From Caracas to Minneapolis

The Donald Trump administration celebrated the birthday of what those in the Christian faith call the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, on December 25 by bombing two African countries, Nigeria and Somalia. That Christmas day horror was only the beginning of its crimes as 2025 ended. As 2026 began, on January 3, the U.S. bombed Caracas, the first time in history a South American country was subjected to air bombardment, and kidnapped Venezuelan president, Nicholas Maduro, and his wife Cilia Adela Flores. In a world of nation-states, the government of one country has no right to seize the citizens (let alone the head of state) of any other nation-state.

On January 7 in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a native-born U.S. citizen who was a poet, a Christian, white, and a mother of three now-orphaned children. While the administration attempted to frame Ms. Good as a “domestic terrorist” who was attempting to run over the agent, Jonathan Ross, bystander videos show she was actually trying to avoid him while he circled her car with a cell phone in one hand and his service weapon in the other.

This horror followed weeks of a coordinated racist drive against the Somali community, which serves as a textbook example of economic scapegoating. Reactionary demagogues first claimed Somali immigrants had been capturing and eating domestic pets; more recently, they have weaponized allegations of “daycare fraud” to charge that Somali businesspeople are funneling federal dollars to international terrorist groups. By criminalizing the Somali community’s economic activity, the federal government has created the pretext for a permanent federal occupation of the city.

More than 2,000 ICE agents have flooded Minneapolis, and Trump wants to send more. This massive deployment represents a domestic application of the “Department of War” philosophy, turning a major U.S. city into a garrisoned territory.

The Historical Limits of Capital: From Stagflation to Artificial Intelligence

Recent media speculation has focused on whether 79-year-old President Donald Trump is experiencing cognitive decline, echoing similar coverage of his predecessor, Joseph Biden.

They’re the oldest men to have held the office. As people age, they become more vulnerable to the group of brain changes we call dementia. I’m not qualified to assess anyone’s health; what matters here is what these stories signal politically — confusion, factionalism, and instability at the top of the state.

At times, it seems that Trump has no coherent foreign policy. There are stories he’s pressuring Euromaidan Ukraine to settle the war with Russia on Russian terms. Then it seems that settlement talks go nowhere.

Gold, Overproduction, and the Emerging Monetary Crisis

On November 8, Senate Democrats made a deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown. The deal was attacked by many podcasters allied with the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.

Led by President Trump, Republicans threatened to cut or end funding for the SNAP (food stamps) program. In 2024, some 41 million people depended on the program.

In the face of court orders, they backed down, but the Supreme Court allowed them to go ahead with the cutoff. Hours before eight Democrats caved to Republican demands and announced they’d vote to end the government shutdown on Republican-Trump terms.

Palestine

On October 9, a new ceasefire in Gaza was announced. The last one took effect in January 2025 as Donald Trump assumed office. Many hoped this was the end of the Gaza genocide.

In March, the genocide resumed as Trump and Zionist entity leaders made clear their aims included the complete removal of the Palestinian population from Gaza. Kept open was whether this process was through ethnic cleansing or physical annihilation (literal genocide).

Physical annihilation was achieved by killing through mass bombing, cutting off food and water, causing manufactured famine, and disease.

Marxism versus Individual Terror

On September 10, far-right youth group Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a sniper at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. The FBI arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who turned himself in at the urging of his family. Turning Point USA specializes in organizing far-right youth to support the Republican Party and Donald Trump. Kirk was a thorough-going bigot who specialized in baiting African Americans, Muslims, women’s rights activists, gays, trans people, leftists, progressives and liberals. He also made anti-Semitic remarks that in no way excluded his strong support for Zionism.

Artificial Intelligence

On August 15, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Alaska was once a Russian colony that was purchased by the U.S. in 1867 and became a state in 1959.

The anti-imperialist YouTuber Brian Berletic expressed concern that the Trump administration might attempt to kidnap Putin. This did not seem so far-fetched in light of the Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran aimed at decapitating Iran’s political and military leadership. This occurred as they were supposed to engage in negotiations to normalize relations. Unlike Iran, Russia has nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them to the U.S. mainland, making any kidnap attempt unlikely, and Putin returned home safely.

Trump has refused to walk away from the Russo-Ukrainian war, and there were no breakthroughs in ending it. The war started with the 2014 U.S.-organized right-wing coup to overthrow the popularly elected Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych. Coup leaders, called the Euromaidan movement, were supported by a coalition of pro-U.S. imperialist liberals and Ukrainian fascists who provided the muscle power.

Class War at Home, Imperialist War Abroad

Last month, June 2025, saw the twelve-day U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. On July 4, U.S. Independence Day, Donald Trump signed his “Big Beautiful Bill.” The bill means class war at home, and the twelve-day war against Iran points to more imperialist war abroad. This month, we examine the class war at home and the capitalist war economy.

Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is a massive attack on the working class, science, art, education, and human culture in general. We could write volumes about this wretched thing, but we will zero in on the attack on the working class. The spearhead is the attack on the Medicaid program. To grasp its importance, it helps to understand Marx’s theory of wage labor and surplus value.

MAGA

On June 13, 2025, Israel attacked Iran. It is clear that the Trump regime knew it was coming and approved of it. Then, on June 22, the U.S. directly attacked the peaceful Iranian nuclear energy program with bunker-busting bombs. On June 25, the U.S. and the Zionist entity announced they were halting the bombing attacks for the time being, and Iran then halted its counterattacks against the Zionist entity, ending what is being called “the twelve-day war” for now. Next month, we will examine the consequences of the twelve-day war.

Last month, I noted that the tariff war shows we are entering a period similar to that between August 1914 and August 1945. The U.S.-Israeli twelve-day war against Iran confirms it. Significantly, Israel has threatened to launch such a war many times over the last 30 years, claiming it was concerned Iran was developing nuclear bombs. This is even though there is no indication Iran was interested in developing a nuclear bomb — Iran’s clergy-run regime has declared many times that nuclear weapons are sinful and forbidden by the Muslim religion and God.

Unraveling of the Post-1945 Order

As May winds down, the Gaza genocide continues, as do negotiations to end the Russo-Ukraine war, with no clear end in sight as of this writing. The Republican House of Representatives passed a bill now being considered by the Senate aimed at big cuts in government-supported Medicaid and possible cuts in Medicare and Social Security. The bill also features making earlier Trump-Republican tax cuts permanent, as well as adding more.

Liberals and progressives claim Republicans want to cut Medicaid to finance the tax cuts (capitalists don’t like to pay taxes) — but this is not their main motive.

Cutting Medicaid forces more of the poor onto the labor market by making them financially desperate to find a job or go without medical insurance. Nothing is being done to make more jobs available, nor are there plans to force bosses to provide medical insurance or wages sufficient to afford private insurance. They are intended to force people to work for wages that do not even pay the value of their labor power.

Liberation Day

On April 2, President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs. As this blog concentrates on economic questions, this was the biggest event of the last month. But before I get to the tariff, I’ll look at other developments.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia lived and worked legally in Maryland since 2019. The Trump administration accused him of belonging to a gang, arrested and put him on a plane heading for a notoriously brutal El Salvadoran prison. He had not been convicted of any crime. They then claimed they’d committed an administrative mistake.

On April 10, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. As of this writing (April 28), he remains imprisoned, and Trump has refused to follow the court’s order. [I wonder whether the high court regrets last year’s decision that even after leaving office, a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for any action taken while in office in pursuit of their duties? I don’t know the answer, but it seems the court is like a man sawing off the branch he is sitting on. -SW]