FEDERAL: Universities Bend the Knee to Government
In the last month, Columbia University, Brown University, and the University of Pennsylvania reached agreements with the Trump administration. These agreements came mainly in order to restore federal funding to various grants and programs at the universities, funding which had been frozen by the government earlier in the year. In order to secure the return of funding, the universities had to agree to a variety of demands by the government, including agreements to
- remove race as a consideration in hiring, financial aid, or admissions.
- force transgender students to use dorms, bathrooms, and facilities based on their assigned sex at birth.
- promote Israel and Zionism, and push for further repression of pro-Palestine student activists.
These agreements allow universities and their investors to restore millions of dollars in federal funding without having to “admit any wrongdoing,” while also gutting programs and rights for both their workers and their students. This is a clear demonstration of the priorities of university administrations, which prioritize their own profits, largely from investments, real estate, or patents on new inventions. Rather than serving as institutions of education for the people, these universities prefer to work to promote the ideologies of the ruling class, and employ an army of researchers to better enrich capitalist industries and their profits.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Ghislaine Maxwell Tries to Use Epstein’s 2007 Deal to Escape Justice
Ghislaine Maxwell, longtime partner and co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, has filed a Supreme Court appeal arguing that a 2007 non-prosecution deal made between Epstein and federal prosecutors in Florida should shield her from sex trafficking charges. That agreement, struck entirely behind closed doors, granted immunity not only to Epstein, but to unnamed co-conspirators as well. It was unprecedented in scope and secrecy, bypassing victims and shielding a criminal network of the elite from public accountability.
The very structure of the plea deal exposes how the state protects the powerful, not the exploited. Women and girls, trafficked through Epstein’s network, were systematically silenced by the same courts now being asked to erase the conviction of his chief accomplice. This is nothing but impunity for the ruling class. And it’s a reminder that without mass revolutionary justice rooted in workers power, elite violence will always find refuge in the legal system.
NEW YORK: Feds Move to Deport 82-Year-Old Irish Republican Gabriel Megahey
Gabriel Megahey, a former Irish republican fighter convicted in 1983 for actions tied to the IRA’s armed struggle against British colonialism, has lived in the U.S. for decades under protections linked to the Good Friday Agreement. Now, at age 82, the Department of Homeland Security is attempting to revoke his status and deport him, threatening to strip him of his Medicare, Medicaid, and legal residency.
Megahey served his sentence. But now, decades later, the state turns on him, using immigration powers to target an aging revolutionary veteran. His case shows how easily the U.S. wields its legal apparatus to punish former revolutionaries, especially those who fought imperialism and now live as immigrants on U.S. soil.
NEW YORK: Freedom for Tarek Bazrouk!
On May 7, the FBI raided the home of Palestinian student and activist Tarek Bazrouk and arrested him for having taken part in pro-Palestine protests. For more than 2 months, he remains locked in the Metropolitan Detention Center without bail with his case handled by the DOJ directly. This act of escalation is a part of U.S. imperialism’s offensive against the pro-Palestinian movement and democratic liberties overall.
Progressive and people’s organizations such as the City College of New York Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), City University of New York SJP, and Revolutionary Student Union have been spearheading a campaign to defend Tarek and raising funds to buy him books. Donate to the campaign here:
https://chuffed.org/project/135655-put-money-on-tareks-books
FEDERAL: Trump and the Dollar – Crisis Management for Capital, Misery for Workers
Donald Trump recently endorsed a weaker U.S. dollar, arguing it would boost exports and benefit American industry. In reality, this position reflects the deep contradictions of a decaying capitalist system: falling rates of profit, oversaturated markets, and ballooning debt leave few options for capital beyond manipulating currency and chasing short-term gains abroad.
A weaker dollar may help exporters on paper, but it raises the cost of imports, deepens inflation, and squeezes workers already struggling with stagnant wages and rising prices. The capitalist state scrambles to protect accumulation for the few, while the majority are left to absorb the fallout through layoffs, higher rents, and austerity.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Military Assigned to Immigration Enforcement Under State Control
The Pentagon has shifted 1,700 troops aiding immigration enforcement to Title 32 status, keeping them federally funded but placing them under state governors. This change expands military involvement in ICE operations, blurring lines between domestic policing and warfare.
FRANCE: Georges Abdallah released after 40 years in French prison
After 41 years as a political prisoner in capitalist-imperialist France’s prisons for his fight for Palestine, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah was finally released from the concrete jungle, with the warm love and welcome back home from thousands gathered at Lebanon’s Beirut Airport. Abdallah’s release would not have been made possible without the continuous, unwavering mobilization of the revolutionary and popular masses in solidarity with Palestine against imperialism and the genocidal Israel.
INTERNATIONAL: Firmest revolutionary salute from the Communist Party of the Philippines to the martyrs of the Indian revolution
In the midst of the New Democratic Revolution, the CPP extends their solidarity to the CPI (Maoist) and the popular masses in India as their Memorial Week (July 28th-August 3rd) approaches near. Honoring the heroes and martyrs in the fight against feudalism, imperialism and bureaucrat capitalism, the CPP enforces the principle of proletarian internationalism by sharing that the heroes of the armed struggle in India are also heroes of the Filipino people for national liberation. Under the Modi regime, Comrade Basavaraj and hundreds of other Indian comrades have fallen by the Hindutva government’s Operation Kagar offensive against the CPI (Maoist) and the PLGA. Without the sacrifices of Basavaraj and countless others, most importantly the mass struggle of Siddis, Dalits and Adivasis against their treacherous oppression, no path to liberation and defeat of imperialism would be possible. Both India and the Philippines are waging a fight against the national oppression of their people, and serves to temper the popular and most oppressed masses in both nations towards the revolutionary tide.
PALESTINE: The Zionist tactic of starvation does not weaken, but nourishes, the Resistance
In the past four months, thousands of trucks with gasoline, food, and other vital aid to the Palestinian people have been blocked by Israel, whose insidious goal is to starve them to extinction in the name of having been chosen by God. Infant mortality, miscarriages, and medical death of the elderly has reached devastating levels, with 650,000 at risk of casualty via manufactured starvation. About 60 aid points, 40 food banks, and 877 Palestinians have been direct targets of Israel’s “Death Traps” where the Palestinian people are massacred retrieving even the smallest bit of basic aid. Israel, in its last chapter, is only strengthening the spirit of resistance and determination to win with all that it can to exacerbate the lowest levels of humanity they have, being a satellite State for U.S. imperialism. The Al-Quds and Al-Qassam brigades, with their booby traps, explosives, and rockets, are restless in their operation against the Zionist enemy generating more losses for their military.
BRAZIL: We’re shutting down the civic-military school! Fascists out!
Romeu Zema Neto’s NOVO party unsuccessfully attempted to militarize 700 schools in the state of Minas Gerais. Students, teachers, parents, and other revolutionary and popular sectors stood together against the planned militarization in the struggle for free public education. Across the state of Minas Gerais, the popular Brazilian masses withstood the intimidation of government forces, only further proving the vibrancy of the masses to fight for vital democratic demands of their schools and neighborhoods in the state and across Brazil. More details are found in the statement released by Red Unity – Revolutionary Youth League in Brazil.
