French riots hit President Macron hard, "lame duck" dilemma intensifies, Trump shouts: Close the border

Large-scale unrest broke out across France on the 17th. The wave of demonstrations against rising living and fuel costs merged with the high school student protests that have been going on for several weeks, triggering fierce police-citizen clashes in more than 100 locations including Paris, Marseille, and Lyon. The turmoil has become a severe test for President Emmanuel Macron before he leaves office as France faces dual domestic and diplomatic dilemmas and the government tries to push for budget austerity.

This wave of protests began in September this year at Lycée St-Exupéry in Créteil, a suburb southeast of Paris. It was initially a strike triggered by a severe shortage of teaching staff, and then quickly spread across the country, forcing hundreds of schools to close. Students express strong dissatisfaction with the lack of resources and dilapidated facilities, especially in low-income communities. Not only are rats scurrying around the dilapidated campus, ceilings are collapsing and leaking, but the lack of air conditioning in classrooms makes students "as hot as an oven in summer and as cold as an ice cellar in winter."

In addition, students also protested against the overloaded schedule of "8 a.m. to 6 a.m." and demanded the abolition of the national university admissions application platform with unfair screening mechanisms. The latest "Program for International Student Assessment" (PISA) report shows that French students' reading and mathematics scores have dropped significantly, and society is generally worried that the education system is losing its function of helping disadvantaged children to move upward.

Since the outbreak of the student movement in September, at least 24 schools across France have been ransacked or set on fire. A total of nearly 8,000 people have been arrested, mostly minors. About 900 police officers and more than 350 teachers and students have been injured.

Since his first term, Macron has often faced fierce social protests, such as the "Yellow Vest" movement in 2018 and the pension reform protests in 2023. However, this time the crisis lies in the double attack of the "student movement" and the "popular inflationary anger." As France is about to hold a presidential election in six months, Macron, who is unable to seek three re-elections next year due to constitutional restrictions, is facing a "lame duck" dilemma of declining power. The party even hopes that he will reduce his public speeches to avoid angering the public; his political allies are more worried that the long-term budget and trade defense measures against China he promoted in the EU will be ineffective.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing party "La France Insoumise", supports students and proposes lowering the voting age to 16 years old; far-right leader Marine Le Pen demands that the police be given more power to deal with rioters; conservative former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe also strongly condemns vandalism and arson.

U.S. President Trump, who has a bad relationship with Macron, posted on the social platform on the 18th that "France is burning!" and Vice President J.D. Vance both blamed the riots on Western liberal immigration policies and urged France to immediately close the border.