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Nationwide May Day Protests Target Trump's 'Billionaire Agenda'
"This May Day we are fighting back," said organizer May Day Strong. "We are demanding a country that puts our families over their fortunes."
May 01, 2025
Hundreds of thousands of workers rallied from coast to coast Thursday to mark International Workers' Day with spirited demonstrations supporting labor rights and protesting President Donald Trump's "billionaire agenda" and attacks on the rule of law, unions, immigrants, Palestine defenders, transgender people, and others.
Rallies took place in hundreds of cities and towns across the United States in what the May Day Strong coalition, which led the day of action along with the 50501 movement and others, called "a demand for a country that invests in working families—not billionaire profits."
"Trump and his billionaire profiteers are trying to create a race to the bottom—on wages, on benefits, on dignity itself," the coalition said. "This May Day we are fighting back. We are demanding a country that puts our families over their fortunes—public schools over private profits, healthcare over hedge funds, prosperity over free market politics."
HAPPENING NOW: Hundreds of protesters march through the streets of Washington, D.C. en route to the White House for a May Day rally against Donald Trump (Video: Mariel Carbone)
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— Marco Foster (@marcofoster.bsky.social) May 1, 2025 at 10:06 AM
"Just one day after the 100th day of the Trump administration, families nationwide are already facing cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and education—while billionaires reap massive tax breaks and record profits," May Day Strong added.
In Philadelphia, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among those who addressed a crowd of thousands, many of them union workers.
"Brothers and sisters, what we are celebrating today, May Day, is in a sense a sacred holiday, and all over our country workers are coming out and demanding justice, and all over the world, in dozens of countries, workers are standing up to oligarchy and demanding a world in which all people have a decent standard of living," said Sanders, whose Fighting Oligarchy tour with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)w is drawing massive crowds, including in "red" states.
Shafeek Anderson, a hotel worker and member of Unite Here Local 274 who attended the Philadelphia rally, toldWCAU that "we're tired of everything that's going on in everyday life. We're tired of our prices going up. We're tired of the unfair treatment."
"We're tired of the inequality in life and everything else," Anderson added. "So rallies like this will absolutely help show that we mean business and we absolutely will stand on business when we need to."
In Chicago, Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union—which recently won what it called a "transformative" new contract—said that "we believe in the power of common good bargaining and together, with SEIU 73 and other labor unions, we have been able to secure sanctuary protections for our students and their families."
"We resist bullies like Trump by creating coalition and leaning into the power of history and the power that Black people's freedom has paved for America in the first general strike during the Civil War," Davis Gates added. "My people believe in reconstruction, and we can do it together in solidarity and create a society that works for everyone."
Boise stands up for workers, for each other, for our humanity, for our democracy...Courage is contagious! May Day Strong!
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— Indivisible Boise Chapter One (@indivisibleboise.bsky.social) May 1, 2025 at 1:18 PM
The detainment and disappearance of students and workers without due process is an attack on every one of us in the streets today, and those of you at home. We won't be ignored. Los Angeles won't back down. #WeMakeAmericaWork #MayDay #InternationalWorkersDay
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— California Fast Food Workers Union (@cafastfoodunion.bsky.social) May 1, 2025 at 9:58 AM
The May Day Strong coalition is demanding:
- An end to the billionaire takeover and government corruption;
- Full funding for public schools, healthcare, and housing;
- Protection and expansion of Medicaid, Social Security, and other essential programs;
- A halt to attacks on immigrants, Black, Indigenous, trans, and other targeted communities; and
- Strong union protections, fair wages, and dignity for all workers.
"This is a war on working people—and we will not stand down," said May Day Strong. "They're defunding our schools, privatizing public services, attacking unions, and targeting immigrant families with fear and violence. Working people built this nation, and we know how to take care of each other."
HAPPENING NOW: A HUGE crowd of protesters march through the streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin for a May Day protest against Donald Trump
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— Marco Foster (@marcofoster.bsky.social) May 1, 2025 at 10:36 AM
HAPPENING NOW: Thousands of protesters are at the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix for a May Day rally against Donald Trump (Video: Colton Krolak)
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— Marco Foster (@marcofoster.bsky.social) May 1, 2025 at 10:20 AM
"We won't back down—we will never stop fighting for our families and the rights and freedoms that propel opportunity and a better life for all Americans," the coalition added. "Their time is up."
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'Mayday! Mayday!': It's May Day
Unless we stop the damage Trump and his band of billionaire oligarchs are doing to both our democracy and our economy before then, much of it will be irreversible.
May 01, 2025
May Day has two meanings, both of which are directly applicable to today. It commemorates the solidarity of the labor movement (139 years ago today, workers gathered in the streets of Chicago to demand an eight-hour day).
“Mayday!” is also a distress signal used by pilots to indicate imminent danger or a life-threatening emergency (derived from the French phrase “m’aider,” meaning “help me”).
That about sums it up: Our solidarity is necessary to overcome the imminent dangers we now face — all from Donald J. Trump.
I doubt we can wait until the midterm elections to contain him. Unless we stop the damage he’s doing to both our democracy and our economy before then, much of it will be irreversible. It’s not even clear what sort of election we’ll be able to have 18 months from now.
Demonstrations are planned today in more than 900 cities against both the Trump regime and the oligarchy that supports and benefits from it. The official banner under which people will march today is, appropriately, “For the Workers, Not the Billionaires.”
Our solidarity is necessary to overcome the imminent dangers we now face — all from Donald J. Trump.
Under Trump, Americans are relearning the lesson we learned about the oligarchy during the Gilded Age of the late 1890s, when robber barons ran the government and the economy for their own benefit: Oligarchy is incompatible with the common good.
The Republican Party and Elon Musk’s efforts to cut veterans’ benefits, Medicaid, Social Security, food safety, food stamps, and much else that Americans depend on — all to create room in the budget for another big tax cut mostly benefiting the wealthy — is the latest and clearest example of oligarchic muscle-flexing in the Trump regime.
This is forcing the Democratic Party to move toward economic populism. Despite recent discussion in The New York Times among former leaders of the Democratic Leadership Council attributing Bill Clinton’s electoral victories to his neoliberal stances, the energy in today’s Party lies in 83-year-old Bernie Sanders and 35-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who are explicitly taking on the oligarchy.
Meanwhile, Trump’s polls are plummeting. Almost all now show him underwater, with approval ratings hovering around 42 percent and disapprovals at over 55 percent.
Trump’s trade war is choking off supply chains and threatening to push up prices and create shortages of critical components and products.
It’s already causing the economy to contract — by 0.3 percent in the first quarter, according to a Commerce Department report out yesterday. That’s a huge reversal from the strong 2.4 percent expansion in the final full quarter of Biden’s presidency. Wall Street has chalked up the worst performance at the start of a new presidential term in almost half a century.
At the same time, Trump is edging ever closer to defying the Supreme Court. In a unanimous ruling on April 10, the court ordered Trump to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia — a Maryland man the regime wrongly deported to El Salvador last month.
In a Tuesday interview on ABC, Trump acknowledged that he “could” secure Abrego Garcia’s release — contradicting Attorney General Bondi’s assertion that the U.S. doesn’t have the power to do so — but said he won’t. “If he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that, but he is not.”
Hopefully, today’s May Day demonstrations will lead to larger ones (I’m still counting on a “national civic uprising” that even conservatives like columnist David Brooks support).
But what’s the goal of such displays of solidarity? How do they fight the imminent dangers?
Mark my words: If the economy continues to deteriorate, if the regime cuts services that the public depends on in order to give the oligarchy a huge tax cut, and if Trump ever more openly defies the Supreme Court — the solidarity will pay off in such a huge outpouring of national anger that Congress impeaches and convicts the orange menace before the midterm elections.
Mayday! And Happy May Day.
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Amazon Won't Display Tariff Costs After Trump Whines to Bezos
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said all companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
Apr 29, 2025
Amazon said Tuesday that it would not display tariff costs next to products on its website after U.S. President Donald Trump called the e-commerce giant's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, to complain about the reported plan.
Citing an unnamed person familiar with Amazon's supposed plan, Punchbowl Newsreported that "the shopping site will display how much of an item's cost is derived from tariffs—right next to the product's total listed price."
Many Amazon products come from China. While U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed Sunday that "there is a path" to a tariff deal with the Chinese government, Trump has recently caused global economic alarm by hitting the country with a 145% tax and imposing a 10% minimum for other nations.
According toCNN, which spoke with two senior White House officials on Tuesday, Trump's call to Bezos "came shortly after one of the senior officials phoned the president to inform him of the story" from Punchbowl.
"Of course he was pissed," one official said of Trump. "Why should a multibillion-dollar company pass off costs to consumers?"
Asked about how the call with Bezos went, Trump told reporters: "Great. Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly, and he did the right thing, and he's a good guy."
Earlier Tuesday, during a briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Amazon's reported plan "a hostile and political act," and said that "this is another reason why Americans should buy American."
Leavitt also asked why Amazon didn't have such displays during the Biden administration and held up a printed version of a 2021 Reutersreport about the company's "compliance with the Chinese government edict" to stop allowing customer ratings and reviews in China, allegedly prompted by negative feedback left on a collection President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings.
Asked whether Bezos is "still a Trump supporter," Leavitt said that she "will not speak to" the president's relationship with him.
As CNBCdetailed Tuesday:
Less than two hours after the press briefing, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the company was only ever considering listing tariff charges on some products for Amazon Haul, its budget-focused shopping section.
"The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products," the spokesperson said. "This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties."
But in a follow-up statement an hour after that one, the spokesperson clarified that the plan to show tariff surcharges was "never approved" and is "not going to happen."
In response to Bloomberg also reporting on Amazon's claim that tariff displays were never under consideration for the company's main site, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote on social media Tuesday, "Good move."
Before Amazon publicly killed any plans for showing consumers the costs from Trump's import taxes, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the chamber's floor Tuesday that companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
"I urge more companies, particularly national retailers that compete with Amazon, to adopt this practice. If Amazon has the courage to display why prices are going up because of tariffs, so should all of our other national retailers who compete with them. And I am calling on them to do it now," he said.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) on Tuesday framed the whole incident as an example of how "Trump has created a government by and for the billionaires," declaring: "If anyone ever doubted that Trump, and [Elon] Musk, and Bezos, and the billionaires are all [on] one team, just look at what happened at Amazon today. Bezos immediately caved and walked back a plan to tell Americans how much Trump's tariffs are costing them."
Casar also claimed Bezos wants "big tax cuts and sweetheart deals," and pointed to Amazon's Prime Video paying $40 million to license a documentary about the life of First Lady Melania Trump. In addition to the film agreement, Bezos has come under fire for Amazon's $1 million donation to the president's inauguration fund.
As the owner of
The Washington Post, Bezos—the world's second-richest person, after Trump adviser Musk—also faced intense criticism for blocking the newspaper's planned endorsement of the president's 2024 Democratic challenger, Kamala Harris, and demanding its opinion page advocate for "personal liberties and free markets."
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