Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. ICE at airports: A dress rehearsal for police state dictatorship
Five days after President Donald Trump deployed hundreds of armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to airports across the US, not a single Democratic leader in the House or Senate has called for their removal. The same goes for Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Instead, one day before millions prepared to take the streets in the “No Kings” protests, the Democratic Party effectively dropped its phony charade of reining in the ICE and Border Patrol killers. This was the significance of the bill unanimously passed by the Senate early Friday morning to fund the Department of Homeland Security, with the exception of ICE and Border Patrol.
2. US to send another 10,000 ground troops to Middle East, as war with Iran escalates
The buildup of ground troops capable of launching an invasion of Iran is the real content of Trump’s claims that he is negotiating with Iran. The administration has repeatedly used talk of negotiations as cover for military escalation—in last year’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, in the January kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and now in the current war. On Wednesday, President Trump extended his “pause” on strikes against Iran’s power infrastructure to April 6, even as Israeli strikes intensified—hitting a uranium processing facility in Yazd, the Khondab Heavy Water Complex and two of Iran’s largest steel plants on Thursday alone.
Any ground invasion of Kharg Island, a major focal point of planned operations, would involve significant US casualties. The Wall Street Journal reported that US ships heading for the Strait of Hormuz would have to pass through “narrow, shallow waters, flanked by Iranian forces armed with missiles and drones and potentially seeded with sea mines.” Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told the Journal that “supersonic antiship missiles could travel from the Iranian mainland in a matter of seconds.”
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The bombing campaign, now in its 28th day, has killed thousands of Iranian civilians. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has documented at least 1,500 civilian deaths, including 217 children. The Washington Post reported Thursday that nearly 1,500 Iranian civilians have been confirmed killed. Non-government Iranian health officials estimate the actual death toll at approximately 32,000.
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Iran’s 90 million people have been sealed off from the outside world by a near-total internet blackout for 28 days. The internet monitoring group NetBlocks reported that connectivity has dropped 98 percent since February 28. According to Human Rights Watch, the government has threatened legal action against citizens who use virtual private networks (VPNs) or share circumvention tools. Iranians abroad cannot reach family inside the country.
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In Lebanon, the Israeli assault launched under cover of the Iran war has killed at least 1,116 people and wounded 3,229 since March 2, including 121 children and 40 healthcare workers. The UN estimates 1.2 million Lebanese have fled their homes, roughly 20 percent of the population. The WHO documented 28 attacks on healthcare infrastructure in the first two weeks alone, killing 30 medical workers. According to Israeli military statements, three divisions are now operating inside the country. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the “acceleration of demolition” of border villages, citing “the Beit Hanoun and Rafah models” from Gaza. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared: “Very soon, Dahieh will look like Khan Younis.”
Ten American service members were wounded Thursday when Iranian missiles and drones struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, two of them seriously. More than 300 US troops have been wounded in four weeks of war. Thirteen American service members have been killed since February 28.
3. ICE black sites exposed: secret detention network operated for years under both parties
A report by the Colorado Times Recorder (CTR) following a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operates at least 170 “hold rooms” - unofficial, undisclosed detention sites - across forty-nine states and four U.S. territories, excluding only West Virginia, the District of Columbia, and American Samoa. 130 of these are located in ICE field offices or sub-offices, locations where immigrants often must report for routine check-ins with ICE. Nearly every major American city has at least one hold room.
Predictably, conditions of these black sites are deplorable. Several sites are nothing more than windowless warehouses, or low-quality structures near airports. Detainees are not provided beds, and must sleep on floors or chairs; and these facilities are not required to even have toilets.
According to analysis by CTR and No Concentration Camps in Colorado (NOCCC), these secret and inhumane detention cells have held more than 140,000 immigrants from January through October 2025. Immigrants who have been sequestered to these sites are frequently held for weeks at a time. 37 of these facilities held immigrant detainees for over a month, with one detainee being held for 292 days in Newark, New Jersey.
109 of these black sites have held at least one child. The New York site has held 927 children, and the Phoenix site has held 749. A one-year old girl was held at one of Colorado’s nine hold rooms. Both the New York and Phoenix locations are located in federal buildings housing government immigration offices, including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices and Immigration Courts.
Under conditions of deep popular hostility to the Democrats and Republicans alike, and growing sympathy for socialism, the Democrats first established this secret detention network and both parties have maintained and expanded it for the past 15 years
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Given ICE’s planned $38.3 billion expansion of its concentration camp network, the only rational conclusion following the revelation that ICE also operates a network of secret black sites is that these, too, will grow and expand.
Detainees held at black sites are disappeared and are therefore placed outside the reach of the law, without access to legal remedies such as habeas corpus through which they might challenge their detention. More than 20 years after the exposure of the US government’s global network of secret prisons in the “war on terror,” these same anti-democratic methods are increasingly being deployed within the United States itself.
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Bipartisan support for Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda has provided ICE with an essentially unlimited budget. As a result, ICE has the capacity to allocate tens of millions of dollars as incentives and awards to local law enforcement agencies that participate in its 287(g) programs, paying off local and state police to turn them into immigration bounty hunters.
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ICE funding for immigration bounty hunters reaches even small and obscure state agencies, such as the nine task force officers at the Point Comfort Police Department in Texas. The Key Colony Beach Police Department in Florida and the Coward Police Department in South Carolina can each boast only a single officer, but together receive more than $240,000 in ICE funding. A single officer in Bradley County Constable District 7 in Tennessee was awarded $107,525, followed by a salary bump of $11,500, and the District is now apparently to receive more than $1.8 million in additional ICE funding.
Significantly, neither the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office nor the Minnesota State Patrol has a 287(g) agreement with ICE, but that did not prevent them from attacking and arresting protestors at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, effectively functioning as state and local auxiliaries for immigration thugs.
The exposure of ICE’s nationwide network of clandestine detention sites, together with the lucrative payouts used to recruit state and local police as immigration bounty hunters, lays bare the class and bipartisan character of the repression of immigrants in the United States. The entire police apparatus operates in concert with the immigration police and cannot be relied on to defend the democratic rights of workers, regardless of immigration status. None of these agencies can be “reformed” to serve the interests of workers. They must be abolished, along with the capitalist system they defend.
4. Black Sea turns into a battlefield: A Turkish-operated tanker carrying Russian oil was hit
The crude oil tanker Altura, owned by Turkish company Pergamon Shipping and en route from Russia, was struck by an armed unmanned maritime vehicle (UMV) on Thursday, 26 kilometers (16 miles) from the entrance to the Bosphorus Strait.
No one has officially claimed responsibility for the attack, which occurred in the fifth year of the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. Carried out during the US-Israel war of annihilation against Iran, Türkiye’s eastern neighbor, the attack underscores the danger of escalation and expansion in the Ukraine war.
An explosion occurred on the bridge of the Sierra Leone-flagged tanker carrying 140,000 tons of crude oil, and the engine room began to take on water. Following an emergency call, rescue tugs belonging to the General Directorate of Coast Guard were dispatched. It was reported that the 27-member Turkish crew are in good health and that no injuries were sustained.
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Öncü Keçeli said Thursday evening that the attack within NATO member Türkiye’s Exclusive Economic Zone in the Black Sea was “in violation of international law,” adding, “To prevent the war from spreading to the Black Sea and escalating further, we are continuing our contacts with the relevant parties.”
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After being acquired by Pergamon Shipping in November 2025, the targeted tanker was renamed Altura. According to a report by the Cumhuriyet newspaper, the tanker was added to the European Union’s (EU) sanctions list in October, to Switzerland’s and Ukraine’s in December, and finally to the United Kingdom’s in February. The report claimed that the vessel was linked to Muhammad Hussein Shamkhani, the son of Ali Shamkhani, the former Secretary-General of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was killed by Israel in February.
Five UMV have been found along Türkiye’s Black Sea coast over the past one and a half years. Most recently, on March 21, an armed UMV was detected off the coast of Ordu, a city in the Eastern Black Sea region. According to a statement made Thursday by Rear Admiral Zeki Aktürk, spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense, this UMV is “of US origin and is believed to have drifted ashore due to a current after its engine malfunctioned.” It was “safely destroyed by teams from the Underwater Defense Command.” The UMV was reportedly carrying two tons of ammunition.
The situation in the Black Sea escalated after the Trump administration presented a 28-point plan to Kiev on November 20, calling for a negotiated resolution to the conflict with Russia.
On November 28, two tankers—the Kairos and the Virat—en route to Russia were attacked in waters under Türkiye’s jurisdiction off the coasts of the provinces of Kocaeli and Kastamonu. On December 10, the Comoros-flagged tanker Dashan was struck in the Black Sea by a Ukrainian-made unmanned maritime vehicle named Sea Baby.
These targeted tankers had been listed among vessels sanctioned after the war began in 2022. Following its invasion, Russia has used a “shadow fleet” of hundreds of tankers—many sailing under different flags—to evade Western sanctions, especially those targeting its oil exports.
The attacks in the Black Sea are being carried out with NATO’s knowledge and approval. In early December, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte implied that they had approved such attacks, stating: “We are strengthening our support for Ukraine and increasing pressure on Russia. This includes countering Russia’s Shadow Fleet and other measures to pose strategic dilemmas for the Kremlin.”
Meanwhile, the UK military will be sent to board ships suspected of being part of Russia’s sanctions-evading “shadow fleet.” According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Belgium, Finland and France have all seized or detained tankers; Germany, Italy, Latvia, Norway and Sweden have boarded or detained cargo and bulk vessels.
Russia also announced that Ukrainian forces had carried out more than a dozen attack attempts this month on facilities supplying the TurkStream and Blue Stream natural gas pipelines, both of which pass through the Black Sea, and that these attacks had been repelled.
According to Reuters calculations based on market data “at least 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity is at a halt following Ukrainian drone attacks, a disputed attack on a major pipeline and the seizure of tankers.” It reported that this month Russia’s major Western oil export ports, including Novorossiysk on the Black Sea and Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea, were hit.
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Both the Zelensky regime [in Ukraine] and the European powers are opposing the Trump administration’s attempt to end the war in Ukraine through a separate agreement with the Kremlin—one that would allow it to reap the spoils alone—as well as its reduction of arms shipments. European powers, on the one hand, seek to recoup their investment in the war in Ukraine and, on the other, support escalating the conflict with Russia to enhance their military capabilities independently of the US to advance their predatory imperialist interests.
Türkiye, which has strong ties to both Ukraine and Russia, advocates for a negotiated solution between Kiev and Moscow out of concern that an escalation of the war would harm the interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie. The risk of the US-NATO war against Russia expanding is accompanied by the danger of Türkiye being drawn into an imperialist war against Iran.
After the attacks against Iran began, it was alleged that Iran had fired missiles at Türkiye on three occasions. Although Iran denied targeting Türkiye, NATO, Ankara and the Turkish media quickly issued statements condemning Iran. Last week, Ankara, along with allied Ajerbaijan, Pakistan, and Arab regimes, signed the Riyadh statement condemning Iran while remaining silent on the illegal war of aggression waged by the US and Israel.
NATO is bolstering its forces in Türkiye as it openly prepares to join the war against Iran. Using the alleged missile launches from Iran as a pretext, Patriot air defense systems were deployed to the Incirlik Air Base in Adana and the Kürecik Radar Base in Malatya, both of which are used by the US.
NATO is establishing a new corps in Türkiye called the Multinational Corps Türkiye (MNC-TÜR). The news was confirmed by the Ministry of National Defense on Thursday.
5. Writers Guild of America West staff union moves to shut down strike
The strike against the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) by 115 employees, members of the Writers Guild Staff Union (WGSU), part of the Pacific Northwest Staff Union, is more than five weeks old. According to the WGSU, it is one of the longest strikes by union staff in US history.
The contempt with which the Writers Guild treats its own employees speaks to the relationship more generally between the various well-heeled union officialdoms and the rank-and-file: an implacably hostile one. The rights and living standards of the rank-and-file are incompatible with the privileges and pro-corporate existence and outlook of the union apparatus.
On Thursday, the WGSU addressed WGAW executive director Ellen Stutzman with what it described as a “strike-ending” proposal. Given the track record of the unions, including the WGSU-PNWSU itself, WGAW staff have every reason to be suspicious.
In its press release, the WGSU union accused the Guild leadership of having “chosen a war path with its own employees,” noting that the strike has collided with the broader negotiations between writers and the Hollywood studios. Staff have moved their picketing to the SAG-AFTRA building, where the Writers Guild of America East and West are bargaining jointly with the AMPTP, underscoring the proximity of this struggle to wider conflicts in the industry.
The militant tone of the press release is fraudulent. The substance of the union’s proposal reveals it is preparing to end the strike by making concessions. “Enough is enough. The time to enter a fair deal with your staff and reunite is now,” the WGSU declares. It continues: “Attached to this letter you will find a significantly revised contract proposal, in management’s desired ordering and formatting, that is intended to bring this strike to a close.”
The union further states that if no agreement is reached soon, it will support moving the dispute into arbitration within 60 days. In other words, the leadership is prepared to place the issues in the hands of a supposedly “impartial” third party, i.e., a management-government-controlled process. This is both cowardly and reactionary. If the WGSU is not able to force its members to accept rotten terms, it will turn that job over to an arbitrator.
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The fact that this is a “union against a union” conflict only underscores the reality that these organizations function not as instruments of worker control, but as bureaucratic structures integrated into management and the state. When confronted with genuine struggle, they intervene to contain and suppress it.
6. Edwin Soto (1953-2026): Transit worker and lifetime supporter of the fight for socialism
Edwin Soto, who joined the Trotskyist movement as a teenager in New York City more than 50 years ago, died last month at the age of 72.
Edwin was a member of the Workers League, the forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party, for two decades. Both of his parents had come to the US mainland from Puerto Rico. He joined the socialist movement in 1973. He was part of a layer of the working class, including many African American and Hispanic youth, who became politically aware at a time of imperialist war in Vietnam and mass civil rights struggles in the US, the unraveling of the postwar capitalist boom, and the growing crisis of the two-party system of capitalist rule. Edwin was convinced by the struggle of the Trotskyist movement against the betrayals of Stalinism, Pabloism and petty-bourgeois nationalism.
In the 1970s, Edwin was on the staff of the party print shop for a number of years. He fought alongside Tom Henehan, the leader of the Young Socialists (the predecessor organization of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality), who was the victim of a political assassination on October 16, 1977.
Edwin actively sold the Bulletin, newspaper of the Workers League. He worked closely with Helen Halyard, the assistant national secretary of the Workers League and then the Socialist Equality Party, who died in 2023. Edwin participated in both the 1984 and 1988 presidential election campaigns of Ed Winn, the transit worker who became a leading member of the Workers League. Ed Winn won election to the Executive Board of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), where he fought against the betrayals of the union bureaucracy.
At the time of the decisive split in the world Trotskyist movement in 1985-86, Edwin stood with the majority of the International Committee of the Fourth International against the Workers Revolutionary Party leadership, which had capitulated to Stalinism and bourgeois nationalism.
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Edwin had himself become a transit worker in the 1980s, first as a car cleaner and then a train operator. He worked in the New York City subway system for more than three decades before he retired around 2020.
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Today, as the daily war crimes and outrages of the Trump presidency underscore the growing dangers of world war and fascism, the significance of Edwin’s political commitment becomes all the more clear. The perspective that he fought for until the end of his life will animate and guide the struggles of millions of workers and youth in the fight for international socialism, the only alternative to capitalist barbarism and the threat to human civilization.
Seeking an immediate end to his months-long ordeal behind bars, Xiang filed an unopposed motion to waive the Presentence Investigation Report (PSR) and proceed to sentencing. Judge Sweeney, a Trump appointee and member of the right-wing Federalist Society, flatly denied the request. In his March 9 order, Sweeney justified the delay by citing the need to investigate Xiang’s personal finances to extract a financial penalty. Because the smuggling charge carries a maximum potential fine of $250,000, Sweeney demanded a deeper probe into the modest monthly income Xiang earned as a university researcher, to determine his “ability to pay any fine that may be imposed.”
This delay is the latest outrage in a xenophobic dragnet targeting Chinese scientists at universities across the United States. It contrasts with the relatively short delay between plea deal and sentencing in similar recent cases. Former University of Michigan (U-M) researcher Chengxuan Han was sentenced to time served on September 10, three weeks after her plea of no contest. Yunqing Jian was immediately sentenced to time served as part of her plea deal on November 12. Three other U-M researchers—Bai, Zhang, and Zhang—were released the day after the federal cases against them were dismissed on February 4.
The delay in sentencing further highlights the scientific illiteracy and reactionary xenophobia driving the FBI’s operations. The initial criminal complaint filed in Chicago, and the inflammatory posts on X by FBI Director Kash Patel, accused Xiang of smuggling E. coli bacteria. However, by the time the formal indictment was filed in Indiana on December 16, the charges had quietly shifted focus. The indictment accused him of receiving a package containing “plasmid DNA of E. coli bacteria”.
Judge Sweeney’s March 9 order denying the motion to waive the PSR evinces the same elementary misunderstanding, conflating plasmid DNA with living E. coli bacteria: “The offense to which Xiang proposes to plead guilty is a serious offense involving the smuggling from China of plasmid DNA of E. coli bacteria, a pathogen, for use in Xiang’s research. The United States Department of Agriculture requires a permit for the importation of E. coli because its importation may negatively impact agriculture in the United States.”
A plant biologist ridiculed the government’s false claim that plasmid DNA poses any danger:
“It’s purified DNA. It’s the same chemical as the DNA in our own cells, or in every organism on the planet. There’s no difference between DNA isolated from E. coli versus DNA isolated from a human cell, so the fact that it was isolated from E. coli is irrelevant.”
The continued imprisonment of Xiang exposes another way US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is used by the state apparatus to break foreign-born workers and scientists. At Xiang’s initial hearing in the Northern District of Illinois on November 26, the magistrate judge was prepared to release him on bail. However, the Department of Homeland Security had already revoked his J-1 visa, and immediately placed a detention hold on his case. This created a legal trap: if Xiang accepted bail and was released from criminal custody, US Marshals would immediately turn him over to an ICE detention facility.
Because time spent in an administrative ICE facility does not count toward a federal criminal sentence, Xiang was effectively forced into a corner. To ensure that his days behind bars would count as “time served” against any ultimate criminal penalty, Xiang had to remain in the Chicago jail. As a result of his revoked visa and the looming threat of ICE, he waived his right to a detention hearing and has remained in federal custody ever since.
Rather than defending against these politically motivated frame-ups, universities have functioned as willing accomplices in the state dragnet. In the cases of Bai, Zhang, and Zhang, it was the university’s internal investigation and subsequent firing of the researchers that abruptly canceled their visas, instantly stripping them of their legal status and exposing them to ICE detention and arrest.
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The Socialist Equality Party, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the World Socialist Web Site seek to link the fight for democratic rights to the broader struggle against imperialist war and capitalist austerity. Workers, students and scientists must demand the immediate release of detained researchers, the dropping of all charges against them, restoration of visas and employment, and an independent, publicly accountable inquiry into coordination between universities and the US Department of Justice.
7. Sri Lankan government institutes huge fuel price increases
The Sri Lankan government has sharply increased fuel prices by 26–30 percent since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran placing even greater burdens on working people. The fuel price hike has triggered a series of increases such as transport fares, food prices and other essential goods.
After claiming his government could manage the crisis emerging in Sri Lanka, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake made an about-turn, warning of shortages, rising costs and electricity disruptions.
In a televised media discussion on March 17 and again in a parliamentary speech on March 20, Dissanayake stressed that Sri Lanka faced an “external shock” due to the war. He pointed to threats to global energy supplies, then declared that the government had little choice but to increase prices.
Neither Dissanayake nor his government has condemned the criminal war by Israel and US imperialism on Iran, but has maintained a false posture of “neutrality.” In fact, in a previous statement on the war, Dissanayake has singled out the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—a retaliatory action by Iran against naked US-Israeli aggression—as the chief disrupting factor in oil supplies and the global economy.
The risk of escalation is high. For a country like Sri Lanka, which imports 60 percent of its energy needs, much of it through the Strait of Hormuz, the war is having a serious impact. The island relies on energy imports for electricity generation, transport and much of its economic activity, under conditions where it is already forced to implement a severe International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity program.
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The government has restricted the distribution of fertiliser for paddy (rice) production which means that yields for the Yala season from May to August are likely to be severely affected. The prices paid to farmers for vegetables have plummeted because most trucks involved in transporting the goods to market lack fuel.
Echoing the desperate measures imposed after the country defaulted on foreign debts in 2022, the government has reintroduced a QR code-based fuel rationing system to curb consumption, intensifying the difficulties for three-wheeler and other taxi drivers in particular. Fearing a public outcry, it has deployed the military and police to fuel stations.
Sri Lanka lacks sufficient storage capacity for fuel and is thus dependent on regular shipments. Even minor delays risk shortages and long queues, as seen during the 2022 crisis.
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Working people and the oppressed in Sri Lanka face the same fundamental issues confronting workers internationally. Only a unified working-class movement based on socialist policies is capable of ending the cycle of crisis and austerity and the plunge towards a far wider world war.
8. Australia: More Victorian teachers and supporters call for better wages, conditions at mass strike
The World Socialist Web Site is publishing more interviews gathered by members and supporters of the Committee for Public Education (CFPE) at the March 24 statewide strike of tens of thousands of Victorian public school educators.
While rank-and-file teachers have shown their enthusiasm for a struggle to reverse decades of worsening conditions in public education, the Australian Education Union (AEU) bureaucracy is working behind closed doors with the state Labor government of Jacinta Allan to prepare another sellout agreement as it has done over decades.
CFPE members explained that the struggle to defend public education amid a global assault on living and working conditions requires a fight against the Labor governments that are spearheading the agenda of war and austerity in Australia.
9. Australian Broadcasting Corporation staff strike over pay and conditions
In negotiations for a new enterprise agreement, ABC management has offered annual wage increases of just 3.5 percent, 3.25 percent and 3.25 percent, and a one‑off $1,000 payment that excludes casual staff.
The pay “increases” are scarcely above the current rate of inflation, which is predicted to surge to over 5 percent this year partly on the back of price hikes flowing from the criminal US-led war against Iran. The management offer does nothing to address untenable workloads, growing casualisation or other working conditions.
Staff at more than 60 ABC offices joined strike rallies, including in the capital cities and regional and rural centres. A protest outside ABC headquarters at Ultimo in Sydney was attended by several hundred, with a hundred or so rallying in Melbourne.
While there was a mood of defiance among staff, short speeches by union leaders were bereft. The Sydney and Melbourne rallies were addressed by officials from the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) which covers journalists and editorial employees, and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) which covers other staff.
The MEAA and CPSU leaders mouthed generalities about the importance of the public broadcaster and the need for “fair” pay and conditions. They said little about decades of funding cuts by successive governments, which continue under the current Labor government, presenting the issue as being one of current management. The union leaders could not explain how casual and contract work has soared over the years, because it is a consequence of the previous sellout enterprise agreements that they have enforced.
No perspective was presented as to what would be done next. In a sure sign of preparations for another sellout, the unions had lowered their own wage claim from an already inadequate 5.5 percent per annum to 4.5 percent at the beginning of the week. They are returning to negotiations with ABC management this coming Monday.
Socialist Equality Party members campaigned at the Sydney and Melbourne rallies, placing the dispute in the context of broader struggles by workers, including teachers, health staff and academics, who all face sub-inflationary real wage cuts and increasingly onerous conditions.
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Kelli in Melbourne:
“I don’t work here for the pay. I work here for love. The pay is a struggle. A lot of people, myself included, would be in a really terrible financial situation if they didn’t have partners that worked in other industries. If I didn’t have a partner that earned a wage that keeps up with inflation, then paying the rent would be difficult.”
The administration of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), was elected in November amid mass anger over unaffordable housing, collapsing social conditions, and staggering inequality in the nation’s largest city. Less than a year later, it is moving to implement austerity—preparing cuts to education, housing and homeless programs to meet the legal requirements of a budget “balanced” on behalf of the bond markets and the financial aristocracy.
In a hearing on Wednesday before the City Council, Sherif Soliman, Mamdani’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)—a veteran of the Bloomberg, de Blasio and Adams mayoral administrations—noted that the city’s recently appointed Chief Savings Officers had identified $1.7 billion in cuts to various city departments. These include vacating underused office space in the Sanitation Department, lowering telecommunications pricing in the Fire Department, and modernizing technology and downsizing leases.
The presence of another career austerity technician at the head of OMB underscores the class continuity of the Mamdani administration: behind the DSA brand stands the same apparatus that has enforced decades of cuts.
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The Mamdani administration is in deep crisis precisely because the DSA has no answer to the budget diktats of Wall Street except capitulation. Its role is not to mobilize working people against the financial oligarchy, but to impose austerity while smothering opposition with “progressive” rhetoric.
On March 11, the credit rating agency Moody’s shifted the city’s outlook (the likely direction of the rating over the next six to 24 months) from Stable to Negative.
On March 20, Fitch/Kroll, another major credit rating agency, announced that its outlook for the city’s finances was also negative, noting that it “expects the city’s fiscal profile to weaken as it navigates a period of elevated expenditure pressure.” This is the bureaucratic language of austerity, and the billionaires whom the ratings agencies represent are clearly concerned that Mamdani’s proposed solutions to the budget crisis are unworkable and insufficient.
Mamdani has floated two of those solutions in recent months. The first is to encourage Governor Kathy Hochul, a right-wing Democrat, to approve a 2.5 percent tax increase on all incomes over $1 million and a just-under-2 percent tax increase on corporations.
Only the state legislature can implement these taxes. While a joint session of the Democrat-dominated Assembly and Senate has “approved” the tax increases, it has not voted on them. Even if it does so, as part of the 2027 budget, it is highly unlikely that Hochul will sign them into law. Even if she did, the taxes would still have to be approved by the New York City Council. The new speaker of the Council, Democrat Julie Menin, has indicated that she would oppose this.
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The implications of the inability to raise revenue by increasing taxes and the pressure exerted by the credit rating agencies are significant not only because education and social conditions will continue to deteriorate in the most socially unequal big city in the United States—as gas and commodity prices rise because of the war against Iran—but, just as importantly, because it exposes the utter bankruptcy of the Democratic Socialists of America in power.
The DSA was voted into the mayor’s office promising minor reforms—such as free bus service, about which virtually nothing has been heard in recent months—and a freeze in rents for the city’s million rent-regulated apartments, a pledge that is itself in doubt and about which Mamdani’s rhetoric has notably cooled.
Instead, the pseudo-left DSA is now offering austerity and police repression, both conditioned and exemplified by Mamdani’s notorious political alliance with Donald Trump, the benefits of which go entirely to the fascist in the White House.
The second meeting between Mamdani and Trump, on February 26, occurred after Trump’s ICE goons had murdered Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, two days after Trump’s State of the Union address, and just as the forces of Operation Epic Fury were preparing to launch an unprovoked war on Iran.
This is the path followed by the DSA: not only an alliance with the corporate Democratic Party, but collaboration with the most odious representative of the financial oligarchy. While Mamdani has called the attack on Iran an “illegal war of aggression,” he has refrained from naming Trump or members of his cabinet as war criminals and calling for their arrest and prosecution.
13. Mass layoffs, inflation fuel strikes across Mexico
Mexico is witnessing a marked upturn in class struggle as inflation, mass layoffs and factory closures provoke a wave of strikes and strike deadlines in key sectors—above all auto and auto parts, education and services.
Similar pressures—soaring prices, speed‑ups, layoffs—are propelling a parallel strike wave north of the border in the United States, including the important strike by 3,800 meatpacking workers at JBS in Greeley, Colorado, underscoring the objective basis for a common, international struggle.
The union bureaucracies, however, including the so-called “independent” unions in Mexico, are working relentlessly to contain workers’ anger by confining their strategy to appeals to the administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum and the labor courts—institutions that exist to safeguard the profit interests of transnational corporations and keep Mexican labor cheap.
The looming conflict at General Motors’ giant Silao assembly plant in Guanajuato, which employs roughly 7,000 workers and is one of the key hubs of the North American auto chain, provides a sense of the overall picture. GM workers had backed the demand raised by the “independent” union SINTTIA for a 20 percent wage increase, a figure that, even if won, would barely keep pace with rising prices.
At Silao, the union has already signaled its role as an arm of management: it agreed to postpone the strike hours before the deadline, announcing a preliminary deal for a wage increase of just 10 percent now, another 1 percent in October and a further 1 percent for certain categories in December—an 11-12 percent raise over two years amid accelerating inflation, without any concrete gains on hours, break times or safety conditions, which are central issues for workers on the line.
The reaction among Silao workers has been one of anger and contempt. On social media and in comments to the World Socialist Web Site, workers have called the agreement a “joke,” a “disappointment” and a “circus.” One worker summed up the prevailing sentiment: “The union told us half the truth. They made us lose a rest day in a meeting where they said they would not back down.”
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In the sprawling network of plants owned by First Brands Group—covering brands like Tridonex, Trico, Cardone and Autolite— workers producing parts for Ford and General Motors have been hit by a wave of closures after the parent company’s bankruptcy filing in the United States. In Matamoros, Tamaulipas alone, across the border from Texas, around 5,000 auto‑parts workers are directly affected, while more than 10,800 maquiladora factory jobs—about 4 percent of the sector’s workforce in the state—have been wiped out just in the first quarter of 2026.
Workers have responded with militant defensive actions that go beyond the legal framework of “conciliation.” At Tridonex in Matamoros, they have launched a plant occupation and strike, while Trico workers compelled the union to announce a strike. However, these occupations and strikes are being framed by the unions not as a defense of jobs, but merely to prevent the removal of machinery to cover severance pay and outstanding wages.
The struggle at Tornel, a tire manufacturer, has revealed both the ferocity of employer repression and the courage of workers. More than 2,000 workers, including 1,050 who are unionized, have been on strike since late February across several plants. Their demands include overdue wage increases of 7 and 5 percent, improvements in lagging benefits and, crucially, a reduction in working hours in a sector where workers are exposed to lead, carbon black and dyes that gravely affect their health.
On March 18, after three weeks on strike, workers maintaining the picket at the Tultitlán plant came under gunfire from company thugs around 4:00 a.m., leaving four strikers wounded. Striking workers apprehended two of the attackers, who were reportedly wearing company uniforms.
In a powerful show of resolve following the shooting, workers held a court‑supervised vote on March 22 on whether to continue the strike. Of the 1,051 workers eligible to vote, 883 voted to maintain the strike and only 113 to end it. This overwhelming defiance of armed intimidation stands in sharp contrast to the response of the union leadership and the government.
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At Goodyear México, a strike deadline was over wage demands, with the company offering around 4.7 percent while the union called for roughly 15 percent and a broader contract review.
While, on its surface, these are traditional contract negotiations, the growing struggles unfold against a backdrop of war, automation, and cross‑border supply chain and profit‑driven restructuring.
Beyond the auto sector, major struggles include:
At Nacional Monte de Piedad, a large pawn‑broking and social assistance institution with over 300 branches, some 2,300 workers have been on strike since October 2025—more than five months—over contract violations, cuts to benefits and disputes over management decisions, with the union now threatening to escalate the legal battle up to the Supreme Court.
In education, the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) led a 72‑hour nationwide stoppage from March 18 to 20, with mass mobilizations in Mexico City and other states. Teachers are demanding the repeal of the 2007 ISSSTE pension law, the elimination of regressive education reforms and a significant wage increase, and are warning that they may escalate toward an indefinite national strike.
In higher education and science, multiple unions—such as STAHUACh, SUTUACM, SPAUAZ and SUTIN—have filed strike deadlines and organized coordinated mobilizations over wages, job security and funding, with a notable strike at the Autonomous University of Chapingo. There, the union is confronting a 4 percent wage cap imposed by the Finance Ministry while it demands a 30 percent increase.
Caterpillar workers have carried out a strike that has paralyzed operations for more than two and a half years, since September 23, 2023 to demand an initial collective bargaining agreement.
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Since August 2023, formal manufacturing employment has fallen from 3 million to 2.82 million—a net loss of 180,000 jobs by the end of 2025—with layoffs intensifying this year, particularly in the maquiladoras.
What unites all these conflicts—from GM Silao and the plant occupations in Matamoros to the Tornel strike, teacher stoppages and JBS—is their fundamentally political character. Mexico plays a central role in the North American and global economy as a low‑wage export platform for auto, electronics, agriculture and other industries that directly feed US imperialism’s drive for hegemony through war and recolonization.
The defense of jobs, wages and conditions in Mexico is inseparable from the struggle against the imperialist war drive and the assault on labor and democratic rights across the continent.
What is urgently needed is the formation of rank‑and‑file committees in every workplace— “sellout‑proof” organizations that workers control directly and that can link up across factories, industries and national borders. As part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), these committees can coordinate their struggles with teachers, industrial workers and public employees in the US, Canada and beyond, countering the mobility of capital and the use of new technologies to undermine their power.
Only through such an independent, international offensive of the working class can the working people of Mexico defend their rights, oppose war and fight for a society organized on the basis of human need rather than corporate profit.
15. Canada’s NDP to pick new leader one year after election debacle
For six years beginning in 2019, the NDP, with the support and at the behest of the trade unions, propped up successive Justin Trudeau-led minority Liberal governments that implemented capitalist austerity, rearmament and war. The unions, meanwhile, derailed the biggest strike wave in decades. As workers sought to mount a counter-offensive against surging prices and intensifying worker-exploitation, the unions systematically isolated their struggles, pushed through concessionary contracts, and enforced government antistrike laws and orders.
Eleven months after the April 28, 2025 federal election and under conditions where the Liberal government, reorganized under the former central banker Mark Carney, has lurched sharply further right, support for the NDP remains tepid. Most polls show its popular support hovering around 10 percent. Looking for greener pastures, NDP politicians continue to defect to the Liberals. These include Nunavut MP Lori Idlout, who earlier this month crossed over to the Carney Liberals, and Doly Begum, who last month resigned as Ontario NDP deputy leader and a Toronto-area MPP so that she can stand as the Liberal candidate in an upcoming federal by-election.
Nevertheless, within the ranks of the union bureaucracy and the middle-class pseudo-left there is much interest in rebranding and reviving this anemic, right-wing social-democratic party. This is because they fear that the mass opposition that will soon emerge to the Carney Liberal government—its support for the imperialist wars on Iran and Russia, diversion of society’s resources to preparing for world war, and assault on workers’ social and democratic rights—will escape their stultifying political grip.
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Whatever their tactical disagreements, all of the candidates for the NDP leadership are staunch defenders of Canadian capitalism and its state, and inveterate opponents of class struggle. They are determined to contain and neuter social opposition by shackling it to the pro-employer trade unions, protests to the corporate elite and parliamentary-electoral politics.
None has repudiated the NDP’s role in propping up the Trudeau minority Liberal government, which has continued under Carney, as in last November’s budget vote.
All support “Team Canada,” the federal government-led, union and NDP-supported “national front” against Trump’s tariffs and threats. Team Canada serves to both pit Canadian workers in trade war against their US and overseas class brothers and sisters and to provide, behind a parade of Canadian nationalist flag-waving, political cover for the ruling class to push politics far to the right. Carney’s union and NDP-backed calls to strengthen Canadian “sovereignty” and economic “resilience” have invariably taken the form of massive rearmament, measures to strengthen Canada’s military-industrial base and steep cuts to public services and federal jobs.
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The NDP is a political vehicle of the trade union bureaucracy and other petty bourgeois layers that are entirely beholden to Canadian capitalism and its state. It serves as a mechanism for politically suppressing the working class. It cannot be transformed into an instrument for opposing imperialist war and capitalist austerity, let alone a means for workers to fight for socialism. On the contrary, workers will only be able to wage such struggles through a decisive political break with social democracy and its sponsors in the pro-capitalist trade union apparatuses.
This requires the building of new organizations of class struggle, rank-and-file committees that refuse to subordinate workers’ interests to the profit and geopolitical imperatives of Canadian imperialism. One of the principal tasks of these committees will be to fight to fuse the struggles of workers in Canada with the growing working class upsurge in the United States against Trump, his operation dictatorship and the Iran war. Above all, the fight against war, oligarchy and the threat of fascism and dictatorship requires the building of a mass revolutionary party of the working class to impart its struggles with an international-socialist program and strategy. That party is the Socialist Equality Party.
16. Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani targeted in attempted assassination plot
Nerdeen Kiswani, a prominent Palestinian activist and co-founder of the New York-based group Within Our Lifetime, was the target of an imminent plot to assassinate her and/or firebomb her home, amid an escalating campaign of threats and incitement by Zionist organizations and pro-war politicians.
The New York Police Department and federal agents arrested a 26-year-old New Jersey man, Alexander Heifler, after an undercover NYPD detective infiltrated online communications and, in the course of the operation, identified what officials described as an imminent attack. Heifler was charged with making and possessing destructive devices and is expected to appear in federal court in Newark.
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The threatened attack on Kiswani takes place in the context of a sustained campaign of intimidation and violent incitement against opponents of Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, encouraged and enabled by the state, the corporate media and both big-business parties.
Kiswani has been a target of pro-Israel groups for years. In February, she filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against Betar USA and its leadership under the Ku Klux Klan Enforcement Act of 1871, charging that the organization orchestrated a coordinated campaign of “racial harassment, violent threats, stalking and intimidation.”
Kiswani is represented by Eric Lee and Christopher Godshall-Bennett of Lee & Godshall-Bennett LLP, and Daniel Kornstein and Jonathan Abady of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP.
The lawsuit, together with a lengthy appendix, documents repeated social media threats, intimidation tactics, and bounty-style incitement directed at Kiswani and other antiwar protesters.
Betar USA has publicly characterized Kiswani as a “domestic terrorist,” threatened to work with the Trump administration to denaturalize and deport her, and boasted of providing “the names of hundreds of protesters and activists” to the Trump administration and DHS to urge ICE arrests and deportations.
A central component of the complaint concerns Betar’s attempts to terrorize Kiswani by repeatedly trying to force her to accept a pager or “beeper,” a menacing reference to Israel’s September 2024 operation in Lebanon. The suit cites Betar’s public bounty offer: “We offer 1000 to anyone who hands @NerdeenKiswani a beeper tomorrow. We have them for distribution.”
The lawsuit also cites the New York Attorney General’s January 13, 2026 investigation finding Betar engaged in “bias-motivated assaults, threats and harassment targeting Muslim, Arab, Palestinian and Jewish New Yorkers” —underscoring that these threats are part of an escalating campaign of political intimidation aimed at silencing opposition to the US-backed genocide in Gaza.
The attempt to assassinate Kiswani also comes amid a broader escalation of political repression in the United States, bound up with imperialist war abroad and the growth of authoritarianism at home, spearheaded by the Trump administration. The anti-Muslim campaign, aimed at dividing the working class, is being cultivated by broad sections of the US ruling class and the Republican Party as Israel carries out genocide in Gaza, widens its assault on Lebanon, and wages a joint illegal war with US imperialism against Iran.
17. UK Labour government speeds up deportations to Nigeria in expanding anti-migrant crackdown
Britain’s Labour government used a state visit last week by Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to announce an expansion of its anti-migrant crackdown.
The Home Office statement, “New UK–Nigeria partnership to speed up removals,” said the agreement ensures that “Visa overstayers, foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers will be removed from British soil far more easily…” The agreement was signed by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Nigerian Interior Minister Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo.
Central to the deal is that “UK letters, an alternative identification document issued to individuals without a valid passport and used to support the return of people with no right to remain in the UK, will be recognised by the Nigerian government for the first time.”
This was condemned by human rights organisations in Britain and Nigeria. Renowned Nigerian human rights lawyer Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, stated, “The use of the ‘UK letters’ to return Nigerians is not and cannot be a substitute for proper travel documents. This was “fundamentally at odds with international human rights standards,” as it “lowers the threshold for deportation—potentially allowing individuals to be removed without proper verification of their identity or nationality.” He warned that this could lead to “wrongful or arbitrary deportations.”
Currently, there are 961 Nigerian asylum seekers in the UK who have exhausted their rights of appeal and have no claim to refugee status. There are 1,110 foreign nationals from Nigeria convicted of crimes in UK jails whom the Home Office is seeking to deport. Regardless of the severity of their crimes, they will be removed more rapidly under the new system.
The Home Office framed the deal as central to its agenda of mass round-ups of migrants. Tens of thousands have been deported since the government came to office in July 2024.
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Britain’s right-wing tabloid media, constantly demanding more draconian anti-immigration policies, hailed the policy. The Daily Mail said Mahmood had addressed the problem that, “Currently, one of the main barriers faced by the Home Office in its bid to deport a foreign national is waiting for their home country to issue a passport or other travel papers”.
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British imperialism is bolstering links with Nigeria, a country rich in oil and mineral resources. During the visit, the government announced that UK Export Finance (Britain’s export credit agency and a government department) would guarantee £746 million ($902m) in loans to Nigeria. This will fund the redevelopment of two major Nigerian trading ports: Lagos Port Complex (Apapa Quays) and the Tin Can Island Port Complex.
The state visit—the first by a Nigerian leader to the UK in 37 years—included a lavish banquet at Windsor Castle. King Charles III described Nigeria as an “economic powerhouse, a cultural force and an influential diplomatic voice.”
Streamlined deportations to Nigeria are part of a sweeping attack on the rights of migrants in the UK, including arguably the most severe curtailment of asylum protections in the post-war period.
Previously, asylum seekers whose claims were accepted were granted five years of protection under the Labour government of Tony Blair. From this month, adults and accompanied children claiming asylum will receive only 30 months of protection. After that, their cases will be reviewed, and deportation will be enforced if the country of origin is deemed “safe.”
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The Labour government—supporting genocide and war overseas and imposing xenophobic anti-migrant and pro-social austerity at home—is a deeply right-wing party, social democratic only in name. It joins social democratic parties across Europe complicit, and even playing a leading role, in the stripping back of asylum protections, demonization of migrants, construction of detention camps and strengthening of “Fortress Europe”—as thousands continue to die on its walls.
Members of the University and College Union (UCU) at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) are being balloted for industrial action after the university executive board put forward proposals for cuts of almost £27 million.
These include £16 million of savings from 200 academic job losses, £8 million in reduced contributions to staff pensions, ending nationally agreed pay progression, and other savings carved off the backs of the workforce.
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Higher education institutions—including Russell Group universities, redbrick universities, and post-92 former polytechnics—along with private education providers such as Study Group, which runs USIC, are implementing cuts, restructuring, and austerity measures to protect revenues and align higher education with corporate priorities.
This is reflected in shifting priorities across institutions: at USIC, the focus is on the international “student experience” rather than education; at SHU, on maximizing research revenue; and at the UoS, on meeting the scientific demands of the military-industrial complex.
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Any meaningful defense of pay, pensions, jobs, and working conditions cannot be entrusted to the UCU bureaucracy. Its refusal to coordinate strike action even across Sheffield’s three ongoing HE disputes, and to link it with workers in Further Education, as well as its repeated suspension of strikes, are central to the impasse workers face, not just in that city but nationally.
UCU leaders act as mediators for management, repeatedly isolating and atomizing workplace struggles, converting strike mandates into token or intermittent action that is called off on the flimsiest pretext, while bargaining away core demands and rights.
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This fight requires transferring power away from an entrenched union apparatus back to college and university workers facing huge attacks from management.
19. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia:
Bangladesh:
India:
New Zealand:
Pakistan:
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.
