WASHINGTON—As President Donald Trump’s planned taxpayer-paid birthday bash June 14 concert collapsed, activists—led by labor, the No Kings movement, and 50501—stepped up plans for events opposing his agenda this week.
One organization, Seven Days In June, got a jump on others. It is sponsoring candlelight vigils, mass phone call operations to Congress, and demonstrations in dozens of cities, with labor leaders among the participants. Those actions began on June 1 and are running all week.
One major highlight of the planned events is an evening candlelight vigil on June 5 on Chicago’s North Side. It is being promoted by the Gay City News, an LGBTQ publication that has been battling attacks on the communities from which many of its readers come.
The main No Kings event on June 14 itself will be the Concert for The First Amendment, to be streamed live from the Town Hall auditorium in Manhattan, New York City, at 7:30 p.m. that night. No Kings is encouraging, and listing on its website, plans for watch parties and similar gatherings nationally.
Participants include longtime activist/performers Bette Midler, Jane Fonda, and Julia Roberts, MSNOW correspondent Joy Reid, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, and the Singing Resistance.
It’s intended to “celebrate the freedoms guaranteed by our First Amendment–of speech, religion, press, assembly, and protest—and the people power that both fuels these rights and is essential to guarantee them,” organizers say.
That’s especially relevant given the GOP Trump regime’s continuing attacks on freedom of speech and of the press. Among the latest moves by the Trump administration is one requiring non-disclosure agreements from all present and future federal workers to have them “sit down and shut up,” as Trump has ordered journalists at press conferences when it comes to discussing his administration, its excesses, and its graft.
“Even as authoritarians increase their attacks on our freedoms and communities, we see examples across the country of people rising up together, taking action, and turning back those forces,” the No Kings organizers declare.
Another labor allied grass-roots group, People’s History 250, is gathering videos from rank-and-file workers about what the celebration of independence means to them and to workers’ rights.
Others in the labor movement are mobilizing all week in a stepped-up campaign on health care. The week-long health care campaigners’ goal: Mobilizing people to urge Congress to reverse the massive GOP-sponsored $880 billion 10-year cut in Medicaid. Trump pushed it through a compliant legislature on party-line votes, then signed it last July 4. The demonstrators will honor those who have died so far because they lost medical care due to the Trump-GOP “one big beautiful bill.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star of Hamilton, says he and his family “have seen firsthand what happens when people cannot get the care and support they need.
“This is a moment for our communities to come together and make our voices heard. Health affects every family, every neighborhood, and every one of us.”
Trump had planned a big birthday-bash concert on the National Mall on June 14 and had invited dozens of performers. So many of those who initially accepted pulled out when they discovered it would be a partisan event that he was forced to cancel it. He’ll give a big speech instead.
He’ll also host a Universal Fighting Championship match under a big steel frame on the White House’s South Lawn. Aerial photos of the White House show the frame dominating the Executive Mansion, and nearby evidence of another grandiose Trumpian self-triumphalist project: the wreckage of its East Wing, in favor of building his controversial billion-dollar ballroom.
As for the pro-health care events, sponsors emphasize the damage Trump and his team—including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and compliant lawmakers—have done.
Organizers of the June 1-7 events note chronic diseases now “account for the majority of U.S. health spending. Preventable conditions are too often detected late, compounding costs and suffering. Preventable disease outbreaks have re-emerged as vaccination rates have declined.
“Strained public health workforces and disease surveillance systems are near a breaking point… Community hospitals and safety-net providers face mounting financial pressure.
“Chaotic and inconsistent health investment carries real consequences. Short-term politics”—the “big beautiful bill” and its shift of money from Medicaid, Medicare, and food stamps to tax cuts for corporations and the 1%—”should not undermine long-term health security.”
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