Trump seeks to abolish crucial library and museum service

Sandy English

In an attack on access to education and culture in the US, Donald Trump issued an executive order March 14 aimed at doing away with the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services.

Kanza Library and Learning Center (kawnation.gov)

As the American Libraries magazine explains,

The president cannot fully eliminate IMLS without congressional approval, but his order takes every possible step in that direction. The order calls for the elimination of IMLS, by limiting budget requests from the agency to only the funds needed to shut it down. Otherwise, the administration, through its Office of Management and Budget, will “reject funding requests.”

Trump’s action is intended to cut off a financial lifeline to museums and libraries, already woefully underfunded. Seventy-five staff will also lose their jobs.

IMLS describes itself as an institution that provides “opportunities that address regional challenges … improving library services and access to resources, enhancing museum exhibitions and educational programs, digitizing historical documents and collections, promoting lifelong learning and cultural engagement, and supporting workforce development within libraries and museums.”

The institute gives out grants to large state libraries and smaller local ones, as well as to a large range of museums and historical societies in all 50 states, including those that serve the poorest demographics in the US, such as people living in rural areas and the Native American population. The IMLS administered $266.7 million in grants to museums and libraries across the US and Puerto Rico in 2024.

The role that museums and libraries play in educating millions of people about history, archaeology, art and science cannot be underestimated. Public libraries not only make books, videos and sound recordings freely available to anyone who has a library card, but serve as community centers and places for after-school programs. For millions of people in the US, especially those in the bottom 50 percent of income earners, libraries are among the only safe and intellectually stimulating public spaces available to them.

IMLS provides grants to numerous tribal libraries for basic operating expenses, such as purchasing books and computers; to programs that provide digital literacy training in underserved communities; and to efforts to digitize important historical collections.

This is a small sample of last year’s grants:

• The IMLS gave a $10,000 grant to the Kaw Nation and the Kanza Library and Learning Center, a Native American library in Kaw City, Oklahoma, to purchase books and computers, and to purchase furniture for the library, including for a childcare center.
• The Griswold Memorial Library in the town of Colrain, Massachusetts received a National Library Medal from the IMLS that came with an award of $10,000 for its “community-driven Kindness Reading Project to their partnership with public health nurses.”
• The IMLS provided $240,000 to the Rochester [New York] Museum & Science Center for an exhibit that “will explore themes of Haudenosaunee cultural continuity and change, identity, and sovereignty through featured artists and artworks. A series of educational programs featuring traditional Haudenosaunee artistry through artist demonstrations, workshops, and cultural festivals.”
• The institute gave $249,000 to the Sciencenter in Ithaca, New York to “use input from prior library collaborations and listening sessions to co-create STEM activity kits and establish a learning community with library educators to support locally relevant STEM learning.”
• The New Mexico State University Museum received $44,000 from the IMLS to “complete an inventory and assessment of its archaeological holdings to improve intellectual control and public access to the collection.”
• The Indianapolis Zoo in Indiana received $114,000 for operating expenses.
• The Lorain Historical Society in Ohio received $24,000 for “an oral history project to collect and share stories of older adults and foster dialogue with area youth.”
• The Maine State Library received $1,500,000 to ensure that all Maine residents “have equitable access to high quality information resources through libraries” and to improve information services for “Maine’s diverse population, including people who are underserved and underrepresented, living in rural and remote communities, the disabled, those who are homebound, immigrants, or any resident who struggles with financial and other challenges.”
• The IMLS granted the Foundation for the Advancement of Conservation $692,000 to “partner with researchers to understand the carbon impact of six activities central to museum collections work: treatment; environmental control; emergency preparedness; time-based media and digitization; pest control; and object loans.”

Griswold Memorial Library (colrain-ma.gov)

Library and museum associations have raised a hue and cry about the loss of this funding.

“By eliminating the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services,” said the American Library Association (ALA) in a statement, “the Trump administration’s executive order is cutting off at the knees the most beloved and trusted of American institutions and the staff and services they offer: Early literacy development and grade-level reading programs. And those who will feel that loss most keenly live in rural communities.”

The American Association of Museums (AAM) said in a statement: “This Executive Order threatens the critical roles museums and museum workers play in American society and puts jobs, education, conservation, and vital community programs at risk. There is no efficiency argument when IMLS represents just 0.0046% of the federal budget, while museums generate $50 billion in economic impact.”

The abolition of the IMLS has clearly come as a shock to many in the professional museum and library associations. They exhibit every sign of not knowing what has hit them. The ALA “implores” Trump “to reconsider this short-sighted decision,” and the AAM has made available templates of letters to senators and House members that “ask them to speak up to the Administration stressing the importance of IMLS.”

The decision to eliminate the IMLS is not an error that Trump and his administration will rectify. The defunding of libraries is part of the program of the oligarchy. The stream of executive orders since January 20 this year has had one purpose: to eliminate democratic rights and establish a dictatorship.

The role of libraries, and, by implication, museums, has been an inherent feature of American democracy since early in its development. In 1823, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter that “the establishment of such libraries in every town … brings the use of books so much within the means of everyone that … the public have the right and the understanding to judge for themselves.”

The oligarchy behind Trump abhors this concept and is determined to extinguish the right and the means to think critically. The drive to abolish the IMLS is part of this program.

Soaring rice prices in the Philippines drive millions deeper into poverty

Dante Pastrana

Rice prices have soared in the Philippines in recent months. The dietary staple, which accounts for over 20 percent of the food budget of poor families, has become increasingly unaffordable.

Ronnel Gardon tends rice supplies at a shop in Manila [AP Photo/Joeal Calupitan]

According to the recent Agriculture Department price monitoring report, from February 22 to March 4, regular milled rice on average cost 40.83 pesos (71 US cents) per kilogram while the well-milled variety cost 46.74 pesos per kilogram. On March 6, the department reported well-milled rice prices had reached as high as 52 pesos per kilogram in the National Capital Region of Metro Manila.

The deepening rice crisis in the Philippines under the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who campaigned to reduce rice prices to 20 pesos per kilogram before becoming president in June 2022, is driving millions of Filipino workers and the rural poor deeper into poverty and hunger, also battered by surging inflation in other food prices, utilities and fuel.

A recent survey by the Social Weather Stations, a leading Philippine polling firm, revealed a staggering increase in self-rated poverty among Filipino families, with 63 percent of respondents declaring themselves poor in December 2024. This marked a 17 percent increase from March 2024 and represents the highest poverty rate recorded in the country in over two decades.

The survey, conducted among 2,160 households, found that the annual average for self-rated poverty in 2024 reached 57 percent, a nine-point increase from the 48 percent recorded in 2023. Based on the 2020 Philippine census, this translates to approximately 15 million households or 60.2 million people living in poverty. The results stand in stark contrast to the government’s official poverty statistics, which claim a poverty incidence of just 10.9 percent in 2023, equivalent to 2.99 million families or 11.9 million people.

The survey also revealed that 25.9 percent of Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the three months preceding December 2024. The annual hunger average for 2024 reached 20.2 percent, nearly double the figure for 2023. Severe hunger—defined as those who often or always experienced having nothing to eat—rose from 1.5 percent in 2023 to 5.1 percent in 2024. These figures paint a grim picture of the daily struggles faced by millions of Filipinos, who are forced to tighten their belts and lower their living standards to survive.

Domestic rice production was estimated in 2024 at 385.5 billion pesos, accounting for over 20 percent of the total value of agricultural goods. Nearly 30 percent of the total available crop area is planted with rice.

However, 33 percent of the estimated two million rice farmers are the poorest of the poor in the Philippines. A thin layer of landlords dominates production and extracts most of the profits through land rent and brutal exploitation of rural workers. At the same time, 86,000 wholesalers and retailers and 12,000 millers (who are also often landlords) dominate distribution, imposing farm gate prices at just half the retail price.

In February, farm gate prices plunged even lower, by over 35 percent of last year’s prices. Trapped in a system dominated by landlords and middlemen, the poor rice farmers are forced to sell their harvest at exploitative prices, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and debt.

Anger is rapidly growing in the working class. According to one survey conducted in February by OCTA research, support for the Marcos government notably in working-class areas was down to 39 percent in Metro Manila, 32 percent in the industrial region of Calabarzon, and lower still to just 19 percent in Central Visayas.

In February, in the lead up to the start of the campaign for the 2025 national election for congressional and local government positions, the government declared a Food Security Emergency and began releasing 300,000 metric tons of rice stocks for local government units to sell at a subsidized price of 35 pesos per kilogram.

That same month, the government announced a reduction of the nationwide maximum suggested retail price for imported rice, which comprises over 20 percent of the local market. From 55 pesos per kilogram, it has now decreased to 49 pesos per kilogram.

The Marcos government’s response to the crisis is a cynical attempt to placate growing working-class anger while protecting the interests of landlords and agribusiness. Far from being an attempt to regulate the market price of rice, the sell-off of government stock is simply a drive to clear warehouses for the purchase of rice held by the landlords and wealthier rice farmers.

According to the Philippine News Agency, well before the February announcement of releasing its 300,000 metric tons of rice stocks, there was a surge of government requisitions in January. This reached 284,810 metric tons, significantly higher than the 48,680 metric rice stocks in January 2024, as the government bought local palay (unhusked rice) at 30 pesos per kilogram for dry palay and 23 pesos per kilogram for fresh or wet palay. The government plans to purchase over 870,000 metric tons this year.

Given that these purchases are oriented to the landlords and to better off layers of farmers who have the logistics for drying palay or can afford to ship off their harvest to the nearest government warehouse, this essentially subsidizes their profits.

Equally cynical is the supposed price cap on imported rice. According to the Philippine Star, rice imports plunged by almost 35 percent in the first two months on an annual basis to a little over 500,000 metric tons because of “the high carry-over stocks from last year when private entities imported a record-high 4.8 million metric of rice.” The price cap becomes essentially the minimum price for the selloff of last year’s stocks by private businesses.

New discovery of ancient bone tools from East Africa reveals greater complexity in the evolution of early human technology

Philip Guelpa

New discoveries made in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania by an international team led by Ignacio de la Torre, CSIC-Spanish National Research Council, push back the archaeological record of bone-tool manufacture and use by more than a million years.

The research is published in the scientific journal Nature (de La Torre et al, “Systematic bone tool production at 1.5 million years ago,” Nature, March 5, 2025). The earliest evidence of any form of human technology, Oldowan stone tools associated with Homo habilis, the first members of our genus, dates back to approximately 2.5 million years ago (mya), also from East Africa. 

The newly discovered bone tools, which consist of 27 deliberately split and chipped large mammal long bones, were recovered from a buried context at the T69 Complex site that dates to about a million years later than the first tools and are thought to have also been manufactured by H. habilis, although no human remains were found in association.

Tools made on long bone diaphysis of very large mammals,.some 1.5 million years ago. [Photo by Ignacio de la Torre et al / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Earlier recoveries of pieces of bone with characteristics indicating that they had been used in some fashion were all found on the surface at various sites, not in a buried, stratigraphic context and therefore could not be assign a date. Based on the dating of the context in which the newly discovered bone tools were found, the researchers suggest that this technology may have played a role in the transition from the Oldowan (2.6-1.7 mya) to the succeeding Acheulian cultural period (1.76-0.13 mya), which is characterized by a more sophisticated stone tool inventory. 

Prior to the new discovery, the earliest known datable bone tools were recovered from sites associated with Homo erectus, hundreds of thousands of years later. This difference in occurrence is not entirely surprising since stone tools are virtually indestructible whereas artifacts made from organic materials (e.g., wood, bone, plant fibers) are subject to relatively rapid decay except in particular environments, such as permanently water-logged or extremely arid settings. Therefore, the older an archaeological site, the less likely it is to have surviving organic artifacts. It has long been suggested that the material culture recovered from ancient archaeological contexts, consisting exclusively of stone artifacts provides an incomplete picture of human behavior in the past. These new finds give a tantalizing glimpse into what we are missing. 

Perhaps the key new knowledge to be derived from these early bone tools is that humans even at this early stage had the intellectual and technological capacity to transfer manufacturing techniques between different raw material media. The bone tools found at the T69 Complex site were made out of elephant, hippopotamus and bovid long bones. These were split and then modified using a similar knapping (i.e., chipping) technique as that employed for stone tool manufacture, presumably using stone hammers. It is assumed that that this technique originated with the working of stone. However, due to the lack of evidence from early sites, the question of which came first must be left somewhat in doubt. 

The researchers noted that the recovered bone tools date to a period before the time when large stone bifaces, known as hand-axes, were being manufactured during the Acheulean period and used in such tasks as heavy butchering. Hand-axes have a refined symmetry and complexity of production stages significantly greater than earlier Oldowan stone tools. Possibly, therefore, the bone tools’ functions were later replaced by the more effective and difficult to manufacture stone hand-axes, which displayed sharper, more robust cutting edges.

Recently reported research examining the differences between human culture and that of other animals identified the former as having what is characterized as “open-endedness.” That is the capacity to mentally abstract components of complex behaviors and rearrange them in novel ways in order to achieve new results. A prime example of this is human language. Individual words can be mixed and rearranged in novel ways in order to express new ideas. 

It would seem that H. habilis had, at least by 1.5 mya, the intellectual capacity to transfer an existing manufacturing technique to a new medium which had its own characteristics and challenges. A further inference is that they had at least a rudimentary basis for language. 

Unfortunately, unlike most lithic materials used to make stone tools (e.g., chert, flint, obsidian), which often preserve characteristic use-wear traces, such as micro-flaking or abrasion along working edges, which can provide data on how a tool was used and against what materials, bone does not often retain such evidence. Therefore, it is difficult to impossible in many cases to identify how these tools were used, especially in older specimens. The researchers in the recent investigation suggest that the newly discovered bone tools were used in some tasks requiring sharp, heavy-duty actions, perhaps such as butchering animal carcasses.  

This new research provides fresh insight into the complex evolution of human technology and also of human cognitive development.

Erdogan’s main rival, İstanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu detained by police

Barış Demir & Ulaş Ateşçi

Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and possible presidential candidate for the Republican People’s Party (CHP), was detained on two separate charges in a police raid on his home early Wednesday morning.

The police-state crackdown sparked mass protests across the country. After hundreds of municipal workers demonstrated in front of the Şişli Municipality, hundreds of students at Istanbul University organized a protest, defying Istanbul Governorship’s four-day ban on all protests.

Ekrem Imamoglu, Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, giving a speech in front of Istanbul Palace of Justice on 31 January 2025. [Photo: X / @ekrem_imamoglu]

Police reinforcements were deployed by the police chief to the security directorate in Istanbul where İmamoğlu is being detained, while crowds gathered behind the barricades to protest his detention. Thousands took to the streets in many cities, including Izmir and Ankara.

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Police detained İmamoğlu on charges of “leading [a] benefit-oriented criminal organization” along with 106 people, including mayors, municipality officials, journalists and artists. İmamoğlu and seven others, including Şişli and Beylikdüzü mayors and municipal officials, were also detained on charges of “aiding the terrorist organization,” i.e., the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The Sosyalist Eşitlik Grubu (SEG), the Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, issued a statement on X condemning the Erdoğan regime’s police state repression, which abolishes basic democratic rights, including the right to vote and be elected, and calling for the immediate release of those detained.

Placing Turkey’s escalating repression in an international context, the SEG further noted:

The developments in Turkey are part of a global process by ruling classes, from the U.S. to Europe, to build authoritarian regimes under conditions of genocide in Gaza, a developing world war, and rapidly intensifying class tensions. The deeply crisis-ridden and decaying global capitalist system is incompatible with democracy.

The Istanbul Governorship’s unconstitutional four-day “prohibition of demonstrations” reflects fear of opposition from working-class and youth masses. Democracy can only be defended and secured through the independent, mass mobilization of the working class for a socialist program.

İmamoğlu announced his detention on X, stating, “A coup is being carried out against the will of the nation.” He added: “A handful of minds attempting to usurp our nation’s will have deployed hundreds of police officers to the doors of 16 million Istanbul residents by exploiting our beloved police for evil. We face immense tyranny, but we will not yield. I entrust myself to my people. Let everyone know I will be tall in the saddle. I will continue to fight against his [Erdoğan’s] mentality that instrumentalizes the process through its apparatus.”

On Tuesday, İmamoğlu’s university degree, obtained 31 years ago, was unlawfully revoked by Istanbul University. Having a university degree is one of many anti-democratic requirements imposed on presidential candidates. Polls have shown İmamoğlu ahead of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a potential presidential race.

The CHP became the leading party in last year’s elections, surpassing Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) for the first time in 22 years. Recently, the CHP launched an early election campaign in response to government-led repression and operations. An internal primary election, where İmamoğlu would be the sole candidate, was scheduled for this Sunday.

İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued a statement defending its trumped-up accusations that İmamoğlu is guilty of “aiding a terrorist organization”. It declared: “İmamoğlu, together with other suspects, determined the lists of municipal council members with their approvals in the local elections, they committed the crime of aiding the PKK/KCK terrorist organization by knowingly participating in the Urban Consensus…”

The police investigation is targeting a legal electoral alliance, known as the “Urban Consensus”, between the CHP and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) in local elections held on March 31 last year. The two parties collectively secured votes from over 20 million citizens nationwide.

As previously explained on the World Socialist Web Site, “The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office is creating a ‘crime’ that does not exist and is trying to legitimise this operation on the basis that the electoral alliance between two legal parties was praised in the media by officials of the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).”

While the Erdoğan government seeks to suppress the opposition parties by linking them to the PKK, it is simultaneously negotiating with imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. As part of talks mediated by the DEM Party and largely supported by other parliamentary parties, Öcalan recently called on the PKK to hold a congress, lay down arms, and dissolve itself.

İmamoğlu’s detention is part of a broader state crackdown targeting the DEM Party and CHP-elected mayors, journalists, and labor leaders in recent months. It exposes the hypocrisy of claims that negotiations—closely tied to the deepening war in the Middle East—will bring “peace and democracy.”

CHP leader Özgür Özel called İmamoğlu’s detention a “coup,” stating on X: “Using force to decide on behalf of the people, override their will, or obstruct it is a coup. A power is now at work to prevent the people from choosing the next president. We are facing a coup attempt against our next president.”

In a statement, the DEM Party declared, “As we have repeatedly stated, these actions constitute a coup. Turkey is experiencing an overt ‘joint judicial-executive coup’ process that increasingly targets all political and social opposition.”

Sections of the financial capital quickly showed their discontent with the detentions. Borsa Istanbul’s BIST 100 index opened with a sharp drop of nearly 7 percent, while the Turkish lira fell to historic lows against foreign currencies.

The European allies of the CHP, who are trying to continue the imperialist war against Russia in Ukraine and are carrying out a massive social onslaught at home, also reacted negatively. German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Sebastian Fischer described it as “a serious setback for democracy,” while the Social Democrats (SPD) declared their solidarity with İmamoğlu. The French Foreign Ministry said it was “deeply concerned” about the detentions.

The Erdoğan government’s growing turn to authoritarian rule reflects a deepening crisis of the ruling class, rooted not in Erdoğan’s mind but in the global capitalist system. Erdoğan already vowed to respond to the expanding Middle East war—of which the Gaza genocide is a part—and the growing radicalization of the working class by “strengthening the internal front.”

İmamoğlu’s arrest marks a new stage in the presidential dictatorship built over years.

Events in Turkey cannot be separated from the global shift toward authoritarianism amid escalating imperialist wars and growing social inequality. Four years after his attempted January 6 coup, fascist President Donald Trump, reinstated by the US financial oligarchy, is dismantling the constitution and defying court rulings.

Governments worldwide, including Erdoğan’s, are aware that their allies in Washington will no longer pressure them with “human rights” and “democracy” rhetoric, enabling them to advance dictatorial moves.

Australian families struggle with escalating school costs

Karen Maxwell

Australian working-class families are finding it increasingly difficult to send their children to school due to the spiraling costs of education.

Overall, families in 2025 are expected to spend $13.6 billion on schooling costs, including uniforms, tuition, technology and excursions—up from $12.9 billion last year.

[Photo: Futurity Investment Group]

The Futurity Investment Group recently issued a “Cost of Education in Australia” report that estimated the average cost of putting a child through 13 years of school at $123,000. This represents a 33 percent increase from 2024, when the average cost was $92,000.

Futurity Group executive manager Sarah McCadie told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that in an online survey of 2,385 families: “One in four parents told us they’re sacrificing family holidays, nearly 30 percent said they’re going without buying something for themselves, and 22 percent said they’re working more hours than they’d like to.”

Australia has one of the most privatised education systems in the world. A 2024 OECD report revealed that the country has the highest level of expenditure on private educational facilities in the OECD, totaling 0.7 percent of gross domestic product, more than double the OECD average of 0.3 percent.

Approximately 40 percent of all students attend private secondary schools. Many private schools have imposed sharp tuition fee hikes in recent years.

The Futurity Group report estimated that the average cost of sending a student to a Catholic school for 13 years is $194,000. Attending an independent school (non-Catholic private) for 13 years would cost an average of $350,000 in 2025, compared to $317,000 in 2024. Approximately 56 percent of these costs would comprise school fees, and 44 percent would represent ancillary costs.

Costs are even higher at elite private schools, which are inaccessible to the vast majority of the population. Several elite schools now charge more than $50,000 in annual tuition fees.

While public schools in Australia are supposed to be “free,” parents are regularly “invited” to make voluntary contributions. In 2023, the average annual “voluntary contribution” made by parents to government schools in Victoria was $570 per student.

Families often receive an official letter from the school at the start of the year presented on official school stationary resembling an itemised bill, according to Professor Emma Rowe in a recent article in the Conversation. Rowe recounted that in 2019, children at a government primary school in Sydney received free popcorn if their parents had paid the “voluntary” fees.

While schools cannot legally enforce the payment of these “voluntary contributions,” children can be denied participation in certain activities if their parents do not pay.

Parents from working-class families feel pressured to make these voluntary payments, fearing that otherwise their children will miss out on educational opportunities or suffer social stigmatism.

Damien Ellwood, president of the Australian Council of State School Organisations, told the ABC: “The feedback was that families didn’t feel like it was a voluntary contribution… families felt that if the schools did not receive that money, the children wouldn’t get access to the basic education they needed.”

In parallel research conducted by Compare Club, immediate back-to-school costs for each child returning to a public school was estimated on average to be $1,555. This included: $496 for technology and devices, $229 for uniform, and $255 for mandatory excursions. The annual cost of transport to and from school (often between $500 and $600), as well as the exorbitant cost of textbooks, must also be factored in.

Parents are resorting to desperate measures to try to ensure that their children are adequately equipped for school. These include credit card debt and other forms of personal debt, or assistance from grandparents. Opportunistic lenders are springing up, offering “back-to-school loans.”

Record numbers of families are turning to charities.

One such charity, the Smith Family, told the Melbourne Herald Sun that the number of students receiving assistance from its Learning for Life program in 2024 was 14,900—double the number recorded eight years ago in 2016.

In another survey of 359 parents by Finder, nearly a third reported financial difficulties. Two percent of the participating families said their children would be forced to go without basic supplies this year at school. Another 4 percent said their children would have to make do with last year’s supplies, 8 percent said they would have to purchase secondhand items or rely on hand-me-downs, and 15 percent said they would be forced to go into debt.

Cindy Eldridge, a single parent receiving support from the Smith Family, told the Herald Sun: “It brings you down. Sometimes I’ve gotta pick between am I getting my son’s school uniform this week or am I going to eat properly this week?”

“It’s hard trying to differ between the kids’ needs. One day I actually had to go to food banks just so the kids could have what they needed for school… I shouldn’t have to decide on whether my kids can eat lunch at the park or have everything they need for school.”

Working-class households should not have to rely on charity to access public education. Public education, like public healthcare and decent housing, is a fundamental social right, fought for by generations of workers and their families.

It is an indictment of the federal Labor government and all state governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, that working-class families are being forced to the financial brink just to try to ensure that their children receive an adequately resourced public education.

Since scraping into office in May 2022, promising a “better future,” the Labor government has pursued a pro-corporate agenda of cuts to both real wages and social spending. At the same time, the Labor government backed repeated interest rate hikes by the Reserve Bank of Australia, driving up home mortgage repayments and rents.

The new funding model for schools recently implemented by the Albanese government, the so-called Better and Fairer Schools Act, will entrench the systemic underfunding of public schools. It allows for only a nominal increase of $16 billion in federal government spending for public education over the next 10 years. This is a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed to address the years of neglect and under-resourcing that have devastated the public education system.

The Australian Education Union (AEU) has responded to the back-to-school financial crisis by reporting that teachers are feeling compelled to pitch in from their own wages to supply basic equipment or financially assist their students who come from low-income families.

Yet the same AEU bureaucracy has played the most critical role in imposing regressive industrial agreements on teachers’ wages and conditions, while refusing to mount any struggle against the diversion of funding by governments away from public education and into the private sector.

Major reduction in Fed’s US growth forecast

Nick Beams

The US Federal Reserve made a sharp downward revision in its forecast for US economic growth this year at its meeting yesterday amid what chair Jerome Powell referred to as “high uncertainty” surrounding the effect of the economic policies of the Trump administration.

A news conference by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is displayed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. [AP Photo/Seth Wenig]

Projections by Fed officials cut the growth forecast for this year to 1.7 percent from the 2.1 percent forecast last December, a significant reduction. They also forecast a rise in the Fed’s measure of inflation from 2.5 percent to 2.7 percent with the main reason being the tariff increases so far and the threat of more to come.

Powell said it was not possible to separate out the causes of the elevation but a “good part” of it was coming from tariffs and “there may be a delay in further progress” in bringing inflation down to the Fed’s target of 2 percent.

In his prepared remarks he said the new administration was implementing “significant changes” in trade, immigration, fiscal policy and regulation which would matter for the economy and monetary policy. “[U]ncertainty around the changes and their effects on the economic outlook is high.”

The Fed, as expected, decided to hold interest rates at their present level while projecting two cuts by the end of the year.

It also decided to slow the pace of its balance sheet reduction from $25 billion a month to $5 billion because of “some signs of tightness in money markets.” The Fed wants to avoid the situation which developed in September 2019, when an earlier rundown of its Treasury bond holdings led to a major spike in interest rates in the ultra-short term repo market that required its intervention.

The meeting was held amid a major shift in economic prospects. The year began with expectation that “American exceptionalism”—a growth rate higher than other major economies and an elevated stock market—would continue. Three months later the economic landscape has dramatically shifted.

Recession, which was then regarded as a negligible risk, is now a real prospect. Consumer spending is down, consumer confidence is falling, business planning and investment decisions have become more difficult because of tariff uncertainty and the effect of government spending cuts, and the stock market is down around 10 percent from its high of a month ago.

And in a sign of longer-term concerns about the stability of the US financial system and the position of the dollar, the price of gold continues to reach record highs.

The sharp downturn in the US economy and the impact of uncertainty over Trump’s policies was highlighted by a survey of leading economists conducted by the Financial Times (FT), published earlier this week.

The median forecast for US growth from the 49 economists surveyed was 1.6 percent this month, down from 2.3 percent in a survey conducted in December and a marked reduction from the growth rate of 2.8 percent for 2024.

The extent of the transformation in the US economic outlook was highlighted by economist Robert Barbera of Johns Hopkins University.

“Tariffs, tax cuts, government employment and expenditure cuts, assaults on education funding and [Fed] independence all are in play. Nothing of this sort has been in play in my 50 years of forecasting,” he said.

Karen Dynan, a professor at Harvard University, said while economists had struggled in the past to find evidence of how uncertainty affected the economy, it was “so high now that it seems likely to reduce investment. How much will depend on how long it persists.”

After he went to the election pledging his policies would produce a new “golden age,” Trump and members of his administration are now touting the benefits of a recession.

In an interview with Fox News last Sunday week, Trump refused to rule it out, saying there was a “period of transition.” He was followed two days later by commerce secretary Howard Lutnick who told CBS News that Trump’s policies were “worth it” even if they led to a recession.

The Trump agenda of economic war against the rest of the world and the working class at home is starting to impact on the global economy with the OECD, the grouping of more than 30 major economies, warning it would slow global growth this year and next.

“The message is clearly that trade uncertainty and economic policy uncertainty are having a significant toll,” OECD chief economist Álvaro Pereira told the FT.

It cut the growth forecast for 12 of the G20 group, with the largest falls in Canada and Mexico as a result of tariff hikes. The growth forecast for Canada for this year and next was more than halved to just 0.7 percent, while Mexico is now predicted to fall into recession this year and contract by 1.3 percent.

And the tariff war has only just begun.

Anxious to try to avoid any conflict with the Trump administration, Powell, while forced to refer to tariffs in his remarks, did not utter a word about the April 2 deadline set by Trump for the unleashing of his so-called “reciprocal tariff” agenda.

The basis of this plan is that the US will impose retaliatory measures not just against tariffs on its goods but in response to any policies of other countries which it deems to be inimical to the profit interests of US corporations. This could include measures such as the value added tax in Europe, regulations on the high-tech social media giants as well as the pharmaceutical benefits scheme in Australia.

Apart from the effect on the real economy, the OECD warned that a resurgence of inflation as a result of tariff increases, which by their very nature are inflationary, could trigger a “rapid repricing” in financial markets.

In his press conference Powell maintained that while it might take longer, the inflation rate was trending down, implying that the effect of Trump’s tariffs was transitory. He was reminded by one questioner that the last time the Fed had put forward such a claim was during the pandemic price hikes.

They were the start of an inflation cycle, the highest for 40 years, which continues to impact on the wages and living standards of millions. Powell tried to bat away the question by maintaining that the current circumstances were very different.

Evidence of potential financial turbulence warned of by the OECD emerged this week in a closely watched survey conducted by the Bank of America (BofA) of major investment firms. They made their “biggest ever” cut in allocations to US equity markets.

The drop was 40 percentage points as the surveyed firms went from 17 percent overweight in US equities in February to 23 percent underweight in March. The turnaround was the largest since the fall in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

Elyas Galou, senior investment strategist at the BofA, said that at the beginning of the year investors were all “raging bulls” on the US but this had now changed “significantly.”

Eduardo Bolsonaro Flees Brazil

Brian Mier

Eduardo Bolsonaro with then-U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, 30 August 2019. Photo: White House.

Brazilian Liberal Party lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of indicted former President Jair Bolsonaro and South American representative for CPAC, took a leave of absence from Congress today and announced he will remain in the United States to escape “political persecution” and pressure U.S. officials to impose sanctions against Alexandre de Moraes—one of Brazil’s 11 Supreme Court Ministers—in an attempt to keep his father out of jail.

It is no secret that Eduardo Bolsonaro has been close to Steve Bannon and other key figures in Donald Trump’s circle since 2018. Similarities in billionaire-funded social media tactics used by Trump and the Bolsonaros are living testament to this, and the closeness that Eduardo has to leaders of the American far right is also demonstrated by his presence at the January 5, 2021, “war council” meeting in Washington, hosted by Mike Lindell on the eve of the U.S. Capitol invasion.

On February 18, 2025, Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office issued a formal indictment of former President Jair Bolsonaro and 32 of his cronies for the crimes of attempting a violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law, attempting a coup d’état, and forming an armed criminal organization.

Eduardo Bolsonaro immediately swung into action, contacting friends in the Republican Party and private sector alike. The next day, Rumble and Truth Social filed a frivolous lawsuit against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who was in charge of the investigation against his father. On February 24, Republican Congressman Rich McCormick released a public letter to President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in which he called for punitive actions against Moraes, including “Magnitsky sanctions, immediate visa bans, and economic penalties.”

On February 27, Workers’ Party Congressmen Lindbergh Farias and Rogério Correia filed a criminal complaint with the Attorney General’s Office against Eduardo Bolsonaro for conspiring against Brazil with members of a foreign government.

“The individual in question, completely disconnected from reality and acting against Brazil’s national interests, is encouraging a foreign government to impose retaliatory measures against his own country and one of the justices of the Supreme Federal Court,” reads a section of the complaint. Judging him a probable flight risk due to his network of connections in the American far right, they requested that the Federal Police confiscate his passport. Time has proven them correct, but the police did not act quickly enough.

On March 13, the net began to tighten around Jair Bolsonaro as the Attorney General’s Office officially upheld the indictment against Bolsonaro and his cronies, after a procedural period in which they were allowed to present their defense arguments. The Supreme Court then set March 25 as the date for the final review of evidence before formally setting a trial date.

This put Eduardo Bolsonaro in a quandary. With a complaint already filed against him for illegally abusing the power of his office to lobby for intervention in Brazil’s internal affairs by a foreign government—a crime so serious that, in theory, it could result in charges of treason—he had to choose between keeping his position as Congressman and complying with national security laws, or renouncing and moving to Florida, like so many right-wing Latin American politicians before him.

Bolsonaro is claiming his leave will be temporary, but going on leave of absence will not shield him from criminal prosecution for abuse of authority, crimes against the judiciary, and violation of national security laws. Like all Members of Congress, he enjoys a certain level of parliamentary immunity, but can still be investigated and tried by the same Supreme Court that he has been publicly attacking for the past five years. So if, as he announced on his social media today, his plan is to stay in the U.S. to find some way to “punish Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes,” he will probably have to stay there for a long time. The question is, how much damage can he do to Brazil’s national sovereignty while he’s up there?