Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump says US Navy will escort ships through Strait of Hormuz as Iran war spirals
At a White House press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz Tuesday, Trump spoke about the war in the language of a mob boss—boasting of “hits” on Iranian leaders, referring to assassinations as people being “taken out,” tallying the dead like a gangster counting bodies.
“Forty-nine people were taken out in the first hit,” he said. “And I guess there was another hit today on the new leadership, and it looks like that was pretty substantial also. So they’re getting hit very hard, and we’ll see what happens.”
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The deployment of Navy escorts into the Strait of Hormuz—just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, within range of Iranian anti-ship missiles and drones—raises the prospect of the sinking of American vessels and major US casualties.
Six US service members have already been killed by an Iranian drone strike on Port Shuaiba in Kuwait on March 1, and at least 18 more were seriously wounded. The Pentagon identified four of the dead: Captain Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sergeant First Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sergeant First Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sergeant Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa—a college student at Drake University posthumously promoted from Specialist. Three US fighter jets were shot down by “friendly fire” from Kuwaiti air defenses; all six aircrew ejected.
Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes daily, has plunged more than 90 percent. Zero LNG tankers passed through, a first. Over 150 tankers carrying oil or liquefied natural gas are drifting or parked inside the bay. Maersk, MSC, Hapag-Lloyd, and CMA CGM—the four largest container shipping lines in the world—have all suspended operations. Maritime war risk insurers have canceled existing policies and demanded vastly higher rates, creating what Kpler analysts described as “a real supply disruption, not a risk premium event.”
Iran has declared the strait closed. IRGC Brigadier General Ebrahim Jabari announced on state television: “The Strait is closed. If anyone tries to pass, the heroes of the Revolutionary Guards and the regular navy will set those ships ablaze.” The withdrawal of maritime insurers has reinforced the blockade—doing the work of mines and warships.
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In a letter sent to Congress on Monday, Trump wrote, “It is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary.”
The disaster being unleashed by US imperialism on Iranian society is immense. The Iranian Red Crescent reported 787 people killed across Iran as of March 3. On Saturday, an airstrike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, killing 165 people — most of them girls aged 7 to 12—and wounding 95 more. The school was struck at 10:45 in the morning during a class change, with 170 students present.
On Tuesday, thousands of mourners filled the streets of Minab for the mass funeral, showering the coffins with rose petals as they were lowered into rows of freshly dug graves.
The US and Israel have bombed multiple hospitals. Khatam-al-Anbia Hospital and Gandhi Hospital in Tehran were struck on March 1, destroying the IVF department at Gandhi Hospital. Iran is under a near-total internet blackout—connectivity has collapsed to 1 percent of normal levels—disrupting hospitals, pharmacies, and banks across the country. The country’s navy, air force, radar, and air defenses have been systematically destroyed.
Iran has retaliated with waves of missiles and drones targeting Israel, US military bases, and Gulf states. The US consulate complex in Dubai was struck by a drone. Hezbollah launched precision missiles and drones at Israeli targets, and Israel responded with strikes on Lebanon killing at least 31 people. Embassies across the region are being evacuated. The State Department has told Americans to leave more than a dozen countries, from Egypt to Iraq, on their own.
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The assault on Iran takes place within the context of a broader eruption of American militarism across the globe. In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the National Defense Strategy the same day, Senator Roger Wicker declared: “President Trump’s actions in the Western Hemisphere, the Middle East and Europe are inextricably linked to our overall struggle against the Chinese Communist Party. Tailored use of military force and support in Venezuela, Iran and Ukraine has thwarted Chinese and Russian objectives and denied their access to resources and technology.”
Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, agreed, arguing that degrading Iran would put the US “in a position where our very kind of model ally, Israel, which is willing and able to take a lot more responsibility, our Gulf partners, who are doing a lot ... allow us to enable this focus on the first island chain.”
In other words, the war against Iran is, by the explicit admission of the US government, a stepping stone in the preparation for a far larger war against China. The wars in Venezuela, Iran and Ukraine are interconnected components of an insane plan for global conquest.
The war is rapidly escalating and the dangers are enormous. The American ruling class has set in motion a chain of events it cannot control. A war launched to assert imperialist dominance over the Persian Gulf is spreading across the Middle East, convulsing the global economy, and accelerating the trajectory toward a global military conflagration. The working class in the United States and around the world must be warned: this war will not be stopped by any faction of the political establishment. It can only be halted through the independent mobilization of the international working class against the capitalist system that produces it.
2. Following armed provocation and energy blockade, Trump floats “friendly takeover” of Cuba
Trump’s remarks, made before boarding Marine One, and as planes were already on the move to bomb Iran and kill top officials, expose the predatory logic: submit or face destruction.
“Marco Rubio is dealing on it and at a very high level … they have no money. They have no oil, they have no food,” he gloated before boarding.
Earlier media reports indicate Rubio has been holding talks to groom Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of Cuban leader Raul Castro and overseer of the military’s GAESA economic conglomerate.
The Trump administration seeks to install a puppet regime and turn Cuba into a cheap labor source for Wall Street, handing ports, plantations and mines to US corporations while expelling Russian and Chinese influence from the region. This is part of a Hitlerian drive for hegemony across the hemisphere and beyond, including Trump’s efforts to “run” Venezuela, attack Mexico, seize Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal.Significantly, the effort to starve Cuba into submission has received bipartisan support in Washington, with no effort from Democratic Party leaders to block the strengthened embargo.
3. With Trump’s backing, Pakistan wages “open war” on Afghanistan
Military clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan continued for a fifth day Tuesday, in a conflict with potentially major implications for South Asian and world geopolitics.
Pakistan has carried out waves of air and missile strikes, including on Kabul and other targets deep inside Afghanistan, since it announced last Friday, February 27, that it was launching “open war” on its smaller, northwestern neighbor. Pakistani forces have also attacked numerous Afghan positions along the 2,640-kilometer (1,640 miles) Durand Line, a British Empire-imposed border that Kabul has never recognized.
Afghanistan’s Taliban regime has countered with drone strikes and cross-border assaults. Both sides are boasting that they have killed hundreds of rival soldiers. Kabul is alleging Pakistan’s aerial war has resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties.
Most foreign governments, including those of China, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have appealed to the two sides to immediately cease hostilities and negotiate a settlement.
The United States led by the would-be fascist dictator Donald Trump administration is not among them. Endorsing Islamabad’s war narrative, the US State Department has declared Washington’s “support for Pakistan’s right to defend itself against incursions from the Taliban, which is designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization.”
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Frictions and animosity between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government have been mounting since at least 2023. Last October, Pakistan carried out air strikes deep inside Afghanistan on what it claimed were bases of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an insurgent Islamist Pakistan militia, triggering almost two weeks of fighting between Pakistani and Afghan forces. Qatar, with the assistance of other powers, brokered a truce, but it began to unravel almost as soon as it had been concluded.
Pakistan blames Kabul for a recent spike in terrorist attacks by the TTP, but also the Islamic State-Khorasan Province and Baluchi separatists.
Even in the first days of last fall’s shaky truce, Islamabad refused to reopen its border with Afghanistan, preventing the cross-border movement of goods and people. Now in its fifth month, the trade and travel embargo is having a hugely damaging impact on people and commerce on both sides of the Durand Line. This is especially true in Afghanistan, whose economy was already reeling under drought and the continued refusal of the US and other western powers to allow Kabul access to the billions in Afghan Central Bank assets they seized when the Taliban came to power in August 2021.
Pakistan’s government has also sought to divert mass social anger over its imposition of brutal IMF (International Monetary Fund) austerity measures, growing poverty and ever-widening social inequality by moving to deport millions of Afghan refugees, many of whom have lived in Pakistan for decades or were born there.
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Islamabad has publicly condemned both the US-Israeli attack on Iran and their assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in addition to being Iran’s head of state was revered by tens of millions as a spiritual Shia leader.
These statements will not have ruffled any feathers in Washington. The domestic and international compulsions under which Islamabad operates are well understood in Washington.
There is deep-rooted popular animosity toward US imperialism, and the brutal drone war it mounted for years in Pakistan’s tribal areas during the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies. This was a major factor in the rise to power of the now defrocked and jailed ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek‑e‑Insaf (Movement for Justice).
Pakistan also shares longstanding cultural-civilizational ties to its western neighbor Iran. While the exact figure is unknown, Shia Muslims are estimated to account for between 15 and 20 percent of Pakistan’s population, that is, some 40 million or more people.
Recent days have seen large protests against the US-Israeli attack on Iran and the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei in major cities across the country, including Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. Pakistani security forces killed ten protesters and injured scores more Sunday, when they allegedly tried to storm the US consulate in Karachi. According to press reports at least 11 more people were killed last weekend during protests in Gilgit and Skardu, the principal cities in Pakistan’s remote, northerly Gilgit-Baltistan administrative territory.
A major factor in the Pakistan-Afghanistan conflict is Islamabad’s fears over the increasingly close ties its arch-rival India has developed with the Taliban regime. All the more so, given that India-Pakistan relations have been on a knife’s edge since last May, when India mounted illegal air strikes deep inside Pakistan, triggering four days of cross-border clashes that brought South Asia’s twin nuclear powers to the brink of all-out war. Not only have there have been no negotiations since Islamabad and New Delhi announced a truce May 10. India has withdrawn from the Indus Water Treaty, threatening a key economic lifeline of Pakistan, and both sides have continued to exchange bellicose threats and ratcheted up their weapons and ammunition purchases.
Pakistan’s unprecedented October 2025 attack on Afghanistan took place during a week-long visit by Taliban Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi to New Delhi. During his stay, he concluded a series of agreements with India’s Narendra Modi-led Hindu supremacist government, including for economic assistance and support for health care. Even more concerning for Islamabad, Foreign Minister Muttaqi called India a “close friend” and said Kabul recognizes and aligns with New Delhi’s security concerns.
Islamabad charges that India is using Afghanistan to provide material support to both the TTP and the ethno-nationalist separatist insurgency in Baluchistan. There is compelling evidence to support this, especially in the case of the Baluchi insurgency. But this is also very much a case of the pot calling the kettle black, as Islamabad has long supported Islamist insurgents in Indian-held Kashmir, as well as the Khalistan movement for a separate Sikh state.
The Taliban regime, for its part, charges that Pakistan is acting as the cat’s paw for Washington. It says Trump turned aggressively against it after it refused to cede to his demand that it give back to the Pentagon the massive US-built Bagram military base on Kabul’s outskirts. In making this demand, Trump noted the base’s proximity to key elements of China’s strategic nuclear program.
On Sunday, Pakistan’s air force attacked the Bagram base.
India is far and away Washington’s closest ally in South Asia. Under Modi, it has become a frontline state in American imperialism’s military-strategic offensive against China, and has entered into an ever-expanding web of bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral military-security ties with Washington and its principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.
Yet New Delhi’s position on Pakistan’s “open war” on Taliban-led Afghanistan is radically different from Washington, underscoring the complex and explosive mesh of conflicting geostrategic interests that now traverse South and Central Asia. Soon after the clashes began, India’s Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement that “strongly condemns Pakistan’s airstrikes on Afghan territory that have resulted in civilian casualties, including women and children, during the holy month of Ramadan.” It termed the attacks a violation of Afghan sovereignty and “another attempt by Pakistan to externalize its internal failures.”
The Pakistan-Afghan conflict, like the Indo-Pakistani conflict with which it is increasingly enmeshed, is rooted in colonialism, imperialist oppression and the venal character of the rival bourgeois regimes.
Nearly 4,000 healthcare professionals from 49 states have issued a joint open letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, demanding the immediate release of all children from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. The letter, drafted by board-certified pediatricians and signed by a wide array of physicians, nurses, and public health experts, is a sweeping indictment of state repression—a meticulous, medically documented exposure of the squalid, life-threatening conditions to which the Trump administration is deliberately subjecting immigrant children.
This action takes place against the backdrop of a massive escalation of interior enforcement and mass deportations during the second term of the Trump administration. According to recent data, the number of children held in ICE custody on any given day has skyrocketed by more than sixfold since the start of the administration. ICE now holds an average of 170 children daily, with the population surging to 400 or more on certain days. In total, ICE has booked at least 3,800 children into detention facilities since the beginning of Trump’s second term, deliberately subjecting thousands of youths to extended periods of incarceration. These detentions brazenly violate the 20-day limit established under the long-standing Flores Settlement Agreement—a 1997 consent decree which, while it does not state a specific number of days explicitly, has been judicially interpreted since 2015 as prohibiting the detention of children with their families for more than 20 days.
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This intervention by healthcare workers is not merely a medical plea. It is a critical political act by professionals defending basic human rights and human life against the violence of the state. That this apparatus has been constructed and expanded across administrations of both political parties makes the call to action all the more urgent: the fight cannot be left to appeals to institutions that have sanctioned or enabled these conditions.
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The human toll of this imprisonment is captured in the harrowing ordeal of Juan Nicolás, a two-month-old infant detained at the Dilley, Texas facility. The infant developed bronchitis and persistent vomiting. With no doctor available during the early morning hours when the baby most needed attention, facility staff were unable to provide physician-level care, and the family was left to wait while his condition deteriorated over several days. Only after an acute deterioration on February 16 was he rushed by ambulance to a hospital. Juan Nicolás was discharged around midnight and returned to the Dilley facility—and he, his mother, father and 16-month-old sister were deported to Mexico the following day.
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In another case that unfolded in February 2025, a 10-year-old US citizen who had recently undergone surgery for a rare brain tumor was swept up with her family at an immigration checkpoint as they drove to Houston for a specialist follow-up appointment. Despite the mother pleading with authorities about her daughter’s medical condition, the family was taken into custody, held in a detention facility, and deported to Mexico within 24 hours. Allegations documented in a subsequent civil rights complaint filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project state that the girl was denied medical attention in detention. Now 11 years old, her recovery has stalled in Mexico, where she cannot access the specialized care her Houston doctors provided.
The letter also highlights a child who suffered permanent vision loss after being violently struck in the eye with a mop by a staff member and denied access to a specialist for weeks.
This systematic abuse is now unfolding amid a deadly measles outbreak inside the Dilley facility. Dr. Cozzo warned that “with overcrowding, poor sanitation, poor infection control, inadequate nutrition, and inadequate sleep, the immediate health risk to infants and children is largely infectious.” Infants under six months old, whose immune systems are immature and who cannot yet receive the MMR vaccine, rely entirely on herd immunity—a protection largely absent in the crowded, unventilated cells of ICE detention. By holding infants in these facilities during an outbreak, federal authorities are, as Dr. Patel observed, “knowingly exposing them to potentially deadly infectious diseases.”
Beyond demanding the immediate release of all children in custody, the nearly 4,000 healthcare signatories called for real-time public transparency regarding infectious disease outbreaks, injuries and deaths, as well as independent pediatric oversight with unrestricted access to inspect all facilities. They demand continuous on-site coverage by licensed pediatric practitioners, trauma-informed mental health care and the mandatory independent investigation of all child deaths and serious injuries in custody. Taken together, the letter is a concrete and devastating exposure of a federal apparatus that routinely inflicts lethal harm upon the most vulnerable members of these immigrant families.
The full reality of these fascistic policies is laid bare at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas. Operated by the for-profit prison contractor CoreCivic, this modern-day concentration camp is where the federal government’s policy of deliberate degradation assumes its most concentrated form. Families report a complete lack of basic sanitation, being forced to mix infant formula with “putrid” water, and being served rotting food contaminated with mold, bugs and worms.
Medical care within these facilities is not merely substandard; it constitutes deliberate, life-threatening neglect. The documented abuses include a child suffering permanent hearing loss after an ear infection was ignored, a pregnant woman collapsing without prompt aid and a detainee with appendicitis who was left writhing in pain on the floor and told by guards to simply take Tylenol and return in three days. Compounding this physical torment is the psychological terror inflicted by the state’s agents, who routinely hurl verbal abuse at detainees and use the explicit threat of family separation—telling parents their children will be taken and placed in foster care—to enforce compliance and discipline.
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What these healthcare workers have made undeniable—through meticulous documentation and courageous public action—is that the imprisonment and systematic destruction of immigrant children is not policy gone wrong. It is policy working as intended, by a bipartisan state apparatus constructed over decades, and now carried out to its logical extreme under Trump.
The fight to defend the lives and rights of these children cannot be entrusted to the courts that have sanctioned this apparatus, nor to the political parties that built it. It demands the independent, international mobilization of the working class—the only social force with both the interest and the power to dismantle the system of state terror, exploitation and deliberate human suffering that makes these concentration camps possible.
5. How the USW refinery contract helps oil companies profit off Trump’s war in Iran
Last month’s national pattern agreement covering 30,000 US refinery workers is more than a sellout, with wage increases of just 15 percent over four years, no meaningful safety improvements and no protections against job cuts or automation. For the second contract in a row, the United Steelworkers (USW) bureaucracy is seeking to ram through what amounts to a war contract on refinery workers.
Only three weeks after the deal was announced, the US launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, now spiraling into a regional conflict aimed at dominating global energy supply chains. In January, the Trump administration kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Both countries are major oil producers whose principal export partner is China—underscoring that these operations are preparations for a far larger war, including the danger of direct conflict between nuclear-armed powers.
This is the latest in a long line of US regime-change operations driven by the struggle for control over oil. But the present war is a criminal disaster on a far greater scale than Iraq. American workers will pay the price in both blood and treasure. The Trump administration, moreover, refuses to rule out the deployment of ground troops.
Another front in this war is the working class at home, where corporations are carrying out a sweeping assault on jobs and living standards even as Trump tramples democratic rights and floods cities with ICE agents.
Images of refineries erupting in flames in the Persian Gulf find their parallel in the explosions and accidents produced by relentless cost-cutting and speedup in pursuit of profit. Last October, a massive fireball engulfed a refinery in El Segundo, California. More recently, three contract workers suffered burns at ExxonMobil’s refinery in Beaumont, Texas.
The fight of refinery workers against exploitation in the plants is inseparable from the broader struggle of the working class against war—and against the trade union apparatus, which functions as an extension of the oil companies and the government. It requires the building of rank-and-file committees from below to organize workers independently and prepare a counteroffensive against inequality, dictatorship and war.
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The last national contract, reached in February 2022, was announced on the first day of the war in Ukraine—a US proxy war against Russia. Then-USW President Tom Conway, who met in secret with President Joe Biden during the talks, boasted that the 11 percent deal over four years was a “responsible contract” because it did not contribute to “inflationary pressures.” In other words, it kept wages below inflation, which was then at its highest level in decades.
The US oil industry profited immensely in the aftermath, in large part by stepping in as Europe’s access to Russian energy supplies was curtailed. Today, US oil production stands at record levels—about 13.6 million barrels per day, up from roughly 11.1–11.2 million in 2021.
In the coming years, production is likely to surge further as Trump eliminates remaining drilling restrictions. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial board piece, “US LNG [liquefied natural gas] to the World’s Rescue,” even claimed that the US export boom was “saving the world economy.”
The industry also stands to gain from price spikes driven by the threat of disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply transits. Analysts have warned that prices could rise to $130 or $150 per barrel in a prolonged war, compared to about $67 at the start of the conflict, while statements attributed to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have threatened prices as high as $200 per barrel.
At current production levels, $150-a-barrel oil would generate roughly $1.1 billion in additional revenue every day compared with pre-war prices—enough to cover the $2,500 “bonus” for all 30,000 workers in the new contract in about 98 minutes.
The effect of the pattern agreement is to keep workers on the job and production running, ensuring that superprofits continue to flow into the pockets of the oil giants, while workers are made poorer. Economists estimate that every 5 percent increase in oil prices is associated with a 0.1 percentage point rise in inflation. Analysts warn that a prolonged war lasting months could send shockwaves through the economy and potentially trigger a recession.
In that event, the experience of 2008–2009 and 2020 makes clear what would follow: trillions would be mobilized to bail out corporations and the financial markets, while workers would be driven even further backward.
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From an economic standpoint, workers possess immense leverage. Thirty thousand refinery workers operate roughly two-thirds of US refining capacity. For a world market already disrupted by war, there is no immediate substitute for US output except the limited drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Workers also have powerful leverage to halt the war because the refineries supply fuel for the US military. The US Air Force consumes between 1.5 billion and 2 billion gallons of aviation fuel annually—roughly 10 percent of all aviation fuel used in the United States—and about half of that is purchased domestically. Recent one-year contracts awarded to Marathon, Chevron, Valero and Phillips 66 have a combined value of $1.3 billion.
The USW’s priority is propping up the capitalist economy. But the full scope of its role can only be understood in the context of the upsurge in class struggle, with strikes across healthcare and education set to begin this year. In the aftermath of the Minnesota killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, a general strike became an issue of national discussion.
The response of the union bureaucracy has been to consciously try to disrupt and sabotage a movement in the direction of a general strike. Officials from other unions mouthed support for protests while refusing to call any action and diverting anger into consumer boycotts.
The role of the union bureaucracy in war is to impose peace on the home front. In 2024, Biden called the AFL-CIO his “domestic NATO.” This formulation expresses not only his policy but the essential function of the union apparatus since the no-strike pledges during World War II.
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The bureaucracy’s parasitic social interests are shown in the person of the new USW president, Roxanne Brown, who took office at the start of the month, replacing David McCall. While Brown took over after the refinery agreement was reached, she served as second-in-command during talks and was the face of what little public messaging the USW carried out during the talks.
Brown is a creature of the state. She built her career as an official in the USW’s policy and legislative department, having been hired in 2007 as an assistant legislative director. She is also a vice president on the AFL-CIO Executive Council. She is listed as an “expert” on the website of the National Endowment for Democracy, long a front group for US State Department operations carried out in collaboration with sections of the union bureaucracy. Their site also lists her as a board member of Georgetown University’s Institute of International Economic Law and the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Direct Air Capture Advisory Council.
Brown was chosen for her extensive, largely behind-the-scenes connections with politicians and government offices. She would almost certainly have been deeply involved in Conway’s closed-door meetings with Biden in 2022. In her role as USW vice president at large, she earned $273,697 in 2024.
Her elevation reflects the total estrangement of the bureaucracy from the rank and file. She and her slate were elected unopposed because they were the only candidates to reach the nominating threshold from local unions—a fact the apparatus attempted to obscure by emphasizing that she is the first black woman to head the union. She has never worked a single day in a refinery or steel mill.
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The fight by refinery workers against the oil companies is inseparable from the fight against war. The USW “negotiated” this contract to assist US imperialism in the lead-up to war. There is no doubt that the Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, was closely following the talks and receiving regular updates, while workers were left completely in the dark.
Contracts patterned after the national deal must be rejected. But that is only a start. Workers must organize independently and in opposition to the union apparatus. This points to the urgency of developing rank-and-file committees to provide independent initiative and prepare collective action.
The logic of the movement underway is in the direction of a general strike against the Trump administration. This perspective emerges with increasing urgency with each passing day of the war. It must be consciously prepared through new organizations and structures genuinely controlled by workers themselves.
On Tuesday, embattled Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee to defend both her own record and the murderous and criminal actions of the immigration agencies she oversees.
The hearing takes place under conditions where DHS employees are going without pay for over two weeks after Democrats refused to provide votes to fund the agency unless it adopted cosmetic measures aimed at restoring the credibility of the widely hated department, which has Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under its purview.
Millions of people are outraged over the brutal and criminal character of the “mass deportation operation,” which serves as a spearhead of dictatorship, and the murder of multiple Americans this year, including Keith Porter Jr., Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
In response to the murders of Good and Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, tens of thousands of people held mass demonstrations on January 23 and 30 demanding that all immigration agents leave the state and that those responsible for the murders be held accountable. Some two months after the murder of Good and Porter Jr. and more than a month after the murder of Pretti, none of the agents responsible for their killings have been arrested or charged with a crime.
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Near the beginning of the hearing, a protester shouted, “Kristi Noem, you should be ashamed of yourself,” before being wrestled to the ground by Capitol Police. As they were carried out of the chamber, the protester called for the abolition of ICE.
A second protester shouted, “Two other Americans were killed by ICE, Keith Porter Jr. and Dr. Linda Davis. They were Americans killed by ICE. Say their names, their black lives matter.” Dr. Linda Davis, a special education teacher in Savannah, Georgia, was killed on February 16 when a vehicle fleeing federal immigration agents crashed into her car during a morning commute near her school.
In her opening remarks and testimony, Noem repeatedly defended the immigration Gestapo and refused to apologize to the families of Good and Pretti for smearing them after they were killed. In the case of Pretti, Noem falsely claimed that the VA ICU nurse was “brandishing a weapon” and appeared to be engaged in “domestic terrorism.” These comments were made hours after video emerged showing Pretti was disarmed, shoved to the ground and shot in the back multiple times by CBP thugs.
Noem likewise refused to apologize to Marimar Martinez, who attended the hearing in person. Last year during “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, Martinez was shot multiple times by CBP thug Charles Exum after CBP agents rammed her car. Exum bragged over text message that he put “five holes” in Martinez, a US citizen on her way to donate clothes at a local church.
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In his opening remarks, chairman of the committee Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley condemned Democrats for not voting to approve funding for the DHS, “Now more than ever I hope the Democrats work to end the shut down.” Retiring Senator Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) fumed that under Noem’s leadership, “the American people...think that deporting people is wrong.”
In his opening statement, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (D) attacked Noem over the murders of US citizens before proposing immigration goons “follow the same rules as police.”
While many Democrats mentioned the murder of US citizens and the lack of any accountability from ICE agents, none of them proposed actually abolishing ICE, a demand that has the support of 50 percent of the US population according to a YouGov poll released on March 3, the highest registered support for abolishing the agency YouGov has measured.
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Turning to Minnesota, Noem confirmed during the hearing that roughly 650 federal immigration agents remain in the state, weeks after the Trump administration claimed it was winding down its massive enforcement operation. Pressed by senators on why hundreds of agents were still deployed following the murders of Good and Pretti, Noem claimed that the agents were now primarily investigating alleged “fraud,” including supposed Medicaid fraud cases in Minnesota.
Last week the federal government announced it would withhold $259 million in Medicaid payments to Minnesota—a move without precedent in modern US politics and yet another attack on the working class by the Trump administration. The announcement was publicized by Health and Human Services Secretary Mehmet Oz and Vice President JD Vance, who claimed the action targeted “scammers” who have “hijacked in particular a certain part of the Medicaid system,” but offered no concrete evidence to justify such sweeping punishment. Promising further attacks on workers and families, Oz warned that Minnesota “is not alone” and “won’t be the first to receive this action”.
Medicaid in Minnesota is a major social lifeline: over 1.26 million people are beneficiaries, it covers three in 10 children, and more than 78 percent of adult recipients are working, in school, or caregiving. The program insures over 300,000 low-income workers. Cutting funds to such a program is an assault on working class families—children, the elderly, people with disabilities and low-paid workers who rely on Medicaid for basic health care. The freeze is part of the Trump administration’s escalating offensive in Minnesota, first with the killings of Good and Pretti, and now through social murder carried out by cuts to vital programs.
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The same ruling circles attacking social programs enrich themselves through speculation, war profiteering and corruption. There is real fraud taking place, and it is in Washington, particularly in the White House. Trump has enriched himself to an extraordinary degree, personally accumulating at least $1.4 billion in a single year of his presidency, including more than $800 million from cryptocurrency ventures, bribes and other transfers of money.
The biggest fraud of all is the illegal war on Iran, which exposes the lie that social programs must be cut for lack of funds. Billions of dollars have already been wasted massacring school girls in Tehran and workers throughout the region. The Trump administration’s broader trajectory—the expansion of ICE, the trampling of democratic rights and the launching of illegal wars—expresses the logic of a ruling class defending its ill-gotten wealth and power. The same ruling class that wages war abroad now demands austerity and dictatorship at home to pay for it.
The defense of democratic rights and social programs cannot be left to either party of the ruling class. Workers must build rank-and-file committees, convene mass meetings in workplaces and communities, and unite struggles over health care, wages and democratic rights into a mass movement independent of the two capitalist parties and their adjuncts in the trade unions.
7. Florida’s assembly line of death grinds on with execution of Billy Leon Kearse
In a continuation of what has become the deadliest era of state-sanctioned killing in modern Florida history, the state executed Billy Leon Kearse on Tuesday, March 3. Kearse, 53, was killed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke for a crime committed over three decades ago when he was just 84 days past his 18th birthday. He was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m. local time.
Kearse’s attorneys filed an application for a stay on February 28 to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, citing Sixth Amendment jury impartiality issues and Eighth Amendment intellectual disability claims. Just hours before he was set to die, the Court rejected Kearse’s petition without comment. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied his appeal.
Kearse’s execution marks the first of three scheduled in Florida this month alone, an unprecedented pace that signals a further escalation of capital punishment policy under Governor Ron DeSantis. Following Kearse’s execution, the state plans to kill Michael King on March 17 and James Duckett, a former police officer, on March 31. This killing spree follows a record-breaking 2025, during which Florida carried out 19 executions—accounting for approximately 40 percent of all executions nationwide.
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While the state portrays Kearse as a calculated killer, his history paints a far more complex picture of systemic social failure and intellectual disability. Kearse’s childhood was marked by severe neglect and emotional distress. His mother reportedly drank heavily during pregnancy, most likely leading Kearse to suffer from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome; he also suffered a head injury as a toddler. By age eight, he was already in the juvenile justice system for being “beyond control,” and he spent his youth in special education programs for the “severely disturbed.”
The US Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons in 2005 that executing individuals for crimes committed as juveniles under age 18 violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Prior to this ruling, 22 juvenile offenders were executed, the last being Scott Hain, 17, in Oklahoma. Texas accounted for 13 of these executions.
Maria DeLiberato, legal and policy director for Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP), stated, “Mr. Kearse’s case implicates nearly every constitutional and due process concern imaginable—from the fact that he was just 18 years old at the time of the offense, to his well-documented intellectual disability, to the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Sgt. Parrish, which reflect the kind of panicked, fight-or-flight impulsivity we know is common in late adolescent brains.”
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Legal experts argue that Kearse is constitutionally ineligible for execution due to these disabilities. He functions at a third or fourth-grade level, has a documented history of adaptive deficits, and has presented full-scale IQ scores that place him squarely within the range of intellectual disability.
The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 that executing individuals with intellectual disabilities, which the justices referred to as “mental retardation,” violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
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The history of Kearse’s legal case is a decades-long saga of procedural maneuvering. Originally sentenced to death in 1991, his sentence was vacated by the Florida Supreme Court in 1995 due to sentencing errors. However, he was resentenced to death in 1997.
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The acceleration of executions is part of a broader resurgence of the death penalty in Florida. Governor DeSantis recently signed legislation allowing for death sentences based on an 8-4 jury recommendation, directly challenging US Supreme Court precedents that had moved toward requiring unanimity. Furthermore, Florida remains the only state where the governor maintains sole authority to sign warrants without independent oversight.
Resistance to this spree of death continues to mount. Organizations such as FADP and the Catholic Mobilizing Network organized vigils and petition drives, urging clemency for Kearse and other death row inmates. They argue that capital punishment is a state-sanctioned violation of human dignity that disproportionately targets the disabled and the impoverished. They call for an end to capital punishment, reflecting growing opposition in the American public to the barbaric practice.
8. Index of Repression maps huge scale of anti-Palestinian crackdown in Britain
Tara Mariwany of the European Legal Support Centre explained, “Nearly a third of people targeted are activists, 22 percent are students, and 13 percent are within the category of academics, writers and teachers.”
9. Kenya backs US-Israeli imperialist attack on Iran
[President] Ruto’s statement has been met with popular contempt. Hundreds of replies on X, along with comments on Instagram and Facebook and beneath online newspaper articles, voice a common sentiment: his statement does not represent Kenyan workers.
The political front mounted against LFI, encompassing far-right groups, the Socialist Party, the National Rally, and Macron's government, is waging an offensive against democratic rights and the growing opposition to the establishment of a police state.
11. Turkish miners break through gendarmerie barricade, seizing mine
The Turkish miners’ wildcat strike and occupation in İzmir, defying state oppression, is part of a growing radicalization within the working class on an international scale.
12. Türkiye’s concerns mount over US-Israeli war on Iran
Ankara fears that this imperialist attack, which could lead to the collapse of the Iranian regime, could in turn increase Israel’s influence on its own borders, trigger a new wave of migrants, and encourage separatist initiatives by Kurdish nationalist forces linked to the US and Israel.
13. Pennsylvania student protesters face daunting legal battle in “Quakertown 5” case
The handing down of aggravated felony assault charges to the students reveals the state’s authoritarian response to youth resistance against repression.
14. Early election called in Denmark, as Social Democrats seek to capitalize on anti-Trump sentiment
[ Prime Minister Mette] Frederiksen called the vote more than six months early, amid a revival in support for her party following the conflict with US President Donald Trump over control of Greenland.
The films reviewed here are collaborations between Israeli and Arab filmmakers and actors seeking to come to grips with the catastrophic consequences of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
16. Australian Labor government fully complicit in illegal war on Iran
This imperialist bombardment has nothing whatsoever to do with freedom from oppression, any more than the ongoing US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza.
17. Stop the criminal war of aggression against Iran! [with video]
The Socialist Equality Party says clearly:
This war is a crime against peace. It is a step toward global war and nuclear catastrophe. We demand an immediate halt to all US and Israeli attacks on Iran. Not one cent, not one ounce of support for this war. Withdraw all Western troops from the Middle East and end the sanctions. For an international, socialist anti-war movement of the working class.
On February 4, federal prosecutors abruptly filed a motion to dismiss all criminal charges against three Chinese postdoctoral researchers from the University of Michigan (U-Mich)—Xu Bai, Fengfan Zhang and Zhiyong Zhang. After more than three months in federal custody, the three were released on February 5 and returned to China. The dismissal confirms that these prosecutions lacked any genuine public-safety basis and formed part of a politically driven campaign to intimidate migrant researchers and students, coerce universities into policing international cooperation, and provide ideological cover for a US turn toward confrontation with China.
The three U-Mich researchers were accused of participating in a conspiracy to “smuggle” dangerous biological materials. In reality, the alleged contraband was common laboratory research material—C. elegans nematodes and plasmids—ubiquitous, harmless tools of basic biology used in labs around the world.
The case of Bai, Zhang and Zhang must be understood as part of a coordinated escalation by the national security apparatus. Since 2024-2025, the Department of Justice, FBI and Customs and Border Protection have pursued a series of prosecutions and detentions of Chinese researchers, promoting the use of sensationalist “agroterrorism” and “smuggling” rhetoric to criminalize routine scientific exchange. Cases at U-Mich—where earlier arrests and coerced plea deals produced deportations and ruined careers—served as a template.
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When the DOJ quietly dismissed the Bai, Zhang, and Zhang case, corporate media moved quickly to salvage the government’s credibility. Reporters and official spokespeople emphasized technical rationales or diplomatic explanations to deflect attention from the fraudulent basis of the charges. This spin serves to preserve public trust in the state security apparatus and to maintain the usefulness of xenophobic tropes in priming public opinion for further repression and war preparations.
Three interrelated material factors explain the drive to criminalize international scientific collaboration.
1. Geopolitics and preparations for confrontation. The US ruling class is rearming and reorganizing its political and economic life for strategic competition with China. Universities and scientific research are now being systematically militarized under measures such as the CHIPS and Science Act and other initiatives that tether academic work to defense priorities. In 2025, U-Mich received $100 million in direct research support from the Department of Defense. The repressive campaign against international researchers prepares the ideological terrain for confrontation by demonizing foreign scientists as potential agents of a foreign state.
2. Domestic class politics and scapegoating. As the capitalist crisis deepens—reflected in austerity, precarious employment and attacks on democratic rights—sections of the ruling elite exploit xenophobia to divide the working class and deflect social opposition. Targeting migrant scholars frames a manufactured external threat while legitimizing an expansion of police and administrative powers at home.
3. Corporate-state control of knowledge. The tightening of export controls, grant conditions and university compliance regimes places academic labor under the authority of government and corporate interests. Universities, fearing loss of federal funds and political reprisal, collude with investigators—firing staff, revoking visas and handing over records—transforming campuses into instruments of government repression. The U-Mich administration did nothing to defend Jian and Han, and its decision to terminate Bai, Zhang and Zhang stripped them of institutional protections and immediately jeopardized their immigration status, exposing them to detention by federal authorities.
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The collapse of the case against Bai, Zhang and Zhang should not be mistaken for an end to the witch-hunting. The national security state retains the legal instruments and administrative mechanisms to target scientists, union activists, anti-war organizers and any section of working people that challenges the policies of the ruling class. The fight against this repression must be fought politically and on a mass basis, linking the defense of scientific freedom and democratic rights to the broader struggle against imperialist war and capitalist austerity.
We must make these demands:
- Drop all charges in the case against Youhuang Xiang at IU, and halt all deportations and visa revocations used for political purposes.
- Reinstate fired researchers and restore their visas and employment without conditions.
- Open independent, democratically supervised public hearings on DOJ and FBI abuses, with subpoena power to reveal coordination between universities, prosecutors and intelligence agencies.
- Repeal administrative rules and funding conditions that force universities to police international collaboration and research.
19. Germany set to introduce further crackdown on migrants and refugees
A new harsher anti-migration and asylum law is set to come into effect once it is ratified by the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat.
20. IYSSE (Australia) campus meetings: Stop the criminal US-Israeli war against Iran!
The meetings in Newcastle, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane will elaborate the socialist and revolutionary perspective to end war on Iran and halt the slide to a disastrous nuclear third world war.
21. French President Macron announces expansion of nuclear weapons arsenal
The French president intends to establish an “advanced deterrence” for Europe as a whole and station nuclear weapons in Germany and other European countries in the future.
22. Australian Labor government accuses Iran of “antisemitic” attacks to justify Trump’s criminal war
The revival of bogus claims that Iran orchestrated firebombings on Australian soil is the Labor government’s original contribution to the deluge of propaganda surrounding the illegal US-Israeli bombardment of that country.
23. Ukrainian state intensifies pressure on Bogdan Syrotiuk by withholding medical care
The Ukrainian state has responded to a devastating expert report that demonstrated that the charges of “state treason” against Bogdan Syrotiuk lack any foundation, by stepping up the pressure on the 26-year old socialist. Bogdan has been imprisoned since April 2024 and faces a sentence of between 15 years and life in prison. He was the founder and leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, a Trotskyist youth organization in the former Soviet Union, that opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the NATO proxy war by fighting to unify the working class of Russia and Ukraine.
In the fall, a linguistic report by one of Ukraine’s most prominent criminologists, meticulously examined the charges of “state treason” and work on behalf of the Russian Federation by the prosecution which are based entirely on publications of the World Socialist Web Site. The report completely shattered the case of the prosecution which, for over a year, had already failed to deliver any evidence in court.
The response by the court has been to commission a third linguistic report. Originally due in late December, it has not been presented to this day. The next court session was postponed several times. When the court finally convened again on February 23, it only ruled to prolong Bogdan’s pre-trial detention.
Meanwhile, Bogdan has been denied urgently necessary medical care to treat his teeth. Like many people in the former Soviet Union, where the state of medical care and the general health of the population underwent a staggering decline as a result of the restoration of capitalism, Bogdan suffers from serious dental problems. He experiences severe pain and is threatened with serious mid- and long term health consequences. For over a year now, he has been promised treatment by a dentist outside the prison since the prison facility cannot provide the necessary procedures. Under one flimsy pretext after another, this visit has been postponed time and again. A new prison administration is now no longer even trying to arrange it.
There is nothing accidental about this treatment. It is a means to increase the personal pressure on Bogdan under conditions where the case of the prosecution has effectively fallen apart and the campaign in his international defense has been gaining an ever wider hearing. Before the expert’s report, the defense of Bogdan reached another important milestone with the decision of the European Court for Human Rights to review his case. This makes Bogdan’s case one of only very few from Ukraine that have been admitted, despite the widespread violation of human rights in the country.
The case before the ECHR rests upon the violation of his right to liberty, enshrined in Article 6. However, there is abundant evidence for serious violations of at least two other articles: the right to a fair trial and the prohibition of inhumane and degrading treatment.
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There will be no justice for Bogdan within the Ukrainian court system. The case against him is a case against the International Committee, aimed at de facto outlawing Trotskyism and intimidating any opposition from the left to the ongoing war in Ukraine. The only path to freedom for Bogdan lies in an intensification and broadening of the international defense campaign.
We call upon all readers to sign the petition, and demand that he immediately be granted the necessary medical procedure! The European Court of Human Rights must speed up its review of the case! All charges must be dropped and Bogdan be released! To support this campaign, spread the word about the case and make a donation here!
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.
