From the start of the ICE crackdowns, ordinary people have been horrified that their friends, neighbors and relatives are being brutally beaten, arrested, interned and often deported to faraway places. So, they have mobilized to call attention to what repressive forces have tried to do in the shadows.
Throughout the Twin Cities region, which includes Minneapolis-St. Paul, this mobilization has gone the furthest. The Trump administration has struck back, bringing in even more forces to try to crush the mobilization. But even after the second brutal murder, of hospital worker Alex Pretti, a man with a cell phone in his hand, shot ten times, eight while on the ground, the population stood their ground.
After the murder of Pretti, the demonstrations grew larger. While authorities waited for the population to stand down, instead, even more people came out. After the second murder, an angry reaction spread, opposed ever more broadly, across the U.S., causing the media to declare an emergency, to say that the Trump Administration has gone too far, condemning it publicly. The Trump administration removed Bovino, head of the Border Patrol, making him the scapegoat for the murderous activity of the thugs. But it was not media—but the Minneapolis mobilization that did it.
Does that mean that ICE is out of Minneapolis and will be pulled from other cities? While the Trump Administration felt forced to pull its lead terrorist Bovino out of Minneapolis, and may even defuse that situation, they continue to carry out their strategic plan.
Last July, Congress tripled the ICE budget, making it the most richly funded law enforcement agency in the federal government, exceeding the military budgets of most countries, including Turkey or Spain. With all that money, ICE has gone on a hiring spree, increasing the number of agents from 10,000 to 22,000 in a matter of months, recruiting people with overt white supremacist and racist appeals.
ICE has also hired private companies to provide it the tools to spy on people through their cell phones, scrape social media from the web and provide information from data brokers, as well as use facial recognition software to identify local activists. All that in order to build a huge database of activists all over the country to prepare a much bigger crackdown.
All this comes down to a build-up of a national paramilitary force to discipline the population through intimidation and fear. Trump may have started by attacking immigrants. But that was only the wedge to go after all those who dared defy the American government and state, especially the working class.
In late January, the Trump administration issued a memorandum broadening ICE agents’ powers to arrest people without a warrant. “This memo bends over backward to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest,” said one former ICE agent.
In fact, it is a public statement that ICE will not only continue but step up its reign of terror in spite of the fact that the Trump administration has come under fire. This in the face of the murder and brutality in the Twin Cities, carried out by thousands of masked and heavily armed federal agents. And this has been too much for even a part of Trump’s voting base to swallow.
The force that has been able to push the Trump Administration to step back has been a population that has been increasingly mobilizing itself in the Twin Cities, and to a lesser extent in many towns and cities, not just to protect immigrants, but to protect itself.
All throughout the Minneapolis and St. Paul region, more than 34,000 people have signed up to be a part of one of several loosely-knit ICE watch groups. The people in these groups are getting training from former ICE agents, former cops and military vets.
They are organizing, deepening the resistance of the community. Will the populations of other cities join in to support them, in preparation for attacks to come?
As people mobilize, they can discover that we have to get rid of not just ICE, not just the Border Patrol, not just a crew of rotten politicians, but the entire brutal system that they represent and defend. Because that is the reality we face today.
In Minneapolis, the Tuesday before Alex Pretti’s murder, ICE agents detained a five-year-old and his father after coming home from pre-school. Agents then brought Liam Conejo Ramos, the boy, up to the door of his family’s home. Observers at the scene said the ICE agents tried to get Liam’s family members to come out—that agents were using Liam as bait.
Immigration activists and school officials in the area have observed ICE using deception in order to enter people’s homes. Another example was a seventeen-year-old high school student, who cracked the door open—ICE immediately pushed their way in and detained her.
Liam ended up at an immigration detention center outside of San Antonio with his father, an Ecuadorian who came to the U.S. and applied for asylum in 2024. He has no criminal record—nor does Liam.
Six students have been arrested from Liam’s school district, alongside 25 parents just out of Valley View Elementary School, where he is a student. Schools like Valley View in the area have reported that many immigrant students have not been attending, out of fear that they or their parents might be detained. Many students who do attend are upset by the thought that their peers languish in faraway jails for no reason. Teachers and school workers deal with the fallout.
Arresting small children in bunny hats—that has made it abundantly clear that the ICE campaign in Minneapolis has nothing to do with so-called “criminals,” or “safety.” That it is in fact a terror campaign, pure and simple.
Ever since ICE started arresting younger than five-year-olds, parents are now giving their young children “the talk.” Young children are targeted in wars and conflicts all over the world, from Palestine to Haiti. Now, the ruling class of the United States is bringing those wars right here. No, there is no safe haven.
There is only one solution to this madness: get rid of capitalism, the rule of the rich over the working class.
Goodwill thrift shops in this area reported a 20% increase in foot traffic last year. This is not all young “influencers” buying vintage clothing. It’s also more workers who need to stretch a dollar.
After a five-day walkout in October, about 31,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers in California are on strike again, this time indefinitely. The strikers—nurses, midwives, therapists and other classifications of workers—make up about one out of six Kaiser employees countrywide. They have been working without a contract since May.
The workers are demanding better wages and benefits, especially for certain groups of co-workers who have newly joined UNAC/UHCP, the union representing the strikers. But the main issue strikers emphasize is staffing. Nurses say Kaiser’s short-staffing is so bad that even taking bathroom breaks becomes a problem. Therapists speak of having to delay their patients’ appointments and explain how Kaiser often doesn’t fully replace workers who burn out and leave. Patients can’t get the care they need in time because of long waitlists for appointments and surgeries. Union officials reported that, in just two years, Kaiser nurses in Southern California filed 14,000 formal warnings that patients are at risk.
Kaiser, which calls itself “non-profit” to avoid paying taxes, is sitting on 66 billion dollars in reserves, and reports multi-billion-dollar surpluses (profits, that is!) year after year. While fighting its workers tooth-and-nail over wages and staffing, Kaiser pays dozens of its top executives seven figure salaries and invests heavily in the financial markets. A nurse anesthetist, who is a member of the union’s bargaining team, said that negotiations with Kaiser felt like sitting across the table from an “investment bank that poses as a health care organization.”
It’s the same throughout the U.S. health care industry, which raked in more than 4 trillion dollars in 2025.
But health care workers are standing up to the companies’ attacks. At least 38 health care strikes were reported in 2025 and, currently, more than 15,000 nurses are on strike in New York. Nurses in six other states are either on strike or threatening one.
These strikes are isolated and defensive today. That can change if the workers are able to bring them together and make them part of a larger offensive.
Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was assaulted at a town hall by a man who sprayed liquid on her. The attacker turned out to be someone who was a supporter of Donald Trump, which is not surprising since Trump has constantly launched vicious and violent verbal assaults on Omar.
Trump’s frequent attacks on Omar go way beyond the fact that she is a Democrat and a critic of Trump’s policies. They are part of something much more disgusting from Trump—deliberate racist insults aimed against nonwhite people, and especially against people with dark skin.
As a child, Omar came to the U.S. from Somalia. She is part of a large community of Somalis who live in Minnesota. Trump has called Somalis “garbage” and “worst in the world.” In the past, Trump has referred to Haiti and countries in Africa as “shithole” countries.
Trump’s racist intent couldn’t be more clear when he said he doesn’t want people from Africa and Haiti to come to the U.S., he wants people from countries like Norway and Sweden, which are predominately white. Trump even pays for white people from South Africa to move to the U.S.
Trump has his own personal history of racism. He was guilty of housing discrimination. He called for the execution of falsely accused young black men. Trump’s former top lawyer said that, in private, Trump frequently called black people “niggers.”
But as president, Trump is leading an administration which is carrying out a deliberate campaign of racism, attacks on immigrants, and is supporting white supremacy. Social media posts from federal administration departments have echoed words and themes from Nazi Germany and the Ku Klux Klan.
The White House and Homeland Security posted a recruiting ad for ICE that was headed by the words “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” which is the name of a song popular with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. It’s a song calling for a race war and for the U.S. to only be for white people.
The Labor Department posted a video called “One Homeland, One People, One Heritage,” which is similar to a Nazi slogan used during World War Two, calling for Germany to get rid of all non-Aryan people.
The White House posted a picture of Trump with the word “Remigration,” which is a word used by those who are calling for the expulsion of nonwhite people and immigrants. Trump has often said he wants Somalis and Haitians “out of the country.” The Trump administration ICE agents are stopping and grabbing people off the street based on their skin color.
This racist and nativist campaign coming from the Trump administration is disgusting and vile. It is coming from people who are racist. Using dehumanizing language against people from other countries and ethnic backgrounds is something that is used when a government is preparing to go to war. When U.S. soldiers were sent to invade Vietnam, it was to kill “gooks.” When the U.S. invaded Iraq, it was to kill “ragheads.” Killing another person goes against people’s basic human instincts, so government leaders want to dehumanize the people who the soldiers are sent to kill.
The racist campaign coming from the government is also meant to divide the working class in this country. They want to pit white workers against black workers, pit workers born in this country against workers born in another country. When workers are having their lives destroyed and their standard of living driven down, they want workers to blame each other, instead of blaming the capitalist class and the capitalist system that is responsible.
The racist and divisive campaign being carried out by the Trump administration is dangerous for the working class, if the working class falls for it. The working class cannot allow itself to be divided. If it is not divided, the working class has the power to get rid of the system that is responsible for racism, poverty and war.
In July of 2025, Donald Trump signed into law the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that included a 10-year moratorium on a staffing rule in nursing homes. The staffing rule initiated under the Biden administration in 2024 required increased staffing levels in nursing homes. The bill also exempted nursing homes from a Medicaid cut.
Biden had promised to address the declining quality and increasing costs at nursing homes in his State of the Union address. The promise was in January of 2022. The staffing rule wasn’t even initiated until April of 2024, although never enforced.
And within six weeks, according to an investigative report by the New York Times, nursing home executives “turned to a tool that has proved successful in getting the attention of the Trump campaign: money.” A number of executives donated as much as $250,000 each to Trump’s campaign.
The money continued to pour in after the Big Beautiful Bill was signed in July of 2025. About 40 corporate entities associated with nursing homes across the country gave 4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC run by Trump’s allies, in August and September.
Because—the nursing home industry doesn’t just want a moratorium—it wants to make any nursing home staffing reforms go away permanently.
There are 15,000 certified nursing homes in the U.S. And like all of health care in the U.S., there are monopoly-like groups which own and control what is known as the nursing home industry. These nursing home groups are not just content to feed at the trough of government money from Medicaid. They also make profits by having staffing at the lowest possible levels. Increased staffing means increased labor costs that cut into their profits.
Their lobby group, The America Health Care Association, has represented the nursing home industry’s interests in Washington, D.C. for 75 years! These nursing home executives, and the major shareholders they serve, are nothing but pariahs making millions, while elders and the disabled suffer.
No profits should be made at the expense of the elderly or any human being. Care should be based on what it is that older people need, and that absolutely necessitates extensive staffing, with nursing home workers making high salaries with excellent benefits and humane working conditions.
Under the guidance of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services drastically cut the number of vaccines recommended for children from 17 to 11. They no longer recommend vaccines for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), flu and meningococcal disease.
This comes after RFK, Jr. fired all 17 members of the department’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, many of whom were scientists with many years of experience. He replaced them with his own team, many of them long-time vaccine skeptics.
RFK, Jr. and his crew claim the new recommendations bring the U.S. in line with those of other wealthy countries, and they’ve used Denmark as an example. In the case of at least one of the vaccines, bringing the U.S. in line with Denmark represents a step backward for the U.S. Denmark doesn’t vaccinate against rotavirus, and has about 1,200 infants and toddlers hospitalized each year for the disease. That’s a rate similar to what the U.S. saw before it vaccinated against rotavirus, and the U.S. has about 56 times as many people as Denmark. That means the U.S. could see over 60,000 children hospitalized for rotavirus each year if parents and schools follow the new recommendations.
The other vaccines are also known to have been effective in reducing the rates of these diseases in the U.S. The hepatitis A vaccine led to a 90% drop in the disease since 1996. The hepatitis B vaccine led to a 99% drop in reported cases of the disease from 1990 to 2019. Hepatitis B causes liver cancer and liver cancer has also dropped greatly since the vaccine was given widely.
The U.S. is also different from many other wealthy countries in ways that will likely lead to higher rates of disease if children receive fewer vaccinations. Other countries, including Denmark, have universal health care, which is not the case in the U.S. Other countries also conduct more surveillance and screening for infectious diseases and have lower rates of poverty than the U.S.
This can be seen by simply looking at differences in life expectancy between areas right here in this country. Life expectancy is over 10 years longer in the Upper Midwest than in Appalachia, and over 5 years longer Northeastern states compared with Southern states like Mississippi and Alabama. These gaps will likely increase with fewer children being vaccinated.
There are certainly reasons for people to mistrust the medical system in this country, but people like RFK, Jr. and his associates at the DHHS are pushing an anti-scientific agenda that will make things only worse.
The following is taken from a presentation scheduled to be given in Detroit on January 25. The video of the full presentation can be found at War Threats Abroad, War at Home
Let’s talk about Venezuela. When we put out our leaflet for this meeting two and a half weeks ago, the U.S. government had just kidnapped Nicolas Maduro, the president of a sovereign country. The Trump administration had stationed naval warships, air force fighters and bombers and thousands of marines in the Caribbean, a task force that was threatening a war. The U.S. military was blowing up boats that were allegedly carrying drugs.
And today, what is the situation?
Trump used the U.S. military to remove Maduro, saying that he was corrupt, tied to the drug trade, that he was a dictator who was heading a repressive regime of the Venezuelan military, secret police and paramilitary forces that are used against the Venezuelan population. All of which is true. But after removing Maduro, Trump made a deal with Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s vice president, to replace him as president. Delcy Rodriguez is also corrupt, also tied to the drug trade, and she is also a dictator, presiding over a repressive regime of the Venezuelan military, secret police and paramilitary forces that are used against the Venezuelan population. And some have reported that Trump cut a deal with Rodriguez before Maduro was even removed.
The Venezuelan people may, at some point, have a say over their own future. But right now, the only thing different in Venezuela is the one face at the top has been changed. Other than that, one dictator has replaced another dictator. Maduro has been removed, but Venezuela has the same corruption, the same repression, the same poverty in the population, and that poverty will get worse as the U.S. takes more of Venezuela’s oil money.
Less than a day after removing Maduro, Trump announced that it wasn’t really about Maduro being a bad guy, it was really about oil. The Trump administration had the U.S. military seizing oil tankers that were leaving Venezuela and then selling the oil and pocketing the money. Trump said that Venezuela, with the world’s largest reserves of oil, was going to be under the control of the U.S., and that U.S. oil companies were going to go in, rebuild the oil infrastructure and begin pumping all that Venezuelan oil.
Except it seems like the U.S. oil companies are really not that interested! When Trump invited the top executives of U.S. oil companies to the White House, the CEO of Exxon said that it would be too expensive right now to invest the money it would take to rebuild the Venezuelan oil industry, there are less expensive places to extract oil, and besides there is a glut of oil on the world market today and they don’t want to have too much oil, which might lead to lower prices and lower profits.
And what about all those boats that the U.S. military was blowing up almost every day, boats that were supposedly bringing drugs to the U.S.? The Trump administration loved to show us live videos of those boats being blown to smithereens. They told us that they were saving lives by keeping drugs out of the U.S. That was always a lie. If there were actually drugs on those boats, they weren’t headed to the U.S. And since the Trump administration removed Maduro, they seemed to have all but forgotten about these supposed drug boats. A couple days ago, there was one boat sunk in the Pacific, and nothing more at all has happened in the Caribbean.
And one more thing about Trump and the drug trade. While he was claiming he was trying to stop drugs, Trump pardoned and let out of prison a big-time drug dealer, who also happened to be a friend of Trump. Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, was convicted in a U.S. court of drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Trump set free this drug kingpin. So much for Trump’s war against drugs!
So, after all this, what really happened in Venezuela? Trump replaced one dictator with another dictator. Trump says it’s about getting more oil, except the oil is not really needed. Trump says it’s about stopping drugs, except it isn’t about drugs at all.
So, what the hell is Trump doing in Venezuela? From where we were a few weeks ago, who could believe where things are today? It seems crazy. Is this just Trump, proclaiming himself to be king of the world?
Yes, this certainly is Trump’s massive ego talking. But there is much more than that. It would be a mistake to believe this is only about Trump.
Trump is the political representative of the U.S. capitalist class, which is the dominant economic and military power in the world. Yes, Trump can act crazy. But if Trump was doing something that was against the interests of this capitalist class, you would see them pushing back against Trump and even getting rid of him. We aren’t seeing anything like that today.
Trump threatened Venezuela, but the U.S. government, on behalf of the capitalist class, has threatened countries in Latin America many times before. And more than made threats. The U.S. government, with the armed intervention of the U.S. military, has enabled U.S. corporations to exploit the natural resources, the agricultural land and the labor of the working people of Latin America for 200 years. The U.S. government, under both Republicans and Democrats, has treated Latin America as its own “backyard,” overthrowing elected governments, installing dictators, and sending in U.S. troops multiple times to protect and increase the profits of U.S. corporations.
Trump may boast that he runs the world. But for many decades, U.S. imperialism has done exactly that.
The U.S. capitalist class is always in competition with capitalists of the rest of the world. The capitalists of every country are in competition against each other for the world’s markets and natural resources and labor to exploit. This competition between capitalists intensifies when the capitalist economy is in a crisis, with no other way to increase their profits other than by taking away from each other.
This competition between the capitalists of different countries and the economic crises of capitalism is what leads to war, wars between countries and world wars.
The capitalist economy is in an economic crisis today. Capitalists cannot make the profit they want by investing in production. The fact that they put most of their money into speculation is a sign of the crisis of capitalism.
World War I and World War II were both results of economic crises and competition between capitalists. Before WWII, before the full-blown world war broke out, there were many aggressions that led to war. The German government sent troops into other countries. The U.S. government blocked Japan from getting oil and tried to economically strangle Japan in competition over the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Alliances between capitalist powers changed, back and forth, as they each sought their own advantage. These were steps along the road to WWII. Does this sound familiar to what is happening today?
We don’t know for sure how the sides in another global war would line up today. But it is very likely a war would set the U.S. against China. U.S. imperialism has been the dominant world power, with the strongest military and economy, since at least the end of WWII. That domination is being challenged today by China. If the U.S. capitalist class wants to be able to continue to dictate to the whole world, that leads them into a war with China. And if China has their economy strangled by the U.S., they might feel they have no choice but to go to war against the U.S. Either way, if the U.S. ruling class goes to a war against China, the U.S. government would not be able to afford to let the other major capitalist powers stay out of this war.
The threats and actions that the U.S. government is taking today in Venezuela, Greenland and elsewhere are steps, along with many other things, that are leading the world into a new global war. Such a war, with all the latest weapons, would be a catastrophe for humanity. Such a war would be even more destructive, and it would mean many times more deaths than the previous world wars.
The wars of capitalism pit the working people of one country against the working people of other countries. They want the workers of the world to kill each other, all in pursuit of more profits for a handful of billionaires.
This cannot be the future we want. But the only way that it is not our future is if the working class in each country engages their own war against their own ruling class. Such a fight can start when the working class begins a fight for our own day-to-day interests, trying to defend our standard of living. Such a fight would run up against the whole capitalist system. But the working class, when it uses all its power, can bring down that system and the working class can build a new society, free from the horrors of war. Maybe that won’t happen before the next world war starts. But the devastation and destruction of war and the suffering of the population can also lead to revolutions led by the working class. This is what happened during and immediately after WWI, in Russia and in other places in Europe. Those workers’ revolutions after WWI show the possibility for a better future for humanity.
Trump threatened to impose increased tariffs on countries selling oil to Cuba, declaring a “national emergency” due to the “unusual and extraordinary threat” posed by Cuba. He claims Cuba allows Russia to spy on the U.S. and is friendly to hostile nations like Iran and terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Cuba’s access to badly needed oil has already been drastically cut after the U.S. attack on Venezuela, which then stopped all oil shipments to Cuba. Venezuela was shipping about 50,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, about half of what it needs. Even before Trump’s latest threats, Mexico was shipping much less, only 20,000 barrels per day.
These cuts to Cuba’s access to oil have already led to its worst economic crisis ever and could lead to a complete economic collapse and a worsening humanitarian crisis there. The country and its people have already experienced long power blackouts, and hours-long lines to purchase gasoline for their cars.
Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum appears to be attempting to toe a fine line, agreeing to cut her country’s shipments, while reserving the right to supply oil to Cuba on a humanitarian basis. Mexico appears to have already reduced their shipments of oil to Cuba even further, to just about 7,000 barrels a day. Some reports suggest Cuba’s current oil supply could last no more than a few weeks.
Trump’s claim that Cuba represents a threat to the U.S. is a complete joke! It’s a tiny island nation weakened economically by an economic embargo by the U.S. and other wealthy nations in place since the 1960s. The attacks against Cuba by the U.S. obviously long predate Trump, but it appears Trump is looking to completely strangle the Cuban regime and to replace it with one ready to bow to U.S. economic interests.
Neither Trump nor those who’ve gone before him have carried out their attacks on Cuba out of concern for the interests of American or Cuban workers. While the Cuban revolution certainly had its limits for the Cuban working class, its example has always been a thorn in the side of the wealthy American ruling class. It’s that class for which Trump now appears ready to finish the job. American workers have no interest in supporting his efforts.
This article is translated from the January 30 issue, #3000 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
The last remaining body of an Israeli hostage abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was recovered and formally identified on January 26. In principle, his repatriation to Israel should trigger “phase two” of the ceasefire agreement signed in October.
The second stage of the “Trump plan” calls for the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Gaza, the deployment of an international force, and the establishment of a Palestinian administration managed by a Board of Peace chaired by Trump himself. On January 22 in Davos, he declared this Board was established. But his bluster has no impact on the situation in Gaza, where the Israeli army continues to operate with impunity.
The ceasefire agreement pledged that the border crossing in Rafah between the Gaza Strip and Egypt would reopen as soon as the ceasefire took effect, to let in humanitarian aid. Its partial reopening was only declared on January 26. But the official statement gave no date, specifying only that passage will be “reserved for pedestrians and subject to a full Israeli inspection mechanism.” These restrictions will surely keep blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid, while the situation for Gazans in terms of food and health stays as dire as ever.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared he believes the priority at this stage is to disarm Hamas, “peacefully or forcefully.” The Israeli defense minister was even clearer at the end of December, flatly declaring, “We will never leave Gaza.”
Far from withdrawing, the Israeli army regularly pushes forward the boundary of the area under its control, the “yellow line” supposedly established by the October agreement. This line squeezes more than two million Palestinians into barely 40% of the ravaged territory. Yellow concrete blocks marking this border are relocated daily. Testimonies tell how residents who went to sleep in an area far from the yellow line in the evening discovered yellow blocks in front of their homes when they woke up.
The Israeli army continues its policy of terror and massacre. Nearly 500 Palestinians have been killed since the implementation of the so-called ceasefire. Nearly all fell victim to soldiers’ fire or drone strikes. The Israeli army continues to destroy the remaining buildings east of the yellow line and is building military bases there. More than a dozen such bases have been identified so far. These show the army’s intent to occupy Gaza permanently.
In Davos, Trump indulged in his usual buffoonery before an audience of super-rich individuals and heads of state. He showed off a brochure for luxury hotels—his plan for Gaza. But in Gaza, the reality is that Palestinians continue to live amidst rubble and in tents, with no hope of reconstruction. With Trump’s support, and under the guise of the “new phase,” the Israeli government continues its war against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank—where settlement construction is speeding up.
This article is translated from the January 30 issue, #3000 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
As limited communication is restored between Iran and the rest of the world, testimonies reveal the scale of the massacres perpetrated by the leaders of the Islamic Republic to suppress the popular uprising.
The regime acknowledges 3,000 deaths, which includes and artificially inflates the number of police officers and Basij militia men killed by protestors the government labels “terrorists.” The number of protesters killed between January 8 and 10 could exceed 30,000. Another 100,000 are believed to have been wounded. Tens of thousands were arrested, even inside hospitals. Survivors who took refuge at the Turkish border described the hunt for protesters by police and militia men, who had been pumped into a frenzy. Medical workers describe hospitals overwhelmed with gunshot wounds. Doctors were forced to amputate infected limbs. There wasn’t enough blood for transfusions. Many victims had head and especially eye injuries from bullets or batons. Families of prisoners report overcrowded jail cells, where wounded people were left untreated and detainees were tortured.
Since 2017, previous protest mobilizations have drawn in various segments of Iranian society such as young people, women, and workers, and were brutally repressed. But the movement that began on December 28, 2025, by shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, quickly attracted people of all ages and social backgrounds, including conservative members of the lower middle class who had long been loyal to the regime. Government leaders were faced with a revolt that threatened their power. Their support inside the country was dwindling. They consciously orchestrated a bloodbath to terrorize the entire population.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the leaders of the Revolutionary Guards acted to defend the interests of Iran’s privileged classes, who feared losing everything in a mass uprising. A French columnist wondered, “Can one imagine a society stained with the blood of 30,000 of its own?” But he should be able to imagine this, because 30,000 dead is roughly the number of Parisian workers who were murdered by the authorities during the repression of the Paris Commune in May 1871. Their blood will always “taint” the memory of France’s Third Republic.
Imperialist leaders who claim to be outraged at the massacre in Iran are actually complicit. They have collaborated with the Iranian regime whenever and wherever they found it necessary, from Afghanistan to Iraq. Western leaders don’t criticize the dictatorship. They criticize that it does not sufficiently comply with their interests, that it supports Hezbollah and Hamas, and that it maintains economic ties with Russia and China, two countries imperialists want to isolate. As one survivor of the repression put it, “The Americans and Europeans just want to do business with Iran.”
Trump cast himself in a favorable light by posting to protesters in early January, “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! … HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” This was obviously just empty rhetoric. Trump is more accustomed to suppressing protesters and was not about to help them. In fact, when people protest in Iran, he prefers to see them crushed. The dirty work done by the regime means less work for a potential occupying army to do.
With the popular uprising seemingly quelled for now, the U.S. calmly sent an armada to the Persian Gulf and threatened to bomb Iran, as it did in June 2025. All while claiming to be a liberator. Certainly, various American intelligence services and their Israeli allies are maneuvering to create a potential alternative to Khamenei and his henchmen. But their problem in this is to preserve the state apparatus and its repressive forces which are capable of keeping the population in line. To this end, all pro-American networks and media outlets have propelled Reza Pahlavi to the forefront. He is the son of the shah, the dictator who was overthrown by revolution in 1979. Some people in the Iranian diaspora present him as a potential solution. He is betting on support by factions within the widely discredited regime.
But no solution imposed by bombs or by the maneuvers of American imperialism will allow the workers and working people of Iran to live decently and freely.
This article is taken from the January 21 workplace editorial of Workers’ Fight, the Trotskyist group active in Britain.
Most commentators are quite happy explaining the heavy-handed interventions of the U.S. as due to Trump’s “personality,” or because he doesn’t care about the “rules-based international order.” In fact, it’s a convenient excuse for what in reality is the brutal competition between national capitalists for control over natural resources and trading routes—and they’ve all set their eyes on Greenland!
The Arctic ice is receding, opening the Northwest Passage for regular trading ships, reducing the distance of Asia-Europe shipping routes by 30–35%—a great business opportunity! And this is also opening opportunities to exploit oil, uranium and gas reserves—and rare metals that are crucial for AI tech. So, while Denmark and the E.U. have an interest in keeping the region under their control, China (in partnership with Russia) has invested in infrastructure through their Polar Silk Road project. As for the U.S. government, it’s now simply telling the world that Greenland is its backyard. Various U.S. tech tycoons and Trump-backers have, for instance, invested in KoBold Metals, a U.S. company which looks for critical minerals around the world—including in Greenland.
No wonder the European Round Table for Industry (ERT), which includes the Italian oil giant Eni, British/Swedish multinational AstraZeneca, and German car manufacturers BMW and Mercedes, issued a statement against the U.S. administration, saying that “the ERT would support necessary steps to defend the fundamental interests of Europe and E.U. Member States.” European leaders are, accordingly, threatening retaliatory tariffs against Trump.
Starmer and the E.U. leaders pay lip-service to the rights of the Greenlanders, saying their future should be their decision. They don’t acknowledge the oppression of the Inuit people, who make up 90% of the 57,000 inhabitants. Under Danish colonial rule, in the 1960s and 70s, thousands of Inuit women were forcibly sterilized and forced to emigrate to Denmark, where they faced racist discrimination. One can only draw parallels with the Chagos Islanders, forcibly expelled from the Chagos Islands by the British government in the late 1960s, to make space for a military base. Now Trump has called Starmer’s deal to give back the islands to Mauritius “stupidity” and against “U.S. national security”, despite the lease for the military base being extended for another 99 years!
In this capitalist world however, “might” is “right.” So, it will be the task of the international working class to use its “might” to finally bring humanity out of barbarism, aiming toward a civilized future. One where resources are shared for the needs of all and not appropriated by a few greedy capitalists, who, by their brutal competition against each other, threaten war—and the destruction of our whole planet!
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of January 25, 2026.
For six weeks, Minneapolis has been under siege by ICE and the Border Patrol.
Supposedly, these are police forces, whose task is to pick up immigrants who break the law.
In fact, they are military forces whose real task today is to subdue the U.S. population, native born and immigrant.
Fitted out in full body armor, heavy boots, cans of noxious chemical spray strapped to their bodies, handguns strapped to their legs, with machine guns slung over their shoulders when they march down city streets, ICE and the Border Patrol are exactly what they look like: military forces. The Vice President declared that they have “absolute immunity,” meaning they can NOT be prosecuted for anything they do, no matter how criminal, no matter how terrible.
And they have done terrible things. In Minneapolis, they killed two people, shooting both at close range. The first was Renee Nicole Good, who had just driven her six-year-old son to school. While trying to steer her car out of a blocked street, she was shot in the head. Their second victim was 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse in the VA Hospital. When he tried to help a woman whom ICE had pushed to the ground, he was tackled by seven ICE thugs, shot multiple times. His gun, for which he had a permit to carry, hadn’t been drawn.
ICE thugs grabbed a five-year-old boy, using him as bait to trick someone into opening a locked door. Four of them held a man on the ground, while another shot a stream of noxious chemicals into his face. They pulled a disabled woman out of her car through a broken window. She had been on her way to a medical appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center. They sprayed pepper gas into a car with three kids in the back seat, on the way home from a basketball game.
ICE thugs descended on a school, where they lined up students for no reason except to stoke fear. They refused to accept the identification cards carried by Native Americans, which ICE claimed were not valid. They broke out windows of passing cars, just to show they could.
Trump lied about all these actions and many more—blatantly lied, making the point he can say what he wants, send thugs to do whatever he wants, and no one will dare to stop him.
In Minneapolis, Trump met a population that wasn’t ready to be drummed into submission.
The murder of George Floyd by a cop had brought many people in Minneapolis out into the street in protest in 2020. That experience armed them to react when ICE invaded.
Neighborhood groups came back to life. Networks were re-established, letting people know where ICE was. Observers followed ICE around, using cell phones to document what ICE was doing. It’s how the lies about Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were refuted. Demonstrations were organized. After the first killing, tens of thousands marched through the city in 8-below-zero weather.
None of this is enough to shrivel up ICE and blow it away. ICE and the Border Patrol are being used to establish the principle that the military will be used inside this country against the population. They are battering rams to get the population used to accepting discipline.
Trump may be a megalomaniac. He may wish to be a dictator. ICE may be thugs, but the issue goes far beyond Trump and ICE.
The U.S. is on the road to war. War is the ultimate answer to economic crises capitalism cannot overcome. And the system is in crisis today.
That is why we see preparations for war. Military spending is on the increase. New U.S. weapons were tested out in Ukraine and Gaza. New technology was tested by the bombing of Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Nigeria and Venezuela. And the government is trying to muzzle the U.S. population, trying to get us used to obeying orders.
Whatever happens down this road, when the population fights back as it did in Minneapolis and elsewhere, it is arming itself for the future.
Rural Kent County on the Eastern Shore is Maryland’s smallest county, with only one high school and one extremely run-down middle school. Staff report holes in the floor and bats infesting the boiler. It turns out the state’s much-ballyhooed formula for allocating money for Baltimore and county school districts actually reduces the money Kent County could use to renovate the middle school.
The county commissioner proposed a plan to free up money for this. He would close the county’s detention center—which has already cut a quarter of its staff—and send its dozens of prisoners to another county. This would make it harder for families to visit prisoners. But the state attorney general just ruled this plan is illegal, saying state law requires each county to operate its own detention center. However, state law does not require schools to be in working condition! Four out of five public schools in Maryland need repairs or are rated “functions unreliable.”
We know the priorities of the government: locking people up, not educating people.
A massive winter storm marched across the country from the Southwest to New England between January 23 and January 26. It unleashed heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain on forty states, as well as dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills, impacting some 230 million people. The storm involved a strong surge of arctic air mixing with moisture from a warm Pacific Ocean and a warm Gulf of Mexico. This created a prolonged period of sub-freezing temperatures.
So how does global warming help create a huge winter storm affecting tens of millions of people?
The surface ocean temperatures in the northern Pacific are two to five degrees Fahrenheit above normal, and have been for the past year. The process of evaporation sends warm water vapor from the surface of the ocean into the atmosphere where it can change the jet stream pattern which drives our weather. In addition, global warming has slowed down the jet stream, which contains the cold Arctic air mass, making it weaker and allowing the cold air to escape the polar region and move south toward the equator.
The storm then pulled moisture from the Gulf of Mexico which is also two to five degrees above average. The warm water pushed more water vapor into the storm system increasing the amount of snow, sleet or freezing rain that was dumped across the country.
Major storms that affect roughly half the country or more were once rare events. But since 1980, they have become more frequent, more severe and more impactful on people’s lives. Before January 2026, in 2023, 2021, and 2020 there were heatwaves and droughts often affecting more than half the country. Then there was the Polar Vortex of 2019, the North American Derecho in June 2012, Snowmageddon in February 2010, the Blizzard of 1996, and the Superstorm of 1993. One cannot say that any one of these events was caused by a warming planet. One can say that a warming planet increases the risk of having these extreme storms and weather events more frequently.
The big January winter storm was predicted a week in advance. All levels of government had time to plan and prepare. But with all the cutbacks and reductions it meant they were left with little resource to do planning and preparations. FEMA hasn’t even paid out the money for last year’s storms. States are expected to take care of things. And states have less resources than the federal government.
The way the current society is organized, everyone is expected to handle the storm, or any other crisis for that matter, on their own. Even the news media put out tips of what to do to survive the storm—a storm affecting more than half the country! Everyone is out for themselves, not because they are selfish but because this society is not organized on a collective basis. This society, organized as it is, created the chaos many of us experienced. Long lines wrapping around grocery stores, empty shelves, no shovels or salt. Children at home, parents pulling their hair out, no electricity or heat for tens of thousands of people, nowhere near enough warming centers.
Now imagine people organized where they live into teams to shovel, or cook, or help others to get where they need to go. It’s much easier and faster for five people to dig a car out than for one person digging out their own car. Or better still, imagine real public transportation that worked. It would make more sense to have teams of people keep public transit going. It’s true, some people already help each other to dig out or deal with the crisis. Some of us saw this in our own neighborhoods—neighbors getting together to help each other out.
A storm of this magnitude requires a collective solution. The idea that it is everyone out for themselves is totally inefficient. The unions had a slogan “One for All and All for One.”
The way this society is organized is to funnel the mountains of wealth produced by the working class into the hands of billionaires. But it could be organized on a different basis. One where everyone benefits from the wealth and resources that we produce.
WSSC Water is urging all 1.9 million customers in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties in Maryland to only use water for essential purposes effective immediately. The urgent essential-water-use-only request was issued Tuesday due to the predicted increase in the number of water main breaks and leaks throughout the system, including breaks that were not yet identified.
Tuesday afternoon WSSC was aware of 33 breaks and leaks. At the same time WSSC was facing water production “challenges” at both filtration plants.
WSSC blames the extreme cold temperatures. Yes, extreme cold stresses pipes. But these pipes are 60 years old or older. It doesn’t take much to stress this aging water system.
The author (1912–2001) was the son of a cocoa plantation owner in Brazil and lived through the unbridled greed and violence he portrayed in his over 30 novels. This book vividly describes these early days, where you saw violent wars to control, profit from, and monopolize the production of cocoa.
In addition, he completes the picture by providing intimate details of life in this time period: the brutal slavery, the people the plantation owners used as assassins, the doctors, the mercenary priests, the corrupt politicians, the witchdoctor, the women, both wives and prostitutes. Each character is fully developed.
You see the town in its exploding growth, the destroyed old growth forests, the new shops, the streets, the ports, the burros, the railroad. And you see the devastation that the march of capitalist “progress” brings, fed by the blood running into the soil.