Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Chile’s Carabineros repress, detain health workers protesting budget cuts
The scenes outside La Moneda, with water cannon dispersing a peaceful march and union leaders dragged into detention, belong to a global pattern of state violence against working-class opposition.
2. Investigation exposes militarization of California campuses
An investigation by CalMatters into all 148 public college and university campuses in California confirms what students and faculty have long experienced: campus police departments have become paramilitary forces, stockpiling combat-grade weaponry without even the most minimal democratic oversight. CalMatters is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization based in Sacramento. Its findings expose not only the militarization of higher education, but also the political forces that have enabled it, including the Democratic Party and its allies in the trade union bureaucracy and the pseudo-left.The investigation found that police departments across the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and California Community Colleges (CCC) systems possess large arsenals of AR-15-style rifles and submachineguns, tens of thousands of rounds of specialized ammunition, tear gas grenades, distraction devices, surveillance drones and Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) capable of causing permanent hearing damage. UC Berkeley alone possesses 24 patrol rifles, 19 projectile launchers, 5,000 rounds of ammunition and an LRAD. UCLA deployed its LRADs 71 times during the 2024-25 academic year. San Jose State University stored 33 tear gas grenades and an HK MP5 submachinegun in violation of CSU policy.
These arsenals were supposedly regulated by Assembly Bill 481, signed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in 2021. Presented as a landmark transparency measure, AB 481 requires campus police to obtain governing board approval for military equipment, publish annual inventories and use policies and hold public forums. The CalMatters investigation documents systemic noncompliance.
UC Berkeley withheld its inventory until seven months after the UC Board of Regents approved it and only after repeated media inquiries. Cal Poly Humboldt and Sonoma State failed to hold required public forums in 2025. The CSU Board of Trustees has not publicly reviewed its military equipment policy since 2022. More than 40 community colleges failed to produce military equipment reports, while the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office admitted it does not track district compliance.
Campus police have also exploited legal loopholes to conceal their combat capabilities. To exempt themselves from public disclosure, the California State University system and San Francisco State administrators claimed their AR-15 patrol rifles were merely “standard issue,” a designation that was contradicted by San Jose State’s campus report, which classified the same style of semi-automatic rifle as a “specialized firearm.”
Even more revealing is the strategic deployment of “mutual aid.” When the UC administration moved to dismantle pro-Palestinian encampments at UCLA in May 2024, it called in the California Highway Patrol (CHP). Because state agencies are exempt from AB 481’s campus-level oversight requirements, CHP officers deployed flashbangs, chemical agents and rubber bullets, while the university formally maintained policies restricting those very weapons. Militarized repression was outsourced and laundered by means of a jurisdictional loophole.
These developments reflect a broader political process driven by the deepening crisis of American capitalism. California, celebrated by Democrats as a progressive model, combines extraordinary wealth concentration with deepening social misery.
*****
In California, where the political establishment presents itself as Trump’s principal opponent, the Democratic Party has overseen the militarization of campus policing under Democratic governors, Democratic-appointed regents and a Democratic legislature. AB 481 was designed to regulate and legitimize the campus security apparatus, not dismantle it.
*****
The weapons stockpiled on California campuses are used against peaceful student demonstrations, labor pickets and political protests. During the 2019-2020 wildcat strike at UC Santa Cruz, campus police worked with the California National Guard to deploy military surveillance equipment against graduate student pickets.
Historical records and public disclosures confirm that campus police departments systematically monitor labor organizing, including questioning service workers and compiling detailed intelligence reports for university labor relations and human resources officials to facilitate operational continuity during strikes.
3. Serbian President Vučić announces his resignation
Vucic is banking on the opposition’s weakness ahead of snap parliamentary elections, which are expected to be held at the same time as the presidential election.
4. Lula government officially acknowledges threat of US military aggression against Brazil
Brazil’s Foreign Ministry acknowledges the threat of a US military intervention, amid the intensification of Trump’s imperialist offensive against Latin America.
5. University of Michigan students, faculty, staff, alumni issue open letter defending U-Mich Eight
Over 260 members of the University of Michigan community have signed an open letter condemning the federal prosecution of eight pro-Palestinian activists as a political assault on free speech.
6. Canada announces its largest ever military procurement to purchase 12 German-made attack submarines
The submarine purchase is not just Canada's most expensive ever military procurement. Ottawa is using it is a means to embed itself in Europe’s own massive rearmament program and strengthen their war alliance against Russia.
7. Thai rice farmers leave fields idle amid deepening rural crisis
Farmers are being hit from all sides: sharply higher costs for fuel, fertilizer, irrigation, harvesting and transport, and falling rice prices caused by global oversupply and cheaper competitors.
8. Perspective: The mass layoffs in Germany’s auto industry and the global war on jobs
Germany, Europe’s largest economy and manufacturing center, is at the crest of a global layoff wave that must be opposed by an international offensive by the working class to save jobs.
9. Berlin’s CDU-SPD government turns German capital into a centre of war production
Behind the backs of the population and under the banner of “innovation,” Berlin’s CDU-SPD government is transforming the German capital into a centre of arms production, drone development and military research.
10. German government declares war on the working class with radical austerity reforms
To finance rearmament and war, and to further enrich the wealthy, the government is condemning working people to longer working hours for less money and is abandoning the needy, the sick, the elderly and refugees to their fate.
11. Australia: Workers and students speak out against Labor’s assault on disability support
Labor’s $38 billion cut to disability services—part of a broader austerity agenda funding war over human need—has provoked widespread opposition from recipients, families and workers.
12. Australia: Union resumes secret negotiations to prepare another sellout of Victorian educators
The Australian Education Union is trying to reverse the mass “no” vote against its sellout agreement and impose the same betrayal in violation of the sentiments of educators.
13. ICE killer remains free as witnesses to Houston shooting are held in immigrant prison
Eyewitness testimony and surveillance footage show Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and his co-workers being pursued, cut off and surrounded by unmarked vehicles that gave no clear indication they belonged to federal agents.
14. Inmates face torture after prison riots in Sri Lanka
Following the massacre at Negombo Prison, in which 28 people were killed, two more prisoners have died in unexplained circumstances after being transferred to other facilities.
15. 28 killed in shoe factory fire in China
Huiteng Footwear, which operated the factory, is just one of more than 5,000 shoe manufacturers employing over half a million workers in the coastal city of Jinjiang, often described as China’s “shoe capital.”
16. As US strikes intensify, Trump says the Iran ceasefire is “over”
Speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara this week, President Trump said of the ceasefire with Iran, “To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them. They’re scum.” This was followed by an announcement of a temporary pause in military action and then still more intense strikes.
17. USPS maintenance technician removed from Minnesota facility for demanding cleanup of human feces
A Minnesota USPS maintenance technician was removed from the St. Paul Processing and Distribution Center by police and referred for a psychiatric evaluation after demanding that management clean human feces from mail-sorting equipment.
18. WSWS begins posting highlight clips from webinar on the American Revolution
On June 25, the World Socialist Web Site hosted an extraordinary panel of eminent historians at a webinar to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution.
The full webinar, “The American Revolution and Its Place in History: From the War Against Monarchy to ‘No Kings,’” can be accessed at wsws.org/1776.
Here is another clip:
19. Workers Struggles: Asia & Australia
Australia:
Bangladesh:
India:
South Korea:
20. 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.
