A major nationwide protest to “block everything” is due to take place across France on September 10th. However, the reaction of working-class, multi-ethnic neighbourhoods to it remains a weak point of the protest movement. What often stops residents of these areas joining in such struggles is their own difficult living conditions, a fear that any backlash will hit them the hardest, and their wariness of a Left that shows little interest in “jointly constructing” a protest movement with them. Laura Wojcik reports on the views of residents and activists from working class districts in the Paris region and Marseille.

On September 8th the government of François Bayrou looks set to be toppled in a vote of confidence that the prime minister himself has called. Since his appointment at the end of December 2024, Bayrou’s government has obviously struggled because of its lack of an overall majority in the National Assembly, but it has nonetheless clearly pursued a liberal and conservative path. Here, members of Mediapart's editorial team look back at the nine months of an administration whose time in office has been marked by environmental setbacks and by its endorsement of the anti-immigration line espoused by the rightwing Les Républicains party.

In his latest book 'Un taylorisme augmenté' ('Enhanced Taylorism') the France-based sociologist Juan Sebastián Carbonell offers a fresh perspective on the likely impact of artificial intelligence on the labour market. Rather than seeing it as a boost for productivity on the one hand or as a destroyer of jobs on the other, the academic instead describes artificial intelligence as a capitalist tool for tighter control over already downgraded work. And he calls for a social struggle centred squarely on the issue of technology and its role in the workplace. Romaric Godin reviews the academic's book.

Sébastien Lecornu, 39, was on Monday appointed by Emmanuel Macron as France’s new prime minister, tasked with pushing the president’s policy programme through France’s hung parliament – there where his predecessors failed and where his reputation as an expert in the art of political manoeuvring will face its sternest test yet. However, Lecornu, whose ideological convictions are unclear, and who is cited in a judicial investigation into favouritism, also has a mixed record of success as minister. Mediapart political correspondent Ilyes Ramdani dresses a portrait of he who is widely regarded as Macron’s last chance for avoiding fresh legislative elections, and the risk of the far-right obtaining a majority.

Prime minister François Bayrou has approved the renovation of his office in Pau, the small city in south-west France where he is also still the serving mayor. The aim of the work is to “restore the original splendour” of that office, and the bill - to be paid from public funds - comes in at 40,000 euros, according to Mediapart's information. Such a move is politically explosive in the middle of a national austerity plan being pushed by the prime minister himself and against the backdrop of a city council whose public debt has soared since it came under Bayrou's control. Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget report.

Earlier this month a screening of the hit film 'Barbie' in the Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec was cancelled after local protests. Yet the move to stop this film being shown was just the latest episode in a long list of cancel-culture attacks on the freedom to stage artistic performances across France. Many of these interventions have come from fundamentalist Catholic and nationalist groups, with some also emanating from the Left. Faced with such threats, some local elected representatives have felt obliged to yield to the pressure and cancel events. Laura Wojcik reports.

There are plans to stage a major nationwide protest and 'block everything' in France on September 10th. Having begun on social media, this movement is a reaction against the austerity measures proposed in prime minister François Bayrou's 2026 budget. Last Tuesday evening Mediapart was present when at least 200 people gathered in the southern city of Montpellier to prepare for the September event. Those at the meeting included veterans from the nationwide 'Gilets jaunes' or 'Yellow Vests' protests of 2018 and 2019, trade unionists, students and pro-Palestine activists. They called for their various struggles to come together and for people to get out and protest, despite the likely fall of the current government in a vote of no confidence scheduled for September 8th. Cécile Hautefeuille reports.

Following the surprise announcement by French Prime Minister François Bayrou on Monday (photo) that he will submit his government to a confidence vote in France’s hung parliament on September 8th, which several opposition parties have announced they will reject, his fate now appears sealed after less than nine months in office. As Pauline Graulle reports, the parties of the Left and Right are now preparing for the post-Bayrou period, with the looming possibility of new snap parliamentary elections amid the deepening political chaos.

A state of famine in the Gaza Strip was officially declared on Friday by a UN-affiliated body of experts, the IPC, that evaluate food insecurity around the world. The famine is declared in the Gaza Governorate, which includes Gaza City with a population of one million and which now faces a large-scale Israeli military offensive. Mediapart’s Gwenaëlle Lenoir interviewed Jérôme Grimaud, the emergency aid coordinator in Gaza for the French NGO Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), who told her of the horrific consequences of the famine, notably on hospital patients.

There has been outcry in France after Raphaël Graven, aka “Jean Pormanove”, or simply “JP”, died on Monday in front of the cameras of an online streaming channel whose viewers paid to watch him being subjected for 12 days to cruel physical and psychological abuse. After an autopsy found no external or internal injury to explain his death, toxicological tests have been ordered. Questions remain over the precise circumstances of his death, and others over the antics of his fellow streamers, the failure of relevant authorities to intervene beforehand, the laisser-faire attitude of the Australian platform Kick which hosted the channel, and why viewers watch the disturbing content.