Pakistan warns Indian military strike “imminent,” as tensions between South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers flare

Rohantha De Silva

Indian paramilitary soldiers patrol as they guard at a busy market in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Tuesday, April 29, 2025 [AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan]

Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif warned Monday that an Indian military strike on his country is “imminent,” adding that Islamabad would respond with tactical or strategic nuclear weapons only if “there is a direct threat to our existence.”

Asif’s claim of an imminent attack was amplified by Pakistan Information Minister Attaullah Tarar late Tuesday. He said there was “verified intelligence indicating that India intends to carry out a military operation against Pakistan” within the next 24-36 hours.

Tarar went on to vow that Pakistan would respond to any Indian attack in kind, raising the spectre of a rapid descent into all-out war between the two countries. “Any military adventurism from India will receive a certain and decisive response,” declared Tarar. “The international community must recognise that responsibility for any catastrophic escalation will rest solely with India. The people of Pakistan will defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity at all costs.”

Tensions between South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers have been aboil since India’s government, led by the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), blamed Pakistan for a brutal April 23 terrorist attack near Pahalgam in Indian-held Kashmir that killed 26 tourists.

New Delhi has offered no proof for its claim of Pakistani state involvement in the Pahalgam atrocity, and has rejected out of hand Islamabad’s calls for an international investigation into the attack.

Instead, the Indian government has taken a series of provocative “reprisals,” and given every indication that it is preparing a cross-border strike on Pakistan—potentially even larger than those it mounted in 2016 and 2019, after similarly holding Pakistan responsible for the actions of Islamist insurgents in Indian-held Kashmir.

In recent days, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior government leaders have made repeated threats against Pakistan, pledging to smite the “masters of terror” and the “organizers,” not just perpetrators of terrorism, without directly naming the country.

Meanwhile, in the name of “hunting militants,” Indian security forces have launched a campaign of mass repression in Kashmir so harsh and indiscriminate that even pro-Indian politicians from the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) National Conference and the J&K People’s Democratic Party have been forced to criticize it.

On Tuesday, according to a Press Trust of India source, Modi gave India’s armed forces complete “operational freedom” to determine the “mode, targets, and timing” of India’s response to the April 22 attack, at a meeting with the heads of the country’s national-security establishment. Those said to have participated in the meeting include Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan, and the heads of the army, navy and air force.

Pakistan is likewise preparing its military for combat. Speaking with Reuters on Monday, Defence Minister Asif said Islamabad had placed its forces on high alert and implemented measures to counter and respond to an Indian attack. “We have reinforced our forces because it is something which is imminent now. In that situation, some strategic decisions must be taken, so those decisions have been taken.” Indicating the state of tensions and the possibility of an Indian strike triggering a cascade of escalating tit-for-tat military reprisals, Asif went on to raise the issue of what threat level would trigger a Pakistani resort to its nuclear arsenal.

Every night since last Thursday has seen what is described as cross-border small arms fire along parts of the Line of Control (LOC). The LOC is the boundary that demarcates Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistan-occupied Azad Kashmir, pending final resolution of their competing claims to all the territories of the former British Indian princely state of Kashmir.

On Tuesday, Pakistan’s military boasted it had shot down an Indian quadcopter surveillance drone along the LOC, “thwarting a violation of its airspace.” It has also seized an Indian Border Security Force soldier who reportedly strayed across the LOC while accompanying local farmers who were tending to their crops.

The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and more broadly power and influence in South Asia is a reactionary conflict between rival capitalist powers. Its roots lie in the communal partition of South Asia into an avowedly Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu India in 1947-48.

With the aim of securing geostrategic and economic advantages and as a means of directing class tensions outward and dividing the workers and toilers through the incitement of communalism, the capitalist elites of Indian and Pakistan have perpetuated the conflict over the past eight decades. Untold human and material resources have been squandered in multiple wars, declared and undeclared, and numerous border skirmishes and war crises, and in procuring and developing armaments, including, since the late 1990s, nuclear weapons.

The BJP government, aided and abetted by the corporate media and the opposition parties, is using the Pahalgam atrocity to whip up bellicose nationalism, stoke communal reaction and launch fresh attacks on democratic rights.

Right-wing Hindu organizations that enjoy the patronage of the governing BJP have launched attacks on Kashmiri students studying elsewhere in India, forcing hundreds to flee to their native region. On Tuesday Modi met with Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the Hindu supremacist RSS, reportedly to discuss India’s response to the Pahalgam attack. The BJP is an offshoot of the RSS, which has a long bloody record of communalist incitement.

When the head of a major Indian farmers’ organization voiced opposition to India’s provocative announcement that for the first time ever it is suspending its participation in the Indus Water Treaty, because it would harm Pakistani farmers, he was widely pilloried, with a BJP leader accusing him of “speaking the language of Pakistan.”

On Monday, the government cut off access to more than a dozen mainstream Pakistani YouTube media channels, including Dawn News and Geo News, on the grounds they were airing “provocative content” and “misinformation on India, its Army, and security agencies.”

Last Thursday, the leading Stalinist party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, participated in an all-party meeting convened by the BJP to help stampede the population behind its exploitation of the terrorist attack to whip up reaction and launch military action against Pakistan. The CPM has criticized none of New Delhi’s “retaliatory” actions against Pakistan, including the expulsion of all Pakistani nationals in India save diplomatic personnel, and the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty, which threatens, especially over the longer term, Pakistan’s access to water vital for its power grid and irrigation.

Over the past two decades, the India-Pakistan conflict has become ever more entwined with that between US imperialism and China, adding a massive new charge to both.

Washington’s drive to build up India as a counterweight to China, which has included granting India a raft of strategic favours, has upset the balance of power, or more appropriately balance of terror, between New Delhi and Islamabad.

This has emboldened India to try to effectively change the rules of the game in its relationship with Pakistan, with the aim of asserting itself as the regional hegemon. Like its US and Israeli allies, New Delhi has asserted the “right” to stage illegal cross-border attacks on Pakistan. When it did so in 2016 and 2019, it received Washington’s backing under Obama and then Trump.

Pakistan has responded by doubling down on its “all weather” strategic partnership with China, further straining relations with India and the US.

In 2019, the Modi government sought to strengthen its grip over Jammu and Kashmir and its hand against both China and Pakistan by illegally abolishing the Muslim-majority territory’s special autonomous constitutional status and reducing it from a state to a central government-controlled Union Territory. At the same time, it spun off Ladakh, which borders Chinese-controlled Aksai Chin, from Jammu and Kashmir, so as to facilitate the region’s militarization.

On Tuesday, China for the second straight day expressed alarm about the heightened tensions between India and Pakistan.

While Iran and Saudi Arabia have sought to engage both sides, and the United Nations and European Union have called for restraint and dialogue, Washington has said next to nothing, and is certainly not intervening to restrain its ally India.

Supreme Court bars Trump deportation flights

Patrick Martin

U.S. Supreme Court police officers outside of the Supreme Court, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024, in Washington. [AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana]

In an emergency order issued between midnight and 1 a.m. on Saturday, the US Supreme Court halted an attempt by the Trump administration to ship dozens more Venezuelan migrants to a torture prison in El Salvador under an executive order in which he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The action—rare in both its timing and its evident distrust of the executive branch—led to at least one busload of migrants turning around as it reached the airport in Abilene, Texas and returning to a detention camp run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Just as extraordinary as the late-night issuance of the order was the dissent filed by the two most fascistic justices on the high court, written by Samuel Alito and endorsed by Clarence Thomas. The two denounced the seven-member court majority—which apparently included all three justices nominated by Donald Trump—because they had acted on warnings by the American Civil Liberties Union that the mass deportation was only hours, or even minutes, away. That these warnings were true was apparently of no concern to Alito and Thomas.

A rapid-fire series of legal maneuvers began Wednesday when lawyers for two Venezuelan migrants held at Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas filed habeas corpus motions against deporting their clients, following the procedure laid down by the Supreme Court last week.

Federal Judge James Hendrix, appointed by Trump during his first term, denied the motion the next day, stating he had received assurances in which the government had “answered unequivocally” that it did not intend to deport the two men. Their attorneys appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative in the country, but the appeals court turned them down.

Also Thursday, immigration lawyers learned that a group of more than two dozen Venezuelan migrants had been moved by ICE from all over the country to the Southern District of Texas. They had then been bused to the Bluebonnet facility, in the Northern District of Texas, evidently to evade a restraining order against deportation flights issued in the Southern District.

In a further demonstration of duplicity, ICE gave each migrant a notice, in English only, which many cannot read, declaring that he would be deported immediately. This was an effort to comply with the Supreme Court directive while robbing it of any substance, since the notice did not even inform the migrants that they could file an appeal against their deportation.

On Friday, ACLU lawyers appeared again before Judge Hendrix, but with an unusual request: that the judge issue his ruling, for or against their clients, by no later than 1:30 p.m., so they would have time to appeal it before any deportation flight could take off.

When Hendrix failed to meet this deadline, the lawyers for the migrants filed an appeal with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, with the same declaration of urgency: rule quickly, so that an appeal can be filed with the Supreme Court. The ACLU attorneys then went directly to the Supreme Court, and the court majority took it up, bypassing both the Fifth Circuit and the justice who is assigned to oversee it, Samuel Alito, and acting before the Department of Justice could even file a response on the issue.

Given these circumstances, the decision of the Supreme Court to take up the matter at all, and then to issue an emergency order temporarily stopping the deportation flight until the matter could be considered by the lower courts, is unusual, perhaps unprecedented. The decision was made so rapidly that the order was issued before Alito could finish writing his five-page dissent. He only declared that his dissent would be coming, and published it later in the day.

As Mark Allen Stern, the legal commentator at Slate magazine, observed:

The majority’s decision to wade in straightaway points to a skepticism that the Justice Department was telling the truth. It’s damning, too, that the majority did not even wait for DOJ to file a brief with the court before acting. The only plausible explanation for the court’s order is that a majority feared the government would whisk away the migrants to El Salvador if it did not intervene immediately.

This fear was well-founded. NBC News reported Sunday it had obtained video of several ICE buses full of Venezuelan migrants headed towards Abilene Airport on late Friday evening, about 30 miles from the Bluebonnet Detention Center, with an escort of nearly two dozen police vehicles. The video shows the motorcade passing the Abilene Airport, looping around it, and then returning in the direction of the ICE prison.

“These men were close to spending their lives in a horrific foreign prison without ever having had any due process,” Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU immigration attorney, said after the ruling. “The case has a long way to go. But for now, we are relieved that the court has not allowed the Trump administration to hurry them away in secret.”

The Supreme Court intervention is only a temporary reprieve, even assuming that the Trump administration abides by it. White House officials have already voiced their ire over the ruling, with Trump himself, in a post on Truth Social, sarcastically wishing “Happy Easter” to “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue…”

The Department of Justice filed a motion with the Supreme Court later Saturday asking the justices to lift their own emergency order, but suggesting that, in the interim, the Trump administration wanted to shift the legal basis on which it claimed authority for the deportation flights. It sought to use other anti-immigrant laws, while litigation over the Alien Enemies Act continues.

“The government has agreed not to remove pursuant the AEA those AEA detainees who do file habeas claims,” wrote US Solicitor General D. John Sauer. “This court should dissolve its current administrative stay and allow the lower courts to address the relevant legal and factual questions in the first instance—including the development of a proper factual record.”

This language is remarkable as well, since it effectively admits that the government was prepared to ship dozens of migrants from Venezuela to a prison in a third country, El Salvador, without having provided the necessary legal and factual basis for doing so.

In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S. to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP) [AP Photo]

Moreover, in the most high-profile deportation case, that involving Maryland resident Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration did not make use of the Alien Enemies Act. ICE agents simply seized the immigrant worker, who has lived in the US for half his life and is married to a US citizen with whom he has three children, and put him on one of the earlier deportation flights to El Salvador.

Media attention over the case has focused on the visit by Maryland US Senator Chris Van Hollen to El Salvador, where he was able eventually to meet with Abrego Garcia, confirming for his family that he was alive and healthy.

Van Hollen, a Democrat, was featured on virtually every Sunday morning television interview program, where he denounced the Trump administration’s lawless anti-migrant policy and called the denial of due process for Abrego Garcia a threat to the democratic rights of all Americans, citizens as well as non-citizens.

This is certainly true, but neither the courts nor the Democratic Party should be relied on to defend these rights. The perfidy of the Democrats was indicated, even as Van Hollen was visiting El Salvador, when California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom criticized the focus on Abrego Garcia as “the distraction of the day,” saying that Democrats should instead draw attention to the economic consequences of Trump’s tariff war.

Referring to Trump and the Republicans, Newsom said, “This is the debate they want.” Democrats look like they are “defending MS-13” and “someone who’s out of sight, out of mind in El Salvador.”

Trump’s $40 billion Health and Human Services cuts: A prescription for social devastation

Evan Blake

Donald Trump shakes hands with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a Turning Point Action campaign rally, Wednesday, October 23, 2024 in Duluth, Georgia. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

The Trump administration’s plans to cut $40 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—a staggering reduction of roughly one-third of its discretionary budget—marks an inflection point in the deepening assault on science, public health and the social rights of the working class in the United States and internationally. 

This unprecedented attack on programs which affect the health and well-being of virtually the entire world’s population is a critical component of the fascist program that Trump and his health secretary, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., seek to implement. It is a conscious effort to roll back more than a century of social progress and scientific achievement and will have catastrophic consequences.

The cuts, detailed in an internal memorandum obtained by the Washington Post and published Wednesday night, include the following:

• National Institutes of Health (NIH): Budget slashed from $47 billion to $27 billion—a 40 percent reduction. The number of NIH institutes and centers is to be cut from 27 to eight, with the elimination of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Institute of Nursing Research. Hundreds of research grants, including those on vaccine hesitancy, transgender health and COVID-19, are to be canceled. Thousands of scientists will be laid off, accelerating a mass exodus of expertise from the US.

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Budget cut by 44 percent, from $9.2 billion to $5.2 billion. All chronic disease programs—including those targeting heart disease, obesity, diabetes, domestic HIV care, and smoking cessation—are to be eliminated, exposing Kennedy’s claims to be fighting “America’s chronic disease epidemic” as nothing but hot air. Staff working on drowning prevention, gun violence, worker safety and STD testing have already been laid off. 

• Head Start: Complete elimination of federal funding, cutting off early childhood education and care for 750,000 low-income children. This will devastate working families, particularly in rural areas where Head Start is often the only non-family childcare provider, forcing parents out of the workforce and deepening social inequality. This cut by itself will outrage tens of millions of people whose children have benefited or are benefiting from the program.

• Rural health programs: Elimination of grants for rural hospitals, residency developments and state offices of rural health, threatening to shutter critical access points for millions in rural America. Trump ran up huge vote margins in rural areas during the 2024 election, thanks to the long record of neglect and austerity on the part of Democratic Party administrations. Now he is seeking to outdo all previous administrations in the destruction of rural infrastructure.

• Food and Drug Administration (FDA): Funding set at the bare minimum to allow continued collection of industry fees, threatening the agency’s ability to regulate drug and device safety. The agency is one of those turned over to the control of a right-wing opponent of public health measures to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, Martin Makary.

Coinciding with these massive cuts, which will directly worsen the health of millions of Americans, Kennedy is creating a new $20 billion agency with the Orwellian title “Administration for a Healthy America.” The central purpose of this new agency is to consolidate and eliminate numerous prevention-focused programs, including those for childhood lead poisoning, healthcare workforce development and ALS patient registries. Funding for policy and research will be tightly controlled by Kennedy, who is launching initiatives that will serve as vehicles for anti-scientific, eugenicist policies.

These cuts are not “cost-saving” measures, as claimed by the White House. They represent a deliberate, fascistic effort to destroy the infrastructure of scientific research and public health that underpins modern society. The aim is to return the working class to conditions of social misery and industrial exploitation not seen since the 19th century.

The HHS cuts were revealed just two weeks after Kennedy imposed the layoffs of over 20,000 HHS workers, roughly a quarter of the federal public health workforce. These included 80 percent of staff at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is responsible for workplace safety and disease monitoring, and the gutting of agencies tracking infectious diseases, monitoring chemical exposures, enforcing food and drug safety, and more.

At the same time, the administration has imposed gag orders on scientific agencies, erased public health data from thousands of government websites and elevated anti-science quacks like Jay Bhattacharya to positions of power. The CDC and NIH, once global leaders in disease prevention, have been crippled. The US has withdrawn from the World Health Organization (WHO), and the PEPFAR program—which provides life-saving HIV/AIDS treatment to over 20 million people in low-income countries—faces elimination.

On the same day that the HHS cuts were revealed, Nature published the results of recent modeling which underscores the vast global ramifications of these policies. The study found that if the United States were to end all global health funding—including for HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and maternal and child health programs—an estimated 25 million people would die preventable deaths over the next 15 years. These include 15 million from HIV/AIDS alone, due to the cutoff of PEPFAR funding, and over 7 million child deaths from other causes.

The model projects that by 2040, HIV deaths would surge by over 50 percent and tuberculosis infections would rise by 69 million worldwide. Even partial cuts, such as maintaining only HIV treatment programs, would still result in millions of additional deaths and a catastrophic reversal of decades of public health progress. 

Furthermore, the dismantling of pandemic surveillance and response programs, including the CDC’s Global Health Center and the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, means that the US and world population are now flying blind in the face of growing threats like H5N1 “bird flu.” Both Kennedy and USDA head Brooke Rollins have openly floated a proposal to allow bird flu to spread unchecked on poultry farms, risking the emergence of a strain capable of human-to-human transmission.

The Trump-Kennedy war on science represents a continuation and deepening of the criminal policies of the Biden administration, which normalized mass infection and the abandonment of public health during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Both capitalist parties have subordinated science and social needs to the interests of the corporate-financial oligarchy, paving the way for today’s unbridled social counterrevolution.

The trade union bureaucracies, in particular the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), have done nothing to oppose these attacks on science and the working class. Instead they have stifled the enormous opposition of rank-and-file public health workers, isolating them and allowing them to be fired en masse. The defense of science, public health and social rights cannot be entrusted to these reactionary bureaucrats.

Social Security to mark immigrants as dead to force them to “self-deport”

Marc Wells

A father and son in San Juan, Texas [AP Photo/Eric Gay]

In one of the most ruthless assaults on immigrant workers in American history, the Trump administration has launched a policy that weaponizes the Social Security Administration’s “Death Master File” to erase the legal existence of thousands of living people.

This is not mere administrative cruelty. It is a campaign of financial assassination, designed to strip immigrant workers of their livelihoods, sever their access to essential services, and force them to “self-deport” through economic strangulation.

The list already includes over 6,300 individuals, and officials admit it will likely expand. Among them are minors and individuals with no criminal record. While the administration claims these people are “suspected criminals” or “terrorists,” even internal agency staff have found no evidence to support those allegations. These are workers who have paid into Social Security, Medicaid and unemployment insurance programs now used as weapons against them.

The scheme targets immigrants who were granted temporary legal status under the Biden administration, a status that carried no path to citizenship and no permanent protection, only the illusion of security until the political winds shifted. Trump has already started revoking their temporary status.

Their real “crime” was allowing themselves to be registered and tracked in federal databases built by Democratic administrations, which have long relied on immigrant labor while denying them lasting political rights or protections.

Now, under Trump, these records have been repurposed into a purge list.

Through this sinister manipulation, the government has begun reclassifying living immigrants as “dead,” transferring their names and Social Security numbers into a system meant for the deceased. The consequences are catastrophic: without a valid Social Security number, one cannot legally work, open a bank account, sign a lease, access healthcare or claim any benefit. In the eyes of the financial system, they cease to exist.

The government’s intent is clear: dismantle the Social Security system as part of its attacks on fundamental past gains such as Medicare, Medicaid and other vital social programs. It starts by erasing these immigrants on paper and forcing them out of the country by depriving them of every means of survival after years of exploiting their labor.

As Leland Dudek, Trump’s acting commissioner of Social Security, admitted in an internal email, the financial lives of these immigrants will be “terminated.”

Martin O’Malley, Social Security commissioner under Biden, said, “It’s tantamount to financial murder.”

There is no due process, no hearing, no appeal before one’s life is wiped from the records. And getting off the death list is no simple matter. As former Social Security Administration (SSA) official Marcela Escobar-Alava noted:

“There’s a whole ‘I’m not dead’ routine... but the centers are backlogged.”

Staffing cuts have only deepened that backlog, leaving thousands trapped in legal limbo. 

But this attack did not appear from nowhere. It stands on the shoulders of decades of bipartisan reaction.

Under Bill Clinton, border militarization and punitive immigration laws were expanded. The Obama administration perfected the digital architecture that made this atrocity possible, building mass surveillance systems, registration pipelines and legal frameworks that funneled immigrant workers into the machinery of deportation. Despite his “progressive” facade, Obama earned the title “deporter-in-chief,” overseeing the forced removal of more immigrants than any other president in US history.

Biden extended these policies under more “humane” branding. Programs like the CBP One app and humanitarian parole created vast registries of immigrant workers, funneled into low-wage jobs while awaiting permanent status that was never offered. These workers paid taxes, contributed to Social Security, and enriched American society—only to be left completely exposed when the political calculations shifted.

Now Trump, inheriting these lists, has flipped a bureaucratic switch and declared them dead.

To justify this grotesque act, the administration has fallen back on the well-worn rhetoric of “law and order.” Trump and his mouthpieces, including the corporate media, have painted immigrant workers as criminals, rapists, terrorists, and freeloaders.

Internal agency reports confirm that most of the people targeted have no criminal history at all. The lists have been compiled so recklessly they even include minors, some as young as 13.

The real “crime,” in the eyes of the capitalist state, is not violence or fraud—it is being poor, foreign-born and a member of the working class.

This scapegoating is a classic feature of capitalism in crisis. As social inequality deepens and economic instability spreads, the ruling class turns to repression and nationalism to deflect working class anger. Immigrants, marginalized and politically weakened by legal status, become the most convenient targets, used to distract attention from the real architects of the crisis.

While immigrant workers are being declared “dead,” the true parasites—the financial oligarchy—continue to plunder society with impunity.

Donald Trump has built his fortune on tax fraud, wage theft and financial scams. Elon Musk, now actively shaping immigration enforcement policy, spreads conspiracy theories about immigrants “stealing benefits” while personally profiting from billions in government subsidies.

These men produce nothing. It is immigrant workers—alongside their native-born brothers and sisters—who create the wealth that the ruling class seizes. They clean hospitals, deliver goods, build homes, care for children and harvest food. Their labor sustains the world. The billionaires feed off it.

This attack is not an isolated policy but part of a sweeping assault on democratic rights. The same apparatus of state repression that targets immigrant workers is being deployed against students, young people and anyone perceived as politically oppositional. Students like Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal and Rumeysa Ozturk are only a few among many. 

The campaign to erase immigrant workers from economic life is part of a broader offensive against the entire working class. Once normalized, these tools of control will expand, targeting dissent, slashing social protections and undermining labor rights for all.

IRS to slash 40 percent of workforce as deadline passes for agencies to plan cuts

Tom Hall

Just one day after the April 15 federal income tax filing deadline, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revealed plans for massive workforce reductions, according to internal documents obtained by FNN and Politico. The agency is preparing to shrink its staff from around 100,000 to between 60,000 and 70,000 employees.

Protesters rally in Los Angeles against the Trump administration's attacks on the Constitution and federal workers, March 22, 2025.

This move is part of a far-reaching campaign by the Trump administration to gut the federal workforce and dismantle essential public institutions. Agencies not directly tied to military-intelligence apparatus, domestic and border policing, or the increasing of corporate profits are being targeted for destruction. Over 70,000 federal employees have already accepted voluntary buyouts, and tens of thousands more are expected to be laid off in the coming months.

At the IRS, over 20,000 have already taken buyouts. Internal memos make clear that these cuts are being made with full awareness of their impact. One such memo stated, “taxpayer services and compliance will need to be trimmed,” a clear signal that enforcement against wealthy tax cheats will be scaled back.

An IRS worker, speaking anonymously to the World Socialist Web Site, described the consequences of the cuts:

The cuts will have a profound impact on tax enforcement, which will make it easier for millionaire and billionaire tax cheats to avoid detection. Millionaires and billionaires tend to have very complicated transaction structures and can have tax returns well over a hundred pages long. They will no doubt be the primary beneficiaries of these cuts.

The worker went on to explain that the cuts will likely lead to a broader fiscal crisis:

This will most likely force the government to make up the shortfall from the rest of the population. Presumably the administration plans to do this through tariffs, which, unlike income taxes, are not progressive. Billionaires and the poor all pay the same amount for the higher cost of goods resulting from tariffs. Another outcome will be poor customer service and the wasteful payment of more fraudulent subsidies, the IRS pays out a lot of subsidies, since there will be fewer people monitoring things.

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents IRS employees, warned in a statement to The Hill that enforcement is being specifically targeted:

Roughly 70 percent of the personnel cuts thus far have been in enforcement, which will make it easier to avoid detection for the millionaire and billionaire tax cheats who evade an estimated $150 billion in taxes every year. It is estimated that every dollar cut from enforcement costs five to nine dollars in revenue. So if Musk tries to cut $10 billion from IRS enforcement spending, he will be risking $50-90 billion in lost revenue each year

In other words, the entire purpose of the layoffs is to facilitate tax fraud by the wealthy and eliminate the programs their taxes help fund.

While tax enforcement is being slashed, sweeping cuts to social spending are underway. The Trump administration is backing $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid and roughly $230 billion from food stamps. On top of this, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is proposing to cut $40 billion in mandatory spending, which would inevitably include cuts to federal worker pensions and healthcare.

Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” which spearheading attacks on the federal workforce, is also demanding direct access to tax records for every American. This massive privacy violation would enable the White House to use tax records to facilitate roundups and other repressive measures against immigrants and political opponents of the regime.

This measure, aimed at establishing a presidential dictatorship, has prompted a wave of resignations of top IRS officials, including two acting IRS commissioners since Trump took office. The agency’s chief information officer also announced just before the April 15 filing deadline plans to step down at the end of the month.

According to the Associated Press, the administration is also attempting to eliminate the IRS Direct File system—a free e-filing option for ordinary taxpayers. By undermining this system, the government seeks to make the filing process more difficult and increase profits for private tax preparers.

Latest round of cuts

The layoffs at the IRS are only one part of a much broader purge of the federal workforce. April 14 was the deadline for all federal agencies to submit “reductions in force” (RIF) plans for the second round of layoffs. According to the New York Times, there have been at least 56,230 confirmed job cuts and about 76,100 employees who have taken buyouts, with a further 146,320 or more being currently planned. This is approximately equal to 10 percent of the total federal workforce.

Other recent cuts include:

• Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): 20,000 workers are being eliminated through a mix of layoffs and buyouts. The CDC and FDA are each losing about 20 percent of their staff. Two-thirds of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has been eliminated.

• Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): Up to 50 percent of staff are being laid off; some areas may lose as much as 75 percent.

• Department of Veterans Affairs (VA): Over 1,000 probationary workers have been dismissed, including researchers working on mental health, cancer, addiction, and prosthetics.

• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): 388 employees have been terminated.

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): 880 employees have been laid off, including workers from the National Hurricane Center and Storm Prediction Center, making the country more vulnerable to severe death and destruction from extreme weather.

• Department of Energy (DOE): 1,200–2,000 layoffs affecting the National Nuclear Security Administration and other critical areas.

• AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC): Over 2,000 volunteers have dismissed due to “programmatic circumstances beyond your control,” the agency said in a memo. This decision impacts disaster relief and community service projects nationwide.

At the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), staffing cuts have been so severe that the agency was forced to hire dozens of contractors just to manage travel and scheduling for inspectors after the entire travel operations division was laid off at the start of the month. The move threatens to cripple in-person inspections of the food supply and even strand inspectors who were out in the field at the time of the cuts.

Despite the severity of these attacks, federal unions like the NTEU have taken no serious action. Upholding anti-democratic laws which ban federal workers from striking, their response has been limited to letters and statements, even as the administration tears up union contracts through executive orders. While federal workers are being stripped of their jobs and protections, union officials remain committed to a strategy of appeasement and legal appeals.

Commonwealth Is Offering The 2025/26 Distance Learning Master’s Scholarships

Application Deadline:

The application deadline is  16:00 GMT on Tuesday, 20 May 2025.

Tell Me About The Commonwealth Distance Learning Masters Scholarships:

The Commonwealth Distance Learning programme is one of three Master’s programmes offered by the Commonwealth Scholarships Commission. The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK (CSC) provides the UK government scholarship scheme led by international development objectives. It operates within the framework of the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship plan (CSFP) and offers a vivid demonstration of the UK’s enduring commitment to the Commonwealth. By attracting individuals with outstanding talent and identifiable potential from all backgrounds and supporting them to become leaders and innovators on returning to their home countries, the CSC’s work combines sustainable development with the UK national interest and provides opportunities for international partnerships and collaboration.

Which Fields are Eligible?

The list of eligible fields can be viewed here. 

Type:

Master’s Degree (Distance Learning) Scholarships 

Who can Apply For The Commonwealth Distance Learning Masters Scholarships?

To be eligible for a Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarship, applicants should:

• Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by an eligible Commonwealth country, or be a British Protected Person.
• Be a permanent resident in a developing Commonwealth country.
• Hold a first degree of at least upper second class (2:1) standard. A lower qualification and sufficient relevant experience may be considered in certain cases.
• Be unable to afford to study the programme without this scholarship.

How are Applicants Selected?

Each participating UK University will conduct its own recruitment process to select a specified number of candidates for Distance Learning Scholarships. Universities must submit their selected candidates to the CSC. The CSC will then confirm that these candidates meet the eligibility criteria for this scheme, and universities will inform candidates of their results.

Selection criteria include:

• Academic merit of the applicant
• Potential impact of the work on the development of the applicant’s home country

Which Countries Are Eligible?

The list of eligible countries can be viewed here.

Where will the Award be Taken?

The programme is delivered by UK universities, but scholars will remain in their home countries while undertaking their studies online.

How Many Awards?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of the Commonwealth Distance Learning Masters Scholarships?

The scholarship benefits include:

• Full tuition fees for approved courses are covered.
• Additional financial assistance may vary depending on the award and personal circumstances.
  For study based in the UK (not applicable to this distance learning programme), benefits may include airfare, visa costs, and a living allowance.

How Long Will the Award Last?

Duration of study 

How to Apply:

• Apply for admission to an approved Master’s course at a participating UK university.
• Submit a separate application for the Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarship using the CSC’s online application system.
• Applicants can apply for multiple courses and universities but may only accept one scholarship offer.

Visit the official application page

Trump says tech tariff exemption only temporary

Nick Beams

After announcing that electronic goods, such as iPhones and semi-conductors, would be exempted from his so-called “reciprocal tariffs,” US president Trump has said they could soon be imposed through another mechanism.

The iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are displayed at the Apple Fifth Avenue store, Friday, Sept. 16, 2022, in New York. [AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura]

Barely 24 hours after announcing the exemption as a result of pressure from Apple and other tech giants, Trump made clear the reprieve was only temporary.

“Nobody is getting ‘off the hook’ for the unfair trade balances, and non-monetary tariff barriers, that other countries have used against us, especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst!” he wrote in a social media post yesterday.

Tariffs on electronic goods are set to be re-imposed as a result of national security investigations into this sector, as well into pharmaceuticals, expected to be concluded within two months.

Expanding on Trump’s social media post, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said: “What he’s doing is he’s saying they’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs. But they’re included in the semi-conductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two.”

Asked if tariffs on iPhones might be imposed, Lutnick replied: “Correct. That’s right … We need our medicines and we need semiconductors to be built in America.”

While the tariffs are completely irrational, if not totally insane, from an economic standpoint, they do have geo-political and military content.

Speaking about the imposition of tariffs on steel in March and the threat against pharmaceuticals, Trump said: “We don’t make pharmaceuticals anymore and if we have problems like wars or anything else, we need steel, we need pharmaceuticals.”

The military dimension of the economic war is virtually excluded from coverage of Trump’s actions in the so-called mainstream media. But it is very present in the documents accompanying the measures which emphasise that “national security,” that is military preparation, is front and centre.

The executive order of April 2, announcing the “reciprocal tariffs,” said the large and persistent “goods trade deficits” had “hollowed out” domestic manufacturing capacity, undermined critical supply chains “and rendered our defense-industrial base dependent on foreign adversaries.”

In all their pronouncements, Trump and his officials continually refer to the “goods trade” deficit, ignoring the fact that in the provision of services the US has a trade surplus. This is because services, such as the design of software and computer programs, while they are vital for the military, do not provide the actual hardware and materiel needed.

Following up on Lutnick’s comments in a further social media post yesterday, Trump emphasised “national security” considerations.

He said the administration would be “taking a look at semi-conductors and the whole electronics supply chain in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.”

The total absurdity of the tariff measures and the utter derangement of Trump officials on the economy was underscored in recent remarks by Lutnick.

“The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America.”

The remarks were so ridiculous that one even must wonder if he was not trying to mock the entire agenda.

In any case it is totally impossible. It has been estimated that an iPhone “made in America” would cost $3500 and that Apple would need at least three years and $30 billion to shift a tenth of its supply chain from Asia back to the US.

It remains to be seen what effect the latest twist in the Trump tariff war will have when markets open today. But the developments last week, particularly in the bond and currency markets where yields on 10-year Treasuries rose sharply and the dollar fell, indicate a growing crisis of confidence in the US financial system.

In a “normally” functioning financial market, US Treasury bonds are a risk-free safe haven in times of turbulence. But as the implications of the Trump economic war sink in, they have become the centre of risk, as reflected in the increase in yield as bond prices fell. The two move in opposite directions.

There are many comments from analysts, bankers and financial executives which underscore the historic nature of what has taken place. Essentially, the entire framework within which the global capitalist system operated in the post-war period has been shattered and cannot be restored.

In remarks reported in the Australian Financial Review, Kathy Jones, the chief fixed income strategist (bond market specialist) at the investment Charles Schwab, said: “The issue facing the markets is a loss of confidence in US policy. The abrupt changes in tariff policy have caused leveraged trades [those based on large amounts of debt] to come undone and sent buyers to the sidelines.”

Bhanu Baweja of the Swiss bank UBS said: “This is so scary. We are re-defining the risk-free rate of the world. If you put volatility in the risk-free rate of the world, it will upend every market.”

There is a myriad of such comments to be found.

Yesterday, the founder of the Bridgewater hedge fund and something of a student of the workings of the global financial system, billionaire Ray Dalio, told the NBC program Meet the Press: “Right now we are at a decision-making point and very close to a recession. And I’m worried about something worse than a recession if this isn’t handled well.”

He said he was concerned about trade disruptions, rising debt and the bringing down of the entire economic and geopolitical structure that had been in place since World War II and the shift from multilateralism to a “unilateral world order in which there’s great conflict.”

In the growing financial turbulence, the very value of money was at stake and that a breakdown in the bond market, combined with international conflict, would bring about disruption to the international monetary system even more severe than president Nixon’s removal of the gold backing from the US dollar in 1971 and the global crisis of 2008.

Fears over the very value of money are reflected in the rising price of gold which is hitting new record highs on almost a daily basis.

The gold price escalation is extremely significant. After the gold backing was removed, the dollar continued to function as world money.

But it has operated as a fiat currency, not backed by gold as real value, but has rested on the economic, political and financial power of the US state.

Today that imperialist state, plunging ever deeper into debt and with a financial system riddled with speculation, parasitism and outright criminal corruption, as graphically revealed in the 2011 Senate report on the 2008 meltdown, is at the very centre of the crisis.

In an earlier interview with the business channel CNBC, Dalio said he agreed with Trump on the problem—rising government debt now at $36 trillion and a growing trade deficit—but was very concerned about the solution. He could offer no viable alternative, however.

In a post on X last week, he called for a trade agreement with China describing it as a “win-win” outcome. But a deal between China and the US to jointly manage the world and prevent it plunging into an economic and financial crisis is impossible.

This is because, whatever short-term agreements may be reached there can be no long-term arrangement because that would involve US imperialism making major concessions to Beijing. All factions of the US ruling class, whatever their tactical differences with Trump, are united in their determination to ensure there is no so-called multipolar world. US hegemony must be maintained at all costs and that means the subordination of China.

What will exactly come out of the wreckage of the entire post-war order remains to be seen. But signs of a division of the globe into three blocs—one centered on the US, one on Europe and one based on China and the so-called BRICS group of countries—are starting to emerge.

It is too early say with any certainty who will line up where. But the fracturing, already underway before Trump arrived on the scene, is becoming ever more palpable and, as in the 1930s when the world was divided in such a way, it points in the direction of war.