THAT’S KIND OF THE POINT: Protests Threaten Macron’s Campaign to Remake France.

The Macron government deployed the full weight of France’s security apparatus on Saturday, but it wasn’t enough to contain a movement that authorities said mobilized 136,000 protesters. They included droves of rioters who waged pitched battles with police in the heart of the French capital and other major cities, lighting fires, smashing storefronts and leading to 135 injuries and more than 1,000 arrests.

The weekend violence left Mr. Macron cornered like at no other time in his presidency. Unable to control protesters through security measures, Mr. Macron is now facing calls to placate the masses by reversing course on his signature agenda: making France more economically competitive through sweeping changes to its labor market, taxes, public spending and pension system.

The 40-year-old former investment banker is scheduled to address the nation on Monday evening, officials said. Many French are calling for a shift in both policy and tone that discards the top-down leadership style that has marked his first year-and-a-half in office.

“Get the hell out of my way!” the wise man once said.

MICHAEL WALSH: Wanna Make Your Community Unaffordable? Fill It with Government Workers.

WILL BUNCH: Is France showing us what America’s next civil war will look like?

Related: France to Probe Possible Russian Influence on Yellow Vest Riots. Everything that upsets our incompetent, virtue-signalling political class is because of Russian interference. And no doubt the Russians will try to take advantage of the resentment stirred up by our incompetent virtue-signalling political class. But the real problem is the incompetent virtue-signalling political class. Not that I expect our incompetent virtue signalling political class to admit that.

Meanwhile, Will Bunch’s progressive fears/fantasies notwithstanding, America’s next civil war would more likely be along these lines. Or, probably, worse.

RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE, AND SNITCHES GET STITCHES: HOW THINGS WORK IN BLUE CITIES. SF DA Gascón carried guns on planes, then whistle-blower was fired, suit says.

A former senior investigator says he was fired for blowing the whistle on his boss, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who he alleged carried a gun while flying — in violation of federal law.

Gascón reacted with a “pattern of retaliation and harassment” that culminated in the termination of senior investigator Henry G. McKenzie on Oct. 30, 2017, according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

In the Nov. 24 filing, McKenzie says that Gascón — who is also the city’s former police chief — took a gun on board commercial flights repeatedly after becoming D.A. in January 2012.

According to the suit, members of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office Investigators Association, which included McKenzie, discussed the “need to blow the whistle” on Gascón’s potential criminal violations in early 2017.

Sometime that spring, an investigator in the district attorney’s office contacted the Transportation Security Administration to report Gascón’s alleged unlawful travel with a firearm.

“The issue is flying armed while not being a peace officer, and flying armed when there was no need to” for law enforcement purposes, McKenzie’s attorney, Fulvio Cajina, told us.

Under federal law, peace officers who are armed while traveling are required to state that they are doing so for good reason — a reason related to their work — under penalty of perjury. The investigators believed that, as district attorney, Gascón was no longer an active peace officer and had no need to travel with a gun.

In the months after the TSA was notified, five of the Investigators Association’s seven-member governing body were either terminated or reprimanded. In all, according to the suit, “nearly half of the district attorney’s investigative department — or about 14 staff members — “were either terminated or forced to resign under intense pressure within a five-month span,” the suit said.

Remember this when Democrats go on about gun control, or the rule of law.