Drop the Minnesota charges!

Minnesota trade unionists are among 15 indicted by the US federal government on charges of “conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer” over their opposition to ICE. Their indictments cite their involvement in previously held workers’ assemblies in Minneapolis as evidence of wrongdoing. The charges, from old law and rarely used, can bring up to six years’ jail.

Minnesota had a general strike on 23 January, moving Trump to withdraw ICE thugs from Minneapolis in mid-February. The workers’ assemblies organised in Minneapolis have provided spaces where workers, trade unionists and the left can meet, debate and organise. They are positive for the US workers’ movement, and it is an outrage that workers are being victimised for them.

It is unclear as yet what the timeline for these cases will be. Nonetheless, it is the duty of trade unions and the left, in the US and internationally, to support and stand in solidarity with our comrades victimised for their opposition to ICE and Trump. On the latest official figures, 60,311 people are in ICE detention, and the numbers deported are increasing month by month. The deportation drive is continuing, if for now with less spectacle and bluster.

On 29 June the Supreme Court ruled to allow Trump to sack at will officials of public regulatory agencies, but not to allow him to sack Federal Reserve governors. Trump declared that he will seek ways round that to sack Lisa Cook. The Court also upheld state laws allowing postal ballots delayed in the post to be counted, and refused to take Trump’s bid to overturn the civil verdict against him for E Jean Carroll over his sexual abuse of her.

More rulings may come from the Supreme Court this week on Trump’s attempt to abolish birthright citizenship, and on trans athlete bans.

Mid-term elections to the House of Representatives and Senate are coming up in November, and a sizeable chunk of his right-wing base has not liked his Iran war.

27 June was the latest day of mass protests against Trump across the USA — this time under the slogan “All Of Us 250”, contesting the 250th anniversary on 4 July of the Declaration of Independence which Trump will try to use for self-boosting. Other milestones of protest will be 28 August, to mark the anniversary of the civil-rights March on Washington in 1963, and 15 September, National Voter Registration Day.

In the run-up to November, Trump will probably seek new gambits to try to throw his opponents off balance, and ways of tilting the voting procedures in his favour beyond those already in train in many Republican-controlled states.