“As an adjudicated insurrectionist, Trump is an illegitimate president according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and therefore every official act as president will be illegitimate.”
–Mike Zonta, co-editor of OccupySF.net
The 14th Amendment states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Call your Congressperson and your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121
Even an eighth-grade algebra student knows that you can’t divide by zero — and prices can’t fall by more than 100%, writes Marc Sandalow.Examiner file
Here’s something for “reckless, feckless and defeatist” haters of President Donald Trump to ponder now that algebra is back in San Francisco’s middle schools.
Trump repeatedly boasts of reducing drug prices by 600%, sometimes as much as 1,500% — a seeming mathematical impossibility. Last week his health secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr., came to his defense twice, once in testimony before Congress and once before reporters in the Oval Office, insisting that Trump’s claim is one of “two ways of calculating” percentages.
Those who understand basic arithmetic ridicule the assertion as “MAGA math.” It conjures up the twisted reality portrayed in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” in which fear arises that Big Brother will declare that two plus two is five.
But what if the critics could be proven wrong? With apologies to those who understand mathematics on a much higher level than I do, here’s one explanation supporting Big Brother’s calculation.
Let’s start with something everyone can agree on: 0 = 0.
And you don’t need algebra to know that any number subtracted from itself is zero. Which means, in algebraic terms, x – x = 0. Or, x – x = x – x.
Furthermore, any number multiplied by zero equals zero. So, it is also true that 4(x – x) = 5(x – x) is a mathematically sound equation.
Now comes the more complicated calculation, which will soon be introduced to San Francisco eighth graders. In algebra, one way to simplify an equation is by dividing each side by an identical number.
So, divide both sides by x – x and you end up with 4 = 5. And if 4 equals five, then 2 + 2 = 5.
Perhaps Big Brother, Trump and Kennedy are right!
Kennedy, who holds degrees from Harvard and the University of Virginia and attended the London School of Economics, insisted that his boss’s math was accurate.
“If a drug was $100 and its price rose to $600, that would be a 600% increase” Kennedy said last week (that’s actually a 500% increase, but who’s counting?). “If it drops from $600 to $100, that would be a 600% savings.”
Under new proposal, SFPUC would be able to purchase infrastructure the utility would otherwise be required to install itself
“Right,” the president proclaimed.
Actually, that’s wrong, as most eighth-graders could tell them. You can’t divide by zero. And prices can’t fall by more than 100%.
Say a 300-pound man balloons up to 600 pounds. That’s a 100% increase. But if drops back to 300 pounds, he hasn’t lost 100% of his weight. If he had, he’d be gone.
Though it might be confusing to some — including Trump and Kennedy — going from 300 to 600 is a 100% increase. Falling from 600 to 300 is a 50% decrease.
Of course, haggling over numbers is only important if you are concerned about reality. And reality, as comedian Stephen Colbert once observed, “has a well-known liberal bias.”
Were Trump or Kennedy making an honest mistake, they would correct themselves. But assertions such as “the U.S. has already won the war in Iran,” or that prices have plummeted since Joe Biden was president, or that the U.S. economy is the hottest in the world are not meant to fact-checked.
“This is the problem with the media,” Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said after the 2016 election. “You guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally. The American people didn’t. They understood it.”
And the White House is counting on Americans not understanding algebra.
In the final season of the HBO comedy series “Veep,” the buffoonish Jonah Ryan insists he has more delegates than the math shows in his quixotic run for the presidency. He then learns that algebra was developed by Muslims in the 9th century.
“How do you explain that when I add up my delegates — with Christian math — the number is quite different?” he says, vowing to end the teaching of “Sharia math” in schools.
Americans have grown accustomed to MAGA math. It explains how Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in 2024 by a margin of 1.5 percentage points was a “historic landslide,” how Washington, D.C., no longer has crime, or how such an unpopular president can have a “100% approval rating.”
And if bringing algebra back to eighth grade doesn’t make believers out of them, perhaps the White House can find alternate facts that will.
By J.D. Morris, Staff Writer May 2, 2026 (SFChronicle.com)
Gift Article
Saikat Chakrabarti, who is running to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, poses for a photo between supporters in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood during the opening of his second campaign office.Lizzy Montana Myers/For the S.F. Chronicle
San Francisco congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti was largely unknown on the city’s political scene when he launched his campaign for the House seat held by Rep. Nancy Pelosi for decades.
While he spent seven months in Congress as chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Chakrabarti has barely waded into San Francisco politics in the 17 years since he first moved to the city.
To Chakrabarti and his supporters, his scant experience in local governance isn’t a weakness — it’s an asset in his campaign as an outsider who wants to push the Democratic Party in a bolder, more progressive direction. But as the race to succeed Pelosi intensifies ahead of the June 2 primary, Chakrabarti’s critics have repeatedly cast him as unqualified.
Donors supporting state Sen. Scott Wiener, the presumed front-runner, paid for mailers that describe Chakrabarti as barely connected to San Francisco. One Wiener supporter was even linked to a mysterious van that made a similar argument in a more provocative fashion.
But it’s not just Wiener’s fans who are making that argument. Some local progressives and labor union leaders who support another major candidate, Supervisor Connie Chan, are also deeply skeptical about Chakrabarti, a wealthy former tech engineer who has little history of backing the local candidates and causes they support.
Chakrabarti is largely self-funding his campaign, but his fundraising reflects that he is getting a lot of support from outside San Francisco: 66% of his donors through March were from outside California. Additionally, Politico previously reported that Chakrabarti voted once in San Francisco in 2010 — and did not cast a ballot in the city again for a decade. He spent several of those years living in other places.
“He’s a total imposter,” said Aaron Peskin, a Chan backer who was a longtime member of the Board of Supervisors. “He’s very interested in being an elected official, but he has … no track record in … San Francisco that I’m aware of.”
Allies of Chakrabarti have a far different view.
In Chakrabarti, supporters see a fighter who is willing to take strong stances on issues such as Israel’s war in Gaza, healthcare and wealth inequality. Chakrabarti has promised to support an arms embargo on Israel, push to make Medicare available to all Americans, and back tax increases on the country’s richest residents — including himself. He has also said he will challenge party leadership when necessary to advance his goals, including by voting to oust Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. as the House Democrats’ leader.
“The system is broken. The establishment has been failing us,” former San Francisco Democratic Party Chair Honey Mahogany said at a recent Chakrabarti campaign event. “We need new blood. We need a new generation of leaders … who are not in the pockets of the special interests.”
Chakrabarti has blasted the influence of deep-pocketed tech donors who have lined up behind Wiener, his main opponent. But Chakrabarti’s campaign has been bankrolled heavily by his own wealth, which he accumulated by “winning the startup lottery” in his early years in San Francisco.
He moved to the city in 2009, when he was 23. A few years later, he became one of the earliest employees at Stripe, the payment processing company now valued at $159 billion. Stripe’s success made Chakrabarti a centimillionaire for earnings above $100 million, and he has spent about $5 million of his own money on the race so far.
He told the Chronicle that his time at Stripe also fueled a political awakening.
“I was seeing the cost-of-living crisis going crazy around me,” Chakrabarti said of his early years in San Francisco. “I started to realize I wasn’t working on the actual problems that were facing people in tech. So I quit.”
After leaving the tech industry, Chakrabarti got involved in federal politics, starting with the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders. He subsequently co-founded two political groups, helmed Ocasio-Cortez’s successful 2018 House campaign and became her first chief of staff once she was elected.
His time on the East Coast has been a major source of scrutiny in his House campaign.
In 2018, he purchased a $1.6 million home in Gaithersburg, Md. — and signed a deed in which he listed that house as his primary residence, according to a November report from the San Francisco Standard. He has said he bought that house for his parents and described the primary residence declaration as a mistake that he has since corrected.
Nonetheless, the Maryland house became a launching pad for criticism from Wiener, who referenced the Standard story in a March video attacking Chakrabarti. Abundant Future, a super PAC that supports Wiener, has gone even further, sending multiple mailers that cast Chakrabarti as a carpetbagger.
Chakrabarti has fired back, accusing Wiener of misrepresenting the details of the Maryland home purchase and calling the attacks on his San Francisco residency as “nativist in a way.”
While he made a name for himself as a progressive on the national level, Chakrabarti’s limited track record with local candidates has been more politically diverse.
Chakrabarti supported Supervisor Bilal Mahmood’s successful 2024 bid to unseat Dean Preston, a democratic socialist who had been the most left-leaning member of the Board of Supervisors. He also backed another moderate supervisor candidate in a different district and voted for moderate Mayor Daniel Lurie.
Chakrabarti told the Chronicle that his electoral preferences haven’t always aligned neatly with the city’s political camps. He said he previously supported Preston but felt “lined up a bit more” on housing policy with Mahmood, who favored more aggressive measures to build housing for all income levels. He said he voted for Lurie because he believes that “the tribal politics in this city is one of the reasons for its dysfunction” and he thought Lurie could change that.
Chakrabarti also noted that he has supported some local progressive candidates, including Chesa Boudin’s successful bid for San Francisco district attorney in 2019 before his recall in 2022.
Still, no sitting elected official in San Francisco has endorsed Chakrabarti’s campaign. None of the city’s labor unions has endorsed him, either — which is rare for a leading progressive candidate. Many labor groups have rallied around Chan’s bid, though some have backed Wiener.
Mike Casey, a Chan supporter and president of the San Francisco Labor Council, said the supervisor had consistently backed union causes throughout her time in public office, but he couldn’t say the same about Chakrabarti.
“He doesn’t know our issues. He hasn’t been there when we’ve been fighting to raise the minimum wage or make sure that low-wage workers get healthcare,” Casey said. “How can you claim the mantle of being a progressive if you don’t even have a strong alliance with the traditional progressive organizations and institutions like organized labor?”
Eric Jaye, a political consultant who estimated he has been involved with more than 100 local campaigns, said Chakrabarti’s thin list of local endorsements could hurt him with voters.
“I don’t think his money erases all of that,” Jaye said. “San Francisco politics tends to be highly reliant on validation from trusted sources. … It’s still a place where voters would like to know that somebody that they know and trust has vetted you.”
Chakrabarti isn’t worried.
“I’m running as the outsider to the political establishment — that means it’s going to be hard for me, in a primary like this, to get local endorsements,” he told the Chronicle. “That’s not going to stop me from being a pro-labor candidate. … Going into November, I do hope to earn the endorsement of local progressive and union groups.”
While the local progressive establishment has largely shied away from backing Chakbarti during the primary, so has his former boss, Ocasio-Cortez, a national progressive superstar. Chakrabarti told the Chronicle he has “a good relationship” with Ocasio-Cortez and hopes to earn her backing in the future.
Yet Chakrabarti has had little difficulty spreading the word about his candidacy, especially online.
One of his advertisements, in which he touts his national political experience while walking through Dolores Park, has more than 1 million views on YouTube. He is a prolific poster on social media sites: On Instagram, he has more followers than Wiener and Chan combined.
Chakrabarti has also paid handsomely to amass an army of paid field organizers who his campaign says have knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors — a task other campaigns typically rely on volunteers to complete.
“I feel like his presence is really strong,” said San Francisco resident Risa Takenaka, 28, who attended a recent Chakrabarti campaign event and said she was inclined to support his campaign.
Takenaka was among a large crowd of people who recently packed into a Castro storefront that Chakrabarti has turned into his second campaign office in the city. She said she was unmoved by the attacks she has seen against Chakrabarti.
But some other attendees told the Chronicle they were thinking about Chakrabarti’s local track record as they contemplated whether to back him.
Don Bliss, a 66-year old San Francisco resident, called Chakrabarti’s decision to support some moderate local candidates in the 2024 election cycle as “rather disturbing for a progressive.”
“I’ve questioned his local bona fides,” Bliss said. “I don’t think that the argument is strong enough to not vote for him, because he does have significant local connections … but I am weighing that as part of my decision.”
Hafeth “Omar” Mansouri, the manager of Key Food Market on Fillmore Street — around the corner from the first San Francisco home Chakrabarti bought 13 years ago — said he’s known the candidate for years and runs into him on the street regularly.
Mansouri, 45, has grown into a strong supporter of Chakrabarti’s political efforts, recently appearing in a social media video with the candidate and Hasan Piker, a popular leftist streamer with a history of controversial comments.
“What he says and what he does — it resonates with me,” Mansouri told the Chronicle, citing Chakrabarti’s stances on several issues, including the war in Gaza. “He’s progressive.”
In his interview with the Chronicle, Chakrabarti stressed that he has considered San Francisco home for much of his adult life. He also made it clear that he thinks the national focus of his past political work can help him deliver for local residents.
“I really believe that the issues San Francisco is facing — whether it’s the cost of living crisis or the homelessness crisis — these are the issues that we’re facing hardest, but they are national issues,” he said. “We have to do these big, structural changes nationally to fix these (problems) for our communities right here.”
J.D. Morris covers San Francisco City Hall, focused on Mayor Daniel Lurie. He joined the Chronicle in 2018 to cover energy and spent three years writing mostly about PG&E and California wildfires.
Before coming to the Chronicle, he reported on local government for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, where he was among the journalists awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the 2017 North Bay wildfires.
He was previously the casino industry reporter for the Las Vegas Sun. Raised in Monterey County and Bakersfield, he has a bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from UC Berkeley.
Library of Congress Jul 29, 2010 SUMMARY This film shows the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, and the devastation resulting from the subsequent three-day fire. The 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck at 5:12am and was centered along the San Andreas Fault, which slices through coastal California. Most of the cities of central California were badly damaged. San Francisco, with thousands of unreinforced brick buildings – and thousands more closely-spaced wooden Victorian dwellings – was poorly prepared for a major fire. Collapsed buildings, broken chimneys, and a shortage of water due to broken mains led to several large fires that soon coalesced into a city-wide holocaust. The fire swept over nearly a quarter of the city, including the entire downtown area. Dynamite was used with varying success to prevent the fire from spreading westward. Over 3,000 people are now estimated to have died as a result of the disaster. For the surviving refugees, the first few weeks were hard; as aid poured in from around the country, thousands slept in tents in city parks, and all citizens were asked to do their cooking in the street. A severe shortage of public transportation made a taxicab out of anything on wheels. Numerous businesses relocated teporarily in Oakland and many refugees found lodgings outside the city. Reconstruction of the city proceeded at a furious pace and by 1908, San Francisco was well on the way to recovery. The scenes in the film are preceded by titles, many of which are sensationalized. One entire scene showing a family eating in the street was almost certainly staged for the camera. The film was probably made in early May, as one scene can be precisely dated to May 9, and another to sometime after May 1. CREATED/PUBLISHED [United States : s.n., 1906?]. SUBJECTS Earthquakes–California–San Francisco. Fires–California–San Francisco. Buildings–Earthquake effects–California–San Francisco. Ferries–California–San Francisco. Street-railroads–California–San Francisco. San Francisco (Calif.)–History. Oakland (Calif.)–History. Transportation–Earthquake effects–California. Actuality–Short. RELATED NAMES AFI/Adams (L.F.) Collection (Library of Congress) DIGITAL ID lcmp003 03734s1 03734s2 03734s3 03734s4 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mbrsmi/lcmp003…
Reminiscent of the Gingrich Revolution, a multi-bill package would attack higher costs, raise wages, and get big money out of politics. Its architect sees it as a battle plan for the midterms.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), with other members of Congress, is seen on the House steps of the Capitol in Washington, September 30, 2025. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
On Wednesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus introduced a wide-ranging agenda in advance of the midterm elections that rivals the breadth of the Republican Contract with America put forward by Newt Gingrich in 1994.
At a time of stagnant employment and rising inflation that is poised to worsen as the Strait of Hormuz crisis continues, the agenda focuses on affordability in many forms, proposing bills that would lower the cost of housing, electricity, gasoline, child care, prescription drugs, groceries, and consumer goods and services where the price is set through the extraction of personal information.
The legislative package, called the New Affordability Agenda, would also tackle the wage side of the affordability equation, benefiting workers through mandates for guaranteed double time for overtime and two weeks of paid vacation. And it is designed to place limits on the scads of money that makes all these policies impossible to advance through Congress, by capping super PAC spending in elections.
In an interview with the Prospect, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) called the agenda a direct response to the impression that the Democratic Party had strayed too far from its New Deal and Great Society roots. “After the 2024 election loss, Democrats from across the ideological spectrum were saying that we lost the trust of working people,” he said. “This is our chance to regain that.”
Most of the ideas are relatively new; stalwart concepts that Democratic candidates run on across the country like banning congressional stock trading are likely to come later. Casar, in his first term as Progressive Caucus chair, called the agenda “the tip of the spear” and said the caucus would obviously be fighting for more than ten bills next year. But he saw the opportunity for a package the entire party can come together on.
Two of the co-authors of the legislation, Reps. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) and Josh Riley (D-NY), are not Progressive Caucus members; Riley represents a swing district. And the New Affordability Agenda is backed up with polling from Data for Progress showing broad appeal, with all the policies having at least 65 percent support, including between 59 and 78 percent backing from Republicans.
“This agenda can help us build a new consensus this year within the Democratic Party,” said Casar, who has begun talking with all the top Democrats in the committees of jurisdiction, who would chair the committees if Democrats take the midterms and would be in a position to pass the bills. He’s engaged House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on the agenda as well, along with rank-and-file members.
“We need to be more than an anti-Trump party. We need to be a pro-worker party.”Rep. Greg Casar
The caucus spent close to a year deputizing its members to come up with the slate of policies, enlisting assistance and advice from current and former policymakers, union leaders, and progressive economists. Twenty-two organizations endorsed the agenda.
“At a time when Americans are facing not just an affordability crisis but also a deep sense of economic precarity, we need a policy agenda that will deliver real relief and take on corporate abuse,” former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan said in a statement. “It’s terrific to see a legislative plan that will address these pain points and steer towards an economy that is more fair and competitive.”
Casar previewed the agenda last year in a profile in the Prospect, calling it the “battleship bill.” He explicitly saw it as something that could be used in blue, red, and purple districts during the elections, and that could be passed if Democrats take back the House. Any resistance from the Senate or President Trump would clarify the stakes of the next election and build a mandate for success in 2028. “Voters can see us fighting for things we care about and blame Republicans for blocking it,” Casar said.
Throughout its history, the Progressive Caucus has traditionally endorsed blue-sky legislation like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal, topics that do not necessarily have majority support in Congress. While the caucus still supports those bedrock issues, this is a different tactic.
“When I go do town halls in Republican districts or in a union hall with building trades members that voted for Biden and then Trump, they say, ‘We’re sick of Trump but what are you guys actually for? Are you going to say affordability over and over or do something about it?’” Casar explained. “We need to be more than an anti-Trump party. We need to be a pro-worker party.”
The other innovation in the agenda is that practically all of the bills tee up a special-interest villain that would oppose a popular reform. Pharmaceutical companies, oil drillers, seed monopolies, Big Tech and AI firms, big-box stores, investor-owned utilities, low-wage employers, and the billionaires who try to influence politics would all be put on the same side. “When Biden said ‘nothing will fundamentally change’ at a big donor event, that was a big problem,” Casar said. “Voters want fundamental change … Trump villainized immigrants, Trump villainized the LGBT community. If Democrats want to fight back against that scapegoating, we need to take on the real villains taking your money.”
What follows is a rundown of the pieces of the agenda:
Public drug production: The Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act by retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) would create a program to directly make medications like insulin for diabetes, inhalers for asthma, opioid overdose treatment naloxone, epinephrine for anaphylaxis, and more. The drugs would then be sold to the public at a discount. The caucus estimates that insulin prices would drop to $50 a vial, and naloxone prices would fall by more than half. Republicans support this (at 72 percent) at even higher rates than Democrats (68 percent) in Data for Progress polling.
Housing affordability: The agenda adopts several ideas from House Financial Services Committee ranking member Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), including $20,000 in down payment, closing cost, and interest-rate buydown assistance for first-time homeowners; significant funding to build affordable and public housing; and an expansion of rental assistance.
Utility rate reform: Reps. Casar and Riley are introducing a bill to address the rising cost of electricity. Among other things, the bill would ban utility monopolies from building into their rate increases reimbursement for lobbying, private jets for executives, or political contributions. (This polls at an astronomical 79 percent support, with nearly equal backing from Democrats, Republicans, and independents.) It also directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to set a reasonable rate of return for utility company rate-setting, which takes into account a utility’s monopoly status and stable cash flows. And it would prioritize investments that save money over time like boosting electricity grid capacity, instead of unnecessary capital investments thrown in to allow for additional rate hikes. Customers would save an estimated $500 a year.
Unfair and deceptive pricing: The Fair Competition for Small Business Act by Rep. Waters gives state attorneys general explicit authority to win financial penalties from large retailers engaging in price discrimination, price-fixing, or other anti-competitive behaviors. This would fill the gap of a federal government that has refused to enforce the Robinson-Patman Act, a New Deal–era law which banned price discrimination by chain stores. Separately, the agenda includes Casar’s Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act, which bans surveillance pricing, the use of personal data to target consumer prices individually. The Washington Post was recently caught using data to set subscription prices, and Sony was exposed using differential pricing on the PlayStation Store. Ending surveillance pricing has 70 percent support in polling.
Seed independence: A bill from Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) would eliminate corporate patents on seeds, which force farmers to buy them every year. Instead, seeds could be replanted, reducing input costs on a host of crops and lowering the price of groceries. The provision has 75 percent support.
Windfall profits taxes for Big Oil: Oil companies are seeing record profits due to Trump’s war in Iran and the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) would attack that with a tax on a portion of large oil companies’ excess profits from the price spike and return the proceeds to lower- and middle-class families, who would get a check for up to $324 per household. This legislation is supported by 69 percent of those surveyed in the Data for Progress poll.
Child care needs: Building on a proposal that didn’t make it into the Biden-era Build Back Better plan, the Child Care for Every Community Act from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) would create a universal child care program capped at 7 percent of household income, with half of all families paying no more than $10 a day. Local providers would administer the program, boosted by federal funding. The Progressive Caucus joined with frontline Democrats in swing seats during the Biden years to ensure universality regardless of income. “This legislative agenda provides a vision for how we as a party can put money back in the pockets of every American and uphold our promises to working families,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement.
Paid vacation time: The PTO Act from Rep. Magaziner would give 27 million workers who currently do not get paid vacation access to two weeks off per year. That would be in addition to any paid sick leave or family and medical leave at their employer. The provision would equate to $1,933 per year for a worker making $24 an hour. It’s supported by 79 percent of the public in Data for Progress polling.
Overtime pay: The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires all eligible salaried employees to receive no less than time and a half for every hour worked above 40 in a week. This amendment to the FLSA from Casar would expand that minimum to double time. The higher wages would put limits on overworking employees, and there are other provisions in the legislation to safeguard against that as well. The caucus estimates that over 13 million workers would feel this benefit, supported in polling by 69 percent of the public. “True affordability comes when working people earn enough to cover the costs of living with dignity and security,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute.
Defanging of super PACs: More than 19 percent of all spending in federal elections in 2024 came from 300 billionaires, most of it uncapped and unaccountable in the form of super PACs legalized by the Citizens United ruling. The Abolish Super PACs Act from Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) attempts to cap super PAC donations at $5,000 per year, the same way that corporate PACs are capped in their direct donations to individual candidates. The legislation, supported by 71 percent of respondents to the Data for Progress poll, is probably the most important of the agenda, because the rest of it is unlikely to pass if special interests spend millions to influence elections and candidates are too easily bought or chilled into silence by big money. Said Rep. Lee in a statement: “It’s past time we be the party of working people, not the party of corporations.”
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David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90. More by David Dayen
In fact, it’s been such a success that Mayor Daniel Lurie is using a $68 million surplus, Prop. C money that exceeds budget expectations, to replace General Fund support for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
“Prop. C has been wildly successful,” Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, told the Budget and Appropriations Committee. She said the money that came from taxing the rich has created 5,620 units of affordable housing, and has moved 8,420 people who were living on the streets into stable housing, including 2,800 children.
Lurie is now opposing another tax on the rich, Prop. D, which would bring in enough money to solve much of the budget crisis. If it passes, I look forward to hearing next year that it’s wild success has made the mayor’s job a lot easier.
Friedenbach gave a short, but critical history of why homelessness has become such an issue in the US:
“Housing First is the most effective approach to ending homelessness,” Colleen Rivecca, director of policy planning at the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Center, noted. “It is an evidence-based practice that is supported at the federal, state, and local level.”
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Under Housing First programs, tenants can’t be evicted for failing to meet treatment goals—that is, they can’t be thrown back on the streets if they are still struggling with substance use.
Third: The city isn’t putting enough money into funding permanent supportive housing, despite all the money coming in from Prop. C.
PSH isn’t just about putting people in rooms; it requires a trained, dedicated staff to work with every resident to address the trauma, physical and mental health issues, and substance disorders that are the result of this nation refusing to fund affordable housing.
That costs more every year, in part, Rivecca said, because the population PSH is serving is getting older, and the trauma is getting more serious. Plus: The cost of living keeps exploding in San Francisco, thanks to the latest tech boom (which the mayor happily embraces). When more rich people move into a city, the price of housing (and almost everything else) goes up, and the nonprofit workers who don’t have AI salaries need better pay to afford even marginal housing.
This is a fact that generations of mayors who supported tech booms have failed to acknowledge.
The failure to fund services in PSH creates a doom loop: Tenants and neighbors complain that the facilities aren’t well run, Dorsey demands no drugs, and public faith in the programs drops. This is a classic right-wing strategy: Refuse to fund public services, then complain that the programs are failing, and cut their funding entirely.
Prop. C will bring in $63 million more than expected this calendar year, and some $90 million more during this budget cycle. And yet, the budget for HSH is going down by more than $50 million. Sophia Kittler, the mayor’s budget director, told the supes that money that once came from the General Fund to support programs to end homelessness is now being replaced by unexpected money from Prop. C.
Sup. Shamann Walton was a bit incredulous. If the city has all this extra money, he said, why are they any cuts to HSH?
Kittler said there are no service cuts, since the Prop. C money backfills the cuts from the General Fund.
“But you could be doing so much more,” Walton said, to applause from a room full of affordable housing advocates.
Sup. Connie Chan was also disturbed. “If we know there is a forecasted revenue increase, why are we cutting services?”
Kittler said that the mayor’s approach this budget cycle will be to reduce funding for new PSH. “The emphasis has been on capacity building,” Kittler said. Now, Lurie wants to move toward stabilizing existing programs, to “not double down on capacity but improve the infrastructure,” she said.
Walton kept making the point that the city can do both.
Instead, the mayor wants to reduce the amount of new housing, while homelessness continues to increase. As Friedenbach noted, every time the city finds housing for one homeless person, three more become homeless—largely because rents keep going up.
Largely because Lurie keeps promoting this city as the AI capital of the world.
Nobody ever asked the residents to vote on whether that’s the city we want to live in.
48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.
May Day rallies across the world brought workers out in force on Friday to protest against rising energy prices caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran, with Turkish police arresting hundreds of people in Istanbul, according to a lawyers’ association. Here’s everything you need to know about the demonstrations taking place from the Philippines to Pakistan.
Workers across the world are marching in May Day rallies Friday, calling for peace, higher wages and better working conditions as they grapple with rising energy costs and shrinking purchasing power tied to the Iran war.
The day is a public holiday in many countries, and demonstrations, some of which have turned violent in the past, are expected in many of the world’s major cities.
“Working people refuse to pay the price for Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East,” the European Trade Union Confederation, which represents 93 trade union organisations in 41 European countries, said. “Today’s rallies show working people will not stand by and see their jobs and living standards destroyed.”
In the US, activists opposing President Donald Trump’s policies are planning marches and boycotts.
France’s public holidays: The art of the long weekend
Turkish police on Friday fired tear gas and arrested hundreds of people holding May Day demonstrations in Istanbul, as thousands rallied nationwide.
According to the CHD Lawyers’ Association, at least 370 people were arrested in Istanbul, where police fired tear gas from riot-control vehicles into the crowd.
Images aired on the opposition channel HALK TV also showed the president of the Turkish Workers’ Party, Erkan Bas, engulfed in pepper spray.
May Day sees a major police deployment in Turkey every year, with a large area in the heart of Istanbul around Taksim Square sealed off.
Last year, protests moved to the Kadikoy area of the city and more than 400 people were arrested.
The number of arrests this year appeared to be approaching that level.
The CHD lawyers’ group, which was present at the rallies, said on a post on X that, at 1100 GMT “according to our information, the number of people in custody stands at 370”.
May Day demonstrations across the world
Workers’ unions traditionally use May Day to rally around wages, pensions, inequality and broader political issues.
Rising living costs linked to the conflict in the Middle East are expected to be a key theme in Friday’s rallies.
In the Philippines‘ capital of Manila, large crowds marched to call for higher wages and lower taxes as protesters denounced the US role in the Iran war. Some held banners reading “no troops, no bases, no war games, resist US-led wars.” Protesters clashed with police blocking the way near the US Embassy.
“Every Filipino worker now is aware that the situation here is deeply connected to the global crisis,” said Josua Mata, leader of SENTRO umbrella group of labor federations.
In Indonesia, President Prabowo Subianto joined a May Day rally in the capital, Jakarta, greeting tens of thousands of people amid a tight police and military presence. Workers called for stronger government protection amid rising prices and difficulties in finding raw materials for their industry.
In Pakistan, May Day is a public holiday marked by rallies, but many daily wage earners cannot afford to take time off.
“How will I bring vegetables and other necessities home if I don’t work?” said Mohammad Maskeen, a 55-year-old construction worker near Islamabad.
Rising oil prices have fuelled inflation, which the government estimates at about 16 percent, in a country heavily reliant on financial support from the International Monetary Fund and allied nations.
In Italy, the government approved nearly 1 billion euros in job incentives this week, aiming to promote stable employment and curb labour abuses ahead of May Day. The measures extend tax breaks to encourage hiring young people and disadvantaged women, and seek to address exploitation tied to platform-based work. Opposition parties dismissed the package as “pure propaganda”.
In Portugal, proposed labour law changes by the centre-right government sparked a general strike and street protests last year. There is still no deal after nine months of negotiations with unions and employers. Unions say the proposals would weaken workers’ rights, including by expanding overtime limits and reducing some benefits.
May Day carries special meaning this year in France after a heated debate about whether employees should be allowed to work on the country’s most protected public holiday – the only day when most employees have a mandatory paid day off.
Almost all businesses, shops and malls are closed, and only essential sectors such as hospitals, transport and hotels are exempt.
A recent parliamentary proposal to expand work on the day prompted major outcry from unions and left-wing politicians.
“Don’t touch May Day,” workers’ unions said in a joint statement.
Faced with the controversy, the government this week introduced a bill meant to allow people staffing bakeries and florists to work on the holiday. It is customary in France to give lily of the valley flowers on May Day as a symbol of good luck.
“May 1 is not just any day,” Small and Medium-sized Businesses Minister Serge Papin said. “It symbolises social gains stemming from a century of building social rules that have led to the labour code we know in France. It is indeed a special day.”
Activists and labour unions are organising street protests and boycotts across the United States, where May Day is not a federal holiday.
May Day Strong, a coalition of activist groups and labour unions, has called on people to protest under the banner of “workers over billionaires”.
Voicing strong opposition to Trump’s policies, organisers listed thousands of May Day actions across the country and are seeking an economic blackout through “no school, no work, no shopping”.
Demands include taxing the rich and putting an end to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
While labour and immigrant rights are historically intertwined, the focus of May Day rallies in the US shifted to immigration in 2006. That’s when roughly 1 million people, including nearly half a million in Chicago alone, took to the streets to protest federal legislation that would have made living in the US without legal permission a felony.
May Day, or International Workers’ Day, dates back more than a century to a pivotal period in US labour history.
In the 1880s, unions pushed for an eight-hour workday through strikes and demonstrations. In May 1886, a Chicago rally protesting the police killing of two striking workers the day before also turned deadly when a bomb was thrown at police, who fired into the crowd in response.
Several labour activists – most of them immigrants and staunch anarchists – were convicted of conspiracy and other charges, despite the fact that the bomber had not been identified; four were executed.
Unions later designated May 1 to honour workers. A monument in Chicago’s Haymarket Square commemorates them with the inscription: “Dedicated to all workers of the world.”
May Day is now observed in much of the world from Europe to Latin America, Africa and Asia.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference held by President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, DC on April 6, 2026.
(Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Republicans are out of excuses and should join Democrats and stop this war,” said one congressional Democrat. “Let’s put the pressure on.”
Friday marks 60 days since President Donald Trump formally notified Congress of the US and Israel’s illegal war on Iran—a key deadline under a relevant federal law. In a new notification obtained by Politico, the White House claimed the conflict has been “terminated,” but lawmakers aren’t buying that argument.
“That’s bullshit,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said of the latest notification on social media. “This is an illegal war, and every day Republicans remain complicit and allow it to continue is another day lives are endangered, chaos erupts, and prices increase, all while Americans foot the bill.”
Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who has fought to stop Trump’s assault on Iran since before it began, told Common Dreams that “Trump knows this war is deeply unpopular with his base. He’s trying to say it’s over, but the reality is that thousands of US troops are still in the region, and food and gas prices are still going up at home.”
The Republican president and some of his key allies had previewed the White House position in various remarks on Thursday.
“Look, the country’s doing really well, and that’s despite a military operation—I don’t call it a war,” Trump, a well-documented liar, told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “Iran is dying to make a deal.”
Since Trump began bombing Iran on February 28, legal experts and US lawmakers have alleged violations of international law and the Constitution, which empowers only Congress to declare war. However, both chambers are narrowly controlled by Republicans, nearly all of whom have refused to support Democratic war powers resolutions intended to end the conflict, most recently in the Senate on Thursday.
Defenders of Trump’s so-called “Operation Epic Fury” argue that he was allowed to strike Iran under the War Powers Act of 1973, which empowers the president to deploy military forces for up to 60 days as long as he notifies Congress within 48 hours. After those two months, he is required to end hostilities or seek permission from federal lawmakers to continue them.
“He seems set against doing so,” Tess Bridgeman and Oona A. Hathaway wrote Friday for Just Security. “If he refuses, he will take a war that is already doubly illegal and turn it into a triply illegal war. He will also make it clear, if it was not already, that he regards the law as no constraint on his use of the US military’s lethal power.”
On Thursday, as the latest Senate resolution was blocked in a 47-50 vote, Trump allies joined the president in suggesting that, as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told NBC News in the Capitol, “We are not at war.”
“I don’t think we have an active, kinetic military bombing, firing, or anything like that. Right now, we are trying to broker a peace,” Johnson said. “I would be very reluctant to get in front of the administration in the midst of these very sensitive negotiations, so we’ll have to see how that plays out.”
The US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire on April 7, just hours after Trump’s genocidal threat to wipe out the Middle Eastern country’s “whole civilization.” That truce has since been extended, but it and another deal for Israel’s supposed targeting of Hezbollah in Lebanon are both “fragile, temporary, and in danger of collapse at any moment,” as Amnesty Internationalstressed in a Wednesday statement calling on the international community to push for sustainable peace in the region.
Throughout the ceasefire, Trump has maintained his naval blockade on Iran, which has responded to the war by closing the Strait of Hormuz to most ship traffic. Restrictions on the trade route have driven up fuel prices around the world, including across the United States, where new polling shows that over 60% of Americans say the president’s war was a “mistake.”
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth cited the ceasefire on Thursday when questioned about how the administration plans to address the 60-day deadline by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.)—a leading voice for war powers resolutions on Iran and other military aggression by the administration—during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Hegseth said that “ultimately, I would defer to the White House and White House counsel on that. However, we are in a ceasefire right now, which, [in] our understanding, means the 60-day clock pauses, or stops, in a ceasefire.”
Interjecting, Kaine responded that “I do not believe the statute would support that. I think the 60 days runs maybe tomorrow, and it’s gonna pose a really important legal question for the administration. We have serious constitutional concerns and we don’t want to layer those with additional statutory concerns.”
Before the notification to Congress on Friday, a senior Trump administration official had affirmed that what Hegseth laid out is the White House position, telling Reuters that the US military and Iran have not exchanged fire since April 7 and, for War Powers Act purposes, “the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28, have terminated.”
Highlighting Trump’s ongoing blockade of Iran, US Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) called Hegseth “flat wrong,” and declared that the Pentagon chief “does not get to rewrite the law because following it is inconvenient.”
Another California Democrat, Rep. Sara Jacobs, said on social media Thursday: “Trump’s war on Iran was illegal from day one—Congress never authorized it. Tomorrow, the statutory 60-day clock runs out too. Republicans are out of excuses and should join Democrats and stop this war. Let’s put the pressure on.”
In a video released Friday, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) noted his role in the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal—which Trump ditched during his first term—and emphasized the president’s “legal obligation to withdraw troops after 60 days, or come to Congress for authorization.”
It’s been 60 days since Trump started this war against Iran. But this war should've never should’ve happened, and it needs to end. Now.
Under the War Powers Act, this administration is now required withdraw our troops or make their case and seek Congressional authorization. pic.twitter.com/ebdQjvAQOW
Democrats have vowed to keep introducing war powers resolutions. As one went down in the Senate on Thursday, Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) introduced another in the House, following in the footsteps of other Congressional Progressive Caucus members.
“Americans don’t even know why we are in this war, and neither does Congress,” Balint said in a statement. “This unauthorized war is yet another example of the Trump administration’s brazen and illegal attempts to consolidate power. At a time when Americans have told us everything is too expensive, it is shameful that we are wasting upwards of a billion dollars a day on this.”
“We need it to end, to bring our service members back to safety, and to get Congress and this administration to focus on lowering the cost of living here at home,” she added. “Today, I introduced a war powers resolution which would direct the president to stop the use of US armed forces in Iran unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war from Congress. It is essential to hold every member of Congress accountable for allowing this war to continue and put them on record for the American people to see.”
Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of the political reform group Issue One, took aim at federal lawmakers on Friday, declaring that “the American people should be deeply concerned by Congress’ failure today. Since the war in Iran started, our country has spent more than $25 billion bombing military and civilian targets in Iran. Fourteen Americans have been killed, and more than 200 have been wounded. More than 3,000 Iranians have died—half of them civilians, and many of them children. The stakes are profound, which is why Congress should be making such decisions, not just one man in the Oval Office.”
“Yet, in defiance of the Constitution, too many in Congress bow to the President. In missing the 60-day deadline to assert constitutional authority, Congress has totally failed in its most fundamental role as the first branch of government,” he continued. “The precedent set today is deeply harmful to American democracy. When the president acting alone becomes normalized, it becomes more difficult to have a government of, by, and for the people.”
“The founders were very clear that Congress, not the executive, has the final say when it comes to war and peace,” he concluded. “This can’t go on. Congress must approve all future funding for the war with Iran. Moving forward, Congress has to reassert its power in deciding when and how our country enters war. In order to do that, Congress should update the 1973 War Powers Resolution to reassert constitutional checks and balances to protect future generations of Americans.”
This article has been updated to include the White House’s new notification to Congress claiming the Iran War has been “terminated” plus comment from Issue One, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Congressman Ro Khanna.
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Demonstrators attend a May Day rally marking International Workers’ Day in New York, on May 1, 2026.
(Photo by Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)
“During the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations, we showed what we’re against. May Day is the day we’re making clear what we are fighting for,” said one organizer.
In thousands of locations across the United States, workers and students are taking off from work and school and swearing off shopping on Friday as part of a national May Day protest.
May Day Strong, a coalition of activist groups and unions organizing the events, said more than 4,000 actions, from marches to pickets to displays of peaceful civil disobedience, were underway.
It is yet another nationwide display of coordinated resistance to the Trump administration’s agenda, including its war in Iran and its use of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to attack immigrant communities, issues that were at the forefront of March’s “No Kings” protests.
Six young protesters with the Sunrise Movement were taken into custody after blocking a bridge in Minneapolis in what they said was an act of “nonviolent noncooperation” to “stand up to the war in Iran and against ICE terrorizing our neighbors and our cities.”
Dozens more Sunrise protesters in Portland held a sit-in in the lobby of a Hilton hotel that was housing top officials with the Department of Homeland Security, leading to eight arrests.
“It’s May 1st, it’s workers’ day,” one of the protesters was recorded saying while being led away by police. “Don’t forget that you have power.”
In New York, over 100 activists lined up outside every entrance to the New York Stock Exchange in downtown Manhattan, banging drums and chanting “No ICE, no war!” where they were met by a flood of cops.
“The rich get richer off the backs of poor and working class people.” A May Day protester outside the NY Stock Exchange calls for taxing the rich to fund healthcare and support for the most vulnerable.
In the spirit of May Day, a global day of solidarity among workers, Sulma Arias, the executive director of the social justice organization People’s Action, said Friday’s “Workers Over Billionaires” protests are just as much about confronting injustices as about building an alternative.
“During the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations, we showed what we’re against. May Day is the day we’re making clear what we are fighting for,” Arias said. “We are for affordable housing for low-income people. We are for free healthcare for all. We are for utility laws that ensure every home stays warm in the winter and cool in the summer at costs that a person on a fixed income can afford. We are for the right to a fair and equal vote for Americans from every race and in every state. May Day is our day to assert and defend our rights.”
“They want us afraid. They want us divided. But on May 1, we refuse.”
Despite claims by President Donald Trump that the US is entering an economic “golden age” under his leadership, a Gallup poll released this week found that 55% of Americans said their finances were getting worse, the highest number ever recorded in more than 20 years of polling, and even higher than in the doldrums of the Great Recession.
"Workers over billionaires!"
Chicago Teachers Union president @stacydavisgates urges workers to take back their power to assemble at the city's May Day rally.
A coalition of labor unions across several major cities, including Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles, has coordinated what has been called an “economic blackout,” which includes avoiding buying from private sector retailers.
“When we say ‘workers over billionaires,’ ‘billionaires’ is not just this amorphous figure, right? They’re real people,” said Jana Korn, the chief of staff for the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO, in an interview with The Real News Network. “In Philadelphia, we’re kind of a poor city. We don’t have that many billionaires, but we have one. The CEO of Comcast is the only billionaire that lives in the city.”
“So why should we, as a city, accept that they take and take from us? And then with that money, what do they do? They donate to Trump’s ballroom project,” she continued. “People in Philadelphia are struggling… Our transportation system barely works. We’re at risk of having 17 schools close down this year.”
Some labor organizers have described economic boycotts, undertaken as part of prior mass protest movements against the second Trump administration, as an act of building strength for something larger, such as a future general strike.
“I think really for us in the labor movement,” Korn said, “[the boycott is] about how do we build the capacity to really disrupt, to strike when necessary, to shut things down when we have to. And that’s something that we have not been called to do as a labor movement in a very long time.”
Other unions have used May Day to confront their own employers directly. In New Orleans, hundreds of nurses at University Medical Center announced that they were beginning a five-day strike after attempting to negotiate a contract for more than two years.
In New York City, Amazon workers unionized with the Teamsters assembled on the steps of the public library before marching to Amazon’s corporate offices to demand the company cut its contracts with ICE, which has used its cloud computing services to target immigrants, including some Amazon workers and contractors.
Matt Multari, who has worked as an Amazon driver for a year and a half, told Mother Jones that he joined the protest to “demand the one thing that’s worth fighting for in this life: respect.”
Masih Fouladi, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center, said, “May Day is a moment of reckoning.”
“Immigrant communities—from farmworkers in our fields to nurses in our hospitals, from refugees fleeing war to families who have built their lives here for generations—are under siege,” she said. “They want us afraid. They want us divided. But on May 1, we refuse.”
“Workers and immigrants—documented and undocumented, native-born and newly arrived,” she said, “will stand together in the streets because we know the truth: there is no workers’ rights without immigrant rights, and there is no justice for working people here while our tax dollars fund devastation abroad.”
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Protesters march at the May Day Sin Fronteras: International Workers’ Day March and Resource Fair at Fruitvale Plaza in Oakland, Calif. on Friday, May. 1, 2026.Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
A May Day protest by airport service workers briefly shut down the departure-level roadway at San Francisco International Airport’s international terminal Friday, diverting traffic as demonstrators rallied over a wage dispute and broader labor concerns.
Several San Francisco elected officials were arrested after demonstrators blocked the roadway to the international terminal, including Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, Supervisor Connie Chan and former Supervisor Jane Kim. State Sen. Josh Becker, who represents San Mateo County and part of Santa Clara County, was also arrested.
“San Francisco airport is the people’s airport,” Chan told supporters before her arrest. “We know our workers deserve fair pay, a fair contract, health care and benefits. We’re demanding that the workers get that benefits and fair pay right now.”
Before making arrests, police warned protesters to clear the street.
“I have been arrested before,” Mandelman said. “I’ve been arrested with the hotel workers, for marriage equality, and I’ve been arrested for the airport workers. These folks have been trying to get a fair contract for a year, and I wanted to be supportive on this May Day.”
The lawmakers were among approximately 25 people cited and released for their actions while protesting President Donald Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The demonstration, led by SEIU, was part of a wave of May Day actions across the Bay Area focused on labor and immigrant rights. Hundreds of airport workers rallied Friday morning at the international terminal.
SFO officials said the airport had issued a free speech permit for the demonstration. In a statement, the airport said the permit process is intended to give demonstrators a place to share their message while designating areas that allow passengers to keep moving through the airport.
“As a safety precaution, the upper-level roadway at the International Terminal was temporarily closed,” SFO said.
During the closure, vehicles headed to the international terminal were routed to the lower arrivals level. Airport officials also advised travelers to use the Kiss & Fly area at the Rental Car Center for international terminal pickups and drop-offs. Domestic terminals were not affected, SFO said.
Demonstrators block roadway to SFO
Demonstrators march into San Francisco International Airport’s international terminal during May Day protests Friday. Lea Suzuki S F Chronicle
The airport later said all lanes on the international terminal roadway had reopened Friday afternoon.
May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, has long been associated with labor organizing and, in the United States, immigrant rights demonstrations. Bay Area protests were held Friday in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose, Palo Alto, Santa Rosa, Alameda and other cities.
In San Francisco, demonstrators marched from Civic Center and down Market Street, passing City Hall, the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building and Salesforce Tower as unions and immigrant rights groups joined actions around the region. Dozens of unions were represented, including SEIU, National Nurses United, the Teamsters and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
Marchers shook tambourines and chanted, with one pushing a baby in a stroller affixed with a “future union member” sign. Some carried signs proclaiming “Stand up to Trump” and “Stop the war on Iran,” as well as a banner embroidered with the “Enough” in more than a dozen languages.
“This is really a day to say ‘enough,’” said Anne Wolf, who created the banner with others at the Richmond Art Center. “Today is also about ICE and the attacks on working people in California whose immigration status shouldn’t matter. We’re all a working community, and I think the banner expresses that as well.”
Francisco Herrera, the co-executive director of San Francisco’s Nuevo Sol Day Labor and Domestic Worker Center, said the protest was an occasion for all workers to unite, whether they’re employed by a restaurant or a bank.
“If you have a W2, if you can’t take a year off without work, you are working class,” he said.
Google employee Emma Jackson said speaking out against billionaires is especially important to her as a worker in the tech industry, which has been rocked by waves of mass layoffs in the past year.
“It’s our work that generates their billions,” Jackson said. “It’s great to be in solidarity with so many tech workers coming out against tech billionaires.”
May Day demonstrators march along Fruitvale Ave. in Oakland
Demonstrators march along Fruitvale Ave. during the Oakland Sin Fronteras: International Workers’ Day March & Resource Fair in Oakland, Calif. on Friday, May 1, 2026.Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
Unlike the “No Kings” protests typically held on weekends, the May Day demonstration required many to leave work and school to participate. Sasha Wright, an organizer with Jobs for Justice San Francisco, was heartened to see workers’ willingness to join the protest on a weekday afternoon.
“What we’ve seen in other countries where there’s been an authoritarian takeover of the government is that it’s going to take more than marches,” Wright said. “It’s going to take other tactics, like strikes and boycotts. So it’s really exciting to see people taking that next step.”
Nicholas Weininger said he carved the time out of his day as an engineering-management consultant to join the throngs of people in San Francisco. His homemade sign featured a quote from Péter Magyar, the Hungarian Prime Minister-elect: “Never again a country without consequences.”
Joss Pearlman, 15, left class at Lick-Wilmerding High School with three friends to march with other demonstrators toward the Embarcadero.
“As teenage girls, it’s just patriarchy in general that we don’t think should exist anymore,” she said. “We’re standing up for things that affect us and affect our community.”
Protesters also briefly blocked the roadway outside Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport on Friday morning. Demonstrators gathered at the ILWU Local 6 union hall on Hegenberger Road before marching to the terminals. The union has called on the Port of Oakland to protect port jobs.
Later on Friday, protesters filled Oakland’s Fruitvale Plaza, chanting “we want justice for our people,” playing traditional Korean drums and waving signs that read “immigrant labor built this country” and “ICE out.” Demonstrators marched up 35th Avenue, before returning to Fruitvale Plaza.
In downtown Berkeley, a crowd of more than 100 sporting union T-shirts and safety vests marched to Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park on Friday morning. Many held signs that denounced Trump and his administrative priorities, which many felt had prioritized corporations over working people.
“Income and wealth inequality have reached levels that are untenable,” Ida Martinac, a member of SEIU Local 1000 who also serves on the Berkeley Rent Board. “Something has to give. That’s why building labor power is so important.”
Lucy Hodgman is a Hearst Fellow on the Climate Team at the San Francisco Chronicle, covering seismic building issues, homeowners insurance and breaking energy and environment news. She previously covered politics for the Times Union, in Albany, New York, and breaking news for Politico and the Sacramento Bee.
Originally from Brooklyn, Lucy graduated from Yale University with a degree in English. Reach her at lucy.hodgman@hearst.com.
Kate Talerico is a reporter covering the East Bay, with a focus on Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda County. Before joining the Chronicle, she covered housing at the Mercury News, reporting on changes to the real estate industry and tracking how housing policy is shaped and implemented. Her first journalism job was at the Idaho Statesman, where she covered Boise’s growth leading up to the pandemic. She also lived in France for two years, teaching English to high school students. Kate graduated from Brown University with a degree in urban studies.
On May 1, 2026, San Francisco hosts major May Day actions, including a 2 PM march from Civic Center Plaza, focusing on labor rights, immigration, and anti-austerity. Expect disruptions, specifically an early morning SFO terminal demonstration, and a broader “no work, no school” movement. Major actions in San Francisco include: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
11 AM – SFO Rally: A demonstration led by SEIU-USWW and Bay Resistance at SFO’s International Terminal departure level.
2 PM – May Day “Shut it Down” March: Main march starting at Civic Center Plaza, marching toward Embarcadero.
4 PM – SF Labor Council March: Rally at Embarcadero Plaza for International Workers’ Day.
Demands: Workers are protesting for higher wages, against ICE actions, and against corporate greed. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Transit and traffic around the Civic Center and the Embarcadero may be affected. Participants are advised to join the rallies at Civic Center Plaza. [1, 2]
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