French Protests Over School Funding and Living Costs Draw Police Tear Gas and Foreign Criticism

Thousands of students and workers marched in Paris and other French cities on Saturday over school funding and living costs, and police used tear gas in Lyon, where the rally had been banned, and in Clermont-Ferrand. In Clermont-Ferrand, French media reported, officers also used stun grenades on demonstrators trying to reach the city center. Authorities confined the Paris march to the city's southeastern edge, and several thousand people set out from Porte d'Italie, a smaller crowd than a week earlier. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said up to 70,000 officers would be deployed nationwide. The movement began last month over staff shortages at one high school southeast of Paris. The New York Times reported that marches were largely peaceful until evening, when police used tear gas and water cannons in Marseille and Paris. President Donald Trump said at a Monday rally that migrants had taken over France. President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that foreign manipulation of information, including AI-generated images, had prompted unacceptable comments, and he named Trump among others. The State Department said Trump's views were accurate.

Right-leaning Fox News leads with the political dispute rather than the marches. It features Trump's remarks, Macron's rebuttal, and State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott's endorsement, and it describes the weekend as protests that turned into rioting and looting. Left-leaning NBC News and The New York Times lead with the protests themselves: crowd sizes, tear gas, water cannons and security plans. NBC adds Nuñez's deployment figure, the Orléans march against the far right, and economic grievances, and the Times headline stresses hundreds of thousands marching under heavy security. Neither left-leaning outlet's excerpt mentions Trump or Macron's rebuttal, and Fox does not mention the school-funding origins or the cost-of-living grievances. Both sides report police force and some unrest. Alternative and independent outlets had not reported the story at the time of writing, while left-leaning and right-leaning outlets had.