This Week is a series produced in collaboration between The Partisan and the Revolutionary Student Union. We hope that this coverage will serve to broaden our readers’ understanding of ongoing events nationally and internationally, and provide a class-conscious perspective on them.
Federal: Hundreds of Troops Deployed for Interior ICE Operations
The US military is now being deployed, not just to crackdown on mass resistance to the Imperialist State’s offensive on the immigrant masses, but also to participate directly in the deportation apparatus itself. On July 3, the Pentagon deployed 700 active-duty troops, including 200 Marines, to assist ICE’s inland crackdown. These deployments are not limited to the border. Troops are being sent to detention centers and logistics hubs in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, but will ultimately support mass raids nationwide.
While capitalist politicians insist these troops are performing “administrative” roles, their true function is to bolster a militarized deportation regime and prepare for repression of dissent in working-class and nationally-oppressed communities. This is about establishing military-police control over interior population centers, especially where resistance is growing.
These deployments demand an escalation of local People’s Defense organizing in every city, neighborhood, and campus under threat, as revolutionaries-in-formation take up the task of exercising political leadership in a period of intensifying class warfare.
Federal: House Passes “Big Beautiful Bill” Slashing Social Programs
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed the House 218–214 on July 3. It is a coordinated class assault: deep cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, housing aid, and public programs, combined with an expansion of border enforcement and massive new tax giveaways to the rich. $350 billion will go to ICE, CBP, and other repressive arms of the State.
This bill is a continuation of bipartisan austerity. Democratic Party leaders offered loud objections but no resistance. Many of these same programs were already underfunded or gutted during the Biden administration. The reality is that both parties agree: the working class must pay the price for the worsening crisis of the international imperialist system. This is what capitalist democracy looks like in decline: bailouts for the ruling class, hunger and poverty for the workers.
Pennsylvania: Philadelphia City Workers Strike Over and Inflation
Nearly 9,000 city workers in Philadelphia have gone on strike, demanding wage increases that match the cost of living and rejecting cuts to job protections. Sanitation, transit, and city services have all ground to a halt.
But while the headlines focus on the statements and officials of the establishment state union, the real lesson is elsewhere: millions of workers in public sector jobs remain locked in contracts with no strike clauses and expansive managerial rights clauses, with no structure for real struggle beyond periodic negotiations. Strikes like this are the exception: they show the explosive potential of these sectors, but also highlight the millions of public sector workers nationally currently being sold-out by their so-called establishment “unions” while massive layoffs and cut-backs are occurring. Already the imperialist court system, which establishment labor cynically relies on, is issuing injunctions breaking the strike for key segments of the striking workers.
Revolutionary students should not limit themselves to cheering from the sidelines or tailing establishment labor officials. We must unite with the work of class-conscious labor organizations and connect with workers, study their conditions, and advocate for the creation of independent, mass-based organizations capable of consistently organizing around both the political and the economic demands of workers.
The path forward is a new class-conscious union movement. One that student organizers must support enthusiastically by struggling alongside class-conscious workers and entrenching ourselves in the everyday struggles of the working class.
Tennessee: New Law Criminalizes Transporting Undocumented People
A new law in Tennessee now makes it a felony to shelter, house, or transport undocumented immigrants. This law targets workers, students, neighbors, even family members. It will be used to criminalize entire sections of the working class: truck drivers, construction crews, tenant organizers, and all workers alike.
This is about turning everyday life into a crime for the undocumented masses. It deepens the divide between “legal” and “illegal” workers, pushing migrant labor further underground and isolating it from broader class struggle.
This law functions as a direct descendant of the Black Codes. It is no coincidence such laws are being rolled out first in the Black Belt South, where Jim Crow and formal racial segregation dominated until only half a century ago. The answer is to this law is not another court challenge. The answer is open defiance and elevating and extending the current wave of spontaneous mass resistance into something organized and sustainable, aimed at revolution and the imperialist system itself.
Texas: Trump Slashes Weather Services—and the NWS Stays Silent
As Texas drowns under historic floods, the Trump administration is gutting the National Weather Service (NWS), slashing staff, and closing key positions. Over 120 forecast offices are running short, and the NWS itself is letting it happen.
Where’s the outcry from inside? Nowhere. The NWS leadership is quietly complying, refusing to sound the alarm publicly. While workers on the ground struggle to keep systems running, the top of the agency bows to political pressure and privatization threats.
People will die from slowdowns like this when weather alerts come late, if at all. Already there are more than two hundred are dead or missing in Texas this past week due to floodwaters that occurred without prediction or sufficient warning. Rural, poor, and immigrant communities, especially across the Black Belt South and the heavily Chicano and indigenous Southwest, will be the first to be abandoned, like we saw in North Carolina in 2024.
Philippines: New Reports on Actions by the New People’s Army
On July 2 at 5:30 AM Manila time, one of the units of the New Peoples’ Army’s (NPA) Roselyn Jean Pelle Command carried out an offensive against Isagani “Uko” Imalay, a notorious rapist in Barangay Badila. He was let go by the Philippine State with little to no repercussion by the corrupt, bourgeois courts. As a means to finally achieve justice for the victims, their families, and all Filipina women, he was given the opportunity to transform himself into one of the people. However, Red fighters were left with no other choice: armed with pistols and even a submachine gun, Imalay chose to fight while NPA soldiers surrounded him. The capture of Imalay by the fighters of the New People’s Army demonstrates the vibrancy and strong will of a people’s revolutionary justice system. This is a strong, swift, and just system in the hands of the oppressed masses and Filipino revolutionaries. Additionally, on June 14, 3 members of the Philippine State’s 62nd Infantry Battalion were eliminated by the NPA’s Leonard Panaligan Command, motivated by the just concrete demands of the masses against intimidation and harassment by the Filipino counterinsurgent forces. The New People’s Army continues to serve the Filipino people as part of their ongoing National Democratic Revolution.
Kenya: Two Killed by Police Shooting at Protestors
The Kenyan masses, subjugated by a comprador government backed by US and Chinese imperialism, have continued their protests against the State. The police have retaliated by firing live rounds and water cannons in Nairobi capital. As a result, two protestors died today from severe gunshot wounds sustained at the hands of the State and the police. These martyrs of resistance against the old Kenyan State come amidst widespread demonstrations, calling for US imperialist lackey President William Ruto to resign. Blocking main roads and nearby streets in Nairobi, the Kenyan people have mobilized, against corruption, State violence, and forced disappearances.
Gaza: Stones of David Strikes Continue
The “Axis of Resistance” in occupied Palestine have been carrying out their “Stones of David” operations since May, with nonstop hammering of Israel’s forces wherever they are in or near the Gaza Strip, whose people continue to face genocide, whether by Israel enforcing mass dehydration or the banning of infant formula. On June 25, seven Israeli soldiers occupying Khan Younis were neutralized and 16 others were wounded by one Palestinian guerrilla fighter who attached an explosive to a Puma tank. The genocidal Israeli state media went haywire after this offensive occurred, with absolute shock that even one soldier fighting for Palestinian liberation would take up revolutionary violence.
Israel: 36 Bases Hit by Iran, Israel Hides Evidence
From satellite radar data that was kept hidden by Israel’s military, six Iranian missiles struck five Israeli military installations, including an air base, intelligence center, and logistics hub. Data retrieved from The Telegraph indicate that there were 36 overall strikes by Iran on the Israeli State’s air defense system, strikes which were left unacknowledged by the Israeli military. The notorious Weizmann Institute and the Soroka University Medical Center were both hit directly, displacing 15,000 Zionist settlers in the process. This is a clear indication of Israel’s dying power, as it is desperate to murder as many indigenous Palestinians as possible and bring the nations around them down with them.
Brazil: Revolutionary Students Uphold Anti-Imperialist Struggle
On June 24, the Movimento Estudantil Popular Revolucionário (MEPR, the Revolutionary People’s Student Movement) held a debate at the Federal University of Pará, attended by students and activists alike. The main discussion in this debate was the reading of an A Nova Democracia (AND) article titled “United States Ordered Netanyahu to Attack Iran.” They conducted dialogue around the anti-imperialist struggles in West Asia and Arabia, and honored the martyrs and heroes of the international proletariat. It began with a tribute to Brazilian proletarian revolutionary Fausto Arruda, upholding his work and example for the new generation of Brazilian revolutionaries in the building of the New Democratic Revolution in Brazil. They also held a tribute to Comrade Basavaraj, the recently-martyred General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), highlighting the importance of the People’s War in India against the old Indian State and the struggles of the Indian masses. After the tributes, participants read the AND article, followed with discussion and questions, giving the students and activists an opportunity to understand and uphold anti-imperialism.
