Bernie Sanders warns ‘worst is yet to come’ in rallying cry against billionaires | Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders has sounded the alarm on the US economy, warning that “the worst is yet to come” unless workers can defeat a “ruling class” of billionaires.

The US senator spoke at a rally in Manhattan on Sunday alongside Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, who warned that artificial intelligence was “coming for human jobs” amid growing concern over the rapid development of the technology.

As the two men headlined the launch of Union Now, a new initiative aimed at strengthening unions across the United States, Sanders issued a grim assessment of the consequences if workers fail to organize against billionaires like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX; Jeff Bezos, executive chairman of Amazon; and Donald Trump, the American president.

“Unless we fundamentally transform our economic and political systems, the worst is yet to come,” he said, citing pushes from billionaires like Musk to invest in robotics and AI to replace workers, and Bezos, who recently announced an effort to raise $100 billion to buy and automate manufacturing companies.

“When we talk about the importance of tackling the income inequality crisis, we know that the most effective tool to do this is to increase union density,” Mamdani said. “Organizing campaigns and strikes can, frankly, be a lonely job. That’s why Union Now will support workers and provide them with more resources, and my administration will stand with them. This moment demands nothing less.

“AI and robots are preying on human jobs. Worker protections are eroding. Some companies think exploitation is a viable business model. They are wrong.”

Sanders argued that America’s working and middle classes are facing an existential crisis at the whim of Trump and other billionaires. “It is absolutely important that all of us here and every American understand that in the ruling class of this country today there is an extraordinary level of arrogance and cruelty,” he said. “In many ways, these guys believe like monarchs. I’m not exaggerating, like 19th century monarchs. They believe they have a divine right to rule.”

Musk owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of Americans, Sanders said, and in 2025 alone, 938 U.S.-based billionaires saw their net worth increase by $1.5 billion.

“The truth is that the top 1 percent, the people who run this country, have never had it better,” he told the crowd. “But the sad reality is that for these people, everything they have is not enough. They want more and more, and they don’t care who they step on to get what they want.

“These guys are extremely, extremely greedy people, and they don’t care what happens to our children, what happens to our parents and our grandparents, and what happens to our environment today.”

“One of the goals of the oligarchs and the media they own is to make ordinary people feel like there is nothing they can do to shape the future,” Sanders continued. “And what we are here today to say to Mr. Musk and his friends: Go to hell.”

Sanders cited Mamdani’s victory in New York’s mayoral election last year as an example of people coming together to defeat the efforts of billionaires and the ultra-rich, who vehemently opposed Mamdani’s candidacy.

“Their nightmare is not just what is happening in New York, but also the fear that workers across the country are doing the exact same thing,” he said. “Instead of hating each other because of the language we speak or where we were born, we will stand together and fight for a government that represents us all.”

The time has come for America’s labor movement to rebuild itself, Sanders said, as well as the political system, by ending the influence of super political action committees. The Democratic Party must become a party of the working class, he argued.

The rally also included appearances by workers involved in some of the most high-profile unionizing efforts in the United States in recent years and who have faced fierce opposition from employers, including workers at Amazon, Starbucks, REI, Delta Air Lines and Wells Fargo.

“If Trump and his fellow oligarchs get their way, we will live in a society where fewer and fewer people will have more and more wealth and more and more power, where democracy will be undermined, where workers will be thrown onto the streets with no recourse,” Sanders concluded. “This is not the America we want for ourselves or for our children.

“The good news is that if we stand together and don’t let Trump and his friends divide us, when we come together and fight for a government that works for all of us, there is nothing we can’t accomplish. »