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The death toll from the current US heat wave has not yet been fully established, and official figures often lag behind the reality by weeks or months. But the danger is clear. In Europe, Reuters reported Friday that at least 3,700 excess deaths were recorded during the recent heat wave in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, including 2,025 in France alone. Health authorities warned that the toll may rise as more complete data becomes available.

Reports from workers show that dangerous conditions are widespread across industries. “I can’t take the heat like I used to,” a CSX railroad worker told the WSWS. “The young guys can withstand it better. The company used to get us electrolyte drinks, and when it would get like tomorrow the manager would sometimes bring out fruit midday. All that is no more.”

He said management has recently complained about workers leaving trucks idling because of high fuel prices. “We don’t care,” he said. “We told them we’re not shutting them off. There needs to be a place for guys to escape the heat. The last thing you want to do with someone overheated is put them in a hot truck and wait for the air conditioner to cool off. They need to get in a cool area immediately.”

The same worker contrasted these conditions with the treatment of railroad executives. “Yesterday they brought out the fancy business train and had the CEO of CSX and the Secretary of Transportation get on it at Alexandria station [in the Washington, DC area],” he said.

A factory worker at a Missouri product manufacturing plant described regular heat-related collapses near a boiling-water pressure test area. “People drop and get put in ambulances on the daily,” the worker said. “Specifically around the water bath, where they do a pressure test with boiling water on the cans. Around summer time, you will see ambulances there. They mostly put women around there. At least in the hot times. Any other time it’s just a boring job that is hot. A can that fails, you put on a thick glove and fish it out. But combined with this oppressive heat, the humidity and heat drops people regularly.”

Watch "The American Revolution and Its Place in History", only on the World Socialist Web Site, wsws.org/1776

The media frenzy surrounding the “Wedding of the Century” between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden (MSG) in New York City on Friday night is a case study of they way the lives of the wealthy and famous are packaged as entertainment, while very serious and far more important questions facing the public are pushed out of view.

Created by artist-photographer Phil Buehler, the Wall of Tears is “a public artwork memorializing the 18,457+ children killed in Gaza from October 7th, 2023 until July 19, 2025.”

That’s more than one child killed every hour. The work first appeared in Brooklyn, New York on January 29, the anniversary of the death of Hind Rajab. On June 11, it was brought to PEACE Park East in Dearborn, Michigan (13621 Michigan Ave, across from the Arab American National Museum) where it will remain on display through the end of July.

The Wall is 50 feet long, and towers at seven and a half feet high. The name of each martyred child is listed in small letters, in both Arabic and Roman, in the chronological order of his or her death, as is the age when he or she was killed. Boys names are highlighted in light grey, and girls in white. The names completely cover the wall, from top to bottom and along its entire length. One has to stoop down to read the names near the ground and stretch upward ito see those at the top.

The words of the Declaration of Independence, like those of all great revolutionary documents, come suddenly alive in periods of social struggle. Its denunciation of George III, a ruler “marked by every act which may define a Tyrant … unfit to be the ruler of a free people,” reads today like a condemnation of the Trump administration. As the historian Adam Hochschild observed in the webinar held by the World Socialist Web Site on June 25, the Declaration’s indictment of the king reads as if it “were written this morning.”

In the language of the Declaration, the military has been rendered “superior to the Civil Power” through the deployment of troops into American cities. Immigrants are “transported beyond Seas” without charge or trial to a concentration camp in El Salvador. Federal agents are protected “from punishment for any Murders which they should commit,” as in the cases of the ICE agent who shot Renée Good and the CBP agents who shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

The Declaration’s statement that “all men are created equal” stands as an indictment of a society that has just minted its first trillionaire, Elon Musk. Nearly 1,000 billionaires command $8.4 trillion, and the top 1 percent holds as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of the population combined. American society is mired in corruption and criminality, with President Donald Trump having reaped $1.43 billion in a cryptocurrency scam during his first year in office. 

In a comment last week, the Age’s chief political correspondent Chip Le Grand bemoaned the rejection of a sellout enterprise agreement by Victorian teachers for the first time in over forty years.

Le Grand, drawing on the trope of the “outside agitator,” ascribed the defeat of the agreement to the influence of socialists. He particularly singled out the Committee for Public Education (CFPE), a rank-and-file teachers’ network initiated by the Socialist Equality Party, which had campaigned among educators for a “no” vote.

The column testified to nervousness within the corporate ruling elite over the teachers’ rebellion and the weakening grip of the trade union bureaucracy that it expresses. The Age is the most prominent “liberal” daily newspaper in Victoria. Le Grand is its most prominent commentator.

Socialist Equality Party Assistant National Secretary Tom Scripps spoke outside the Turkish embassy in London on Tuesday. He and a group of SEP members aimed to deliver a letter of protest to the Turkish ambassador protesting the unjust arrest of Mayor Ali Ercan Akpolat, and hundreds of others, by the Erdoğan government.

This followed a protest outside the Turkish embassy in Berlin held by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, and protests held on Büyükada (Prinkipo) island—part of Ercan Ali’s municipality—participated in by the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi–Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International).

Staff at the embassy refused to open the door or to receive the letter, which has been submitted by email. The text is posted below.

Despite Canary’s high profile in Britain, its de-banking by Lloyd’s met a wall of silence from the mainstream media over the past 48 hours. Only the pro-Scottish independence National, business publication City AM, and right-wing GB News carried news of Lloyds’ actions.

Independent outlets, including Double Down News, Middle East Eye, Declassified UK and Novara Media, have condemned Lloyds’ actions as a major attack on press freedom and speech.

Robert Stevens, UK editor of the World Socialist Web Site, wrote, “Lloyds’ de-banking of Canary is a major attack on democratic rights—if this stands, all left-wing and independent media are threatened.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom has reached a deal with legislative leaders to strip the independently elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction of all managerial authority over the California Department of Education, transferring control to a governor-appointed Director of Education. The plan was embedded in Assembly Bill 181 and coincides with the June 29–30 voting window to pass the complete fiscal budget blueprint before the midnight start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Under the current system, the Superintendent is elected by voters statewide and oversees a public education system with a budget exceeding $100 billion, serving millions of students. AB 181 eliminates that independent mandate. Beginning January 15, the next governor would appoint a Director of Education, confirmed by the state Senate, who would assume all operational control. The elected Superintendent would be reduced to a largely ceremonial role.

The bill is being sold in the language of technocratic efficiency. Newsom acted on recommendations from Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a Stanford-based research institute, which argued that splitting authority between an elected superintendent and the governor creates “inefficiency and ineffectiveness.” Dozens of education advocacy organizations endorsed the concept. Ted Lempert of Children Now praised Newsom for providing “strong leadership.” Former State Board President Michael Kirst called it “an important milestone.”

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump released his mandatory financial disclosure for 2025. It showed that he more than tripled his personal income during the first year of his second term, from $622 million in 2024 to at least $2.2 billion last year.

The scale of Trump's self-enrichment renders the great corruption scandals of American history almost quaint by comparison. The Teapot Dome affair of the 1920s, which stood for a century as the byword for political criminality, centered on roughly $400,000 in bribes—about $8 million in today's dollars—accepted by Interior Secretary Albert Fall in exchange for leasing naval oil reserves. Fall went to prison. Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in 1973 over kickbacks totaling perhaps $250,000, collected in envelopes of cash from Maryland contractors. By Trumpian standards, small potatoes.

Since taking office, O’Brien has presided over one betrayal after another. At UPS, where the Teamsters pushed through a contract the bureaucracy hailed as “historic” in 2023, the company is carrying out a deep restructuring plan which has destroyed tens of thousands of union jobs. It eliminated 48,000 jobs in 2025 and announced plans to cut up to 30,000 more operational positions in 2026.

O’Brien has also cultivated open ties with the extreme right. In 2024, he became the first Teamsters president to address the Republican National Convention, praising Donald Trump as “one tough SOB” and presenting the union bureaucracy as a vehicle for a nationalist political realignment. For Trump’s Justice Department, this is obviously a positive.

Workers at Bridgewater Interiors in Warren, Michigan, members of UAW Local 400, voted Tuesday to ratify a four-year contract the United Auto Workers bureaucracy rushed through without giving the factory’s 1,000 workers the chance to see the full agreement or study its details. In a social media post Wednesday, the UAW said workers “voted by 80 percent to ratify a new contract that secures a top rate of $35 an hour by 2030 among other major gains...”

This is no more truthful than anything else the UAW bureaucracy has told workers since their previous contract expired on May 15. The deal hailed by UAW President Shawn Fain includes a starvation-level starting wage of only $20 an hour, which would top out at $29 in four years. Due to the high turnover rate, many workers would be stuck on this low-wage treadmill.

Tuesday’s Democratic Party primary contests in Colorado were another demonstration of the shift to the left among workers and young people across the United States. In the congressional district based on the city of Denver, 15-term incumbent Diana DeGette was defeated for the Democratic nomination by a first-time candidate and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Melat Kiros.

The 29-year-old former lawyer and doctoral student, who came to the US from Ethiopia as an infant, challenged the 68-year-old DeGette from the left, particularly on the question of opposition to the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Before moving back to Colorado, Kiros was fired by a Manhattan law firm in late 2023 for posting material online criticizing Israel and defending those who call for the overthrow of the Zionist state.

She also publicly condemned the detention of Hayam El Gamal and her five children after El Gamal’s husband carried out an attack on a gathering of demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, in which one woman was killed. El Gamal had no knowledge of the planned attack and has since divorced her husband, but she and her five children, some as young as five, were held at a detention center in Dilley, Texas for more than ten months. DeGette made no such statements in support of the El Gamal family.

Kiros also sought to appeal to anger over the state of the economy and the refusal of the Democratic Party to conduct any serious struggle against the Trump administration, presenting herself as a barista struggling to pay the rent and criticizing DeGette for accepting contributions from corporate PACs, particularly from the healthcare industry. She also vowed not to support House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for speaker if the Democrats win control of the House in November.

The war in Ukraine has entered an extraordinarily dangerous new stage. On the eve of the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7–8, the European imperialist powers are recklessly escalating the conflict with Russia, transforming Ukraine into a launchpad for deep strikes into Russian territory and preparing the political, military and industrial foundations for a direct NATO-Russia war.

Such a war would not remain confined to Ukraine. It would threaten to engulf the whole of Europe and could rapidly escalate into a nuclear conflict.

Workers must understand the seriousness of the situation and draw the necessary political conclusions. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have already been killed or wounded. Entire cities have been destroyed and millions displaced. Yet the NATO powers, above all in Europe, are not seeking to stop the slaughter. They are escalating it and are prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands and even millions more.

The central danger is that the distinction between a proxy war and a direct war between NATO and Russia is being systematically erased. Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile strikes against targets deep inside Russia—energy facilities, military-industrial sites, airfields, ports and infrastructure around Moscow and St. Petersburg—depend on NATO intelligence, satellite surveillance, targeting data, weapons systems and political direction.

"Marxist history was never simply an exercise in critique. It was not merely about exposing hypocrisy, deception, mystification, or the distance between professed ideals and social realities. It was genuinely historical. It understood societies as developing through stages or phases, with each social order creating new capacities, contradictions, and possibilities that could not be reduced either to moral progress or to unchanging domination."

Watch "The American Revolution and Its Place in History", only on the World Socialist Web Site: wsws.org/1776

Almost all the Venezuelans deported from the United States who arrived on Flight 164 at Simón Bolívar International Airport were killed by the catastrophic earthquakes of June 24, having landed only six hours earlier.

The group—120 men, 19 women, five boys and two girls—had been processed through arrival protocols and taken under Venezuelan state intelligence (SEBIN) custody to the Hotel Santuario La Llanada, a spare government facility in La Guaira where migrants are locked in and subjected to medical checks and identity document procedures.

At 6 p.m., the 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes knocked down the entire building. Of the 147 deportees, only 12 survived.

"All of history is a struggle, and the struggle against slavery was already part of what was going on in the colonies and in the new states at the American founding." Watch "The American Revolution and Its Place in History", only on the World Socialist Web Site, wsws.org/1776

As Engels explains, the capitalists “engaged in production and exchange for the sake of the immediate profit” are structurally incapable of looking beyond the “first, tangible success.” For them, “the sole incentive becomes the profit to be gained on selling.” And this profit is vast: The net income of stock market-listed oil and gas companies in the US alone in 2022 was $916 billion, of which 84 percent was captured by the richest tenth of the population, and half by the richest 1 percent.

To attempt to address the climate crisis by issuing appeals to governments to regulate this oligarchy, or directly to the boardrooms themselves—as do the green and environmentalist movements—is like discussing vegetarianism with a pack of hungry wolves.

The profits of fossil-fueled capitalism not only insulate the super rich from the effects of climate change but render them indifferent to the democratic sentiment of those who are affected. The ruling class stands to lose between $1.4 and $2.4 trillion in stranded fossil fuel assets and investments in a move to a net-zero emissions society. A comparison of the time and resources spent by the European governments on each confirms that they are more prepared to contemplate war with nuclear-armed Russia than such a transition.

Safeguarding human life on earth means seizing power away from these arsonists by expropriating the oligarchy and toppling capitalist governments in a world socialist revolution.

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — A second case of measles has been reported in Connecticut, according to officials with the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) on Monday.

The case was found in a vaccinated adult in Hartford County, officials said, noting it was a “weak positive result.”