As Trump targets universities while Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem redefines habeas corpus as presidential deportation power, STEPHEN ARNELL traces how John Scopes’s optimism about academic freedom’s triumph now seems tragically premature

Here are the voices of DANIEL KEBEDE, FRAN HEATHCOTE, HOLLY TURNER and LEANNE MOHAMAD explaining why they will be taking part in the People’s Assembly No More Austerity demo next weekend 

DIANE ABBOTT MP argues that Labour’s proposals contained in the recent white paper won’t actually bring down immigration numbers or win support from Reform voters — but they will succeed in making politics more nasty and poisonous 
 

Exempting military expenditure from austerity while slashing welfare represents a fundamental misallocation of resources that guarantees continued decline, argues MICHAEL BURKE

In the conclusion of his two-part article, PETER MERTENS reveals that while global military spending hits $2.7 trillion with European arms company profits soaring 1,000%, €1 invested in hospitals creates 2.5 times more jobs than weapons

IAN LAWRENCE welcomes the government sentencing review but warns past experience shows such words rarely translate into meaningful action

In the first half of a two-part article, PETER MERTENS looks at how Nato’s €800 billion ‘Readiness 2030’ plan serves Washington’s pivot to the Pacific, forcing Europeans to dismantle social security and slash pensions to fund it

Human rights activist PETE STEVENSON, aka Pete the Poet, considers alternative ways of holding a meeting

The German Chancellor seeks EU sanctions on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to prevent future governments from resuming Russian gas deliveries, delivering a devastating blow to German industry — and German workers, writes RAINER RUPP

Noboa’s second term looks set to deepen his neoliberal policies: reduced public investment, privatization, cuts to social programmes, and militarisation, says  PILAR TROYA FERNANDEZ

Peaceful protesters are facing increasingly authoritarian clampdowns, including two recent arrests for putting a sticker on a Barclays ATM. LYNDA WALKER reports

RONNIE KASRILS pays tribute to Ruth First, a fearless fighter against South African apartheid, in the centenary month of her birth

Despite internal pressure over the Gaza genocide, Narendra Modi’s government has deepened relations with Tel Aviv. ROGER McKENZIE explores the geopolitics behind these strengthening links

ALASTAIR BONNETT reports on the paradoxes of populist attitudes towards protection of the natural world

The Tories’ trouble is rooted in the British capitalist Establishment now being more disoriented and uncertain of its social mission than before, argues ANDREW MURRAY

Our roving AGM from this Thursday through Sunday and our upcoming Morning Star Conference 2025 on June 14 in London are great opportunities to meet the team and help plan the way forward, says editor BEN CHACKO

STEPHEN ARNELL examines whether Starmer is a canny strategist playing a longer game or heading for MacDonald’s Great Betrayal, tracing parallels between today’s rightward drift and the 1931 crisis

Under Modi’s hard-right regime, India is going backwards — but not in the state of Kerala, where the communist-led government continues to deliver remarkable results in infrastructure, economic growth, healthcare, welfare, education, science and social harmony, reports PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY

TERRY HANSEN explains how Netanyahu’s boasts of 92,000 aid trucks contradict his own January admission of providing ‘minimal humanitarian aid’ and decades of Israeli documents reveal policies designed to keep Palestinians at ‘minimal subsistence’ levels since 1991

In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

JOHN GREEN observes how Berlin’s transformation from socialist aspiration to imperial nostalgia mirrors Germany’s dangerous trajectory under Chancellor Merz — a BlackRock millionaire and anti-communist preparing for a new war with Russia

Research shows Farage mainly gets rebel voters from the Tory base and Labour loses voters to the Greens and Lib Dems — but this doesn’t mean the danger from the right isn’t real, explains historian KEITH FLETT

Israel’s messianic settler regime has moved beyond military containment to mass ethnic cleansing, making any two-state solution based on differential rights impossible — we must support the Palestinian demand for decolonisation, writes HUGH LANNING

BILL GREENSHIELDS invites all and sundry to this years’ Derby Silk Mill Lockout March, Rally and People’s Festival on June 7

As Gaza burns and politicians abandon ‘bairns not bombs’ slogans to embrace a war economy, MATT KERR exposes the real purpose behind Britain’s EU fishing agreement: accessing €150 billion in militarisation funds

RMT’s former president ALEX GORDON explains why his union supports defence diversification and a just transition for workers in regions dependent on military contracts, and calls on readers to join CND’s demo against nuclear-armed submarines on June 7
 

In part two of May’s Berlin Bulletin, VICTOR GROSSMAN, having assessed the policies of the new government, looks at how the opposition is faring

David Lammy is now calling Israel’s escalation of the Gaza genocide morally unjustifiable — but what is truly unjustifiable is for Lammy to say this while directly arming and providing surveillance information for the genocide, writes NUVPREET KALRA

PRABHAT PATNAIK details the epochal shift of political power from Western neocolonialists to the people

Police guidelines suggesting home searches and digital checks for women who experience pregnancy loss under suspicion of having broken the outdated 1967 Abortion Act have sparked uproar, writes PEOPLES’ HEALTH DISPATCH 

MAT COWARD tells the extraordinary story of the second world war Spitfire pilot who became Britain’s most famous Stalag escaper, was awarded an MBE, mentored a generation of radio writers and co-founded a hardline Marxist-Leninist party

SOLOMON HUGHES details how the firm has quickly moved on to buttering-up Labour MPs after the fall of the Tories so it can continue to ‘win both ways’ collecting public and private cash by undermining the NHS

In part one of his Berlin bulletin, VICTOR GROSSMAN assesses the economic and political difficulties facing the new Merz government — and a regrettable ruling-class consensus on the solutions

The intensified Israeli military operations in Gaza are an attempt by Netanyahu to project strength amid perceived political vulnerability, argues RAMZY BAROUD

MARK FAIRHURST highlights the main issues facing officers in a long neglected service, and raised by front-line delegates at POA conference last week, including understaffing, violence, bullying and the ongoing denial of workers’ right to strike

A bizarre on-air rant by Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s head of counter-terrorism, shines a light on the present state of transatlantic relations, says NICK WRIGHT