This is a conversation between John Meehan and Paul LeBlanc in Dublin on Friday, the 20th of June, 2025.
Paul Le Blanc has for many years been a teacher and activist in Pittsburgh. His writings include “Lenin and the Revolutionary Party” [1990; new ed. 2015]
Last weekend (Saturday June 14 2025) a large number of “No Kings” protests occurred in many parts of the United States. One participant was Paul LeBlanc. Would you like to give us an overview of the No Kings protests, describe the one you attended?
Paul Le Blanc: Sure I can speak especially about my own experience in Pittsburgh and in other cities and towns across the country.
The “No Kings” demonstrations were part of a wave of demonstrations that have developed over the past few months. The first big one was the April 5 demonstration, under the slogan of “Hands Off.” Hands Off the health care system, education system, various other things that are being dismantled or attacked by the Trump regime. In Pittsburgh, there was a massive demonstration. It was the largest that I had seen in the city up to that time, 8000 people minimum.
This was followed by May Day demonstrations. And Pittsburgh is not and hasn’t for decades been a centre of May Day demonstrations. But this was massive, the biggest May Day demonstration that I’ve seen. It wasn’t quite as big as April 5, but there were several thousand people participating. Again, it was focused especially on social issues and economic issues in the United States. There was also some reference to foreign policy stuff — Palestine, Ukraine, so forth.
The biggest demonstration of all was the most recent, the “No Kings” demonstration. There were over 10,000 people protesting in Pittsburgh, and millions of people throughout the country: a massive outpouring of anger and rage and ridicule of Trump’s pretensions of being popular and powerful and so forth. People said “No Kings,” with many accusing him of being a fascist, a totalitarian, a dictator. Certainly, he’s authoritarian. There was general agreement on a defence of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and even of the US Constitution, which he’s walking all over.
So, this was massive, and pro Trump elements have not come close to mobilising anything on this scale. There’s a lot of anti-Trump sentiment. Trump claims that he has an overwhelming mandate from the American people, and that’s a lie. He tells all kinds of lies, makes all kinds of distorted claims. He did not get a majority, certainly not a landslide majority. He was able to rack up more votes than his competitors. But his mandate is razor thin, and I think the number of people who support him is dropping. I believe that he is eroding his own base of support with policies that are hurting all of us. It’s an interesting development, for sure.
Early results point to upset win for the leftwing candidate over former governor Andrew Cuomo
🚨 BREAKING | Pro-Palestine leftist Zohran Mamdani WINS Democratic primary for New York Mayor🔴 Zohran Mamdani – 44%🔵 Andrew Cuomo – 36%🟠 Brad Lander – 11%NY uses 2nd preference voting, but Cuomo has conceded and Mamdani is expected to win final count easily.
Zohran Mamdani, the leftwing Democrat feared by Wall Street, is on course to win the party’s mayoral primary for New York City, sending shockwaves across US politics. Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has called for higher taxes on the rich and assailed US support for Israel in Gaza, stunned Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York state, in the Democratic primary race on Tuesday. His success will reverberate across Wall Street and among the billionaire donors, including hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who backed his rival. It will also intensify the debate among Democrats as they seek a convincing political strategy to take on Donald Trump.
“Tonight, we made history,” Mamdani told hundreds of jubilant supporters in Queens on Tuesday night. “I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City. “When we no longer believe in our democracy, it only becomes easier for people like Donald Trump to convince us of his worth, for billionaires to convince us that they must always lead,” he said. New York leans towards Democrats, and Mamdani’s victory gives the 33-year-old a major advantage in the election this year to replace Eric Adams as the city’s mayor — one of the most powerful positions in US domestic politics. Cuomo conceded defeat late on Tuesday in a contest that was widely seen as a referendum on the future of the party. “Tonight was not our night, tonight. It was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night,” Cuomo told supporters at a post-election party, adding that he had called Mamdani to congratulate him. Unofficial results on Tuesday night showed Mamdani with a seven-point lead over Cuomo, with more than 90 per cent of the vote counted.
The final result will depend on the tally in the city’s ranked-choice system, which allows people to pick up to five candidates in order of preference. The winner will be officially declared on July 1, at the earliest, after all other candidates’ votes have been reallocated.
Following Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, the Democrats have been riven between a progressive wing exemplified by New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and moderates such as Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who has praised Trump. Mamdani ran his campaign on a pledge to make life more affordable for New Yorkers, whose cost of living has soared since the Covid-19 pandemic. If elected, he says he will raise taxes on the rich to fund free buses and childcare, as well as city-owned grocery stores. The progressive candidate tapped into a groundswell of support among younger voters — an electoral strategy that will be studied by Democrats nationally as they try to win back youthful voters who backed Trump in November. “In the words of Nelson Mandela: it always seems impossible until it’s done,” Mamdani said on X following the result. Ocasio-Cortez, who has tapped into a similar voter base, congratulated Mamdani on Tuesday night, saying in a social media post, “billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won.”
Zohran Mamdani supporters celebrate a New York mayoral Election Victory, June 25 2025
Zohran’s win is a rebuke to the Democratic Party’s disastrous and reactionary playbook since Clinton ‘92: in the face of the Right, move to the center which disgusts everyone and has led to further rightward drift. My comrades who’ve worked tirelessly to get Zohran elected are wary of the Dems, but believe—wrongly, in my opinion—that the Dem ballot line can be used by the Left to burrow from within. The NYC left is not yet prepared for how viciously and relentlessly the wealthy and powerful of that party will go after Zohran to co-opt and undermine him—whatever works. The left in NYC is not yet building the movement infrastructure to hold any left candidate accountable to resist pulls to the right and cooptation, as we’ve seen with AOC locally and Bernie nationally. We have a lot to learn from Chicago’s experience where the left also elected its mayor with a stronger labor left but similar movement and political deficits.
I’m happy Zohran won because of what it says about the possibility for building support for a progressive vision, but we’re surrounded by land mines without a map out or broad acknowledgement that there won’t be heroes to save us, that without organizing and mass movements and democratic structures of dissent to create pressure and accountability, the electoral wins will be elusive.
Ashley Smith :
In the face of an all out attack by the NYC ruling class and the worst Zionist slanders, racism, and anti communism, a Muslim pro-Palestine socialist just won the Democratic Primary and is now frontrunner for Mayor of New York. Whatever happens next, this is a sign of the profound radicalization to the left among the multiracial working class of this country on every single issue, including and especially Palestine. Our task now is to build the mass class and social struggles to push back against the rulers of the system that will pull out every trick in the book to block, neutralize, and co-opt Mamdani. We also must hold him accountable to the movements that made his victory possible. Celebrate, understand the powerful forces arrayed against us, and prepare to organize, demonstrate, and strike to overcome those obstacles and make Mamdani’s promises a reality.
Tania Vyhovsky, State Senator, Vermont :
Zohran ran a brilliant campaign and truly acknowledged the suffering of the many. His win is not only a referendum on the elitist dem establishment but a testament that a better world is possible and when you give people something to vote for they will vote. Turnout was huge in this election by US standards. People are sick and tired of being shamed and fear mongered into voting for the lesser of two evils. Mamdani gave New Yorkers something to believe in and he gave them and all of us hope for a better future. The democratic establishment will likely learn nothing from this but like Bernie in 2016 this may galvanize a whole wave of people who again believe in the power of a movement for a better tomorrow. This is governing from the ground up, governing for the people and it has to be the future if the United States is going to defeat fascism.
Mass resistance to the far-right USA Donald Trump régime is growing. This Labor Notes article highlights a number of disturbing cases : people are being illegally detained by racist state forces and deported. Similar authoritarian anti-democratic developments are occurring in other countries, including Ireland.
The situation is far more grim in Putin’s Russia – that is where we are headed unless resistance grows.
Members of various unions rallied in protest March 27 outside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, where farmworker organizer Lelo Juarez and SEIU member Lewelyn Davis are being held. Credit: The Stand
Ten national unions and dozens of locals representing more than 3 million members have issued a joint statement demanding the release of immigrant workers recently snatched by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The statement names farmworker union leader Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, who was picked up in what appears to be blatant retaliation for his organizing; SEIU Local 925 member Lewelyn Dixon, a University of Washington lab technician detained on her way home from visiting family; SEIU Local 509 member Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student whose detention by federal agents was captured in chilling footage; sheet metal worker Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a SMART Local 100 apprentice who was sent to El Salvador’s notorious prison complex; and United Auto Workers Local 2710 member Mahmoud Khalil, abducted by federal agents in front of his eight-months-pregnant wife.
The unions are also calling on employers, university administrators, and local governments to refuse to cooperate—and demanding that elected officials “find their spines.”
Key grassroots leaders of the recently triumphant MAGA movement went to war with Elon Musk on the question of immigration, in a spectacular argument that pointed to political divisions within their movement.
Tensions were already rising as Musk fanboys had started to promote their favourite capitalist as a co-president or ‘the real VP’ which angered the rampant egotism of Donald Trump who does not tolerate any competition. Musk made clear at a recent rally that Musk could never be president. Why? Because “He wasn’t born here”. Musk, a South African who is now naturalised as a US citizen would always ultimately be an outsider for the MAGA people.
This was the kindling for the wider explosion. Just before Christmas Day, Trump appointed US-Indian venture capitalist Siram Krishnan to be policy lead on AI. This was met with anger from some of the MAGA faithful – Krishnan had previously been a Democrat supporter so was seen as a suspect, but also crucially – not American. Well not fully ‘American’ in the way that they care about i.e. white.
Frieda Afary has written an excellent analysis (see below). She shows that the Democratic party candidate Kamala Harris lost 10 million votes compared with Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Trump’s vote totals in 2020 and 2024 were almost identical.
This article analyzes the vote breakdown, the pundits’ views, argues that Trump is a fascist and offers perspectives for the needed anti-fascist resistance.
Donald Trump’s election as president, and the Republican victories nationwide are a catastrophe for progressive forces in the U.S. and around the world. What the November 5, 2024 election showed was that while this country is still divided, there has been a rightward shift nationwide and across all demographic and geographic groups. (Levitt, 2024)
Vote Breakdown:
Let’s take a closer look at the demographic breakdown of the votes. Approximately 72 million voted for Harris and 75 million voted for Trump. Approximately 700,000 voted for Jill Stein and 700,000 voted for Robert Kennedy. This means that Democrats received 10 million fewer votes than in 2020 when Biden received 81 million. Trump received approximately the same number of votes he received in 2020. (U.S. Election Results, 2024)
The lame duck President of the USA Joe Biden – a “proud Irish-American Zionist” – is a bigger danger to the people living in Gaza and Palestine because he does not have to bend to electoral pressures.
The US president’s behaviour towards Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has clearly retreated from the semi-critical approach he had begun to adopt after realizing how costly his total complicity in the Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people is electorally, especially among traditional Democratic Party voters, as it is even resented within the party itself.
This is a very persuasive analysis. Accordingly, we must hope that pressure mounts in the USA and elsewhere to drive Biden out of office as soon as possible. Some reports suggest that Biden only agreed to leave the election race in favour of Kamala Harris after Barack Obama threatened Biden with ejection from the White House, using the 25th Amendment mechanism.
This would mean that not only did they force Biden out of the race, but that the Democrats know full well that Biden isn’t fit to serve out the rest of his term, but are comfortable letting him continue as a figure head if it serves their efforts to retain power for the party.
At the same time we must dismiss wild conspiracy claims about these developments. There was no “coup” against Biden – since when did party bosses deciding to bully an unpopular leader to resign become a coup? A better argument is that Obama, Harris and company did not go far enough dumping candidate Biden, who clearly has major medical cognitive issues – War Criminal Biden should be booted out of the White House as soon as possible, by any means necessary – the 25th Amendment is a satisfactory instrument.
John Meehan August 7 2024
Joe Biden’s Crime Against Humanity
Joe Biden will alas not stand in the dock before the International Criminal Court – that much is sure. There is no doubt, however, that the court of history, which is the fairest of criminal courts, will include his name prominently on the list of perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
Since he announced his decision to stop running for a second presidential term, Joe Biden has become a “lame duck” – an expression that commonly refers in the United States to an elected official who has reached the final months of their term without any extension prospect. The expression means that the official’s influence has become limited, as everybody knows that they will not remain in office for long. However, a person in such a situation in a presidential political system in which the president is elected by popular vote (indirectly in the US case), is also, in contrast, more free-handed than a president campaigning for an additional term, who must therefore ensure that he (no she, yet) does not lose votes as a result of positions or measures he may take.
Sharon Smith, writing for International Socialism, explores the control wielded by the Democratic Party establishment over the nomination process in her article, “The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election.
Foreword : USA Presidential elections are shit-shows – mud-slinging works.
Readers may know a famous Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) quip about why he called his opponent a pig fucker. Johnson admitted it wasn’t true, but “I want him to have to deny it,” he explained.
Mr Johnson became President of the USA in November 1963, taking over from the assassinated John F Kennedy.
Johnson won an election landslide in 1964 claiming his opponent Barry Goldwater was a fanatical warmonger. By 1968 demonstrators all over the globe were marching against the USA invasion of Vietnam – a favourite chant was :
“Hey, Hey, LBJ
How many kids did you kill today”
Donald Trump (age 78) looked more mentally capable than President Joe Biden (age 82) in a recent TV debate. The New York felon, convicted in a jury trial and fined 86 million dollars for sexually assaulting the writer E Jean Carroll, is now up against a more formidable Democratic party opponent Kamala Harris (age 59). The gloves are off :
“Ms Harris, speaking at a private fundraiser headlined by singer-songwriter James Taylor in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, said much of the rhetoric coming from Mr Trump and his running mate, US Senator JD Vance, was “just plain weird.”
Her use of the word “weird” to describe her opponents was part of a new strategy from Democrats.
The Harris campaign called Mr Trump “old and quite weird” following his appearance on Fox News on Thursday, and at least one supporter showed up outside the event yesterday holding a sign proclaiming “Trump is weird.” – RTÉ News Report
The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election – by Sharon Smith
What the Democratic Party establishment wants, it gets—and that includes its chosen presidential candidate. It had anointed Joe Biden well before the election primary season got underway in early 2024. This is why Biden ran virtually unopposed and predictably won every Democratic primary.
But the path to Biden’s reelection was not as smooth as Democratic Party leaders envisioned, mainly because Biden’s cognitive decline—underway for several years—has accelerated in recent months. Perhaps the leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed they could shield the public from Biden’s decline through the entire election cycle by limiting his time in the public eye. That strategy backfired badly. The Party leadership is entirely to blame for the ensuing chaos. But don’t expect them to change course.
An article from the Financial Times journalist Edward Luce, which should be a wake-up call.
Donald Trump’s running mate opposes abortion and aid to Ukraine and says he would not have certified results of 2020 vote.
With Vance, Trump is doubling down on Maga
Ohio senator is an intelligent and forceful exponent of the Maga movement — and maybe also its future
If there were any doubts that Donald Trump would go full “America First” he banished them on Monday with his vice-presidential pick. JD Vance is the most high-profile Trumpian cheerleader among senior Republicans.
Trump could have held his nose and chosen Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, who gave him the biggest run for his money in the Republican primaries. Haley is a relative moderate on abortion. Selecting her, or a like-minded figure, would have signalled that he wanted to broaden his appeal to wavering suburban female Republicans.
Vance, by contrast, is an unapologetic Christian conservative. If Joe Biden can find a silver lining in the gathering storm clouds, Vance would be it. Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, is an effective campaigner on a woman’s right to choose.
Ashley Smith analyzes the impact of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on the deepening political crisis in the U.S. and the ever growing weakness of the Joe Biden campaign.
The United States was already headed for one of the most acute political crises in recent memory. Then former president and convicted felon Donald Trump was nearly assassinated at a rally in Pennsylvania. Having survived, Trump has consolidated his base and cornered the Democrats by blaming them for the attack.
Trump will now position himself as a strong man and survivor over a debilitated Biden campaign. He has an inside track to victory in the election with a clear advantage despite being widely despised.
Even before the attempted assassination of Trump, President Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate performance had thrown his candidacy into doubt with the bourgeois press, the Democrat’s capitalist donors, and centrist politicians, all calling for him to pass the baton to another nominee.
GOP Capitalizes on Assassination Attempt
The attempt against Trump has drowned out all other issues. The image of him bloodied, defiant with fist raised, and chanting “fight, fight, fight” has been plastered across the media and will no doubt end up on t-shirts at this week’s GOP Convention in Milwaukee.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 