The Daily Brief
Today
Good morning. Ukrainian drone barrages struck a Samara oil refinery and an e-commerce warehouse deep inside Russia, part of a widening infrastructure war in which Russian strikes killed at least two people in Ukraine a day after a two-wave drone attack on a shopping mall in Zelenskyy's hometown killed sixteen. The trading of blows across borders lays bare a conflict where working-class communities on both sides absorb the cost of capitalist rivalry.
In Gary, Indiana, blackouts have stretched into a second week, the latest manifestation of an infrastructure collapse that the World Socialist Web Site attributes to decades of policies through which the financial elite has drained resources from essential physical assets and funneled them into speculation. The Calumet region's decay is not neglect but the intended result of austerity imposed by capital.
The Trump administration is set to impose fifty-percent tariffs on twenty billion dollars worth of Canadian products, targeting roughly five percent of what Canada ships to the United States each year. The trade war weaponizes supply chains, threatening jobs and raising costs for workers on both sides of the border while bosses calculate their margins.
Mother Jones continues its investigation into the dispossession of Black land, documenting how the loss started with the government's betrayal of its 40 acres promise to formerly enslaved people and continued over decades. Today, researchers are unearthing the details of that loss.