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"This is a war on working people—and we will not stand down."
With right-wing, pro-corporate political parties across the world aggressively pushing anti-immigration policies and sentiment as they worsen inequality and attack crucial services, working people across the world gathered on Thursday to mark May Day—the holiday memorializing the struggles and victories of the global labor movement—and to let those in power know they aren't fooled by xenophobic scapegoating.
"They tell people that migrants are to blame for failing hospitals, job insecurity, and rising rents," said Esther Lynch, general secretary of the European Trade Union Conference in Paris. "This is a lie—a dangerous lie. The true cause is austerity, it is underfunding, privatization, and a refusal to invest in people. It's price gauging, it's union busting, it's pay injustice."
Here are photos from demonstrations and marches worldwide:
Protesters with red flags raise their fists as they march during a May Day (Labour Day) rally, marking International Workers' Day, outside the Greek Parliament in Athens, on May 1, 2025. (Photo: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP via Getty Images)
Paris was the site of France's main May Day rally, but an estimated 260 protests kicked off throughout the country, hosted by the General Confederation of France (CGT).
In the United States, protests were expected in nearly 1,000 cities, with many participants tying the fight against union-busting, the high cost of living, privatization, and corporate greed to President Donald Trump's administration—which has spent the past three months working to secure $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy while pushing a mass deportation campaign and blaming working families' struggles on a so-called "invasion" by immigrants.
"This is a war on working people—and we will not stand down," a website for the U.S. May Day protests reads. "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. 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. Their time is up."
French union leaders also used the occasion to decry the "Trumpization" of global politics, and Italian protesters in Turin paraded a puppet of the U.S. president.
The global movement sent the message that "there is an alternative to the billionaire vision of the world," said the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
Other May Day marches and rallies were held in countries including Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, the Philippines, Turkey, and Japan.
"Around the world, workers are being denied the basics of life like well-funded hospitals and schools, living wages, and freedom to move, while billionaires pocket record profits and unimaginable power," said Luc Triangle, general secretary of the ITUC. "A system built for the 0.0001% is rigged against the rest of us—but workers around the world are standing up and organizing to take back democracy."
"Workers are demanding a New Social Contract that works for them—not the billionaires undermining democracy," said Triangle. "Fair taxation, strong public services, living wages, and a just transition are not radical demands—they are the foundation of a just society."
On May 8, the ITUC plans to issue an open letter to heads of state and global institutions demanding a new social contract, including collective bargaining rights for all workers; minimum living wages; and governments that ensure universal healthcare, education, and other public services.
"Let us be clear: austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity. And it is a choice that has caused and is causing enormous damage," said Lynch. "When governments slash spending under the guise of fiscal responsibility, the real result is increased hardship, unemployment, and insecurity—especially for working people."
"Jobs in the public and private sector are being lost across the E.U. due to austerity policies," she added. "Vital public services are being slashed, wages are being frozen, pensions cut and entire communities are being abandoned. In this vacuum, the far right grows stronger—not by offering solutions, but by spreading fear."
The exchange on the Senate floor came after the Finance Committee chair blocked passage of the Vermont Independent's bill.
U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo on Tuesday blocked passage of Sen. Bernie Sanders' legislation to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision care for tens of millions of American seniors, but the bill's sponsor got the panel leader to publicly agree to further discuss the issue.
Sanders (I-Vt.) took to the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon to ask for unanimous consent to pass the Medicare Dental, Hearing, and Vision Expansion Act, which is spearheaded in the House of Representatives by Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas).
"In the richest country in the history of the world, it is unacceptable that millions of seniors are unable to read because they can't afford eyeglasses, can't have conversations with their grandchildren because they can't afford hearing aids, and have trouble eating because they can't afford dentures," Sanders said in a statement.
"That should not be happening in the United States of America in the year 2025," he continued. "The time is long overdue for Congress to expand Medicare to include comprehensive coverage for the dental, vision, and hearing care that our seniors desperately need."
After Crapo (R-Idaho) rose to stop the bill from advancing, he and Sanders had a brief exchange in which the Republican agreed to working on achieving the "outcome" of the federal healthcare program covering dental, vision, and hearing.
In Sanders' remarks on the Senate floor about his bill, he sounded the alarm about efforts by President Donald Trump, billionaire Elon Musk, and congressional Republicans to cut government healthcare programs and Social Security.
"Yeah, we have more nuclear weapons than any other country, we have more billionaires than any other country, but we also have one of the highest rates of senior poverty of any country on Earth. We might want to get our priorities right," said Sanders, who has long fought for achieving universal healthcare in the United States via his Medicare for All legislation.
"While my Republican colleagues would like to make massive cuts to Medicaid in order to provide more tax breaks to billionaires, some of us have a better idea," he said. "We think that it makes more sense to substantially improve the lives of our nation's seniors by expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing benefits."
To pay for his expansion plan, Sanders calls for ensuring that Medicare pays no more for prescription drugs than the Department of Veterans Affairs and addressing the tens of billions of dollars that privately administered Medicare Advantage plans overcharge the federal government annually.
In a statement about the bill, Doggett highlighted that "this expanded care could help prevent cognitive impairment and dementia, worsened chronic disease, and imbalance leading to falls with deadly consequences. This is an essential step to fulfilling the original promise of Medicare—to assure dignity and health for all."
Welcoming their renewed push for Medicare expansion, Public Citizen healthcare advocate Eagan Kemp declared that "at the same time Trump and his cronies in Congress try to rip healthcare away from millions and push for further privatization of Medicare, Sen. Sanders and Rep. Doggett are showing what one of our top priorities in healthcare should be—improving traditional Medicare."
"The introduction of this legislation is an important step to ensure Medicare enrollees can access the care they need, and we hope that Congress will act quickly to pass these commonsense reforms," Kemp added. "Healthcare is a human right."
Earlier Tuesday, in anticipation of Crapo's committee holding a confirmation hearing for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former television host Trump has nominated to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Public Citizen released a research brief about the hundreds of millions of dollars Medicare Advantage companies have spent on lobbying.
"If Oz is confirmed as the CMS administrator," Kemp warned, "attacks on traditional Medicare are likely to move into overdrive."
Universal healthcare, or at least a robust public option, would give Americans the freedom to leave jobs or relationships without fear of losing coverage.
Many people are nervously awaiting the fate of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, under the new administration. If the ACA is repealed or restricted, countless women in abusive relationships could be forced to risk losing their spouse's healthcare coverage should they decide to leave.
For millions of Americans, healthcare is tied to jobs or marriages, creating dangerous dependencies. In 2023, over 60% of Americans under age 65 relied on employer-sponsored health insurance. Of these, one-quarter of women under 65 received their health insurance through a spouse’s plan.
I witnessed the devastating consequences of this firsthand during my 10 years working with a governmental agency dedicated to supporting individuals in “high-risk” domestic violence situations—cases where abuse was severe, frequent, and life-threatening. In this role, I provided crisis intervention, safety planning, and emotional support to survivors navigating unimaginable challenges. One woman I worked with called me from the doctor’s office one afternoon in tears. She had just been treated for a fractured eye socket. Her partner had thrown her against a wall the night before. While she hadn’t disclosed the cause of her injury to the medical staff, she had shared the truth with me.
Today, healthcare access is largely determined by employment and marital status, reinforcing economic inequality, gender-based harm, and rigid social roles.
Her distress, however, wasn’t about the medical care she received. It was about the idea of losing access to that very care if she ever left her partner. Ironically, the same healthcare that tended to her physical and emotional wounds was tied to her abuser’s job. Without him, she and her children would lose their health insurance entirely.
This tragic irony is the daily reality for countless individuals across the United States. For people in abusive, coercive, or manipulative relationships, healthcare tied to marriage gives abusers significant leverage. Leaving an abusive partner is never a simple decision, but the threat of losing health insurance—often for their children as well as themselves—makes it even harder. Survivors are forced to weigh their personal safety against access to life-saving care.
Employer-sponsored health insurance wasn’t always the norm. Before World War II, Americans typically paid out of pocket for medical procedures. But in the 1940s, wage controls during wartime prevented employers from raising salaries, so they began offering health insurance as a perk to attract and retain workers. Over time, this temporary solution became a default system, expanding to include dependent and spousal coverage as societal norms emphasized “family-centric” policies.
What began as a short-term fix has since created a web of unintended consequences. Today, healthcare access is largely determined by employment and marital status, reinforcing economic inequality, gender-based harm, and rigid social roles.
For survivors of domestic violence, this system compounds an already harrowing situation. The research shows that approximately 99% of domestic violence survivors experience financial abuse. Healthcare is often one of the financial tools used to exert control. Survivors may be blocked from accessing care, forced to remain in harmful relationships, or deprived of medical resources if they attempt to leave.
But the problem doesn’t end with domestic violence. The employer- and spousal-based healthcare system pressures people to conform to outdated family roles, leaving out millions who live outside traditional employment or family structures. For example, why shouldn’t someone be able to add a sibling, an elderly parent, or a close friend to their health insurance plan? Our narrow definitions of “family” exclude many from the support they need during life’s most challenging moments.
The good news is that change is possible. While we may not yet be at a point where we can fully separate healthcare from jobs and marriages, we are at a critical juncture where we can challenge the status quo and push for meaningful reform.
The Affordable Care Act was a significant step forward, but public options remain prohibitively expensive for many Americans. On average, employer-sponsored plans cost workers around $6,200 annually for family coverage, while public plans, without subsidies, can be more expensive. Closing this gap through expanded subsidies or premium caps must be a priority.
Current laws offer some protections. For example, domestic violence survivors qualify for health insurance enrollment outside standard open enrollment periods under the ACA and many private plans. But these policies are undermined by prohibitive costs and complex administrative processes, creating unnecessary barriers for those already in crisis.
Administrative barriers like these need reform. The ACA’s rollout was marred by technical issues, and today, many Americans still face confusing, inefficient systems that discourage participation. Streamlining the enrollment process and raising public awareness of available options would go a long way toward ensuring equitable access.
Long-term, we must move toward a system where healthcare access is no longer tied to employment or romantic relationships. Universal healthcare, or at least a robust public option, would give Americans the freedom to leave jobs or relationships without fear of losing coverage. No one should have to choose between their health and their safety, or between financial security and their autonomy.