Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: April 13-19
- 25 years ago:
50 years ago:
75 years ago:
European Coal and Steel Community founded with the Treaty of Paris
100 years ago:
The Times, speaking for the Democratic Party, proceeds from a premise it considers too self-evident to require argument: that the failure to achieve the war's objectives would constitute a strategic catastrophe of the first order.
*****The Times’ declaration that “Iran’s regime deserves no sympathy” must be examined in the full context of what this war has done to human beings. The war opened with the assassination of Ali Khamenei in a strike that killed him alongside family members, in his residence, in a country engaged in active negotiations. Senior military commanders and government officials were killed alongside him. The strikes simultaneously inflicted mass casualties on civilian populations, including, by credible accounts, more than 100 children. The wives and family members of targeted officials—people whose sole connection to the “regime” was the accident of familial relationship to those who held political power—were killed in the same strikes.
The Times editorial, surveying this reality, informs its readers that the regime deserves no sympathy. Had Iran launched a comparable preemptive strike on Washington—killing the president, his officials and family members during active negotiations, while simultaneously killing over 100 American children—the Times and the entire political establishment would have responded with a fury that would have made the reaction to September 11 appear measured. The demand for accountability would have admitted no qualification.
The Iranian dead receive none of this. The children among them are unacknowledged. The widows of assassinated officials generate no moral consideration. The “no sympathy” formulation erases them from the moral universe within which the editorial’s readers are invited to evaluate the war—a universe in which Iranian lives constitute a categorically different order of existence from American lives, one that imposes no obligations of acknowledgment or accountability on those who have taken them. This is not incidental to the editorial’s politics. It is their moral foundation, designed to ensure that Phase Two can be organized and prosecuted with the same indifference to Iranian human life that characterized Phase One.The sentence that most precisely reveals this editorial’s political purpose is the following: “It is also a mistake for any Americans, including Mr. Trump’s critics, to root for this country to fail.”“This country” does not refer to the American working class, which bears every cost of this war. It refers to the American imperial state and the system of capitalist power whose global dominance that state exists to maintain. “To fail” means to suffer strategic defeat at the hands of a nation exercising its fundamental right to defend its sovereignty.*****What this editorial represents, in its fullest significance, is the response of the most politically sophisticated section of the American ruling class to a strategic crisis without precedent in the postwar period. In the space of six weeks, American imperialism has suffered a major and unforeseen military and strategic setback. Even more significant than the failure to achieve its military objectives is the staggering blow to its political and moral standing. The United States is now seen by billions of people around the globe as a criminal force. The threat made by its president to exterminate Iran will never be forgotten.
But the policies of the United States are not determined by moral considerations. The Times understands that Iran cannot be perceived to have won, that the Strait of Hormuz cannot remain under effective Iranian leverage, that the demonstration of American strategic failure cannot become the permanent new reference point against which every other power calibrates its relationship to Washington. Phase Two, under more competent and institutionally grounded direction, is what this editorial serves to prepare.
As the bourgeoisie prepares the next phase of the war, so the working class must consciously prepare its own response. The ruling class is organizing for renewed escalation. The working class must organize for revolutionary opposition.
The struggle against war requires the complete political independence of the working class from all the parties and institutions of the ruling class. That means a decisive break with the Democratic Party, which no less than the Republicans represents the interests of American imperialism. The development of an anti-war movement is impossible except on the basis of the independent mobilization of workers, in the United States and internationally, against the capitalist system that is the source of war. This independence—organizational, political and ideological—is not an abstract principle. It is the concrete political task posed by the present crisis with immense historical urgency.
Ulaş Sevinç, leader of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal in Türkiye, released a video statement condemning the arrest of independent union leader Başaran Aksu.
A new strike by Lufthansa pilots today and on Tuesday demonstrates the flight crew’s strong determination to fight. The strike is part of the growing mobilization of the European and international working class.
Trump’s denunciations of the Macron government reveal the irreconcilable conflicts between the major imperialist powers underlying US imperialism’s war of aggression against Iran.
On Sunday, with a Tuesday strike date looming for 70,000 Los Angeles education workers, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has announced a tentative agreement with the Los Angeles Unified School District. The move is aimed at blocking unified strike action with 30,000 school support staff in Service Employees International Union Local 99.
Later Sunday evening, the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALU) announced a deal for 3,000 administrators.
The UTLA deal is already provoking widespread anger. It was worked out behind closed doors, without rank-and-file oversight and announced in direct defiance of the strike mandate.
“UTLA has to be working against teachers. They gave in for such a low amount,” one poster commented on the union’s Instagram page. “This is pathetic, we’re going to be back where we started two years from now,” said another. And a third: “This is not good enough! We didn’t say anything about settling for less!”
Others stressed the need for action to push the teachers’ advantage. “We CAN get everything we’re demanding if we were willing to not give in to less than what we are asking.” Another wrote: “SEIU and AALA still have not reached an agreement. It’s all or nothing come on!!”
Educators should reject this agreement, made in defiance of their clearly expressed democratic decision to strike, and join classified workers and administrators on the picket lines Tuesday. The struggle must go forward but under control by the rank and file, not the apparatus which controls the union.
The Albanese Labor government is presiding over the increasingly devastating impact on working-class living conditions and the prospect of crippling fuel shortages, particularly of diesel.
The Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU-UAW) has set a strike deadline of 12:01 am on April 21, 2026, for 4,000 Teaching Fellows, Research Assistants and other academic workers who voted by 96 percent to walk out after months of failed contract negotiations with the Harvard Corporation.
The sticking point is stark. Teaching Fellows earn between $18 and $21 per hour—so little that many qualify for state food stamps—while Harvard sits atop a $53.2 billion endowment that it channels into financial markets and the military-industrial complex. The university has countered workers’ demands with a proposed 2.5 percent annual raise, against a documented need for a 74 percent increase just to achieve pay parity between Teaching Fellows and Research Assistants.
[The] Harvard administration has also rejected workers’ demands to protect their international colleagues from Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) thugs saying this would interfere with their “relationship with the federal government.” This comes after Harvard has already surrendered to most of Trump’s blackmail demands to destroy academic freedom.
That is not a negotiating position. It is a provocation.
U.S. Central Command announced Sunday that American warships will begin blockading all maritime traffic entering or exiting Iranian ports on Monday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time
Kennedy Orwa, a PhD student at the University of Washington, was detained at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on April 7 and deported with his 13-year-old son the following day.
The European Union is once again tightening its migration and asylum policy. Far-right parties are setting the pace.
While UAW President Shawn Fain hailed a modest increase of 17,000 members—a large portion in the academic sector—this obscures the reality that layoffs continued across major UAW-represented auto plants. The impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade war program, fully supported by UAW leadership, has contributed to ongoing instability and uncertainty in the industry.
Against this backdrop, UAW net assets rose to $1,250,132,191 in 2025, up from $1,175,910,875 the previous year. The bulk of these assets—$856.9 million—is invested in marketable securities through the strike fund, tying the union’s financial position closely to Wall Street. This alignment creates a direct financial incentive for the apparatus to block strike action and suppress class struggle in the interest of maintaining corporate profitability.
The UAW listed another $161 million in net value for its luxurious Black Lake education center and golf course in Northern Michigan.
Perhaps even more revealing is what’s not front and center in LM-2: the UAW Retiree Health Care Trust Fund held approximately $63 billion in assets in 2024, including more than $7.7 billion in General Motors stock. While nominally independent, top UAW officials, including Fain, oversee the trust, which distributes roughly $300 million annually in administrative expenses. By transferring responsibility for retiree healthcare from the auto companies to the union, retiree benefits have been placed at the mercy of stock market fluctuations.
At the same time, control of such a vast fund has provided the bureaucracy with significant influence in the financial world and access to lucrative management fees. It also means the UAW apparatus directly benefits from a shortening of retirees’ lifespans since this results in smaller payouts from the trust fund.
Solidarity House collected $226,524,129 in dues in 2025 through the per capita tax of about $577 in annual dues deducted from the paychecks of every active member. Meanwhile, it only paid out $8.5 million in strike pay. The few strikes that were called were quickly shut down, such as the walkout at GE Aerospace in Greater Cincinnati, where the resulting agreement met none of the workers’ key demands and imposed wage increases of just 3 percent—effectively offset by inflation and rising healthcare costs.
The largest category of spending was “representational activities,” largely consisting of salaries and expenses, including travel and conferences held at resorts, luxury hotels, and casinos—often in warm weather vacation spots far removed from the major auto plants in the Midwest.
The salaries of the bloated UAW apparatus are by far the single largest expenditure, $107.1 million. The average compensation for the UAW’s staff of 950 apparatchiks rose to $112,000—well above the pay of the average shop-floor worker. This figure excludes local UAW officers, many of whom also earn six-figure salaries. Top officials earned significantly above the average: Fain received $276,378 in reported salary and expense allowances; Vice President Rich Boyer received $265,000; Vice President Mike Booth received $248,270; and Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock took home $250,633.
A relatively unknown staffer, Sherrod Elledge, received an extraordinary $520,244 in salary and expenses. Elledge is listed as a “health and safety specialist” who has taught workshops at Eastern Michigan University and also participated in an international labor and health course in Guarulhos, Brazil.
This raises serious questions: Who authorized such a payout for an unelected official? What responsibilities supposedly justify compensation at this level—excessive even by the standards of the UAW apparatus?
*****The UAW also spent millions on conferences and training sessions, frequently held at vacation destinations. These included events at the Hyatt Regency Louisville ($379,016), the Grand Hyatt San Diego ($450,118), the TradeWinds Resort in St. Petersburg, Florida ($650,423) and the Atlanta Marriott ($706,791), among others.
As the World Socialist Web Site has asserted, the UAW long ago severed its connection to the class struggle and the defense of workers’ interests, functioning increasingly as a business entity. The rising salaries and perks of the union apparatus are tied to its expansive investment portfolio and its close, institutionalized relationship with auto company management through numerous joint committees.
*****Under this corporatist model, the UAW has developed a financial incentive to suppress strikes—particularly to avoid drawing down its substantial strike fund, which functions as a reserve controlled by the bureaucracy.
This situation is the outcome of a strategic shift beginning in the 1980s, when the UAW and other unions abandoned any traditions of the class struggle and adopted the program of corporatist “partnership” with management under conditions of globalization. Since the formal adoption by the UAW of union management collaboration, the apparatus has overseen the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the auto industry, a major reduction in real wages and the evisceration of hard won benefits, including defined benefit pensions, the eight-hour workday and the principle of equal pay for equal work.
Meanwhile, the UAW bureaucracy has overseen worsening conditions in the plants, due to speedup, forced overtime and continued downsizing. In 2025, a series of high-profile injuries and deaths underscored these deteriorating conditions. Among them was the death of veteran skilled trades worker Ronald Adams Sr., who was crushed while working on machinery at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Plant in Michigan. Investigations into the incident—reportedly involving failures in lockout-tagout procedures overseen by the union—have stalled amid collaboration between Stellantis management and the UAW. Despite widespread outrage, there is no indication that Elledge, the union’s highly paid safety specialist, played any role in addressing the case.
The growing wealth of the UAW reflects its role in supporting corporate and state interests. After years of backing the Democratic Party, Fain has emerged as a prominent union supporter of the Trump administration and its policies of trade conflict, austerity and expanded executive authority.
Today, UAW is a union in name only. Instead of fighting for workers’ interests it operates as an arm of management, suppressing worker resistance through a web of labor-management structures. This will only change when workers break the stranglehold of the bureaucracy by building rank-and-file committees to transfer power from the UAW apparatus to workers on the shop floor. A new leadership must be forged based on the fight for the global unity of workers in opposition to the capitalist profit system.
Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell, who had been the leading Democrat in the election for governor of California, announced late Sunday that he was ending his campaign as a result of allegations of sexual misconduct made by several women, including a former staff member.
In a statement posted on X, he wrote:
I am suspending my campaign for Governor. To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past. I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made—but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi both urged Swalwell to end his gubernatorial campaign after the San Francisco Chronicle published a lengthy account Friday of claims made by the former staff member, who said that Swalwell had raped her.
CNN published more details of allegations by other women, and by Saturday there was a full-scale media feeding frenzy on the issue, with demands that Swalwell resign his seat in Congress as well as ending his campaign for state governor.
*****
Swalwell launched his campaign for governor last November, forgoing reelection from the 14th Congressional District, which includes portions of the Bay Area east, including all or parts of the cities of San Leandro, Hayward, Union City, Fremont and Livermore. He only emerged as the leading Democratic candidate in a poll published last month, ahead of billionaire Tom Steyer, who has already spent $110 million on his own campaign, and former Representative Katie Porter.
Under the “jungle primary” system used in California, all candidates of all parties will appear on a June 2 primary ballot, with the top two candidates, regardless of party, advancing to a November runoff. The leading Republican in the race, right-wing talk-show host Steve Hilton, was just endorsed by President Trump. He is polling slightly behind Swalwell. The current governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, is term-limited and will leave office at the end of this year.
*****The reference to “survivors” and the demands that Swalwell resign his seat immediately are typical of the anti-democratic attacks on due process and presumption of innocence that have characterized the #MeToo scandal-mongering campaign since its inception.
There is no reason to believe or disbelieve the allegations made by Swalwell’s former staffer until her testimony has been tested against other evidence. That Congress and the two capitalist parties that control it are both rife with political, financial and moral corruption is hardly a secret.
Any charges against Swalwell would likely be referred to the House Ethics Committee, which is already investigating Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida on financial corruption charges and Republican Tony Gonzales of Texas for sexual misconduct that allegedly contributed to the suicide of a former aide.
Most of Swalwell’s current campaign and congressional staff signed a statement supporting the former staffer and urging the congressman to end his gubernatorial campaign and resign from his seat immediately. Writing that they were “horrified” by the allegations, they said, “We stand with our former colleague, and the other women who have come forward. We believe you should stand with them, too.”
The timing of the Chronicle exposé is certainly politically motivated, since it comes barely two weeks after Swalwell appeared to separate himself from the other Democratic contenders, in large measure because he has postured as an aggressive opponent of Trump and the fascistic operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The article was published after the deadline passed for any new candidate to enter the race, and less than three weeks before the first of two televised debates scheduled for the primary campaign.
Besides Steyer and Porter, the other prominent Democrats in the race include former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra; former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan; California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond; and former State Controller Betty Yee. None of these candidates has topped five percent in recent polls.
The meeting in Hatton on April 26 will discuss the real aims of US imperialism, the complicity of Sri Lanka's ruling elite in the widening war, and the socialist strategy that must be adopted to fight against war.
Thousands of people joined protests to denounce New Zealand’s alliance with the US and government silence on US and Israeli war crimes. The organizers, however, promoted illusions in Labour and the Greens.
Romania is playing an increasingly central role in the war offensives of US imperialism in the Middle East and of NATO against Russia in Ukraine.
Both films underscore a central truth: under capitalism, personal decisions can be so severely restricted that they become almost irrelevant.
Over 3,300 people have now been arrested on these charges since Palestine Action was outlawed by the Labour government in June-July last year.
The Index on Censorship magazine in March featured an interview with a former UK librarian, hounded out of a job she loved due to fallout from a book censorship drive by school management.
Over 50 percent of school librarians have reported similar incidents in schools across the UK, including in Birmingham, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Essex and Scotland.
At the time of the interview, the location of the secondary school was known—Greater Manchester—but not its name—the Lowry Academy in Salford. The librarian, referred to as Emily, wished to remain anonymous.
20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The sign says: "Peace for the world! Down with war!"
