Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. July 4, 2025: Trump, the oligarchy and the American counter-revolution

July 4, 2025 marks 249 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which asserted the right of the people “to alter or to abolish” any government that becomes “destructive” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Independence Day is celebrated with parades, barbecues, picnics and fireworks. All that is well and good. It is necessary, however, to put aside some time for serious thinking about the fate of the American Revolution and the state of the country. As the United States begins the 250th year of its existence, it is in the throes of a political, social, intellectual and cultural counterrevolution. All the great democratic principles that were proclaimed in Jefferson’s immortal document and which inspired not only the struggle against the British monarchy, but also the Second American Revolution of 1861-65 that abolished slavery, are under violent attack.

2. House passes Trump bill, which robs working people to give tax cuts for the super-rich

The bill cuts taxes for the wealthy by $3 trillion, slashes more than $1 trillion from social spending on Medicaid and food stamps and pours $300 billion more into military violence abroad and domestic repression, particularly against immigrants.

3. Sri Lanka’s Tamil parties back US-Israel war against Iran

Tamil oppressed workers and the poor in Sri Lanka have faced discrimination and violence by Colombo regimes for decades, which continues under the current Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power government. Just as the Tamil elites contemptuously treat the oppressed masses in Iran and Palestinians in Gaza, so they regard the Tamil masses with the same contempt. 

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Workers, youth, and students must reject both Tamil and Sinhala capitalist parties' cynical, bankrupt and pro-imperialist positions and should take a bold stand against the imperialist criminal war drive.

The working class in Sri Lanka—Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim—stand in the same trench as their class brothers in Iran, Gaza, throughout the Middle East, including Israel, and internationally, including in the US. What is unfolding in Europe, in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific is a global conflict between nuclear-armed powers that threatens humanity with catastrophe. 

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The SEP and the IYSSE have organised public meetings on the theme: Oppose US-Israel war on Iran! 

4. Philadelphia transit board votes to enact “doomsday budget,” to “dismantle” transit system

Chicago’s transportation system is also facing devastating cuts of around 40 percent. Democrats have controlled the city and state for years, and despite numerous warnings about the current budget crisis, they have done nothing to prevent it. Instead, they are now bracing the public to “do more with less,” as stated by Democratic Mayor and former teachers’ union organizer Brandon Johnson. 

In New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is currently facing a $1.5 billion operating budget gap, with as much as a $35 billion dollar shortfall for its four-year capital plan. It is currently seeking $14 billion in emergency federal dollars to assist it. 

5. Philadelphia city workers defiant as strike continues though third day

In a sign the strike is gaining public support, rapper LL Cool J announced yesterday that he would not perform as scheduled at the city’s “Welcome America” July 4 festival if it meant crossing picket lines. 

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Among workers there is a defiant response to the strikebreaking efforts of the city government. Numerous reports suggest strikers are either ignoring or skirting around the injunction limiting pickets to eight people. In several instances earlier this week, eight picketers were backed by anywhere from 10 to 40 or more strikers present but standing or sitting behind them. 

6. Stateless Palestinian Ward Sakeik released after five months in ICE custody

Ward Sakeik  

Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old stateless Palestinian newlywed, was released late Tuesday from the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas after enduring nearly five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

While her release marks an important victory for immigrant rights, it is a warning that the lawless and punitive policies of the Trump administration continue to target thousands with no criminal record, in open defiance of basic legal protections and constitutional rights.

7. Los Angeles declares fiscal emergency, prepares mass layoffs amid $1 billion deficit

What is unfolding in Los Angeles is part of a nationwide wave of fiscal crises in major cities. In Philadelphia, 9,000 municipal workers are on strike in a city where the school district has a $300 million deficit, and the transit system is preparing “doomsday” cuts. The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority is billions of dollars in the red. Chicago is preparing similar “doomsday” transit cuts in addition to education cuts.

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Los Angeles is home to 56 billionaires with a combined net worth of over $240 billion. Yet city officials, both Democrat and DSA-aligned, insist that there is “no alternative” but to slash jobs and services. Their real concern is maintaining the city’s credit rating and securing the confidence of the financial markets.

8. Over 600 Palestinians killed at US-Israeli “aid centers” in Gaza

At least 600 Palestinians have been killed over the past five weeks at food distributions operated by the US and Israeli-backed “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), Gaza’s government media office said this week.

The killings took place in over 20 separate massacres, which have become an almost daily occurrence as a critical component of the ongoing Gaza genocide.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the Associated Press and BBC published reports, based on firsthand interviews, that American private military contractors working for the GHF opened fire on Palestinian civilians, contradicting claims by the GHF, the US, and Israel that the contractors had not taken part in the mass killings.

The reports by the Associated Press and BBC present a picture of the aid distributions as a type of dehumanizing target practice, in which the “humanitarian” employees laugh at killing civilians and egg each other on to commit violence.

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Last week, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an investigation featuring interviews with Israeli troops, who said they were repeatedly ordered to open fire on unarmed crowds of aid seekers in an operation whose name apparently references the homicidal “red light, green light” game in the fictional Squid Games television series.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Dr. Mads Gilbert, an emergency medicine doctor who has practiced in Gaza for decades, said that the operation of the GHF “is part of the [Israeli military forces] and the Israeli government plan to ethnically cleanse and to fulfill their goal of genocide in Gaza.” 

9. Dana Fort Wayne autoworker reports on brutal conditions at his workplace

“The company pushes back on safety rules. They wiggle out of the rules and, like with anything else, the company says, ‘what are you going to do?’ During the contract the union let the company always talk first. They’re like puppets of the company. There’s just one guy that tries to help us, but the company and the United Steel Workers go against him. We had almost 30 people go to the plant manager to get him to write up a superintendent, Don Radar, that harasses everyone. Of course nothing happened. Don targets people and is racist towards some others. Anyone who doesn’t agree with him has a target on their back." 

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The worker went on to connect the conditions inside the plant with the broader attacks on the working class. “There are cuts to OSHA and then EPA cuts. I knew it was over when those things were cut. It’s another Erin Brockovich situation. Social Security cuts are not fair, you live your whole life working, then no retirement. He cuts all this and gives the family of one of those who stormed the capital $5 million. We have to overthrow Trump. The cost of the war is coming out of our pockets, when we didn’t vote on it. Just like when we opposed the contract here by 11 votes, they rammed it through anyway. 

Describing the vote on the sellout contract he said, “When the majority voted against it, the reps Greg and Antonio told us it was only 11 votes. We put years of blood into this place while the union left us out to dry, then give us the BS about ‘brothers and sisters.’ Don’t get in our faces when you don’t take care of your workers. We all remember when that man had a heart attack, no moment of silence, nothing. Most people didn’t know about it.” 

10. New Zealand PM affirms support for NATO military escalation

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attended the NATO summit at The Hague on June 24-25 during an overseas trip that included a stopover in Beijing to meet with Chinese President XI Jinping.

Luxon was at the summit as part of NATO’s Indo-Pacific 4 (IP4) grouping which consists of Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia. The four non-member countries have since 2021 been regular invitees as NATO forges closer ties with its so-called “partner” countries in the Indo-Pacific to prepare for war with China. 

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New Zealand, a minor imperialist power, relies on Washington’s backing for its own neo-colonial operations in the Pacific. Successive NZ governments have supported US-led wars over the past 30 years, including the criminal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and endorsed the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. Luxon has not criticized, let alone condemned, the Trump administration’s criminal bombing of Iran.

11. German government expands arms cooperation with Ukraine

While the US government is scaling back its military aid to Ukraine, and even halting previously promised arms shipments, the German government is intensifying its military cooperation with Kiev.

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The fact is, with the partial withdrawal of the United States, Germany has become Ukraine’s most important trading and military partner. At the same time, the war-ravaged country is increasingly being swallowed up by Germany. Its rich natural resources, strategic location, and above all, its cheap labour, are once again to benefit German capital. According to auditing firm KPMG, monthly personnel costs per worker in Ukraine amount to only €367 gross—compared to an average of €4,400 in Germany.

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The German government—comprised of the CDU/CSU and SPD under Chancellor Friedrich Merz—is pushing not only to supply German weapons systems to Ukraine, but increasingly to utilize low-cost Ukrainian production directly. This is the purpose of the deceitful propaganda portraying Ukraine as a “bastion of freedom” bravely resisting the authoritarian Russian aggressor. In Kiev, Wadephul declared: “The freedom and future of Ukraine is the most important task of our foreign and security policy.”

That the Zelensky regime has nothing to do with “freedom” is demonstrated by the fact that Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, has held 26-year-old socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk in prison for over 14 months, along with numerous other political prisoners. Accused of “high treason,” Syrotiuk’s only “crime” was to oppose the war and advocate unity between Ukrainian and Russian workers. 

12. Canada’s Liberal government lashes out against the working class 

Negotiations between Prime Minister Mark Carney, top aides in his Liberal government, and the White House on a new Canada-US “economic and security framework” resumed this week after US President Donald Trump abruptly canceled them last Friday.

In a brief social media post, Trump pulled the plug on the talks citing the impending entry into force of Ottawa’s new digital services tax. The Trump administration, like that of the Democrat Joe Biden before it, has vehemently opposed the tax, which would force Meta, Alphabet (Google), Amazon and other US-based tech giants to pay taxes on the enormous profits they generate in Canada from their online services.

Stung by Trump’s action, Canada quickly retreated. On Sunday evening, Carney announced the tax was being withdrawn. The White House gloated about Trump’s negotiating prowess in response, with his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, declaring Canada “caved.”

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In opposition to the corporatist alliance of the unions, government, and big business for austerity and war, the Socialist Equality Party has stood alone in advancing a fighting program for the working class to oppose Trump and all sections of the Canadian ruling class on the basis of a socialist-internationalist program. As the SEP declared in its election statement in April,

Trump is a menace to the workers of Canada and the world. But workers can’t fight him and all he represents—oligarchy, dictatorship and imperialist war—by lining up with the Canadian bourgeoisie, any of its rival factions or political representatives.

Rather, they must assert their independent class interests by forging a movement for workers’ power and fighting to fuse their struggles with the mass opposition to Trump now emerging within the American working class. Canadian workers must assist their American colleagues in breaking free of the Democratic Party, which no less than Trump’s fascist Republicans is a party of Wall Street and the CIA, and its trade union allies.

The cross-border movement must spearhead the struggle for a united socialist North America.

13. Brian Goldstone's There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America: Working class families sliding gradually or dropping suddenly into homelessness

In the United States of America, "homelessness is business."

14. Under extreme heat, Turkey continues to struggle with wildfires  

Since June, the whole of Europe, including Turkey, has been hit by scorching temperatures. Spain, Britain and Portugal, among many other countries, have experienced record-high average and daily temperatures.

The extreme heat has disrupted daily life and caused deaths, and has also caused wildfires in many countries. In Turkey, many fires are still not fully under control and further fire risks are present.

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Although high temperatures and strong winds directly impact the initiation and spread of fires, these annual disasters are not primarily the result of natural phenomena.

Wildfires are a direct product of climate change, aggravated by a capitalist system in which profit comes before human life, and the social costs are becoming increasingly severe with each passing year. Disasters such as fires, floods, droughts and storms are increasing in both frequency and devastating effect. Governments around the world have largely abandoned the fight against global warming and the climate crisis.

This is accompanied by increasing cuts to social funding for disaster response. Forestry workers, firefighters, rescue workers and volunteers are putting their health and lives at risk by fighting the flames. However, inadequate staffing and infrastructure, resulting from decades of underfunding and cuts, are hindering an effective and rapid response to the fires.

15. Job cuts spread and deepen at Australian universities

While starving the universities of funds, the government is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into military spending, while backing the Gaza genocide, the criminal attacks on Iran and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. 

16. Seven missing and feared dead after massive explosions at California fireworks warehouse

Seven workers are missing after a fire triggered a series of massive explosions at a fireworks warehouse Tuesday evening in the northern California town of Esparto, in a largely rural area about 30 miles northwest of Sacramento. In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, authorities said the scene remained too dangerous for firefighters and emergency workers to extinguish ongoing fires and search for the missing workers.

17. Trump-Kennedy attacks on vaccines and public health will kill millions globally

In an extraordinary breach of scientific protocol, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) chief vaccine official appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has personally overruled the recommendations of approximately 30 FDA scientists in order to restrict access to COVID-19 vaccines. Internal documents released this week reveal that FDA staff had concluded the benefits of both Moderna’s mRNA and Novavax’s protein-based vaccines outweighed the risks for all Americans 12 and older, following analysis of extensive clinical trials.

Instead of following established scientific procedures, Prasad issued “override memos” limiting these vaccines to Americans 65 and older and those with underlying health conditions. He justified this with the lie that “even rare vaccination related harms both known and unknown now have higher chance of outweighing potential benefits.” These claims directly contradict the scientific evidence reviewed by his own staff, including CDC data which show that COVID-19 continues to cause 32,000 to 51,000 official deaths annually in the US alone. 

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The Trump administration’s assault on science extends far beyond US borders, threatening to unleash a global health catastrophe that is set to kill millions in the coming years. Three simultaneous withdrawals—from the World Health Organization, USAID and the Gavi vaccine alliance—represent a coordinated abandonment of America’s role in global health initiatives which will have devastating consequences for the world’s most vulnerable populations. 

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While USAID has delivered vital aid and saved millions of lives, it has always functioned as an instrument of US imperialism—using “soft power” to secure American dominance, suppress popular movements and impose pro-corporate policies worldwide. The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID does not represent a break with this legacy but rather the lifting of any pretense of humanitarianism, with catastrophic consequences for the world’s poorest as famine and disease spread unchecked.

The Trump administration’s 83 percent cut to USAID programs threatens to reverse two decades of public health progress in low- and middle-income countries. The Lancet study projects that if current cuts continue through 2030, over 14 million additional deaths will occur, including 4.5 million children under five—equivalent to 700,000 excess child deaths annually. As the study’s authors noted, “For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be similar in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict.” 

18. Cardiff University in the UK announces sweeping cuts, just days after High Court injunction banning protest on campus

Cardiff’s cuts were announced on June 18, just days after a High Court Injunction targeting protest against the Gaza genocide on university property. The injunction means that students and staff must seek permission for any protest, occupation or other form of assembly, including literature stalls, or risk a two-year prison sentence.

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Over 5,000 job cuts across UK universities have already been announced this year, with thousands more in the pipeline, according to figures from the University and College Union (UCU). But the UCU is isolating struggles on a campus-by-campus basis, allowing major cuts to proceed, while citing agreements negotiated over no forced redundancies to call off action.  

19.  Workers Struggles in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa

Finland:

Airline workers in fresh strike for pay increases

France:

Pharmacists work-to-rule in protest at government reduction in subsidized medicine

Portugal:

Taxi drivers protest extortionate commission charges by Uber and Bolt platforms

Turkey:

Paint workers in Izmir strike for pay increase to meet rising cost of living

United Kingdom:

Walkouts by steel workers in Lisburn, Northern Ireland over pay

Phlebotomists at Gloucestershire hospitals to hold rally to mark hundredth day of strikes over pay

Academic staff at Bradford University, England walk out over job cuts

Teachers at UK school trust take further action over plans to extend teaching day

Palestine:

West Bank general strike in protest at settler killings

Nigeria: 

Teachers and council workers in Federal Capital Territory continue pay stoppage

South Africa: 

KwaDukuza Municipality workers in strike over pay and conditions

Women farm workers in protest march in KwaDukuza Municipality to demand emergency housing

Zimbabwe:

University of Zimbabwe fires four union leaders as strike continues

20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. California Democrats lead unanimous attack on free speech with AB 715

Every so often, the political representatives of the ruling class let down their masks and act in lockstep, momentarily dispensing with their factional squabbles to make plain the fundamental unity of their class rule. When this happens, it sends a clear signal: whatever their differences on secondary matters, the Democrats and Republicans are fully united in preserving the dictatorship of capital.

Such is the case with Assembly Bill 715, a dangerous and reactionary measure that passed the California State Assembly with a unanimous 68–0 vote, now heading for Senate. Not a single dissenting voice—no “progressive” objection, no liberal caveat, no democratic handwringing. The political establishment, in perfect harmony, just advanced one of the most authoritarian bills in recent memory.

Sponsored by Assemblymembers Rick Chavez Zbur and Dawn Addis—both Democrats—AB 715 claims to enhance protections against discrimination in public schools, especially against antisemitism and Islamophobia. In reality, the bill has nothing to do with protecting students and everything to do with silencing political dissent.

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The following are the main features of AB 715:

• Redefining discrimination: The bill redefines “discrimination on the basis of religion” to include antisemitism and Islamophobia—terms deliberately left broad and ambiguous. In practice, this paves the way for equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, a conflation used to criminalize criticism of Israel and its genocidal assault on Gaza.

• Censorship of curriculum: It prohibits schools from using any instructional material that might be construed—by the state—as discriminatory. This is a gateway to book bans, map erasures, and historical distortions, particularly around the subject of Palestine. It weaponizes the classroom as a site of ideological purification, policed by the state.

• Expanded complaint procedures: Teachers, board members, and even third-party contractors (custodians, food workers, librarians) would be subjected to rapid and severe disciplinary measures if found “in violation”—not of proven discrimination, but of the state’s politically-motivated definitions.

• A state antisemitism czar: The bill would establish California’s first “state antisemitism coordinator,” a new bureaucratic role that functions more like an ideological overlord than a civil rights official. This person would be tasked with enforcing conformity to the state’s definition of acceptable political discourse.

• Arbitrary definitions of nationality and religion: By extending “nationality” to include perceived ancestry or residency in a country with a dominant religion, the bill sets up a dangerous mechanism for policing thoughts, associations, and affiliations. It opens the door to the persecution of marginalized communities, dissidents, and left-wing organizations under the guise of protecting identity.

• Unprecedented executive power in schools: All of this would come with vast new powers for school officials and administrators, who would be given the authority to investigate, discipline, and dismiss based on vague and ideological criteria.

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There is historical precedent for this. In the 1930s, the Nazi regime in Germany similarly conflated criticism of the state with attacks on the “national community.” They imposed rigid ideological conformity on schools, universities, and public life—always in the name of “protecting the people.” The Democrats are not Nazis. But they are on the same road: one of repression, militarism, and dictatorship.

2. Paramount/CBS caves in to Trump, to pay $16 million in “60 Minutes” lawsuit

For the billionaire who controls Paramount, Shari Redstone, daughter and heir of Sumner Redstone, considerations of journalism and democracy could not hold a candle to the huge financial interests involved in her proposed sale of Paramount to Skydance Media, which is currently being reviewed by the Federal Communications Commission, under the control of Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist installed earlier this year.

Skydance Media is controlled by David Ellison, son of mega-billionaire Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle Corp. and an adamant Trump supporter. Redstone stands to realize $2 billion from the $8 billion takeover. In return, CBS will pass under the editorial control of an oligarch whose political views are indistinguishable from those of Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of Fox. 

3. Philadelphia city workers strike: A sign of rising class struggle in the US 

Workers in Philadelphia are battling the devastating consequences of decades of austerity. The workers, who were offered an insulting 13 percent wage increase over four years by the mayor, are confronting the collapse of public services that have been slashed to the bone. The school district, where 14,000 teachers have also voted to strike, is facing a $300 million deficit, and the city’s transit agency is preparing a “doomsday” budget that would cut services in half.

Workers are rejecting with contempt the claim that there is “no money” for the vital services on which millions rely. In 2023, the Philadelphia metro area had a gross metropolitan product of $557.6 billion and is home to 13 Fortune 500 corporate headquarters. The real issue is that the city’s working class is being bled dry in the interests of corporate profit.

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Just as the American colonists once rose up against the “long train of abuses” of King George III, the ground is being prepared today for a mass rebellion against the dictatorship of finance capital.

Class battles are emerging that will inevitably pose revolutionary questions. Even the defense of workers’ already low standard of living is impossible without a frontal assault by the working class on the prerogatives of wealth. What is required is the expropriation of the oligarchy and a massive redistribution of its wealth, to the working class that created it.

4. As the end of the “pause” approaches, where to for Trump’s tariff war?

Yesterday, Trump announced that an agreement had been struck with Vietnam to cut the tariff on its exports to 20 percent, with a 40 percent tariff on those goods deemed to have been trans-shipped through Vietnam from other countries. Under the deal, US goods will be able to enter Vietnam with zero tariffs.

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The hostility of the US towards its supposed allies is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in its attitude to Japan. Its chief trade negotiator has made seven trips to Washington but so far has come up empty.

On the Japanese side, one of the main sticking points has been the US demand that it takes more of its rice in return for any concessions on cars and auto parts.

The issue has a significant political dimension. The Japanese rice sector, which is dominated by small farmers, has long been a protected area of the economy and many members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), including Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, rest on the farmers for electoral support.

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So far, the only agreement to be announced is with the UK. It was a preliminary deal to lower some mutual trade barriers, including reduced tariffs on British cars. But the UK is something of an outlier. It was not a target of reciprocal tariffs because the US has a trade surplus with it.

There is also a deal with China. This did not cover the impost announced on April, but only the subsequent Chinese restrictions on rare earth exports and some export controls introduced by the US.

Other deals, or framework agreements, may be announced in the next days. India is reported to be on the verge of making an interim agreement with the US to avoid the “liberation day” tariffs of 26 percent.

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The Trump administration is proceeding unconcerned with legality, as in so many other issues, because it is confident that if the issue goes as far as the Supreme Court, it has the numbers there to rule in its favour.

No one can say what will happen on July 9—Trump himself probably does not even know.

But one thing is certain. The entire post-war trading system has been shattered, never to return. In the complex and integrated global economy of today, this will have major consequences, if not immediately, then not too far into the future. 

5. British parliament votes to proscribe Palestine Action: a historic assault on democratic rights

The House of Commons voted Wednesday to support Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s order banning Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. It was a stampede, with 385 MPs approving proscription, versus just 26 against. Their vote brings the state within touching distance of branding peaceful protests against genocide an act of terrorism.

When the order is approved in the House of Lords Thursday, Palestine Action will be defined as a terrorist organization at Friday midnight. Being a member of or uttering support for Palestine Action will be a crime under the Terrorism Act, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. 

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Britain’s parliament voted in open defiance of several United Nations Special Rapporteurs who wrote to the government on Tuesday protesting its moves to proscribe PA. They said, “According to international standards, acts of protest that damage property, but are not intended to kill or injure people, should not be treated as terrorism.” They warned, “This would have a chilling effect on political protest and advocacy generally in relation to defending human rights in Palestine.”

6. Trump halts $7 billion in funds to public schools triggering mass cuts

Oakland, California high school school students in 2019

In a major escalation of its assault on public education, the Trump administration announced this week that it would withhold nearly $7 billion in immediate federal funding for K-12 school districts across the United States. Delivered with less than 24 hours’ notice before the July 1 deadline, the announcement has thrown districts into chaos, forcing them to scramble for alternatives and brace for immediate cuts to staff, programs and essential services.

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The Supreme Court’s recent ruling restricting nationwide injunctions has emboldened the Trump administration to carry out sweeping, unlawful actions—including the freeze on federal education funding—without fear of immediate judicial intervention. The ruling Trump v. CASA effectively allows Trump to bypass constitutional and legislative restraints, acting with near impunity. The funding freeze is a direct result of this new legal landscape, accelerating the administration’s drive toward authoritarian rule.

Trump administration’s funding freeze is an outright illegal impoundment, defying Congress by withholding funds that were already lawfully appropriated. California is at the forefront of these attacks, but the real aim is to establish a precedent for using federal funding as a weapon to impose authoritarian, far-right policies nationwide. By targeting states over Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and related policies, the administration is preparing to withhold billions more—including Title I and IDEA funds for low-income and disabled students—using executive power to override both Congress and democratically enacted laws in service of its reactionary agenda. 

7. Germany’s Social Democrats reaffirm rearmament and Great Power policy

Whereas the party once enjoyed broader support among workers, it has now been reduced almost entirely to its apparatus, which is intimately intertwined with the state. Maintaining capitalist rule has become second nature to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which imposes social cuts and war by every available means—even at the cost of its own collapse.

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When the SPD now calls for banning the AfD, this is not about fighting the far-right but about further strengthening the state apparatus of repression. The collection of evidence concerning the AfD’s unconstitutionality is to be carried out by the Verfassungsschutz (domestic intelligence service). It is precisely Germany’s intelligence agency—infamous and despised for its chronic right-wing bias, which stretches back to the Nazi era—that is to prepare an expert report concerning which parties may exist and which may not.

Such strengthening of the intelligence services and the state security apparatus is aimed directly against the vast majority of the working class, who are increasingly coming into conflict with policies of militarization and the associated social attacks—and are beginning to resist them.

8. Trump’s DHS council targets Democratic mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani

Mamdani acknowledged the escalating danger, stating, “I had a Republican City Council member call for me to be deported. The mayor refused to denounce that as well. What concerns me is that we know these are threats that invite further threats by others. I have received death threats—against myself, and against my family.” 

Mamdani claimed that he fights “for working people ... the same people that [Trump] said he was fighting for,” and argued that Trump targets him “because we know he would rather speak about me than speak about the legislation he is shepherding through D.C.” 

In fact, Trump has been relentlessly promoting his massive spending package—combining border militarization, expanded military funding and sweeping tax cuts for the oligarchy. His attacks on Mamdani are not a “distraction” but a calculated effort to normalize the criminalization of opposition to the rule of the financial elite.

9. US Secretary of State hosts anti-China QUAD meeting in Washington 

The QUAD statement repeated the usual litany of false US accusations against China used to justify Washington’s aggression in the region.

The foreign ministers were “seriously concerned about the situation in the East China Sea and South China Sea.” They denounced “dangerous and provocative actions” in the South China Sea, such as “unsafe use of water cannons,” interference with “freedom of navigation” and “dangerous maneuvers.”

All of that was clearly a reference to China, but it is a complete inversion of reality. In fact, the US has for more than a decade deliberately inflamed low-level territorial disputes in the sea, between China and several Southeast Asian nations, deliberately transforming them into flashpoints for a major war. 

10. The Marxist movement and the fight against antisemitism and Zionism

For over 20 months, the fascistic Zionist government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, with the full support of the imperialist powers, has inflicted upon the Palestinian people a level of barbaric violence comparable to the Nazi mass slaughter of European Jewry during World War II. The unfolding catastrophe and the role of Israel as an unhinged attack dog of world imperialism in the Middle East raises fundamental questions of historical perspective: How can Zionism be fought?

This requires, first of all, a historical understanding of the emergence of Zionism and its ideology. Two recent books by the German historian Mario Kessler provide important historical and theoretical material on the struggle of the Marxist movement against antisemitism and Zionism. In 2022, he published an edited volume of writings by Leon Trotsky on antisemitism — the most comprehensive of its kind in any language — and a monograph reviewing the fight of the socialist movement against antisemitism. That volume also includes a significant collection of articles by Marxists on the fight against antisemitism. 

11.  Entertainment unions campaign for $750 million handout to California corporations 

Many studies have indicated that rather than creating new production opportunities, tax incentives merely shift production from one location to another. In other words, the Entertainment Union Coalition (composed of entertainment unions, notably the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Teamsters, the Writers Guild of America West , the American Federation of Musicians  and the Directors Guild of America) is actively working against its membership in other locales.

This makes an obvious and disgraceful mockery of the official AFL-CIO slogan of “solidarity.” Every union official who signed on to this campaign, including those who showed up to fawn at the feet of California Governor Gavin Newsom at a July 2 news conference, should be branded as traitors.

12. Australia: Teachers rally against Queensland government’s pay “offer”

Queensland, Australia teachers rally in June 

While teachers at the rally showed their determination to fight, speakers sought to divert them into appeals for a deal with [the state] government. In January, when the Queensland Teachers Union began its closed-door negotiations with the state education department, the union stated that all options were on the table, including potential strike action.

However, speakers at the rally urged teachers to write to their local MPs, an activity designed to demobilize them and sow illusions that letters of protest would shift the government. 

No speaker at the rally foreshadowed strike action. Union leaders also put forward no concrete salary demand but continued to use the vague formulation, “nation leading salaries.” 

14. Due to speak on the genocide in Gaza, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese is censored in Switzerland

UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese was scheduled to appear at a series of three meetings in Switzerland starting with an event at the University of Bern on Monday. At the last moment, and clearly under pressure from Zionist and Swiss officials, permission for the meeting was withdrawn. The university argued that the permit for the event had been withdrawn “due to a lack of balance” on the part of the speaker.

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Francesca Albanese is a widely respected expert on international law, who, in her official function for the UN, declared in March 2024 that she saw “reasonable grounds” for assuming genocide in Israel’s military action in Gaza. Albanese expanded and concretized this claim with her report for the UN last October, which stated that the actions of the Israeli government following its invasion of Gaza fulfilled all the criteria, according to international law, for the crime of genocide. 

15. UFCW announces deal to block strike by 45,000 California grocery workers 

As is frequently the case with the union bureaucracy, the Tentative Agreement was announced with zero details and a few empty phrases. According to the union, the agreement supposedly includes “higher wages, more money for pension contributions, additional health and welfare improvements, staffing and more,” without explaining what these supposedly are. In the announcement, union officials also patted themselves on the back, citing an “intense 40-plus hour bargaining session.”

Workers cannot accept this betrayal! They must organize themselves in rank-and-file committees at groceries across the region to overturn this decision, reject the contract and impose their will to strike. They must appeal for unity with their brothers and sisters across the country and break through the isolation the pro-management United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) officials are trying to impose.

Within minutes of the announcement, UFCW Local 324’s Facebook page was flooded with angry comments. 

16. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. Newlywed Palestinian woman faces deportation by Trump’s fascistic immigration regime 

Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old Palestinian woman who is not a citizen of any country, is being victimized by the fascist immigration policies of the Trump administration. Detained by US authorities while returning from her honeymoon in February, Sakeik now faces indefinite incarceration and the threat of deportation to a third country where she has never lived and cannot claim citizenship.

Her case has sparked outrage among immigrant rights advocates and exposes the brutal reality of Trump’s ongoing assault on immigrants, refugees, and legal residents.

2. Senate passes Trump’s class-war bill to cut taxes for the rich and wreck Medicaid

The bill marks a new stage in a process that has unfolded over the past half century. Medicaid, passed in 1965, was a cornerstone of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and “War on Poverty” programs and the last significant social reform enacted in the United States. 

Over the past 60 years, the ruling class has waged an unrelenting social counterevolution. Both the Democrats and Republicans have overseen the slashing of social programs to pay for repeated bailouts of Wall Street and the corporate ruling elite. The gutting of Medicaid marks a turning point. 

3. Touting opening of Florida concentration camp, Trump threatens to denaturalize and deport US citizens

In what Trump and his fascist supporters are calling “Alligator Alcatraz,” some 5,000 people are expected to be herded into the hastily constructed facility in remote South Florida. Governor DeSantis announced that transfers would begin on July 2.

As part of a far-right media blitz aimed at normalizing the construction of remote concentration camps for immigrants and political opponents of the US government, the Republican Party is now selling merchandise to promote the Florida camp—complete with hats emblazoned with alligators. It’s the American fascist equivalent of the Nazis selling beer koozies or ashtrays to commemorate Auschwitz.

4. Verdi trade union sells out ancillary workers at Berlin’s Charité hospital

The new contract is a slap in the face to the ancillary workers, cooked up behind closed doors between management, the union and Berlin’s state government. 

5. NUHW aborts UCSF Children’s Hospital strike after management announces 200 system-wide layoffs

The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) leadership unilaterally ended its strike of 1,300 workers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Benioff Children’s Hospital on Sunday. The union called off the open-ended strike, authorized by a 70 percent margin, without even the pretext of having gained anything and only two days after UCSF announced 200 layoffs at other facilities.  

This blatant act of sabotage underscores the treacherous role of the union bureaucracy, which is joined at the hip with management and the Democratic Party. The struggle can, and must be resumed, only through a seizure of the initiative by the rank and file organizing themselves independently of the NUHW officials to impose real democratic control over the struggle.

6. Jesse Armstrong’s Mountainhead:  A satire about technology billionaires – "Planet Earth's like an all-you-can-eat buffet"

A great many trees and not enough forest. [And]... oddly dated.

7. Australia: NSW Labor budget cuts spending but boosts property developers

Last week’s third budget handed down by the Labor government in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, features more huge handouts to the billionaire property developers who are profiting from Australia’s housing affordability crisis, while junking previous token cost-of-living relief measures for working-class households.

8. Immigration thugs use explosive charges in assault on family home in Los Angeles-area raid 

On June 27, in Huntington Park, California, federal agents from Customs and Border Protection (CPB) carried out a violent raid on the home of a working class family while Jenny Ramirez was caring for her two children, aged six and one.

In a scene of militarized terror more typical of a war zone than a residential neighborhood in Los Angeles, agents used an explosive device to blast the front door off its hinges—without warning or announcement—before storming the premises.

9. In Turkey: the attack on Leman magazine is a dangerous provocation

The ruling class and the capitalist political establishment will try to exploit any opportunity to suppress the deepening political crisis and divert attention away from the mounting class tensions.

10. Australian health workers voice outrage over Gaza catastrophe

An open letter from Australian health professionals and the response it has generated speak to the depth  of the anguish, shock and anger felt by healthcare workers as they  bear witness to the atrocities occurring in Gaza.

11. Canadian woman settles suit over being tortured in “dry cell” solitary confinement

Nova Scotia resident Lisa Adams was kept for 16 days in a solitary room with no running water or flushing toilet under lighted observation by sight and security camera, and with no privacy whatsoever for the entire duration. 

12. Tensions grow between Japan, US over Trump tariffs

While Tokyo and Washington routinely claim their military alliance—which is above all directed at launching an imperialist war against China—is “ironclad,” there are clear signs of tensions between the two.

*****

Washington is using the threat of tariffs to force countries to further align with US military plans. While Japan is already in the process of doubling its military spending to two percent of GDP, the US considers this insufficient. At present, Tokyo plans to complete this process by 2027, with the increase including the budget for the coast guard and other military-related expenses

13. Starmer thrown a lifeline by collapse of Labour rebellion as his gutted welfare reform bill passes

The figures of yesterday’s parliamentary vote on the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments Bill speak to two things: the weakness of Keir Starmer’s Labour government and the unprincipled and spineless character of what passes for the “left” opposition within the Labour Party.

*****

Jeremy Corbyn, whose block of five Independent MPs voted against the amended bill, made no call for a campaign to remove Starmer and his cronies and wrote his usual entirely personal pledge on X: “Yesterday, the government removed vital support from disabled people. Today, the government will criminalize protestors who want to stop genocide. I opposed the government’s attack on the disabled—and I will oppose the draconian proscription of Palestine Action.”

14. Philadelphia municipal workers launch largest strike in nearly 40 years

For the first time in nearly four decades, Philadelphia’s largest municipal workers’ union, AFSCME District Council 33 (DC 33), is on strike. The work stoppage is sending shockwaves through city operations and daily life. It is the first strike of municipal city workers since 1986.

***** 

The strike shows that the conditions are emerging for a mass movement across the country against austerity, not only from Trump but the Democrats who run most major US cities. 

15. The CWU’s whitewash of Royal Mail USO pilots cannot conceal a workplace disaster 

Far from a modest “reform,” the pilots are the first tranche of the Optimized Delivery Model jointly devised by Royal Mail, regulator Ofcom, and Communication Workers Union (CWU) leaders. This aims to slash £300 million across 1,200 delivery offices—profits destined for billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group, now sole owner of Royal Mail.

16. With 2 postal workers dead from heat-related causes, corporate America and Trump move to gut proposed heat safety rule

The Trump administration is preparing to water down or kill a proposed federal rule on workplace heat exposure. The rule, introduced last year by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), would be the first of its kind in US history. Its fate now hangs in the balance as extreme summer heat grips much of the country, particularly the Midwest and East Coast.

***** 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), an average of 40 workers have died on the job from heat exposure each year from 2011 to 2022. An average of 3,389 workers annually from 2011 to 2020 experienced heat-related injuries or illnesses severe enough to cause them to miss one or more days of work. The USPS Office of Inspector General recorded 1,332 heat-related incidents among postal workers alone between 2022 and May 2025. That averages to more than 380 cases annually. 

17. A sharp warning on the state of the global economy  

The US has a debt of $36 trillion, rising at what is universally characterised as an “unsustainable” rate. In the UK, which experienced a major crisis in 2022, there have been warnings of a bond market sell-off because of the high levels of debt. European countries, particularly France and Italy, are weighed down in debt, while the Japanese prime minister has likened the government’s financial position to that of Greece in the 2010s. 

18. Israel’s “eighth” domestic front in ever-widening genocide and war

Israel regards its Palestinian citizens as the enemy within and a target in its US-funded war against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

 *****

Under Israel’s “Nation-State” law enshrining de facto apartheid-style discrimination and segregation, Palestinian Israelis are second-class citizens. Their towns and villages have long been denied equal financing for education, health and welfare and planning permission for housing and public and social infrastructure.

In recent weeks, during Iran’s retaliatory strikes, they were left to fend for themselves. A 2018 State Comptroller’s report found that 60 of 71 municipalities with Palestinian citizens of Israel, including Tamra with its 35,000 residents, lacked public shelters. Four Palestinians were killed in Tamra, about 25 kilometers east of Haifa, when an Iranian missile struck their residential building. Some of the areas where Palestinians live, particularly in the southern Negev, home to Bedouin villages, are designated “open areas” where Israel’s Iron Dome interceptors deliberately allow missiles to fall or detonate interceptors overhead, showering civilians with deadly shrapnel.

***** 

According to the UN, since 7 October 2023, Israeli settlers and the army have killed over 1,000 Palestinians and wounded over 7,000 in the West Bank, while the Israeli authorities have demolished, confiscated or forced the demolition of 3,844 properties, including 1,376 homes, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The IDF have emptied three refugee camps in the West Bank, displacing more than 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, and installed hundreds of checkpoints.

Settler attacks, under the protection of the Israeli military, are part of a broader plan by Israel’s fascistic government to provoke the Palestinians in the West Bank into an attack that can be used, like the 7 October attack, as the pretext for a broader war against the Palestinians.

19. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk  

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. Zohran Mamdani responds to right-wing attacks with accommodations to the Democratic Party and big business

When asked, “do you think that billionaires have a right to exist?” Mamdani responded: “I don’t think that we should have billionaires because frankly it is so much money in a moment of such inequality. Ultimately, what we need more of is equality across our city, across our state and across our country. And I look forward to working with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer for all of them.”

If it is the case that billionaires should not exist because of the levels of inequality, how is this to be squared with Mamani’s proposal to “work with” the billionaires in addressing the crisis and implementing politics that will “benefit everyone”?

Revealed in these comments is the basic contradiction of Mamdani’s perspective. While appealing to the mass social anger that propelled his election victory, Mamdani claims that the issues that drove his support can be resolved through the Democratic Party, which is a party of Wall Street and the ruling class, and without challenging the foundations of capitalist rule.

***** 

As part of this effort to consolidate support among sections of business and the political leadership of the Democratic Party, Mamdani has also “amped down” his opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

In the Meet the Press interview, Mamdani was pressed by Welker to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which he did not. In responding, however, Mamdani accepted the fiction of a “moment of antisemitism in our country and in our city.” He made no reference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which was a central issue in the broad popular support for his campaign. 

2. Dollar fall an expression of the crisis of US and global capitalism

The US dollar has had its worst start for the year since 1973, in the wake of President Nixon’s August 1971 decision to remove its gold backing and abrogate the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, which had been a central plank of the post-war monetary order established after the chaos of the 1930s.

In the first six months of the year, it has fallen by more than 10 percent against a basket of six major currencies, in a sign of a loss of confidence in its status as the dominant currency and a safe haven in periods of financial turbulence and stress. 

3. UFCW ignores strike deadline for 45,000 California grocery workers: Workers must organize to override stalling tactics and launch a strike!

For weeks, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has been holding “practice” pickets and noisily declaring that it is preparing to strike. Indeed, it said that last week’s round of talks were supposed to be the last such discussions. But as of this writing, neither a strike nor an agreement has been announced—and no details of talks have been shared with the rank and file.

*****

Even the union’s own press materials admit what’s at stake. UFCW Locals 324 and 770 stated, “Tens of thousands of additional union grocery workers across the country who are employed by Kroger and Albertsons ... also voted to authorize a strike last week, bringing over 100,000 grocery workers to the brink of a strike at the same time. Should the workers call a strike, it could create the largest grocery strike in modern history.”

But the bureaucracy is stalling precisely because grocery workers are in a powerful position, not in spite of it. They do not want to do anything that threatens their cozy ties with management. One of the most appalling examples of this was during the start of the pandemic, when the UFCW not only refused to close the meatpacking plants but worked out an “attendance bonus” at one Tyson plant, with managers taking bets on how many workers would get sick. Six workers are confirmed to have died at the facility.

All of the 100,000 workers on the brink of striking are members of the UFCW. But instead of laying the groundwork for a powerful nationwide strike, the bureaucrats are deliberately isolating each section from the others. 

4. With Philadelphia municipal workers strike looming, mayor offers miserable pay increase

The struggle unfolds against a budget crisis in the city that led the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) to adopt a “doomsday budget” last Thursday. “We have to budget not on hope but on reality,” said SEPTA General Manager Scott A. Sauer to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The budget would slash services in the coming fiscal year by nearly half.

The term “doomsday budget” was also used to describe a similarly catastrophic funding bill for the city’s school district a decade ago. At that time, the School District of Philadelphia eliminated thousands of non-core positions, leaving the teachers and schools stripped of resources.

Budget crises are unfolding in major metropolitan centers all over the United States, with the proximate cause in many cases being the cutoff of pandemic assistance by the Biden administration last year.

5. Nearly 100 Palestinians killed across Gaza, as Netanyahu prepares to meet Trump in Washington D.C.

As the daily killings continue, Prime Minister Netanyahu is planning to visit Washington D.C. next week to meet with President Donald Trump. The White House has been promoting the visit as part of “ceasefire talks,” but the meeting is widely recognized as a planning session for the next stage of Israel’s ethnic cleansing operation in Gaza.

6. New study shows immense impact of public health on life expectancy

The current landscape of public health in the United States is marked by a far-reaching attack on foundational scientific principles and institutions, threatening decades of progress in combating preventable diseases.  

7. Trump administration revokes US visas for Bob Vylan over anti-genocide chants at Glastonbury

The banning of Bob Vylan is an attack on the democratic rights of the entire working class and youth. The government and ruling elite are terrified of the growing global opposition to genocide, repression and war. The chants that rang out at Glastonbury express the sentiments of millions.

8. Australia: Black People’s Union doubles down on censorship of socialists

The BPU declares itself to be a revolutionary organization. Its website is replete with radical declarations that it is anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist and its solidarity with oppressed indigenous peoples in the Pacific and internationally, including the Palestinians. It even declares the need for the international working class to overturn capitalism.

But, for all this radical-sounding demagogy, the BPU does not declare what its “revolution” is for, or what it intends to replace capitalism with. The word “socialism” does not appear on its website. As for its references to the working class, its claim that “as many as 3 in every 4 non-Indigenous people” in Australia are racist amounts to a slander against workers. It underscores the objective political role of black nationalism, along with every other form of nationalism and racism, as a means to divide the working class.

9. Labor governments support brutal police assault on Sydney pro-Palestinian protest

As thousands have expressed their shock and anger at a violent assault on a small pro-Palestinian protest in Sydney last Friday, senior representatives of the New South Wales state and federal Labor governments have defended the police rampage.

The response is all the more striking, given that it follows the exposure of the lawlessness of the police actions and the horrific injuries suffered by one of the participants.

10. Protest outside Woolwich Crown Court demands release of Palestine Action’s Filton 18

The “Filton 18” members of Palestine Action appeared in Woolwich Crown Court today, a high-security courtroom and the state’s preferred venue for terrorism cases. They are being prosecuted in connection with an action last August at Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems’ Filton site near Bristol, where protesters damaged property to impede the supply of war crimes in Gaza.

This week, Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will be moving an order through Parliament outlawing Palestine Action altogether by adding it to the list of the government’s proscribed organizations—equating it with terrorist organizations like ISIS. Even expressing support for the organization or its members would be made a criminal offense, with a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

11. Palestine Action mounts legal challenge to Starmer’s “terrorism” ban, as public opposition grows

A broad spectrum of human rights groups, political and media organizations have called for the ban on PA to be halted. This includes top establishment figures such as Labour Peer Lord Falconer, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice under Prime Minister Tony Blair. He stated that spray painting a RAF plane would not meet the legal threshold for a terrorism proscription, but added that PA “may have done other things” to justify the government’s ban.

Writing in a similar vein in the pro-Tory Telegraph, Simon Heffer judged that PA’s actions were “bonkers and loathsome” but could not be compared to terrorism, warning, “This devaluation of a word with a precise meaning is highly dangerous.”

Friday’s High Court hearing will take place at the same time as a pre-trial hearing of SOAS 2 member Sarah, a student at University of London’s, School of African and Oriental Studies, charged under the Terrorism Act for defending the right of the Palestinian people to resist Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

12. 600,000 public sector workers in Turkey oppose contract imposing wage cuts

While the working class is in economic decline, social resources are being transferred to corporations, banks and militarism. According to the 2025 Global Wealth Report published by Switzerland-based UBS, Turkey stood out last year as the country with the largest increase in the number of US dollar millionaires. Turkey had 7,000 new dollar millionaires in 2024, the highest increase worldwide with a rate of 8.4 percent.

This has only been possible by increasing the exploitation of the working class and clawing back its social conditions. According to the Gini coefficient of wealth inequality cited in the same report, Turkey ranks ninth in the world, with a value of 0.73 by 2024.

The social attack on the working class is inextricably linked to militarism and war. At the last NATO summit in The Hague, leaders agreed to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. Erdogan emphasized his commitment to this target, saying, “In fact, we are one of the countries closest to reaching 5 percent.” This foreshadows continuing attacks on the working class.

13. Germany: Protest and tribunal oppose Gaza genocide, state repression

On Saturday, around 500 people demonstrated in Duisburg against the genocide in Gaza and the repression directed at those who express solidarity with the Palestinians. Following the demonstration, those affected gave testimony at a public tribunal.

14. “Every worker has a stake”: In public meeting, USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee launches investigation of heat-related deaths

The US Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (USPS RFC) held a well-attended online meeting Sunday to announce the launch of an independent investigation into the deaths of two letter carriers who died in apparent heat-related incidents in recent weeks.

15. Australia: 160 workers locked out at Peabody’s Helensburgh coal min

The lockout, considered “protected employer response action” under Australia’s pro-business Fair Work Act, is a provocation aimed at intimidating workers, crippling them financially and discouraging them from fighting back against further attacks on job security, wages and conditions. Peabody has used the same tactic to pressure Helensburgh workers to accept rotten deals in every enterprise bargaining negotiation over the past decade.

*****

The current lockout at Helensburgh is a stark reminder that the so-called Fair Work Act, far from being “fair,” is completely stacked in favor of big business. The Act allows an employer to indefinitely lock out its entire workforce, without pay, in response to any industrial action, however limited, even when workers have fulfilled the byzantine requirements of the FWC to deem that action “protected.”

16. Workers Struggles: The Americas

Argentina: 

Workers, educators and students rally in defense of universities 

Canada:

Ontario Workers Compensation civil servants now in 5th week of strike

Ecuador: 

Protests against central Ecuador mining project 

Mexico:

Mexico City welfare workers demand an end to contingent work

Paraguay: 

Nurses demand higher wages

United States: 

Meatpacking workers overwhelmingly vote to strike Tyson Amarillo, Texas plant

Providence, Rhode Island healthcare workers vote for open-ended strike

Washington state emergency service workers to strike for first contract

17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk