Charlie Kirk was a racist. Charlie Kirk was a transphobe. Charlie Kirk was a Nazi in every sense of the word. And this cultivator of hate is now dead. 

Since his death, U.S. presidents, news media, and even sports franchises have anointed Kirk as a martyr for the cause of free speech and open debate. All have strongly condemned Kirk’s assassination as an “act of political violence.” 

A bipartisan salute to fascism

It was unsurprising when Trump’s fascist Republican Party lionized Kirk as a hero and demanded swift, brutal justice for his killing. However, Trump and his fascist base have not been alone in their worship of Kirk. The entire ruling class has been united in their defense of Kirk in the wake of his death.

Joe Biden, former war criminal in chief, released a statement stating that “There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.” 

President Biden notably lacked this empathy for the tens of thousands of Palestinians that his administration murdered via the apartheid state of Israel

Barack Obama referred to Kirk’s killing as “despicable violence that has no place in our democracy.” The irony is thick: a man responsible for drone strikes in Pakistan that killed thousands of people, including dozens of children, strongly condemns the assassination of a prominent Nazi. 

Praise of Kirk was not limited to U.S. capitalist politicians and demagogues. Benjamin Netanyahu described Kirk as a “lion-hearted friend of Israel.” Fascist Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared Kirk’s death a “deep wound for democracy.” 

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the Labour Party declared there is “no justification for political violence.” Yet, his government joined a U.S. military offensive against Yemen for its solidarity with Palestine. When an Israeli airstrike — using British and U.S. support — assassinated Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi in August, that act of “political violence” was apparently justified.

Along with the political sphere, the entire media and the entire ruling class establishment have crowned Kirk as a champion of open debate whose life was tragically cut short. Since Kirk’s death, the New York Yankees, several NFL teams, and even McDonald’s have held some sort of display in commemoration of the slain fascist organizer.  Donald Trump, Joe Biden, the New York Yankees, and McDonald’s would have us believe that Kirk was an innocent victim and a martyr for the cause of free speech. 

He was no such thing.

So, who was Charlie Kirk? Who was this hero for free expression being deified across mainstream society? Charlie Kirk was a hateful racist and fascist. Kirk’s actions and statements over the years have made this reality abundantly clear. 

Kirk’s role in the fascist movement was prominent and expansive. Understanding the current media campaign around Kirk’s fatal shooting requires an examination of his life and fascist beliefs. In 2019, Kirk founded “Turning Point USA,” an organization that has become the vanguard for the growth of Trumpism among Gen Z. Since then, Kirk has personally run and grown the organization into a national fascist mobilization operation. Turning Point USA’s core mission is the conversion of college students to MAGA ideology and Christian nationalism. 

In the buildup to the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” march on Capitol Hill, Kirk announced that Turning Point USA would send 80 buses of young conservatives to the attempted Trump coup. Reports surfaced later that Turning Point USA also funneled significant funds to the organizers of the insurrection. 

A record of racism, transphobia, and hate

Kirk’s support of Jan. 6 is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the years, Kirk pushed vicious fascist views on a number of issues. Shortly before his death, Kirk openly denied that Israel was committing any violence against civilians or children in Gaza. At one point on his tour of college campuses, Kirk went as far as to assert that “Palestine doesn’t exist.” 

Kirk seemingly has an endless repertoire of violent, offensive statements. The Guardian newspaper compiled a list of Kirk’s positions on issues ranging from race to gender to immigration. On April 1, 2024, Kirk compared all gender-affirming health care clinics to German Nazi doctors, demanding that all gender affirming care providers be tried “Nuremberg style.” Later that year, Kirk implied that he would force his 10-year-old daughter to deliver a child conceived from rape. 

One of Kirk’s greatest concerns was the very existence of the Black community. He targeted Black people with vicious, racist lies again and again. In the world of Charlie Kirk, one of the biggest problems in the U.S. was “prowling Blacks [who] go around for fun to target white people.” 

Kirk often honed his attacks against Black women, declaring that Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson “stole their slot” from a white person. All of these anti-Black statements are patently lies, but that never stopped Kirk. 

Anti-immigration also played a central role in Kirk’s ideology, as he was an explicit believer in “great replacement theory” – the idea that a Jewish and / or socialist conspiracy is underway in the U.S. to replace white people with Latine migrants. In 2024, Kirk boldly declared, “The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day on our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.” 

Open debate was supposedly Kirk’s calling card. He consistently advocated for his own right to speak freely, while always trying to intimidate and silence ideological opponents.

He viciously attacked all of those who spoke against MAGA fascism or U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza. When Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral primary with popular demands around health care, education and against the genocide in Palestine, Kirk immediately unleashed his rage. Kirk tweeted, “24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11. Now, a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.” The comparison between Mamdani and the attack on the World Trade Center is as incorrect as it is racist. 

One unassailable conclusion is easily drawn from Kirk’s words and fascist activism. Charlie Kirk was an absolute and complete monster. Kirk held fascist values deeply in his soul and was a white nationalist preaching that white Western society was inherently superior to the rest of the world. This conception is foundational to Nazi ideology, dating back to Adolf Hitler. In Kirk’s own words: “Western civilization is the best that humanity has produced. It’s an outgrowth of the Bible.” 

Given the mountain of evidence that demonstrates Kirk’s political nature, a question must be posed. Why is this fascist maniac being lionized and commemorated?

When progressive activists or even Democratic Party politicians are attacked or assassinated, they do not receive nearly the mass exultation that Kirk has in the past week. Donald Trump insisted that there were “fine people” within the neo-Nazi crowd that marched on Charlottesville in 2017 and murdered DSA member and anti-fascist activist Heather Heyer. 

On June 14, 2025, Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband were murdered in their home by a MAGA terrorist, who also shot and seriously wounded Democratic State Senator John Hoffman and his wife.

The mainstream political world was relatively calm when compared to the circus around Kirk. There was no moment of silence at Yankee Stadium. JD Vance did not visit the Hortman or Hoffman families. McDonald’s kept its flags at full mast. 

Yet, the current reaction to Kirk’s death is reaching a complete fever pitch, with the right wing demanding retribution against the broad progressive movement. JD Vance hosted Charlie Kirk’s Monday podcast from the White House, promising there will be no unity with the “radical left.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is firing any Department of War staffer who posts negative statements about Kirk on social media. The billionaire class and their political mouthpieces have made clear that Charlie Kirk is now a figure of national salvation, not to be questioned nor criticized. 

Widespread praise and outrage over Kirk’s death seem particularly ridiculous when analyzed in the context of current U.S. imperialist violence across the globe. Political hacks like Trump and Biden pour out tears for a Nazi agitator when their own policies murdered thousands upon thousands of children in Gaza. As these tears flow, the U.S.-backed project of Israel unleashes its ground offensive into Gaza City and renews the bombing of Yemen’s crucial Hodeidah port. These actions will directly or indirectly result in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. 

Even so, the billionaires and the politicians they bankroll cry no tears for the people of Palestine or Yemen. 

They cry no tears for Venezuela or Cuba, which they have starved through sanctions for decades. The billionaire oligarchs and their flunkies cry no tears for the thousands of dead soldiers scattered across Ukraine, who die only for the profits of defense conglomerates. When it comes to a hateful Nazi organizer, the billionaires and their minions suddenly have boundless empathy. 

The capitalist embrace of fascism

This unity of wealthy interests and political figures around Kirk is entirely based on capitalism’s current tendency to rely on fascist rhetoric and tactics to maintain control domestically and internationally. The last decade has seen several challenges to U.S. imperialism’s iron fist both at home and abroad. Russia has defied NATO aggression on its Western border. Yemen, Iran, and Gaza have refused to bow to the Zionist offensive. Burkina Faso expelled French and U.S. corporate interests. 

Domestically, the entire country rebelled against racist police terror after the murder of George Floyd. This was the peak of a Black Lives Matter social movement that began over a decade ago with the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. 

The U.S.-escalated genocide in Palestine also triggered a massive protest movement in the U.S. against imperialist war and genocide. College students built encampments. Pro-Palestinian organizations marched on D.C. The Jewish community showed its first sign of substantial internal division around Zionist apartheid for the first time since Israel’s founding. 

The first Amazon labor union was formed. “Striketober” rocked the halls of power with its displays of cross-industry worker unity in 2021. Starbucks workers united not just to form a union, but to fight for Palestine. 

Facing economic and political instability that threatens their profits, the capitalist class is once again looking at fascism. This is a historical tactic: In the 1920s, German and Italian industrialists supported Hitler and Mussolini to crush widespread strikes and suppress growing socialist movements, thereby maintaining their power and control.

Trump and Vance are playing that same role. The Trump era has seen the growth of fascist rhetoric. And as shown by the outpouring of love for this Nazi maniac, Charlie Kirk, the entire ruling class is united behind Trump’s fascist vision. This acceptance of fascism can be seen not just in Kirk’s anointment as national hero, but also in the Democratic Party’s response, or lack thereof, to Trump’s invasions of major cities. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass used the brutal LAPD and other local agencies against the anti-Trump rebellion that broke out after mass ICE raids. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has completely surrendered to Trump regarding the National Guard occupation of the capital city. 

The fight ahead

There is no doubt that Trump and Vance and others will use Kirk’s death as pretext for already planned repressions against left-wing organizing. Now, more than ever, the working class must reject the lionization of individuals like Kirk. To accept the view of Kirk as a national hero is to accept the normalization of fascism. 

Now is the time to reject the pernicious lies of Republicans and Democrats alike. Now is the time to fight for a better world, to fight for socialism. 

“Mental health should not be a death sentence,” words said by Zeke Cohen, City Council President, at the second crisis response meeting held at City Hall. 

This was a continuum meeting called last month on police accountability for three deaths caused by Baltimore police — Bilal BJ Abduallah, Phtorcarcha Brooks and Dontae Melton Jr. 

BJ Abduallah was known in the neighborhood as a beloved Arabber martyred by police gunfire. 

Throughout the long three hours taken up by city officials to point fingers at different agencies. A lot of discrepancies were uncovered with disappointment of the community, such as $10 million allocated by the courts to be spent merely on advertising for 988, an already-lacking system in place.

The 988 number is a suicide hotline and prevention number which is supposed to be used to divert 911 mental health calls. Less than 1% of calls were diverted. 

That system was not effective when it came to Ms. Brooks; she was a 70-year-old woman who had a history of mental health issues. Police have been to her home about 20 times before her last interaction with police. 

After kicking Ms. Brooks’ door down, police entered to allegedly take her to the hospital. Ambushed and confused, Ms. Brooks saw that her home was breached. She held a knife for defense as the BPD tried to detain her. An officer attempted to deploy a taser to no avail. The officer then fired his gun, which struck Ms. Brooks twice. 

In a heartfelt speech, Ms. Brooks’ brother talked about how the system failed their family. They suffer the trauma of their family member being talked about as a number and statistic.

Dontae Melton Jr.’s death was skirted around and purposely not directly addressed. The full body cam footage and the ruling of his death were released on the same day of the hearing. Melton was seen in the footage approaching the officer, asking for help. 

Officer Gerard Petitiford radioed in, “I have a gentleman pulling on my doors asking for help but he doesn’t look like he needs help.” Melton’s feet and hands were shackled. Ten police officers stood around for 50 minutes as Melton passed away, with the fire department less than 3 minutes away and Mercy Hospital 2 minutes away.

The police department vows to train 100% of officers in CIT to improve safety for mental crisis encounters. Currently, 23% of BPD have had this training. In other publications, Police Commissioner Richard Worley has said that, because of the understaffing of police officers, they allowed officers to volunteer to take training. Blaming the failure of officers on the faulty CAD system, which has failed five times before already.

Ms. Bailey, one of the citizens who testified, said it best: “What I realized sitting here for three hours is that I’ll never get a solution.” 

Members of the council and the mayor are complicit when it comes to the healing of Baltimoreans. The mayor complied when BPD pleaded for an increase in the police budget in June, a week before officers killed three members of the community. 

Almost everyone who testified that night said the community does not need more policing as a solution to healing. Testimony from Alec Summerfield for PPA (People’s Power Assembly) emphasized health care, not handcuffs. A separate department develops Community Mental Health Navigators, who would be hired to work at outposts across the city. Navigators will have the following roles. 

1. Conduct community outreach / relationally organize to advertise their services.
2. Screen for anxiety, depression, and stress.
3. Identify and manage risk as part of a treatment team, including an on-call licensed supervisor.
4. Provide mental health referrals and broader social service referrals, as needed.
5. Educate about mental health.

This issue at hand is systemic; it cannot be changed with those who succumb to the imperialist system. The CIT training is supposed to be a step to reform policing, though the language of the program suggests otherwise. 

Safety cannot be achieved if the officers who arrive at the scene are trained to take people to jail. CIT has existed from 1988, yet so many people have died by police during mental health crises. Dontae Melton’s story resembles Oral Nunis’s, a father worried about finances who threatened to jump out his second-story home in 2020. Upon arrival, an officer with cuffs in his hands ordered Nunis to comply. This led to Nunis’ death because of “legal restraint,” while the three officers met no repercussions.

 The AP has reported over 1,036 deaths after being subdued by police from 2012 to 2021. Not counting the countless cases purposely hidden and filed incorrectly. It shouldn’t take a 40-hour training to humanize the community the police swore to serve. Out of 1,036 deaths, only 28 cases had some accountability of officers’ charges. A lot of these cases end up with the police getting acquitted in federal jury trials.

We cannot move forward with qualified immunity in the U.S. if we expect to have accountability. The book is constantly being thrown at the marginalized and the poor, but almost always, the police and those with authority skip over the repercussions of the law.  

The court filing of Barnes v. Felix is an important case of the use of force. Ashtian Barnes was murdered by Harris County, Texas, police officer Roberto Felix Jr. Barnes was pulled over for outstanding tolls in a rental car. Barnes, afraid for his life, drove off, resulting in Officer Felix firing into Barnes’ vehicle. The Supreme Court, 9-0, rejected the “moment of threat” doctrine used by some lower courts to allow excessive police force. The unanimous 9–0 decision means officers must be trained with non-lethal tools to prevent situations from escalating to “use of force.” 

On Sept. 14, members of Baltimore and Maryland-based Filipino organizations and allies of the Tanggol Migrante Movement (TMM) organized a press conference and rally in protest of the deportations of four Filipino Carnival Pride Cruise seafarers who were accused of possession of child pornography but not given due process. The seafarers ardently deny this claim. 

ICE and DHS have employed similar harassment and targeting tactics to deport over a hundred documented and lawfully working Filipino seafarers out of Norfolk and other ports over the past year.

The press conference was held at the gates of Baltimore’s cruise terminal, where cars were lined up to board the next Carnival Pride Cruise ship. A large banner facing the road read: “Defend Filipino Seafarers.” Other signs read “Marcos: Don’t trade our livelihoods for U.S. military deals” and “Money for migrant workers, not flood control fraud.” 

The Tanggol Migrante Movement calls on the Philippine government to prioritize and protect the rights and welfare of Filipino migrants, and use its diplomatic power to negotiate with the U.S. on their behalf. 

“We just want the Philippines government to be on the seafarers’ side,” said Felix, a Filipino seafarer. “They can replace us very quick without any due process or investigation.”

If the Philippine embassy fails to file a strong diplomatic protest, the TMM commits to taking to the streets to defend these seafarers and all migrants who face neglect and persecution.

By the time the eleventh wave of COVID-19 swept across the U.S. this summer, the institutions meant to protect public health had been gutted. Pharmacies refused to stock boosters, the CDC was under political occupation, and the FDA restricted access to vaccines on flimsy pretexts.

This wasn’t the result of a single mistake or one administration. It grew out of two overlapping forces: Big Pharma, which treated the pandemic as a profit machine, and Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who seized on public distrust to tear down the very institutions designed to protect health. 

The U.S. health system is oriented toward profits and politics, not human need.

From purge to policy

The transformation accelerated in August 2025, when a deadly attack at CDC headquarters provided cover for a purge. CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired after resisting White House pressure and replaced by Jim O’Neill, a tech finance executive with no public health experience but plenty of loyalty.

At the FDA, leadership restricted mRNA vaccine eligibility to those over 65 or with chronic conditions. Pharmacies, in turn, refused shots outright or demanded prescriptions. Mass vaccination was rolled back by bureaucratic decree, just as another deadly surge unfolded.

Meanwhile, RFK Jr. completely replaced the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), removing all 17 existing members and appointing eight new members with vaccine-skeptical views aligned with the Trump administration.

Big Pharma’s handprints

The ground for this wrecking crew was laid earlier. During the pandemic, Washington allowed Big Pharma to dictate the response. Billions were poured into the mRNA platform, while ventilation, mask standards, antivirals, and social distancing protections were demoted.

Vaccines were marketed as miracle cures, but decades of coronavirus research made it clear they could not give long-term immunity the way a measles shot can. Coronaviruses replicate quickly in the upper respiratory tract, so vaccinated people could still carry and transmit the virus. What vaccines did exceptionally well was prevent severe illness and death by priming the immune system to respond before infections became life-threatening.

Trust eroded when people continued to get sick despite the miracle cure hype. Vaccines worked — they prevented severe illness and death — but they were never designed to stop every infection, a nuance lost in the messaging. When vaccines didn’t completely block infections, anti-vaccine networks claimed the whole system had “failed.”

The real failure wasn’t the vaccines themselves, but a policy that prioritized profit over people — rushing lucrative vaccinations while neglecting layered public health measures like ventilation, masking, social distancing, and antiviral access. By focusing on a single pharmaceutical product instead of system-wide protections, trust eroded, leaving gaps that anti-vaccine networks exploited.

The capture of institutions

With ACIP now filled with officials opposed to vaccination, the scientific process is being hollowed out. Evidence-based review has been replaced by rubber-stamp formalities. At the same time, HHS workers have had their union recognition revoked, and channels for public input have been shut down, ensuring policy is shaped by political loyalty rather than scientific evidence or community needs.

The effects are already visible. NIH and CDC budgets are being slashed. The U.S. has withdrawn funding from Gavi, the global vaccine alliance. Thousands of public health workers have been terminated. And pharmacies — amid an ongoing wave infecting millions each week — are denying boosters to most of the working class.

The consequences are tangible: crowded ICUs, preventable deaths, and Long COVID disabilities. Promising mRNA cancer and disease-prevention trials have been stalled or canceled, delaying treatments that could have reduced severe illness and recurrence.

Two phases of failure

Today’s crisis stems from two sources. The first was the pandemic-era system, captured by Big Pharma, which treated vaccines as a profit machine while underinvesting in essential public health measures like ventilation, masking, social distancing, and paid sick leave. This commercialization-first approach left gaps in protection and eroded trust, setting the stage for the second source: the MAHA regime, which exploited that disillusionment to dismantle public health institutions outright.

These institutions were won through decades of struggle. Around the world, access to public health is recognized as a basic human right; yet, today, that hard-won protection is under attack.

In 2025, the Trump administration terminated hundreds of health disparities research projects at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), following executive orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies across the federal government. 

Decades of research into differences in health outcomes — such as higher rates of chronic disease, COVID-19 mortality, and reduced access to care among Black, Latine, Indigenous, and low-income communities — were abruptly shut down.

What began as a pandemic response shaped by profit has now been twisted into an assault on public health. Science has been subordinated to the market, public health institutions are being purged, and budgets are being slashed.

If this trajectory isn’t reversed, the cost will be measured in preventable deaths, chronic illness, stalled cancer and HIV research. Public health was won through struggle. It will only be saved the same way.

Sept. 13 — Protesters rallied in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood to defend the Elliot-Chelsea and Fulton Houses from the wrecking ball. These New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) complexes are home to thousands of working-class New Yorkers — but instead of investing in repairs, the city is pushing demolition and displacement.

The area on Manhattan’s West Side in Midtown South has been targeted by wealthy real estate interests who want to build luxury housing. The prime culprit is the Related Companies, which grabbed $6 billion in tax subsidies for its Hudson Yards development, where the cheapest apartment goes for a million bucks.

The outfit even got the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to spend $2.4 billion to extend the 7 subway line to Hudson Yards. Now, Related Companies is moving south from 34th Street to push working-class tenants out of their homes with NYCHA’s assistance.

People marched on the home of City Councilmember Erik Bottcher, who is supporting the destruction of affordable housing. The marchers included many seniors, who are being told they might be able to move back into new housing in 15 years, when most will be dead.

There were plenty of younger folks and children, too. Leaflets in Chinese, Spanish and English had been distributed to build the action.

Among the speakers in front of Bottcher’s home were Chris Silvera, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 808 and Sara Catalinotto from Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST).

Caitlin Cahill described the plans to destroy public housing as “Robert Moses 2.0.” Moses was in charge of urban removal in the Big Apple for decades. Hundreds of thousands of people were driven out of their homes to build the Cross Bronx expressway, other highways and Lincoln Center.

Activists are also planning to file a lawsuit to stop the housing demolition. Donate to the Chelsea Public Housing Legal Defense Fund at GoFundMe.com.

On Sept. 9, hundreds marched in downtown New Orleans. They were protesting both Trump’s threat to occupy the majority-Black city with federal troops and Gov. Jeff Landry’s ongoing deployment of state police in our streets, despite declining crime rates.

These two rich crooks are in on it together. Landry – who the Louisiana Board of Ethics recently charged with using $13,540 in government funds for free travel – knows no bounds in how low he will go to suck up to Trump. So, of course, he welcomes Trump’s plans for New Orleans. (The crowd who usually talk about “state’s rights” and “federal overreach” have been pretty quiet on all this.)

The New Orleans Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression initiated Tuesday’s action, which began with a rally outside the Federal Building on Poydras Street. Other participating groups included the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Louisiana Workers Councils, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the immigrant worker organization Unión Migrante.

‘From New Orleans to Palestine, occupation is a crime!’

Speakers emphasized the need for solidarity with the people of Los Angeles, D.C., Chicago, and other cities being attacked by Trump and ICE, as well as the connection between the repression inside U.S. borders and what this government and its Israeli proxies are doing in Palestine.

And we know that none of that repression does anything to address the real crisis of the working class with food costs, access to housing and medical care – quite the opposite. Every dollar spent brutalizing people is a dollar that could put food on a child’s plate or help to keep a rural hospital open.

Racist roots go deep

At the rally, Adam with the Alliance Against Racist and Police Repression talked about the deep historic roots of the racist repression we are seeing here. From slavery to Jim Crow, to the mass incarceration of Black people, to immigrant crackdowns, it is all connected.

In recent years, Louisiana has become a hub for immigrant detention, and now Trump and Landry are opening up a new immigrant detention facility at Angola (Louisiana State Penitentiary) – the biggest maximum-security prison in the country.

The land where Angola now stands was used for slave plantations, and the prison today is still a working farm. Around 76% of the inmates are Black. Chain gangs still labor in the fields with overseers on horseback.

Legal proceedings against Angola are ongoing because of the deplorable conditions on the farm line. Last year, a judge issued an emergency injunction to stop work on the hottest days of summer. The plaintiffs are incarcerated workers on Angola’s farm line, teamed up with the advocacy group Voice of the Experienced (VOTE). Judges have since found that the prison authorities are not fully complying, and the injunction was renewed on Sept. 10, 2025.

A speaker with Critical Mass New Orleans, which conducts monthly bicycle rides to promote cyclists’ rights, quoted Malcolm X’s 1964 line, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.” And today we are seeing them turn to old racist tricks (which never went away) to prop up a rotten capitalist system. 

‘Labor stands with you!’

Working-class unity is the only response that can stop the attacks on all of us, as speaker Mike Robichaux explained. He spoke on behalf of National Nurses United, the union leading the struggle against the LCMC Health System bosses who understaff and underpay their nurses. He said:

“We need solidarity with our trans siblings, with our Black and Brown brothers and sisters! With our immigrant brothers and sisters who are being disappeared, taken away from their families and children! It is unconscionable, it is wrong, and the only thing that is gonna stop it is us out here on the streets demanding more.

“Every time someone honks, I want you to say, ‘get out of your car and get on the street!’ We need more people on the streets all the time, pounding the drums for justice, for a society that lifts people up instead of smacking them down.

“We are here as labor to stand in solidarity with all of you. There have been moments in our history when we have been here before, and a unified labor movement has been the thing that has helped pull us through. We have got work to do to get there. But I believe in my heart of hearts that if we get unified, our movements – labor, immigrant rights, Black and Brown justice, trans organizations – we have to unify – that’s the only way we’re gonna get out of this fix that we’re in.

“I stand with you. The nurses stand with you. Labor stands with you!” 

“History teaches us that when an economic crisis hits, the process of scapegoating becomes more intense and more violent. African-American, Latino, Asian, and Arab peoples, lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, feminists, trans people – and others who have been in the forefront of progress – will increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs.”

― Leslie Feinberg

On the morning of Aug. 27, 2025, a shooter believed to be transgender shot and killed two children and injured more in a Catholic school. Because of years of building up the lie that transgender people are more likely to be mass murderers, it took little for this spark to ignite a ferocious blaze.

On Sept. 4 of this year, CNN reported that Trump administration officials are in the process of discussing disallowing transgender people the right of gun ownership. This would be achieved by labeling them as inherently mentally defective, as “mentally defective” is the standard used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to justify loss of gun rights. The Department of Justice has responded to questions from the news media on this matter by saying that they are, “….actively evaluating options to prevent the pattern of violence we have seen from individuals with specific mental health challenges and substance abuse disorders.”

Although transgender people are four times more likely than average to suffer violent crime, a 2023 examination by the Gun Violence Archive found that a mere .09% – .14 of mass shooters are transgender. Compared to the fact that only 1% of the population of the United States identifies as transgender, it is clear that trans people are significantly less likely to be mass shooters, not more. Therefore, they need tools and methods of self-defense. On the other hand, cisgender men have been responsible for 96%-97% of mass shootings, with no talk of disarmament for them. The truth doesn’t stop the myth of a trans mass shooting epidemic from being repeated over and over by bad actors. From the “LibsOfTiktok” social media account to the President’s own son, Donald Trump Jr., cisgender mass killers are called trans in order to smear trans people and deflect from the material realities behind mass shootings.

Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels is well known for his observation that, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” The lie of a transgender murder epidemic has become a well-entrenched part of the collective belief system of the right. Ultimately, the function of such a lie is to demonize, which then paves the way for horrors.

An example of the draconian measures being discussed was expressed by right wing podcast host Joey Mannarino, who said on social media, “Health and Human Services must immediately get involved and violate the HIPAA laws [regarding doctor/patient confidentality] to forward every transgender and transgender- questioning person to local law enforcement for IMMEDIATE detainment until we can figure out why they keep killing children in schools.” He closed out his post with, “This needs to be handled by the federal government with no mercy. They need to be treated as we treat terror organizations.”

Transgender individuals as terror organizations is akin to the newly renamed Department of War descending on Chicago, as the White House promised in a recent tweet. Meanwhile, using genocidal language, Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire said in a speech at CPAC that, “For the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”

In a step toward removing transgender people from public life, this administration asserted psychiatric disqualifications in transgender people in the military ban. This was accomplished via Executive Order 14183, saying that military membership, “….is inconsistent with the…. mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.”

Gender dysphoria is simply a distress that can arise from navigating society with a feeling of gender presentation inconsistent with one’s gender identity. Although many transgender people report suffering these feelings, others insist that they feel no such distress. These people often use the term “gender euphoria’ to describe a feeling of satisfaction and happiness that arises from gender transition. Regardless, ‘gender dysphoria’ is the excuse the Trump administration has been using as a weapon against gender minorities in an era where the psychiatric establishment has left behind the notion that transness itself represents a mental illness. Any gun ban for trans people via a mental health exception relies on a lie that has already been dismissed by the psychiatric profession. It would serve a repressive and fascistic cultural function rather than upholding public safety.

In 1930s Germany, the Nazi Party introduced gun regulations unevenly. Scapegoated groups, such as Jews, were banned from gun ownership. Nazi Party members had much looser regulations on gun ownership, creating a stark dynamic of who was allowed the power of lethal force. Before the United States was established, the 1751 French Black Code required colonizers in Louisiana to stop and even attack “any Black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane.” If the targeted person refused to stop and was on horseback, the colonizer was authorized and encouraged to shoot and kill them.

Later, during Jim Crow, Black people were regularly denied licenses to own guns, a problem not shared with their white neighbors. The intent of such policies is clear: oppression against scapegoated groups is to be maintained and perpetuated through the dynamic of an armed oppressor and the unarmed oppressed. This is a dynamic of predator and prey, with oppressed groups at the mercy of a predatory majority population. This is what the Trump administration wants to bring to bear against transgender people.

However, disarming them is only part of a bigger strategy. As a matter of practicality, a ban on transgender gun ownership would require a national registry of transgender people similar to the one the Centers for Disease Control wanted regarding HIV+ patients in the 1980s, once it was clear the infection was spreading to heterosexuals. Gun shops would need a database to reference in order to ensure compliance with the law. We’ve already seen overtures from the right that point to testing the waters in order to achieve this goal.

The Department of Justice has issued more than 20 subpoenas to hospitals providing gender affirming care to minors. This not only includes information about medical practitioners, but also confidential information about patients, including names, home addresses, birth dates, and social security numbers. There is also precedent for such actions in recent history.

In recent years, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton attempted to weaponize the state’s driver’s licensing and legal ID process via the Texas Department of Public Safety. He demanded information about people who had changed their gender marker on identification documents. He asked for the numbers of those who do so with the stipulation that he may request names and other identification data later. The same year, a member of Florida’s medical board proposed a registry of all trans youth. The same proposal happened in Ohio. This is a push that has been gaining traction.

Expecting the Trump administration to be a voice of moderation is utter folly. A presidential administration known for accelerating into full-throttle fascistic excess whenever possible can be expected to keep demanding more. To take a potential step further, if they establish the notion that transgender people inherently possess a dangerous mental defect, this would enable them to enact involuntary commitment of trans folk to an institutional setting. Again, this is similar to the goal proposed by many for HIV+ people in the ‘80s. We have already seen this strategy invoked in the executive order targeting unhoused people.

Executive Order 14321, titled “Ending Crime And Disorder On America’s Streets”, says that nearly two-thirds of unhoused people suffer from substance abuse issues, and a similar number suffer from undefined mental health conditions. Having made these claims, the order goes on to state its intentions to “[Shift] homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings…. through the appropriate use of civil commitment.”

The congressional website congress.gov has this to say about involuntary civil commitment: “Involuntary civil commitment, or the forced hospitalization of persons with serious mental illness (SMI),1 is a type of mental health treatment that presents tension between an individual’s liberty interests and the state’s interests in protecting citizens from danger.”

All of this boils down to forcibly separating and isolating people from the general population and into a locked facility. Executive Order 14321 deals specifically with unhoused people in Washington, D.C. The statement from the DoJ regarding the trans gun ban describes them as “individuals with specific mental health challenges and substance abuse disorders.” This is the same justification used against unhoused people. To similarly label transgender people as possessing violent mental illnesses will allow the administration to forcibly move trans people into such a facility should this policy against unhoused people remain unchecked.

Extrapolating further, any scapegoated group could be likewise smeared and locked away. This administration’s enthusiasm for using concentration camps, such as the so-called ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ against oppressed people shows that this potential threat must be taken seriously. Population removal and concentration camps are as “American” as apple pie, and are particularly consistent with this administration’s stated goals and history.

In Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, Marx and Engels wrote, “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.” They understood the predator/prey dynamic and knew that a disarmed proletariat is at the mercy of predatory capital. They clearly stated that the working class can never prevail unarmed. It stands to reason that our class should not be allowed to be disarmed in a piecemeal way, parts at a time.

Huey Newton, co-founder of the revolutionary Black Panther Party, said in a 1970 speech about queer and women’s liberation struggles, “There is nothing to say that a homosexual cannot also be a revolutionary. … Quite the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary.”

Oppressed nations and specially oppressed peoples are more likely to embrace revolutionary solutions. The revolutionary potential of the transgender proletariat is great. No loss of rights, including the right to bear arms, can be allowed. All working peoples need to embrace solidarity with those who are specially oppressed. Cisgender revolutionaries must act with trans comrades to frustrate this offensive in the interest of our victory in the class war. We have a world to win, and we can only win it together, as a class, undivided.

Victory to the transgender struggle!

Victory to poor, working, and oppressed peoples!

Source: Fighting Words

Sept. 8 — Thousands poured into the streets of downtown Chicago this weekend, chanting “No Trump! No Troops!” and waving banners that declared “ICE Out of Chicago!” and “No Nazis, No Kings.” The mass demonstration was a defiant response to President Donald Trump’s escalating threats to unleash the National Guard and federal forces against the city — a move many see as an outright declaration of war.

On Sept. 6, Donald Trump declared that Chicago would be the first city to face his newly renamed “Department of War.” He posted an AI-generated image of attack helicopters flying over Chicago’s skyline with the headline “Chipocalypse Now” — a parody of the Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now. 

The provocative image and its accompanying tagline, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” deliberately evoke Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now. The AI-generated graphic, reportedly created at Trump’s behest, casts the former president in the role of Robert Duvall’s unhinged Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore — the character who infamously declared his love for “the smell of napalm in the morning” while presiding over the devastating massacre of Vietnamese civilians.

The image carries an additional menacing message emblazoned across its bottom: “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” This refers to Trump’s executive order signed Oct. 5, which formally renames the Department of Defense — the world’s most deadly military apparatus — back to its original pre-Cold War designation as the Department of War. 

The reference is particularly pointed: Duvall’s character represented the callous brutality of U.S. imperialism abroad, making the adaptation of his iconic line into domestic policy rhetoric a striking example of how military language and imagery are being repurposed for immigration enforcement.

The message was unmistakable: Trump wants to use the U.S. military against a U.S. city.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker fired back, warning: “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal.” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson accused Trump of seeking to “occupy our city and break our Constitution.”

It was a threat. And Chicago wasted no time in answering back.

On Oct. 6, thousands of people marched down Michigan Avenue, chanting “No Trump! No Troops!” and holding signs that read “ICE Out of Chicago!” and “Rise Up! Fight Back!”

The march, organized by the Coalition Against the Trump Agenda and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, brought together people from every corner of the city — union members, immigrant families, students, faith leaders, and neighbors who refuse to see their communities turned into military zones.

Escalating repression

On Sept. 7, Trump’s “Border Czar” Tom Homan confirmed that raids were imminent. “You can expect action in most sanctuary cities across the country,” he told national television, adding that National Guard deployments were “always on the table.”

The assault on Chicago comes on the heels of sweeping immigration raids across the country. Last week, nearly 500 workers were seized in Georgia at a Hyundai construction site, the largest mass immigration raid in U.S. history. Over the weekend, federal forces stormed a granola bar factory in upstate New York, detaining both immigrants and U.S. citizens. Troops are also being mobilized for deployment in New Orleans and Baltimore.

Backing from the billionaires

Trump’s war footing at home is backed by the country’s wealthiest oligarchs. Just days before his Chicago declaration, Trump met in Washington with tech moguls and financiers, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. The oligarchy is openly aligning itself with Trump.

This corporate alliance is already evident in policy. Trump has scrapped public health protections, threatened to gut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. Tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of industry are accelerating — policies guaranteed to stoke mass opposition. Trump’s answer is repression.

Despite the unprecedented nature of a U.S. president threatening to wage war on a U.S. city, the corporate press has largely muted its coverage. Major outlets like The New York Times and Washington Post relegated the story to their websites, omitting it from print editions. On Sunday talk shows, hosts largely ignored the subject; CNN even allowed Homan to claim Trump’s explicit threat of war on Chicago was “taken out of context.”

Resistance grows

But in Chicago, the resistance could not be ignored. Thousands of voices rose in unison along Michigan Avenue, sending a message that the city would not be cowed. “Rise up! Fight back!” they chanted.

For many, the march marked not just opposition to Trump’s immediate threats, but a defense of democratic rights under direct siege. “Trump said he would be a dictator ‘from day one,’” one marcher said. “Now he’s showing us he meant it. But we’re showing him something too: we won’t go quietly.”

Trump is targeting Black women to fire

The wealthy and powerful want you to hate 23 million fellow workers who the federal, state or local governments employ. They include teachers, postal workers, hospital employees, and sanitation workers, as well as hundreds of other occupations. Their labor is essential.

Government employees account for one out of seven workers in the United States. Trump’s mass firings of federal employees and his cancellation of union contracts for 1.5 million of them are an attack on the entire labor movement.

Billionaire Elon Musk wanted to fire 80,000 people working for the Veterans Administration. The VA is still planning to get rid of 30,000. 

If vets suffering from Agent Orange have to wait longer for treatment, well, that’s just too bad. To Trump’s Make America Great Again regime, the VA hospitals are dangerous examples of “socialized medicine.” 

As many as 53 million people have died from HIV/AIDS worldwide. Yet the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has cut funding for efforts to create a vaccine.

The attacks on public workers go hand-in-hand with kicking millions off Medicaid. Wall Street’s ultimate aim is to privatize Social Security and Medicare.

For 50 years, the super-rich in the United States have feasted from super profits while destroying millions of union jobs. All working and poor people suffered a defeat when banksters got 50,000 New York City municipal employees fired in 1975, including 10,000 teachers.

Black women are special targets

It’s been Black women who’ve been hit hardest. Between February and March this year, 318,000 Black women lost their jobs despite the capitalist economy adding jobs. 

Trump’s massive firings are a big reason. His job cuts have especially hit the areas where Black women are concentrated, like education and health.

That’s racism. All the attacks on DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — are attacks on Black, Indigenous and Latine workers.

Trump has tried to fire Lisa Cook, the first Black woman member of the Federal Reserve banking system’s Board of Governors. He has fired Carla Hayden, the first woman and first Black person to be Librarian of Congress.

Trump also dismissed Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black person to serve on the National Labor Relations Board. Meanwhile, a Trump-appointed prosecutor is seeking to jail the Black New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver for trying to inspect an ICE concentration camp. That was McIver’s duty as a member of Congress. 

Black women suffered the worst employment discrimination. It took years of struggle to open up jobs in the factories and offices. 

In the 1930s, close to 80% of Black women workers in Cleveland were employed as maids and housekeepers. (“AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45″ by  Kimberley L. Phillips)

One of the longest battles was to get jobs in the virtually all-white Southern textile mills, which were then the region’s biggest industry. (“Hiring the Black Worker,” by Timothy Minchin.) But it was even harder to get office jobs.

Government jobs were often considered a safe haven. Black workers account for 29% of postal workers. Over 12% of federal employees are Black women.

Many of the better-paid Black workers in New York City are public employees. Neighborhoods like St. Albans in southeastern Queens — where Black home-owning families account for the majority of the population — are heavy concentrations of government employment. 

When Trump’s lawyer and fellow bigot Rudy Giuliani was NYC mayor, he fired 21 times as many Black workers as white workers.

Democratic presidential administrations are also job cutters

Vice President Albert Gore bragged that he and President Bill Clinton got rid of 100,000 employees. What Gore didn’t mention was that a majority of those fired were Black.

Trump is a fascist bully. The power of the people has to be organized to stop him.

Wall Street just threw another parade. The so-called “Magnificent Seven” tech giants — Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, Nvidia, Tesla — reported quarterly earnings. Headlines screamed that the economy is “booming,” and President Trump jumped in with his usual bravado: “America is the hottest country anywhere in the world.” Stock indexes hit records, and the pundits swooned.

But stop and read past the ticker tape. The reality on the ground is pretty ugly. Tech profits did climb, yes — but not because artificial intelligence is unleashing a new industrial revolution. The gains are coming from old, established business lines: advertising, cloud services, subscription platforms. 

Meanwhile, hundreds of billions are being poured into AI hype — data centers, chips, research — not because AI is generating new wealth or employment, but because surplus capital cannot be profitably deployed in productive investment elsewhere. This is monopoly-finance capitalism: inflating assets and manipulating markets, turning money into more money, disconnected from real production or social need.

Outside the gleaming towers of tech, the U.S. economy is sputtering. Strip away Trump’s tariffs — which artificially boost GDP by forcing working people to buy domestic goods instead of cheaper imports — and growth falls to a pitiful 1.2%. Business investment is flagging, employment is frozen, and manufacturing jobs are disappearing faster than during the pandemic slump. Inflation clings stubbornly above 3%, keeping real wages locked where they were five years ago. For working people, the “record economy” is a joke.

Tariffs: A 1920s strategy in 2025

Import tariffs now average 18.2% — their highest level in nearly a century. Trump brags that they are “bringing in billions,” but in the context of a trillion-dollar military spending deficit, these billions are trivial. Meanwhile, tariffs push prices up and distort trade flows.

Yale economists estimate Trump’s tariffs will add 2% to consumer prices, roughly $2,400 per household annually. In other words, Trump is driving inflation onto working people while pretending to champion national self-reliance. The economic strategy is medieval, the impact is modern-day brutality.

Jobs data as political theater

If the economy is faltering, why do media headlines still trumpet growth and resilience? The answer is simple: The numbers are manipulated. On Aug. 1, the Labor Department quietly admitted that 258,000 fewer jobs were created over the past year than initially reported. That’s not a minor correction — it completely undermines the narrative of a robust labor market.

Overestimating employment during downturns is not a mistake; it is a capitalist tactic. Statistical agencies assume expansion continues at the same pace, even as businesses fail. As Marxists have long argued, this serves a purpose: Painting a rosier picture of the economy helps prevent investors from panicking in the stock, bond, and real estate markets, and delays pressure on central banks to cut interest rates.

Protecting the sham, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accusing her of releasing “fake data,” the revision that showed a significant fall in jobs. In her place, he put E.J. Antoni, a Heritage Foundation hardliner and Project 2025 co-author, tasked with “fixing” the numbers — by redefining unemployment to make it look smaller, or even shutting down the monthly jobs report altogether. In short, the government office that tracks employment is being turned over to political loyalists whose job is to manipulate the numbers in favor of corporations and against workers.

The class logic of ‘full employment’

Capitalism does not thrive on full employment. It thrives on a “reserve army” of unemployed workers to keep wages low and discourage labor militancy. Celebrating “robust employment” is not a victory for workers — it’s propaganda to hide underemployment.

When most workers can’t walk away from low-paying jobs, corporate profits are safe. Interest rate hikes by the Fed that cause unemployment and economic hardship are praised as “stability.” And capitalist economists promote the idea that unemployment is necessary to stop wages and prices from rising too fast. 

Unemployment is accepted because it protects profits.

The AI bubble and speculative capital

At the same time, U.S. capital is gorging itself on a new speculative bubble: artificial intelligence. Billions in private credit are financing massive AI projects. Wall Street celebrates the hype while real economic activity stagnates. GDP rises, but real purchasing power does not. Workers’ wages remain frozen, their job security eroding, while the ultra-rich sit atop speculative gains.

The AI boom is a classic capitalist mirage: It creates the appearance of innovation and progress while concentrating wealth and masking stagnation. When the bubble bursts — as these bubbles eventually do — the working class will be left holding the bag.

Capitalism’s double bind

U.S. capitalism faces a brutal contradiction. On one side, speculative capital thrives on the AI bubble, feeding itself through private credit and hype. On the other hand, the real economy flirts with stagnation, inflation, and layoffs. Tariff nationalism accelerates the squeeze, raising costs.

Trump, ever the carnival barker, insists that the country has never been richer even as workers’ wages are depressed, living standards stall, and more people face economic insecurity. His firing of statistical officials shows the blunt edge of authoritarian capitalism: When reality threatens profits, reality itself is rewritten.

But the problem is not just Trump. It is the logic of a system that requires recurring crises to discipline labor, manage overproduction, and restore profitability. AI hype, tariffs, and fake jobs numbers create the illusion of a booming economy — but it’s really just a cover for big profits gained by squeezing workers.

The human cost

For the working class, the contradictions are not abstract — they are immediate and brutal. Inflation quietly erodes paychecks. Jobs disappear in factories and warehouses. Prices for essentials rise under tariffs while AI hype fuels stock market gains for a handful of billionaires. The spectacle of economic growth is just that: a show. The reality is falling wages, mounting insecurity, and repression.

When the AI bubble bursts, when tariffs finally push the economy into stagflation, the bill will fall not on Trump or Wall Street, but on the working class. Profits at the top will be defended; sacrifices at the bottom will be demanded. History shows this is not a glitch but a feature of capitalist logic. Crises are the mechanism by which capital enforces its own survival.

Looking ahead

The illusions of prosperity cannot last forever. The gap between soaring profits and stagnant living standards grows wider every day. Trump’s authoritarian measures, AI hype, and tariff nationalism are temporary props for a fragile system. Eventually, the contradictions will surface: Speculative bubbles will collapse, inflation will bite, and unemployment will rise.

Workers will be the ones paying the price. And yet, this same system that penalizes labor could be challenged — if working people organize, fight for gains, and resist the repression imposed by recurring crises. The future is not set in stone; it is shaped by class struggle.