If one word could summarize the ideology of the second Trump regime, it would be “hate.”

Consider, for example, Paul Ingrassia — who started off as Trump’s White House liaison to the Justice Department and then liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, before Trump nominated him in May to run the White House’s Office of Special Counsel.

Politico is out today with an exposé of Ingrassia — noteworthy because it so clearly illustrates Trump’s priorities when it comes to personnel.

Before his nomination, Ingrassia reportedly told a group of fellow Republicans that “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.”

He has written about former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy: “Never trust a chinaman or Indian … NEVER.”

He has said Black people behave like “victims” because “that’s their natural state … You can’t change them,” adding: “Proof: all of Africa is a shithole, and will always be that way.”

He has urged that the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell.” Using an Italian slur for Black people, he wrote: “No moulignon holidays … From kwanza [sic] to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth,” adding: “Every single one needs to be eviscerated.”

He has written: “We need competent white men in positions of leadership. … The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal … We need to reject that part of our heritage.”

He has backed martial law. He’s referred to 2024 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley as an “insufferable bitch.” He called Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel a “psyop,” (which stands for psychological operation).

He has ties to avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes. Soon after he made the “Nazi” comment, Ingrassia attended a rally for Fuentes.

Ingrassia’s overt bigotry was too much even for Senate Republicans, who pushed back against his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel — resulting in Trump’s pulling the nomination in November.

But Ingrassia wasn’t booted from the Trump administration. In fact, after pulling his nomination, Trump invited Ingrassia to meet with him at the White House and offered him another administration post — deputy general counsel of the General Services Administration. He is now acting general counsel, supervising more than 100 lawyers.

Trump doesn’t mind Ingrassia’s bigotry because Ingrassia is a Trump loyalist who for years has praised Trump on X and Substack. (After Trump reposted more than 100 of Ingrassia’s fawning Substacks, Ingrassia called himself “Trump’s favorite writer.”)

In Trump world, fawning loyalty always trumps hateful bigotry.

In contrast to Trump’s graciousness toward Ingrassia, the Trump regime has been trying to rid America of people seeking to stop the spread of online hate speech.

On Thursday, a federal judge in New York temporarily blocked Trump from detaining Imran Ahmed, the founder and chief executive of a nonprofit organization that works to stop the spread of online hate and disinformation, whom the Trump regime accused of promoting the censoring of “American viewpoints.”

Ahmed — who is in the United States legally, with a green card and an American wife and child — is one of five people barred by the Trump regime because they’ve been scrutinizing hate speech on social media platforms such as Elon Musk’s X.

Musk had unsuccessfully tried to sue Ahmed’s research group in 2023 when it documented a rise in hate speech on X after Musk bought the platform, then called Twitter. When Trump’s State Department barred Ahmed from America, Musk posted, “This is so great.”

So there we have it, friends. Hateful bigotry is fine inside the Trump regime as long as the hateful bigots are loyal to Trump.

Meanwhile, the regime is trying to rid America of people fighting hateful bigotry.

Hate is the defining ideology of the Trump regime.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

One of the most notable characteristics of 2025 has been the shamelessness of the billionaire class and the conspicuousness of its corruption.

For many years, whenever I’ve warned that an increasing portion of the nation’s wealth is falling into the hands of an ever-smaller number of people, the moneyed interests have responded: “But that’s just the free market,” or “the free market has decided they deserve it.”

Rubbish. There’s no such thing as a “free market” to begin with. Today’s so-called “free market” is the outcome of political decisions over monopolization, labor organization, private property, finance, trade, taxes, and much more.

Who’s behind these political decisions? Increasingly, the same small number of ultra-rich who have gained disproportionate influence over our politics. They’ve created five ways for themselves to accumulate a billion dollars or more.

1. First, exploit a monopoly.

Does Jeff Bezos deserve his billions because he founded and built Amazon?

No. Amazon is a monopolist with nearly 40 percent of all e-commerce retail sales in America. In addition, Amazon is protected by a slew of patents granted by the U.S. government.

In 2023, the U.S. government — through the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states— charged Amazon with illegally maintaining a monopoly by crushing competition, inflating prices, and harming consumers through anticompetitive practices like punishing sellers who offer lower prices elsewhere. (The trial is currently scheduled to begin in 2027.)

If the government fully enforced anti-monopoly (antitrust) laws and didn’t give Amazon such broad patents, Bezos would be worth far less.

If anti-monopoly laws were enforced, other titans of high tech would be worth far less, too — among them, Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

2. A second way to make more than a billion is to get insider information that’s unavailable to other investors.

Billionaire Steven A. Cohen headed up a hedge fund firm in which, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department, insider trading was “substantial, pervasive, and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry.” Nine of Cohen’s present or former employees pleaded guilty or were convicted. Cohen got off with a fine, changed the name of his firm, and apparently is back at the game.

Former billionaire investor Bill Hwang was convicted in late 2024 and sentenced to 18 years for fraud related to the collapse of his Archegos Capital Management. The charges focused on his trading on insider information, market manipulation, and fraud.

The crypto market often experiences sharp volatility linked to policy announcements by the Trump regime. Moments after Trump announced new tariffs on China, one inside trader became $150 million richer from a leveraged short position.

Insider trading is endemic in C-suites. SEC researchers have found that corporate executives are twice as likely to sell their stock on the days following their own stock buyback announcements, when their stock prices soar, as they are in the days leading up to the announcements.

If government cracked down on insider trading, hedge fund mavens and top corporate executives wouldn’t be raking in nearly as much money.

3. A third way to make more than a billion is to buy off politicians who will change the rules of the “free market” in your favor.

The first Trump tax cut has saved Charles Koch and Koch Industries an estimated $1 to $1.4 billion a year, not even counting tax savings on profits stored offshore and a shrunken estate tax. The second Trump tax cut saved the Kochs even more. They and their affiliated groups spent some $20 million lobbying for the Trump tax cut and $550 million seeking to get Trump elected in 2024. Not a bad return on investment.

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, sank a quarter of a billion dollars into getting Trump elected in 2024 and is on the way to spending as much if not more trying to keep the House and Senate under Republican control. What does Musk get out of it? Lower taxes on himself and his businesses, rollbacks of regulations that limit his profits, and federal contracts that make him even richer.

Trump and his own family have also reaped big rewards by changing the economy’s rules in their favor. By the end of 2025, they had cleared at least $1.2 billion through their crypto investments — whose value has ballooned in large part because of Trump’s decisions to deregulate crypto and encourage its use.

The value of their crypto investments also rose with Trump’s pardon of Changpeng “CZ” Zhao — the billionaire co-founder of the Binance crypto exchange who pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. Binance was closely tied to World Liberty Financial, actively managed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

Earlier this year, a state-controlled United Arab Emirates firm bought $100 million of cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial — essentially a huge deposit for World Liberty, which could then generate returns in the tens of millions of dollars each year.

Trump’s wealth soared again in mid-December on news that Trump Media & Technology Group, the publicly traded company whose biggest shareholder is Trump, is merging with TAE Technologies, a privately held fusion technology company. The additional wealth was the consequence of more self-dealing by Trump: His Department of Energy had created an Office of Fusion to support the commercialization of fusion.

The family company of billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also been making a bundle off political influence. Lutnick’s company helped raise capital for Toby Neugebauer, a billionaire who’s building one of the giant data centers that will power the next generation of AI, banking millions in fees in the process. Lutnick has also been twisting the arms of American allies and dangling policy favors in exchange for investments in U.S. industrial projects that have given his family’s clients access to foreign capital.

If we had tough anti-corruption laws preventing such political payoffs and self-dealing, the Kochs, Musks, Trumps, Lutnicks, and other high-rollers wouldn’t get the spoils of their political influence: tax breaks, regulatory rollbacks, and government subsidies that have enlarged their fortunes.

4. The fourth way to make more than a billion is to extort big investors.

Adam Neumann conned J.P.Morgan, SoftBank, and other investors to sink hundreds of millions into WeWork, an office-sharing startup. Neumann used some of the money to buy buildings he leased back to WeWork and to enjoy a lifestyle that included a $60 million private jet. WeWork never made a nickel of profit.

After Neumann was forced to disclose his personal conflicts of interest, WeWork’s initial public offering fell apart, and the company’s estimated value plummeted. To salvage what they could, investors paid him over $1 billion to exit the board and give up his voting rights. Most other WeWork employees were left holding near-worthless stock options. Thousands were set to be laid off.

A few wealthy fraudsters have been found guilty and forced to disgorge their ill-gotten gains (in 2024, Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, whose net worth reached an estimated $26 billion, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors of nearly $10 billion).

But many have not. If we had tougher anti-fraud laws and better enforcement, Neumann and others like him wouldn’t be billionaires.

5. The fifth way to make more than a billion is to get the money from rich parents or relatives.

A new UBS report finds that a record number — 91 people — became billionaires in 2025 through inheritance. Their total bounty was almost $300 billion.

It’s the beginning of what’s expected to be the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history, during which heirs will inherit at least $5.9 trillion over the next 15 years.

An estimated 45 percent of all wealth in America is inherited. That’s because, under U.S. tax law — which is itself largely a product of lobbying by the wealthy — the capital gains of one generation are wiped out when those assets are transferred to the next.

As Mitt Romney (remember him?) recently pointed out, had Elon Musk purchased his Tesla stock for, say, $1 billion and held it until his death, and if it were then worth $500 billion, he would never pay the 24 percent federal capital gains tax on the $499 billion profit. Under the current tax code, when Musk’s heirs inherit his stock, the assets will be treated as if the heirs purchased it for $500 billion. So no one will ever pay taxes on the $499 billion capital gain.

If unearned income were treated the same as earned income under the tax code, America’s non-working rich wouldn’t be billionaires. And if capital gains weren’t eliminated at death, many heirs wouldn’t be, either.

The good news is that Americans are becoming increasingly alarmed about the harms billionaires are inflicting on our system. A Harris poll released last month finds that over half of Americans (53 percent) believe that billionaires are threatening democracy.

In addition, a significant 71 percent of Americans believe there should be a wealth tax. And a majority believe there should be a cap on how much wealth a person can accumulate.

These schemes also threaten capitalism itself. The system doesn’t work when monopolies, insider trading, political payoffs, fraud, and large amounts of inherited wealth are rigging it. As the system loses public trust, it begins to unravel.

When and if sane and honest people ever again control the U.S. government, one of the first things they should do is enact a tax on large accumulations of wealth.

Also an end to the current rule that allows all capital gains to be erased when the owners of the capital die, thereby enabling heirs to inherit all the accumulated wealth tax-free.

Not the least, we must get big money out of politics — to end the bribes and corruption that have distorted capitalism for the benefit of a handful of people at the top. (Here’s a way to do it.)

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

About a year ago, at the start of the Trump regime, a woman was about to pass me on the sidewalk and then stopped, turned toward me, and almost shouted, “It’s a f------ nightmare!”

It has been a “f------ nightmare.”

But sometimes a nation needs a nightmare before it can fully awaken to long-simmering crises.

Martin Luther King Jr. mobilized the nation against racial injustice by making sure almost everyone in the United States saw its horrors — on the nightly news, watching peaceful Black people getting clubbed and arrested for exercising their rights.

Were it not for that painful national exposure to racist brutality, we wouldn’t have gotten the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act.

Something similar happened in the first years of the 20th century, when muckraking journalists revealed the monopolies, corruption, and public-be-damned arrogance of the robber barons.

Were it not for that painful national exposure, we wouldn’t have gotten the reforms of the Progressive Era.

A similar dynamic is playing out as Americans witness the nightmare of Trump’s neofascism: its mindless cruelty, blatant attempts to silence critics, wanton destruction of much of our government, open racism and misogyny.

Trump has revealed himself in ways his first-term handlers wouldn’t allow — as a sociopath who posts AI cartoons showing himself s------- on millions of Americans who marched against him. A malignant narcissist unable to respond to the tragic killings of Rob and Michele Reiner without making it all about himself. A chronic liar who says prices are dropping when everyone knows they’re rising.

As Americans see all this, outrage has been growing. We are beginning to mobilize — not all of us, of course, but the great majority.

Record numbers of us marched on October 18, No Kings Day. Democratic candidates have won just about every recent special election and mayoral and gubernatorial contest and a remarkable number of down-ballot races in bright red states and cities. MAGA is coming apart. Trump’s polls are tanking.

We are organizing and mobilizing with a resolve I have not seen in my lifetime.

America had to come to this point. We couldn’t go on as we were, even under Democratic presidents. For 40 years, a narrow economic elite has been siphoning off ever more wealth and power.

I’m old enough to remember when America had the largest and fastest-growing middle class in the world. We adhered to the basic bargain that if someone worked hard and played by the rules, they’d do better than their parents, and their children would do even better.

I remember when CEOs took home 20 times the pay of their workers, not 300 times. When members of Congress acted in the interests of their constituents rather than being bribed by campaign donations to do the bidding of big corporations and the super-wealthy.

I remember when our biggest domestic challenges were civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights — not the very survival of democracy and the rule of law.

But over the last 40 years, starting with Reagan, America went off the rails. Deregulation, privatization, free trade, wild gambling by Wall Street, union-busting, monopolization, record levels of inequality, stagnant wages for most, staggering wealth for a few, big money taking over our politics.

Corporate profits became more important than good jobs and good wages for all. Stock buybacks and the well-being of investors more important than the common good.

Democratic presidents were better than Republican, to be sure, but the underlying rot worsened. It was undermining the foundations of America.

Trump has precipitated a long-overdue reckoning.

That reckoning has revealed the rot.

It has also revealed the suck-up cowardice of so many CEOs, billionaires, Wall Street bankers, media moguls, tech titans, Republican politicians, and other so-called “leaders” who have stayed silent or actively sought to curry Trump’s favor.

America’s so-called “leadership class” is a sham. Most of them do not care a whit for the rest of America. They are out for themselves.

The “f------ nightmare” is not over by any stretch. It’s likely to get worse in 2026 as Trump and his sycophants, and many of America’s “leaders,” realize 2026 may be their last unrestrained year to inflict damage and siphon off the spoils.

But the nightmare has awakened much of America to the truth about what has happened to this country — and what we must do to get it back on the track toward social justice, democracy, and widespread prosperity.

I’d like to believe that the horrific darkness of this past year is a necessary prelude to a brighter and saner future.

Be well. Be safe. We will prevail.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Sorry to burden you with this question, but it nags at me.

Why haven’t the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association stood up against the unethical behavior of professionals in the Trump regime?

I was always told that professional associations existed to maintain professional standards, not merely to restrict the number of licensed professionals to maintain professional prices.

But Lindsey Halligan, now the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, is ethically unmoored.

She was appointed by Trump and Pam Bondi for the express purpose of prosecuting Trump enemies James Comey and Letitia James.

Halligan is a former insurance lawyer with no criminal law experience. (She had helped Trump “de-wokify” the Smithsonian.)

On November 17, 2025, a federal magistrate judge identified multiple instances of Halligan’s misconduct, including making “fundamental misstatements of the law” to a grand jury.

Halligan admitted she never showed the final indictment to the entire grand jury after it had rejected her first submission, a remarkable failure.

A judge subsequently found that Halligan had been illegally appointed U.S. attorney to begin with and dismissed the indictments against Comey and James. The Justice Department is now appealing.

According to the American Bar Association’s model rules of conduct (adopted by every state bar association), a prosecutor in a criminal case must “refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause.” It is also considered professional misconduct for a lawyer to “engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.”

If legal ethics mean anything, Halligan should be disbarred.

If medical ethics mean anything, Dr. Vinay Prasad should no longer be a doctor.

Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator, recently claimed that Covid vaccines were dangerous for children and had caused the deaths of “at least 10 children.”

Twelve former FDA commissioners said Prasad’s claim broke sharply from long-standing scientific norms and posed “a threat to evidence-based vaccine policy and public health security.”

Inside Medicine reported that Prasad used incomplete information and that the pediatric death toll from Covid shots was between zero and seven.

More to the point, how many children would have died without the Covid vaccine? The Centers for Disease Control reported that more than 2,100 American children have died of Covid since the pandemic began.

I could have used many other examples of doctors now ostensibly serving the public in the Trump regime who have thrown their own integrity and ethics out the window and into the Potomac.

What is unfolding among doctors inside the Department of Health and Human Services is an attempt to rewrite the rules governing the entire U.S. public health system based on ideology rather than science.

Likewise, I could have found many other examples of attorneys in the Trump regime who are violating professional standards.

What’s occurring among lawyers in the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney’s offices is an attempt to rewrite the rules governing the entire U.S. system of criminal justice based on Trump’s vindictiveness rather than the rule of law.

If professional associations have any legitimate purpose in our system, it is to enforce ethical standards and hold professionals accountable to them.

Hell, if the American Economic Association can permanently ban Harvard economist (and former treasury secretary) Larry Summers for conduct “fundamentally inconsistent with its standards of professional integrity” (Summers had repeatedly asked Jeffrey Epstein for advice on Summers’s pursuit of a younger economist), surely the American Bar Association should ban Lindsey Halligan, and the American Medical Association, Vinay Prasad.

Where are the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association during Trump’s unscrupulous reign?

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Once you begin surrendering to Trump, he always wants more. You can’t appease a tyrant.

David Ellison’s CBS — after gutting DEI policies there, appointing right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein to a new “ombudsman” role, and making anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News (despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms) — yesterday removed a segment from “60 Minutes” featuring stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador. Bari Weiss had demanded changes to the segment.

The Ellisons — fils et père — have been seeking Trump’s support for their hostile bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery, but Trump has been unhappy with recent episodes of “60 Minutes,” even under its new management. Hence, the segment’s removal.

Sharyn Alfonsi, a long-standing “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment that was removed, accused CBS News of pulling it for “political” reasons. “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote in a note to the CBS News Team. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Here’s Alfonsi’s note in full:

News Team,
Thank you for the notes and texts. I apologize for not reaching out earlier.
I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, INSIDE CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight. We (Ori and I) asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.
Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now-after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.
We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.
If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a “kill switch” for any reporting they find inconvenient.
If the standard for airing a story becomes “the government must agree to be interviewed,” then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.
These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.
CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that “low point.” By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.
We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of “Gold Standard” reputation for a single week of political quiet.
I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.
Sharyn

Sharyn Alfonsi wins this week’s Joseph N. Welch Award for courage in the face of tyranny (named for the chief counsel for the U.S. Army who confronted Senator Joe McCarthy with the iconic question, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" which led to McCarthy’s demise).

I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow (who also revealed to America the danger of Joe McCarthy) and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS. And when the top management of CBS felt they had independent responsibilities to the American public.

America can survive without a “60 Minutes” it can trust, just as we can survive without trustworthy editorial pages of the Washington Post. But at some point, as Trump continues to repress criticism of him and his regime, American democracy is compromised beyond repair.

We are coming to the end of only the first year of Trump II. He and the lapdogs and sycophants around him have done more damage to this nation in less than a year than I thought possible.

They have not been them alone in their destruction. They’ve had enablers in the form of billionaires such as Larry and David Ellison, along with quisling managers such as Bari Weiss, who confuse having money and power with possessing integrity and fostering the common good.

Here, in sharp contrast to today’s cowardly suck-up CBS News under Bari Weiss and David Ellison, is the courageous and resolute CBS News’s Edward R. Murrow, from April 13, 1954.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Trump calls it “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I have a more accurate description: our political trauma.

After almost a year of Trump’s second term, I and many other people — including, very likely, you — are feeling exhausted, distraught, and sickened by what’s happened to our country and the world.

As Times columnist Bret Stephens puts it, we are being led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House — a petty, hollow, squalid, ogre-in-chief.

Every day that goes by seems to bring uglier vindictiveness, bigger lies, wilder boasts, and worse policies.

The cruelty is almost unbearable — the destruction of USAID, the pursuit of undocumented immigrants, the breakup of families, the arrests and detentions without due process, the bombing of small boats in the Caribbean and killing of more than 100 people, and so on.

The fact it’s being done in our name, by the United States of America, is heartbreaking.

I try to be optimistic. I tell myself — as I’ve told you — that we will be all the stronger for having gone through this dark time. Most of us now have a new and deeper appreciation for democracy, the rule of law, and social justice.

I also tell myself that we couldn’t have remained on the road we were on — with its widening inequalities and worsening political corruption.

I believe all this, but it doesn’t always subdue for me the sting and the stink of Trump — the shattering, dispiriting sadness of it all. That we’ve barely completed the first year of his likely four-year regime is terrifying.

We are not powerless, of course. Together we are making significant progress against this scourge. The ogre is not able to do as much damage now as he did initially. The slumbering good giant of America is awakening.

But the vile man in the Oval Office continues to say and do horrible things.

My early New Year’s resolution is to accept this for what it is — a terrible blight on America and the world — but not allow it to discourage me or dim my determination to fight it.

I hope your determination remains strong, too.

I’ve found that the best antidote to political trauma is political activism. We shall overcome. We shall overcome.

May you find joy and rest in this holiday season. May you recharge your batteries for the struggle ahead.

Thank you for all you do.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

Today, after almost a year of Trump’s second regime, I want to talk about the challenge Trump and his regime pose to America’s moral purpose. The best way into the subject is, I think, to ask a few questions about what’s been happening, and then offer an answer to all of them.

Questions:

— Why does Trump’s latest National Security Strategy, released this month, make no distinction between despotism and democracy?

— Why is Trump abandoning Europe and siding with Putin over Ukraine?

— Why is Trump also solicitous of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince MBS, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and Benjamin Netanyahu?

— Why is the Trump regime so intent on detaining or deporting undocumented people in the United States who have not committed any crimes and have been productive members of their communities for years?

— Why is the Trump regime barring people from even entering the United States whose home countries are predominantly Muslim or whose inhabitants have mostly black or brown skin?

— Why has the Trump regime allowed Andrew and Tristan Tate — arrested in Romania in 2023 on charges of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organized criminal group to sexually exploit women — to come to the United States?

— Why is the Trump regime admitting into the U.S. white South Africans as refugees, but not Black or brown people who are in grave danger around the world?

— Why has the Trump regime cracked down on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in universities, the public sector, and the private sector?

— Why has Trump targeted for prosecution or intimidation so many women of color who are now in, or have recently occupied, positions of power in the United States?

Answer to all of the above:

Trump and the people around him are not interested in protecting America’s democratic ideals from the global enemies of those ideals. They reject the progress America and the rest of what used to be called the “free world” have achieved in advancing democracy, the rule of law, social justice, and human rights.

The world they seek is one of white supremacy, male dominance, the superiority of the Judeo-Christian tradition over all other creeds, and America-first nationalism.

White male Christian nationalism is about power. It seeks to give white Christian men power over Black and brown people, over women, over people who are not Judeo-Christians, over people born outside the United States, and over anyone who does not fit neatly into the structure and roles of a traditional family.

White male Christian nationalism has more in common with Vladimir Putin, who condemns LGBTQ+ people and scoffs at human rights; with Saudi Arabia, which confines women to second-class status and murders critics of the regime; and with Viktor Orban, who views Muslim immigrants as direct threats to Europe’s Christian values, than it does with America’s traditional allies.

So, when Trump and his regime refer to America’s “national security,” they are not talking about security against authoritarian regimes that eschew democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Their view of “national security” is security against forces — both inside America as well as abroad — that advocate democracy, the rule of law, and human rights (which they describe derisively as “woke” or “diversity, equity, and inclusion”) rather than white male Christian nationalism.

White male Christian nationalism is a throwback to the world before the enlightenment of the 18th century took root in the West; before the core ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights provided a beacon to America and the world; before Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man.

America has not always lived up to these core enlightenment ideals, but it has at least striven to face its shortcomings and overcome its moral hypocrisies. It fought a horrendous civil war that ended the scourge slavery. It extended voting rights to women. It enacted the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts to guarantee equal political rights to Black and brown people. It committed itself to equal marriage rights.

Our system of rights has rested on a civic culture that demands mutual respect, adherence to the egalitarian principles enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, rejection of bigotry and hatred, dedication to freedom and justice, and deep suspicion of centralized power whether in government or in the economy.

***

After almost a year of Trump’s second term — even more violent and extreme than his first — the moral challenge he and his regime pose to the soul of this nation has become clear: the loss of our core ideals, the deterioration of our founding principles, and the abdication of America’s moral authority in the world.

What do you think?

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

I couldn’t sleep last night because I kept thinking about Trump’s response to the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner. Something about it kept worrying me.

As you may recall, instead of extending his sympathies, he said in a post to Truth Social Monday morning that:

“Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace.”

Many commentators and politicians (including several Republicans) have criticized Trump for this.

Sage Steele, former ESPN host and Trump ally, called Trump’s post “disappointing.” Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, wrote that “regardless of how you feel about Rob Reiner this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered.” Rep. Michael Lawler, Republican of New York, said “this statement is wrong.”

Jenna Ellis, Trump’s former lawyer who’s now a conservative radio host, wrote that “this is a horrible example from Trump (and surprising considering the two attempts on his own life) and should be condemned by everyone with any decency.” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said: “We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.”

All true, but Trump says inappropriate things all the time, and most of us know by now that he’s a loathsome human being.

Stephens went on to charge that Trump had debased America:

“In every grotesque social media post; in every cabinet meeting devoted, North Korea-like, to adulating him; in every executive-order-signing ceremony intended to make him appear like a Chinese emperor; in every fawning reference to all the peace he’s supposedly brought the world; in every Neronic enlargement of the White House’s East Wing; in every classless dig at his predecessor; in every shady deal his family is striking to enrich itself; in every White House gathering of tech billionaires paying him court (in the literal senses of both “pay” and “court”); in every visiting foreign leader who learns to abase himself to avoid some capricious tariff or other punishment — in all this and more, our standards as a nation are being debased, our manners barbarized.”

Of course Trump is debasing America. But we already knew this, too.

What kept me up last night was something else.

I’ve worked for three presidents, one Republican and two Democrats. I’ve seen presidents up close. The job is overwhelmingly difficult. It takes a toll. But I have never seen anything remotely like what has happened to Donald Trump.

If Trump was once rational, he no longer is.

His response to the Reiner killings, like his AI post on October 18 in which he defecated on millions of protesters, reveals a depth of paranoia and grandiosity worse than anything he has shown before.

His chief of staff, Suzy Wiles, told Chris Whipple in an interview that appeared in Tuesday’s Vanity Fair that Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality” because he “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

Nothing he can’t do?

I don’t want to alarm you, and I hesitate to even mention this, but I couldn’t sleep knowing that Trump has the power to launch a nuclear bomb.

As commander-in-chief, he is the only person in the United States with the authority to launch a nuke. No one else need be consulted before he does. No one else can veto such an order. Not even the vice president or secretary of defense has the power to stop it.

I hope to god he doesn’t. I don’t think he would.

But what if he’s provoked? What if he feels that his manhood or his authority or his status is being threatened? What if he just wants to demonstrate to Americans and the world how strong he is?

Again, I doubt this will happen, but the risk is not zero. Here’s a man who thinks Rob and Michele Reiner were murdered because they had a “raging obsession” with him. A man who, according to his current chief of staff, has the personality of an alcoholic with delusions of omnipotence.

It’s a risk that neither the United States nor the rest of the world can afford to take.

I don’t think I’m being alarmist. If anything, I worry that we’ve become so inured to Trump’s madness that we’re not alarmist enough.

Trump must be removed from office as soon as possible.

Either Section 4 of the 25th Amendment must be invoked — because he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” — or he must be impeached and convicted under Section 4 of Article II of the Constitution for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics — which can still be trusted! — reports today that just 64,000 jobs were added to the economy in November.

That’s not enough to keep up with the number of people looking for jobs. Hence, the jobless rate rose last month to 4.6 percent — up from 4.4 percent in September and from 4.0 percent in January.

But the bigger news is that almost no jobs have been added to the American economy since April.

In fact, 710,000 more people are unemployed now versus November 2024.

Take a look.

It would be one thing if wage gains were growing, but they aren’t. They’re slowing.

What accounts for this dismal record? Trump wants to blame the Fed, which he claims has been too slow to reduce interest rates. But in addition to creating jobs, the Fed also has a mandate to fight inflation — and prices continue to rise.

The two main reasons for the dismal economy are:

1. Trump’s tariffs. Employers aren’t willing to expand or add news jobs due to the added costs of the tariffs, which they have to absorb or pass onto their customers. The tariffs are also creating wild uncertainties about the future, further discouraging hiring.

2. Efforts by employers to cut costs. Payrolls are about two-thirds of all the costs of doing business, so employers squeeze payrolls as much as they can. They’re doing it now just as they have over the last several decades — by outsourcing abroad (although this has become trickier, given the tariffs) and by substituting technology for labor. What’s new — and making it far easier for them to substitute technology for labor — is Artificial Intelligence.

Bottom line: Between rising prices and no new jobs, most Americans are struggling to pay their bills. Hence, the affordability crisis.

Hence, a political reckoning for Republicans, particularly if Democrats focus on affordability in next year’s midterm elections. Key planks of such a platform should be: (1) eliminating many of Trump’s tariffs, (2) busting up monopolies, (3) giving workers more power through unions, (4) raising the minimum wage, and (5) lowering the costs of healthcare, housing, and childcare.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

I was not going to mention the tragic deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner because there’s far too much tragedy around us already. It appears to be a personal, family tragedy. (Police have arrested the Reiners’ son, Nick, in connection with their killing.)

But I can’t keep mum about Trump’s response to it.

Instead of extending sympathies to Rob and Michele Reiner and their family and friends, Trump said in a post to Truth Social this morning, that:

“Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace.”

Three quick points about Trump’s response:

First, this angry, partisan message is utterly inappropriate to the tragedy that has engulfed the Reiner family and the community of people who care about them.

Second, Trump has made it all about himself. It’s not the first time his malignant narcissism has put himself at the center of whatever is preoccupying the public at the moment, but this is one of the most extreme and disgusting examples I’ve seen.

Third, if anyone still harbors any doubt that Trump is losing it — that his mind is in the grip of dementia, also likely paranoia — this post should make it clear. No rational person would post this.

Enough said.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Especially in these dark times, it’s important to salute courageous individuals who stand up to Trump’s tyranny.

My latest Joseph Welch Award (named after the courageous attorney who stood up to Joseph McCarthy in the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings) goes to the 21 Indiana Senate Republicans who stood up to Trump last Thursday.

Indiana’s GOP-controlled state Senate rejected 31 to 19 the map that would have gerrymandered two more safe red seats. The vote may have imperiled the Republican Party’s chances of holding control of Congress next November, but it strengthened American democracy.

The failed vote was the culmination of a no-holds-barred, four-month pressure campaign from Trump and his White House on recalcitrant Indiana Republicans. The pressure included private meetings and public shaming from Trump, along with Trump’s threats to primary them next time they’re up for election (“They … should DO THEIR JOB, AND DO IT NOW!” Trump posted. “If not, let’s get them out of office.”).

The pressure also included multiple visits to the Hoosier State from JD Vance, whip calls from Speaker Mike Johnson, and veiled threats from Washington to withhold federal funds from the state. Republican legislators were also subjected to pipe bomb threats, unsolicited pizza deliveries to their home addresses, and swatting of their homes.

Turning Point Action, the organization founded by Charlie Kirk, pledged to spend tens of millions of dollars to primary any Republican who voted against the redistricting map.

Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 campaign manager and adviser to Fair Maps Indiana, a dark-money group that blitzed the state with ads in recent weeks, also threatened retribution. “If you don’t defend a political movement from those that stand in the way — then it’s not a movement at all — a handful of politicians in Indiana will now know what standing in the way really means.”

Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, made explicit in an X post Thursday that Indiana would risk all its federal funding if the Indiana Senate didn’t vote for the new map. “Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.”

Yet — a majority of Indiana’s Senate Republicans voted against the map. How to explain this?

Mitch Daniels, who served as governor of Indiana from 2005 to 2013, blamed Trump’s bullying tactics: “Washington-based enforcers demand maximum, sacrificial loyalty or else. In this case, each of those so threatened has a constituency of friends and supporters. It’s an odd way to build a winning party.”

Daniels also noted that the in-your-face partisanship of Trump’s effort was “not likely to improve the party’s standing with independents, or to inspire its own adherents to turn out next year.”

But there was something else that gave Indiana Republicans the courage to reject Trump’s map. This factor is profoundly important to the future of America. Let me explain.

American politics today is divided between two groups — fanatics who view politics as a form of warfare, and institutionalists who view politics as a means of implementing democracy.

To fanatics, winning is everything. To institutionalists, democracy is everything.

This divide is becoming more significant than the old political divides — conservative versus liberal, right versus left, or Republican versus Democrat. Both warfare fanatics and institutionalists can be found among Democrats, as well as Trump Republicans.

Trump and the people around him are extreme fanatics. To them, America is already engaged in a civil war. They view those who oppose them, including many who call themselves Republicans, as their sworn enemies — against whom scorched-earth tactics are entirely justified.

“We have a huge problem,” said Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who simulcasted his “War Room” show live from a suburban Indianapolis hotel just before the vote. “We’ve got a net five to 10 seats [in the House of Representatives]. If we don’t get a net 10 pickup in the redistricting wars, it’s going to be enormously hard, if not impossible, to hold the House.”

But institutionalists don’t view politics as a form of warfare. They see it as a form of service — part of a civic tradition that’s older and more honorable than the win-at-any-cost fanaticism we’re now seeing.

Indiana is a deep-red state, to be sure. But it also has a strong tradition of political responsibility and civic integrity. And last Thursday, Indiana’s civic tradition won out.

Indiana state Senator Spencer Deery, a Republican who opposed the redrawn map, put it clearly: “The power to draw election maps is a sacred responsibility directly tied to the integrity of our elections and the people’s faith in our constitutional system.”

State Senator Greg Goode, another Republican, contrasted that civic tradition with the warfare fanaticism threatening it. In his floor speech before voting against the gerrymandered map, Goode said:

“The forces that define [the] vitriolic political affairs in places outside of Indiana have been gradually and now very blatantly infiltrat[ing] the political affairs in Indiana. Misinformation. Cruel social media posts, over-the-top pressure from within the state house and outside, threats of primaries, threats of violence, acts of violence. Friends, we’re better than this.”

When Goode said “we’re better than this,” he was referring to Indiana’s civic tradition.

Indiana is not alone. A similar civic tradition can be found all over America. It exists in direct contrast to Trump and his warfare fanaticism. I believe America’s civic tradition will prove more powerful than fanatic political warfare.

That Indiana’s Republican senators had the courage last Thursday to stand up to the bully-in-chief is hugely encouraging for the nation. They deserve the Joseph Welch Award.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Trump gave what was billed as a “Christmas speech” in rural Pennsylvania this past week that began with his “wishing each and every one of you a very merry Christmas, happy New Year, all of that stuff” and boasting that now, under his presidency, “everybody’s saying ‘merry Christmas’ again.”

Then he claimed — contrary to the experience of nearly everyone in the crowd — that he had gotten them “lower prices” and “bigger paychecks.” And asserted that anyone having difficulty making ends meet should just cut back on buying stuff. “You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils … Every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two,” he said, adding, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice. You don’t need 37 dolls.”

It’s rich — Trump preaching austerity while raking in billions from his crypto investments and bribes: a luxury jetliner from Qatar, gold bar from Apple, wealth from the Saudis, gold Rolex clock from Switzerland, and so much more.

“The only thing that is truly going up big, it’s called the stock market and your 401(k)s,” Trump continued, apparently unaware that 92 percent of the stock market is owned by the richest 10 percent of Americans while most Americans own no stock at all. (Just over a third have even a 401(k), 403(b), 503(b) or Thrift Savings Plan.)

He was supposed to talk about affordability, but Trump’s malignant narcissistic brain seemed incapable of the minimal empathy needed to understand the public’s angst over the cost of living. So he veered off affordability to attack Minnesota’s Rep. Ilhan Omar, ridicule windmills, mock transgender people, and call Joe Biden a son of a bitch.

Small wonder that most voters have had it with Trump. Even the MAGA faithful are starting to have second thoughts.

In Miami this week, voters delivered the mayor’s office to a Democrat for the first time in nearly 30 years and rebuffed the Republican candidate, whom Trump endorsed — by a whopping 59 percent to 41 percent. Miami’s new mayor-elect, Eileen Higgins, said the city is “at the tip of the spear” of affordability concerns in America.

In Indiana this week, Republican senators rejected a redistricting plan that Trump had tried to bully them into accepting. He threatened to primary legislators who didn’t go along and even whipped up supporters to pressure them — including so-called swatting of their homes (hoax reports to provoke a police response) and death threats.

It didn’t work. Twenty-one senators from the Republican majority in the Indiana Senate and all 10 Senate Democrats voted it down.

Even congressional Republicans are starting to desert him as they see that the wannabe emperor has no clothes: His ability to hurt or help them in next year’s midterms is rapidly diminishing.

They’ve rejected his demand to end the filibuster, rebuked his incipient health care plan, forced him to cave on the Epstein files, won’t approve his bonkers $2,000 tariff checks for Americans, want more say over his boat strikes off the coasts of Central and South America, and are in open rebellion against his handpicked speaker of the House.

Trump won’t steal Christmas, but it’s looking increasingly likely that Christmas will steal Trump.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

What’s really at stake in the fight between Netflix and Paramount for Warner Bros Discovery?

Let me make it clear I’m against Netflix acquiring Warner Bros Discovery. That would concentrate corporate power in ways that harm consumers and distort American politics.

But Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros would be just as bad, if not worse.

What’s at stake in all of this is Trump’s — or any president’s — power over the private sector of the American economy.

The back story here is that Warner Bros Discovery owns CNN, and Trump loathes CNN. He frequently complains that its coverage of him has been too negative. He’s termed those running CNN “corrupt and incompetent” and has told top aides he wants new ownership of CNN, along with changes in CNN programming and personnel.

Last week, Trump declared he would involve himself in any proposed sale of Warner Bros, and on Wednesday he said it was “imperative” that the transaction result in the sale of CNN and replacement of its leadership.

Another part of the back story involves Larry Ellison — one of the richest people in America and the largest individual shareholder of Paramount, whose son runs it, and whose operation on Monday launched an unfriendly tender offer for Warner Bros Discovery, to counter Netflix’s friendly offer.

Ellison is an ally of Trump. He has assured Trump and his top aides that if Paramount gains control of Warner Bros and CNN, it will get rid of CNN personnel whom Trump apparently detests, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. (Paramount already owns CBS.)

Paramount is portraying itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery because it will have an easier time “getting regulatory approval” of the deal than will Netflix — even though Paramount is relying on financial backing from three Middle East sovereign-wealth funds (along with Jared Kushner).

Who in their right mind would give Middle East wealth funds any leverage over CBS and CNN? Answer: Trump, whose family business is already deeply dependent on financing from the Middle East.

Trump trusts the Ellisons because they pushed Paramount to settle Trump’s frivolous $16 million lawsuit against CBS and cancel Stephen Colbert — much to Trump’s delight.

Trump loyalist flak Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, then promptly approved the $8 billion merger of Paramount with Skydance Media.

Trump’s alliance with Larry Ellison goes back to 2020, when Ellison hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home. According to court records, after the 2020 election, Ellison participated in a phone call to discuss how Trump’s defeat could be contested. In June 2025, he and his firm, Oracle, were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington.

Now in charge of Paramount and its CBS division, Larry’s son, David Ellison, has gutted DEI policies at CBS, put right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein into a new “ombudsman” role there, and made anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms.

The FCC’s Carr has already effectively blessed the Paramount deal. What other “regulatory approval” might be needed? Theoretically, the Federal Trade Commission could object on antitrust grounds. But, as Trump did at the FCC, he planted loyalists at the FTC to do his bidding. (Pam Bondi has asserted that she and the Justice Department’s antitrust division will oversee the merger.)

This past week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether Trump had a right to fire an FTC commissioner (the FTC, like the FCC, is supposed to be an “independent” regulatory agency).

Chief Justice John Roberts — who believes that the framers of the Constitution intended a “unitary” executive rather than one whose authority might be shared with independent regulatory agencies established by Congress — suggested during the oral argument that Trump’s removal power should be the norm.

But if Trump’s maneuvers over Warner Bros Discovery has any lessons for the future, the independence of regulatory agencies may be more important than ever before. Otherwise, a wannabe tyrant sitting in the Oval Office can interfere in any business transaction he wishes, to enlarge his own power and stifle criticism.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

His fantastical claims have become more unhinged. This is especially troubling given that he is the oldest president ever to be sworn in and has a family history of Alzheimer’s.

Trump even seems to be confused about when he was president. And he keeps claiming that the Epstein files were a hoax created by his predecessors, even though the arrest and demise of Trump’s close friend Jeffrey Epstein happened during Trump’s own first term.

Paranoia and anger are common symptoms of dementia; so is a loss of impulse control. All have become cornerstones of Trump’s second term.

Trump’s Cabinet could invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. Instead, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, JD Vance, and RFK Jr. seem to be feeding into Trump’s paranoid delusions to increase their own power and advance their own fanatical agendas.

A person suffering dementia can be a danger to themselves and others. In the most tragic cases, they can be manipulated and taken advantage of by unscrupulous relatives or caretakers. Is this what’s happening in the White House?

It’s one thing to read about Trump’s mental decline — quite another to see it, which is why this week’s video is particularly important.

- YouTube youtu.be

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Trump recently had his name engraved on the U.S. Institute of Peace — now renamed the “Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace.” On Wednesday, the White House confirmed the renaming, calling it “a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability.”

Actually, it’s a reminder of what a strong malignant narcissist can accomplish when untethered from reality.

On Friday, Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, the world football league, awarded Trump the first (and likely last) annual FIFA Peace Prize — along with a hagiographic video of Trump and “peace.”

What FIFA has to do with peace is anyone’s guess, but Infantino is evidently trying to curry favor with Trump. (Infantino, by the way, oversaw the 2020 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, defending and minimizing Qatar’s miserable human rights record. He also played a key role in selecting Saudi Arabia to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup, notwithstanding the Saudi murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.)

Both Trump’s absurd renaming of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the equally absurd FIFA award are parts of Trump’s campaign to get the Nobel Peace Prize — something he has coveted since Barack Obama was awarded it in 2009 (anything Obama got credited with, Trump wants to discredit or match).

Too late for this year. The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to María Corina Machado of Venezuela “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” (The prize is awarded annually on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, in a formal ceremony at the Oslo City Hall. Trump has his eye on the 2026 prize.)

Ironically, Trump has declared war on Venezuela, without congressional authorization — causing the death so far of at least 87 people bombed by American military jets targeting vessels allegedly carrying drugs into the United States.

Those 87 include two people who barely survived a first bombing, only to be bombed again. (Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who saw a video of the second strike in a closed-door briefing, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday that the two survivors “were barely alive, much less engaging in hostilities,” when the follow-up strike took place.)

Trump has designated a Venezuelan criminal group — Cartel de los Soles — as a Foreign Terrorist Organization led by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Yet analysts have pointed out that the Cartel de los Soles is not a hierarchical group but an umbrella term used to describe corrupt Venezuelan officials who have allowed cocaine to transit through the country.

Could it be that Trump wants access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves?

He doesn’t seem to be particularly upset about cocaine trafficking. While he’s bombing small vessels in the Caribbean allegedly for smuggling fentanyl into the United States, Trump is pardoning Honduras’ former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of trafficking large amounts of cocaine into the United States.

Trump is also in the process of giving eastern Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s golf pal and itinerant diplomat, has offered Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy adviser, a plan for carving up disputed territory in a way likely to appeal to Putin.

As revealed in a transcript of a recent meeting, Witkoff told Ushakov, “Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere.”

Witkoff also advised Ushakov on how Putin can get the best deal for Russia — by having Putin flatter America’s narcissist-in-chief:

”Make the call and just reiterate that you congratulate the president on this achievement [in Gaza], that you supported it, that you respect that he is a man of peace and you’re just, you’re really glad to have seen it happen.”

Ushakov responded:

“Hey Steve, I agree with you that he will congratulate, he will say that Mr. Trump is a real peace man and so-and-so. That he will say.”

While Witkoff has been seeking a “peace” deal in Ukraine by giving Putin much of what Putin wants, Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner have been seeking billions of dollars in business deals with Russia. It’s a brazen conflict of interest.

Witkoff spoke on the record to The Wall Street Journal, characterizing the talks with Russia over oil, gas, and rare-earth minerals as “a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”

Everyone’s thriving, that is, except Ukrainians and those conscripted into the Russian army.

Other potential beneficiaries of the deal include ExxonMobil, along with a Trump donor and college pal of Donald Trump Jr. with the improbable name Gentry Beach. Beach hopes to acquire a 9.9 percent stake in a Russian Arctic gas project.

Meanwhile, Trump has allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to continue bombing Gaza, even after declaring a ceasefire there.

Peace prize? Please.

Trump is taking credit for achieving “peace” between nations that weren’t even at war.

He’s also trying to change the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War.

And he’s conjuring up “enemies within” the United States as pretexts for prosecuting political opponents, attacking American universities, and attempting to stifle media criticism of himself and his administration.

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize is awarded to the person who in the preceding year “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Nobel’s will further specified that the prize be awarded by a committee of five people chosen by the Norwegian Parliament.

Memo to the Norwegian Parliament and the Nobel committee: No president in American history deserves the Nobel Peace Prize less than does Donald J. Trump.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Ten and a half long months ago, America began spiraling in a terrifying direction. We knew Trump was bad; his first term had been a calamity. But few of us were prepared for the catastrophe that awaited us in the second.

Part of it came because Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress, and Trump was able to intimidate and browbeat them into submitting to whatever he wanted to do.

Now, finally, the ground is shifting.

Some congressional Republicans are turning hawkish on the budget and reject Trump’s zany notion of $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks, as well as his stated desire to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for two years.

Russian hawks dislike Trump’s love fest with Putin on Ukraine.

Nor did they appreciate his happy meeting with Zohran Mamdani.

Or his refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Some are demanding to know more about Trump’s and Hegseth’s bombing (and re-bombing) of boats in the Caribbean.

When Marjorie Taylor Greene decided to pick up her bigotry and leave Congress, I assumed it was because she had picked a fight with Trump and lost. But other Republican members are threatening to depart too — potentially leaving Trump and his puppet Speaker Mike Johnson without enough votes to stop the Democrats.

Could it be — is it really possible? — that a few congressional Republicans are now feeling their backbones?

Yes — which is enough for other congressional Republicans to realize they, too, have vertebrae.

Why now?

Because the MAGA base that every congressional Republican is so afraid of and solicitous toward is falling apart.

They’re finally seeing Trump for what he is: a man without principle except getting richer and more powerful and engraving his name on buildings.

A lame-duck president who said he’d make life better for MAGA starting on “day one” but has made life worse for MAGA by month 10.

He doesn’t even believe in lowering prices. He calls the affordability crisis a “con” job.

Democrats swept last month’s off-year elections and performed better than usual in Tuesday’s House race in a bright-red Tennessee district.

If you’re taking some satisfaction from the MAGA crackup, don’t let your guard down.

It’s when Trump feels he’s in trouble that he does the biggest and craziest things to deflect attention.

So, my friends, beware.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

Trump isn’t just destroying the White House to make room for a vanity ballroom — he’s selling it off to the highest bidders, who conveniently need favors from his regime.

The giant ballroom is Trump’s monument to corruption.

Google and Amazon are both chipping in with massive donations. They both just so happen to have massive antitrust lawsuits working their way through the courts. Amazon is also suing to get the National Labor Relations Board declared unconstitutional. But I’m sure their ballroom donations have nothing to do with that, right?

I suppose that Apple’s support for the ballroom isn’t related to its own legal problems — or its desire to remain exempt from Trump’s tariffs.

Oh, and Meta. It’s also involved in a major antitrust lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission right now. But I’m sure the company is just donating because Mark Zuckerberg is a patriot.

Surely it’s not because Meta and other Big Tech companies stand to gain handsomely if Trump maintains his corporate-friendly AI policy.

Other generous donors to the ballroom project include cryptocurrency players like Coinbase, Ripple, and even the Winklevoss twins.

I’m sure the Winklevoss twins would be thrilled if Trump kept up his crypto-friendly policies, which he’s also cashing in on.

And Coinbase’s donation probably has nothing to do with the company’s being under an active regulatory investigation, right?

Another donor: The railroad giant Union Pacific, which is eyeing a $72 billion megamerger that needs approval from federal regulators.

Another: Comcast, which needs government approval for the mergers and acquisitions it pursues.

As does billionaire private equity executive Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone.

Companies that survive on government contacts are also chipping in, including Palantir and Lockheed Martin. How kind of them.

The Supreme Court has narrowed the definition of “bribery” to the point where a specific favor has to be demanded in advance of payment. So we can’t say this is bribery … exactly.

But the writing’s on the wall — perhaps literally. These donors are likely to get their names etched into the new White House building itself.

Could there be a more fitting monument to the Trump presidency?

That’s because in Trump’s White House, everything is for sale — even the building itself.

Memo to all of us: One of the first things to be done when sanity and legality are restored to Washington — demolition of Trump’s ballroom memorial to corruption.

- YouTube youtu.be

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

After criticizing media coverage about him aging in office, Trump appeared to be falling asleep during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.

But that’s hardly the most troubling aspect of his aging.

In the last few weeks, Trump’s insults, tantrums, and threats have exploded.

To Nancy Cordes, CBS’s White House correspondent, he said: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”

About New York Times correspondent Katie Rogers: “third rate … ugly, both inside and out.”

To Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”

About Democratic lawmakers who told military members to defy illegal orders: guilty of “sedition … punishable by DEATH.”

About Somali immigrants to the United States: “Garbage” whom “we don’t want in our country.”

What to make of all this?

Trump’s press hack Karoline Leavitt tells reporters to “appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near-daily basis.”

Sorry, Ms. Leavitt. This goes way beyond frankness and openness. Trump is now saying things nobody in their right mind would say, let alone the president of the United States.

He’s losing control over what he says, descending into angry, venomous, often dangerous territory. Note how close his language is coming to violence — when he speaks of acts being punishable by death, or human beings as garbage, or someone being ugly inside and out.

The deterioration isn’t due to age alone.

I have some standing to talk about this frankly. I was born 10 days after Trump. My gray matter isn’t what it used to be, either, but I don’t say whatever comes into my head.

It’s true that when you’re pushing 80, brain inhibitors start shutting down. You begin to let go. Even in my daily Substack letter to you, I’ve found myself using language that I’d never use when I was younger, like the word “s---".

When my father got into his 90s, he told his friends at their weekly restaurant lunch that it was about time they paid their fair shares of the bill. He told his pharmacist that he was dangerously incompetent and should be fired. He told me I needed to dress better and get a haircut.

He lost some of his inhibitions, but at least his observations were accurate.

I think older people lose certain inhibitions because they don’t care as much about their reputations as do younger people. In a way, that’s rational. Older people no longer depend on their reputations for the next job or next date or new friend. If a young person says whatever comes into their heads, they have much more to lose, reputation-wise.

But Trump’s outbursts signal something more than the normal declining inhibitions that come with older age. Trump no longer has any filters. He’s becoming impetuous.

This would be worrying about anyone who’s aging. But a filterless president of the United States who says anything that comes into his head poses a unique danger. What if he gets angry at China, calls up Xi, tells him he’s an a------, and then orders up a nuclear bomb?

It’s time the media reported on this. It’s time America faced reality. It’s time we demanded that our representatives in Congress take action, before it’s too late.

Invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

Today’s Office Hours discussion question is particularly difficult to answer. After more than 10 months of this catastrophic Trump regime, who has emerged as the worst person in it, other than Trump himself?

There are so many candidates for this distinction that’s it been hard to narrow down the finalists, but I’ve done the best I can to identify the most dangerous. All have caused extensive damage. This isn’t to excuse Trump, of course. He appointed them and continues to support them. His rantings and ravings have encouraged them.

Which of them in your view is the worst of the worst?

Pete Hegseth. Trump’s secretary of defense (or of “war” as Trump and Hegseth want to call it) has created more chaos, infighting, and likely war crimes than any defense secretary in living memory. The former Fox News host reportedly gave a verbal order to kill everyone aboard vessels suspected of smuggling drugs, which led a military commander to carry out a second strike to kill those who had initially survived an attack in early September.

Senator Mark Kelly this week called Hegseth “unqualified” for his job. “He runs around on a stage like he’s a 12-year-old playing army. And it is ridiculous, it is embarrassing, and I can’t imagine what our allies think of looking at that guy in this job, one of the most important jobs in our country…. He is in the national command authority for nuclear weapons. This is the secretary of defense. This is not a serious person. He should have been fired after Signalgate. And then every single day after that.”

Pam Bondi. Bondi has turned the Justice Department into Trump’s private law firm — going after his enemies and pardoning his friends. When Trump demanded that she prosecute former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Bondi didn’t hesitate. She has purged many lawyers for being inadequately loyal to Trump. DOJ has lost thousands of experienced attorneys. Even the elite Solicitor General’s Office has lost half of its staff.

Last week a federal judge found that Bondi’s appointment of Lindsey Halligan to the post of U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was illegal and threw out the cases she had brought against Comey and James. Federal judges have also ruled illegal the appointments of U.S. attorneys for the Central District of California and the District of Nevada. This week a federal appeals court rejected Alina Habba as U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey and instead selected Desiree Leigh Grace, an experienced prosecutor, to lead the office. Bondi then fired Grace and maneuvered Habba back into control of the office.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. RFK Jr. has almost single-handedly destroyed public health in the United States. His war on vaccines poses a clear and present danger. He has decimated the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health — substituting anti-science fanatics for health experts. He has caused the U.S. to be less prepared for the next pandemic.

On Tucker Carlson’s podcast in June, Kennedy falsely claimed that the hepatitis B birth dose is a “likely culprit” of autism and said the hepatitis B virus is not “casually contagious.” Wrong on both counts. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory panel appointed by Kennedy is scheduled to discuss and vote on the hepatitis B birth dose recommendation during its two-day meeting starting December 4, likely no longer recommending it for newborns.

Stephen Miller. Miller is the most powerful force behind the regime’s cruel and unconstitutional expurgation of immigrants from the United States. It began with a promise that it would target only undocumented immigrants who had committed terrible crimes here; then spread to all undocumented immigrants; then to many green-card holders and others here legally; and has now encompassed almost everyone who has immigrated to the United States.

Miller has turned the Department of Homeland Security into a domestic police force and the State Department’s visa and refugee operations into a personal fiefdom. He is overseeing efforts to separate families in which one parent is here legally, to detain people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, and is sending others to prisons in foreign countries, all without due process of law. He and Trump are turning America into a nativist den of bigotry and hate.

***

Hence, today’s Office Hours question: Who in the Trump regime is the worst of the worst?

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

It’s called Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley tech company that may put your most basic freedoms at risk.

Palantir gets its name from a device used in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, in which a “palantir” is a seeing stone — something like a crystal ball — that can be used to spy on people and distort the truth. During the War of the Ring, a palantir falls under the control of the evil Sauron, who uses it to manipulate and deceive.

Palantir — co-founded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel and its current CEO Alex Karp — bears a striking similarity.

It sells AI-based data platforms that let their clients, including governments, militaries, and law enforcement agencies, quickly process and analyze massive amounts of your personal data.

Whether it’s social media profiles, bank account records, tax history, medical history, or driving records, the tools that Palantir sells are used to help clients identify and monitor individuals — like you.

Why should this matter to you? Billions of your tax dollars are going to Palantir, and what Palantir is working on could be used against you.

As Palantir’s Karp says: “Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them.”

Early in his current term, Trump signed an executive order requiring government agencies to consolidate all of their information about you into one giant database — something that has never been done before. To help process this massive amount of information, Trump chose Palantir.

Trump claims this is about “efficiency.” But as one Silicon Valley investor described it, Palantir is “building the infrastructure of the police state.”

Data privacy experts warn that when government data is pooled together, it can be used by a tyrant to intimidate or silence opposition. The possibilities for abuse are huge. One of Palantir’s major projects is a new immigrant surveillance system for ICE’s deportations.

We’ve already seen Trump target people or organizations he considers enemies. Imagine if he could punish or deny services to individual Americans based on their political affiliation, whether they’ve attended a protest, or even posted an unflattering picture of him online.

Palantir could be giving Trump the power to do just this.

Palantir co-founder and Trump ally Peter Thiel has made no secret of his disdain for democracy, writing “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

But when he speaks of “freedom,” he isn’t thinking about you. To Thiel, “freedom” means that he and his fellow tech oligarchs get to do what they want, without consequences, while the rest of us live in an authoritarian police state.

It’s a match made in Mordor — Trump gets the infrastructure to go after his enemies. Thiel gets to end American democracy.

The danger of Palantir’s AI-powered super database on all Americans is amplified by the vast wealth and power of those associated with it, and their apparent disdain for democratic institutions.

To protect democracy and our individual freedoms, we need to elect leaders who will defend the public from corporations like Palantir — not partner with them.

Tolkien’s palantir fell under the control of Sauron. Thiel’s Palantir is falling under the control of Trump.

How this story ends is up to all of us. Please, help spread the word by sharing this video.

- YouTube youtu.be

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

The publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary has named “rage bait” its phrase of the year.

Call it the monetization of rage. Rage has become a valuable commodity. (Always follow the money.)

A growing number of online creators are making rage bait. Their goal is to record videos, produce memes, and write posts that make other users furious: conspiracy theories, lies, combustible AI-generated video clips — whatever it takes.

The more content they create, the more engagement they get, the more they get paid.

The rage bait market is worldwide. Since X, Facebook, and Instagram pay certain content creators for posts that drive engagement, people all over the globe have a financial incentive to share material that feeds the anger of American users and will therefore get reposted.

Last week a new feature on X permitting users to see where accounts originate showed that a number of high-engagement MAGA accounts that claim to be those of patriotic Americans are in fact from Russia, Eastern Europe, India, Nigeria, Thailand, and Bangladesh.

It’s not only social media. Much the same is true of Fox News and Newsmax, as well as MSNBC. (The network that’s falling behind is the one that hasn’t taken as clear a side in the outrage wars: CNN.)

This isn’t entirely new.

Years ago, I appeared on several television programs where I debated conservatives. Once, when my opponent and I discovered we agreed on more than we disagreed, the TV producer shouted in my earbud, “More anger!”

I asked the producer during the commercial break why she wanted more anger.

“It’s why people tune in,” she said. “An angry fight attracts more viewers than a calm discussion. People stop scrolling and stay put. Advertisers want this.”

At this point I lost my temper and refused to appear on that program ever again.

Now it’s far worse, because competition for eyeballs and attention is more intense. Rewards for grabbing that attention are greater, and they go to anyone with the ability to create and sell the most outrage.

Our brains are programmed for excitement. Few events get us more excited than being juiced up with rage.

Most large media corporations are moved by shareholder returns, not the common good. This has transformed many journalists from investigators and analysts offering news to “content providers” competing for attention.

Trump’s antics have ruled the airwaves for almost a decade because his eagerness to vilify, disparage, denounce, and lie about others is a media magnet. Regardless of whether you’re appalled or thrilled by his diatribes, they’ve been rage bait.

Media executives love them.

As early as the 2016 presidential race, Leslie Moonves, CEO of CBS, confessed that the Trump phenomenon “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” adding, “Who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? The money’s rolling in … and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on Donald. Keep going.”

The incentive structure in Washington follows the incentive structure in the media because the media is where people get their “news” — not only their understandings of what’s at stake but also their excitement, entertainment, and rage — which correlate directly with the performative rage we witness every day from the inhabitant of the Oval Office and his Republican lackeys.

How to make rage less profitable? Five remedies:

1. Require that news divisions be independent of the executives who represent shareholders — as they were before the 1980s.

2. Ensure that our personal information remains private, guarded from data-mining bots that flood us with custom-tailored news designed to enrage us.

3. Demand that moderation policies be reinstated and enforced on social media.

4. Stop social media corporations from paying “influencers.”

5. Have our schools emphasize critical thinking about what students hear and see in the “news,” so they’re better able to distinguish truth from fiction and real news from hype.

I’d be interested to know your ideas about how we tame the monetization of rage.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

This week’s shooting of two National Guard members by a gunman identified by the authorities as an Afghan national was horrific.

But Trump’s response has been disproportionate and bigoted. He vows to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.” He intends to deport legal immigrants born in countries the White House deems “high risk.”

He threatens to strip U.S. citizenship from naturalized migrants “who undermine domestic tranquillity.” He plans to deport foreigners deemed to be “non-compatible with Western Civilization.” He wants to detain even more migrants in jail — in the U.S. or in other countries — without due process.

In addition to the unconstitutionality of such actions, these threats stir up the worst nativist impulses in America — blaming and scapegoating entire groups of people for the act of one gunman.

Apart from Native Americans, we are all immigrants — all descended from “foreigners.” Some of our ancestors came here eagerly; some came because they were no longer safe in their homelands; some came enslaved.

Almost all of us are mongrels — of mixed nationalities, mixed ethnicities, mixed races, mixed creeds. While we maintain our own traditions, we also embrace the ideals of this nation.

Here’s how Ronald Reagan put it in a 1988 speech, in which he explained:

“I received a letter not long ago from a man who said, ‘You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk.’ But then he added, ‘Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.’”
A person becomes an American by adopting America’s principles, especially those principles summarized in the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration of Independence, such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Carl Friedrich wrote that “To be an American is an ideal, while to be a Frenchman is a fact.”
As an immigrant friend once put it to me: “I was always an American; I was just born in the wrong country.”

I don’t think I’ve ever quoted Reagan before. He was wrong about so many things. Yet Reagan understood something fundamental to this nation that Trump doesn’t have a clue about: America is an idea — a set of aspirations and ideals — more than a nationality.

The only thing Trump knows is that he needs to fuel bigotry. His Straight White Male Christian Nationalism requires prejudice against anyone who’s not.

Like dictators before him, Trump’s road to tyranny is paved with stones hurled at “them.” His entire project depends on hate.

America is better than this.

We won’t buy Trump’s hate. To the contrary, we’ll call out bigots. We won’t tolerate intolerance. We’ll protect hardworking members of our community. We’ll alert them when ICE is lurking.

We will not succumb to the ravings of a venomous president who wants us to hate each other.

Pope Leo recently said his favorite movie of all time was “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Mine too. I first watched it when I was a kid in the early 1950s. For years, it was shown the week before Christmas. I loved it. Still do.

The pope’s and my favorite movie has a lot to tell us about where America is right now, and the scourge of Donald Trump.

If you don’t already know it, the central conflict in the movie is between Mr. Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore) and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart).

Potter is a greedy, cruel banker. In his Social Darwinist view of America, people compete with one another for scarce resources. Those who succeed deserve to win because they’ve outrun everyone else in that competitive race.

Potter, in other words, is Trump.

George is the generous, honorable head of Bedford Falls’ building-and-loan company, the one entity standing in the way of Potter’s total domination of the town.

After the death of George’s father, who founded the building-and-loan company, Potter — who sits on the bank’s board — seeks to dissolve it. Potter claims George’s father “was not a businessman. He was a man of high ideals, so-called, but ideals without common sense can ruin a town.” For Potter, common sense is not coddling the “discontented rabble.”

Exactly what Trump would say (think of his cuts to Medicaid, refusal to extend Obamacare subsidies, and withholding of food stamps during the government shutdown).

To George, though, Bedford Falls is a community whose members help each other. He tells Potter that the so-called “rabble … do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” George’s father helped them build homes on credit so they could have a decent life.

“People were human beings to him,” George tells Potter, “but to you, they’re cattle.”

When George’s Uncle Billy accidentally loses some bank deposits that fall into Potter’s hands, the banker sees an opportunity to ruin George. (Trump would do precisely the same.)

This brings George to a bridge where he contemplates suicide, thinking his life has been worthless, before a guardian angel counsels him to think about what Bedford Falls would be like if George hadn’t been born — poor, fearful, and completely dependent on Potter. The movie ends when everyone George has helped — virtually the entire town — pitches in to bail out George and his building-and-loan.

It’s a cartoon, of course — both a utopian and a dystopian version of America — but the cartoon poses a choice that’s become all too relevant: Do we join together, or do we let the Potters of America — Trump and his billionaire backers — run and ruin everything?

Since the political rise of Ronald Reagan, Republicans and the moneyed interests have used Potter-like Social Darwinism to justify tax cuts for the wealthy, union-busting, and cutbacks in social safety nets.

Trump is shamelessly finishing what Ronald Reagan started.

The goal is to have Americans so angry and suspicious of one another that we don’t look upward to see where all the money and power have gone. That way, we don’t join together — as did the good citizens of Bedford Falls — to stop Potter, er, Trump, and the oligarchs behind him.

What would Republicans and America’s moneyed interests say about “It’s a Wonderful Life” if it were released today? They’d probably call it socialist, maybe even communist, and it would make them squirm — especially given the eerie similarity between Lionel Barrymore’s Potter and Trump.

When “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released, the FBI considered it evidence of Communist Party infiltration of the film industry. Either a movie was subversive or it wasn’t, and in the bureau’s broad framing, this one certainly was.

The FBI’s Los Angeles field office, using a report by an ad-hoc group that included Fountainhead author and future Trump pinup girl Ayn Rand, warned that the movie represented “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” The movie “deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. This … is a common trick used by Communists.”

The Bureau’s report compared “It’s a Wonderful Life” to a Soviet film and alleged that Frank Capra, its director, was “associated with left-wing groups” and that the film’s screenwriters, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, were “very close to known Communists.”

This was all rubbish, of course, and a prelude to the witch hunt led by Republican senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of Hollywood, the State Department, and even the U.S. Army.

Trump’s probes are into alleged disloyalty to himself, which is akin to McCarthy’s communism in the early 1950s. Loyalty to Trump is now the purity test all elected Republicans must pass.

As director Frank Capra does in his dystopian view of what Bedford Falls would have been had George Bailey never existed, Trump is seeking to rewrite American history as if his brazen attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election never occurred. If he succeeds, we’re all in a dystopian Pottersville.

In announcing the 77 pardons he recently issued to officials who joined him in seeking to steal the 2020 election, Trump called them “victims of political persecution” who were “targeted for defending the Constitution.”

In fact, they were co-conspirators in the worst attack on our system of government since the Civil War.

Trump declared that the pardons “end a grave national injustice.” In fact, the national injustice was that neither Trump nor any of his co-conspirators have yet been convicted of treason.

He declared that his pardons “continue the process of national reconciliation.” In fact, they continue his pursuit of national amnesia.

In Trump’s retelling, January 6 was “a beautiful day full of love and peace.” In fact, it was a day of national disgrace.

Presumably, Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter would have said the same if that was necessary to secure his hold over Pottersville.

I don’t know whether Pope Leo had all this in mind when he called “It’s a Wonderful Life” his favorite movie of all time. But it’s likely that the pope, who hails from Chicago, knows what Mr. Potter — er, Trump — is doing to America, and indirectly to the world.

The richest man on earth owns X.

The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS — and could soon own Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.

The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fourth-richest man owns The Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.

Another billionaire owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic — some might say sinister — reason.

As vast wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, this small group of the ultra-wealthy may rationally fear that a majority of voters could try to confiscate their wealth — through, for example, a wealth tax.

If you’re a multibillionaire, in other words, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. New York City real estate and oil tycoon John Catsimatidis, whose net worth is estimated at $4.5 billion, donated $2.4 million to support Trump and congressional Republicans in 2024 — nearly twice as much as he gave in 2016. Why? “If you’re a billionaire, you want to stay a billionaire,” Catsimatidis told The Washington Post.

But rather than rely on Republicans, a more reliable means of stopping majorities from targeting your riches might be to control a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets.

As a media mogul, you can effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of yourself and other plutocrats and discouraging any attempt to tax away your wealth.

And Trump has been ready to help you. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits.

So it wasn’t surprising that the owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos — the fourth-richest person — stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris last year, as Trump rose in the polls. Or that, once Trump was elected, Bezos decreed that the Post’s opinion section must support “personal liberties and free markets.” And that he bought a proposed documentary about Melania Trump — for which she is the executive producer — for a whopping $40 million.

Bezos’s moves have led several of the Post’s top editors, journalists, and columnists to resign. Thousands of subscribers have cancelled. But the Post remains the biggest ongoing media presence in America’s capital city.

Bezos is a businessman first and foremost. His highest goal is not to inform the public but to make money. And he knows Trump can wreak havoc on his businesses by imposing unfriendly Federal Communications Commission rulings, or enforcing labor laws against him, or breaking up his companies with antitrust laws, or making it difficult for him to import what he sells.

On the other hand, Trump can also enrich Bezos — through lucrative government contracts or favorable FCC rulings or government subsidies.

It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison, the second-richest man.

Paramount’s CBS settled Trump’s frivolous $16 million lawsuit against CBS and canceled Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight. Trump loyalist flak Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, then approved an $8 billion merger of Paramount Global, owner of CBS, and Skydance Media.

Larry Ellison’s son, David, became chief executive of the new media giant, Paramount Skydance.

In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship “Sixty Minutes” resigned, presumably because they were pressured by Paramount not to air stories critical of Trump. No matter. Too much money was at stake.

I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS, and when the top management of CBS felt they had independent responsibilities to the American public.

Like Bezos, Larry Ellison is first and foremost a businessman who knows that Trump can help or hinder his businesses. In 2020, he hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home. According to court records, after the 2020 election, Ellison participated in a phone call to discuss how Trump’s defeat could be contested. In June 2025, he and his firm, Oracle, were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington.

After taking charge of CBS, David Ellison promised to gut DEI policies there, put right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein into a new “ombudsman” role, and made anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms.

The Guardian reports that Larry Ellison has told Trump that if Paramount gains control of Warner Bros. Discovery — which owns CNN — Paramount will fire CNN hosts whom Trump doesn’t like.

Other billionaire media owners have followed the same trajectory. Despite his sometimes contentious relationship with Trump, Elon Musk has turned X into a cesspool of right-wing propaganda. Rupert Murdoch continues to give Trump all the positive coverage imaginable. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and owner of Time magazine, has put Trump on the cover.

It is impossible to know the extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by these billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited.

But we can say with some certainty that in an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, and when a thin-skinned president is willing and able to violate laws and norms to punish or reward, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function in this democracy.

What to do about this? Two important steps:

1. At the least, media outlets should inform their readers about any and all potential conflicts of interest, and media watchdogs and professional associations should ensure they do.

Recently, The Washington Post’s editorial board defended Trump’s razing of the East Wing of the White House to build his giant ballroom, without disclosing that Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s Defense Department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors but failed to mention Bezos’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticized Washington, D.C.’s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington, D.C. market.

These breaches are inexcusable.

2. A second step — if and when America has a saner government — is for anti-monopoly authorities to block the purchase of a major media outlet by someone with extensive businesses that could pose conflicts of interest.

Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently from the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.

As The Washington Post’s slogan used to say, democracy dies in darkness. Today, darkness is closing in because a demagogue sits in the Oval Office and so much of America’s wealth and media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few people easily manipulated by that demagogue.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Several of you responded to my “Sunday thought” yesterday by saying that the first step out of the mess we’re in is to get rid of the Supreme Court’s bonkers Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision of 2010, which held that corporations are people — entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the rest of us.

Corporate political spending was growing before Citizens United, but the decision opened the floodgates to the unlimited super PAC spending and undisclosed dark money we suffer from today.

Between 2008 and 2024, reported “independent” expenditures by outside groups exploded by more than 28-fold — from $144 million to $4.21 billion. Unreported money also skyrocketed, with dark money groups spending millions influencing the 2024 election.

Most people I talk with assume that the only way to stop corporate and dark money in American politics is either to wait for the Supreme Court to undo Citizens United (we could wait a very long time) or amend the U.S. Constitution (this is extraordinarily difficult).

But there’s another way! I want to tell you about it because there’s a good chance it will work.

It will be on the ballot next November in Montana. Maybe you can get it on the ballot in your state, too.

Here’s the thing: Individual states — either through their legislators or their citizens wielding ballot initiatives — have the authority to limit corporate political activity and dark money spending, because they determine what powers corporations have.

In American law, corporations are creatures of state laws. For more than two centuries, the power to define their form, limits, and privilege has belonged only to the states.

In fact, corporations have no powers at all until a state government grants them some. In the 1819 Supreme Court case Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, Chief Justice John Marshall established that:

“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence….The objects for which a corporation is created are universally such as the government wishes to promote. They are deemed beneficial to the country; and this benefit constitutes the consideration, and, in most cases, the sole consideration of the grant.”

States don’t have to grant corporations the power to spend in politics. In fact, they could decide not to give corporations that power.

This isn’t about corporate rights, as the Supreme Court determined in Citizens United. It’s about corporate powers.

When a state exercises its authority to define corporations as entities without the power to spend in politics, it will no longer be relevant whether corporations have a right to spend in politics — because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning.

Delaware’s corporation code already declines to grant private foundations the power to spend in elections.

Importantly, a state that no longer grants its corporations the power to spend in elections also denies that power to corporations chartered in the other 49 states, if they wish to do business in that state.

All a state would need to do is enact a law with a provision something like this:

“Every corporation operating under the laws of this state has all the corporate powers it held previously, except that nothing in this statute grants or recognizes any power to engage in election activity or ballot-issue activity.”

Sound farfetched? Not at all.

In Montana, local organizers have drafted and submitted a constitutional initiative for voters to consider in 2026 — the first step in a movement built to spread nationwide. It would decline to grant to all corporations the power to spend in elections.

Called the Transparent Election Initiative, it wouldn’t overturn Citizens United — it would negate the consequences of Citizens United. (Click on the link and you’ll get the details.)

The argument is laid out in a paper that the Center for American Progress published several weeks ago. (Kudos to CAP and the paper’s author, Tom Moore, a senior fellow at CAP who previously served as counsel and chief of staff to a longtime member of the Federal Election Commission.)

Note to governors and state legislators: The Citizens United decision is enormously unpopular. Some 75 percent of Americans disapprove of it. But most of your governors and state legislators haven’t realized that you have the authority to make Citizens United irrelevant. My recommendation to you: Use that authority to rid the nation of Citizens United.

Hopefully, Montanans will lead the way.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/

We’ve endured 10 months of Trump’s mayhem so far. A question I’ve been asking various people is how long they believe it will take for America to recover from Trump — if the nation ever will recover?

It’s impossible to answer with any definitiveness. It depends on how long you believe he’ll remain in office, whether you think Democrats will prevail in the 2026 midterms, what role you believe the Supreme Court will play in constraining Trump, whether you think American voters will boot him (or his successor) out of office in 2028, and if you believe we’ll ever have free and fair elections again.

Here’s the range of responses I’ve been getting. I’d be very interested in yours.

1. We’ll recover quickly; all we need is one good president and a competent Congress. Americans are resilient. We’ve recovered from depression, war, economic calamities (such as the near meltdown of Wall Street), and political strife (think of 1968). We’re polarized at the moment, but we’ve been polarized before (think of the Civil Rights Movement, or the fight for marriage equality). The biggest underlying problems we face are economic — affordability and widening economic inequalities — which a good president and competent Congress can help rectify. I’m optimistic. We’re a practical people. Time and again, when we have to make changes, we roll up our collective sleeves and do so.

2. It will take at least a decade. Although we’re practical and resilient, Trump and his sycophants have done so much damage to the institutional and moral fabric of the nation that I don’t think we can expect to be back — even back to where we were before Trump first came to power — for at least a decade. We will recover, but that will require several terms of a good president and majorities in Congress who understand the importance of both rebuilding and reforming democratic institutions and making the economy work for all instead of a few at the top. This is doable; we’ve achieved these sorts of positive changes and reforms before. But we need to be steadfast and patient.

3. We won’t recover for at least a generation. The damage has been so profound — undermining not only our legal and political systems but also our economic system and even our culture — that I believe it will take several generations before we recover from this. We can do it: giving real hope to the non-college working class, overcoming the racial and ethnic divides that Trump has exacerbated, ensuring equal opportunity, ending the bullying and coarsening that Trump and his lapdogs have encouraged, and opening America back up to the rest of the world — all are possible, but all will require diligent and determined efforts that may not pay off until the end of the century.

4. Never. America will never recover from this. Trump has destroyed what was left of the nation’s capacity for self-government. His two terms — especially the last 10 months and what I expect to be the remainder of his term — have brought us so far from where we should be that we will never be able to get back on track. Trump himself is the consequence and culmination of decades of decay of our democratic institutions, decades of widening inequality, of inadequate responses to climate change, and of irresponsible world leadership. Much as I don’t want to be defeatist or pessimistic, the terrible reality is that there is no longer hope for America.

So, today’s Office Hours discussion question: How long will it take America to recover from Trump, if it ever will?

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Today I want to talk to you about a difficult subject. Let me start with the Trump regime’s ongoing accusations of antisemitism to extort billions of dollars from American universities — while simultaneously disregarding antisemitism within its own ranks.

Exhibit A is Harmeet Dhillon, now Trump’s assistant attorney general for civil rights. For the last 10 months, Dhillon has condemned prestigious universities for allowing what she deems “antisemitic” protests — and withheld research funding unless they agree to explicit measures supposedly to prevent antisemitism.

I was a Dartmouth trustee in the 1980s when its president, James O. Freedman, who was Jewish, endured the antisemitic barbs of an ascendant right-wing student group that included Dhillon, along with Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza.

In 1988, as editor of The Dartmouth Review, Dhillon published a column depicting Freedman as Adolf Hitler under the headline “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Freedmann” — a play on a Nazi slogan, “One Empire, One People, One Leader,” but substituting and misspelling Freedman’s name for “Fuhrer.”

Using the analogy of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the column satirically described how “Der Freedmann” and his associates rid the campus of conservatives. The column referred to the “‘Final Solution’ of the Conservative Problem” and to “survivors” of the Dartmouth “holocaust” and described Dartmouth conservatives being “deported in cattle cars in the night.”

A drawing on the cover of the following issue also depicted Freedman, who had been critical of The Review, as Hitler.

I saw up close how much Dhillon’s publication hurt Freedman. As a Jew, he not only felt personally attacked but also worried about the effects of Dhillon’s publication on Jewish students at Dartmouth.

The student newspaper The Dartmouth took The Review to task, claiming that it “is anti-Semitic; its impact rings through this community today and will remain long after its publishers have completed their stints in Hanover.”

Several faculty members wrote to outside advisers of The Review, asking them to reconsider allowing their names to be associated with the publication. The regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, in Boston, condemned it.

It is possible, of course, that Dhillon’s undergraduate escapade into antisemitism caused her such remorse that she subsequently experienced a conversion of sorts and became committed to ridding universities of similar acts of bigotry.

But nothing in her history after Dartmouth or her official biography suggests such a conversion.

The most probable explanation for her turnaround is simple ambition. Dhillon grabbed the opportunity to become assistant attorney general in charge of civil rights and agreed to use the charge of antisemitism as a weapon to carry out the Trump regime’s war on prestigious universities — not because they’re hotbeds of antisemitism, but because the authoritarian right considers them hotbeds of leftist ideology.

As JD Vance said in a 2021 speech titled ‘The Universities are the enemy,’ “we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.”

But the problem of antisemitism within the ranks of Trump Republicans runs much deeper than Dhillon.

Exhibit B is Kevin Roberts — president of the Heritage Foundation, creator of Trump’s Project 2025, and one of Trump’s most loyal supporters.

Roberts recently came to the defense of Tucker Carlson after Carlson’s friendly interview with Nick Fuentes, an ardent fan of Adolf Hitler — in which Carlson declined to challenge Fuentes’s bigoted beliefs or his remark about problems with “organized Jewry in America.”

Here’s what Roberts said:

“Tucker Carlson … always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.”

To whom was Roberts referring when he spoke of “the venomous coalition” and “the globalist class”? These words are closely associated with antisemitism and are similar to those Fuentes has used.

Roberts went on to say:

“The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now. My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America.”

But aren’t Jews as loyal to America as Christians? Again, Roberts seemed to be toying with an antisemitic trope, implicitly questioning the loyalty of American Jews to America.

When asked about the controversy, Trump refrained from criticizing Fuentes (with whom he has dined at Mar-a-Lago) and praised Carlson for having “said good things about me over the years” — adding “you can’t tell him who to interview” and “if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes — I don’t know much about him — but if he wants to do it, get the word out. People have to decide.”

Fuentes liked Trump’s response, posting “Thank you Mr. President!” on social media.

Fuentes’s influence is surely one test of whether Trump conservatives are willing to accommodate bigots in their coalition.

But the problem of antisemitism in the ranks of Trump Republicans runs deeper than one antisemitic crackpot. Indeed, it runs deeper than the apparent hypocrisies of Kevin Roberts or Harmeet Dhillon.

It touches on a central question that everyone inside the regime and all who support it must grapple with: When does Trump authoritarianism bleed into fascism — along with the antisemitism that has historically fueled it?

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) arrived at the White House yesterday, he was met by a Marine band, officers on horseback carrying the Saudi and American flags, and fighter jets flying over the White House in a V formation.

It was far more pomp than visiting foreign leaders normally receive.

What had the crown prince done to merit such honor from the United States?

He has helped broker a tentative peace between Hamas and Israel. But so have Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates.

The real reason for the honor is that MBS and the Saudis are doing lots of business with Trump’s family — and this visit is part of the payoff.

It’s MBS’s effort to rehabilitate his reputation after Saudi operatives murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and chopped his body into pieces with a bone saw — a killing that U.S. intelligence determined was greenlit by MBS.

But in yesterday’s joint Oval Office appearance — freighted with flattery between Trump and MBS — Trump brushed off a reporter’s question about MBS and the murder.

“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen,” said Trump, referring to Khashoggi.

Things happen?

When the reporter then asked MBS about the finding by U.S. intelligence, Trump quickly interjected. “He knew nothing about it. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking something like that.”

All of which raises once again the question of who is honored in this upside-down Trump era, and who is subject to shame and disgrace.

Larry Summers, who had been secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton and a high official in the Obama White House, said Monday that he was “deeply ashamed” about his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and therefore would be “stepping back” from all public engagements as he works to “rebuild trust and repair relationships.”

New details of Summers’s relationship with Epstein emerged last week when a House committee released emails showing years of personal correspondence between the two men, including Summers’s sexist comments and his seeking Epstein’s romantic advice.

Consultants who specialize in rehabilitating the reputations of public figures often advise that they begin with a full public apology, along with a period in which they “step back” out of the limelight.

What separates consultant-driven contrition from the real thing depends on whether it involves any real personal sacrifice.

It’s not clear what Summers will have to sacrifice. Apparently he’ll continue in his role of University Professor at Harvard, the highest and most honorable rank a faculty member there can achieve. (Senator Elizabeth Warren has called on Harvard to sever ties with Summers to hold him accountable for his close friendship with Epstein.)

The same question — whom we honor, whom we shame, and who is genuinely contrite — is also relevant to Eric Adams’s final weeks as mayor of New York City, during which the pace of his foreign travel is increasing even as the city foots much of the bill. No contrition from the mayor — although he was indicted on corruption charges that focused, in part, on improper foreign travel.

And then comes Elon Musk, who — despite his reign of terror in the federal government, including a stack of court rulings finding what he did to be illegal, to say nothing of his blowup with Trump — will preside this weekend at a festive DOGE reunion in Austin at a high-end hotel where Musk often has a suite.

In this era of Trump, America’s moral authority — its capacity to separate right from wrong, and to pride itself doing (or at least trying to do) what is honorable — seems to have vanished, along with the norms on which that authority has been based.

Under Trump, the only normative rule is to gain as much power and money as possible. Power and wealth are honored, even if the honoree has greenlit a brutal murder.

The only exception appears to be pedophilia. Or close association with a pedophile, for which an earnest expression of contrition may be sufficient to get back on the honor track.

High on the list of things America must do when this period of moral squalor is behind us will be to restore real honor and real shame.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

The likelihood that dozens of House Republicans will vote in favor of compelling the Justice Department to release the Epstein files has caused Trump to reverse his objections and urge House Republicans to back such a measure.

But this raises two questions that are the subjects of today’s Office Hours discussion.

First: Is Trump sincere about wishing to release the Epstein files?

Some say yes. He didn’t count on how strongly the MAGA base wanted the files released, and therefore how much opposition he’d run into from House Republicans. Trump’s announcement avoids a potential embarrassment for him. Now he just wants to get the Epstein matter behind him.

Others say no, he doesn’t really want them released. Calling for their release is just another Trump ruse to make it look as if he’s innocent.

If he genuinely wanted the files released, he could order the Justice Department to release them — rather than go through the circus of a discharge petition, which might not make it through the Senate.

He knows that if the Justice Department begins to investigate several prominent Democrats who have been linked to Epstein — which Trump has ordered the DOJ to do — the DOJ could refuse to release any further files related to Epstein by claiming that the disclosures could harm continuing investigations.

So today’s FIRST Office Hours question: Is Trump sincere about wanting the Epstein files released, or is this just another Trump ruse?

Which brings us to today’s SECOND Office Hours question: Assuming Trump is still trying to hide what’s in the Epstein files, why do you think he’s doing so? I’ve heard several theories:

1. He wants to protect the privacy of other victims. Although this is the argument that Fox News and various Republicans have been using to justify Trump’s reluctance to release the files, it might possibly be true.

2. He’s trying to hide the fact that he was a confidante of the late Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre, one of the most prominent survivors of Epstein’s sexual abuse, died by suicide in April. The redacted emails released last week by House Democrats included one from Epstein suggesting that Trump had spent time with Giuffre at Epstein’s estate. Giuffre had worked for Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Perhaps Trump doesn’t want the embarrassment of having been a confidante of Giuffre, who was one of the earliest and loudest voices calling for criminal charges against Epstein and his enablers (other Epstein abuse survivors have credited her with giving them the courage to speak out).

3. He’s trying to hide the fact that he was also one of Epstein’s “clients” who had sex with underage girls. In the emails that have been released, Giuffre specifically and repeatedly denies that Trump had sex with her or any other girl, even as she made allegations against many other powerful figures.

But this hardly exonerates Trump. Giuffre might have been lying. She might have been paid off or intimidated.

The stakes for Trump are huge. If he was in fact one of Epstein’s clients, it could lead to his impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate, because Trump’s MAGA base — to which congressional Republicans are solicitous — would probably turn against him. They can tolerate all sorts of wrongdoing by him but not pedophilia.

4. Not only is he trying to hide that he was an Epstein client who had sex with underage girls, he’s also trying to hide his involvement in Epstein’s and perhaps even Giuffre’s apparent suicides. I’m reluctant even to include this among the claims I’ve been hearing because it’s such a dark and extreme one. I’m mentioning it only because it is being discussed. Some people believe Trump would stop at nothing.

So what do you think? Why is Trump going to such lengths to hide his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein?

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Trump claimed last week on social media that “Our economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” and that “grocery prices are way down.

Rubbish.

How do I know he’s lying? Official government statistics haven’t been issued during the shutdown — presumably to Trump’s relief (the White House said Wednesday that the October jobs and Consumer Price Index reports may never come out).

But we can get good estimates of where the economy is now, based on where the economy was heading before the shutdown and recent reports by private data firms.

First, I want to tell you what we know about Trump’s truly s----- economy. Then I’ll suggest 10 things that Democrats should pledge to do about it.

1. Prices continue to rise as real wages fall

While the cost of living isn’t going up as fast as it did in 2022, consumer prices are still up 27 percent since the onset of the pandemic. Wages haven’t kept up.

Americans know this. In a recent Harris poll, 62 percent say the cost of everyday items has climbed over the last month, and nearly half say the increases have been difficult to afford.

Much of this is due to Trump’s tariffs, which are import taxes — paid by American corporations that are now passing many of the costs on to consumers. Even Trump knows this, which is why he’s removing tariffs on coffee, bananas, beef, and other agricultural commodities. But his other tariffs will remain, boosting the costs of everything else.

As a result, wages — when adjusted for inflation — have been falling, government and private-sector data show. Since the start of the year, inflation has been rising faster than after-tax pay for lower- and middle-income households, according to the Bank of America Institute.

According to the JPMorganChase Institute, the rate of real income growth has slowed to levels last seen in the early 2010s, when the economy was still recovering from the financial crisis and the unemployment rate was roughly double what it is today.

2. Job growth has stalled

Americans are scared of losing their jobs. In the same recent Harris poll I referred to above, 55 percent of employed workers say they’re worried they’ll be laid off.

That worry is borne out in the data. Indeed’s job posting index has fallen to its lowest level since February 2021.

The Fed’s Beige Book — which compiles reports from Fed branches all over the country — also shows the job market losing steam.

The latest ADP private-sector data confirms that the labor market continued to weaken in the latter half of October, with more than 11,000 jobs lost per week on average.

Finally, Challenger, Gray & Christmas (a private firm that collects data on workplace reductions) reports that U.S. employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far in 2025. That’s the most layoffs since 2020, when the pandemic slammed the economy, and rivals job cuts during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.

3. Homeowners are underwater, and foreclosures are up

Nearly 900,000 homeowners (about 1.6 percent of all mortgage holders) are now underwater on their mortgages, the highest share in three years. Many of these buyers purchased in 2022–24 with low down payments in markets that have since cooled.

At the same time, filings for home foreclosures are up about 17 percent since the third quarter last year (according to ATTOM Data Solutions), suggesting more borrowers in trouble.

4. Corporate profits continue to rise

You might think that with all these stresses on American consumers, corporate profits would dip. But in reality, U.S. corporate profits continue to rise, and the stock market continues to hit new highs (although the stock market is wobbly, as I’ll get to in a moment).

As a result, the investor class — the richest 10 percent of Americans, who own over 90 percent of the stock market — are reaping big rewards.

How to square this with all the layoffs and so few job openings? Amazon’s profits are through the roof, but it’s laying off 30,000 people.

First, corporations are reluctant to expand and hire because of so much uncertainty about the future, caused in large part by Trump’s tariffs and his expulsion from the U.S. of many workers critical to the agriculture and construction industries.

Secondly, profits are being led by the six major high tech firms, whose monopolistic hold over their markets has given them the power to raise prices.

Third, many corporations are making use of artificial intelligence. AI is boosting business productivity while reducing the demand for workers. We’re seeing that trend mostly in the technology sector, which continues to substitute AI for jobs. But the trend seems to be spreading to other industries.

5. Inequality is widening

Put this all together and you get a two-tier economy whose inequality gap is widening.

America has always had a two-tiered economy, but for the last 80 years, the middle class has been in the upper tier along with the wealthy, while the working class and poor have been in the lower one.

Now, the middle class is joining the lower tier. This new reality has huge implications both for the economy and for American politics.

The richest 10 percent of households — whom I’ve described as the investor class — now account for nearly half of total U.S. spending, thanks to the stock market surge. (Thirty years ago they were responsible for about a third.)

Meanwhile, middle- and lower-income families are pulling back. They’re facing tightening budgets, higher living costs, declining real wages, and a raft of corporate layoffs.

The consequent divergence in spending — with a smaller group of people keeping the economy going — is fueling concerns that the U.S. economy is becoming more fragile.

With the economy so dependent on the richest 10 percent — who in turn are highly dependent on the stock market — a stock market downturn would raise risk of a serious recession.

6. What the Democrats must pledge to America

The Trump economy is truly s----- for most Americans. Every time Trump or his lapdogs in Congress tell Americans that the economy is terrific, they seem more out of touch with reality.

Democrats need to show America that they can be better trusted to bring prices down and real wages up.

This means, in my view, promising the following 10 things. These should constitute the Democrats’ pledge to America:

1. Trump’s across-the-board tariffs are import taxes that are raising the prices of just about everything American consumers buy. Democrats will eliminate them where their costs to consumers are far higher than any potential benefits in the form of new jobs.

2. Another major source of high prices is monopolies — especially in high tech, health care, food, and finance. Democrats will vigorously enforce antitrust (anti-monopoly) laws. Giant corporations will be busted up. Mergers or acquisitions by large firms, barred.

3. Workers need more bargaining power to get higher wages. Part of the answer is stronger unions. Democrats will make it easier for them to start or join unions.

4. The national minimum wage will be raised to $20 an hour. No one who works full-time should be in poverty.

5. Housing cost increases will be slowed by stopping private equity firms from buying up large tracts of housing and colluding on prices.

6. Health care costs will be lowered by making Medicare available to everyone.

7. Working families will get help with child care and elder care.

8. They’ll also get paid family leave.

9. If adequate-paying jobs are unavailable, workers will also have access to a universal basic income. It won’t make families comfortable, but it will be enough to keep them out of poverty.

10. Taxes will be raised on the wealthiest to pay for this.

What do you think?

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

I feel emotionally whipsawed. I expect you feel the same.

I was cheered by Mamdani’s election and the Democratic sweep across America.

But I was deeply upset this past week at Senate Democrats who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by caving in to Republicans.

I tell myself that this is what progress looks like in a tempestuous time — a roller coaster whose highs are higher than its lows.

This past week’s Democratic sellout was certainly a low. But the high of the November 4 elections was higher, because it changed the trajectory of the nation.

Besides, the shutdown wasn’t a total failure. It let Democrats spotlight the Republicans’ pending withdrawal of health coverage from millions of Americans. And it revealed more of Trump’s selfish cruelty when he boasted about his lavish White House ballroom and renovated Lincoln Bedroom while refusing food stamp benefits for 42 million people.

It also showed why an older generation of Democrats — Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine — have had their day and must now move on.

The party’s energy and future belong to Zohran Mamdani, AOC, and others — such as Seattle’s newly elected progressive young mayor, Katie Wilson. Wilson is a community organizer, self-described socialist, and first-time candidate pushing for higher taxes on the wealthy to finance what most people in Seattle need. Some call her the “West Coast Mamdani.”

A few days ago I spoke with Mamdani’s first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan, and was impressed with his experience, knowledge, and commitment. I came away confident that Mamdani will be able to implement his ambitious goals, and more.

Other signs of progress — the Democrats’ surprise redistricting win in Utah and a potential upset in a special congressional election in Tennessee next month.

Meanwhile, young people across America are ushering in a new era of progressive activism.

On Thursday, more than a thousand Starbucks baristas walked off the job — demanding better hours, more pay, and better working conditions and threatening to escalate their protests if Starbucks didn’t deliver. (You can support them by boycotting Starbucks.)

Progress, too, in the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein returning this week to haunt Trump with more evidence of Trump’s complicity.

Recall that in 2024 Trump said he’d “have no problem with” the release of Epstein’s list of clients. Yet since then, Trump has done everything possible to cover it up.

House Speaker Mike Johnson even refused to seat Adelita Grijalva, the newly elected representative from Arizona, because she’d provide the crucial 218^th signature on the discharge petition leading to a House vote on releasing the Epstein files. And she did, when sworn in this week.

The petition became effective Thursday when two Republican signers, Reps. Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, refused to take their names off it — despite intense pressure from Trump and Justice Department officials. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene is splitting with Trump over Epstein.

And now, in a pathetic effort to take heat off himself, Trump has ordered his attorney general flak Pam Bondi to investigate prominent Democrats who appear to be linked to Epstein. Won’t work.

All the while, Trump’s polls have continued to tank. Only 33 percent now approve of the way he’s managing the government, down from 43 percent in March. Among independents, his approval has plummeted to a remarkable 25 percent.

Democrats, meanwhile, are fired up. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows them far more determined than Republicans to vote in the midterms, with 44 percent of Democrats “very enthusiastic” about casting their ballot next year, compared with 26 percent of Republicans.

All progress.

Rest assured, there will be more frustrations and setbacks to come. Trump and and his fanatic lapdogs (Miller, Vought, Vance, Hegseth, Kennedy Jr., Bondi, and Noem), will pull the nation further into their authoritarian muck.

We haven’t seen the bottom yet. But we will prevail.

We won’t be discouraged by tactical defeats, such as this past week’s. We’ll keep fighting — organizing, mobilizing, phoning and writing our members of Congress, demonstrating, boycotting, protecting the vulnerable, winning state and local elections, winning next year’s midterm elections.

We’ll keep fighting because the stakes are so high. We’ll keep fighting because future generations depend on us.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/