Melissa Estrada and her niece Alexis Silveira came to the 'No Kings' rally in West Palm Beach on June 14, 2025, to protest President Trump's immigration crackdown. Estrada's banner paid tribute to her father who fought in World War II.
People march from Scissortail Park to City Hall during the No Kings protest in Oklahoma City, Saturday, June, 14, 2025.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to skip the barbecue and spend their Labor Day protesting President Donald Trump and the billionaires who support him.

“We’re excited to see a lot of folks turning out and really turning up the heat on the administration and on the billionaires that are really driving the agenda, especially as we’re seeing increased attacks on our communities,” Saqib Bhatti, executive director of Action Center on Race and the Economy, told USA TODAY.

More than a thousand "Workers Over Billionaires” events are planned nationwide on Labor Day and the surrounding days.

Taking place in small and large cities in nearly every state, the events are designed to build on the momentum of other large-scale protests including No Kings Day in June and Good Trouble Lives On in July. They are led by labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO, and other advocacy groups such as May Day Strong, Public Citizen and Indivisible.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the protests. Instead, it provided a quote from Vice President JD Vance about Democrats not voting for the GOP tax and spending bill and a quote from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about Labor Day.

"We finally have a President who fights and delivers for the American worker every single day. President Trump believes that American workers are the heart and soul of our economy and our national identity, which is why he’s championed an agenda that puts them first always," she said.

Bhatti, whose group is focused on racial and economic activism, said many Americans don't see Trump's actions that way.

Organizers are expecting "a big show of force on Monday that we’re not going to take it sitting down, that working class people across the country are ready to fight back and to make sure that we don’t just let billionaires run roughshod over our communities," Bhatti said.

Close to the community

Many of the advocacy groups planning the Labor Day protest were also involved in the nationwide "No Kings" demonstrations on June 14, which drew millions of participants across 2,100 locations and hundreds of thousands of people for the Good Trouble Lives On events at more than a thousand locations on July 17, according to the group's estimates. Overall, there have been monthly nationwide protests against the administration's policies since April.

While events in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York are expected to be larger, there is no flagship event this time, in part because organizers say they want activists to focus on the needs in their local communities.

It follows the model advocacy groups have used since the spring, holding events in as many locations as possible, rather than in one or two major cities. The approach can be harder for the public to ignore and allows people who show up to connect with local resources and perform local advocacy.

National Education Association president Becky Pringle said the teacher and school support staff union is participating because educators feel a responsibility to speak up. The administration has hurt children, she said, especially with the passage of the GOP tax and spending bill that cut Medicare and food benefits.

“We understand that we have to demonstrate our rejection of corruption and lawlessness and predatory policies, all of the chaos and destruction, as they take money away from kids, from feeding them, providing health care … to give tax breaks to people who are already obscenely wealthy,” Pringle said.

Each community should decide what specific policies to protest and how, Pringle said. She plans to attend events in Iowa focused on the impact of the cuts to food assistance and what it means for working families.

“Educators and workers across the country understand what is happening and how our rights are being diminished or taken away, how power is being consolidated right now, very, very quickly and where our constitution is being threatened and questioned and pushed aside,” Pringle told USA TODAY. “Honestly we are in that moment where either we stand up and fight for our democracy or we don’t have one.”

Regardless on what topic activists choose to focus on, organizers feel this should be a movement led by working class people, Organized Power In Numbers Executive Director Neidi Dominguez told USA TODAY.

"In this moment the only way forward is to choose workers over billionaires every day," she said.

Dominguez said this moment stands out because it is bringing together labor and community groups for mass protests on Labor Day for the first time in a long time.

In New York City, thousands of New Yorkers are expected to rally in front of Trump Tower to turn Fifth Avenue into a “Restaurant in the Street.”

In Des Moines, labor groups plan to march from the Iowa Capitol to Union Labor Park and end with a massive cookout. In Scottsdale, Arizona, organizers plan a die-in complete with tombstones and coffins "to dramatize how billionaires and politicians are killing our communities through corporate greed, school privatization, and attacks on working people," according to the event description.

Organizers in Madison, Wisconsin, are hosting Labor Fest 2025 on Madison Labor Temple grounds. There will be live music, food trucks, and children’s events, as well as a collection drive for students in families who are homeless.

In Denver, activists will hold a rally at the state Capitol demanding that ICE stay out of schools and communities.

Activists in Arkansas will gather for a rally in Hot Springs National Park and a march in Little Rock. In Post Falls, Idaho the North Idaho Central Labor Council and the Spokane Regional Labor Counci are hosting a car show and Labor Day picnic.

Protests aimed at specific billionaires

Some of the protests and rallies will target particular corporate actors “that are really helping drive the authoritarian agenda,” Bhatti said.

That includes people and companies that have donated to Trump’s political action committees, those who worked for Elon Musk's Department Of Government Efficiency or who have financially benefited from moves by the Trump administration.

“We know that a lot of these folks who are actually helping drive the agenda are actually not accustomed to being the subject of big protests,” he said.

Bhatti is speaking at a Chicago event, which is aimed at Antonio Gracias, a high-ranking DOGE volunteer involved with immigration and Social Security policy, who left the government in July. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, had recently questioned the nine public pension funds he was also managing about whether his DOGE work was harming their investments.

Bhatti said other targets include AI platform Palantir Technologies Inc., which has received millions of dollars in government contracts to merge government data on Americans, and its co-founder billionaire Peter Thiel; Target, which changed DEI policies when Trump took office; Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia and GOP mega-donor Jeff Yass.

In East Hampton, New York, where several billionaires have summer homes, organizers have planned a "house tour" march past their homes. Organizers of the East Hampton event call it "a direct confrontation with the power centers of oligarchy," in a news release.

People directly connected to Trump aren't the only protest targets, Dominguez said. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, activists are protesting a local developer who has received millions of dollars in tax breaks to build hotels and high-priced homes, Dominguez said, as well as the local government for providing the tax breaks.

Training for the future

Organizers also want to use the protests to continue training a new generation of activists, with an eye toward the next three years of Trump's term and the years beyond.

“We know that we are in a period of history in which it’s going to take a lot of mass protests all across the country to be able to really really turn back the tide of authoritarianism,” Bhatti said. “We know that it is not a sprint, it is a marathon and people need to build the muscle.”

Pringle said activists have been very intentional about building up a movement at all levels.

“We’re up against really wealthy people, billionaires who are wielding their power and influence and control in this government in a way that we’ve not witnessed at this level or at this speed,” Pringle said. “Organized people will always win over organized money but we have to organize, we have to be intentional and we have to understand our power.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: More protests against Trump are planned nationwide. What to expect on Labor Day

Reporting by Sarah D. Wire, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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