Yesterday, U.S. district judge Richard Leon blocked Trump from proceeding with construction of his $400 million ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. This has halted, at least for now, one of Trump’s most visible efforts to reshape the symbolic center of the federal government’s executive branch.

In a 35-page opinion, Judge Leon — an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush — wrote that Trump likely did not have the authority to make changes to the White House that could endure for generations, without consulting Congress.

This marks, by my calculation, the 89th time since the start of Trump’s second term that a federal judge has ruled that he cannot simply do whatever he wants; his actions must be authorized by Congress.

Focus for a moment on the word authorized. It’s from the Latin auctoritas and auctor — to originate, the originator.

In our system of government, a president is not the originator of power. Power comes from the people. And among the three branches of government, the people are most clearly represented by Congress. This was the founders’ design in the Constitution, which is why the very first article enumerates Congress’s powers.

The decision by Judge Leon puts the ballroom project on hold while the lawsuit continues. When a federal judge grants a preliminary injunction, it means that the judge views it likely that plaintiffs (in this case, the National Trust for Historic Preservation) will prevail on the merits of the case, and that allowing whatever is going on to continue (in this case, construction of Trump’s enormous 90,000-square-foot ballroom) will cause the plaintiffs irreparable harm.

In December, the National Trust sued Trump after he razed the East Wing (originally constructed in 1902 and expanded during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency) to make way for what Trump says will be the “finest” ballroom in the country.

As designed, that ballroom is larger than the Executive Residence and the West Wing combined. If constructed, it would be the dominant edifice of the White House — symbolically shifting its focus from where the president works and lives to where a president might lavishly entertain, as in a king’s throne room.

Trump has repeatedly emphasized that his ballroom is funded entirely by private donors, so its cost won’t be borne by taxpayers and it doesn’t need a congressional appropriation. He says he’s raised more than $350 million from personal backers and around two dozen tech, cryptocurrency, and defense corporations to fund the structure without government support.

Translated: He’s extorted $350 million from monied interests eager to suck up to him.

But Judge Leon insists this doesn’t give Trump authority to destroy part of the White House and erect a giant ballroom in its place: “No statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”

Judge Leon adds: “The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” [exclamation included]

The idea that Trump is the steward of anything for future generations rather than an owner must seem odd to Trump. I doubt that the former real-estate developer has ever once thought of the presidency as a stewardship.

Which is why the notion that he’s not authorized to do whatever he wants — raze the White House for a grand ballroom, deploy ICE and Border Patrol agents to terrorize immigrants and murder Americans trying to protect them, attack Iran — is inconceivable to him.

In his first public reaction to the court order, Trump called the National Trust “a Radical Left Group of Lunatics” that’s suing him for a “ballroom that is under budget, ahead of schedule, being built at no cost to the Taxpayer, and will be the finest Building of its kind anywhere in the World.”

To real-estate developer Trump, all that matters is being under budget, ahead of schedule, and at no cost to taxpayers. Even if he demolishes the entire White House and erects a Trump Tower in its place. Even if he extorts every CEO in America to pay for it. Even if he erects a giant arch across the Potomac with his name emblazoned on it.

But the people have not authorized him to do any of this. Which means — as long as we have an independent federal judiciary, and any hope for a Congress that will stand up to him — he cannot.

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/.

Mr. Trump, may I have a word?

Bad enough for you to insist — in the face of all evidence to the contrary — that you won the 2020 election.

But it’s another thing for you to pretend — in the face of mounting deaths and injuries, ballooning expenses, and rising prices — that you won, or are winning, the war with Iran you began on February 28.

“Let me say, we’ve won,” you told a rally in Kentucky on March 11.

“I think we’ve won,” you said on the White House South Lawn on March 20.

“We’ve won this war. The war has been won,” you said in the Oval Office on March 24.

“We are winning so big,” you told a fundraising dinner on March 25.

“We’ve had regime change,” you told reporters three days ago. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead.” Iran has now moved onto its “third regime,” and American negotiators are now speaking to “a whole different group of people” who have “been very reasonable,” you said.

You’re making all this up. In fact, you’re losing your war. And so is America and much of the rest of the world.

After a month, your war has already cost 13 American lives, cost American taxpayers at least $30 billion, cost American consumers at least a dollar more per gallon of gas than they paid a month ago, pushed up food prices and mortgage rates, and pushed down the value of 401(k) retirement plans. It’s mangled supply chains for industries that rely on items such as fertilizer to grow food or helium to make computer chips. It’s also wreaked havoc across the Middle East with at least 1,574 civilians killed in Iran, including 236 children, and at least 50 killed in Iran’s attacks on other Gulf nations.

You assumed Iran would give up its nuclear program. Wrong. After more than a month of bombing by the United States and Israel, you’ve most likely stiffened the regime’s resolve to produce a nuclear weapon.

In this respect, too, America is worse off — more endangered than we were in 2018 before you withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama. In that deal, Iran agreed to restrict its nuclear program — reducing uranium stockpiles by 98 percent and capping enrichment at 3.67 percent, and allowing inspections — in exchange for relief from UN, EU, and U.S. nuclear-related sanctions.

Iran now holds a stockpile of approximately 970 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60 percent purity, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. That’s close to weapons-grade. No one knows where it’s stored.

You thought winning this war would be as easy as abducting Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and setting up a puppet regime there. Wrong again. The old ayatollah is gone, but the new one and his regime are even more radical and hard line.

You assumed America’s military might would weaken Iran’s military capacity. Wrong. They’ve embraced asymmetric warfare — using cheap drones and missiles and blocking the Strait of Hormuz — rather than take on America’s and Israel’s superior forces directly.

You thought the regime would soon cave. Wrong. It’s been over a month and they’re the ones playing the waiting game. They think they can withstand the mounting political and economic pressures better and longer than you and America can. They may be correct.

Reportedly, you’ve told aides you’re now willing to end the war even if Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe this is your best option at this point. But it will allow Iran to decide in the future how much oil gets through and for whom, and could cause the economic damage to the U.S. to grow exponentially worse.

Mr. Trump, do you really believe you won this war? Do you really believe America is better off than it was when you began the war?

Maybe the people around you are telling you that you’ve won the war and we’re better off because you punish the bearers of bad news and reward those who tell you what you want to hear. Presumably you’re hearing the same fictionalized good news from Republicans in Congress, from sycophantic leaders abroad, from other assorted lackeys and suck-ups.

Or maybe you think that if you can convince enough people that you won and we’re better off, you will have won and America will be better off. Because for you it’s always about public perceptions of reality rather than reality itself. Everything depends on hype, spin, exaggeration, and outright lies. For you there’s no truth, only belief.

Or maybe you think that if you keep saying you won or are winning, and America has come out on top, your magical thinking will in fact come true.

But this isn’t a game, and you’re not a magician. This is real blood and guts. Real pain. Real deaths and injuries. Real price increases at the gas pump. Real hardships for real people — in America, in the Middle East, and elsewhere.

You can’t pretend, sir. This isn’t reality television. This is for real. And the reality is Americans are worse off now and less secure than we were when you started this.

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 he ran for president again in 2024, Trump made three promises to the American public:

(1) He said he’d “secure” the southern border. Most Americans now believe he’s gone too far in this.

(2) He’d avoid foreign wars. He said: “We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East, and we’re not fixing our roads in this country? How stupid. How stupid is it? And we’re not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, even.” Umm. How well has this promise turned out?

(3) His third promise was to bring prices down and create more jobs. He said: “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.”

In fact, Trump has pushed prices way up.

As of today, the price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, is above $116 a barrel. The average price for a gallon of gas in the United States is now $4.00, and many people are paying far more. Food costs are also heading upward.

He’s also raised tariffs on imports. This has increased the prices of everything we buy from abroad.

He has also pledged to be “the greatest jobs president that God has ever created.”

But he’s been the worst jobs president in American history.

In his first term, Trump presided over a historic net loss of nearly 3 million jobs, the worst jobs numbers ever recorded under an American president.

So far in his second term, he has presided over a loss of 150,000 jobs. (By contrast, in the final 14 months of Joe Biden’s presidency, the economy added 1.74 million jobs.)

The only thing Trump has done to make any Americans better off is to cut taxes on the rich and big corporations. He did this in his second term. It was also his major economic policy in his first term (which he promised would result in $4,000 annual raises for everyone else. How did that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise?)

May I speak plainly? Trump has turned the American economy into s---

Trump’s economic record is only slightly worse than that of every Republican president before him. Here’s the historic truth that everyone needs to understand: The America economy does worse under Republican presidents. Since 1933, the U.S. economy has grown nearly twice as fast on average under Democrats.

Wage growth slowed after Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich and big corporations. And the Bush and Trump tax cuts didn’t trickle down, either.

These giveaways to the wealthy have come at the expense of investments in infrastructure, education, and health care — making life more expensive and difficult for everyone who isn’t rich.

They’ve also exploded the debt and deficit.

Reagan oversaw a 186 percent increase in the national debt — the biggest percentage increase in over 70 years.

The Bush and Trump tax cuts — which mostly benefited corporations and the rich — are the main reasons why America’s debt continues to grow faster than the economy.

Look at the historic record and you see something else: Republican presidents have led us into the three worst economic crises of the last hundred years.

The Great Depression began in 1929 under Herbert Hoover. The Great Recession began in 2008 under George W. Bush. The pandemic recession of 2020 began under Trump.

Democrats (FDR, Obama, and Biden) led us out of these Republican economic crises.

Republicans talk about “running the country like a business.” Sure. They’ve run it the way Trump ran his businesses: with massive debts, a string of failures, and payouts for the folks at the top, while average workers get shafted again and again.

Given Republicans’ track record, why would any hardworking American put their financial security in the hands of a Republican president (or, for that matter, a Republican Congress) ever again?

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/.

As we near the fourth week of Trump’s war with no end in sight, I want to make sure you are aware of what he said today, and its implications.

After Tehran dismissed his 15-point ceasefire plan, Trump claimed today that Iran is “begging to make a deal” and that he wasn’t the one pushing for negotiations. (Earlier, he told Tehran to “get serious soon” about negotiating an end to the war.)

“They’ll tell you, ‘We’re not negotiating,’” Trump said. “Of course, they’re negotiating. They’ve been obliterated.” He said Iran is allowing some oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz as a “present” to show how serious it is about negotiating to end the war.

He rejected reports that he was looking for an exit ramp. “I read a story today that I’m desperate to make a deal,” Trump told reporters. “I’m the opposite of desperate. I don’t care.”

Is he naive? Ignorant? Stupid? Or does he think we’re so stupid as not to see that he’s making this up as he goes, that he has no plan, no exit strategy, no way out?

Trump — and Pete Hegseth and anyone else who may be advising him — have already blown this.

They thought the Iranian regime would fall as easily as the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. They assumed they could use air power alone. Wrong on both counts.

They overestimated the capacity and desire of Iranians to overthrow the regime.

They underestimated the regime’s resilience. They didn’t count on it expanding the conflict through the use of cheap drones aimed at closing the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting supply chains throughout the region, and raising oil prices — thereby putting mounting political and economic pressure on the United States.

They didn’t anticipate that they’d have to lift sanctions on Iran, delivering the regime a huge windfall. Nor that they’d deliver vast oil profits to Vladimir Putin.

To the extent they engaged in any planning at all, they focused on America’s military might rather than the consequences of what might happen next. But as we should have learned years ago from bombing North Vietnam, political outcomes cannot be achieved solely from the skies.

Wars are judged by how they end, not how they begin. It is still possible, although highly improbable, that America will come out of this more secure than we went into it. But wars started without clear political objectives have rarely ended well.

The Trump regime now faces the task of trying to reopen Hormuz to prevent even worse economic chaos.

Either it prolongs the war and puts boots on the ground at a significance cost of human life, or it walks away and risks further economic chaos, major damage to America’s image and influence, and an Iranian regime more committed than ever to building a nuclear bomb.

Meanwhile, the costs of this war are accelerating rapidly. The price of oil has resumed its upward trajectory and the stock market its downward drift.

The American public is paying in many ways — not just for more expensive gas but soon for more costly food due to pricier fertilizer.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage has now hit 6.38 percent, the fourth increase since the war began.

The Pentagon is requesting an additional $200 billion to fund the war. This comes to more than $1,400 per American household.

More costs will emerge. The George W. Bush administration in 2003 put the cost of the Iraq War at $40 billion; it ended up costing about $3 trillion.

Soldiers who develop medical disorders or aggravate existing ones, for example, will receive lifelong benefits and medical care, as they should. If today’s troops claim such benefits at the same rate as those who participated in the 1990-91 Gulf War, this cost alone would eventually total at least $600 billion, not counting the human toll.

So far, the war has cost us more than $1.3 million per minute.

At this rate, as Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has calculated, for a bit more than two weeks of this war, we could offer free college education to every American family earning less than $125,000 annually.

For less than three weeks of this war, we could run a nationwide pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds. For less than 13 hours of this war, we could screen all uninsured women for cervical cancer, saving several hundred lives.

For four hours of this war we could get glasses to all 2.3 million low-income schoolchildren in the United States who need them but don’t have them. For less than three weeks of this war, we could restore health insurance subsidies that the Trump administration let expire last year and thus prevent an estimated 8,800 deaths.

For a bit more than five hours of this war, we could deworm all children worldwide. For less than five hours of this war, we could provide vitamin A supplementation for the 190 million children around the world who need it, preventing up to 480,000 child deaths each year and virtually eliminating blindness from vitamin A deficiency.

For about one day’s worth of war spending we could save more than 350,000 lives worldwide from malaria.

Most Americans oppose this war. Congress did not authorize it. It is one man’s war: Donald Trump’s. He alone decided to put us into this horrific, bloody, hugely expensive bind.

I hope and pray we come out of it without even more deaths and higher costs, but that seems improbable. The war is a deepening tragedy, a horrific waste of life and money, a mounting bill we will be paying for years to come.

Focus on this stark reality: One man has put us in this Middle East quagmire. One man is wrecking our economy. One man’s immigration agents have terrorized our neighbors and neighborhoods. One man has ridden roughshod over our system of government.

That man is not our king. He did not even win a majority of the national popular vote in 2024. (He won with a plurality of 49.8 percent, or just 32.5 percent of all eligible voters.)

He’s the only former or sitting president to have been impeached twice, the only former or sitting president to have been convicted of criminal charges (34 felony counts), the only former or sitting president to have sought to overturn an election to remain in office.

So far he has gotten away with all of this.

We will march against him Saturday as a prelude to organizing and mobilizing to take over Congress in the midterm elections.

Someday, I sincerely hope, we will hold him accountable for the wreckage he has made of our country and much of the rest of the world.

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/.

Let me count the ways.

1. Lines are getting longer at airports.

Democrats want to fund the TSA, but Trump’s congressional Republicans refuse. They want all of the Department of Homeland Security to be funded, including ICE and Border Patrol — without the safeguards Democrats are insisting on.

So TSA continues to go unfunded, TSA personnel don’t show up for work, and lines get longer. (Don’t count on ICE to do much to reduce the length of the lines.) Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee this morning, Acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill said the shutdown has produced the longest airport wait times on record.

2. Air-traffic controllers are way understaffed and underpaid.

New York’s LaGuardia Airport is the worst but safety is an issue all over. Pilot concerns about LaGuardia were filed with aviation officials months before Sunday’s collision between an airplane and a firetruck left two pilots dead and 41 other people hospitalized.

Last summer, according to the aviation safety reporting system, a pilot using the airport wrote, “Please do something,” after air traffic controllers failed to provide appropriate guidance about multiple nearby aircraft. “The pace of operations is building in LGA,” they wrote, referring to LaGuardia, one of the busiest in the U.S. “The controllers are pushing the line.”

3. Ticket prices are soaring and flights are being cancelled because the cost of jet fuel is soaring.

Jet fuel prices in the U.S. have increased by over 60 percent since the start of Trump’s war in Iran. Airlines are putting the increased costs of jet fuel onto consumers by raising ticket prices and cancelling less profitable routes.

Why has the war called jet fuel prices to soar? Because Trump apparently didn’t consider that one of the first things Iran would do when attacked would be to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes.

4. Trump’s Transportation Department scrapped a Biden-era rule that would have required airlines to give cash refunds to passengers for significant travel disruptions and delays within the airlines’ control.

That’s bad news for passengers like you and me — and it comes at exactly the wrong time. But it’s great news for airlines, whose own data showed that they were responsible for 60 percent of major delays in 2022 and ‘23.

5. The Transportation Department is also reportedly planning to claw back other protections around passenger refunds, cut requirements for airlines to disclose junk fees, and roll back rules holding airlines liable for damaged wheelchairs.

This will be a boost to the bottom line of the airlines and a nice return on investment for Delta and United in particular, which contributed $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Oh, did I mention that Trump Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s most recent gig, before becoming transportation secretary, was … lobbying for the airline industry? But I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that he won’t lift a finger to rein in airlines’ unchecked greed and power.

Remember: Trump and his cronies in the Cabinet will always govern for their corporate donors and former clients — not for you.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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 Wall Street Journal — hardly an outpost of left-wing propaganda — reported yesterday on the results of an investigation conducted by the Journal’s Hannah Critchfield and her team.

I’m summarizing it below because it deserves your attention.

Critchfield and her team found that 279 people have been accused online by the Trump administration of assaulting federal ICE and Border Patrol agents, and more than half of these people — 64 percent — are American citizens.

Of the 181 American citizens that the Trump administration has accused of attacking federal ICE and Border Patrol officers, close to half have never been charged, and none have been convicted at trial. But the public charges alone have caused them significant harm.

The investigation

The Journal’s team analyzed more than 200 videos associated with allegations of assault against ICE and Border Patrol agents, using both police body camera footage and bystander recordings from social media. Many of the videos cast doubt on the federal government’s claims that agents were assaulted.

The Journal also reviewed more than 100,000 posts on X, posts made in the last year by accounts linked to government agencies and senior government officials.

Each time the government identified a person on a post, the Journal tracked that case through the legal system to see what charges were brought, under what statute, whether the charges were later modified, and what happened to the person in the case.

One of the cases they investigated was that of Sydney Lori Reid, a 44-year-old veterinary assistant in D.C. and a U.S. citizen.

In July, Reid went to a jail to witness an immigration enforcement action. Federal officers had gone there to arrest two migrant men, and Reid said she felt a duty to document it.

As Reid began videotaping, an agent grabbed her and pinned her to a wall. Reid was then surrounded by several federal law enforcement officials. One of them was an FBI agent wearing a face covering and an FBI vest. Two others were ICE officers, dressed in plain clothes, plaid shirts, and khaki pants.

Reid was handcuffed and told she was being arrested for interfering with their operation. Videos reviewed by Critchfield and her team cast doubt on the agents’ claims.

Reid was then placed in a government vehicle and transferred to federal custody. Like many American citizens who wind up in the crosshairs of DHS, she was accused of assault.

The government alleges she assaulted an FBI agent on the basis of scrapes on the agent’s hands, but the scrapes occurred in the process of putting handcuffs on Reid.

The government later charged Reid with felony assault of a federal official, a charge punishable with up to 20 years in prison — a serious federal charge that’s being applied far more broadly now than at any time in recent history.

When Reid was being arrested, she dropped her phone, but the phone was still recording. An agent picked up the phone and put it into the same vehicle that she was riding in on her way to detention.

One officer says: “We’re at the D.C. jail. We’re at the D.C. jail. We have an agitator in custody for ...”

Reid was handcuffed in the backseat. You can hear agents going back and forth about exactly how Reid had assaulted them. First, it was a raised knee, then an elbow.

Another officer: “Yeah, it appeared that there was an elbow that was ... When she was resisting, but she definitely interfered. So we have interfering and I’m going to get ...”

One of the ICE agents called her a stupid female as he was talking to a colleague: “Hey brother, are you good? I have to return to 1D and process this stupid female now that I f------ don’t want to process her.”

Reid was held by federal authorities for roughly two days. She wasn’t allowed to make a phone call during that time.

In the aftermath of her arrest, prosecutors tried to indict her, but that needed to be done through a grand jury, and the grand jury declined to indict her. They tried again before another grand jury, which also declined to indict her. Then they went back to a third grand jury, which declined to indict her.

This is almost unheard of. It showed both the resistance from the public to charge her based on the evidence and the government’s determination to bring charges in this case.

Prosecutors ultimately charged Reid with misdemeanor assault of an officer, a lesser offense that doesn’t require going through a grand jury. Reid was acquitted of that misdemeanor charge at trial.

The Trump Administration’s Strategy

Critchfield and her Journal team found that the push to charge more people for assaulting federal officers — as happened to Reid — is an administration-wide strategy.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and her Department of Justice have pledged to prosecute these cases aggressively. From the very beginning of Bondi’s tenure, starting on her first day in office, she issued a flurry of memos, including one that encouraged prosecutors to aggressively investigate any instances of violence against law enforcement or obstruction of law enforcement.

Gregory Bovino, then the head of Border Patrol, directed his agents to arrest anyone who touched them. “Arrest as many people that touch you as you want to. Those are the general orders all the way to the top, everybody f------ gets it if they touch you. You hear what I’m saying?”

In addition to an increasing number of prosecutions, the Department of Homeland Security has been using social media to exaggerate these alleged attacks, often with a warning to the public: “Don’t be like this person. If you behave in this way, we will come for you.” And they have posted people’s pictures and their full names, seeking to make an example out of these people even before they’re convicted of a crime.

This happened to Reid. A week after she was arrested, her mug shot and name went up on the official ICE account on X, along with the fact that she’s based in Washington, D.C., and a post that said, “Assault an officer or agent get arrested. It’s not rocket science.”

ICE also publicly alleged that Reid assaulted federal agents on behalf of two alleged international gang members.

The Purpose of This Strategy

The Journal’s investigation makes clear that the purpose of this strategy has been to intimidate and silence Americans who might otherwise protest what ICE and Border Patrol are doing.

ICE publicly describes many of these protesters as rioters, agitators, thugs, and terrorists.

Here’s Vice President JD Vance speaking of Renee Good’s death:

“I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers.”

And here’s then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on the death of Alex Pretti:

“This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism, that’s the facts.”

Renee Good was in her car when she was killed. Critchfield and her team found that federal government officials have accused 32 U.S. citizens of intentionally using their vehicles as weapons. DHS considers a vehicle to be a deadly weapon, justifying the use of force. Of those 32 drivers, only one pleaded guilty to an assault charge. Three had their cases dismissed; the rest were never charged.

The Journal investigation found that in most cases where citizens were accused by the government, the outcome was similar to Reid’s.

181 citizens were accused by the government on X of attacking federal officers, but close to half of them were never even charged at all. When people were charged, more often than not, the cases fell apart. Either they were acquitted or found not guilty at trial.

Fifteen people mentioned in government posts pleaded guilty before going to trial. Ten of whom pleaded guilty for lesser offenses than what the government initially charged them with.

Videos have often played major roles in contradicting the government’s case. Critchfield and her team viewed videos that repeatedly cast doubt on the government’s allegations. Protesters were often called violent rioters or professional agitators and accused of making physical contact in some way with agents, but video footage often showed immigration agents being the first to lay their hands on demonstrators.

The Journal found that most of the government’s assault allegations against American protesters posted on X were unsubstantiated. Even federal prosecutors themselves acknowledged that in some cases, the evidence to back up these charges wasn’t there.

Federal prosecutors across the nation told Critchfield and her team that they are facing intense pressure to charge demonstrators and bystanders with crimes even when video evidence contradicts what officers initially claimed about what occurred, or in situations where they wouldn’t normally pursue federal charges.

The costs to those who are arrested are substantial. Even in cases where the person is exonerated, they must still deal with posting bail, securing defense attorneys, and taking days off from work to appear in court. In more extreme cases, people are doxed online and face death threats.

Reid says she’s been more hesitant about engaging in political speech, even though, as she put it, “Those are our rights as U.S. citizens and they’re being stifled.”

Conclusions

The Journal’s investigation concluded that:

“U.S. citizens are caught in the crosshairs of an aggressive government campaign to detain and demonize detractors, including by calling them terrorists, rioters, and agitators. The Department of Homeland Security, which was created in 2002 to protect Americans, has turned its force against U.S. citizens.”

By putting a public bull’s-eye on Americans whom the government accuses of assault, the Journal also found that the Trump administration is chilling First Amendment expression:

“People who had been accused publicly by the federal government of assaulting federal officers … are less likely to participate in protests and less likely to put themselves in situations where their name might be tracked…. There is a real pressure to crack down and send a message to people who the government views as perceived dissenters, even if video contradicts what agents have initially claimed happened.”

Again, let me remind you that this comes from The Wall Street Journal.

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/.

No one knows what Trump is going to do from minute to minute, least of all Trump. But it’s looking ever more likely he’ll be exiting Iran within days, declaring his “excursion” into it (as he’s termed his war) a major victory — and then changing the subject.

On Friday, Trump posted on his social media site that “we are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.”

What objectives? He never said what they were to begin with.

He’s about to wind down and exit because he doesn’t give a damn about anything except maintaining his wealth and power — and the war is now costing him both.

It’s hurting his financial backers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar — whose wealth has been seriously diminished by the war and whose vulnerability has been exposed.

It’s p------ off Trump’s wealthy political backers at home — who are getting pummeled as the U.S. stock market sinks under the weight of the war.

It’s infuriating American voters, as gasoline sells for nearly $4 a gallon — causing Republicans to become ever more anxious about a political backlash in the midterm elections. Most were elected on Trump’s coattails in the 2024 election, in which Trump promised to reduce prices and avoid foreign entanglements — rather than do the exact opposite.

So, forget regime change. Forget freedom for Iranians. Forget “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear capabilities (which Trump claimed he accomplished last June).

Trump will say he vanquished Iran’s military and defense capacities, destroyed its economy, and decapitated its leadership.

Job over. Mission accomplished. Iran obliterated (again).

Right now, though, he has to save face. Iran has rejected Trump’s threat that if it doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz by Monday night, the United States will strike Iranian power plants. Iran says if the U.S. attacks Iran’s power plants, it will attack energy, information technology, and desalination facilities across the Gulf.

So Trump will do some more bombing this week. He’ll then leave the job of opening the Strait to other countries, claiming that the U.S. doesn’t need it because we produce enough oil on our own (which is untrue because oil prices depend on the global market, and U.S. refiners depend on foreign grades of crude).

And he’ll leave the bombing of Iran to Benjamin Netanyahu, who’d rather continue striking Iran and Hezbollah’s strongholds in Lebanon than stand trial in Israel for bribery and corruption. (Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Friday that the military campaign in Iran would “escalate significantly” this week.)

So what will America have gotten out of Trump’s “excursion”? Zilch. Actually, less than zilch because in many ways we’re worse off than when it started. We’ve lost blood and fortune.

Thirteen U.S. service members have been killed, and the war has cost the U.S. an estimated $18 billion so far, not counting the costs to American consumers of higher-priced energy and food.

The regime in Iran has changed, but there’s been no “regime change.” And the change that’s occurred has been toward a harder, more nationalist, more belligerent Islamic state.

Iran is still hiding its enriched uranium and is presumably more determined than ever to turn it into nuclear warheads.

Trump and Israel may crow about destroying Iranian launchers and missile stocks, but Iran is firing even more ballistic missiles and drones across the Middle East now than it did a week ago — launching new missile attacks on Israeli cities and damaging key energy installations in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.

On Friday, Iran launched intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the U.S.-U.K. Diego Garcia military base 2,500 miles away. That’s far enough to hit much of Europe.

Iran figures that political and economic pressures are mounting against Trump faster than they are mounting against Iran. While Iran uses cheap drones to disrupt global supply chains, it’s generating huge profits on its sale of oil (mostly to China), reportedly $8.7 billion in additional oil profits since the war began, driven by a $47 per barrel increase in prices compared to pre-war levels.

Forget Iran negotiating with the U.S. over ending the war. Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, says any talks with the U.S. are off the agenda as Tehran “focuses on punishing the aggressors.”

Other Iranian leaders are demanding as conditions for ending the war massive reparations from the U.S. and the expulsion of American military from the region.

They’re also talking about transforming the Strait of Hormuz into an Iranian toll booth controlling a third of the world’s shipborne crude oil.

We have no way of knowing whether America will now be more vulnerable to Iran-sponsored terrorism, but the risk seems greater than before Trump launched his war.

All told, there has been no American victory here, only tragedy — although the sociopath in the Oval Office will surely claim victory and lie through his teeth about what he has accomplished.

Make no mistake: This will be a surrender. As Vermont Republican Senator George Aiken suggested in 1966 when the U.S. found itself mired in another unwinnable war, Trump’s only real course of action now is to “declare victory and get out,” which I expect him to do momentarily.

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, Trump said that he’d do whatever is necessary to ease the oil crisis. He also assured America that the crisis “will be over soon.”

Bull----.

The problem isn’t just that Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz. It’s also that Iran, Israel, and the United States have all inflicted — and continue to inflict — serious damage to the oil and gas infrastructure of the Middle East. This damage will take months if not years to repair.

At one point on Thursday oil prices jumped to $119 a barrel before falling back to around $111 a barrel — all but guaranteeing that the price of gas at the pump will continue to rise, as will the prices of many other products and services indirectly affected by oil prices.

What we are now witnessing is one of the grossest military and political blunders in modern history.

It’s not hard to understand why Trump is trapped in Iran. He doesn’t listen to anyone outside his small circle of sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear.

But there’s something else. Iran has adopted an asymmetric war strategy that’s working.

I’m indebted to Marty Manley for uncovering a fascinating historical fact that sheds light on what Iran is doing. During the Korean War, U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd came up with a theory of competitive decision-making that shaped American military doctrine for a generation. He called it the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

Boyd found that victory doesn’t go to the side with more firepower. It goes to the side that cycles through the OODA loop faster — observing what’s changing, orienting to its meaning, deciding what to do, and acting before its adversary does.

Get inside your opponent’s loop, Boyd reasoned, and you don’t just outpace him. You break his ability to form a coherent picture of the war he’s fighting.

Manley observes that Iran has adopted Boyd’s approach. Iran hasn’t needed to match American firepower; it’s needed only to generate economic and political problems for Washington that outrun Washington’s ability to orient, decide, and act.

Iran has gotten inside Trump’s OODA loop because Iran has responded to U.S. airstrikes by widening the war horizontally — attacking tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, launching drones and missiles at Gulf state oil and gas infrastructure, provoking the U.S. and Israel to destroy even more of that infrastructure, hitting Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (causing regional outages for banking, e-commerce, and cloud services), and squeezing other choke points that the global economy depends on.

Iran’s leaders — veterans of asymmetric wars in Iraq and Syria — are applying the same asymmetric logic to Trump’s war. Inexpensive drones, short-range missiles, and sea mines can have the same effect that IEDs had in Iraq — only with far greater strategic impact, because they disrupt global supply chains.

What has Washington done? Dropped more bombs and launched more missiles.

On Wednesday Israel struck at the crown jewel of Iran’s energy industry — the giant South Pars gas field that Iran shares with Qatar and is by far the largest in the world. (Israel says Trump gave the attack his blessing; Trump says he didn’t.) Iran quickly retaliated with an attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility.

The attacks have sent the global oil benchmark soaring and prompted a mad scramble in Washington. Trump threatens “to blow up the entirety” of Iran’s South Pars gas holdings if Iran attacks Qatar again. His treasury secretary says the U.S. will consider lifting sanctions on millions of barrels of Iranian oil.

Since he and Israel began bombing Iran, Trump’s strategy has been entirely reactive. Iran is generating problems for Washington faster than Washington can contain them — a clear sign that Iran is inside Trump’s OODA loop.

Trump and Israel assumed that overwhelming airpower would either compel Iran to surrender or trigger regime change. But neither has happened. The regime seems more entrenched and bellicose than ever.

As Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz and attacks its Gulf neighbors’ oil and gas infrastructure, the cost-benefit ratio continues to shift against Trump: Economic and political pressures are mounting on Washington faster than they are on Tehran.

Sure, Iran is hurting — but, as Manley argues, Iran can sustain its counteroffensive more easily and longer than the U.S. can sustain economic damage to Iran. An Iranian Shahed drone made of styrofoam and powered by a motorcycle engine, for example, costs orders of magnitude less than the precision missiles sent to intercept it or the economic havoc it causes when it ignites a tanker, data center, or desalination plant.

In addition, the longer Trump’s OODA loop stays broken, the more bad consequences occur that no one in the Trump regime anticipated. Trump’s war in Iran is now being led by Israel rather than the other way around, and Trump has no easy way to alter this power imbalance.

The war has also shifted the power balance between Russia and Ukraine, with Russian oil revenues potentially doubling as U.S. weapons stocks become depleted.

So what’s next for the U.S.? Is there any way out for Trump?

He could put “boots on the ground” in Iran and attempt to seize Iran’s stockpile of approximately 970 pounds of 60 percent enriched uranium — enough to produce multiple nuclear weapons if further enriched. If he could pull this off, a major feat.

But this would be a particularly dangerous move in terms of American lives lost. It could even risk an accidental nuclear explosion.

Moreover, no one knows where the enriched uranium is being stored. In the wake of U.S. and Israeli strikes last June, it’s likely in deep underground tunnels near Isfahan and other secure locations, but the International Atomic Energy Agency can’t verify the exact locations or status of the stockpile due to lack of access to bombed sites.

What about returning to the diplomatic table? As Richard Haass points out, Trump hardly gave diplomacy a chance before launching his war. U.S. envoys Witkoff and Kushner blended maximal positions — effectively demanding an end to Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile force, and support for proxies — with minimal time for negotiation.

Haass notes the stark contrast between this process and the administration’s apparently endless willingness to give Russia the benefit of the doubt and compromise Ukraine’s interests.

If Trump returned to negotiations now, from a position of demonstrated military capability rather than exhaustion, Iran might be forced to reorient and respond to an adversary that did something unpredictable.

The problem is that the Trump regime has repeatedly reneged on his promises to Iran, so Tehran has no reason to believe any offer Trump makes.

So, presumably for the foreseeable future, Iran will remain in Trump’s OODA loop, Trump will remain trapped in Iran, and American consumers will be trapped by soaring energy prices.

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/.

Many of you are justifiably worried that Trump will interfere in the midterm elections. He’s worried he’ll lose Congress: His polls continue to plummet. The economy is worse than ever. Prices are rising. Few new jobs are being created. And his war in Iran is going badly.

We also know he has no qualms about trying to overturn elections. He’s tried before. In February, he stated he would only respect the results of the 2026 midterms “if the elections are honest” — echoing his dangerous threat from 2020. He’s also kicked off a redistricting war and called for elections to be “nationalized.”

He continues to make the baseless claim that noncitizens are voting in our elections, but multiple investigations and fact-checks by election officials from both parties have repeatedly confirmed it is exceedingly rare.

Hence, it’s important now — eight months before the midterms — to “harden” our election systems and be vigilant against what he’s likely to do.

So today I’d like your thoughts on what he’s most likely to do and where the biggest threats lie.

I’m most concerned about Trump interfering in one of these ways:

1. Enacting a federal law requiring proof of citizenship (birth certificate or passport) and an exactly matching current photo ID, in person, to vote.

These requirements are in the SAVE America Act, which the House passed last month and is now under consideration in the Senate. It would disqualify an estimated 21 million people from voting, most of them Democrats, because they can’t afford the cost or hassle of finding their birth certificates — including married women who have changed their names.

The act also threatens election officials with imprisonment if they fail to uphold the bill’s strict voter documentation requirements, and it makes it harder to cast mail-in ballots (throwing into chaos eight states where vote-by-mail is currently the primary method of voting).

The act is a risk, to be sure, but Trump can’t get this measure through the Senate, because Democrats are sure to filibuster it. The only way it has a prayer is if almost every Senate Republican voted to abolish the filibuster. But this is doubtful because some Senate Republicans fear that without the filibuster, Democrats would be able to pass laws that Republicans abhor when Dems are next in the majority.

2. Stationing ICE and Border Patrol agents at polling places.

Some worry that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents will be deployed at polling locations during the midterm elections. The intent would obviously be to intimidate voters, especially in immigrant communities and communities of color, and create fear at the ballot box.

This is also a risk, but (for what it’s worth) the Department of Homeland Security says it won’t happen. Heather Honey, who serves as deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at DHS, told a group of secretaries of state that “any suggestion that ICE will be present at any polling location is simply not true.”

Meanwhile, measures to restrict federal agents from operating at or near election-related locations have been introduced in more than half a dozen states. Plus, a federal law dating to the end of the Civil War already bans sending the military or other “armed men” to polling places, except to repel armed enemies of the United States. Finally, the U.S. Constitution also gives states — not the president or federal government — the responsibility for running elections.

3. Seizing ballots and voting machines.

Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, has been working for months on an investigation into foreign election interference in U.S. voting machines, which could become a pretext for the regime’s seizing them to protect “national security.” Gabbard and the FBI induced Puerto Rico to turn over some of its voting machines and software images for analysis last year.

Gabbard was also on hand on January 28 in Fulton County, Georgia, when the FBI — acting on a search warrant that relied on debunked claims about the 2020 race — seized hundreds of boxes of ballots from a government warehouse. And the Department of Justice has issued lawsuits against dozens of states for copies of their voter rolls that include sensitive personal information.

It’s not hard to imagine the FBI or Justice Department trying to seize ballots while the 2026 midterm votes are being counted. Trump demanded as much in 2020, although his then attorney general rejected that as unlawful. Pam Bondi, the current attorney general, has shown herself willing to do whatever Trump asks, regardless of what the law says.

But the federal courts are unlikely to allow this. A president doesn’t have the authority to regulate elections, which the Constitution assigns to the states.

4. Getting pro-Trump forces to take over state and local voting systems.

Pro-Trump forces in swing states are trying to change election rules and take over local voting systems.

In recent months, Republicans in Michigan, Arizona, and North Carolina have sought changes in election rules that would hobble likely Democratic voters. They want to alter the places and times of voting to disadvantage Democrats, require high levels of proof of citizenship, and challenge the certifications of Democratic winners. Republicans in more than half of state legislatures have introduced legislation to restrict mail-in ballots.

But many of these initiatives have already been struck down by state and federal courts, and voting rights lawyers tell me that others will be challenged on First and 14th Amendment grounds.

Few state proposals to restrict mail-in ballots are under active consideration, presumably because Republicans worry that the restriction may hurt them as much if not more than Democrats. (Ditto for a bill now before Congress to ban mail-in ballots.)

Hence, today’s Office Hours question: Which is Trump’s most likely threat to the integrity of the midterm elections?

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/.

At a press briefing on Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained about a CNN report that the Trump administration had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt global oil traffic by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

“Patently ridiculous,” Hegseth told reporters, adding — even as the strait’s blockage was proving to be Iran’s most powerful leverage in the war — we “don’t need to worry about it.” He also denied that the U.S. bombed the school where some 175 children were killed. Hegseth added that, as to CNN, “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

These remarks are remarkably stupid, on several levels.

First, CNN got it absolutely right in reporting that Trump’s national security team had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt global oil traffic. CNN cited “multiple sources familiar with the matter.”

The New York Times published a similar story, reporting that in the lead-up to the U.S.-Israeli attack, “Trump downplayed the risks to the energy markets.”

Even The Wall Street Journal, hardly a New York Times or CNN clone, substantiated the story on Friday, reporting that Trump rejected warnings that Iran would likely retaliate by closing the strait because he believed Iran would capitulate before doing so, and he assumed that even if Iran tried to close it, the U.S. military could handle it.

Second, Hegseth’s comment that we “don’t need to worry about” the blockage of the strait is not only false but flippantly insulting to an American public that deserves to know what the Trump regime is planning to do about soaring prices at the gas pump, directly due to that blockage.

Third, even if Hegseth believes that David Ellison’s ownership of CNN will silence CNN’s critical coverage of Trump, it’s remarkably stupid of Hegseth to say it out loud. “The sooner David Ellison takes over CNN, the better” is an open admission that Trump backed Ellison’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent, to silence criticism.

That deal is still pending, so Hegseth’s admission is likely to fuel even more opposition to it. California’s attorney general has already suggested he’ll go to court to block it. Now other attorneys general, the ACLU, and Democrats in Congress may join the case as co-plaintiffs.

Hegseth’s admission also confirms CNN’s worst fears that Ellison will throttle criticism of Trump — a fear that’s already caused several leading lights to exit. As Variety put it, “Anderson, cooped. Jake, tapped. Erin, burnt. Kasie, hunted. Wolf, blitzed.”

Ellison has already proven himself an unreliable steward of journalistic independence at CBS News. One departing producer there explained in a farewell memo to colleagues that she could no longer work where stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit, but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations — a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.”

Finally, Hegseth’s denial that the U.S. is responsible for the deaths of nearly 200 schoolchildren in Iran is belied by mounting evidence that the U.S. did bomb the school. Hegseth’s further insistence that the U.S. “never targets civilians” is refuted by the U.S. military’s killing of at least 157 people on 40 small boats in the Caribbean without evidence they were “narcoterrorists” rather than civilians.

And, friends, this was just one news conference.

Pete Hegseth’s job is so far over his head that he can’t even see it. He evidently believes it’s to cheerlead and defend Trump with bonkers claims like “We didn't start this war, but under President Trump we’re finishing it” and “America is winning decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy” and “we will show no quarter for our enemies.” (“No quarter” means kill everyone and take no prisoners, which is a war crime.)

In the days leading up to the U.S. attack on Iran, Hegseth spent his time criticizing “wokeness” at American universities, feuding with Anthropic over safeguards for AI, and, in the day before the war began, forcing Scouting America to abandon programs aimed at promoting diversity.

He dismisses war crimes, pooh-poohs the rules of engagement, and projects unequivocal belligerence at a time when the United States is rapidly losing whatever moral standing it had in the world.

Granted, it’s difficult to select one of Trump’s Cabinet members as the stupidest. But Pete Hegseth stands out for sheer boneheaded ignorance.

Pray for America and the world.

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

Yesterday I posed the question to many of you: What does Trump do now that he’s cornered in the Strait of Hormuz?

I noted that Iran’s new supreme leader, in his first official message since he took over from his slain father, said Iran will continue to block the Strait of Hormuz by bombarding tankers trying to get through. Iran may also be laying mines in the Strait.

The closure of the Strait has caused “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” according to the International Energy Agency. Oil has reached $100 a barrel, gas at the pump has risen almost 20 percent since the war began, and the stock market continues to slide. Higher oil prices are also raising the costs of food, medicine, electricity, and airline tickets.

Trump knows all this could deliver Congress to the Democrats in the midterms. So — with the Strait of Hormuz blocked and Iran’s new regime sounding more belligerent than ever — what does he do now?

I offered four options:

1. He declares victory and exits the Middle East within a few days, even though the Strait of Hormuz is still blocked — hoping that Iran will unblock it to sell its own oil.

I noted that this poses a high political risk for Trump. Most Americans were against the war to begin with. If fuel prices stay high and Trump has little to show for his war, he and Republicans are almost sure to be penalized brutally in the midterms.

2. He unblocks the Strait of Hormuz with American warships escorting oil tankers, then he declares victory and gets out.

This is militarily risky. The Pentagon has been turning down requests to escort tankers through the strait, saying the threat to American warships from Iranian bombardment and potential mines is too high. Navy officers say Iranian drones and anti-ship missiles could turn the area into a “kill box” for American sailors. So, trying to open the strait now risks the deaths of more U.S. service members.

3. He spends the next two weeks trying to decimate what’s left of Iran’s missile and drone capacities and its navy, in the hope that everything will return to normal after Iran is neutered. Then he declares victory and gets out.

I noted that this is risky in a different way. Iran has shown remarkable resilience in maintaining its missile and drone offenses even as the U.S. and Israel have destroyed much of them. If Trump declares victory and Iran’s belligerence continues notwithstanding, fuel prices could remain high and the “victory” will be shown to be a sham. The worst of all worlds for Trump.

4. He gets Russia, Venezuela, and oil producer allies in the Middle East to dramatically increase production, in hopes this will reduce oil prices and contain the slide of the U.S. stock market.

This will be very hard to do. OPEC’s surplus capacity is limited. Venezuelan production is also limited; even if U.S. oil companies dramatically increased their investment there, it would take many months to boost output. Russia is selling its oil to China and India. Even with additional supplies, the Department of Energy warns that gas prices are unlikely to recede to prewar levels until mid-2027.

***
Almost 6,000 of you voted on these choices.

42 percent of you thought he’d choose #1 — declare victory and get out within days.

Only 6 percent of you thought he’d choose option #2 — he’d unblock the Strait with American warships escorting tankers.

32 percent of you chose option #3 — believing that Trump would continue bombing Iran for at least another two weeks if not longer.

9 percent chose option #4 — getting more oil elsewhere.

(10 percent of you had other ideas about what he’d do.)

The issue is coming to a head even sooner than I assumed. It looks as though he’s choosing option 2. Trump says escort operations will begin “very soon,” and in a pair of social-media posts today he called on other nations to help keep the Strait open.

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 about who’s getting the most out of Trump’s war.

That war is costing the U.S. about $1 billion a day. The Pentagon’s budget is around $1 trillion this year, and Trump wants an additional $500 billion. Because of the war, the cost of oil has topped $100 a barrel, and the price of a gallon of gas at the U.S. pump now averages $3.67 — up from $2.92 before the war.

The strain on the federal budget has given Republicans an excuse to demand further cuts in federal assistance to people in need. JD Vance recently kicked off a “war on waste and fraud” by announcing suspension of Medicaid payments to Minnesota, charging that the program is rife with fraud perpetrated by “bad actors in our society … [who] decide to make themselves rich.”

But if you want to find real waste and fraud, look no further than Pete Hegseth’s “Department of War.”

A new analysis by government watchdog Open the Books found that as the 2025 fiscal year was ending, Hegseth’s Pentagon spent: nearly $100,000 on a Steinway grand piano to outfit the home of the Air Force chief of staff; $60,719 on premium office furniture, including at least one luxurious $1,844 Aeron Chair; $12,540 for three-tiered fruit basket stands; $2 million on Alaskan king crab, $6.9 million on lobster tail, $15.1 million on ribeye steak, and $1 million on salmon; $124,000 for ice cream machines; and $26,000 for sushi preparation tables.

The Pentagon has failed every audit since it was legally required to start submitting them in 2018, and reports say it will continue to fail them at least through 2028.

The ballooning profits of military contractors are helped by their near monopoly on defense production. Since the 1990s, the number of prime contractors for the Defense Department has shrunk from 55 to five.

Keep following the money.

These giants have been spending more on enriching their investors than expanding production. Between 2020 and 2025, top military contractors devoted $110 billion to stock buybacks and dividends — more than double what they spent on capital expenditures — which boosted their stock values and the pay packages of their CEOs.

And who are their biggest investors and CEOs? Trump loyalists.

Larry Ellison’s Oracle provides Hegseth’s war machine with cloud infrastructure and enterprise software. (Reminder: Ellison is the second-richest person in America and a Trump loyalist on the verge of owning a media empire comprised of CBS, CNN, TikTok, Comedy Central, and HBO.)

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has secured billions in contracts for launching sensitive satellites and space surveillance. Musk’s xAI has received a Pentagon contract to develop advanced AI tools. (Reminder: Musk is the richest person in the world and spent a quarter of a billion dollars getting Trump reelected in 2024.)

Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies has landed multibillion-dollar defense contracts, including a $10 billion agreement with the U.S. Army to provide AI-driven data analytics and software to integrate AI, surveillance, and battlefield management systems. (Reminder: Thiel is a billionaire who contributed $1.25 million to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, including $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, and then $10 million to getting JD Vance elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.)

Not to forget Big Oil, now enjoying windfall profits as global oil prices soar. (Recall Trump asking oil company executives for $1 billion for his 2024 campaign, in return for undisclosed favors.)

Among others benefitting from the turmoil is Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East, who’s busily raising at least $5 billion or more for his private-equity investment firm from governments in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

Finally, there’s Trump’s on-again, off-again ally Vladimir Putin. In just two weeks of war, Russia has reaped an estimated $6.9 billion from the increase in oil prices and the easing of sanctions.

What to do? At the very least, Congress should:

Prohibit defense contractors from making campaign donations or lobbying Congress. Why should taxpayers subsidize these activities?

Tax windfall profits from Trump’s war (or from any war). America has had windfall profits taxes during wartime before. Given the size of current windfalls, we need it again.

Cut the defense budget. Start by cutting it 10 percent each year it fails audits. This is particularly important during the Trump-Hegseth era of defense bloat.

As long as Trump and his Republicans control Congress and the executive branch, these reforms don’t have a prayer. Still, Democrats should introduce them and push for them. Let Trump and his Republicans go on record voting against them.

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 is cornered.

Iran’s missiles, drones, and nuclear facilities have been severely hobbled, but its regime is still standing. Many of its senior political, military, and intelligence leaders are dead, but they have been replaced by others. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard survives.

Iran’s new supreme leader, in his first official message since he took over from his slain father, says Iran will continue to block the Strait of Hormuz by bombarding tankers trying to get through.

The closure has caused “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” according to the International Energy Agency. Oil has reached $100 a barrel, gas at the pump has risen almost 20 percent since the war began, and the stock market continues to slide. Higher oil prices are also raising the costs of food, medicine, electricity, and airline tickets.

Trump knows all this could deliver Congress to the Democrats in the midterms. So — with the Strait of Hormuz blocked and Iran’s new regime sounding more belligerent than ever — what does he do now?

Here are the four options:

1. He declares victory and exits the Middle East within a few days, even though the Strait of Hormuz is still blocked — hoping that Iran will unblock it to sell its own oil.

This poses a high political risk for Trump. Most Americans were against the war to begin with. If fuel prices stay high and Trump has little to show for his war, he and Republicans are almost sure to be penalized brutally in the midterms.

2. He unblocks the Strait of Hormuz with American warships escorting oil tankers, then he declares victory and gets out.

This is militarily risky. The Pentagon has been turning down requests to escort tankers through the strait, saying the threat to American warships from Iranian bombardment is too high. So, trying to open the strait now risks the deaths of more U.S. service members.

3. He spends the next two weeks trying to decimate what’s left of Iran’s missile and drone capacities and its navy, in the hope that everything will return to normal after Iran is neutered. Then he declares victory and gets out.

This is risky in a different way. Iran has shown remarkable resilience in maintaining its missile and drone offenses even as the U.S. and Israel have destroyed much of them. If Trump declares victory and Iran’s belligerence continues notwithstanding, fuel prices could remain high and the “victory” will be shown to be a sham. The worst of all worlds for Trump.

4. He gets Russia, Venezuela, and oil producer allies in the Middle East to dramatically increase production, in hopes this will reduce oil prices and contain the slide of the U.S. stock market.

This will be very hard to do. OPEC’s surplus capacity is limited. Venezuelan production is also limited; even if U.S. oil companies dramatically increased their investment there, it would take many months to boost output. Russia is selling its oil to China and India. Even with additional supplies, the Department of Energy warns that gas prices are unlikely to recede to prewar levels until mid-2027.

So, today’s Office Hours question: What does Trump do now that he’s cornered in Iran?

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 says he’s not responsible for what happens next in Iran. “It’s up to the Iranians.”

He acts as if he’s not even responsible for what’s happening in his own government. After federal agents murdered two people in Minneapolis and Border Patrol head Greg Bovino was sacked, Trump lamely explained, “Bovino is very good, but he’s a pretty out there kind of a guy. It some cases that’s good, maybe it wasn’t good here.”

Yesterday the White House quietly removed Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s two top aides at the Labor Department because, well, they were pretty out there, too.

To paraphrase Daniel Webster when speaking to the Supreme Court about Dartmouth College in 1819, the DOL is a small department, but there are those who love it.

I loved it from the moment I entered the Frances Perkins Building on Constitution Avenue as secretary of labor in January 1992.

I loved its mission: to protect and raise the standard of living of working Americans.

I loved its history. The first secretary of labor, Frances Perkins — appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 — was also America’s first female Cabinet secretary. She was the guiding light behind the creation of Social Security, the 40-hour workweek, the National Labor Relations Act, and much more.

Her painting hung behind my desk in my huge second-floor office. Whenever I felt discouraged, I looked at her, and she bucked me up. (Although I’m Jewish, I called her Saint Frances.)

I admired the Department of Labor’s career staff, who were dedicated to helping American workers. I was deeply impressed by the assistant secretaries, the deputy secretary, the chief of staff, and other appointees with whom I toiled, often six or seven days a week from early morning to late at night.

Never before or since have I had the privilege of working with such talented people who cared so much about what they were accomplishing for the American people, and who made such a positive impact on so many lives.

We raised the minimum wage for the first time in many years, even under a Republican-controlled Congress. We implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act. We fought against sweatshops. We took on big corporations that were cheating their employees. We kept workers safe. We … well, I could go on and on. (And I have, in my book Locked in the Cabinet, which you can also find here, but please don’t order from here.)

Why am I telling you all this? Because I’m heartbroken. The wonderful department I once loved is being turned to s---.

I blame Trump. He’s the one who nominated Chavez-DeRemer to be his labor secretary.

Is it inappropriate for a former labor secretary to criticize a current one? Maybe, but I don’t care. She deserves it.

As I’ve noted, the White House yesterday told her two top aides — chief of staff Jihun Han and deputy secretary Rebecca Wright — to resign or be fired.

Investigators say the pair created a “toxic” work environment. Allegedly, they verbally abused staffers, silenced critics within the department, and concocted taxpayer-funded pleasure trips for Chavez-DeRemer by seeking out conferences or speaking engagements where she could make an appearance and then duck out.

I think Han and Wright are taking the rap for Chavez-DeRemer, who’s still facing allegations of drinking during the workday from a “stash” of alcohol in her office, taking subordinates to an Oregon strip club while on an official trip, and having an affair with a member of her security team.

In January, unnamed sources described Chavez-DeRemer as the “boss from hell,” saying she demanded staffers run personal errands for her or perform other menial tasks unrelated to their government jobs.

Meanwhile, her husband has been barred from the Frances Perkins Building after female staff accused him of unwanted sexual advances. His lawyer says the accusers are in cahoots with department employees to force Chavez-DeRemer out of office.

More than two dozen department employees from across the political spectrum describe in interviews with The New York Times a toxic workplace characterized by an absentee secretary, hostile aides, and a deeply demoralized staff.

It’s a f------ mess.

From what I hear, other departments are nearly as bad. Pete Hegseth’s Department of “War” suffers ongoing turmoil. Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security is in shambles. Pam Bondi’s Justice Department is a wreck.

Almost every department and agency of the federal government has become a back-stabbing rat’s nest. Total pandemonium. Career staff against political appointees and vice versa, political appointees against other political appointees. Blatant misuses of taxpayer dollars, self-dealing, conflicts of interest, sexual predation, abuses of lower-level employees.

This is what you get when you have a president and White House staff who don’t give a rat’s a-- about who they appoint to positions of power except for their loyalty to Trump and how they look on television. Along with Republicans in Congress who don’t oversee these departments because they couldn’t care less.

The only reason the White House booted Chavez-DeRemer’s deputy and chief of staff yesterday was to protect her a--, in order to protect Trump.

Trump and his White House assistants are fine with his appointees wrecking our government because they don’t care about government. Hell, they came to government to wreck it. If the public loses confidence in, say, the Department of Labor, that’s perfectly fine. If Congress slashes its funding, so much the better.

It infuriates me because I’ve seen government work for the people. I’ve witnessed public servants who care deeply and bust their a---- in service to this country. I know how important government can be if it’s doing the job it should be doing.

I loved the Department of Labor because it has improved the lives of millions of Americans. I worked like hell as secretary of labor because I believed in what we were doing. That it’s now being treated like crap is an insult to generations of hardworking DOL employees, to American workers, to America.

The least we can all do is flip Congress in November, so senators and representatives who care about this country can oversee these departments and try to remedy some of the wreckage that Trump and his appointees have wrought.

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 said Monday that the United States would continue attacking Iran for “whatever it takes.”

But what’s the “it” in that sentence?

He also said: “We’re destroying Iran’s missile capability” and “annihilating their navy” and ensuring that “this sick and sinister regime” in Iran “can never obtain a nuclear weapon.”

But how will we know when we’ve achieved any of this?

American intelligence officials say Iran has not tried to rebuild its main nuclear sites since the U.S. attack in June. Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium are still buried deep under rubble. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says his agency has found no evidence that Iran resumed enriching uranium since June.

Yet even more U.S. forces are headed to the Middle East, and Trump says bigger waves of airstrikes are coming. He hasn’t ruled out sending in ground troops.

Neither Trump nor anyone else in his regime has provided any clarity about how we’ll know whether we’ve “won” this war.

He has no endgame. He’s given out different timelines and goals, depending on when and to whom he’s speaking. Asked by NBC News what his objectives are, he said, “Number one is decapitating them, getting rid of their whole group of killers and thugs.” He told The Washington Post, “All I want is freedom” for the Iranian people.

Trump told ABC News’ Rachel Scott on Sunday that he had a “beautiful plan” for Iran’s future. He told other outlets there were “good” candidates to take over, but later told ABC’s Jon Karl that the people he had in mind were all dead.

I can’t help thinking about the Vietnam War, which preoccupied much of my youth (and, since he’s almost exactly my age, presumably Trump’s as well). There was no clear endgame there, either.

The biggest difference between Trump’s Iran war and Lyndon Johnson’s in Vietnam was that during Vietnam, America had a draft — which meant the administration had to repeatedly justify the war to the American people. As that misbegotten war escalated and its justification became ever more elusive, it grew to become a central focus of American politics, eventually causing LBJ to drop out of the 1968 presidential race.

But Trump feels no pressure to justify or explain anything. He has no f------ clue what he’s doing in Iran. He’s winging it. He believes he can somehow pull it off because he thinks he’s invincible.

It’s Trump’s M.O. He loves to create chaos because chaos allows him to improvise — to impose his own narrative on a flood of events, dodge responsibility for failures, take credit for successes, and create illusions of glory and victory.

But the chaos he’s ignited in the Middle East is so large that the narrative may already be out of his control. The conflagration is escalating and spreading too fast. Just three days in, he’s making conflicting and inconsistent decisions and providing conflicting accounts.

He assumed a war would be helpful to him. It would justify emergency measures at home. It would deflect attention from his multiple failures. It would make him seem larger.

But it is already making him smaller, more hostage to what’s occurring than leader, more Netanyahu’s patsy than senior partner, another American president sucked into the giant maw of the Middle East.

Americans have short memories, but they do recall that Trump was reelected to accomplish three things: First, to get prices down. He hasn’t done this. Inflation is growing at an annualized rate of nearly 3 percent. Oil prices are about to go through the roof because of the war he’s ignited in the Middle East.

Second, he promised to get control of the nation’s southern border. He’s done this by unleashing immigration agents inside America on people here legally, and doing so with such barbarity — including at least two murders — that most Americans think he’s gone too far.

His third promise was to avoid foreign entanglements. He said during the 2024 campaign that he’d “break the cycle of regime change” and avoid “reckless” policies. He noted that toppling regimes without plans creates “power vacuums that are filled simply by terrorists.” He wanted to shift America away from being “the policeman of the world.” He repeatedly promised to “expel the warmongers” from government. On election night in November 2024, he declared, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Trump has broken this pledge with astounding negligence. He has launched a war in the Middle East without a plan, without a strategy, and without any clear idea about where it leads or how it ends.

Even absent a draft, Americans will not tolerate this for long. If Trump’s War costs many American lives, they will not forgive him.

For all these reasons, Trump’s War may be his undoing. I pray it’s not also the undoing of America.

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 United States is now at war with Iran.

A single person, Donald J. Trump, has released the dogs of war on one of the most dangerous countries in the world — and done it without the consent of Congress or our allies, or even a clear explanation to the American people.

Four days after delivering a State of the Union address in which he boasted of ending eight wars and spent just three minutes discussing Iran and a preference for “diplomacy,” we are now bombing, maiming, and killing.

Anyone who has doubted Trump’s intention to replace American democracy with a dictatorship should now be fully disabused.

I share your despair, sadness, and fear. Even if our president were a wise and judicious man, surrounded by thoughtful advisers with impeccable integrity and wisdom, this would be a highly dangerous move.

Trump is facing the consequences of his decision in his first term to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated with Iran by Obama and backed by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China.

Trump walked away from that treaty because it was Obama’s — and he hates Obama because Obama negotiated safeguards against Iran enriching uranium to weapons grade. Obama also got Obamacare through Congress, addressed climate change and nuclear proliferation, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama was a winner. Trump is a loser. Trump cannot stomach this.

But why should America and thousands if not millions of innocent people pay the price of Trump’s egomaniacal stupidity?

Trump claimed in June to have disarmed Iran. He claimed again in his State of the Union last Tuesday to have “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear weapons program (an assertion rejected by the International Atomic Energy Agency).

Since then, Iran has taken steps to dig out the nuclear facilities hit during those strikes and has resumed work at some sites long known to American spy agencies.

But those same spy agencies say there’s no evidence that Iran has made active efforts to resume enriching uranium or trying to build a mechanism to detonate a bomb.

Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium remain buried after June’s strikes, making it nearly impossible for Iran to build a bomb “within days,” as Trump and his lapdogs claim.

Trump says he wants “regime change.” But unlike Venezuela, the Islamic Republic has nearly a million men under arms. Any attempt to overthrow that regime will require American troops on the ground and almost surely inflict mass casualties on Americans and Iranians.

Besides, Trump won a second term promising “no regime change,” and in 2024 he campaigned as “the first president in decades who started no new wars.”

He hasn’t prepared the American people for this.

In his State of the Union, he said Iran has refused to foreswear any nuclear weapons ambitions. Yet just hours before his address, Iran’s foreign minister reaffirmed on X that his country would “under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.”

Trump noted the Iran regime’s killing of thousands of protesters, but this hardly justifies a war that may cause the deaths of thousands more innocent civilians. (This morning, Iran’s Red Crescent said more than 60 children were killed in the strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh school in the southern town of Minab — a toll that has since been raised to 85.)

Make no mistake. The costs of this war — mayhem and deaths in the Middle East, higher oil prices (as Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz), increased risk of terrorism in Europe and the United States — could be catastrophic.

Yet Americans don’t support this war. They haven’t been told why we’re waging it. Trump’s MAGA base doesn’t want him to engage in regime change. Congress hasn’t voted for this war.

Trump is going to war for himself and his boundless, malicious ego.

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 Epstein files continue to wreak havoc among America’s (and the United Kingdom’s) wealthy elites — this week resulting in even more resignations (and, in the U.K., arrests).

The havoc seems to be getting closer to Trump. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the files fail to include key materials about a woman who in 2019 accused both Epstein and Trump of sexual assault when she was a minor. The FBI conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries of each, but the Justice Department released only the one describing her accusations against Epstein. The other three are missing, as are interview notes, although the department released notes of FBI interviews with other potential witnesses and victims.

This is eerily similar to Watergate. As a friend put it, the dam is leaking more every day, the shingles are dropping off the roof one by one, and there are even (gasp!) members of the president’s own party who want more disclosure. Somebody — like the fall guy who wrote the letter to Judge Sirica, or Alexander Butterfield, who told about the tapes, after saying, “Oh, I wish you hadn’t asked that question!” — is going to blow the deadly whistle. Maybe it’s the woman who accused Trump in 2019. When Trump says, “It’s time to move on from the Epstein files,” you gotta feel the ghost of Richard Nixon in the room.

Hence, today’s Office Hours question: Is the Epstein scandal finally about to destroy Trump?

Here are the most thoughtful responses I get to this question right now:

1. No. The public doesn’t care.

Epstein is by now old news. The public has moved on. Sure, almost every day we hear about another prominent person revealed in the files to be an Epstein crony who’s now pressured to resign their position. But the tempest won’t reach Trump. Even if evidence comes out that he molested a child, it won’t make a difference because there’s too much else going on, including his impending attack on Iran.

2. No. Unlike Nixon, Trump’s Republicans will stay loyal to him.

Regardless of what evidence comes out about Trump, Republicans in Congress will remain loyal to him. In the 1970s, congressional Republicans felt independent of Nixon and were willing to hold him accountable for Watergate. But Trump runs the Republican Party with an iron fist. Republicans won’t dare hold him accountable, because they’re scared of his vindictiveness.

3. Yes. A “smoking gun” is about to emerge on the one issue Trump’s MAGA base will hold against him.

Evidence of Trump’s sexual assault on a minor will soon emerge. Someone will leak it to the press. They’re already on it. Cover-ups never work. When the evidence emerges, Trump’s days are numbered, because pedophilia is the one issue that Trump’s MAGA base won’t forgive. After all, they demanded release of the Epstein files. And as the base goes, so will go congressional Republicans.

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’m not going to watch the State of the Union address Tuesday night. I urge you not to, either.

I hope Nielsen (or whoever makes such estimates these days) will find that far fewer Americans watched Trump’s State of the Union than have watched any other State of the Union in recent memory. It will drive Trump nuts.

There are plenty of other reasons for not watching.

First, he doesn’t deserve our attention. He’s abused and defiled the American presidency, even worse than he did in his first term.

He’s openly taken bribes. He’s blatantly usurped the powers of Congress. He has overtly used the Justice Department to punish people he considers his enemies and pardon people loyal to him. He has willfully rejected the rule of law, broken treaties, literally destroyed part of the White House, thumbed his nose at our allies (including our closest and heretofore loyal neighbors), and utterly failed his constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. He lies like most people breathe. He’s a fraud and a traitor.

Second, we already know what he’s going to say because he’s already stated and restated his lies every chance he gets. He says the economy is in wonderful shape, that he’s settled six wars, that he’s brought peace to the Middle East, that he’s made America safer and more secure, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, ad nauseam.

He assumes that if he repeats these lies often enough, people will believe them. Why should we give him more of an audience for his lies?

Third, he refuses to be president of the United States but only of the people who voted for him in 2024.

He talks in glowing terms about “my” people while denigrating “them” — those of us who didn’t vote for him, who still disapprove of him, or who refuse to give him whatever he wants.

He won’t even fund so-called blue states. So far this year he’s axed over $1.5 billion in blue-state grants, contrary to the wishes of Congress.

If he doesn’t believe he’s my president, why should I treat him as my president and watch his State of the Union?

Fourth and finally, I already know the real state of the union. It s----

The economy has been good for big business and wealthy Americans but s----- for small businesses and average working Americans.

Although Trump repeatedly promised that his tariffs would reduce U.S. imports, shrink the trade deficit, and lead to a revival in American manufacturing, the opposite has happened. The annual trade deficit in goods last year hit a record high. And U.S. manufacturers cut 108,000 jobs.

In the 2024 election, Trump also promised to bring down prices, but inflation is still steaming ahead. Prices grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in December. He’s so out of touch with what most Americans are enduring that he calls the crisis of affordability “fake news.”

He promised to control immigration, but 6 out of 10 Americans think he’s gone “too far” by sending federal agents into American cities who have caused mayhem and murder.

He promised to avoid foreign entanglements, but he abducted the president of Venezuela, killed more than 150 Venezuelans, and is now planning to attack Iran.

His menacing the Middle East has created another inflation risk: The possibility that a key oil export route will be disrupted has caused the price of Brent crude to soar.

For all these reasons, I’m not going to watch Trump’s State of the Union. I recommend that you don’t, either.

Your senators and representatives in Congress should boycott it, too. You might call their offices to suggest this. (Some Democrats are already planning to skip it, opting instead for a counter-programming event on the National Mall dubbed “The People’s State of the Union.” Good!)

And why the hell should justices of the Supreme Court show up, especially after he says he’s “ashamed” of the six who decided his tariffs exceeded his authority — calling the three Democratic appointees a “disgrace to our nation” and the three conservatives who voted against him “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” “very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” “swayed by foreign interests,” and “an embarrassment to their families”?

Boycott the State of the Union. It’s the least we can 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/.

A 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court decided yesterday that Trump cannot take core powers that the Constitution gives Congress. Instead, Congress must delegate any such power clearly and unambiguously.

This is a big decision. It goes far beyond merely interpreting the 1997 International Emergency Economic Powers Act not to give Trump the power over tariffs that he claims to have. It reaffirms a basic constitutional principle about the division and separation of powers between Congress and the president.

On its face, this decision clarifies that Trump cannot decide on his own not to spend money Congress has authorized and appropriated — such as the funds for USAID he refused to spend. And he cannot on his own decide to go to war.

“The Court has long expressed ‘reluctan[ce] to read into ambiguous statutory test’ extraordinary delegations of Congress’s powers,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for himself and five other justices in the opinion released yesterday in Learning Resources v. Trump.

He continued: “In several cases involving ‘major questions,’ the Court has reasoned that ‘both separation of powers principles and a practical understanding of legislative intent’ suggest Congress would not have delegated ‘highly consequential power’ through ambiguous language.”

Exactly. Trump has no authority on his own to impose tariffs, because the Constitution gives that authority to Congress.

But by the same Supreme Court logic, Trump has no authority to impound money Congress has appropriated because the Constitution has given Congress the “core congressional power of the purse,” as the court stated yesterday.

Hence, the $410 to $425 billion in funding that Trump has blocked or delayed violates the Impoundment Control Act, which requires congressional approval for spending pauses. This includes funding withheld for foreign aid, FEMA, Head Start, Harvard and Columbia universities, and public health.

Nor, by this same Supreme Court logic, does Trump have authority to go to war because Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to “declare War … and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water” — and Congress would not have delegated this highly consequential power to a president through ambiguous language.

Presumably this is why Congress enacted the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires a president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops and requires their withdrawal within 60 to 90 days unless Congress declares war or authorizes an extension. Iran, anyone?

The press has reported on yesterday’s Supreme Court decision as if it were only about tariffs. Wrong. It’s far bigger and even more important.

Note that the decision was written by Chief Justice John Roberts — the same justice who wrote the court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, another 6-3 decision in which the court ruled that former presidents have absolute immunity for actions taken within their core constitutional powers and at least presumptive immunity for all other official acts.

I think Roberts intentionally wrote yesterday’s decision in Learning Resources v. Trump as a bookend to Trump v. United States.

Both are intended to clarify the powers of the president and of Congress. A president has immunity for actions taken within his core constitutional powers. But a president has no authority to take core powers that the Constitution gives to Congress.

In these two decisions, the chief justice and five of his colleagues on the court have laid out a roadmap for what they see as the boundary separating the power of the president from the powers of Congress — and how they will decide future cases along that boundary.

Trump will pay no heed, of course. He accepts no limits to his power and has shown no respect for the Constitution, Congress, the Supreme Court, or the rule of law.

But the rest of us should now have a fairly good idea about what to expect from the Supreme Court in the months ahead.

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 consider myself tolerant. My preferred self-image is someone who enjoys meeting all kinds of people with all sorts of views. I tell my students that the best way to learn something is to talk with someone who disagrees with you.

But yesterday I got an invitation from a friend to a dinner party she was organizing, with a warning that she was also inviting someone I’ll call Jim.

Jim is a dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter. He was entranced by Trump in 2016. He thought that Trump won the 2020 election and it was “stolen” from him. He contributed money to Trump’s 2024 campaign. Jim worships Trump.

Our paths crossed briefly several years ago at a cocktail party. When Jim began praising Trump, I wanted to puke. Instead, I left the party and haven’t seen him since.

My friend’s invitation to her dinner party to which she’s also invited Jim is putting me to the test. I really don’t want to go. I cannot stomach the idea of talking with him. And yet, what about my preferred self-image? What about my admonition to my students? What about my supposed tolerance of different views?

So today I’m asking you what you’d do in my circumstances. Would you:

1. Accept her invitation and engage with Jim. It’s a good opportunity to practice what you preach. If you really believe all of us should talk with people with whom we disagree, you should ask him why he supports Trump and explain why you don’t. You might learn something.

2. Accept her invitation and try to be as polite to Jim as possible but don’t engage. She’s a friend of yours so you should accept her invitation and treat Jim nicely. You don’t have to bring up Trump or politics. If he brings them up, you can just say you’d rather not get into it and move to a different topic.

3. Accept her invitation but avoid talking with Jim. It’s a dinner party, so others will be invited. There’s no law that says you have to talk with him. If it’s a sit-down dinner, you might ask your friend to place you as far away from Jim as possible. If he moves in your direction before or after the sit-down dinner, you can just pleasantly move away.

4. Don’t accept her invitation. She had the good sense to tell you that she’d invited Jim, so she probably won’t be surprised or upset that you’re bowing out. Thank her for inviting you, extend your regrets for missing the event, and tell her you look forward to seeing her on another occasion.

Hence, today’s Office Hours question: What would you do under these circumstances?

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/.

Police in the United Kingdom have arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew and Duke of York, on suspicion of misconduct in public office—after the disclosure of emails between Mountbatten-Windsor and the late disgraced banker Jeffrey Epstein. As I write this, Mountbatten-Windsor remains in custody.

We don’t know yet the specific charges. But we do know that the late Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim, accused Mountbatten-Windsor of raping her.

We also know that Mountbatten-Windsor was the UK’s trade envoy between 2001 and 2011, and appears to have forwarded to Epstein confidential government reports from visits to Vietnam, Singapore, and China, including investment opportunities in gold and uranium in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer says, “No one is above the law.” The family of Virginia Giuffre says, “No one is above the law, not even royalty.” Britain’s chief prosecutor says, “No one is above the law.”

Instead of bureaucracies, America now has a royal entourage. Instead of institutions, we now have royal prerogative.

All of which raises awkward questions about the people implicated on this side of the pond, including the person in the Oval Office who loves to be treated like a king, and who appears in the Epstein files 1,433 times (that is, the files that have been released so far). Prince Andrew appears in them 1,821 times.

America likes to believe we gave up kings almost 250 years ago and adopted a system in which “no one is above the law.”

But President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has become a personal tool for him to channel money and status to himself and his closest associates. Since the 2024 election, the Trump family’s personal wealth has increased by at least $4 billion.

As with the British royalty of the 16th century, it’s all personal with Trump—all about expanding his power and enlarging his and his family’s wealth. Proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan oil? “That money will be controlled by me,” he says. The gift of a plane from Qatar? “Mine.” Investments by Middle-East kingdoms in his family’s crypto racket? “Perfectly fine.”

Like the British royalty of yore, King Trump has arbitrary power. He raises Switzerland’s tariff from 30-39% because its former president Karin Keller-Sutter “just rubbed me the wrong way.” He imposes a 50% tariff on Brazil because Brazil refused to halt its prosecution of Trump’s political ally, the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was found guilty of plotting a coup. Vietnam fast-tracks approval of a $1.5 billion Trump family golf course at the same time it seeks to reduce its tariff rate.

Trump claims that Greenland is “psychologically needed,” although the United States already has a military presence there and an open invitation to expand its bases. He muses about making Canada the “51st state.” These are throwbacks to the 16th-century age of empire.

***

Meanwhile, Trump has created a system of tribute and allegiance that would make Henry VIII jealous.

Apple’s Tim Cook delivers a gold-based plaque and a donation to Trump’s planned ballroom. Swiss billionaires bring a gold bar and a Rolex desk clock to the Oval Office. Jeff Bezos backs a vapid movie of Melania and hands her a check for $28 million.

Trump pardons Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire mogul who pled guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023, after which time Zhao’s Binance digital-coin trading platform becomes the engine of the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial.

King Trump was evidently involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s nefarious doings. We don’t know exactly how because there’s been no criminal investigation. But shouldn’t there be?

Elon Musk’s humongous quarter-billion-dollar contribution to Trump’s 2024 campaign earns Musk a dukedom—a “department of government efficiency”—and the keys to the kingdom in the form of sensitive US Treasury Department software systems used to manage federal payments.

But when the Duke of DOGE starts becoming more visible than King Trump, the king banishes him and revokes his dukedom. When the banished Musk begins openly criticizing Trump, the king threatens to cut off Musk’s head in the form of cutting him and his SpaceX off from valuable government contracts. This puts an end to Musk’s impertinence.

The new TikTok (on which Trump has more than 16 million followers) will continue operating in the United States—but now with the financial backing of Trump ally Larry Ellison’s Oracle;Trump’s allied Emirati investment firm MGX (which has already invested in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company); and Silver Lake, teamed up with the private equity firm founded by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Trump allows Nvidia to sell chips to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and extends military guarantees to Qatar—all of which have invested in the Trump family empire. (Emirati-backed investors plowed $2 billion into World Liberty Financial.)

Instead of national glory, Trump demands personal glory—to get the Nobel Peace Prize, to put his name on the Kennedy Center and Penn Station, and other major monuments and buildings.

If his commands are not met, he punishes. Because Norway didn’t give him a Nobel (it wasn’t Norway’s to give anyway), he “no longer feels obliged to think only of peace.” Because performers refuse to appear at the “Trump-Kennedy” Center, he shutters it.

Instead of bureaucracies, America now has a royal entourage. Instead of institutions, we now have royal prerogative. Instead of legitimacy based on the will of the people, there’s divine right (“I had God on my side,” “God was protecting me,” “God is on our side”).

***

We will march against King Trump on the next “No Kings Day” on March 28—hopefully making it the biggest protest in American history.

But the arrest of the former Prince Andrew raises an issue that goes way beyond protesting and marching. King Trump was evidently involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s nefarious doings. We don’t know exactly how because there’s been no criminal investigation. But shouldn’t there be?

Pam Bondi obviously won’t investigate Trump because she’s part of King Trump’s court. But what about a group of state attorneys general?

Trump has also been enriching himself and his family through his public office, violating multiple laws about conflicts of interest.

If the UK can arrest the former Prince Andrew on evidence of such wrongdoing, why shouldn’t America arrest King Trump? If no one is above the law in the UK, not even royalty, presumably no one is above the law in the US, not even a president.

Pam Bondi obviously won’t investigate Trump because she’s part of King Trump’s court. But what about a group of state attorneys general?

Almost 250 years after we broke with George III, the question must now be faced: Are we a monarchy or a nation of laws?

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 was secretary of labor 30 years ago when the U.S. economy was producing an average of 200,000 new jobs a month.

I remember holding news conferences on “jobs days” each month. I felt confident about the strength of the economy. What worried me then was that the new jobs didn’t pay well. (A disgruntled worker once called out to me, “Sure, Mr. Secretary, lots of new jobs. I’m doing three of them to make ends meet!”)

Last Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that the United States produced an average of just 15,000 new jobs per month last year — a record low. And most paid s---.

January showed an uptick in jobs, but almost all of the new jobs were in health care and construction. The rest of the economy seems to be shrinking. And wages are still stuck in the mud.

Profits of big corporations have soared. The stock market values attached to these profits have risen even more. Yet average workers are barely making it.

The U.S. economy is more distorted than ever.

The widening gap between corporate profits and average workers — between capital and labor — helps explain the disconnect between a buoyant economy and pessimistic households. Consumer confidence is in the basement.

The gap was widening before Trump was elected. It explains in part the rise of MAGA and why Trump won in 2016 and again in 2024.

But Trump hasn’t done a thing to alter these trends. In fact, since he became president again, corporate profits (and the stock market) have done even better than before, while average workers have seen almost no gains in jobs or wages.

“I think we have the greatest economy actually ever in history,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow that aired Tuesday.

That’s not what most Americans think. Even most young men — central to Trump’s wins in 2016 and 2024 — now believe they were better off under Biden.

We’re not powerless to alter these trends. The “free market” doesn’t run on automatic. The rules of the economy depend on political decisions — such as tax laws, antitrust laws, and labor laws.

Since Ronald Reagan was president, the nation has lowered taxes on the wealthy and raised them (especially Social Security and state sales taxes) on average Americans.

America has also allowed big corporations to monopolize the economy — which has given them the power to raise prices without worrying that a competitor will grab consumers away.

And what about labor laws?

Take a look at this chart.

The blue line represents the percentage of the national income going to the richest 10 percent — that is, how much of every dollar earned in the United States goes into the pockets of the wealthiest tenth of Americans.

The red line represents the percentage of workers that belong to a union.

Notice a pattern?

The 1940s and 50s saw a dramatic rise in union membership. Laws and public policies encouraged unionization.

That was also a time when a growing portion of the nation’s income went into the pockets of ordinary working people instead of the pockets of the richest 10 percent.

That’s because unions give workers more bargaining power to get a larger share of the profits they helped generate. The benefits of unions helped nonunion workers too. In order to attract workers, corporations that didn’t have unions had to increase the pay of their workers, too.

As a result, by the mid-1950s, America’s economy was powered by the biggest middle class this nation had ever seen. Racial and gender disparities were still a big problem, but America was making progress on them as income inequality trended downward.

So what happened?

As you can see, union membership started to decline in the 1970s.

That was after Lewis Powell — soon to be a justice on the Supreme Court, then an attorney in Richmond, Virginia — urged the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the leaders of American corporations to pour great wads of money into American politics.

Corporations doubled-down on busting unions, while their allies in government weakened labor laws.

Then, starting with Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, corporate attacks on unions got turbocharged. Reagan fired the striking air-traffic controllers. Legally, they had no right to strike, but Reagan’s move legitimized a far broader assault on American unions.

Since then, unions have steadily shrunk, and the gap between the rich and everyone else has taken off. I saw it when I was secretary of labor in the 1990s. I was worried then. I’m far more worried now.

Today, the top 10 percent are doing okay, largely because they own 92 percent of the value of all the shares of stock owned by Americans, and the stock market is doing just fine. The real wealth of the nation has now concentrated in the richest one-tenth of 1 percent.

And the bottom 90 percent are barely holding on.

My friends, this is not bad only for the bottom 90 percent. It’s also bad for the economy and dangerous for our democracy. If unaddressed, it could lead to more demagogues like Trump as far as the eye can see.

As the great jurist Louis Brandeis is reputed to have said: America has a choice. We can have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy, but we cannot have both.

If we want to make sure our economy works for everyone, not just the super-rich, we need to build back union power.

A resurgence of labor unions would go a long way toward fighting inequality, rebuilding a large and vibrant middle class, and making life better for all Americans.

Which is why it’s vital that we support unions.

Please take a look here, and share:

- 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 New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security has sent Google (owner of YouTube), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), and other media corporations subpoenas for the names on accounts that criticize ICE enforcement. The department wants to identify Americans who oppose what it’s doing.

I’ll save them time.

---

Hello? Kristi Noem?

Robert Reich here. I hear you’re trying to find the names of people who are making negative comments on social media about ICE enforcement.

Look no further. I’ve done it frequently. I’m still doing it. This note to you, which I’m posting on Substack, is another example.

If you want more details, just type “Robert Reich” into an internet browser, followed by YouTube or Facebook or Instagram or X or TikTok or Reddit. Or Substack. Then type in your name, or ICE, or the Department of Homeland Security. That will give you plenty of evidence.

If you read what I’ve said, you’ll find it’s very critical. I’ve done some videos that are very critical of you and ICE, too.

Let me not mince words: I really truly believe you’re doing a s----- job.

I’ve said and will continue to say that many of the things you and ICE are doing are unconstitutional.

For example: Pulling people out of their homes in the middle of the night without search warrants. Arresting people without giving them due process of law to defend themselves. Putting innocent people into detention camps. Not giving them adequate food or medical care. Not letting their families know where they are. Sending them out of the country to brutal prisons in other lands. Even jailing children. Arresting journalists reporting on protests against you. And murdering two innocent Americans and not allowing a full criminal investigation of those murders.

All this is forbidden by the Constitution of the United States, Madam Secretary. The federal courts keep telling you this, but you and your department keep defying the courts. This is unconstitutional, too.

You’re even violating the Constitution by sending administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, and all the rest, seeking accounts like mine that criticize what you’re doing.

I have a right under the First Amendment to criticize you without fear of the consequences.

It’s my government, Madam Secretary. You see the possessive pronoun I’m using? My government. It’s your government because you’re a citizen of the United States, not because you’re a government official.

You and your boss are supposed to be working for me and every other American. You swore an oath. The people of the United States hired the two of you to do your jobs, which doesn’t including spying on us or jailing us or trying to intimidate us or murdering us.

I was once a Cabinet officer like you are, Madam Secretary. I had a big office like you do. I had a big staff, like you do. Taxpayers paid for all of it, as they do for everything you’re up to — except when Congress stops the funding, as they have now, because you’re doing so many despicable things.

When I was in the Cabinet, Madam Secretary, I was acutely aware of my responsibilities to the Constitution of the United States. I told myself every day that I had sworn an oath to uphold it. I worked very hard every day to fulfill that responsibility.

I’m not boasting or bragging. I merely did my duty.

I visited communities where my department’s inspectors were attempting to keep people safe, to make sure they were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

I did what federal judges told me to do.

I invited criticism of me and my department. That was an important way to get feedback on what we were doing, to learn if we were making mistakes, to improve the way we served the public. Feedback is very useful in a democracy. You might even say it’s essential to democracy.

What the h--- are you doing, Madam Secretary?

Robert Reich

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/

Producer Alicia Hastey departed CBS News Wednesday, saying the work she came to do was “increasingly becoming impossible,” as stories were now evaluated “not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”

Whose ideological expectations was Hastey referring to? Would it be impertinent for me to suggest it’s the sociopath in the Oval Office?

Hastey’s criticism came a little over two weeks after Bari Weiss, the anti-“woke” opinion journalist who became editor-in-chief at CBS News, unveiled her “21st century” vision at a town hall meeting.

Weiss told producers and staff they were free to leave if they didn’t like it. Since then, at least six out of 20 “CBS Evening News” producers have accepted buyouts.

At that town hall meeting Weiss also named a bunch of new contributors — including the anti-aging influencer Peter Attia. In the latest tranche of Epstein files, Attia appears over 1,700 times, including in an email in which he tells Epstein that “p----- is, indeed, low carb.”

In a missive to the newsroom, Weiss declared that “We love America” should be a guiding principle for the relaunch of the “CBS Evening News.”

Meanwhile, Weiss has replaced “Evening News” anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois with Tony Dokoupil — who was best known for hassling the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates for his “extremist” belief that apartheid is morally wrong.

In one of his first broadcasts, Dokoupil accepted without question Israel’s justification for violating the terms of the ceasefire when it killed three journalists in Gaza, reporting only that “Israel said it was targeting a group operating a drone affiliated with Hamas.”

Weiss faced blowback in December when she shelved a “60 Minutes” report about Venezuelans being deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison hours before it was set to air.

Sharyn Alfonsi, a long-standing “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, had 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.”

The segment later aired on January 18, drawing over 5 million viewers.

The story CBS posted about Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis reported that “the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition.”

No identifiable source was given for CBS’s assertion of “internal bleeding.” A CBS News staffer reported “huge internal concern” that the source was an anonymous leak by the Trump administration meant for an outlet they could trust to run it, no questions asked.

Weiss doesn’t exactly report to Donald Trump, of course. Trump runs CBS News the way he runs Venezuela — with a widely understood threat that he’ll wreak havoc if it doesn’t do what he wants.

As Trump told Dokoupil recently in a rambling nearly 13-minute interview, if Kamala Harris had won the presidential election in 2024, “you probably wouldn’t have a job right now.”

Perhaps CBS News didn’t edit Dokoupil’s rambling interview with Trump because, moments after it ended, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt conveyed Trump’s threat that “if it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your a-- off.”

You see the way Trump now controls CBS News. Dokoupil is Bari Weiss’s newly minted anchor. Bari Weiss is David Ellison’s newly minted head of CBS News. David Ellison is his father’s (Larry Ellison) newly minted head of Paramount, which is the new owner of CBS. Larry Ellison is a pal of Trump’s who contributes to Trump’s super PAC. And Trump? He allowed Ellison to buy CBS and now has the power to take the prized Warner Bros Discovery out of the clutches of Netflix and deliver it to Ellison as well.

Among David Ellison’s first moves at CBS was to gut DEI policies, appoint right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein to a new “ombudsman” role, and appoint Weiss.

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 responsibilities to the American public that transcended making money for CBS’s investors.

America can survive without a “60 Minutes” it can trust, just as we can survive without trustworthy editorial pages of The Washington Post — whose owner, Jeff Bezos, has demanded it reflect right-wing capitalism and whose newsroom he just gutted.

But at some point, as Trump continues to repress criticism of him and his regime, American democracy is compromised beyond repair.

Here, in contrast to the Trump suck-up CBS News has become, is the courageous 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/.

I wanted to highlight and give you context for some important news.

The news is that Trump’s federal prosecutors have failed to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers — all veterans of the military or the intelligence community — who posted a video in November reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders.

The video enraged Trump. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” he wrote on his social media site. He shared another post saying, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

Days later, the six lawmakers disclosed that the FBI had contacted the House and Senate, requesting interviews with them, indicating that a criminal investigation was underway.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington and a longtime Trump ally, promptly asked a grand jury to indict them.

But the grand jury refused.

I can’t emphasize enough how rare it is for a grand jury to refuse to issue an indictment that’s requested by a federal prosecutor, because prosecutors exert so much control over them.

Grand juries aren’t like juries in regular trials. They meet in secret — 16 to 23 citizens summoned from the community. No judge is present. No lawyers who represent defendants are present. No witnesses appear. Prosecutors are in total command — presenting evidence of a crime and asking grand juries to indict. And the evidentiary standard is not whether a crime occurred “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but merely whether there is “probable cause” of a federal crime.

It’s not surprising, then, that federal grand juries have issued indictments in over 99 percent of cases prosecutors bring to them. (For example, in 2010, of 162,000 federal cases that federal prosecutors presented to grand juries seeking an indictment, only 11 resulted in grand juries deciding not to indict.) As Judge Sol Wachtler, the former New York jurist, famously said, prosecutors are in such complete control of grand juries that they could get them to indict a ham sandwich.

But in 2025, something odd began happening. Federal grand juries in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Virginia refused to indict. At least seven of these cases involved clashes between protesters and federal officers. A grand jury in Virginia twice refused to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Then came yesterday’s grand jury’s rejection of Trump’s demand that the six lawmakers he targeted be criminally prosecuted.

It’s an amazing spectacle. Ordinary people serving on grand juries are refusing to indict people who have become entangled in Trump’s viciousness. A citizens’ revolt.

Because of the secretive nature of grand juries, it’s impossible to know for sure why this has been happening. But the rejections suggest that grand jurors may have had enough of prosecutors seeking harsh charges in a highly politicized environment.

After the grand jury refused to indict him and five others, Senator Mark Kelly called Trump’s effort “an outrageous abuse of power by Donald Trump and his lackeys. Donald Trump wants every American to be too scared to speak out against him. The most patriotic thing any of us can do is not back down.”

He’s exactly right. The Justice Department and its federal prosecutors have abandoned any pretense at neutral justice. They’re now flagrant flaks for Trump.

Today, Republican senators weighed in against the regime. North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis accused the regime of using “political lawfare” to try to lock up its perceived enemies. “Thankfully in this instance, a jury saw the attempted indictments for what they really were.” Iowa Republican senator, and Judiciary Committee Chair, Chuck Grassley said: “I think our law enforcement people ought to be spending their time on making our community safe and going after real law breakers.” And Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered that “That’s the judicial system at work.”

At Trump’s insistence, Pirro has opened a criminal investigation of Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve. The department is also pursuing criminal investigations of Democratic officials in Minnesota who opposed Trump’s immigration crackdown. It arrested the journalist Don Lemon over his presence at a church protest in Minneapolis. Last week the FBI searched an elections office in the Atlanta area based on debunked claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Not only are Senate Republicans rising up against this, but so are ordinary Americans. They’re — we’re — saying no to Trump’s vicious prosecutions and no to the federal prosecutors pursing them. We’re saying no to Republican candidates in special elections. We’re saying no to ICE and Border Patrol troops in our cities. We’re shouting “ICE OUT” and “F--- ICE” at sporting events. We’re saying no at marches and demonstrations.

A citizens’ revolt is occurring across America against the mad king, including in places — such as grand juries — where revolts almost never occurred before.

Mark my words, friends: We will be stronger for having gone through this.

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/

A few days ago I was approached on the street by someone I didn’t know. “Are you Robert Reich?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I just want you to know …” she began, and then burst into tears. I felt awful but couldn’t think what to say. Then, in a flash, she was gone.

I don’t know what she wanted me to know, but I do know that lots of people are weeping these days.

They’re weeping for family members who have been arrested and abducted by ICE. For children arrested and imprisoned, even if their own families haven’t been affected. For people murdered by ICE or Border Patrol.

Grieving the children now dying around the world because they no longer have medicines that America used to provide through USAID or because they’re starving in places of war or famine in which America is implicated.

Crying for our planet being destroyed because Trump won’t adhere to the Paris Agreement and promotes oil and coal and kills subsidies for solar and wind.

In tears over the common decency that’s being demolished, as Trump reposts a video of the Obamas as apes, calls Somali-Americans “garbage,” and demands his name on an airport or train station in return for approving a vital transit project in New York.

Lamenting an America being sacked with impunity by billionaires like Jeff Bezos — handing Melania Trump $28 million while slashing The Washington Post’s newsroom and laying off thousands of Amazon workers, at the same time raking in billions of dollars more.

Or Elon Musk — planning AI data centers in space while his AI Grok floods X with sexually explicit images, and promising to flood American politics with more of his money.

And the shameless, wealthy, powerful men who abused young girls in Jeffrey Epstein’s island retreat and New York townhouse.

They’re sobbing because they’re sickened by what has happened to America.

Cry, our beloved country.

I understand the tears. I have wept, too.

But let’s not just weep.

As bleak as this era is, I hope you can also see in it an opportunity.

We could not have stayed on the road we were on even before Trump — toward widening inequality, a politics polluted by wealthy campaign donations and corporate super PACs, a market increasingly rigged by and for billionaires, an economy dominated by finance, and a climate collapsing.

So now we have an opportunity to begin the rebuilding America. A chance to reimagine what we can become and how we can live.

To commit ourselves to stopping the self-dealing, crony capitalism, and legalized bribery that have led us to where we are. Override Citizens United and get big money out of our politics. Prevent the oligarchy from monopolizing our economy, owning our media, and taking over America.

An opportunity to update our Constitution and our means of self-government. Abolish the Electoral College. Stop political and racial gerrymandering.

And never again allow a loathsome wannabe king to tyrannize America and the world.

In other words, my friends, now is the time to rededicate ourselves to the values enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and FDR’s first and second inaugural addresses.

A time to educate the next generation so they don’t make the same mistakes. To teach our children and our grandchildren what happened and why, and instill in them a passion for democracy and the rule of law.

To read them the poems of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, Emma Lazarus’s “New Colossus” — which adorns the Statue of Liberty — and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Washington Monument.

To celebrate the courage of generations of American soldiers, the selflessness of our teachers and social workers, and the kindness of people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the people of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Yes, weep for what we have lost. But don’t just weep. Turn these losses into a new beginning — based on what’s good in America and what has gone wrong.

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 try to ignore Trump’s posts because every one of them is filled with his noxious bloviation.

But sometimes his posts are so revolting that I can’t just let them pass. The loathsome sociopath in the Oval Office has to be held accountable.

Late Thursday — which happened to be the fifth day of Black History Month — at exactly 11:44 pm, Trump posted a video that included a depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys.

Now, we all know Trump is a loathsome human being. His insults have become an odious staple of his presidency. You may remember his AI-generated video of himself as a fighter pilot dumping excrement on No Kings Day protesters. Or his AI-generated video of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries as mariachi performers.

Yesterday, the White House press secretary hurried into the White House press room with her usual pooper-scooper to clean up from last night’s racist post — calling it nothing but “an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” and adding, for good measure: “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

Well, it turns out that plenty of Republican members of Congress were outraged, too — and they didn’t fake it. “The most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” posted South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate. “A reasonable person sees the racist context in this,” posted Nebraska Republican Senator Pete Ricketts. “Totally unacceptable,” posted Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker. “Wrong and incredibly offensive,” posted New York Republican congressman Mike Lawler. “Offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable,” posted Ohio Republican congressman Mike Turner.

What happened then? Just before noon today, Eastern Time — some 12 hours after Trump posted his piece of s--- — the White House said the post had been deleted.

No apology offered, of course. The White House blamed an unnamed “White House staffer” for it.

But you and I and anyone who has paid attention to Trump’s outbursts of bigoted offal over the past months knows it came from him.

Four observations.

First, you know Trump is going to unload his vitriol whenever he feels upstaged by Obama (or Biden) or any other prominent critic. Last weekend, at the same time “Melania” was released, Netflix views of Michelle Obama’s 2020 documentary “Becoming” surged by more than 13,000 percent.

Second, even Republican senators and representatives are now unafraid to publicly accuse Trump of being a bigot. That’s progress.

Third, when congressional Republicans make a ruckus, Trump backs down.

Fourth, this incident adds to the accumulating evidence that Trump is losing his mind.

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 has sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion.

In the suit, filed in Miami federal court on Thursday, Trump alleges that the IRS was responsible for the leak of some of Trump’s tax documents to press in September 2020. The leak occurred by an IRS contractor.

The leaked tax documents revealed that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, the year he first won the presidency, and paid no taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.

The lawsuit claims that the leak caused Trump and his family “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump.”

Oh please.

Trump has been unique among presidential candidates and presidents in refusing to release his tax documents to the public.

He’s also been unique among presidents in filing lawsuits against the government — his government, which is supposed to be our government.

He’s also been unique among presidents in turning the Justice Department into his own private law firm — at least unique since 1975, when Gerald Ford rescued the department from the clutches of Richard Nixon.

So how, exactly, is this $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS going to work? Who will represent the government — that is, you and I and every other taxpayer that would, in effect, have to shell out $10 billion if he wins?

How can the Justice Department represent us when Trump has directed the department to do whatever he wants it to do? If there are settlement negotiations with him, who’s going to negotiate the settlement with him? Who’s going to sign the final agreement with him?

This takes the “art of the deal” into a surreal new dimension. Trump will be making a deal with himself.

[Scene: The Oval Office. President Trump is sitting behind the Resolute Desk. In front of him is Donald Trump, as himself.]

Trump as president: “So, Mr. Trump, as to this lawsuit, what do you REALLY want?”

Trump as himself: “I told you: $10 billion.”

Trump as president: “Will all due respect, Mr. Trump, that’s ludicrous.”

Trump as himself: “It’s NOT ludicrous! Your IRS illegally released my tax returns!”

Trump as president: “It’s not my IRS.”

Trump as himself: “Then whose IRS is it?”

Trump as president: “Yours! You’re a citizen of the United States! The IRS works for you!

Trump as himself: “Bull---- You’re president! The IRS works for YOU!”

Trump as president [trying to reason with Trump as himself]: “Look, there’s no way I can justify to the American people paying you $10 billion.”

Trump as himself: “You have no choice.”

Trump as president: “Of course I have a choice. I can say ‘No.” In fact, I will say ‘No.’ [He clears his throat] … NO!”

Trump as himself: “NOBODY says ‘NO’ to me. I’m Donald Trump!”

Trump as president: “Well, I’m the f------ president of the United States!”

Trump as himself: “Okay, Mr. F------ President Trump. I’ll take this all the way to the Supreme Court!”

Trump as president [laughing]: “Try it! They’ll decide the case for ME! I own seven of them!”

Trump as himself: “NO, they’ll decide the case for ME! I appointed three of them and the rest OWE me!”

Trump as president: “You’re out of your mind!”

Trump as himself: “You’re a moron!”

Trump as president [rising out of his chair and pointing to the door]: “Get the hell out of my office!”

Trump as himself: “NO! YOU get the hell out of MY office!”

[They lunge at each other. It becomes the scene from the movie “Fight Club” where Edward Norton beats himself up until he finally realizes that his nemesis is a figment of his own imagination, whereupon he stops fighting and shoots himself.]

[The End]

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/