Amid new COVID-19 wave, FDA places millions at risk by restricting access to vaccines

Benjamin Mateus

Martin Makary testifies before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Capitol Hill Thursday, March 6, 2025, in Washington. [AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana]

In a significant shift in COVID-19 vaccination policy, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced plans this week to limit access to future vaccine doses in the United States. Under the new regulatory framework, outlined by FDA officials Drs. Vinay Prasad and Martin A. Makary in the New England Journal of Medicine, annual COVID-19 booster shots will primarily be available to older adults—typically those over 65—and to individuals aged 6 months and older with underlying medical conditions that put them at high risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes.

This policy marks a major departure from previous policy. It is being promoted as a way to further normalize the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and treat SARS-CoV-2 as just another respiratory virus among the many that sicken the population each year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines eligible high-risk conditions broadly, including obesity, mental health conditions like depression, asthma, cancer, heart disease and diabetes. FDA officials estimate that, under the new strategy, between 100 million and 200 million Americans—roughly 30 to 60 percent of the US population—will remain eligible for vaccines. However, this framework would leave many healthy Americans, including younger adults and children, potentially ineligible for routine vaccination, despite the risks posed by Long COVID, which affects 4-10 percent of the US population. Roughly 1 in 10 adults who have had COVID-19 develop this debilitating condition.

For healthy individuals between 6 months and 64 years old without risk factors, the FDA now requires randomized, controlled trial data evaluating clinical outcomes before granting Biologics License Applications for vaccines in this group. This demand for more robust evidence exceeds previous authorization processes for updated boosters, which often relied on immunogenicity data.

In their NEJM article, Prasad and Makary cynically argue that these policy changes aim to prevent further declines in immunization rates caused by eroding public trust in vaccination. They reference declining MMR vaccination rates for measles, correctly noting that these vaccines are safe and protective. However, they do not acknowledge that mistrust in vaccines has been fueled by the very individuals and institutions now shaping public health policy, who have promoted conspiracies and alternative treatments instead of sound scientific advice.

Prasad and Makary themselves have a well-documented history of undermining public health measures and promoting pseudoscientific positions. Both have been outspoken critics of previous FDA policies, with Prasad labeling the agency a “failure” and calling annual COVID-19 boosters “a public health disaster the likes of which we’ve never seen before.” Makary, meanwhile, has repeatedly minimized the dangers of COVID-19, falsely predicting the pandemic would be “mostly gone” by April 2021, and has lent credibility to the Wuhan Lab Lie conspiracy theory, despite a lack of supporting evidence.

Their rhetoric mirrors that of the anti-vaccine movement, recycling arguments long used by opponents of science-based medicine. During the pandemic, Prasad in particular became a prominent critic of mask mandates, lockdowns and efforts to speed the deployment of vaccines, aligning himself with reactionary figures and platforms that have consistently opposed effective public health interventions.

Neither Makary nor Prasad are experts in infectious diseases or vaccinology, yet they have maneuvered themselves into positions of authority over the nation’s vaccine policy. Their approach is not rooted in advancing public health but in furthering a right-wing agenda that seeks to dismantle the very infrastructure needed to respond to a global health crisis. Their NEJM article, which claims to defend “public trust,” is a smokescreen for policies that will deepen vaccine hesitancy and leave the population exposed to preventable illness and death.

The policy shift comes as COVID-19 continues to cause significant morbidity and mortality across the US and internationally, with an estimated 30,000-50,000 people having died from COVID-19 in the US since last October. 

Recent CDC data shows that more than 300 people died each week from COVID-19 last month, down from nearly 1,000 weekly deaths in January. However, the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative reports weekly excess deaths at 600 to 1,100—a figure 2-4 times higher than the CDC’s weekly death toll. Wastewater surveillance indicates that about 250,000 people are contracting COVID-19 daily. Health authorities expect another wave of infections in July or August, followed by a winter surge.

While the FDA restricts vaccine access and may slow the approval process for future vaccines in healthy populations, the virus continues to evolve. The LP.8.1 strain, a descendant of the JN.1 variant, is currently dominant in the US, accounting for 70 percent of cases in early May. 

Meanwhile, new variants are emerging elsewhere. The NB.1.8.1 variant is linked to a large surge in China and is rising in parts of Asia. Hong Kong has reported COVID-19 rates not seen in at least a year, with a significant increase in emergency room visits and hospitalizations. Taiwan has also reported more severe cases and deaths, prompting officials to stockpile vaccines and antiviral treatments. The CDC has detected NB.1.8.1 cases in the US among international travelers and through local health authorities in several states.

Scientists are raising concerns about NB.1.8.1. A preprint study led by Yunlong Cao found that NB.1.8.1 has a growth advantage over the previously dominant LP.8.1.1. Preliminary data suggest that while NB.1.8.1 may not evade the immune system better than other rising strains, it binds more effectively to human cells, indicating it could be more transmissible. The study notes that NB.1.8.1 demonstrates a “balanced profile of ACE2 binding and immune evasion, supporting its potential for future prevalence.”

The vaccine policy shift aligns with broader fascistic attacks on science and public health by the Trump administration, whose Health and Human Services (HHS) department has declared the pandemic “over” and replaced the federal COVID-19 resource hub with a website promoting the Wuhan Lab Lie theory.

Many public health officials view these actions as part of a push to normalize the virus and dismantle public health infrastructure, despite ongoing viral mutation and public health impact. Requiring lengthy clinical trials for previously tested vaccines is seen by experts as a barrier to using life-saving treatments. Given the virus’s rapid mutation, a vaccine based on an earlier strain could become obsolete by the time trials are completed, wasting valuable resources.

Amid these policy changes and the emergence of new variants, the leadership of key US health institutions is cementing policies that will undermine scientific research and public health preparedness.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), now led by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a health economist rather than a virologist, has become a focal point for these concerns. Bhattacharya has played a prominent role in the administration’s efforts to restrict research funding and promote quack theories.

At his first staff town hall on Monday, Bhattacharya promoted the Wuhan Lab Lie, claiming the NIH may have funded research that caused the pandemic. Bhattacharya stated, “It’s possible that the pandemic was caused by research conducted by human beings, and it is also possible that the NIH partly sponsored that research.” He added, “I’ve looked at the scientific evidence and I believe it,” endorsing the lab leak theory. 

These anti-scientific statements prompted a walkout of dozens of NIH staffers, who were applauded by many of their remaining colleagues, indicating the growing opposition among NIH and other public health workers.

NIH staff members walking out of meeting after Jay Bhattacharya endorsed the Wuhan Lab Lie, May 19, 2025 [Photo: Clip in Important Context article]

Bhattacharya’s support for the Wuhan Lab Lie is longstanding. He was part of Biosafety Now, a group that opposed gain-of-function research and called for the retraction of papers supporting a natural origin. He also co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a “herd immunity” strategy through widespread infection. His embrace of the lab leak theory has always aimed to provide a pretext for attacking perceived enemies and dismantling public health infrastructure.

Under Bhattacharya’s leadership, the NIH has seen significant cuts and restructuring. Thousands of staff have been laid off or induced to leave. Over 2,500 grant applications have been rejected, more than 800 existing grants terminated and research funds frozen. The administration has proposed a 37 percent cut to the NIH budget for 2026. Funding categories for increasing vaccine uptake and training diverse researchers have been discontinued. Research into Long COVID and next-generation vaccines has been cut or terminated. Bhattacharya himself stated he signed off on cutting over $1.8 billion in research grants.

Neo-fascist Chega surges in Portugal as ruling right-wing Democratic Alliance coalition wins election

Alejandro López

"The hard-right populist party Chega" leader Andre Ventura addresses media and his supporters, following Portugal's general election, in Lisbon, Monday, May 19, 2025. [AP Photo/Ana Brigida]

The snap parliamentary election held in Portugal on Sunday marks a sharp escalation of the country’s deepening political and social crisis. It took place amid a wall-to-wall campaign of anti-immigrant hysteria led by the neo-fascist Chega (Enough) party and the conservative Democratic Alliance (AD), whose government announced plans for mass deportations just days before the vote.

Against a backdrop of decades-long austerity, collapsing public services, and wage stagnation—conditions enforced by successive Socialist Party (PS) governments with the backing of the Communist Party (PCP) and the Left Bloc—broad layers of the population were goaded into a Chega vote. Chega’s electoral rise is not the result of the emergence of a mass fascist movement. Rather, it reflects the bankruptcy and reactionary character of the political establishment, in Portugal and across Europe, which only offers a far-right outlet to growing mass discontent with the existing system.

In the elections, Portugal’s ruling right-wing Democratic Alliance (AD), led by acting Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, won the most votes in its second consecutive election victory, yet once again failed to secure a parliamentary majority, marking the third inconclusive national election in as many years. AD won 32.7 percent of the vote and 89 seats, still far from the 116 seats needed to rule. Portugal’s traditional ruling parties cannot command legitimacy or form a durable government after years of social austerity immiserating broad layers of the working class.

In his victory speech, Montenegro boasted tenfold increase in AD’s lead over the PS, from 51,000 in last year’s election to more than half a million votes, and demanded “stability.” “The people do not want another government or another prime minister. We demand to be allowed to govern,” he said.

Behind this appeal lies a reactionary programme: the privatization of the national airline TAP, sweeping pension cuts, intensified assaults on workers’ rights and full alignment with NATO’s war plans against China and Russia. This includes a historic expansion of military spending in preparation for imperialist war abroad, and brutal attacks on democratic and social rights at home in the name of boosting the “competitiveness” of Portuguese capitalism.

The most politically explosive development in the election is the continued ascent of the neo-fascist Chega party, led by the demagogue and former sports commentator André Ventura. Chega demands mass deportations of immigrants, the militarisation of policing and the reintroduction of the death penalty, alongside tax cuts for the wealthy, attacks on pensions and social benefits, and the deepening of austerity. Ventura cloaks this agenda in demagogic appeals to the “forgotten Portuguese,” blaming immigrants and minorities like the Roma for a social crisis produced by capitalism.

Chega received 22.6 percent of the vote, for the first time matching the PS with 58 seats, pending the final allocation of four overseas seats. Since entering parliament in 2019 with just one deputy, Chega has risen uninterruptedly, with 12 seats in 2022, 50 in 2024, and now on the brink of displacing the PS as the country’s second party.

Chega’s breakthrough has been particularly pronounced in southern regions such as Beja, Setúbal, Portalegre and the Algarve, historically strongholds of the PS and the Stalinist PCP. It is a devastating exposure of the anti-working class policies implemented by successive PCP-backed PS governments.

Ventura’s triumphalism was on full display on election night: “Today we can confidently announce that the two-party system in Portugal has come to an end,” he declared. “Chega has become the second-largest political party. Today we settle accounts with history,” he added. He warned ominously, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

Forming a new government may well prove difficult. Montenegro has reiterated that he will not enter into a coalition with Chega, calling the party “unreliable” and “unfit to govern.” Chega, for its part, appears no longer interested in propping up AD. Unlike in 2024, Ventura has dropped overtures for an alliance and now openly positions himself as an alternative prime minister. “We are almost at the point where we can govern,” he declared. “Nothing will remain the same in Portugal from today onward.”

Whether or not a formal pact is made, the far right is now at the center of Portugal’s official politics. This marks the first time since the fall of the fascist Estado Novo regime in 1974 that such forces will exert direct influence over the direction of Portuguese politics, either from within government or from outside.

Responsibility for this state of affairs lies with what passes for the left in Portugal. The social democratic PS, the Stalinist-dominated Democratic Unitarian Coalition (CDU), and the Pabloite Left Bloc have suffered their worst combined result since the fall of the dictatorship. Together they received just 30 percent of the vote. Ventura gloated over their humiliation: “Chega surpassed the party of Mário Soares [PS], killed the party of Álvaro Cunhal [PCP], and wiped out the Left Bloc.”

The PS, once the dominant political party of post-Carnation Revolution Portugal, received just 23 percent of the vote, down from 78 to 58 seats. Only in 1985 and 1987 did it fare worse. Shortly after the results were confirmed, PS leader Pedro Nuno Santos resigned as party secretary general.

The Pabloite-backed Left Bloc, which once held 19 seats and served as a critical prop for the PS government during its 2015–2019 term, collapsed to a mere 2 percent of the vote and retained just one seat for its leader Mariana Mortágua. The CDU, led by the PCP, secured just 3 percent of the vote and retained three seats, no better than last year. Both were overtaken by Livre (Free), a split from the Left Bloc formed in 2011. Livre gained 4 percent of the vote and now holds six seats.

These parties are widely despised for their direct role in supporting PS-led austerity governments. The PS governed from 2015 to 2024, enforcing EU austerity, dismantling labor protections, and supporting NATO’s imperialist war drive in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The PCP and Left Bloc supported the PS government through the so-called “Geringonça” agreement, providing parliamentary backing for sweeping social attacks.

This alliance imposed brutal cuts to public services, oversaw surging housing costs, suppressed workers’ strikes, including deploying the military against striking truckers, and funneled billions of euros into corporate bailouts and military spending. Even after the formal alliance ended, both parties continued to support PS budgets, its “herd immunity” COVID policies and its backing for NATO’s war in Ukraine.

In 2023, the PS Prime Minister Antonio Costa defended the start of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, stating “Israel has every right to defend itself by acting militarily against Hamas, but respecting the civilian populations of Palestine.” Under his government, Portugal issued export licenses for military goods to Israel totaling over €12.5 million.

Only in 2022, did Bloco (Left Bloc) and PCP vote against the PS budget in a belated attempt to salvage their reputations, amid mass working class opposition, expressed in a strike wave spanning various sectors including education, healthcare, transportation and public administration. Notably, this wave of strikes in late 2022 set the stage for a continued escalation into the following year, with the number of workers involved in strikes across all sectors surging by 288 percent in 2023.

The betrayals of these struggles have created the conditions for the far right’s advance. As wages stagnate and public services crumble, Portugal faces a deep housing crisis driven by speculative capital and mass tourism. Housing prices rose 9 percent last year, while rents in Lisbon reached their highest levels in three decades. Meanwhile, the average monthly wage stands at just €1,200 before tax, and the minimum wage at €870, among the lowest in Western Europe.

Since the start of 2025, Portuguese workers have once again mounted a determined response to deteriorating conditions, with strike activity spanning nearly every sector. In the first quarter alone, 224 strike notices were filed, most over stagnant wages. Participation has been massive, with tens of thousands joining actions ranging from small factory walkouts to nationwide shutdowns.

These included a national strike by educators in private social solidarity institutions, a 24-hour rail stoppage by CP ticket inspectors, rolling strikes by train drivers and other rail workers, a national nurses’ strike, a general strike of civil service and public sector workers, a three-day walkout by Teijin autoworkers and a two-hour stoppage at the AUNDE Portugal textiles factory.

Moody’s cuts US credit rating as debt crisis grows

Nick Beams

Concern over the rise and rise of US debt as the Trump administration seeks to push through its “big beautiful bill” of tax cuts for corporations and the ultra-wealthy has again come into the financial spotlight with the decision by Moody’s to cut the credit rating for the US from its top grade.

The decision, announced last Friday after Wall Street had closed, means that the US no longer enjoys the top rating from any of the three major agencies—the first time in history this has happened.

The US Dollar

Moody’s cut the US rating from triple A to Aa1 and changed its outlook from stable to negative. Fitch and S&P had already downgraded the US from the top rate.

Reporting on the decision, the Financial Times (FT) said it had come when “investors are growing increasingly concerned about the US’s fiscal trajectory” as Trump and the Republican party are “pursuing a budget bill that is widely expected to increase debt significantly over the next decade.”

Announcing its downgrade, Moody’s said: “While we recognize the US’s significant economic and financial strengths, we believe these no longer fully counterbalance the decline in fiscal metrics.”

It forecast that over the next decade, annual federal deficits would rise to 9 percent of GDP by 2035, compared to 6.4 percent last year.

Even more significant was its forecast for the increase in payments for a rising interest bill. It predicted that due to higher interest rates since 2021, “federal interest payments are likely to absorb around 30 percent of revenue by 2035, up from about 18 percent in 2024 and 9 percent in 2021.”

It continued: “This one-notch downgrade… reflects the increase over more than a decade in government debt and interest rate payment ratios to levels that are significantly higher than similarly rated sovereigns.”

As a result of its decision on the US government, Moody’s also lowered its ratings on several large American banks, including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

The Moody’s decision had immediate consequences, reflecting concerns in financial markets about the financial position of the US and the stability of the dollar as the global currency.

The yield (interest rate) on 30-year Treasury bonds rose by 0.13 percentage points to reach 5.03 percent at one point yesterday, exceeding the rise during the turmoil after the announcement of the Trump tariff hikes last month. The dollar fell by 0.7 percent against a basket of currencies.

One of the fears in some sections of the financial markets is that the US could experience a “Liz Truss moment”—a repetition on a larger scale of the financial crisis in the UK in September 2022 when her short-lived Tory government sought to provide major tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, supposedly to promote growth, by increasing debt.

In a post on X, billionaire founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater, Ray Dalio, who has continually warned of the rise in debt, wrote: “For those who care about the value of their money, the risks for US government debt are greater than the rating agencies are conveying.”

There have been a series of warnings about the state of the US economy and the financial position of the government.

The head of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, told his firm’s investor day meeting yesterday that financial markets were not taking into account the impacts of a potential downturn.

“Credit today is a bad risk,” he said, “The people who haven’t been through a major downturn are missing the point about what can happen in credit.”

In an interview with the FT, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Phillip Swagel, warned that the Trump tariff war could be a “tipping point” for foreign investors’ willingness to hold US assets.

The flows of finance into the US, buying up American assets, enabled the financing of government debt and deficits. But now, there is a “constellation of worries that a hesitation among global investors to put capital into the US, or even just to rebalance in a way that diminishes their interest in the US securities, would affect the dollar.”

He said the sentiment among senior global financial officials at the meeting of the International Monetary Fund last month was “really the most negative I can remember.”

Nicolas Trindale, a fund manager at the French financial firm Axa, said the downgrade was a “stark reminder that the US should not take for granted its ‘exorbitant privilege’ that enabled it to issue debt at a relatively lower cost despite a very high fiscal deficit.”

Comments by Yesha Yadav, a professor at the Vanderbilt Law School who studies the Treasury market, to the FT pointed to the political thrust contained within the Moody’s decision.

It was, he said, the “latest reality check on an increasingly bleak prognosis for US government debt management” and a “scolding to policymakers to focus on what reforms are needed to ensure that US credit retains its sheen as the world’s essential risk-free asset.”

There are two aspects to the debt crisis. It has objective roots in the deep-seated crisis of US capitalism, which has been building over decades. But it is also the outcome of political decisions made by the ruling elite in response to it.

One of the chief components has been the ever-increasing outlays on armaments as US imperialism has sought to counter its economic decline through the use of military might.

Over the past 15 years, particularly since the financial crisis of 2008, the coffers of the Treasury have been the source of government bailouts for major corporations to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Federal Reserve has opened its spigots to supply trillions of dollars of ultra-cheap money for financial speculation, lifting the fortunes of the financial oligarchs to stratospheric heights.

Calls for “reforms” do not mean any reversal of these disastrous policies, but rather an intensification of the onslaught against the working class now being implemented via the budget reconciliation process aimed at slashing hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and other vital social services.

Pro-EU candidate Dan wins Romanian presidential elections

Andrei Tudora

Presidential candidate Nicusor Dan waves to supporters after winning the second round of the country's presidential election redo in Bucharest, Romania, early Monday, May 19, 2025. [AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda]

The pro-EU candidate and mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan, has won the presidential elections in Romania, ostensibly ending a political crisis that began with the annulment of the elections in December 2024. Dan secured over 53 percent of the vote.

With a relatively high turnout of 64.75 percent—an increase of over 10 percent compared to the first round—the result reflects a broad rejection of the Trump-inspired rhetoric espoused by his far-right opponent, George Simion of the fascist AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians) party.

Simion had pledged to fire 500,000 public sector employees, following the model of Trump and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.” He was backed by international far-right figures like Steve Bannon and promoted various fascist conspiracy theories, including a version of the “Great Replacement” directed against migrant workers in Romania. Simion also received the backing of Benjamin Netanyahu, via a message relayed by his physician, Herman Berkovits. Simion had previously boasted that he would defy international court rulings to invite the Israeli war criminal to Bucharest.

Dan’s campaign capitalized on the widespread rejection of Simion’s fascistic “national revival” and channeled that sentiment into the dead end of Romanian and European bourgeois politics. With support from all mainstream parties and media outlets—including factions of the Social Democrats and the pseudo-left—it avoided any serious discussion of the urgent issues facing the working class. Even the real threat posed by the AUR and Simion was downplayed, with criticism largely focusing on his alleged “pro-Russian” leanings. In recent months, Romanian journalists have exposed a network of fascist paramilitary groups and training centers, yet these were largely silenced during the campaign, along with their ties to parts of the Romanian state and the influential Orthodox Church.

In reality, AUR is set to benefit politically in the coming period, as it will become the sole parliamentary opposition to Dan’s new government. Romania’s semi-presidential system theoretically grants limited powers to the president, primarily over foreign affairs and the military. In practice, however, these powers—combined with authority over judicial and intelligence appointments—make the presidency the central force in Romanian political life, shaping parliamentary majorities and executive leadership.

Dan has already announced plans to appoint Ilie Bolojan, former interim president and a leader of the National Liberal Party, to head a “government of national unity” composed of all “pro-Western” parties. As both Bolojan and Dan have expressed, this government’s main goal will be to implement sweeping austerity measures to close the budget deficit and fund a massive increase in military spending.

In his first speech on Sunday night, Dan stated that his top priority would be to assess “where we are on security and the ReArm program” (a reference to an EU-backed rearmament initiative). He also warned of a “difficult period” ahead that would be “necessary to economically balance this economy.”

Dan reiterated the expansionist ambitions of the Romanian ruling class toward neighboring Moldova. Thanking Moldovans with Romanian citizenship who had voted for him, he declared: “I assure them that Romania will always be there for them, to help them on their European road and to one day be together.” One only needs to imagine the uproar in European capitals had Russia’s Vladimir Putin made a comparable statement about a neighboring country.

The campaign itself was shaped by mounting geopolitical tensions from the war against Russia and growing frictions among the imperialist powers. The strengthening of a Polish-Romanian alliance against Russia enjoys bipartisan support from the ruling classes in both countries. In Poland, the first round of the presidential election also took place on Sunday. Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, backed by Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform, won just over 30 percent of the vote, ahead of hard-right PiS candidate Karol Nawrocki. Simion had endorsed Nawrocki and appeared with him in Poland last week. In turn, Tusk recorded a video message in Romanian before the election, urging voters to support Dan.

In neighboring Hungary, the Romanian elections became a flashpoint between two rival factions of the ruling class. During the runoff campaign, Viktor Orbán expressed support for Simion, praising his fascist rhetoric about a “Christian Europe.” This gave Péter Magyar—Orbán’s millionaire nationalist challenger who long benefited from his regime—an opportunity to attack Orbán from the right. Magyar accused him of “betraying our Hungarian brothers in Transylvania” and staged a PR march from Budapest to Oradea in Romania. Leaders of the UDMR (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania), who have dominated Hungarian-majority regions since the 1990s, also criticized Orbán.

Magyar was exploiting the widespread fear among ethnic Hungarians in Romania of Simion, a professional provocateur who has incited violence against the Hungarian minority in the past. Though this group has long been courted by Orbán and the UDMR, their regions consistently rank among the poorest in the country, despite nationalistic posturing and endless promises of investment.

An important ally of Dan during the election was the regime of Maia Sandu in Moldova. In her congratulatory message, Sandu praised Dan as “a powerful voice for liberty and democracy.” But Sandu—a Romanian national and former World Bank adviser—has consolidated her power through the banning of opposition parties and imprisonment of political rivals. The mobilization of Moldovan voters was key to Dan’s qualification for the runoff.

One of Dan’s most significant international backers was French President Emmanuel Macron, who publicly endorsed him before the election and was among the first leaders to speak with him on Sunday night.

Throughout the campaign, Dan was the most consistent advocate of unconditional support for Ukraine. He explicitly tied Romania’s “national security” to Russia’s defeat, while maintaining deliberate ambiguity about sending Romanian troops to Ukraine—despite widespread public opposition to the war. In fact, Simion’s perceived resistance to further aid for Ukraine was a major reason for his strong showing.

Romania’s ruling class has, for now, succeeded in suppressing anti-war sentiment and opposition to austerity by exploiting widespread disgust toward the Trump-style figure of Simion. They could do so only because of the complete political disenfranchisement of the working class and the bankruptcy of the post-Stalinist Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the trade unions. Calls by pro-imperialist “lefts” such as MP Victoria Stoiciu to “reset” the PSD or to build new political initiatives around the unions must be firmly rejected by workers as political traps.

DOGE shuts down AmeriCorps programs nationwide, affecting education, disaster services and environmental programs

James Vega & J. Cooper

In this Jan. 16, 2020 photo, Nicholas Thomas, left, and Joe Wright, right, prepare school safety signs as part of the AmeriCorps Urban Safety Program at Wayne State University's Center for Urban Studies. [AP Photo/Corey Williams]

A sweeping $400 million cut to the federal budget has forced AmeriCorps to shut down programs across the country. This reduction—about 41 percent of the program’s total $1 billion annual budget—has sent shockwaves throughout the US.

The cuts have ended or disrupted over 1,000 programs nationwide, offering a wide range of services, including education, disaster response, environmental conservation, housing support, and food security efforts. Over a quarter of AmeriCorps staffers provide educational services, such as tutoring, classroom assistance, youth development or after-school programs.

The decision, led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump administration, officially ended funding for AmeriCorps in Michigan on April 25, 2025, the first state to be hit, which was followed by drastic cuts to all 50 states receiving federal funds.

About 85 percent of AmeriCorps full-time staff were placed on administrative leave, and 32,000 volunteers were immediately displaced, with many facing termination by late June. However, with 80 percent of the program’s initiatives axed by DOGE, the number of people losing their positions will likely be much higher.

“I’m hearing that AmeriCorps NCCC [National Civilian Community Corps] has fallen victim to the massacre of government programs,” posted Nicole Allen on Facebook. “I reflect on my own experience in the program, the 4000+ hours of service I completed … I promise you, 20-year-olds making $200/week are not the cause of our country’s financial crisis.”

Until late April, AmeriCorps operated in all 50 states, employing approximately 500 to 650 full-time staff members who supervised around 200,000 volunteers. Officially referred to as “volunteers” or “members,” these workers receive poverty-level wages in the form of stipends. Some receive health insurance, childcare or housing support. Young people largely “volunteer” for these low-wage, temporary positions due to a lack of decent job prospects. Even supervisors, including program coordinators and managers, typically only earn between $35,000 and $80,000 annually.

Exploiting the difficulties of finding jobs, the AmeriCorps program deploys staffers to fill in the gaps due to the systematic underfunding of education, disaster relief, environmental remediation, or social supports. The elimination of these vital programs will devastate many communities.

AmeriCorps was officially established in 1993 through the National and Community Service Trust Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton. It incorporates the VISTA program (Volunteers in Service to America, founded in 1965 as a domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps) and the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC).

The WSWS explained the explosion of volunteerism under George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton, following the drastic austerity years of the Reagan-Bush administration, in which tens of thousands of jobs were destroyed, the industrial Midwest turned into the “rust belt,” and dozens of communities were decimated.

Appealing to the sincere sentiments of the population and exploiting the massive growth of social inequality, the AmeriCorps program targeted young people who had no political or historical frame of reference, thinking they could “change social ills one good deed at a time.”

Since its inception, AmeriCorps, like the Peace Corps and VISTA, has provided cheap labor to enable non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and even religious charities to benefit from federal subsidies. With each successive administration, whether Democrat or Republican, demands for Americans to “volunteer” for “national service” have grown.

The World Socialist Web Site wrote as far back as 2008:

Every year, new initiatives were developed by both Democrats and Republicans to promote volunteerism while cutting social programs. These include naming the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday a day of national service; General Colin Powell establishing the President’s Summit for America’s Future to encourage volunteerism; and Clinton resuming Bush Sr.’s “Daily Points of Light Award.” In 2001, President George W. Bush went even further, launching his faith-based community initiatives.

Poverty, as a policy, has never been pursued so aggressively (and successfully) as today. Those who are responsible for these policy decisions—tax cuts for the rich, shredding the social safety net, destruction of public education, etc.—tell the working class to volunteer!

Over the last 35 years, school districts, disaster aid non-profits, fire-prevention programs, food pantries and other charitable entities have all shed jobs and come to rely on super-exploited volunteer labor. The cuts to AmeriCorps will be the final blow to countless parts of the disappearing social safety net in the US.

The Mosaic in Action (Texas) lost a team that was set to contribute 2,000 hours to helping homeowners recover from natural disasters. A 2023 American Climate Corps initiative, which trained youth in clean energy and climate resilience, was shut down in January 2025. The cuts will end programs like the Forest Corps, which focused on wildfire and habitat protection. Programs aiding the homeless have been terminated in major urban centers like Chicago. AmeriCorps also helped staff larger organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Teach for America, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Nationally, AmeriCorps supplies more than 54,000 tutors, mentors, classroom assistants and reading and math specialists to schools and after-school programs. “I am heartbroken. And I feel betrayed. This can’t be our future. This is not a future that I want,” said a @_UWNNS_ on Instagram, who established the United Readers Program in Nevada.

“Anyone else feeling defeated and hopeless or just me? My program got cut last week and I have been filled with a mix of anger, sadness, and all around panic. I only have health insurance now until the end of the month and only 1 more living stipend check….” reads a post on the r/AmeriCorps subreddit. Others mention that as AmeriCorps “volunteers,” they are not eligible to collect unemployment insurance.

In Michigan, school mentoring and tutoring programs, administered by the Michigan Education Corps (MEC), will terminate at the end of the school year.

One former teacher who spoke with the World Socialist Web Site had retired after 30 years in the classroom, and then signed up to tutor through the Michigan MathCorps. She told us, “The future of the program and its continued operation is uncertain. While I think things will get better, it remains unclear if MEC will continue into the next school year due to the budget cuts and changes.”

 “I think it is really robbing the youth of the future, both the students and educators. Students expressed sadness at the program changes and sudden educational departures. The program has so much value in providing essential educational support. I think it’s robbing the world and community,” she said.

Michigan Education Corps volunteers were told to stop all activities immediately under the federal stop-work order. The order instructed grantees to halt any AmeriCorps-funded operations upon receipt of the notice. The Michigan College Access Network (MCAN) lost support for initiatives like Advise MI and the College Completion Corps, which helped students apply for college and financial aid, and access to the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award that can help pay for college or student loans.

The Detroit Free Press noted that from January 2024 to February 2025, “In Michigan, more than 7,900 AmeriCorps members and senior volunteers worked at more than 1,300 local service sites.” The federal funds invested totaled more than $31.6 million, according to an AmeriCorps report, and “generated more than $17.5 million in outside resources from businesses, foundations, public agencies, and other sources…”

These cuts affect programs in every state. Katie Loudin posted on Facebook, “My heart is heavy today. Over 200 AmeriCorps members have been cut from their volunteer positions across West Virginia…. [They] were tutoring struggling students win the afterschool programs in math and reading in Lewis County; they were connecting with youth, sourcing locally-grown food, and connecting it to local markets at Grow Ohio Valley; they were creating new pathways out of poverty and workforce training programs at High Rocks in the mountains; they were engaging isolated community members through meaningful programming at our senior centers; they were coordinating food pantries, affordable housing construction, economic resilience, and so much more … feeling heartbroken.”

UK Special Forces personnel give eyewitness accounts of officially sanctioned assassinations and war crimes in Afghanistan

Harvey Thompson

The BBC’s documentary programme Panorama aired Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes, is available for the next 11 months on BBC iPlayer.

 A team of reporters has been investigating unlawful killings by UK forces in Afghanistan for several years and produced an important episode, SAS Death Squads Exposed: A British War Crime? in July 2022, which forced the government into calling an inquiry the following October.

Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes, screenshot from BBC website [Photo: bbc.co.uk]

The latest programme is based on conversations with more than 30 sources who served with or alongside UK Special Forces in Afghanistan during the US-led occupation. Their words are spoken by actors to prevent identification and retaliation.

Their testimony describes the murder of unarmed Afghans in their sleep; the execution of handcuffed detainees, including children; psychotic killing raids; personal kill tallies; and the systematic cover-up of all incriminating evidence, including the deletion of files and the closing down of investigations.

Crimes took place over more than a decade, far longer than the three-year-period (2010 – 2013) being examined by the ongoing Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan, which opened in London in October 2023.

Referring to the largely concurrent US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003, witnesses told the programme that the Special Air Service (SAS) “had already developed a method of covering up unlawful killings in Iraq” by planting weapons (known as “drop weapons”) on the bodies of their victims to make them look like armed fighters.

This method became routine in Afghanistan. One veteran told Panorama, “They’d search someone, handcuff them, then shoot them” [before removing the handcuffs] and “planting a pistol” on the body.

One source who had served with the SAS added, “You’d see a lot more folding stock AKs [AK-47 rifles]. Because of the way they’re designed to fold they were easier to carry in day sacks, easier to bring on to the targets and plant by the body to make it look like the person was holding a rifle when they were shot.”

Another source who had served with the SAS said bluntly, “Everyone knew what was going on… so there was implicit approval for what was happening.”

According to sources, more junior members of assault teams were told by more senior SAS operators to kill male detainees.

Children were not exempt, he recalled, “They handcuffed a young boy and shot him. He was clearly a child, not even close to fighting age.”

The Special Boat Service (SBS) is also implicated for the first time in executions of unarmed and injured Afghans, with Panorama speaking to at least 10 sources who served with or alongside the regiment.

One of these explained that wounded fighters were routinely killed, describing one operation when an Afghan had been left shot but still breathing: “The medic was standing over him, treating his injury… Then one of our blokes came up to him… and there was a bang. He’d been shot in the head at point-blank range… I can’t recall us taking a single injured insurgent back to base for treatment. They were shot… there and then… these are not mercy killings, its murder.”

A veteran who served with the SBS said some troops had a “mob mentality” and described their behaviour on operations as “barbaric,” expressing “serious psychopathic traits.”

A former Intelligence Officer who had been attached to the SBS described the doctoring of operation accounts, saying, “You could see from the photographs taken on site that the accounts being given by the SBS guys to justify certain killings just didn’t add up. They say they’ve been caught in a firefight, but in the photos, you’d see these were multiple clean headshots.”

Panorama was also able to speak to former members of Afghan Special Forces (ASF) who served alongside the SBS around 2020. One told of an operation where his British mentors shot a boy of 13 or 14. He was told his squad should “destroy all the evidence of what happened that night.”

Narrator Richard Bilton explains of “the same squadron that kept a kill tally in Iraq. In Afghanistan, that squadron killed an average of 2.7 people on every operation. Hundreds were killed.”

A former Intelligence Officer who had been attached to the SAS corroborated this: “It was all about the stats. When the numbers were read out at the morning meeting at NATO headquarters, they wanted the SAS task force to have high numbers. It was seen as a metric of success.”

Witnesses tell of one member of an SAS squadron who personally killed dozens of Afghans on a single tour. A veteran with the SAS said, “It seemed like he was trying to get a kill on every operation… He was notorious in the squadron. He genuinely seemed… like a psychopath.”

In one incident sources say was notorious inside the SAS, the soldier slit the throat of an injured Afghan after telling an officer not to shoot the man again, “because he wanted to go and finish the wounded guy off with his knife.”

Another witnesses, who said that among the SAS were “lots of psychotic murderers,” described how, “On some operations, the troop would go into guesthouse-type buildings and kill everyone there… They’d go in and shoot everyone sleeping there, on entry.”

Panorama also examined the methods used to cover up these crimes. According to the testimony, officers would help to falsify post-operational reports. One of the veterans explained, “We understood how to write up serious incident reviews… If it looked like a shooting could represent a breach of the rules of conflict, you’d get a phone call from the legal adviser or one of the staff officers in HQ. They’d pick you up on it and help you to clarify the language. ‘Do you remember someone making a sudden move?’ ‘Oh yeah, I do now.’ That sort of thing. It was built into the way we operated.”

Intelligence Officers watching the operations on live drone feeds, and so witnessing war crimes in real time, were requested to “dig up” data on victims to retrospectively link them with the Taliban.

The programme pointed to Operation Northmoor, an investigation launched by the Royal Military Police in 2014 into allegations of over 600 offences by UK forces in Afghanistan, including the killing of children. The investigation was terminated in 2019 without any prosecutions, despite the proven permanent deletion of evidence by the Special Forces.

Panorama revealed for the first time that then Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron was repeatedly warned during his term in office that UK Special Forces were killing civilians in Afghanistan.

Bilton narrates, “Senior people were told about the killings, but they weren’t stopped. We found evidence of a widespread cover-up lasting years. The cover-up started with Special Forces on the ground. It was continued by some of Britain’s most senior officers, and it was maintained by politicians and the Ministry of Defence.”

A spokesperson for Cameron was compelled to reply to Panorama, saying, “any suggestion that Lord Cameron colluded in covering up allegations of serious criminal wrongdoing is total nonsense.”

Bruce Houlder KC, a former director of service prosecutions, told the programme he hoped the public inquiry would examine the extent of Lord Cameron’s knowledge of alleged civilian casualties following operations by UK Special Forces.

The following are indicted with full complicity; General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, head of UK Special Forces in Afghanistan for a year from 2011 and former Director Special Forces; General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, the former head of the British Army; and Lieutenant General Jonathon Page, another former Director Special Forces.

The final segment of the Panorama programme looks at the veto by UK Special Forces of over 2,000 asylum claims by former members of the Afghan Special Forces (ASF), who could potentially have been called to give evidence of war crimes in the ongoing London inquiry. A former ASF member concluded, “They don’t want us in the UK because of what we have witnessed.”

The programme revealed that the individual overseeing this mass rejection of asylum applications was Gwyn Jenkins. Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes was aired Monday May 12. On May 15, the Labour government’s Ministry of Defence promoted Jenkins to First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, the head of the British Royal Navy.