New spike of COVID in Australia, highest deaths since February

Oscar Grenfell

All available indicators show that Australia, like many other countries, is in the midst of a new spike of coronavirus transmission. Infections, hospitalisations and deaths are rising. The increase follows what the federal Labor government belatedly acknowledged was the most protracted surge of the entire pandemic, in late 2022 and the opening months of this year.

[Photo: WSWS]

The most remarkable feature of the current uptick is that it has gone almost universally unremarked. Government leaders, at the state and federal levels, have said nothing about it. The official media, including the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has shown a complete indifference.

This is the practical application of the “forever COVID” policy adopted by capitalist governments around the world. When they were lifting what had been highly successful virus suppression measures in December 2021, Australia’s governments and official medical authorities claimed that the pandemic would somehow end, and the impacts of the virus would taper off.

All these assertions have been exposed as lies. The pandemic has ended, only in the sense of the proverbial wise monkeys who see, hear and speak no evil. Effectively, what has been established is a new and highly regressive public health doctrine, where the continuous mass circulation of a deadly virus is ignored and treated as a non-event.

In the week ending May 26, the most recent figures available, there were 184 COVID deaths across the country. That is the highest level of mortality since the week ending February 17, when 195 fatalities were reported. Last week’s tragic toll was more than double the relatively recent lows of 70 deaths in the week to March 24 and 77 in the seven-day period ending April 7.

Deaths are a lagging indicator, showing up in statistical reports weeks after the transmission that caused them. With infections and hospitalisations continuing to increase, the fatalities will unfortunately only increase.

Last week, the national tally of confirmed COVID infections reported over the seven-day period was 41,399. That is the highest level since January 6 and the second-highest of the entire year. It is also well over double the figures that were being registered in a number of weeks of February and early March.

The official infection figures have been completely unreliable since at least early 2022. All of the data sets for 2023 cover a period well after the Labor government removed any requirement for infected individuals to notify health authorities that they have a confirmed infection.

The recent increase, however, is notable, because the authorities have, over the very recent months, gone even further in dismantling access to testing. In line with federal guidelines unveiled late last year, the states and territories are shutting down the remnants of the Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing network.

While such exams can still be obtained in certain pathology offices and public hospitals, the PCR set-up that was purpose-built for COVID is largely being ended. In April, the newly-elected Labor administration in New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, suddenly announced that it was shutting 164 PCR testing facilities. It claimed that these services would be ended within 24 hours of the announcement.

But despite this, the infection count is growing. So are hospitalisations, with 2,555 people currently admitted to a medical institution for treatment required by a COVID infection. That tally is the highest since the second month of January. During an apparent ebbing of the virus, there were as few as 1,288 COVID patients in the last weeks of February.

Ominously, the hospitalisations are beginning to approach the peaks of the last surge, when more than 3,500 people were in hospital for COVID treatment during parts of December, 2022. Those levels of hospitalisation were associated with massive deaths, in the hundreds a week, with a high of 523 in the week ending January 27.

ICU nurses protesting outside Westmead Hospital on January 19, 2022. [Photo: NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association]

With the end of all safety restrictions, including masking, the virus is no doubt virtually everywhere. But once again, it is the most vulnerable sections of the population who are being hit the hardest.

According to the federal Department of Health, in the week to May 26 alone there were 482 COVID outbreaks in residential aged-care facilities. There were 2,755 active cases among residents, including 603 confirmed over the preceding seven days. That is an almost six-fold increase on the 102 positive COVID tests among aged care residents in the period covering the first week of May.

In the city of Newcastle, about two hours north of Sydney, there are at least 10 aged care facilities in lockdown due to COVID outbreaks. As the reporting of such events is non-existent and such knowledge is the result of anecdotal evidence, it must be concluded that there are dozens of nursing homes similarly impacted.

The dangers were hardly unknowable. In every single outbreak of the more than three-year pandemic, the aged care facilities have been transformed into killing fields. But governments have done nothing.

In comments cited by the NCA Newswire last week, University of South Australia Professor Adrian Esterman said there were “obvious signs” that a new COVID wave was beginning. Easterman warned of a “triple whammy,” with a spike of influenza, Respiratory Syncytial Virus and the country’s fifth Omicron wave since the “reopening of the economy” at the end of 2021.

The Newswire noted: “Flu cases are 100 times higher than last year, with over 40,000 laboratory-proven reports since the start of 2023.” Substantial outbreaks have been recorded in Queensland and Western Australia, while transmission is being recorded in every other state.

In what should be a national outrage but has largely passed without comment, federal figures released on May 24 showed that just 42.9 percent of eligible aged-care residents had received their latest COVID booster vaccine dose.

When they were abolishing all other public health measures, governments proclaimed the vaccine to be a silver bullet, justifying an end to safety restrictions and creating the conditions for the pandemic to be overcome. Vaccination is crucial, but all experience has demonstrated that separate from other public health policies, such as mandatory indoor masking, air filtration, and where necessary lockdowns, inoculation alone cannot halt transmissions, illnesses and deaths.

However governments now are not even attempting to ensure the vaccine protection of the cohort that is most vulnerable to COVID illness and death, the elderly in aged-care facilities. This goes beyond indifference and negligence. Amid ongoing commentary about the fiscal burden of an aging population, it amounts to a eugenicist cull.

Children, the other most at risk demographic, are also being hammered by the virus. As the WSWS recently reported, numbers of schools have been compelled to institute temporary online learning arrangements. Far from reflecting a concern on the part of governments and the health authorities over transmission among kids, the temporary shutdowns are being caused by the fact that all available teachers are contracting the virus, amid a major staffing crisis in the sector.

The relative prevalence of different variants of the virus is unknown, because there is no government body that is actively tracking the spread. Much of the sampling is based on tests from overseas visitors, which says little about community transmission. The limited data, however, indicates that different variants are predominating in different states.

Essentially, the country, together with the rest of the world, has been transformed into a petri dish, all but guaranteeing the emergence of new variants. Experts have warned it is only a matter of time before an even more transmissible and even more deadly iteration of the virus is identified.

More critical epidemiologists, who were once regularly cited in the official media, have been “deplatformed.” Their voices can be heard only on social media sites such as Twitter. In effect, authoritative and scientifically based public health advice has been forced underground.

One such expert recently noted that federal Labor Health Minister Mark Butler has presided over more mass death than any of his counterparts since World War II. Butler, and federal Labor, have been in office for just over 12 months.

There is a degree of shock and anger among those who follow the pandemic, that Labor’s election, at both the federal level and in almost every state and territory, has not altered the course of COVID policy in the slightest. More than that, the federal Labor government has gone further in dismantling any coordinated public health response than its conservative predecessor was able to.

That underscores the fact that Labor is a party of the ruling elite, committed to enforcing the dictates of the corporate elite against the working class, even if it means levels of preventable death not seen outside of war time.

As attacks inside Russia continue, Macron calls for NATO membership “path” for Ukraine

Andre Damon

As Ukraine continued drone strikes and artillery bombardments of Russian territory for a second day in a row Wednesday, French President Emanuel Macron said he supports a “path” for Ukraine to join the NATO military alliance.

On Tuesday, eight explosive drones were launched at Moscow, the capital city of Russia, damaging an apartment complex. It was the second Ukrainian drone strike on Moscow since the start of the war.

The attacks continued Wednesday with a series of drone strikes against two oil refineries in the region of Russian Krasnodar and the shelling of the Belgorod region of Russia near the Ukrainian border. On Tuesday, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said shelling had killed one person and injured four. Shelling in the region continued Wednesday.

In response to Tuesday’s attacks, both US and UK officials pared back their previous claims that they did not support Ukrainian strikes inside Russia.

UK Foreign Minister James Cleverly said that Ukraine had “the right to project force beyond its borders,” and that such attacks are “internationally recognized as being legitimate as part of a nation’s self-defense.”

Commenting on the US and UK response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia “would have preferred to hear at least some words of condemnation” of the attacks.

The attacks inside of Russia follow the announcement at the G7 Summit on May 19 that the US would allow its NATO allies to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, and the announcement earlier this month by the UK that it would send long-range missiles to Ukraine.

While the US had previously claimed that it did not “encourage or enable” strikes inside of Russia, it is becoming increasingly clear that the fighter jets and long-range missiles are being provided with the aim of striking deep inside Russian-held territory, or even inside Russia itself.

The attacks follow last week’s incursions launched by far-right forces aligned with Ukraine, which carried out raids inside of the Belgorod territory using US-supplied vehicles.

Speaking Wednesday in Slovakia, French President Emanuel Macron called for Ukraine to be provided with “tangible and credible” security guarantees.

Macron said that “if we want to hold our own against Russia… we must give Ukraine the means to prevent any new aggression and to include Ukraine in any new security architecture.”

The French president said he favored a “path” to NATO membership for Ukraine.

Commenting on the announcement, the Financial Times wrote that Macron’s “call for a ‘path towards’ NATO membership for Ukraine also represents a change in position for France, which alongside Germany and the US had earlier this year pushed back against demands from the UK, Poland and other eastern European members to offer Ukraine some form of tangible ‘path’ to membership at the July summit.”

Macron said that discussions on Ukraine’s membership were ongoing and would be a major theme at the NATO summit in Lithuania in July.

In April, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared that “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO,” adding, “All NATO Allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a member.”

On Wednesday, the United States announced another $300 million arms spending for the Ukraine war, including artillery and long-range missiles. Germany, meanwhile, announced on Wednesday that it would shut down four of Russia’s five consulates in Germany.

On Wednesday and Thursday, NATO foreign ministers are meeting in Oslo, Norway to discuss moving forward with the accession of Norway to the military alliance. Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Sweden to call for its entry into the alliance as well.

The accelerated pace of attacks inside Russia, the increasing openness with which these attacks are welcomed by the US and other NATO members, the rapid expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders and the open talk of Ukraine joining NATO point to the escalation and transformation of the war into a direct conflict between NATO and Russia.

UN Agencies Warn ‘Acute Food Insecurity’ Likely to Worsen in 18 Hunger Hot Spots

Jessica Corbett

As El Niño looms and fighting in Sudan rages on, a pair of United Nations agencies on Monday warned that “acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in 18 hunger hot spots” across 22 countries from June to November.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) delivered that warning in a joint report.

“Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen remain at the highest concern level,” the report states. “Haiti, the Sahel (Burkina Faso and Mali), and the Sudan have been elevated to the highest concern levels; this is due to severe movement restrictions of people and goods in Haiti, as well as in Burkina Faso and Mali, and the recent eruption of conflict in the Sudan.”

“Pakistan, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Syrian Arab Republic are hot spots with very high concern, and the warning is also extended to Myanmar,” the publication continues. “Lebanon, El Salvador, and Nicaragua have been added to the list of hunger hot spot countries, since the September 2022 edition. Malawi, Guatemala, and Honduras remain hunger hot spot countries.”

The document stresses that worsening conditions in the hot spots occur in the context of a “global food crisis,” so “the countries and situations covered in this report highlight the most significant deteriorations of hunger expected in the outlook period” but do not represent all nations facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

“Conflict will disrupt livelihoods—including agricultural activities and commercial trade—as people are either directly attacked or flee the prospect of attacks, or face movement restrictions and administrative impediments,” the report states. “New emerging conflicts, in particular the eruption of conflict in the Sudan, will likely drive global conflict trends and impact several neighboring countries.”

“The use of explosive ordnance and siege tactics in several hunger hot spots continues to push people into catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity,” the document adds, “highlighting the critical role of humanitarian access in preventing the worst outcomes of hunger.”

The new report notably came as the WFP announced that on Saturday, six weeks since the fighting broke out in Sudan—displacing nearly 1.4 million people—the U.N. program was able to begin distributing food assistance to the thousands affected by the conflict in and around the capital Khartoum.

“This is a major breakthrough. We have finally been able to help families who are stuck in Khartoum and struggling to make it through each day as food and basic supplies dwindle,” said Eddie Rowe, WFP’s country director in Sudan, in a statement.

“We have been working round-the-clock to reach people in Khartoum since the fighting began,” Rowe added. “A window opened late last week which allowed us to start food distributions. WFP must do more, but that depends on the parties to the conflict and the security and access they realistically guarantee on the ground.”

Along with armed conflict, drivers of the deterioration in the report’s focal regions include economic issues and the climate emergency. The publication points out that last year, “economic risks were driving hunger in more countries than conflict was,” and “the global economy is expected to slow down in 2023—amid monetary tightening in advanced economies—increasing the cost of credit.”

“Weather extremes, such as heavy rains, tropical storms, cyclones, flooding, drought, and increased climate variability, remain significant drivers in some countries and regions,” the document explains, noting that experts anticipate El Niño conditions—or the warming of sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific Ocean—in the months ahead, “with significant implications for several hunger hot spots.”

The report emphasizes that “urgent and scaled‑up assistance” in all hot spots “is essential to avert a further deterioration of acute food insecurity and malnutrition,” and in some cases, “humanitarian actions are critical in preventing further starvation and death.”

Agency leaders echoed the publication’s call to action. Cindy McCain, WFP’s executive director, said in a statement that “not only are more people in more places around the world going hungry, but the severity of the hunger they face is worse than ever.”

“This report makes it clear: Ae must act now to save lives, help people adapt to a changing climate, and ultimately prevent famine,” McCain declared. “If we don’t, the results will be catastrophic.”

FAO’s director-general, Qu Dongyu, stressed that “business-as-usual pathways are no longer an option in today’s risk landscape if we want to achieve global food security for all, ensuring that no one is left behind.”

“We need to provide immediate time-sensitive agricultural interventions to pull people from the brink of hunger, help them rebuild their lives, and provide long-term solutions to address the root causes of food insecurity,” he said. “Investing in disaster risk reduction in the agriculture sector can unlock significant resilience dividends and must be scaled up.”

16 people killed in mass shootings in the US during Memorial Day weekend

Kevin Reed

The epidemic of mass shootings in the US reached a new crescendo over the Memorial Day weekend with at least 20 such incidents taking place between Friday and Monday that left 16 people dead and more than 80 injured.

Police patrol near the scene of a shooting in which nine people were injured, on Tuesday, May 30, 2023, in Hollywood, Florida. [AP Photo/Lynne Sladky]

The shootings took place in Arizona, Virginia, Mississippi, New Mexico, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, South Carolina, Ohio and Florida, among others.

In Arizona, a 20-year-old suspect was taken into custody after killing four people and injuring a fifth in a series of shooting incidents in the Phoenix area. The Mesa Police Department said Iren Byers has been booked into jail on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder for shootings in Mesa, Arizona, and one in Phoenix on Friday and Saturday.

A report in the USA Today on Monday said at around 3:40 p.m. on Friday Byers shot and killed a man next to a canal in Phoenix who was later identified as 41-year-old Nicholas Arnstad. Later, just before 10:30 p.m., officers were dispatched to investigate a person found dead in a park. Officers discovered the body of Julian Cox, 41.

While at the park, officers searched the area after hearing shots fired nearby. At 12:15 a.m. Saturday, they found 36-year-old Angela Fonseca with serious gunshot injuries. She was transported to the hospital and is in stable condition.

Just before 1 a.m. on Saturday a dead man was reported near a Mesa bus station. When officers arrived, they found the body of 41-year-old Stephen Young. Police continued to search the area for other victims, and just after 2 a.m., found John Swain, 40, also dead from gunshots.

No motive has been reported for these killings while police have said that Byers has been cooperative with authorities and took responsibility for all five shootings during questioning. He was said to have told officers where to find the clothing he wore and the weapon he used during the shooting spree, a 9mm handgun, which officers recovered at Byers’ residence.

Nine people were shot and injured in a mass shooting near the Hollywood Beach Boardwalk in Hollywood, Florida, on Monday. A 1-year-old is among the victims, which authorities believe began as an altercation between two groups in a busy area of the beach Monday. Six people remain in the hospital, while others were treated and released. Four are minors between the ages of 1 and 17, and five are adults between the ages of 25 and 65, according to a police update.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, three men were killed at Red River Memorial Motorcycle Rally on Saturday in a confrontation between two gangs, the Bandidos and the Waterdogs, according to police. The victims were identified as Anthony Silva, 26, of Los Lunas, Damian Breaux, 46, of Socorro and Randy Sanchez, 46, of Albuquerque.

In a tweet on Monday afternoon, The Gun Violence Archive posted that there have been, “70 American mass shootings in the 29 days of May, bringing 2023’s total to 259. ... There were 217 mass shootings by this date last year.”

The Gun Violence Archive was established in 2013 and characterizes a mass shooting as four or more shot or killed in an incident, not including the shooter.

Mass shootings in the US have become so commonplace that they are barely reported by the corporate media or discussed by the political establishment. This is because any investigation of the root cause of the daily tragic shootings in America would reveal the extent of the social decay connected to the staggering levels of economic inequality produced by the capitalist system in the world’s wealthiest country.

Decades of imperialist war, cuts to social programs and education funding, police violence and murder, glorification of gun culture and the encouragement of all forms of backwardness and brutality in popular culture have had a devastating impact on the conditions of life for broad masses of the population.

It is a fact that holiday weekends have tended to be more deadly than other weekends and this trend has intensified in recent years. Last year during the Memorial Day weekend, 77 people were injured and 13 were killed in mass shootings. In 2021, 52 were injured and nine were killed between May 28 and May 31. In 2020, in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 56 people were injured and 10 killed in the same weekend that George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight on a street in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin and three other former city police officers, sparking nationwide protests.

Other mass shootings over the past weekend include:

•  Columbus, Ohio: Seven people were injured on Monday morning while doing donuts in their cars in a parking lot. All of the victims are expected to survive.
•  Baltimore, Maryland: An argument between two men led to a shooting on Friday afternoon injuring five people. Police are still searching for the suspect.

• Chester, Pennsylvania: Eight people were injured, including one critically, at 11:30 p.m. on Sunday in a stadium parking lot where about 100 young people gathered to celebrate the approaching summer recess.
• Columbus, Mississippi: One person was killed and four more injured inside a sports bar late Friday night.
• Marianna, Arkansas: A block party ended in tragedy in the small town after one person was killed and four others were injured after 11 p.m. in the parking lot of an auto parts store.
• Hollywood, South Carolina: One person was killed and five were wounded after a shooting near a nightclub on Monday night.

China growth rate falters as youth unemployment rises

Nick Beams

Concerns continue to grow over the slowdown in the Chinese economy as expectations it would “bounce back” with the lifting of zero COVID measures at the end of last year have not materialised. The purported economic recovery is being described as losing steam.

Auto workers install windows at minibus a factory in Shiyan city in central China's Hubei Province on May 10, 2023. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

At the same time a new wave of infections is developing with predictions, likely to be an underestimate, of 65 million infections a week. After lifting restrictions authorities forecast an initial surge which would then subside but new variants are taking hold in major centres such as Shanghai.

The latest monthly data show a decline in key areas of the economy with industrial production and profits, property sales and credit growth all falling short of predictions.

Consumer spending initially jumped after the lifting of anti-COVID measures and was expected to provide an ongoing boost to the economy amid a global slowdown, however, as the Financial Times (FT) reported, it “has also fallen back on a gloomy economic outlook.”

The article cited remarks by Hui Shan, chief China economist at Goldman Sachs, who provided a summary of the overall situation.

“Confidence is a big problem,” he said. “For consumers, there are concerns about the future—you don’t really want to spend. Private investment is also very weak. You talk to entrepreneurs, there is still a reluctance to engage.”

In the first quarter of the year, gross domestic product expanded at a rate of 4.5 percent on the back of increased retail sales and exports. The boost did not last. Property sales, which were 95 percent of their 2019 levels in March, have now fallen to just 63 percent.

One of the most significant social consequences of the economic slowdown, with potentially explosive political consequences, is the rise in youth unemployment. The jobless rate for those aged between 16 and 24 last month reached a record high of 20.4 percent.

Five years ago, a university degree was the ticket to a generally better paid job. Not any longer, as graduates struggle to find a position and those that do often receive less remuneration than they anticipated.

The FT cited the case of one 25-year-old graduate who said she had been applying for jobs for half a year. As yet she had received no offer and noted that even if she did obtain employment the salaries for office jobs were unliveable.

The record jobless rate has been reached before a new cohort of graduates comes on to the jobs market later this year.

According to a recent report by Goldman Sachs, Chinese youth urban unemployment is now roughly double the rate of 10 percent prior to COVID and this could well be an underestimate. This rate could rise rapidly in the coming months and with the start of the graduation season, during which a record 11.6 million young people will enter the labour force, it may jump by as much as 3-4 percentage points.

The Goldman report noted there appeared to be a structural imbalance.

“Despite the fact that a rising share of unemployed persons aged 16-24 years old have higher education, there appears to be a misalignment of academic disciplines with business requirements,” it said.

It cited the case of sports and education. The number of graduates in this area rose by 20 percent in the period 2018 to 2021 but the “hiring demand of [the] education industry weakened meaningfully in the same period.”

There was also weakening demand in the fields of information technology and property which tended to hire younger workers.

“We might see youth unemployment continuing its upward trend in the next few months on the back of strong supply seasonality despite government policies to create more jobs for graduates.”

The Chinese Communist Party knows that the central foundation of its political legitimacy, having established a full-blown capitalist regime, is the promise that despite rising social inequality and corruption its economic policies provide a path of advancement for the population, not least the youth.

But there are signs of a growing conflict.

Last March, no doubt reflecting an official policy turn, an article published by the Communist Youth League attacked graduates for holding on to their aspirations and refusing to “tighten screws” in the factories, denounced their “negative” attitudes, and told them to “take off their suits and enter the factories and farmlands.”

The statement produced an outcry of social media with one comment asking whether the author would “be willing to give up his current job to become a street cleaner or factory worker.”

A Weibo user noted that according to some statistics “more than one million graduates are already working as food delivery riders and other temporary jobs.”

Such a situation is by no means confined to China. There is a significant and growing cohort of young people in the same position in all the major capitalist economies.

Chinese authorities are particularly sensitive to the political dangers of the growth of a highly educated younger generation with no prospects for the future because they have previously emphasised that education and study is the road to social advancement under a capitalist economy.

In the recent period, state media outlets have been running stories on how university graduates have been able to obtain high incomes by starting businesses that do not require academic qualifications.

These claims have been denounced and exposed on social media and, as the FT reported in a recent article, they have been coupled with criticism of the lack of effective labour laws.

According to the report: “White collar workers routinely put in long hours, such as tech companies’ notorious ‘996’ schedule—where employees work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week—or being on call 24 hours per day, seven days a week, with no overtime or paid time off.”

One WeChat commenter wrote: “You should implement the labour law and address workers’ real concern.”

This rumbling opposition has yet to take an overt political form.

Fear of such a development will be uppermost in the minds of the ruling oligarchy headed by Xi Jinping as the developing reality in China comes into conflict with the dominant ideology that the restoration of capitalism represented the way forward for the working class and masses.

The Chinese Communist Party leadership is well aware that it was a movement of youth directed against social inequality, that began in Tiananmen Square, which played an important role in sparking the upsurge of the working class in 1989.

US budget deal will accelerate savage cuts to public education

Chase Lawrence

A wave of mass austerity is being planned and carried out against public education as part of the bipartisan plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. The agreement reached by President Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, which is headed to a vote in the US House of Representatives today, includes far-reaching cuts to social spending. Discretionary spending for the 2024 fiscal year will be frozen at present 2023 levels and a 1 percent cap imposed on any increases for the 2025 fiscal year.

Striking Oakland teachers with banner May 5, 2023. [Photo: WSWS]

The cuts are being prepared under the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 1.1 million people in the US since 2020, including an estimated 2,200 children and 8,000 educators. Of the 96 percent of US children who were infected, an estimated 10 to 25 percent have Long COVID.

The same politicians who swore they were only concerned for the educational and emotional well-being of children when they were herding them back into infected classrooms are now taking an axe to public education.

The third and last federal stimulus bill that provided $122 billion in relief to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund is set to expire in September 2024. As of April this year, most districts have already spent about three-quarters of ESSER funds according to EdWeek Research Center. Under the federal budget agreement, any unspent funds by school districts are set to be rescinded as part of the $30 billion in total unspent COVID relief funds to be clawed back by the federal government. 

Given the impact of inflation, the cap on spending to 2023 levels in the new budget deal will mean a cut in billions of real dollars to already cash-strapped school districts.

A recent report by K-12 Dive indicates the potential scope of the sweeping cuts to education if reverted to 2022 levels. Title I schools, a federal program which serves low income students, would see a $850 million loss, and 60,000 teachers would be laid off. State grants under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) would be reduced by $3.1 billion, laying off 48,000 special education teachers. These are all taking place amid historic teacher shortages in all categories (but especially special education) as a result of decades of bipartisan austerity and the devastation of the education system through mass infection.

The following is a brief survey of the cuts already planned or underway in major districts across the US.

Northeast

New York City is the largest school district in the US with about 1 million students and almost 100,000 teachers and paraprofessionals and other staff. On top of major cuts last year, Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, proposed a 4 percent cut for most city agencies, 3 percent for the Department of Education, along with a further $176 million midyear education cuts.

Adam’s proposed education budget of $30.7 billion for the 2023-2024 fiscal year would be a reduction of $800 million. Budgets provided to schools were cut in the fall in 77 percent of schools for a total of $469 million. Eighty-six percent of schools had cuts totaling $893 million compared to last year, averaging about $655,000 each.

At least $700 million in the city’s recurring expenses, such as 3-K, Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL), the arts, community schools, and social workers, will evaporate with the expiration of ESSER funds. 

The American Federation of Teachers-affiliated United Federation of Teachers has collaborated in the cuts by forcing through real wage cuts on educators.

In New Jersey, 157 school districts face budget cuts under Democratic Governor Phil Murphy’s proposed 2023-24 budget. Twenty-five of those districts would see cuts of over $1 million, including Jersey City, where state funding will be reduced by $50 million. Even if Jersey City is successful in applying for a one-time grant, it would only give two-thirds of the cuts back.

Montclair Public School District, which eliminated 31 teaching positions, is cutting 73 paraprofessional positions to balance a $5.5 million budget deficit. Hundreds of Montclair High School students walked out of school in protest of the cuts on May 18, calling for the reinstatement of laid off staff, among other demands.

Mid-Atlantic

In Maryland, Frederick County Public Schools is planning major cuts to close a more than $40 million budget deficit by the end of June, lowering its budget by $10.8 million. The Board of Education proposed to cut $15 million from the salary pool and eliminate a summer school program funded with around $2 million in COVID relief funds serving 3,500 students. Three grades of the district’s online classes are to be removed for $900,000 in cuts. Proposed special education was revised down from $10.7 million in the initial budget proposal to $7.3 million.

Midwest

In Chicago, Illinois, the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America-backed new Mayor Brandon Johnson has already floated cuts for the near future. During his campaign, Johnson, a former organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, said he would have to make some “tough decisions” when he was mayor, including telling the CTU there was no money to increase school funding. “Who is better able to deliver bad news to a friend than a friend?”

In Detroit, Michigan, at least 150 jobs at the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) are on the chopping block, with the AFT-affiliated Detroit Federation of Teachers and the DSA collaborating in the cuts. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s proposed budget would decrease school funding in real terms. DPSCD has budgeted according to Whitmer’s budget, which will lead to shortfalls as costs increase with inflation. According to Chalkbeat, the district has proposed eliminating “deans of culture, assistant principals, school culture facilitators, college transition advisers, and kindergarten paraprofessionals.”

West Coast

In California, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed $1.5 billion in cuts to education in the state. The Los Angeles Unified School District—the second largest school district in the US—is facing major cuts to school programs and employee salaries in anticipation of the decline in funding sources. The United Teachers Los Angeles forced through a below inflation tentative agreement on teachers, enforcing the district’s austerity measures.

Oakland Unified School District is preparing cuts to close a $79 million deficit, already having approved initial layoffs among support staff. Recently the school board brought school closures and mergers back on the table despite years of protests from school staff, students and families. The recent strike in the district was shut down by the union to force through a pay cut, just like in the 2019 strike.

Washington state has lost about 44,800 public school students since the 2019-20 school year causing many school districts to consider plans for closing schools and cutting staff, salaries and the arts.

Seattle Public Schools faces a $131 million deficit in the 2023-24 school year and $92 million the following year. To close the budget gap, $33 million is being cut from the central office and $11.2 million to school-based staff. In addition to cutting programs, such as the Washington Middle School band program, the district is looking at closures of some of its 106 schools, particularly 30 of those which have enrollment under 300 students.

South

In Louisiana, East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools has announced $15.2 million in proposed cuts directed at the central office positions, as well as contracts with outside vendors to the 2023-24 budget. The district is also increasing the student-to-teacher ratio from the already onerous 28-to-1 to 33-to-1 in grades 6-12. Eighteen teaching positions are being cut. Support staff in various programs such as Special Programs, Guidance Services and Information Technology will also be cut.

Teachers, though no other staff, will supposedly receive an 8 percent pay increase, and then a 12 percent increase over three years for an insulting 4 percent per year. The district notes that it has not secured a sustainable funding source for these raises past this coming school year.

In Fort Bend, Texas, the district has reduced its budget by $40 million since 2021. Deputy Superintendent Steve Bassett told local news that if the district wants to provide a paltry 2 percent raise to its teachers next year, it will have to cut another $23 million elsewhere. Even that, he notes, “is not going to be enough to keep our teachers.” The Austin Independent School District faces a $54 million budget deficit after proposing a 7 percent raise for its teachers.

Multiple districts have pleaded with the state government to raise per pupil spending, which has been frozen since 2019. The Spring Branch Independent School District says it needs an additional $1,000 per student to maintain operations, while the state has only offered an increase of $50 per student.

The cost of war

The massive cuts in social spending are taking place as both parties spend trillions on war and bank bailouts. The budget deal exempts the military from a spending cap. It follows the enactment of Biden’s record $1 trillion war budget and his administration’s allotment of another $375 billion to arm Ukraine for the US proxy war against Russia.

This outcome is exactly what the WSWS warned of in the November 2020 article, “What would a Biden administration mean for public education?“ In it we warned, “a Biden administration will continue the austerity policies [of former President Donald Trump] against public education, under conditions of a severe economic crisis. … Under these conditions, any new programs or budgetary reforms will be rejected as ‘unfeasible’ in light of Wall Street’s demands for mass austerity and state deficits.”

This is the restructuring of public education along class lines or rather the destruction of public education. The children of poor and working class people will be increasingly shut out of education, which will become ever more exclusive to the upper middle class and ruling class.

At the same time, ever younger children are being pushed into the workforce to address the labor shortage caused by the ruling elite’s criminal response to the pandemic. At least eight states have already introduced bills to loosen child labor laws this year, and North Carolina is poised to approve a bill requiring all public high schools to create a three-year track to graduate. This will allow students to be pushed into the military and manual labor jobs earlier. In addition, several states have passed major state legislation to fund school choice and voucher programs. 

The attacks are provoking opposition by educators in the US and internationally. There is no shortage of opposition to these attacks as can be seen among Michigan educators seeking to protect students after a six-year-old child died from a “mystery illness;” San Diego teachers who have been without a contract for over a year; educators, parents and nurses who oppose the budget cuts in Detroit schools and in countless other instances.

Mexico cracks down on migrants, performing Washington’s dirty work at the border

Norisa Diaz

It has been just over two weeks since the Biden administration lifted Title 42, the Trump-era border policy that utilized the pandemic to deny asylum seekers entry at the US-Mexico border.

While right-wing politicians sought to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment with warnings of migrants flooding the border, the opposite has occurred. The number of migrants at the US-Mexico border has declined. Crossings have decreased by half since Title 42 expired on May 11. This, however, has less to do with a drop in the number of people fleeing and seeking asylum than with the Mexican government’s crackdown on migrants.

An encampment of some 300 adults and children near the San Ysidro port of entry [Photo: WSWS]

In 2019, the Trump administration and the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) implemented the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), previously known as “Remain in Mexico.” The purpose of the program is to have Mexican authorities carry out Washington’s dirty work, requiring asylum seekers from Mexico and Central America to remain in Mexico while their immigration cases are considered in the United States.

Despite the fact that many Mexican citizens are fleeing conditions in the country, Mexico has been deemed a “safe third country,” a designation that only underscores the twisted and punitive nature of the policy.

The crackdown by AMLO and the Mexican government on migrants includes the closure of shelters and busing of migrants to the southern and interior states in Mexico, with restrictions that require them to remain in their assigned state or face deportation.

The Miami Herald reported that “the Mexican government has closed dozens of migrant shelters and begun busing migrants away from its northern border to other states. Authorities have also suspended 45-day permits that allow undocumented migrants to travel through the country without fear of deportation or detention.”

These recent changes to US and Mexican immigration law are intended to undercut the immigration status of migrants in Mexico and justify their deportation. No longer able to apply in person, migrants are told they must secure appointments at US ports of entry using the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) One app. However, many migrants are reporting difficulties with the app, which fails to give them an appointment despite multiple application attempts. 

The new US asylum process under Title 8 requires migrants who present themselves at the border without an appointment to prove that they were denied asylum in a “safe third country” en route to the US. If migrants cannot prove this at the US border, they face immediate deportation and a ban on reapplying for asylum of at least five years.

The actions of the Mexican authorities differ little from those of right-wing Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has been busing asylum seekers to Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver, where they are dumped without any assistance. The state boasts of having sent more than 19,000 migrants to Democratic-led cities as part of “Operation Lone Star.”

A Colombian mother who previously spoke to the WSWS sent a testimonial about the situation in the migrant camps, as well as at US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processing facilities. These include Hieleras, or “iceboxes,” where men, women and children detained at the border spend several nights crowded into tiny rooms that are kept at freezing temperatures. There they are forced to sleep on bare concrete floors. The traumatic experience is meant solely to punish migrants and deter them from seeking asylum.

“I lasted three days and two nights in the icebox, until they processed me and gave me permission to be here in the United States while a judge decides whether we are allowed to stay or sends me back to Colombia,” she said.

“Many of the police are very rude,” she continued. “They really have no compassion for the children, who do not have beds. We were on the floor, and some people were without blankets. They do not give good food, only sugary juices, packets of potatoes and a frozen sandwich.

“Where I was with my children, there was a Mexican woman who was seven months pregnant, and she is a minor, 17 years old. They had her without blankets. They kept her in La Hielera, and it wasn’t clear when they would let her out, and did not give her any information about her process.”

Ana previously spoke to the WSWS about the conditions that forced her and her children to flee Colombia after her family was threatened and her son kidnapped for 24 hours. She also sent videos showing the appalling conditions in the open air border camps.

A delegation of humanitarian aid organizations recently visited migrant camps along the Texas Rio Grande Valley and in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Erika Guevara-Rosas, the Americas Director for Amnesty International, who was part of the team, posted on the organization’s website a statement declaring: “The Mexico government is complicit in the humanitarian situation and the human rights crisis that these policies are creating at the border.”

The delegation’s report stressed the life-threatening situation facing the migrants, who have been “left stranded in highly dangerous and difficult conditions by the new asylum bar’s restrictions.” The report continued: “In these areas, the level of violence and danger is so severe that the US State Department advises that they are too dangerous for Americans to visit. Recent reports of escalated cartel violence make the areas even more dangerous for asylum seekers, migrants and humanitarian workers.”

Amna Nawaz with PBS reported from migrant camps on both sides of the border—in Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico—calling the conditions in the Mexican migrant camps “absolutely appalling.” She said, “They are unsanitary. They are dangerous.”

Speaking of the migrant camps in Matamoros, she said:

These are sprawling, temporary tarp tent and blanket hut camps that have popped up, and sources tell us they have really grown in size since Title 42 ended, because people are now deciding to stay here and wait, there aren’t resources to support them. There’s no sanitation. There’s no running water.. .. Sources tell us that there is rampant COVID and tuberculosis and dengue and waterborne illnesses. That’s why we were masking the entire time we were there as well, just dozens and dozens and dozens of families and children. And I will tell you this is no place for children waiting, waiting for their chance, 90-degree heat every day, to try and make their case to US officials.

Conditions facing children at border camps and in US custody only continue to worsen. In recent weeks, at least two minors have died in CBP custody. They include Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, who died in CBP custody in Texas. Despite having a history of sickle cell anemia and heart disease, Alvarez was denied medical treatment while struggling to breathe. This was despite pleas by her mother to get her medical care. The death of Alvarez followed another death just a few days earlier of an unaccompanied 17-year-old Honduran girl, who was being held at a Florida detention center.

While migrants continue to be brutalized, powerful interests in agriculture and dairy farming are applying pressure to end the crackdown, not out of any concern for the migrants’ well-being or their right to asylum but to better exploit their cheap labor. 

Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, told the press that despite a wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric, primarily from Republican politicians, the influence of the dairy and agriculture industries had “watered down” anti-immigrant legislation in Florida. The Daily News reported that “The legislation (Florida Governor) DeSantis signed allows the transportation of migrants within the state, for example, and it preserves in-state tuition breaks for undocumented students.”

Dairy farmer and Republican US Rep. David Valadao of California said he voted for a Republican anti-immigrant bill only after party leaders promised that provisions would be included to address the farm labor shortage.