech firms and global manufacturing facilities owned by Daimler Trucks, Toyota, Siemens and Wolfspeed.
Teachers rejected claims that there is no money for education. “They have the money,” one said. “They’re just not funding it.” The teacher directly linked austerity in schools to military spending and imperialist war. “On the one hand, they give billions to the military,” a teacher said. “They go start wars. The situation in Venezuela, with the kidnapping of that president—it’s completely illegal.”
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Teachers also described the impact of ICE raids on students and families. One explained that recent raids created fear throughout their school, affecting even US citizens. “Those kids were scared to come back,” the teacher said. “They were scared to be home.”
North Carolina students walked out in November to protest ICE’s Operation Charlotte’s Web and support immigrant families, with over 30,000 in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district carrying out a sickout, and a total of 56,000 young people refusing to attend school.
Calling the normalization of repression unacceptable, the teacher added, “What happened in Venezuela is reflected on the streets of American cities. It used to be considered a violation. It still is—but he [Trump] gets away with it.”
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World Socialist Web Site reporters distributed a statement issued by the Educators Rank-and-File Committee (ERFC), which explained that the mass action across North Carolina was part of “the rising tide of opposition of the working class against the attack on the right to public education, growing austerity, the witch-hunting of immigrants, dictatorship and war.”
4. Trump seizes Russian-flagged tanker, plunders Venezuelan oil, threatens to attack Greenland
In the aftermath of Saturday’s US attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has unleashed a global looting operation, seizing a Russian-flagged tanker on the high seas in a stand-off with the Russian navy, announcing the plunder of billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil and categorically asserting that a military attack on the territory of NATO ally Denmark to seize Greenland is an “option.”
On Wednesday, US forces seized two more oil tankers, bringing to four the total number of vessels now in US custody.
The tanker seizures are part of an ongoing campaign of blockade and war aimed at the domination of Venezuela and Latin America as a whole by US imperialism. In mid-December, Trump ordered a “total and complete blockade” of all oil tankers under US sanctions from entering or leaving Venezuela.
5. Europe on brink of war with Russia and America at Paris summit
On January 6, European leaders met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a war summit in Paris, joined by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and two of the Trump administration’s Russia negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The assembled NATO officials issued an open-ended commitment to stationing troops in and arming Ukraine as a military base on Russia’s borders, once a ceasefire is reached. As the Kremlin went to war to prevent just such a situation and has threatened to fire on NATO troops arriving in Ukraine, this makes a mockery of US-European claims to be trying to negotiate with Russia to end the war. Rather, the Paris declaration is goading Russia to continue the war, potentially setting the stage for its escalation into a total war across Europe.
The elephant in the room, however, was Trump’s blatantly illegal invasion of Venezuela and the explosive conflicts building between Washington and its NATO allies, as Trump threatens to seize Greenland from Denmark. The summit’s “underlying atmosphere was extremely tense,” the BBC reported, as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen sat across Witkoff and Kushner. Frederiksen was, the BBC added, “under pressure from European colleagues not to antagonise the US over Greenland, in case that impacts US support for Ukraine.”
Capitalism, as twice in the 20th century, is plunging into world war that can only be stopped by the working class.
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The statement is marred by one evident, fatal weakness. It relies on invocations of international law and NATO solidarity to deter Washington from seizing Greenland, but the Trump administration’s invasion of Venezuela and its threats to use force against Denmark reveal its contempt for both international law and the NATO alliance.
Commentary after the Paris summit was however largely dominated by continued threats of military action against Russia. While the far-right Italian government issued a statement that it would not deploy troops to Ukraine, leaders of several other major European powers described their plans for potential future troop deployments against Russia should a ceasefire be reached.
“We will participate in the regeneration of the Ukrainian army,” Macron said on the France2 TV evening news as the summit ended. “Thousands of soldiers could be deployed to keep the peace in Ukraine after a ceasefire,” he said. “This will be in the context of our foreign military operations, and it will be organized,” he declared—reiterating a pledge to send troops to Ukraine he has repeatedly made in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, in France and across Western Europe, ever since 2024.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer outlined even more detailed promises to station thousands of UK and French troops on Ukrainian soil, ready to fight Russia, once a ceasefire is reached.
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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the press that Berlin’s plans “could include, for example, deploying forces for Ukraine in neighboring NATO areas after a ceasefire.” He added that the German government and parliament would decide on the extent of German military activity once the conditions of a hypothetical Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire were known. “We do not exclude anything in principle,” Merz said.
Like the Greenland statement, this Russia policy is torn apart by staggering contradictions. No one in the European ruling circles explains how or when a ceasefire could be negotiated for their plans to go into effect, or why Moscow’s calls for Ukraine to be a neutral buffer state between it and the NATO powers are unacceptable.
They could say: “We pressed Ukraine to fight Russia, counting on a Ukrainian victory, which we hoped to use to rape and plunder Russia like Trump wants to rape and plunder Venezuela. Things didn’t go according to plan, Ukraine suffered millions of casualties and is being defeated, but we found it easier to lie to you about it. Demonizing Moscow was a great excuse to cut social spending and rearm, and quite honestly, we didn’t care how many Ukrainians died. Now somehow it turns out the United States may declare war on us, but trust us, we have more great ideas coming.”
Three young pro-Palestinian political prisoners have been placed in a life-threatening situation by the Labour government after more than two months on hunger strike. The risk of starving to death is acute and imminent.
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Heba Muraisi, the first of the prisoners to begin the hunger strike, has now passed 66 days without food. Aged 20, she is reported to be struggling to breathe and speak and has described her condition as “deteriorating.” Other symptoms, like muscle spasms, may indicate neurological damage.
Death usually occurs between 60 to 70 days without food but could come sooner, depending on the health of the individual and their circumstances.
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None of the protesters has been found guilty of anything, or even gone to trial. All have been detained on remand for more than a year, despite a standard pre-trial custody limit of six months.
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More than 2,700 people were arrested in just four months under the Terrorism Act 2000 for peacefully protesting the banning of Palestine Action: a deepening of the Starmer government’s repression of protests opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which have been subjected to strict conditions.
The government is proving itself quite content to let the clock run down and see these prisoners die. Muraisi’s case is all the more striking as she has relatives in Rafah, in Gaza. The Labour government’s support for the genocidal destruction of the Palestinians in the Middle East is extended to their supporters and relatives in Britain, too.
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The government has also stonewalled open letters of concern from independent lawyers and medical practitioners, and even an intervention by a United Nations panel of experts who raised “serious questions about compliance with international human rights law and standards, including obligations to protect life and prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
This hunger strike is the largest since the 1981 hunger strike by Irish Republicans at Long Kesh prison, in protest at the Conservative government’s revocation of Special Category Status for political prisoners of war. The Tories’ refusal to back down saw 10 prisoners starve to death. These included Bobby Sands, elected to the House of Commons during his strike, who died after 66 days—a milestone reached by Muraisi on Tuesday. Other hunger strikers died between 46 and 61 days.
The PA hunger strikers are now commemorated on Belfast’s republican murals, with the slogan “Blessed are those who hunger for justice.”
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Workers and young people in Britain and internationally must demand the immediate release of the hunger strikers and all those held without charge for peaceful protest and the withdrawal of the proscription on Palestine Action. We repeat our call: “A counteroffensive in defense of democratic and social rights and against war and genocide cannot be left to the heroic self-sacrifice of a few. Their cause is the cause of the entire working class and student youth, which must be mobilized in their defense.”
7. Eighteen months of Labour government leaves Britons poorer than they were in 2019
After previously occurring only twice in 60 years, that disposable incomes have now fallen for three consecutive quarters no less than three times in a single decade signifies the accelerating and deepening crisis of a British capitalism struggling to compete among its global rivals. Every government since 2010, whether Tory or Labour, has responded with ever more brutal austerity to ensure that it is the working class which pays for this crisis.
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In its electioneering, the Starmer government proclaimed its intention to improve [the] workers’ lot. Labour’s Plan for Change published after the election laid out a goal of “raising living standards in every part of the United Kingdom so working people have more money in their pocket.” This would be will be measured through “higher Real Household Disposable Income per person and GDP per capita by the end of the parliament.”
Such cynical sloganeering was always incompatible with the crisis facing British capitalism, and with pledges made repeatably by Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to rule as the “party of business”, based on Thatcherite policies of “iron discipline” on public spending.
Moreover, the government is committed to a more than doubling of military and security spending (from 2.3 percent to 5 percent of GDP) by 2035, which will requiring emptying the Treasury of funds currently allocated for social spending in order to hand it over the Ministry of Defense.
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The continuing fall in living standards under Labour and decimation of vitally needed social services could not have been imposed but for the role of the trade union bureaucracy. For decades the union apparatus has worked hand-in-glove with the employers and successive Conservative and Labour governments, suppressing wage demands and the struggle to improve terms and working conditions.
In backing Starmer’s election, they declared their support for his corporatist partnership between them both and big business.
Millions of workers are pauperised as a result. According to the Low Pay Commission around 1.9 million workers were paid at or below the national minimum wage NMW in 2024. In 2015 there were 1.5 million jobs paid at or below the NMW. This year the minimum wage rises to just £12.71 per hour for adults aged 21 and over; £10.85 per hour for 18-20 year olds; £8.00 for under 18s and £8.00 for apprentices. [£1.00 is currently equivalent to $1.34 US.]
So effectively have wages been held down by sellout deals negotiated by the unions with employers that by September 2025, 2.6 million people in employment also relied on Universal Credit (UC) welfare payments to top up their meagre incomes. Those in work now account for one-third of all UC claimants.
8. New Zealand economy “subdued” going into 2026
According to a bleak report by New Zealand’s Treasury, the country’s economy was “suppressed” through much of 2025, with the outlook for 2026 “subdued.” Escalating unemployment and wage growth below inflation means the working class is bearing the brunt of the ongoing downturn.
The Treasury’s Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU), released on December 16, showed the economy was in “a deep downturn” at the beginning of 2025. New Zealand has been hit with a 15 percent tariff on most exports to the United States and remains highly exposed to the escalating US trade war against China, NZ’s main trading partner.
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Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told 1 News on December 14 that “we can see the economy strengthening” and “more New Zealanders are starting to feel that, and that’s a good thing.” Such claims are completely baseless.
Unemployment is likely to stay much higher than previously forecast. In November, it reached a 9-year high at 5.3 percent and is expected to “peak” at around 5.5 percent in early 2026. Some 76,000 more will be on the Jobseeker benefit scheme by 2027, even as the government removes this benefit from many 18-19 year-olds. Among young people, 59,427 fewer 15-29 year-olds are in jobs than 2 years ago.
Unemployment has increased more sharply than in most other OECD countries. Figures would be even worse but for the exodus of working people to other countries, mainly Australia. A record 72,000 people left permanently in the 12 months to September—greater than the 57,393 births recorded during the same period. The population is growing due to immigration, but net migration was down to just over 10,000 people in 2024/25.
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In November, according to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, job advertisements over two years were down by 27 percent in construction, 33 percent in health, 31 percent in IT, 35 percent in manufacturing, 30 percent in sales and 16 percent in primary industries.
Wages have increased by less every year than Treasury forecasts. The minimum wage will rise by just 2 percent this April, the third successive year in which minimum wage workers have had a cut in pay in real terms. As a measure of declining real wages, the minimum wage is now at the level of 67-72 percent of the median wage. Full-time workers are estimated to be $4,184 worse off over the past three years.
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The unions have played the key role in suppressing wages by shutting down strikes while isolating workers from each other and negotiating below-inflation pay deals. Following a strike of more than 100,000 teachers and healthcare workers on October 23—the biggest since 1979—the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) has pushed through a settlement for 20,000 high school teachers. The offer included a 2.5 percent pay rise followed by 2.1 percent a year later—below 3 percent inflation and the 4.4 percent annual increase in food prices.
There has been a sharp reversal in the social position of the working class. According to a Post/Freshwater poll published on December 30, nearly two in five respondents (39 percent) reported being in financial trouble or having to cut back on essentials. Only 27 percent felt comfortable or confident in their finances.
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Successive Labour and National Party governments have transferred vast wealth to the super-rich, through tax cuts, bailouts and other concessions. While the poorest 20 percent of households own a median $11,000 in assets, the richest 1 percent, about 40,000 people, control 17.5 percent of NZ wealth. Between 2021 and 2024, the wealthiest 20 percent of households increased their wealth by 19 percent ($386,000) to a median of $2.4 million.
Claims of “fiscal necessity” mask deliberate decisions to prioritize military spending and debt servicing over public services—this political choice produces wage suppression and collapsing social infrastructure. Alongside deepening austerity for working people, the government, fully supported by the opposition Labour Party, is doubling military spending from 1 to 2 percent of GDP, at a cost of $12 billion over four years.
The entire ruling establishment is committed to this program. Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins responded to the Post/Freshwater survey with an anodyne comment that it was a “stark reminder of the pressure facing families.” Hipkins offered nothing more, however, than limited free doctor visits, falsely claiming this would make a “big difference” to household budgets.
Labour’s Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds revealed the reality during the party’s annual conference in November, telling delegates that “we can’t say yes to everything and I make no apology for that. Responsibility must always come first.” Labour lost the 2023 election in a landslide after presiding over rising unemployment, soaring living costs and increased homelessness and child poverty.
9. Full-time employment plummets in Australia
Across Australia, 56,500 full-time jobs were destroyed between October and November last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). At the same time, part-time and casual employment increased by 35,200 to 4,578,900 people, 31.2 percent of the total workforce.
The decline in full-time employment is part of a long-term trend: In 1978, part-time employment accounted for just 14.9 percent of the workforce, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
The ABS showed that nominal hourly earnings went up $2.90, or 7.3 percent, to $42.90 per hour in the year to August 2025. But median weekly earnings increased by only $26, or 1.9 percent, to $1,425.
Over the same period, the official inflation rate—itself a substantial understatement of the real rise in the cost of living—was 3.2 percent, meaning the average worker was hit with a significant pay cut in real terms.
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Although the official unemployment rate now appears “stable,” the total number of employed workers fell by 21,300 in November, the largest single-month decline since February. The rate did not change partly due to “workforce participation” falling by 23,500 people to 66.7 percent, the lowest since March last year. ABS employment and unemployment estimates are deceptive, because its “labour force” definition counts “employed” workers as those working merely an hour a week and “unemployed” workers as only those actively applying for jobs in the four weeks prior to data collection.
Young workers aged 15–24 are among the hardest hit in terms of unemployment. Youth unemployment jumped from 9.7 percent in October to 10.2 percent in November, more than double the overall rate.
Market research firm Roy Morgan calculates real unemployment at 10.7 percent, meaning 1.7 million workers are out of a job, 165,000 more than a year earlier. At the same time, underemployment increased by 266,000 workers to 1.6 million, or 10.2 percent of the workforce.
That is, some 3.3 million people, or 20.9 percent of the workforce, are either out of work or do not have enough work to get by, 431,000 more than a year ago.
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In both the public and private sectors, the trade unions have played a crucial role in enforcing this onslaught, ramming through real-wage slashing enterprise agreements on behalf of governments and management, and blocking any struggle by workers to defend their jobs and conditions.
Workers must take matters into their own hands and build rank-and-file committees, democratically run by workers and independent of the union bureaucracies. Through such committees, workers can break union-imposed isolation and unite their struggles with workers across industries and borders, mobilizing the real power of the working class.
10. In run-up to elections, Peru’s rightist regime faces crisis of rule
Just three months after replacing Peru’s ex-president Dina Boluarte and with barely three months to go until national elections, the rightist regime of President José Jerí is confronting an escalating crisis of bourgeois rule.
While coming to office vowing an “iron-fist” (mano dura) crackdown on organized crime, murders, extortion and other crimes have not only persisted but increased alarmingly. This phenomenon is politically critical, as social outrage over the relentless advance of extortion mafias was the main catalyst for Boluarte's impeachment by Congress and made her one of the most hated heads of state in the country’s history.
The security crisis has further emphasized the failed nature of the state throughout the country. The ruling class, aware of its total disrepute, decided to abandon Boluarte—who had served them obediently—for Jerí.
The newspaper La República reports that “The number of homicides increases from year to year and has doubled since 2020, nearing six crimes per day”—equivalent to 2,190 in the last year. It adds: “In the 80 days of José Jerí's regime, there have been 444 victims, with a daily average higher than that recorded under Dina Boluarte.”
Even more significantly, 2025 also saw an increase in class struggle in Peru. Transportation, healthcare and mining workers, along with 'Generation Z,' and many other sectors staged strikes and protests. Without a doubt, this heightened fears within ruling circles that Boluarte was incapable of quelling the unrest and had become a liability for Peruvian capitalism.
Jerí's rise has also signaled a realignment with Washington's campaign to recolonize the region. Jerí's first international act was to invite a delegation of high-ranking officials from the Trump administration to Peru. Among the six officials was José A. Pérez, director of Operations at the FBI, who was accompanied by other FBI officials, representatives from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and police representatives from various US states. During their stay in Peru, they met with personnel from the Ministry of the Interior, Defense, and the National Police.
Under the guise of fighting urban insecurity and drug trafficking, Jerí proposed to the US delegation to develop a new National Citizen Security Plan which will be presented this month, tacitly recognizing for the first time that his original plan has failed miserably.
Additionally, on December 18, the Peruvian Congress overwhelmingly approved the entry of armed U.S. military personnel starting January 1 until the end of 2026. According to the news outlet RPP, “Peru has previously approved the entry of foreign military personnel for exercises and cooperation, but the relevance of this approval is that it includes the presence of armed US military throughout the year 2026 with scheduled rotations, which has generated attention in the media and public opinion.”
They will visit various departments where there are conflicts between miners and transnational corporations, as well as indigenous complaints about contamination of air and farmland. On the coast: Lima and El Callao, and Pucusana (in Lima). In the Amazon Basin: Ucayali, Loreto, and San Martín. In the central Andes: Huánuco, Pasco, and Junín. And in the southern Andes: Cusco, Ayacucho, and Apurímac.
The purpose of visiting so many different geographical locations is obviously to familiarize the US military with the terrain. The reasons are twofold: first, to prepare to confront China, which will not yield without a fight given the US$33 billion invested in Peru; and second, to support the Peruvian police and military in repressing any popular uprising, given the precarious political situation.
Washington’s criminal invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro and his wife is directed not only at that oil-rich country, but at the entire hemisphere and at reversing the rise of China in the region.
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To counteract increasing Chinese influence not just in Peru but throughout South America, Peruvian Foreign Minister Hugo De Zela reported that the US Army Corps of Engineers is working on expanding the port of Callao, the country’s main port, which, he stated, will require “a significant investment from the United States,” estimated at about US$3 billion.
Investing in Callao will put China and the US in direct competition, which could have catastrophic consequences.
The Trump administration has significant reason to be concerned. Washington’s plans for war with China would be hampered if its Asian rival maintains even partial dominance over South America. It is expected that within a decade, China will have vastly surpassed the US in direct investment and foreign trade in every country on the continent.
This is why Washington has proposed designating Peru as a “major non-NATO ally,” which is a category of military and defense strategic cooperation without the country being a formal member of the treaty organization.
11. Corporation for Public Broadcasting closes down in face of Trump attacks
On Monday, the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) voted to dissolve the 58-year-old organization. The action follows the elimination of all federal funding for the agency by Congress, on the demand of the Trump White House, earlier this year.
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The long-term impact on National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and more than 1,500 local public media stations will likely be dramatic. The funding for NPR and PBS comes from a number of sources, as they have never been properly funded by the federal government. NPR only receives a small amount, some 1 percent, of its funding directly from the federal government. PBS receives approximately 15 percent of its money from the government.
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There is an element of fascist self-delusion in the attacks on the PBS and NPR. These outlets have been thoroughly cowed by right-wing attacks that began in earnest in the 1980s. Aside from the occasional valuable work on history and culture (Ken Burns and others), public broadcasting in the US has largely been engaged in making sure it did not face criticism from the far right.
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There are a couple of lessons from the CPB disaster. First, the cultural barbarism of the entire American ruling elite finds expression here. The Trump forces are cruder and more imbecilic than the Democrats, but hostility to critical voices is universal within the upper echelons of US society. They fear every “new word” because it is no longer a matter of reforms or adjustments, but of the life and death of their system.
Second, the Democratic Party and its cultural-bureaucratic orbit are incapable of putting up the slightest serious resistance to the fascist barbarians. If the proceedings of a recent lawsuit are to be taken seriously, the rottenness and spinelessness of the CPB officialdom in particular have been spectacular.
In November, in an out-of-court settlement, the CPB was forced to agree to fulfill “a $36 million, multi-year contract with NPR that it had yanked after pressure from the Trump White House.” (NPR)
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The results of this entire process are devastating for employees of the CPB and the future of public broadcasting. As for the CPB officials, who crawled to the fascist White House to save their own skins and got kicked in the teeth for their efforts, they received precisely what they deserved.
12. “World War 3 is brewing”: US workers denounce Trump’s war against Venezuela
The US attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro has provoked anger and concern among workers in factories and workplaces across the United States. There is overwhelming opposition, with two-thirds of the population opposing the military attack and 72 percent fearing the US would get deeply involved in Venezuela, according to a Reuters/Ipso poll earlier this week.
Workers at General Motors’ Factory Zero in Detroit denounced Trump and his statements that the US would “rule” Venezuela and take over its oil reserves, the largest in the world. More than 1,100 workers were permanently laid off at the factory Monday, in large part due to the elimination of electric vehicle subsidies by the Trump administration.
Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site distributed the WSWS editorial board statement, “Oppose Trump’s criminal invasion of Venezuela! Release Maduro!” and spoke to autoworkers as they were leaving the plant Wednesday afternoon.
“We’re the ones who are going to pay for this. How much did we spend on Iraq?” one worker said. Another denounced Trump, saying he was a “dictator” who wanted war in Venezuela and a “civil war” in the US.
Other workers stopped to give more detailed comments. A young worker said, “Our tax dollars will go directly” to the war, adding that it was “selfish” for the US to steal the country’s oil. “I’m not okay with that at all.” He said he worried that young people would be forced to fight, saying, “My sister was this close to going into the military, and I told her, look what’s going on. So, she put it off and I’m thankful for that for sure.”
13. Leela Balasuriya (1946–2025): A veteran Trotskyist fighter in Sri Lanka
14. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!Leela was born in 1946 as the second child in a family of four, with an elder sister and two younger brothers. Her parents owned a small plot of land and made their living through small-scale farming. She studied at Siyane National School in her village and, after completing her schooling, obtained a clerical job in the Department for Registration of Persons in 1972.
She joined the All-Ceylon Government Clerical Union (ACGCU), affiliated to the Stalinist Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL), then a partner in the capitalist coalition government led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), which had claimed to be Trotskyist, had already joined a coalition with the SLFP in 1964, betraying the fundamental principles of socialist internationalism.
In 1974, Leela joined the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL)—the predecessor of the SEP—after meeting and discussing with party members. The RCL was conducting a principled struggle against the SLFP-LSSP-CPSL government for the independent mobilisation of the working class, rallying the rural poor and the Tamil minority on the basis of Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution.
Her decision to join the party was a major turning point in her life. She rejected the petty-bourgeois radicalism of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), based on guerrillaism and Sinhala chauvinism, which was very active in the rural south of the country.
Reading the RCL’s Sinhala-language newspaper Kamkaru Mawatha [Workers’ Path], Leela learned about the JVP’s petty-bourgeois radicalism and its communalist politics. In April 1971, the JVP had led an adventurist uprising, which was brutally crushed by the coalition government and resulted in the deaths of around 15,000 rural youth.
Leela joined the party during a time when the global economy had plunged into a major crisis known as the “oil shock,” triggered by a fourfold increase in oil prices by oil-exporting countries in response to the depreciation of the US dollar.
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In early 1983, the RCL was the only working-class party to contest the Colombo Municipal Council elections. Leela was among the 68 RCL candidates.
Facing bitter opposition in the working class, the Jayawardene government systematically inflamed anti-Tamil communalism. It moved troops to the North and East in the name of suppressing the so-called terrorism of Tamil separatist groups, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The real aim of this agenda was to divide workers along ethnic lines while suppressing the Tamil minority. The RCL consistently opposed these government’s reactionary communalism and worked to unite workers on socialist policies.
As part of this struggle, on July 12, 1983, Leela issued an open letter through the RCL’s newspaper Kamkaru Mawatha headlined, “Are the All-Ceylon Government Clerical Union Leaders Sleeping?” to challenge the union’s Stalinist leadership.
She accused the Stalinist union leaders of refusing to convene members’ meetings and of being political props of the government as it was deliberately inflaming communal tensions. The letter explained that the government was conducting “total war against the working class and the oppressed masses. The aim of the ruling class is to establish a dictatorship in order to place the burden of the capitalist crisis on the backs of workers and the oppressed masses.”
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While calling on union members to oppose their leaders’ betrayals and join the struggle to build a revolutionary leadership, the letter stated that “workers must prepare politically to bring down the UNP government, and that the fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government is urgent.”
Leela’s open letter demonstrated how deeply she was rooted in the principles of the SEP/RCL’s struggle for Trotskyism.
Less than a week later, the UNP government used the killing of 13 soldiers by Tamil militants to instigate a murderous anti-Tamil pogrom throughout the island. Violent attacks on Tamils, in which UNP thugs were prominent, erupted on an unprecedented scale. The homes and shops of Tamils were torched, and hundreds of people were killed. The government and police allowed the rampage to continue unimpeded for four days and imposed draconian censorship to block any news.
The pogrom marked the onset of a bloody and protracted communal war waged by successive Colombo governments that only ended in May 2009. An estimated 100,000 Tamil civilians were killed, including at least 40,000 during the final months of the war, according to the UN. The JVP backed the reactionary war to the hilt, while trade union bureaucracies played the critical role of subordinating workers’ struggles to the war effort.
Amid repressive attacks by successive governments, the RCL waged an intransigent political struggle against the war and for the unity of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim workers. Together with local branch party colleagues, Leela engaged in political work in central Colombo and its surrounding neighbourhoods.
Leela was enthusiastic about the launching of the World Socialist Web Site in 1998. During campaigns, she was indefatigable in collecting material for articles published by the WSWS. With a donation from a party sympathizer, she bought a computer to read WSWS articles. Despite confronting various health problems complicated by high blood pressure, as well as physical difficulties and economic hardship, Leela never lost her political determination.
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Comrade Leela’s death occurred amid a historic crisis of global capitalism, characterized by soaring social inequality, the danger of catastrophic world war and the economic collapse of the Sri Lankan economy, which produced a sustained mass uprising against the Rajapakse regime in April–July 2022.
The SEP was the only party that fought for the independent mobilization of the working class to rally the rural poor and fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government on the basis of an international socialist program. It called for the building of workers’ action committees in every workplace and the establishment of a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses to carry forward this struggle. Until her final illness, Leela was deeply engaged in this struggle.
Comrade Leela’s death is a sad loss for the SEP, but the memory of this courageous fighter lives on today in the party’s struggle.
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
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.
