In his first weeks in office, Klansman-in-Chief Donald Trump is working overtime to target Black and migrant workers and attack women and transgender youth. Here are just a few of the new administration’s more outrageous racist and sexist assaults: 

• Trump blamed “diversity” hiring practices for the tragic January plane crash near Washington, D.C., part of his disgusting insinuation that Black workers are inferior to white workers (AP News, 1/30/2025). 
• Trump has given free rein to the world’s richest man,Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, to popularize Nazi salutes one day and slash the federal workforce the next (New York Magazine, 2/7). 
• Beyond U.S. borders, the new administration is suspending payments by USAID (an unofficial arm of the CIA) for 142,000 girls and young women who receive care from an HIV program (NBC, 2/8).

In Trump’s first week in office,  his Department of Homeland Security deported 7,300 workers, even more than the 5,000-plus per week deported by Joe Biden in 2024. Trump is now touting that he will imprison thousands of migrant workers in remote and squalid conditions in Guantanamo Bay. His Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gestapo has been assigned to build 30,000 new prison beds in the Cuba-based prison and torture facility (WOLA, 1/31). 

With the U.S. empire already losing its grip,  Trump is expected to undermine U.S. military alliances in Europe and the Middle East. But the fact is that U.S. decline and global instability long preceded Trump’s latest election. It reflects the failures of the main wing of the ruling class, the Big Fascists of finance capital the multinational banks and oil companies (see glossary on page 6). These liberal bosses pacified and co-opted anti-war and anti-police terror movements and pushed identity-based misleaders like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris or fake “working-class” figures like “Scranton” Joe Biden. But the liberals have no solution for the international crisis of capitalism. Like the Small Fascists, domestic-oriented bosses who back Trump, they must turn to rising fascism to try to discipline their own class and keep rebellious workers in line as the rulers move toward World War III.  

Workers cannot vote away the death and despair of capitalism. The only way out is to follow the leadership of hundreds of workers and students in Los Angeles who staged walkouts and protests to fight back against Trump’s demonization of the most vulnerable workers, to follow the Black workers in Cincinnati, Ohio, who are burning the flags of vile nazis and running them out of town. To sustain and expand our fight, we need to strengthen multiracial unity within our class and fight for One World, One Class, One Party with the internationalist, communist line of Progressive Labor Party. 

Liberals are the midwives of fascism

With capitalism in crisis and China and Russia rising as imperialist challengers, U.S. bosses can no longer rely on liberal democracy to function as they used to. The decline of the old liberal world order and the rise of gutter racist bosses like Trump and Musk will force the Big Fascists to move to more openly fascist measures. The veneer of liberals' “lesser evilism” has been exposed for the charade that it is. If and when the liberal bosses regain power, they  and their bought-and-paid-for politicians will turn to violence, racism, “austerity,” and hyper-nationalism to protect their profits. 

Biden and Harris funded and enabled the genocide in Gaza and the bloody war in Ukraine, relentlessly supplying both Netanyahu and Zelensky with billions of dollars in arms to kill hundreds of thousands of workers. 

Former Deporter-in-Chief Obama displaced more people than any president in history and built the border cages that workers are being threatened with today by Trump. Most recently, over 50 Democrats joined Republicans in Congress to pass the Laken Riley Act, which calls for jailing and deporting migrant workers accused of shoplifting or other minor offenses–without even a figleaf of “due process” (AP News, 1/26/2025). 

Biden’s signature American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) gave local governments $350 billion, a large amount of which was allocated to build up police, courts, jails, prisons, and potentially lethal equipment, including tasers and drones. The funding was wrapped in promises to help communities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic but essentially allowed police to monitor and terrorize workers without them risking infection (The Marshall Project, 9/7/2022). 

Communism: Alternative to war and fascism

Historically, the only way global imperialists can resolve their competition for dominance is through war. As they scramble to prepare for the next global conflict, whether the state is run by Republicans or Democrats, MAGA or liberals– the U.S. ruling class will need fascism to keep workers and their own class in check. The bosses’ crisis makes them even more dangerous. But it also presents an opportunity for workers worldwide to organize class war. History shows us that fascism can be defeated only by a mass, international communist party. 

As communists, we must continue to challenge the liberal misleaders and build our own militant, multiracial, class-conscious struggle among the masses. The international working class must rise up  to smash these bosses and their wars against humanity. We must liberate our class brothers and sisters in the military and inspire them to turn the guns around! Let’s build the world we want to pass on to future generations. Fight for communism!