Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Shut down plants and workplaces amidst spreading toxic air!
Wildfire smoke from Canada and Minnesota has given Detroit the worst air quality in the world. The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees calls for workers to take independent action to protect their health and lives.
2. Australian government cynically tries to distance itself from war on Iran
Labor is presenting itself as a bystander to an illegal war that it has enthusiastically supported and actively participated in, including through the deployment of troops and military hardware.
3. South Australian nurses to vote on sellout union-Labor government agreement
In June, limited 24-hour strikes at Lyell McEwin Hospital and Flinders Medical Centre demonstrated nurses’ determination to fight, even as the union leadership worked to keep these actions isolated and under tight bureaucratic control.
4. Catastrophic Bangladesh floods kill over 50 people
The same failures recur every monsoon: breached embankments, inadequate drainage, delayed relief and infrastructure designed to serve commercial interests rather than human need.
5. German intelligence service removes Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei from extremist watchlist
In its 2025 report, presented on 30 June, the Verfassungsschutz—Germany’s domestic intelligence service, formally known as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution—no longer lists the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) as a so-called “left-wing extremist” organisation. The removal shows that there was no legal basis whatsoever for the party’s earlier designation. It was a campaign against socialist perspectives that was purely politically motivated.
The Verfassungsschutz had first listed the SGP as “left-wing extremist” in its 2018 report. At the time, it justified this on the grounds that the SGP’s activism was directed “against the existing state and social order, invariably slandered as ‘capitalism,’ against the EU, supposed nationalism, imperialism and militarism, as well as against Social Democracy, the trade unions, and the Left Party.”
In doing so, the intelligence service expressly confirmed that the SGP pursues its goals by legal means—that it “attempts to gain public attention for its political ideas through participation in elections and through lecture events.” From the very beginning, the surveillance was therefore based exclusively on the party’s political ideas, not on any unlawful conduct.
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Yet the removal of the SGP from the report does not signify a retreat from the government’s authoritarian offensive. A party can still be monitored by the intelligence services even if it is not listed in the report. Just recently, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union, CSU) announced that he would comprehensively expand the powers of the Verfassungsschutz. According to a draft bill that became known in early July, the Verfassungsschutz and the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Foreign Intelligence Agency) are in future to be permitted not only to engage in surveillance but also actively to “intervene covertly.”
Specifically, the intelligence services are to be allowed to penetrate IT systems, redirect or cut off data streams, provide “false information for those involved” and delete or falsify stored information—in other words, to hack, sabotage and deploy targeted disinformation. All of this affects people who are not even accused of a criminal offense and who will never learn that the intelligence services have taken action against them, let alone be able to take legal action against this.
In the new Verfassungsschutz report for 2025, any fundamental criticism of capitalism and war continues to be defamed as anti-constitutional. The report expressly warns against “Trotskyism” and declares that “left-wing extremist activities” were directed “to abolish the existing state and social order and replace it with a socialist or communist system.” Anyone who opposes militarism and war is defamed as “extremist.” By contrast, the real danger—the right-wing extremist terror networks within the police, the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and the intelligence services themselves—is systematically played down.
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The SGP will continue and intensify its struggle against the intelligence services and for democratic rights. The Verfassungsschutz, which is riddled with right-wing extremist networks and whose previously long-serving president is now himself classified as a right-wing extremist, must be dissolved immediately. The removal of the SGP from the Verfassungsschutz report is no cause for the all-clear. The struggle against the revival of the Anti-Socialist Laws and of thought-crimes continues.
Therefore, sign the petition against the surveillance of the SGP and become a member of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei!
6. United States: Rubio, Miller host fascist conference at State Department
The most chilling remarks came from Stephen Miller, who presented a Nazi-style characterization of the “left” as a biological deformity that had to be eliminated.
7. United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers announce new deal at Dana, rush contract votes
Voting is set to begin Friday on the deal, which increases top pay to $30 an hour by 2030 for current workers but expands the tier system and offers no job protections as parts suppliers slash costs through AI and automation.
During nearly five hours of questioning, Democrats remained virtually silent on ICE murders, National Guard deployments and the prosecution of left-wing opponents of the Trump administration.
9. White House actively discussing sending ground troops to Iran
This dangerous escalation would be a desperate response to the failure of the US war to overturn the Iranian regime.
10. Protesters speak out against ICE murders in Houston, Texas and Biddeford, Maine
WSWS reporters spoke to protesters in Houston, Texas and Biddeford, Maine this week, the sites of two daylight murders of workers on their way to work by ICE gestapo agents.
11. After NYC elections, Jacobin offers services of DSA to Democratic establishment, union bureaucracy
Jacobincites recent DSA election victories to argue, in the form of friendly advice, that the Democratic Party establishment and trade union bureaucracy should not be distracted by the supposed “socialism” of the DSA. For their own good, they must instead embrace the DSA and accept the organization’s offer to lend them a “left” cover.
12. As humanitarian crisis reaches “critical” stage, NYT reports “Marco Rubio is Running Venezuela”
Billions in Venezuelan assets withheld from earthquake relief, debt payments prioritized over reconstruction, and oil wealth redirected to Wall Street all demonstrate that US operations have nothing to do with aiding the population.
When 1,700 workers at Nexteer Automotive in Saginaw, Michigan opened their first paychecks after the UAW narrowly rammed through a fourth contract, they found that 32 hours of vacation time had disappeared.
14. Two disease outbreaks in New York City highlight a prioritization of profit over health
The spread of two diseases in New York City, Legionnaires’ disease and Cyclosporiasis, highlights the failure of the capitalist system to mount effective measures to control known threats to human health and life.
15. Florida’s killing of the aged and infirm: Executive power and the machinery of state vengeance
The scheduling and execution of death sentences in Florida are made possible by a peculiarity of state law, in which the governor holds almost singular authority over the machinery of capital punishment and decides when death warrants are signed and executions scheduled.
For all those groups playing a leading role in the Stop the War Coalition and the Gaza protests, this is either made a secondary issue or ignored entirely as they tout Graham’s supposed role in reviving trade union militancy presented in entirely uncritical fashion.
17. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, & Middle East
Africa
Democratic Republic of the Congo:
Nigeria:
South Africa:
Greece:
Civil servants walk out over government changes to employment conditions
Hungary:
IKEA workers in first strike for 36 years demand pay improvements
Italy:
App-based food delivery workers strike for guaranteed income and health and safety protection
Spain:
Thousands of Airbus workers strike for better pay and conditions
United Kingdom:
Second union joins stoppage by UK school examination board over pay
Foreign Office civil servants walk out over restructuring proposals
Strike by workers at rail maintenance company in Wales over pay
Walkout by bus manufacturing workers in Scarborough over pay
Iran:
Strike of machine tool workers at factory over unpaid wages
18. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
