Left Voice

The recently released reading scores for New York City students have prompted a new round of discussion about the state of literacy in the city’s public schools just a month before the start of the new school year. According to the results, reading proficiency fell six points citywide, with third-grade proficiency dropping by nearly 14 percentage points, even as local assessments suggest a less dramatic decline.

President Trump lost his first attempt to gut birthright citizenship, but he is trying again. Earlier this month, Trump signed two new executive orders aiming to narrow the meaning and reach of birthright citizenship. One seeks to expand the categories of children the administration claims fall outside the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment.

U.S. Imperialism Is Still at an Impasse in Iran While Trump maintains his blockade to strangle Iran, imperialism finds itself in a military impasse. The conflict continues to spread, and the strategic balance of power in the Middle East is being reshaped. This week, the 60-day period of negotiations — dedicated to implementing the memorandum of understanding signed by Tehran and Washington on June 17 — came to an end without yielding any results.

The government of Puerto Rico is rationing water in San Juan and other major cities as a severe drought continues to worsen, with no immediate relief expected. Since August 7, more than 180,000 customers are facing 48-hour water interruptions under a rotating schedule, as the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (AAA) and the island’s government work to address the escalating crisis. July was the driest month ever recorded in San Juan in more than 120 years, and the capital’s fourth-hottest July.

Which Way Forward Towards a Workers’ Party?

In 2020, a record number of people across the United States took to the streets in the movement for Black lives, demanding justice for George Floyd and victims of police violence. Last week, two of the country’s most popular progressives — Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — threw this historic movement under the bus.

Since the beginning of 2026, Bolivia has been embroiled in class struggle. After Rodrigo Paz narrowly won the presidential elections last October and attempted to push through a decree to end fuel subsidies and open the country’s natural resources to extraction by multinational corporations, popular resistance sparked massive mobilizations, including roadblocks that shut down highways across the country and a half-million person march that stretched 17 miles.

For 50 days, from May to June, the Bolivian people carried out a relentless struggle against their right-wing, Trump-allied government. Through roadblocks and other direct actions, the popular masses — workers, peasants, Indigenous people, and the poor — shut down the capital city of La Paz to incoming and outgoing traffic. This popular rebellion was one of the world’s most advanced examples of class struggle in recent times.

In a recent article, I addressed the issue of dialectics in Karl Marx’s critique of political economy, in connection with the publication of Juan Dal Maso’s book Marxism and Dialectics: Notes and Reflections. On this occasion, I am interested in discussing how dialectics appears in the emergentist materialist approach I proposed in my book Red Fire: Communist Reflections on the Ecological Crisis.

It’s astounding that Molly Crabapple’s new book on the General Jewish Workers Bund, better known as “the Bund,” briefly hit No. 4 on the New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Bestseller List. It’s received favorable reviews in the Times, the Economist, and other mainstream outlets, as well as unhinged denunciations by Zionists. The Bund was once known mainly to history nerds.