the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jul 21, 2025
The U.S. Department of Justice just recommended a one-day sentence for Breonna Taylor’s murderer.
Taylor, a 26-year-old, black woman, was fatally shot in March 2020, when seven cops forced entry into her Louisville, Kentucky apartment after midnight. They were executing a “knock and announce” search warrant. The warrant was granted them because a friend who no longer lived there had been suspected of keeping drugs there. As the cops began pounding on her door, her companion, Kenneth Walker, fired a warning shot, after which the cops opened up a barrage of gun fire, hitting Taylor six times and killing her.
Walker and several neighbors, including one who was outside nearby, said the cops never announced themselves before bursting in. Walker fired not knowing who was breaking in. He injured no one.
Three cops were said to be involved in the shooting. A grand jury recommended charges against only one of them, Brett Hankinson. The two others, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, were not charged with any crime. Hankinson, in fact, was not charged with murdering Breonna Taylor. He was only charged with firing into the apartment of one of Taylor’s neighbors.
Just months after Breonna Taylor’s murder, Minneapolis police held down and killed George Floyd, despite his pleas of “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s murder set off many months of demonstrations across the U.S. and around the world in what became the Black Lives Matter movement. Breonna Taylor was among those victims of police brutality whose name was called by those who took part in the protests.
That movement temporarily forced the politicians and the capitalist state apparatus to take legal action against some cops involved in killings, such as Derek Chauvin, the cop eventually convicted of killing George Floyd.
It also pushed the Biden administration to bring federal charges against some of the cops involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor in August of 2022.
Now, U.S. capitalism’s Justice Department says that the one cop convicted in Breonna Taylor’s shooting has suffered enough and proposed a one-day sentence.
Now, after all the huge demonstrations that forced politicians to actually prosecute a few killer cops, this is the Trump administration’s final response, a response intended to offend, to denigrate, and belittle those who fought for some justice. It is a deliberate “In your face!” And by ridiculing the call for justice, it opens the door to racist violence. It’s a dog whistle to Trump’s right-wing base and a green light to cops to carry out more violence.
It certainly will not be the first time the cops in this country have gotten away with murder. Just look at the cops acquitted in the deaths of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Eric Garner in New York, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, just to name a few. Cops kill more than 1,000 people every year. They kill black people at three times the rate they kill white people.
The many protesters who participated in the Black Lives Matter movement fought to reform the system. They pushed for defunding the police, for improving policing, and for more police oversight and made some gains.
But these gains are temporary, because the system isn’t broken. It was built to enforce capitalist exploitation with violence. Its more frequent use against the black population reflects how strongly capitalism is intertwined with racism in this country as it has been throughout its history.
To end police violence requires getting rid of the capitalist system itself, and the armed and violent state apparatus that works in the interests of the wealthy capitalist ruling class. To do so requires that the working class, which has its hands on the system of production, be organized to use its power to tear down this system and replace it with one of its own.
Jul 21, 2025
On July 13, the price of the “Forever” stamp went up again from 73 cents to 78 cents—seven price increases in 4 years.
And on the face of it, that may not seem like a lot—but it is. It is, for people who use regular mail—to write to their families, or to pay their bills by check—all those people who do not have or use computers, or autopay. And often, these are older people, on fixed incomes, and people with less resources.
Those resources have to stretch until the end of the month. For food, housing, electricity, phone and everything else people need. And all those things are going up, as well.
Price increases would be no problem if every time prices go up, wages and other income sources, like Social Security, go up, too!
Jul 21, 2025
57-year-old Jaime Alanis died after falling 30 feet from a greenhouse roof during an ICE raid on Glass House Farm outside Los Angeles. Family members and protestors faced off with federal agents in fatigues while ICE helicopters threw teargas grenades.
Arresting hundreds of farm workers does not make anyone safer, and now it has killed someone.
Jul 21, 2025
Washington, D.C. politicians made a lot of noise about extending the teen curfew to large groups of teens late in the evening in certain areas.
Nominate D.C. politicians for an Emmy award for posing in front of the cameras! But as for staffing rec centers with enough adult workers to make teens feel welcome?
No, that doesn’t happen, not even on TV, or streaming, or in Hollywood….
Jul 21, 2025
Even with prices up, up, up all over the place—and the tariffs now too—the tax plan in the “Big Beautiful Bill” doesn’t include more than a few scraps for the lot of us. One of those scraps: we can deduct overtime pay from our taxes.
Those of us who rely on overtime might appreciate it. And all the companies that rely on our taking overtime won’t mind it either.
But what we need are jobs that pay decent wages for straight time. Workers before us fought—real battles—for the eight-hour day. It’s a fight we’ll have to make again.
Jul 21, 2025
Donald Trump’s accusations that the Democrats organized a conspiracy to cover up the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein have finally come back to bite him. Epstein died in a jail cell in 2019 awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, apparently by suicide. Immediately after, Trump called for “a full investigation” and accused Democrats of keeping the files of the case secret because they would expose the involvement of powerful Democrats in Epstein’s crimes.
In July, the Trump administration reversed course and said they would not open all the files.
To many Trump supporters, it appears that Trump has joined the conspiracy to cover up the crimes of powerful sexual abusers linked to Epstein—and Trump himself may be implicated as well.
In all likelihood, we will never know exactly what is in those files. But even without them, this case has already revealed that rich and powerful people sexually abused dozens of girls, some as young as 14. Witnesses have already reported that Epstein raped them repeatedly and tracked their whereabouts at all times. Others said that while still underage, Epstein pushed them to have sex with “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents … and other world leaders.”
Trump was quoted in New York magazine saying about Epstein: “Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side….” On July 17, the Wall Street Journal reported that Epstein had a letter and sketch of a naked woman signed by Donald Trump. The letter concluded, “may every day be another wonderful secret.” And of course, Trump has already been found guilty of sexual abuse and was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women.
Whatever is in these files, what’s already come out has shined a light on a substantial portion of the ruling class and their hangers-on—Democrats and Republicans alike. Their wealth and privilege rests on treating human beings like objects at their disposal, to be used to increase their wealth and power. Who can be surprised that so many of them also treat young women like disposable playthings?
Jul 21, 2025
State Farm announced a 27.7% rate increase for homeowners’ insurance in Illinois. Last year, State Farm had already increased rates by 12.3%. Even renters have to pay more because landlords add these increases to the rent.
The insurance company claims it has to increase rates because it paid out more money on claims than it has received in premiums.
With severe weather events like floods, tornadoes, wildfires and others increasing, it’s true that there has been more damage done to homes.
Just recently, State Farm paid out more than $4.2 billion to homeowners affected by the wildfires in California. And scientists predict there will be more extreme weather disasters as climate change continues.
Still, despite these payouts, nationwide, State Farm claimed enormous profits in 2024. So how do they keep their profits up? By increasing rates for all of us.
No matter where you live, even if natural disasters don’t hit you directly, capitalism will make you pay, so that they can keep profiting.
Jul 21, 2025
In the past twenty years, Michigan has dropped from 30th to 44th in the country in 4th grade reading scores in the National Assessment of Educational Progress test (NAEP), known as the “nation’s report card.”
In that same time period, Michigan went from having over 1,400 certified librarians to five hundred—five hundred librarians spread over 539 school districts with nearly 3,000 schools and 1.5 million students. That boils down to only 9% of Michigan public schools having a full-time, certified librarian, and can mean one librarian may be covering six schools.
Certified librarians have advanced degrees in library science and other subjects and are key in teaching information literacy to older children—how to do thorough research, with knowing what the best source materials are.
Today we are seeing an uptick in attacks on funding for public education on the federal level with this current Republican administration. But the history of funding for public education, in Michigan and in this whole country, is one of budget shortfalls—for decades, during Republican and Democratic administrations—on the federal and state levels. According to the president of the Michigan Association of School Librarians, “When schools are making cuts, they often turn to the school libraries … We are working so hard to try to improve test scores and trying to get our literacy scores up … and then we cut libraries.”
Five hundred full time librarians today, vs. 1,400 librarians 20 years ago. But 1,400 weren’t enough even then. There should be no less than one school librarian in every school, if not more than one, depending on the size of the school. AND library assistants. And media specialists. And paraprofessionals.
For librarians and other staff are the people who bring literature alive to young people—history, science, nature, art, you name it. Librarians can open up worlds to young people—excite them about ideas.
Bottom line, they are vital in helping with literacy. Period.
Jul 21, 2025
Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old legislator for New York City, pulled off a surprise upset last month when he won the Democratic primary for mayor of the city. It appears that Mamdani pulled ahead by pushing policies that would help working people: free buses, free child care, and a rent freeze in a city with some of the highest rents in the country. He has also proposed increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
Mamdani calls himself a “democratic socialist.” If elected, Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim mayor. He has made a point to clearly back the cause of the Palestinians.
Without a doubt, working people in New York and all over the country need the things he calls for. Mamdani also made a point of going directly to voters in working class areas of the city and listening—when many politicians ignore working people.
But how can you get these things? His child care program alone is estimated to cost between five and eight billion dollars—though he has given few specifics. Like most politicians, his call is for people to vote for him, so that he can make the changes. He has not, and does not, call for working people to organize themselves, in order to pry money out of the hands of the ruling class.
Chicago has a “socialist” mayor: Brandon Johnson, who worked for the Teachers Union before being elected two years ago. Johnson also offered to “transform” Chicago, through his election.
You can ask any Chicagoan—the city is no socialist paradise for workers. The Chicago Public Schools face a huge budget shortfall, and are facing significant layoffs and cuts, despite having a union organizer for mayor. He ran on raising taxes on the wealthy, but so far, he has not done it—he hasn’t even brought it up lately.
Most importantly, this former organizer has not proposed that working people organize themselves to get what they need. Quite the opposite—Johnson and the Teachers Union leadership told the school workers to trust them and their dealings with the Democratic Party apparatus, instead of mobilizing for workers’ demands.
What people need—childcare, housing, education—all those things require money. The ruling class has its hands on plenty of money—and they have no intention of parting with it. The only way to get anything out of them is to wage a determined and forceful struggle. Mamdani, like Johnson before him, proposes nothing of the kind.
Jul 21, 2025
Ten people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s were killed, and 30 others were injured, at the fire in the Gabriel House assisted living facility in Fall River, Massachusetts.
According to the fire department, there was not enough staff at the facility. Current regulations do not require a specific number of staff members. An expert in this field said: “There should have been more staff. They should have trained in the case of fire or other emergency. Quarterly, they should have been doing fire drills. It seemed like residents didn’t know what to do.”
In this society, the elderly are often treated like throw-away people. These are people who worked their whole lives, raised children, left to burn to death!
Jul 21, 2025
This article is translated from the July 18 issue #2972 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas to try to reach a truce in Gaza began on July 6 in Qatar’s capital Doha. “We’re going to get that straightened out over the next week,” Trump declared a week later.
True to character, Trump boasts while the war continues, and famine worsens in Gaza. The prospect was floated of a 60-day ceasefire to allow an exchange of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, as in the two earlier agreements. But any conclusive agreement has been blocked by Netanyahu’s stubbornness and his refusal to even consider ending Israel’s military occupation of the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Israel’s defense minister proposed to erect a so-called “humanitarian city” in southern Gaza on top of the rubble of the former city of Rafah, which was completely razed by bombs and bulldozers. This site would hold the entire civilian population of Gaza, more than two million people. It would be a gigantic concentration camp controlled by the Israeli army.
Netanyahu’s administration has not officially endorsed the scheme, but it’s supported by the Israeli far right, whose platform is centered on expelling Palestinians from Gaza. The mere fact that a senior minister was able to voice this proposal speaks volumes about the outlook of Israel’s leaders.
While diplomats chatter in Doha, bombings continue in Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians every day. Humanitarian aid has been blocked from entering since early March. Famine is worsening and killing many people, especially the most vulnerable. Around 50 children have died of hunger since March. According to UNICEF, more than 5,000 children between 6 months and 5 years old were treated for acute malnutrition in May alone.
On the Israeli side, the death toll also rises, although by less. Since October 2023, 450 soldiers have been killed—with suicides mounting—and armed combat continues in the ruins of Gaza. Clearly, Hamas has not been eradicated, despite Netanyahu’s claims.
In the context of this military stalemate, opposition is beginning to emerge among the Israeli population. At the funeral of a soldier killed on July 7, a friend eulogized, “You were a brave soldier in a war with no goal.” Thousands of Israelis demonstrated again on July 12 in Tel Aviv to criticize the government’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire allowing the return of hostages. But some protestors also denounced “genocide … an hour’s drive away.”
The only hope for breaking the current impasse would be a mobilization of Israel’s population against its own government. Still, no true peace can come from negotiations done under the leadership of the great powers like the U.S. that pit the peoples of the Middle East against each other. The great powers uphold the Israeli state as the policeman of imperialist order.
Jul 21, 2025
The Trump administration is making deals for the U.S.’s NATO allies to send Patriot air-defense systems to Ukraine. Trump said that the U.S. will produce and backfill the Patriot weapons that are sent to Ukraine. It is another statement by the U.S. government that it is planning to continue this war that started over 3 years ago.
The war began in February of 2022 when Putin sent Russian troops across the border to invade Ukraine. Putin was reacting to encirclement by the U.S. and NATO. These powers continued to station more troops, weapons and missiles on the border of Russia, surrounding it.
The U.S. was training and equipping Ukrainian troops, preparing for war, before Russia ever invaded. When the war started, the U.S. government under Biden supplied most of the weapons and intelligence to Ukraine, enough to keep the war going.
The war has been a humanitarian disaster for both the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, and millions of people have been displaced from their homes.
When Trump was running for president last year, he criticized the Biden administration for U.S. involvement in this war. Trump promised to end the war “before Inauguration Day.” It now has been over 6 months since Trump was inaugurated, and the Trump administration continues the war along the same lines as the Biden administration, supplying more weapons to Ukraine.
The U.S. government helped provoke the war in Ukraine and has used Ukrainian soldiers as proxies to fight the war. U.S. involvement in this war was not just due to the policies of the Biden administration. When Biden engaged this war, his administration was serving U.S. imperialism and the U.S. capitalist class, who had an interest to engage a war that would weaken Russia.
Trump is serving the same capitalist class, so it is no surprise that the U.S. government under Trump is, so far, following the same policy to continue the war. Perhaps it is possible that Trump and his administration see an interest for U.S. imperialism today in bringing the war to a ceasefire, or even a close. But once a war starts, it has its own logic and is not easily ended.
But even if and when the war in Ukraine eventually does end, it also should serve as a warning to the population in this country. The U.S. capitalist class and its political representatives were not only ready to keep the war in Ukraine going, a war that killed so many people; they also have used this war as a practice and a learning experience for new weapons and strategies for the next war. The capitalist system is producing more wars around the world, wars which threaten to explode into a world war; a war that would directly involve the population here.
The war in Ukraine was not in the interests of the working people of either Ukraine or Russia. A future war will not be in the interests of working people here, or in any country.
Jul 21, 2025
This article is translated from the website of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the revolutionary workers group active in France.
Since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the army of the State of Israel has increased its bombings and military incursions in this country, whose Golan Heights it has occupied since 1967. Posing as the defender of the Druze community, which is plagued by violence, it intervened again and bombed Damascus, adding blood to the chaos.
As a good watchdog of the interests of the imperialist powers, Netanyahu intends to demonstrate in the most brutal way that nothing can be done in the Middle East without the Israeli state’s approval.
Jul 21, 2025
The Trump administration maximizes the punishment imposed on undocumented immigrants, treating ordinary working people like criminals, while U.S. authorities regularly collaborate with the leaders of real criminal gangs.
Take the case of MS-13, the notorious gang that Trump has often called “probably the meanest and worst gang in the world.” Attorney General Pam Bondi had recently celebrated charges against several key leaders of MS-13, promising to bring “swift American justice” against these criminals.
The gang Trump and Bondi called out, MS-13, is a product of the civil war fought in El Salvador in the 1980s. Students, small farmers, and farmworkers in El Salvador had launched a political movement that became an uprising against the landlords and capitalists that dominated the country and its government. The United States backed the Salvadoran government against this uprising, arming and training death squads that murdered hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country.
Some of the refugees of this violence fled to Los Angeles, where they wound up in the impoverished Pico Union neighborhood. And a few of them formed a gang, MS-13. The U.S. then deported some of them back to El Salvador, where they established links with many of the same government officials and military officers who had worked with the U.S. in the civil war.
Trained with military weapons, MS-13 spread to other countries. In El Salvador, it took over neighborhoods and generated one of the world’s worst homicide rates, driving an exodus of immigrants reminiscent of the 1980s. The gang developed a reputation for torturing, brutalizing and dismembering its victims.
Upon taking office in 2019, Nayib Bukele offered MS-13 leaders political power and lots of money in return for supporting Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party and imposing Bukele’s dictatorship in many Salvadoran neighborhoods. Some of this blood money was supplied by the U.S. government, through the Agency for International Development. Money that U.S. officials claimed was going to build community centers was really being pocketed by Bukele and MS-13 gang leaders for their own enrichment.
All this was such common knowledge that even U.S. investigators and prosecutors used it to make cases against several MS-13 gang leaders, arrested in the U.S. But over the last couple of months, Bondi’s Justice Department dismissed all charges against two key MS-13 gang leaders, as part of a deal that Trump had made with Bukele in return for imprisoning 200 Venezuelan migrants that Trump had sent to the notorious megaprison known as CECOT.
Bondi’s prosecutors tried to keep their deal with MS-13 and Bukele secret. But on July 17, Federal Judge Joan Azrack ruled that “the public has the right to know about such seeming inconsistencies.”
Inconsistencies? The U.S. government is very consistent. It consistently supports dictators and criminals against the working class.
Jul 21, 2025
On the morning of Monday, July 7, dozens of immigration agents, masked, dressed in camouflage and heavily armed, descended on MacArthur Park about two miles west of downtown Los Angeles. As Humvees and armored vehicles blocked streets surrounding the park and a Black Hawk helicopter hovered above, some agents rode across the park on horseback, wearing black armor and face covers—apt for the name their higher-ups chose for this show: “Operation Excalibur.”
If the purpose of this spectacle was to arrest undocumented immigrants, it was not to happen. The park was empty except for a children’s camp. Flyers posted around the park in previous days had been warning residents of immigration raids. In about an hour, the occupation of the park was over.
But this surely was no misguided operation. It was a show of force aimed at the population. Trump’s Customs and Border Protection chief in L.A. said: “Better get used to us now, because this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime in Los Angeles.”
And probably not just Los Angeles either. Congress just increased the budget of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to 170 billion dollars, so it can send more masked agents in unmarked SUVs to rough up and arrest workers—whether they are undocumented or not, since DHS agents obviously arrest first and ask questions later. Like they did when they arrested a 54-year-old street vendor in L.A. on June 19. Not only did the traumatized, 5-foot-tall mother of two suffer a heart attack, but for good measure the agents also took into custody a man who was videotaping the agents from his work van.
The message is clear: federal agents can arrest anyone, any time at work or on the street—without showing identification or a warrant. Trump’s cronies like DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin know that the “murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles and rapists” that she claimed DHS agents are after don’t work at car washes and garment sweatshops. But the purpose of these raids is to terrorize and intimidate workers.
Today, their targets may be immigrant workers. But this kind of military operation can be used against any part of the working class—for example during strikes. But there are also signs that the immigration raids have stirred up outrage among residents, including among many immigrant workers who voted for Trump. Since the raids began in early June, protesters have been gathering around the immigration agents and their vehicles, videotaping them and telling them to “get the fuck out” of their neighborhoods.
The National Guard troops that Trump called in to L.A., supposedly to “protect federal agents,” are also showing signs of distress at the job they are assigned. Before a planned raid in Ventura County north of L.A., a Latino soldier told officers that he would not take part in the operation and was ready to be arrested. He was put on administrative duties instead. Some soldiers told the GI Rights Hotline that they did not want to participate in deporting people. Others said they did not want to be armed occupiers in their own country. It was even reported that, at the Guards’ Southern California base, security was increased because soldiers were defecating in Humvees and showers.
Many of these National Guard troops are workers themselves, taken away from their jobs and families to occupy L.A. They can join the residents outraged at the immigration raids to stop Trump’s show of military force in working-class neighborhoods, in L.A. or elsewhere.
Jul 21, 2025
Put up swiftly like the Hollywood set it is, the “Alligator Alcatraz” State of Florida immigrant detention center premiered on social media on July 1, 2025. Donald Trump and henchwoman Kristy Noem toured to publicize that a planned 1,000 prisoners will be brought in. Located in the Florida Everglades, there ARE alligators in the area, but the real threat comes from scheming far-right humans.
Located in a tropical region of Florida, west of Miami, detainees are “housed” in caged bunkbeds inside of tents. Sewage and trash must be hauled away in large trucks because of the rush job that was done for the sake of publicity.
And what is being publicized? Brutality! The rulers of this society want conditions as awful as possible so they can teach the U.S. population that civilization is on the way out and barbarism is increasingly here. This whole camp is a propaganda project.
The rulers of this society are presenting a reality television show that dehumanizes immigrant detainees. This project aims to recruit followers from whatever part of the population they can hypnotize.
Alligator Alcatraz tee shirts are being printed. This is an attempt to groom a part of the population to be willing accomplices for whatever brutality squads the capitalist class sees fit to implement.
Magical thinking is pushed from the top to get a part of the population to believe that brutalizing immigrants will somehow fix the economy for the population. The capitalist class is showing us who they really are with Alligator Alcatraz. They are taking humanity back in time to an era of human sacrifice. Then as now, human sacrifice will NOT improve economic conditions!
Jul 21, 2025
For many working people, there is no number of extra shifts they could take on to be able to afford to pay for their health care out of pocket. Unless you land a well-paid, full-time job that offers or affords you the ability to purchase quality health insurance, you are left with two choices: keep your income low enough to stay on Medicaid or go without insurance.
Shifting from on Medicaid, to uninsured, to on private insurance, and back again, is a common cycle for many working people. Different insurances only cover certain doctors and hospitals—meaning, every time your insurance status or insurance company changes, so do the doctors you are able to see and hospitals you’re allowed to go to. This causes the people stuck in this cycle of changing health insurances to put off or receive disjointed preventive care.
Many will die and others will live with treatable pain because they have to delay needed tests and treatments.
Jul 21, 2025
Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” will cut 1 trillion dollars from healthcare, mostly from Medicaid. The changes to Medicaid are designed to kick millions of people out of the program.
They will force many adults to prove their incomes are low enough to remain on Medicaid more frequently—maybe even monthly!
In addition to this, people will now have to prove that they’ve spent 80 hours per month working, volunteering or going to school.
Even for the people who continue to meet all the requirements, some will lose their benefits simply by not being able to keep up with all the additional paperwork and deadlines. And this is no accident—they are counting on people falling through the cracks and losing benefits they deserve.
Jul 21, 2025
To justify cuts to Medicaid, Republicans present it as a handout healthcare insurance for lazy, idle people who don’t work but take advantage of hard-working taxpayers. This is total hogwash.
In reality, millions of workers at America’s largest employers, such as Walmart, McDonald’s, and Amazon, are paid so little for their labor that they have to rely on public assistance. As reported by the U.S. government in 2020, 31.2 million workers rely on Medicaid for their health insurance and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for food.
In 2023, 64% of adults on Medicaid (16.6 million) under age 65 were working, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). Approximately 44% of these Medicaid recipients were working full-time!
The U.S. government documented in 2020 that among adult wage earners who are SNAP recipients, 70% worked full-time every week, and more than half worked full or nearly full-time.
The U.S. government is dead set on cutting Medicaid by as much as $863 billion over 10 years, and SNAP food stamps by at least $186 billion. These cuts will be effective as of 2027, further squeezing low-wage workers. This money will be moved to the pockets of already filthy rich, mainly idle people, as handouts through tax cuts to their income.
The corporations will continue to generate their ever-skyrocketing profits by paying their workers ever-decreasing pitiful wages. They profit by having the government pay for their workers’ health insurance. This is a welfare system working for the rich.
Jul 21, 2025
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of July 13, 2025.
Trump says his trade war, all those tariffs on big and small countries alike, are aimed at bringing back manufacturing jobs for U.S. workers. According to Trump, world trade has decimated U.S. industry so much, it has practically disappeared.
Trump’s rhetoric is the same as what union officials and liberal Democrats, like Bernie Sanders, have been saying for decades.
It is true that millions of industrial jobs have been destroyed in this country. But industry has not disappeared in the U.S., like Trump and the Democrats say. On the contrary, industrial production is five times higher in the U.S. than at the end of World War II. And U.S. industry churns out twice as much production as it did in 1980, when we were told that all our jobs were going overseas, to places like China, or Mexico, or anywhere else.
Jobs were not going overseas. They were destroyed by big U.S. companies right here, which drove fewer workers to do ever more work. As a result, one worker today does the work that it took six workers to do in the 1940s.
Over the years, companies cut jobs, even as they increased production. It’s the way they increased their own profits and wealth at the expense of their work force.
Look at what happened in the steel industry, where Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on steel imports last month. Trump justified these tariffs by claiming that a flood of cheap imports had destroyed the steel industry and workers’ jobs.
No, imported steel didn’t destroy U.S. steel workers’ jobs. The steel companies operating in the U.S. did. Today one steel worker produces as much steel as 10 steel workers produced in the 1970s.
Those enormous productivity increases could have benefited the people doing the work. They could have brought higher living standards, more time off, shorter work weeks and early retirement.
But in this capitalist system, they just brought more profit.
In their pursuit of profit, the steel companies slashed hundreds of thousands of jobs. They abandoned big parts of the industrial heartland in the Midwest. They laid waste to its economy and population.
This is not the first time that Trump introduced tariffs on steel, claiming that they would bring steel worker jobs back to the U.S. He introduced tariffs on steel in 2018, during his first term.
But after the tariffs were imposed, the steel companies didn’t increase production. They didn’t hire more workers. All they did was raise their prices. For them, big tariff increases were an opportunity to greatly increase their profits, a profit bonanza. A year later, 75,000 manufacturing jobs had been destroyed. Steel is used in the production of other things, like autos and appliances, and the price increase in steel caused cutbacks in production and jobs.
Those tariffs were not aimed at protecting jobs or bringing jobs back, like Trump claims. They were aimed at increasing the profits and wealth of the U.S. capitalist class in a worsening and more violent trade war.
What a disaster! All because everything is run simply for the profit of a tiny minority, a few thousand families worldwide, a few thousand billionaires, who own and control everything.
This is the situation in which we find ourselves today. It won’t get better so long as the capitalists run things, so long as they make the decisions.
The working class could take power away from the capitalists. It could sweep them away. It could organize a new economy, one that is organized to serve every person.
Workers aren’t doing that today, you say? Yes, but they could. When they wake up from their long sleep. Easier said than done, you say? Yes, but it could be done.
Jul 21, 2025
This non-fiction book describes in great detail all the different attacks of the so-called McCarthy period. The book starts in 1946 and talks about the far-reaching attacks: book bans, attacks on people’s reputations based on hearsay, firings in Hollywood and industry, attacks on anyone who questioned or challenged the status quo or the injustices of capitalist society, censorship in schools and universities. No segment of society was untouched by this climate of fear and hate.
This documentary reveals how much we have learned of the ocean, how modern times have revealed the amazing complexity of this, the earth’s last frontier. He explains with wonder the latest discoveries.
But the film also shows the grave danger the ocean is in. How bottom trawlers and huge industrial factory ships are dredging the ocean floor for profit, killing everything in their wake. Nothing but wasteland remains. Also, how global warming is killing the coral reefs and all the life that abides there.
He has hope though. He offers the hope that the ocean can recover when areas are protected, and if one-third is protected, recovery would be sustainable.
Jul 21, 2025
At Target, Drive Up allows customers to stay in their vehicles and have groceries brought out to them.
If you didn’t feel it, temperatures have recently hit all-time highs, so many people opted for this option to stay in their air conditioned cars, especially older people.
This would be a great service, but in reality, Target doesn’t hire enough people and leaves the ones who are there overwhelmed, exhausted, and still expected to keep up with the high demand. No extra breaks. Just the same fake “team player” talk while we work through dangerous heat. But hey, profits don’t pause for heatstroke.
Jul 21, 2025
Early on July 4, heavy rain—more than 10 inches in three hours—fell on the slopes along the scenic Guadalupe River in Kerr County in central Texas. The river rose quickly, by at least 26 feet in 45 minutes, flooding riverside summer camps, recreational vehicle parks, and farms. At least 129 people were killed, including 27 girls and counselors at the prestigious Camp Mystic. Farm equipment and cattle were washed down the river.
Some officials are claiming they had no idea this would happen. This is not the first time this has happened in this area, appropriately nicknamed “Flash Flood Alley.” This is one of the most flood-prone areas in the country because of its geology. Shallow soil over limestone can’t absorb all the water falling from the sky and rushing down the steep slopes along the Guadalupe River. Storm water cascades into creeks and riverbeds, forming devastating, rushing walls of water and debris.
There have been 12 serious local floods in the past 50 some years—that’s more than one every 5 years.
Two questions immediately pop up. Why are there summer camps in a known flood zone? And what systems were in place to warn sleeping campers of the impending flood?
Camp Mystic was built in the flood plain nearly a century ago. Six years after the camp opened for business, a flash flood washed away several cabins. In this recent flood, some of the cabins were located so close to the banks of the Guadalupe River that they were considered part of the river’s “floodway,” meaning any construction is either banned or extremely restricted by many states and counties.
Floodways are extremely hazardous because of the velocity of floodwaters which carry debris and cause erosion. Yet Camp Mystic continued to build in a flood plain and gain exemptions to do so from the federal government.
As for warning systems, there was no outdoor weather alert system, like sirens that would alert people to a flash flood. While there is no law requiring sirens, experts agree they save lives. Every means to warn people, phone alerts, radio and TV emergency broadcast system, and outdoor sirens should be used. Since a flood in 2017, some officials argued for the sirens, but they were never approved in the budget. One official was quoted as saying that sirens were “too extravagant.” Too extravagant to save 100 people?!
Safety taking a backseat to the profits of a prestigious camp and government budgets is not new in this capitalist society.
Jul 21, 2025
Dangerous flooding has hit multiple locations in the United States since the flooding that killed 129 people in central Texas. Water rushed into New York subway stations, drowned two people in a vehicle in New Jersey. Storms stranded Washington-area motorists. Flash floods hit a mountainous area in New Mexico. A massive downpour clobbered roads and homes in North Carolina. At the same time, flooding rains have failed to relent in Texas. In every case, the flooding was caused by sudden extremely heavy rainstorms.
While downpours and thunderstorms are common in the summer, halfway through, there have been more than twice as many and often fatal floods as usual for July, according to the National Weather Service. There are various weather conditions behind this month’s extreme rainfall, but one thing connects them all: large amounts of moisture in the atmosphere above the country.
It is flowing from abnormally warm oceans across the Northern Hemisphere that are likely to extend the elevated flood risk into August. Plumes of tropical moisture are stretching into middle latitudes and stagnate there, increasing the risk of floods.
Water vapor is fuel for storms. When vapor condenses into clouds, it releases energy, causing storms to intensify. Weather systems that have more of this fuel can produce more rainfall.
As the planet warms, that fuel is building up in the skies. Warmer air holds more moisture. Burning fossil fuels releases “greenhouse” gases into the upper atmosphere. Those gases act like the glass in a greenhouse, trapping the heat of the sun and causing the planet to warm.
This human-caused warming has been very rapid, starting during the Industrial Revolution. And it has been speeding up. A warmer climate creates instability in the atmosphere, making it harder to make predictions about weather systems.
Capitalism puts profits before all else, including human lives. Stopping climate change or mitigating its deadly effects are not profitable. That means in order to change what is happening to the planet and the people and animals on it, capitalism has to go.
Jul 21, 2025
The Canadian forests are burning. This is a relatively new phenomenon. Although no one event can be precisely blamed on the warming climate, as the climate warms, scientists have identified a significant increase in wildfires along with the life-threatening conditions they cause.
As the smoke warnings have become more frequent and severe, they have gone from affecting sensitive groups to being a threat to life. Smoke containing small particulate matter is the most dangerous of pollutants, leading to asthma and cancer.
The stupid remarks of Trump and those who say it is a Canadian problem are smoke-screening. The problem of climate change and the disasters it causes are international and require an international solution.