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/

Public pressure. Pause over these two words. They explain much of what happened this past week.

Why did the Department of Justice finally agree to commence a civil rights investigation into the murder of Alex Pretti?

Why was Greg (“How-the-hell-do-I-open-this-teargas canister?”) Bovino removed from his commander-at-large position in Minneapolis and replaced with border czar Tom Homan, who promises to de-escalate the situation there and drawdown the number of agents?

Why did seven Senate Republicans join all Senate Democrats in voting to block the spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security?

Why did two Senate Republicans even vote with Democrats to repeal the $75 billion funding increase for ICE that Republicans had included in their Big Ugly bill last July?

Public pressure.

It’s different from political power. You and I and most Americans have little or no political power. We can’t force the dictator or his thugs to do, or stop doing, anything. Politically, we’re hostages to Trump and his congressional Republican cowards and zombies.

But this past week we exerted public pressure.

We rallied. We demonstrated. We marched in towns and cities across America. We called our neighbors and friends and families. We called our local media. We called our members of Congress. We wrote letters. We put up signs and billboards.

This culminated in a national shutdown on Friday — shuttering schools and businesses.

We did what a free people do when threatened by a dictator or fascist strongman — we joined together. In outrage and disbelief. In fear and in fury. We joined together to say ENOUGH.

We drew inspiration from the disciplined, dedicated, and courageous people of Minneapolis and St. Paul. They’re ordinary Americans — not “lefties” or “professional agitators,” as the regime describes them — but average Americans with jobs, moms and dads with children, and their friends and neighbors.

As Adam Serwer writes in the The Atlantic, “If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it ‘neighborism’— a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from.”

Contrast this with the guiding philosophy of the Trump regime as stated by JD Vance: “It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’”

The best of America accepts and helps strangers. The best of America welcomes new neighbors. The best of America rejects bigotry. The best of America stands up to dictators.

In Minnesota and elsewhere across the land, grassroots “neighborism” and outrage at Trump’s tyranny are creating an extraordinarily powerful movement.

It’s the kind of public pressure that seeps upward — and boils up — from the roots of America. I’ve seen and felt it (and been part of it) before. During the Vietnam War. During the Civil Rights Movement.

It’s more powerful than everyday political power because it reverberates across America, engulfing those in positions of formal power. It can be felt and heard even by a sociopath sitting in the Oval Office.

This one is just starting.

Trees grow from their roots. The roots send up green shoots. This past week, green shoots emerged.

Make no mistake: These green shoots are still no match for shootings by Trump’s goons. No match for the “official” permission granted to masked ICE agents to make warrantless arrests of people they “suspect” of being undocumented — a direct assault on the Fourth Amendment. Or the arrests of journalists who were covering protests — an assault on the First.

We have a long way to go before America’s new roots and their green shoots grow into trees and the trees grow into forests that foster a new birth of civic virtue and democracy in America.

But, my friends, have no doubt. The roots of America’s neighborism and outrage against tyranny are deepening and spreading, and their green shoots are sprouting. And the fossilized remnants of a bigoted and brutal America — culminating in and exemplified by Donald J. Trump and his thugs — are heading for the dustbin of history.

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 Trump regime started the week by telling lies about Alex Pretti’s murder. Now, Trump has pivoted back to telling lies about the economy in order to change the subject. Trump lies like other humans breathe.

Trump’s year back in office has been filled with lies and broken promises. We’re in the gravitational pull of the midterm elections, so it’s not too early to examine what he promised and how he’s delivered on them.

In this week’s video, I take a look at Trump’s 10 biggest campaign promises and what’s happened since he took office.

I doubt you need convincing, but you might share the video with your Trumpish “Uncle Bob” or anyone else still under the illusion that he’s doing what he said he would.

Are you feeling the “New Golden Age?” Are you enjoying those home and energy prices cut “in half?” How about the satisfaction of having peace throughout the world? And what of his promise to release ALL the Epstein files?

There are so many promises to talk about, you’ll never guess the one promise he actually kept.

Thanks for watching.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

One of the few advantages of being as conspicuous as I am is that many people come up to me whom I don’t know, to give me their views about what’s happening in America — as if I’m a free-floating focus group.

This morning, I was at a restaurant counter finishing my breakfast when a middle-aged man sat down next to me, turned to me, and said, “I don’t want to intrude.”

He just had just done so, so I put down my knife and fork, wiped my mouth with my napkin, turned toward him, and asked, “May I help you?”

“I’ve been a life-long Republican,” he said, “but the events of the past weeks have caused me to leave the Republican Party.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” I said with a smile and turned to finish my breakfast.

“I’m from New Hampshire, and many of my Republican friends are leaving the party, too,” he said. “Minneapolis was the last straw.”

I put down my fork and turned toward him again. “I assume you’re talking about the behavior of ICE and Border Patrol agents there, and the killings?”

“All terrible, of course,” he said, shaking his head. “But what really finished me were the lies — Noem. Miller, Bovino, Vance, Trump.” He frowned. “They all lied through their teeth. I saw the video! They’re a pack of liars.”

I agreed and then turned back to my breakfast, explaining that I had to finish to get to an appointment.

But his words stuck with me.

There are two ways to look at what’s happened in Minneapolis. Two different tipping points for America.

The first is to see the nation tipping more deeply toward Trump’s fascist police state. ICE and the Border Patrol have now become vehicles of state terror. They’re engaged in extrajudicial executions with apparent impunity.

This tipping began with Trump’s purging of federal prosecutors who tried to hold him accountable for his attempted coup. It continued with his pardons of the January 6 rioters, his pardons of his allies and wealthy friends, his criminal prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James, and the criminal investigation of Jerome Powell.

Now, we’re at full tilt. Trump’s inadequately trained, trigger-happy goons — outfitted with guns, pepper spray, and riot gear — have been bullying, beating, and murdering the residents of Minneapolis.

The regime refuses to allow Minnesota to investigate the killings, won’t criminally investigate the shooters, makes wildly false accusations about the victims, and claims that federal agents responsible for the killings have total immunity from prosecution.

But there’s a second way to see what’s happening in Minnesota — a tipping point of a different kind. The fellow from New Hampshire who sat next to me at breakfast this morning typifies it.

It’s America tipping toward mass revulsion of Trump and the people around him.

His latest lies and those of his surrounding sycophants are so blatant and disgusting that some Republicans, like my breakfast companion, are abandoning the GOP altogether.

Americans are coming together to defeat Trump’s fascism, just as they’ve come together in Minneapolis. Not just demonstrating — but also participating in neighborhood watches, standing guard outside a local mosque during Friday prayers, sending out encrypted messages about where agents are lurking, and taking videos of ICE’s atrocities and sharing them widely.

I hear from friends and former students in Minneapolis about an extraordinary outpouring of cooperation and mutual aid. They’re organizing deliveries of food and other necessities to families afraid to leave their homes, picking up groceries for immigrant families, driving vulnerable families to doctor’s appointments, and taking immigrant kids to school.

One friend tells me he’s lived in Minneapolis for 40 years and has never felt the city as closely bound together. “I think we’ve discovered the real meaning of community,” he writes.

A former student says that despite the subzero weather, he and everyone he knows have been involved in organizing — both against ICE and for one another. “This goes far deeper than a protest,” he says. “It’s a new way to live here.”

This upwelling isn’t limited to Minneapolis. I’m hearing from friends and former students across America who are seeing something similar where they live.

“You wouldn’t believe how this community has come together,” writes an old friend from Portland, Maine. “I’ve lived here for more than 20 years and don’t recall a time when we felt as united.”

Both tipping points may be true: We’re tipping toward Trump’s fascist police state at the same time we’re tipping toward a new era of community and solidarity. The latter is the consequence of the former.

I don’t buy the predictions of a second civil war. I think Americans are better than that. If polls are to be believed, most oppose the way Trump has been implementing his immigration policies. Most don’t accept his fascist police state.

As the nation shudders on the edge of his police state, we’re gaining stronger unity against it and taking more responsibility for the well-being of each other. In the darkness of Trump, we’re finding the light 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/.

I believe the shots that killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good are the shots heard ‘round the world that will topple the Trump regime.

From Minneapolis to Davos, people are joining together against Trump’s tyranny.

In Minnesota, they are joining across ethnicity, race, and class against Trump’s gestapo tactics, repression, and murders. Solidarity is spreading to other cities.

In Europe, they are joining across national boundaries against Trump’s threats to their sovereignty, the European Community, and NATO.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, in a speech that drew a standing ovation from world leaders at Davos, called on “middle powers” like Canada and Europe to form a new alliance against economic coercion from the world’s great powers (by which he clearly meant Trump’s United States and Putin’s Russia).

Across America and across the world, people are realizing it’s not possible to appease America’s dictator. The only way to deal with him is to stand up to him — and the only way to stand up to him is by joining together against him.

Trump backed down from his threatened tariffs on Europe for not supporting his acquisition of Greenland, because Europe and Canada held firm.

Of course, Trump is now hitting back. He’s openly contemplating using the Insurrection Act against Americans who oppose him. He’s threatening Carney’s government with 100 percent tariffs on all Canadian products coming into the U.S. if Canada makes a deal with China. The mad dictator is losing his mind.

Europeans and much of the rest of the world have lived under dictatorships. Until now — until Trump — Americans had not.

Yet the “greatest generation” of Americans — including many of our parents and grandparents — risked their lives fighting dictators so that this country would remain free and democratic.

So far, two Americans, both age 37, have given up their lives in Minneapolis in resisting the dictator now occupying the Oval Office.

We must now join together, all of us, to peacefully and decidedly end his dictatorship.

In memory of parents and grandparents who made the supreme sacrifice — in memory of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — we must bring down this regime. The first step is a massive general strike.

We will say loudly and clearly: Enough.

As Trump’s dementia worsens, several axioms are useful for interpreting his increasingly incoherent bloviation.

Axiom #1: Whatever he asserts to be a fact is either a wild exaggeration or a bald-faced lie. Always disregard.

Axiom #2: Whatever he blames on anyone else is something he’s done. He projects like mad, so his accusations are always windows onto what he’s worrying that others will discover about himself.

Axiom #3: Whatever he criticizes as being fake news is a fact he doesn’t want you to know. So pay special attention to it.

Axiom #4: Whenever he attacks some source of information — a survey, poll, or report — it’s come up with some truth he fears. So look at it and share it.

(If you’ve got any other axioms, please share them with us.)

Apropos of the fourth axiom comes today’s New York Times/Siena University poll, which prompted a bilious message from Trump, saying he’s adding it to his lawsuit against The New York Times.

Hence, the poll is worth your looking at and sharing.

What does it show? That all the hand-wringing over Trump’s so-called “realignment” in the 2024 election was rubbish. There was no realignment.

It’s true that when Trump took office a year ago, his approval rating was above 50 percent and he had made significant breakthroughs among traditionally Democratic groups of voters — especially young, nonwhite and and low-turnouts.

But now that’s all gone. Only 40 percent of registered voters now approve of his performance. The supposed “demographic shifts” of the last election have completely vanished. Young and nonwhite voters disapprove of him even more than they did then, although he has kept most of his support among older and white voters.

Overall, among registered voters nationwide, Democrats lead by 5 percentage points. It’s the largest lead for the Democrats in a Times/Siena national poll since 2020. It would be enough for them to take back the House of Representatives.

The poll was done between January 12 and 17, before Trump threatened Greenland and after an ICE agent killed Renee Good but before many of the other atrocities committed by ICE in Minnesota fully came to light.

But the biggest problem for Trump appears to be the economy. He was elected for two reasons: He said he’d get prices down and avoid foreign entanglements. He’s reneged “bigly” on both promises.

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

Today’s Office Hours discussion is more personal than most because what’s occurring in Minneapolis and other American cities is raising the stakes — and forcing many of us to become involved who never expected to be.

What’s happening in Minneapolis may soon be happening in your city. Yesterday, ICE swarmed into southern Maine — Lewiston, Portland, and other seaport towns — in what the Department of Homeland Security chillingly and disparagingly calls “Operation Catch-of-the-Day.”

ICE is out of control. It’s acting illegally — stopping motorists and searching homes without warrants; detaining people on the basis of their skin color; smashing car windows; using pepper spray; pulling people out of their beds in the middle of the night who are legally in the United States; arresting and jailing people; shooting people. It has murdered an American who was doing nothing but trying to get her car out of their way.

I’ve been in touch with friends and former students in Minneapolis as well as Chicago, Los Angeles, and now, Maine. Some have been extraordinarily brave. A few tell me they’ve tailed ICE agents and whistled loudly to warn others of ICE’s whereabouts. Some have sought to block agents from entering schools, courthouses, and clinics. Others have been taking videos to give to the media or use in court.

In all these cases, my friends and former students have been taking risks — of being arrested, losing their jobs, or being physically hurt, even shot at and killed.

The number of ICE agents continues to expand, along with Border Patrol agents. Active military are soon likely to be (or by the time you read this already are) on the streets. The number of cities being subject to ICE is growing.

So the question I want to ask today is one that I wish I didn’t have to ask and never expected to ask of people who inhabit the United States. But it’s important, and I’d appreciate it if you’d answer it as honestly as you can.

What are you prepared to risk to constrain this illegal force? Let me list the risks in rough order of magnitude:

1. Frankly, I’m not willing to risk much of anything. I may write angry letters to my members of Congress and perhaps protest from the sidelines, but if I’m honest with myself, I’m not going to go beyond this.

2. I’d risk being arrested. If I see agents acting in ways I feel are illegal or immoral — bullying or brutalizing innocent people — I may try to stop them at the risk of being arrested for interfering with law enforcement, even if that could mean some time in jail and an arrest record.

3. In addition, I’d risk being suspended from, or losing, my job. I’d take this risk, too. I understand some employers want to avoid controversy and may have no compunctions about firing me if I’ve caused “trouble,” but my principles are more important than my job.

4. In addition, I’d risk being physically harmed, even shot at and maybe killed. I will not use violence, but I feel so strongly that what ICE and Border Patrol agents are doing is wrong that I’m willing to put myself at physical risk — perhaps being pulled out of my car, or doused with tear gas and pepper spray, even subject to lethal force.

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/.

To: European leaders

From: Robert Reich

It is impossible to appease a tyrant.

You know this better than most. I need not remind you of Neville Chamberlain's interactions with Adolf Hitler in 1938. Chamberlain met Hitler three times, culminating in the infamous Munich Agreement, which allowed Germany to annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland in exchange for Hitler's promise of peace. Returning to London, Chamberlain waved a signed Anglo-German declaration, and famously declared "peace for our time.” Instead, Chamberlain had merely emboldened Hitler’s aggression. Hitler soon broke his promise, leading to World War II.

Today, on his “Truth Social,” Trump reposted a comment saying, “China and Russia are the boogeymen when the real threat is the U.N., NATO and [Islam].”

This is madness.

You struck a trade deal with Trump last year. He is now threatening to rip it up and apply economic coercion and even military force if you do not allow him to annex Greenland. He is also on the brink of allowing Russia to annex part of Ukraine.

Most Americans are as opposed to Trump’s wild and illegal actions as you are. But we have no means of expressing our opposition because Trump’s Republicans control Congress and, in effect, the Supreme Court. You do have means.

I urge you to activate your so-called anti-coercion instrument, colloquially known as the “trade bazooka,” which will block some of America’s access to EU markets or impose export controls, among a broader list of potential countermeasures.

The time for appeasing Trump is over.

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

It could be a Monty Python skit from 40 years ago: A demented U.S. president demands that Norway award him the Nobel Peace Prize (which he initially spells “Noble,” and which isn’t Norway’s to give anyway), after converting the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, sending troops into American cities, threatening Canada, and abducting the president of a Latin American country by force.

When he doesn’t get the peace prize, he says he’s no longer interested in peace and decides to take over Greenland. When Greenland refuses him, and Denmark and the rest of Europe make a fuss, he goes into a rage, raises tariffs on Europe (which cost Americans dearly), and threatens war on NATO. The president of Russia is delighted.

Can’t you see it? Eric Idle plays the American president — full of himself and utterly off his rocker. John Cleese is the vicious and hapless Latin American president who’s abducted. Terry Gilliam is the baffled, incredulous head of Greenland. Terry Jones plays the righteous leader of Denmark, Graham Chapman a perplexed NATO dignitary, and Michael Palin the wacky but triumphant president of Russia.

The Monty Python team was so funny because they came up with completely absurd situations, handled them with deadpan seriousness, and stretched them to the limits.

But this particular absurd situation isn’t funny. It’s actually happening. And Trump is truly, tragically, frighteningly out of 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/

Today, as more than 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents — possibly joined by 1,500 active duty military, as Trump threatened yesterday — patrol Minneapolis, hundreds of global CEOs and titans of finance and more than 60 prime ministers and presidents are gathering in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual confab of the world’s powerful and wealthy, called the World Economic Forum.

This year’s Davos meeting occurs at a time when Trump is not just unleashing his brown shirts on Minneapolis but also dismantling the international order that’s largely been in place since the end of World War II — threatening NATO, withdrawing from international organizations including the UN climate treaty, violating the United Nations Charter by invading Venezuela and abducting Nicolas Maduro, upending established trade rules, and demanding that the U.S. annex Greenland.

He’s even hiked tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland — fellow NATO members that have expressed solidarity with Denmark in its refusal to yield to Trump’s demand to annex Greenland.

I hope the leaders now assembling at Davos speak out against Trump’s tyrannous assault on international laws and rules. Their collective repudiation of Trump would give other CEOs and world leaders cover to express their opposition as well. It could be a tipping point.

Will they? Trump is trying to stop them from doing so.

For example, he announced Saturday that he’s suing JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, headed by one of the most prominent CEOs in the world — Jamie Dimon — who is now in Davos.

Trump said he’s suing JPMorgan “for incorrectly and inappropriately DEBANKING me after the January 6th Protest, a protest that turned out to be correct for those doing the protesting – The Election was RIGGED!”

Rubbish. There’s no evidence that Chase “debanked” Trump. (And obviously no evidence that the 2020 election was “rigged.”) Besides, if Trump thought the bank acted improperly, why would he be suing it now, five years later?

In reality, Trump’s lawsuit has nothing to do with any so-called “debanking.” Trump is suing JPMorgan Chase because last week Dimon came out publicly against Trump’s criminal probe of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and apparently Trump worries about what Dimon might say at Davos.

Dimon’s opposition to the criminal investigation was couched in the mildest of terms: “Anything that chips away at [the Fed’s independence] is not a good idea. And in my view, will have the reverse consequences. It’ll increase inflation expectations and probably increase rates over time.”

Yet Dimon’s comment infuriated Trump.

Presumably, the reason Trump says he’ll sue JPMorgan “over the next two weeks” rather than immediately is because Trump wants to maximize the pressure on Dimon.

Dimon has a major speaking role at Davos. If Dimon uses it as an opportunity to blast Trump for taking a wrecking ball to the world economy as well as democracy, he gives cover to every other CEO and many heads of state to criticize Trump, too.

But if Trump can intimidate Dimon into silence, it’s unlikely any other CEO will risk it.

Hence, Trump’s shot across JPMorgan’s bow — aimed not so much at winning a lawsuit against the bank as silencing Dimon and others.

Does Dimon have enough integrity to put the bank’s profits and his own compensation ($770 million for 2025) at risk by speaking the truth — that Trump must be opposed by anyone still possessing power and integrity?

We will see, but I’m not betting on it. Dimon has shown time and again that he has more loyalty to JPMorgan than to the United States. His mild criticism of Trump for undermining the independence of the Fed could reflect no more than concern for his bank’s bottom line.

But who knows? Dimon will soon be retiring. This is his opportunity to be on the right side of history.

To ensure that the assembled CEOs and heads of state are cowed, Trump is traveling to Davos himself and taking with him the largest U.S. delegation ever to attend the meeting, including five Cabinet secretaries and other senior officials.

Will any prime minister or other head of state attending Davos dare repudiate Trump, when Trump is showing no qualms about raising tariffs on, or otherwise punishing, countries that oppose him?

Perhaps, but at most meekly and indirectly. Who wants to taunt the bear?

Yet Dimon and others at Davos must speak out against what is occurring. If there were ever a time for world leadership, it is now.

Davos’s excuse for existing is supposed to be world leadership — although its attendees have not exactly distinguished themselves in the past by their fealty to democracy, social justice, or the rules of international law. Some are directly benefiting from Trump’s tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. Many occupy their positions precisely because of their reluctance to rock any big boats or cause any trouble.

Yet if there were ever a time for them to speak out, it is now. This is their opportunity. It is also their duty. The world needs to hear from world leaders a clear and firm denunciation of the havoc Trump is wreaking.

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/.

Tomorrow we honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.

Trump has removed MLK Jr.’s birthday from the National Park Service’s fee-free days and substituted his own birthday of June 14 as a fee-free day.

I write this more in sorrow than in anger.

All told, I feel profound sorrow for America. Sorrow for the people of Minneapolis who are enduring this Trump-made hell. Sorrow for Renee Good’s three children and wife.

I also feel sorrow for Greenlanders and Venezuelans and others around the world fearing what the sociopath in the Oval Office may do next. Sorrow for everyone justifiably worried about the future of America and the planet because of him.

I’m old enough to remember when Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission seemed impossible. Just as the mission you and I must now engage in — defeating Trumpism and creating a new and better America out of the rubble and chaos he is wreaking — may seem impossible at this moment.

Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished more than anyone thought he could when he began. He did it with patience and perseverance, with the strength of conviction. He did it with calmness, reason, and quiet passion.

And he did it with civil disobedience — what one of his assistants, the late great congressman John Lewis, called “good trouble.”

Good trouble meant mobilizing the nation against racial injustice by making sure almost everyone saw its horrors. Night after night on the news — watching peaceful civil rights marchers getting clobbered by white supremacists.

I remember watching Bull Connor, commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, and his goons use firehoses and attack dogs against Black people — including children — who were peacefully standing up for their rights.

The scenes horrified America and much of the world. Yet were it not for our painful national exposure to racist brutality, we wouldn’t have gotten the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act.

I’ve been thinking of those scenes as I’ve watched ICE thugs patrolling Minneapolis. Watched armed agents pulling people out of cars, using chokeholds, demanding proof of citizenship. Masked agents in unmarked vehicles grabbing neighbors off the streets, using tear gas and pepper spray, shooting innocent people exercising their First Amendment rights to protest.

This time it isn’t Bull Connor and his racist goons. It’s Donald Trump, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, and their fascist goons. It’s armed agents of the president of the United States who are bullying and brutalizing people. Committing a cold-blooded murder of a middle-class white woman in broad daylight who tried to get out of their way. Shooting and injuring others.

This time it’s Trump and the thugs around him making up stories to justify this brutality, lying about the protester’s motives, and threatening even more brutality.

Take a wider look and you see their lawless bullying on a different scale: a criminal investigation of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board for failing to lower interest rates as fast as Trump wants. Criminal investigations of U.S. senators and representatives for telling America’s soldiers that they don’t have to follow illegal orders. Criminal investigations of the governor of Minnesota and mayor of Minneapolis for refusing to cooperate with Trump’s brown shirts.

The Justice Department searching the home of a Washington Post reporter and seizing her laptops and other devices.

Trump raising tariffs on our trusted allies — until and unless they support him in taking over Greenland. Greenland!

A crazy old man saying “f--- you, f--- you” and giving the finger to an American factory worker who criticizes him in public. The crazy old man is president of the United States, and the worker has lost his job because he dared criticize that crazy old man.

I remember the good trouble that occurred 65 years ago. I believe it’s time for it again. Time for all of us — every one of us — to cause it.

What kind of good trouble?

A huge national demonstration, far larger than anything before. Everyone in the streets.

A giant general strike where we stop purchasing all products for two weeks (stocking up beforehand).

A massive boycott of all businesses sucking up to Trump.

A coordinated effort to get all our employers, our churches and synagogues, our unions, our universities to condemn this madness.

A loud demand that our members of Congress impeach and convict him of his high crimes.

There is no longer any neutral place to stand. Either you’re standing up for democracy, the rule of law, and social justice, or you’re complicit in the fascist mayhem Trump has unleashed.

That, for me, is the lesson of all this.

Trump and his thugs have brought us to this point. They are the Bull Connors of today.

We stand with the people of Minneapolis and with the people of every other town and city where Trump’s thugs are prowling or will prowl, and where people are resisting.

We stand with the citizens of Greenland and Venezuela. With Canadians and Europeans. With every nation now threatened by Trump’s lawless abuses of power.

We stand proudly and sturdily everywhere the bright lights of freedom and truth still shine.

We will overcome the darkness of Trump’s fascism. We reject the hate, the bigotry, the fear, and the murderous lawlessness of his regime. We dedicate ourselves to causing good trouble -- ending this mayhem, and building a new and better 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/

Since Renee Good’s death, clashes between ICE and the residents of Minneapolis have escalated. On Wednesday night, an ICE agent shot and wounded someone who, ICE claimed, was fleeing arrest. (Sure, just like Good supposedly was trying to run them over when she turned her car away from them and said, moments before an agent fired three bullets into her chest and head, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”)

I’ve always loved Minneapolis. Its people have midwestern common sense. They also have a deep sense of fairness and justice.

On Wednesday, Trump threatened that if Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota didn’t stop the protesters, whom he referred to as “insurrectionists,” he would “institute the INSURRECTION ACT… and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”

Let’s be clear. The problem is not the protesters. It’s the armed thugs who are shooting and murdering them. (Trump seems capable of seeing a similar dynamic playing out in Iran and vows to protect the protesters there, but not in America.)

A friend who knows a lot more than I do about America’s armed forces recently wrote:

There are four kinds of people who join the armed forces: those from a traditional military family, true patriots who want to serve their country, those with no other prospects who need a job, and psychotics who just want to kill people.The armed services do a pretty decent job of screening out the fourth group, but that group is now the prime recruitment pool for ICE. Racists, haters, gun nuts, and cage fighting fans who want to shoot anyone the least bit different from them. They are becoming America’s Gestapo. That is no exaggeration. We’re slipping into Nazi Germany.

He’s exactly right.

ICE is reportedly investing $100 million in what it calls “wartime recruitment” of 10,000 new agents, in addition to the 20,000 already employed.

It has lowered its recruitment standards to meet the deportation targets set by Stephen Miller (Trump’s deputy chief of staff for promoting bigotry and nativism), thereby increasing the numbers of untrained and dangerous agents on the streets.

ICE’s recruitment is aimed at gun and military enthusiasts and people who listen to right-wing radio, have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship fights or shopped for guns and tactical gear, live near military bases, and attend NASCAR races.

It’s seeking recruits who are willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.”

If I had my way, ICE would be abolished and Border Patrol agents sent back to the border. But this isn’t going to happen under Trump and his Republican lapdogs in Congress. Too many Democrats are almost as spineless when it comes to abolishing ICE.

But Congress can still take action to rein in ICE. At the very least, it must disarm ICE.

The Trump regime is allowing ICE officers to use lethal force in self-defense. But we’ve seen how readily ICE and Border Patrol agents claim self-defense when they’re shooting our compatriots.

How do we disarm ICE?

Congress is now considering the appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security, whose funding runs out at the end of January.

Please demand—call your members of Congress and tell them in no uncertain terms—that the DHS spending bill prohibit ICE and Border Patrol agents from carrying guns and that it unambiguously declare that agents do not have absolute immunity under the law if they harm civilians.

Do this as soon as you can.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee (and an old friend), said Tuesday that she’s seeking to put limits on ICE in the DHS spending bill. “I am looking for policy riders in the Homeland Security bill to [be] able to rein in ICE.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Wednesday that Democrats will oppose the bill unless Republicans agree to new rules governing ICE officers. “ICE cannot conduct itself as if it’s above the law.”

There is no reason for ICE agents to be armed. If they are shot at—and there’s no record of this ever actually happening — they could readily summon state or local police to protect their safety.

ICE was designed to be mainly an investigative agency, not a militarized arm of the presidency. ICE agents are not adequately trained to use deadly force.

In addition, ICE agents prowling our streets in unmarked cars, wearing masks, clad in body armor and carrying long guns, are a clear provocation to violence—both by them and by otherwise law-abiding residents of our towns and cities who feel they must stop their brutality.

Trump, Vance, and Miller want to provoke violent confrontations so they can justify even more oppression — including invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow Trump to call in the regular military. “I’d be allowed to do that,” Trump said in October, referring to the act, “and the courts wouldn’t get involved, nobody would get involved, and I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, I can send anybody I wanted.”

Please: tell your members of Congress not to vote for the DHS spending bill unless it stipulates that ICE be disarmed.

Also tell them that the bill must restrict ICE and Border Patrol’s ability to conduct dragnet arrest operations and target people based on their race, language or accent. And the bill must clarify that ICE agents are liable under civil and criminal law if they harm civilians.

The Trump regime is telling agents they have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits if they kill or maim or otherwise hurt civilians. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” JD Vance said of the ICE agent who killed Renee Good. “He was doing his job.”

DHS went so far as to post a clip of Stephen Miller saying, “You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one — no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.”

Rubbish. There’s no such absolute immunity under the law. Regardless of what the FBI concludes, I hope and expect the state of Minnesota will open a criminal investigation of the agent who murdered Renee Good and, on the basis of the evidence uncovered, prosecute him for murder under state law.

It would be useful for Congress to make it crystal clear in the DHS spending bill now under consideration that ICE agents do not enjoy absolute legal immunity.

Please call your representative and senators today and tell them not to vote for the DHS spending bill unless it (1) disarms ICE agents, (2) prevents them from targeting people based on their race, language, or accent, and (3) stipulates that agents who harm civilians are liable under criminal and civil laws.

To reach your representative or senator, call the US Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Tell them the state and city where you live. They will connect you to any member’s office.

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’s reign of error and terror is spinning out of control. Minneapolis becoming a war zone. Americans murdered in the street. The Justice Department declaring the shooter innocent. Investigators quitting. Oligarchs contributing to the shooter’s defense fund. The FBI investigating the victim’s wife. Meanwhile, a criminal indictment of the head of the Federal Reserve because he won’t cut interest rates. Investigations of Democratic senators. Trump and Hegseth committing war crimes. Trump claiming to be president of Venezuela. Deciding for himself which companies will get access to its oil. Setting up slush funds in other countries to take the spoils. Threatening imminent war on Iran. Refusing to turn over the Epstein files, even though Congress demanded them.

From Minneapolis to Caracas, from Chicago to Greenland, from Washington, D.C., to Tehran, Trump’s lawless violence — and his threats of even more violence — are increasing. The civil liberties of Americans are ever more endangered. His flouting of Congress and defiance of international law are growing.

What can and should be done?

I’m in contact with a range of people and institutions engaged in resisting Trump. Earlier this week I asked them to tell me what, in their view, is the most important thing we can do over the next several months to stop or at least slow this catastrophe. Here are their responses:

1. Target a few Republican senators and House members to switch parties and thereby give Democrats a congressional majority in at least one chamber.

Several of the people I contacted said the single most important thing we can do now is target a few Republican senators and representatives to switch sides or become independents who caucus with the Democrats — giving Democrats a majority in at least one chamber. That will be stop or at least slow Trump.

Republican majorities are razor-thin in both chambers, but as long as they’re in the majority, it’s extremely difficult to stop Trump. Yet some Republicans represent purple districts and states and are struggling to keep their Republican supporters behind them. They’re also struggling with their own consciences in continuing to support Trump’s authoritarian fascism. They’re “gettable,” I’m told.

I recall in 2001 when Vermont Republican Senator Jim Jeffords became an independent and caucused with the Democrats — thereby giving Democrats control of the Senate. Jeffords was a principled man who thought George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were destroying the GOP. Trump is far worse than Bush and Cheney.

Skeptics tell me this won’t work because the forces holding Republican senators and representatives in place are way stronger than they were in 2001.

2. Undertake the largest demonstration against Trump in American history, aiming for at least 10 million marching in the streets, along with a national strike.

Some of the people I spoke with believe that the two No Kings demonstrations last year generated a powerful wave of solidarity and that a third, far larger, would shake the GOP and Trump to the core. They recommend a giant demonstration coupled with a general strike during which no one goes to work — all designed to reveal the depth and breadth of the opposition to Trump.

They note that the second No Kings Day got under Trump’s skin so effectively that he posted an AI-generated video of himself s------- on demonstrators. They also cite research showing that when 3.5 percent of a population takes to the streets, even the most intransigent regimes begin to fold.

Skeptics say a giant demonstration will only cause Trump to dig in and send even more ICE and Border Patrol agents into places where the largest demonstrations are occurring in hopes of provoking violence, which he’d use to justify even more repression.

3. Get the liberal establishment to stand up against Trump and threaten boycotts against corporations and banks that won’t.

Several of the people I spoke with pointed to the wave of establishment protest in recent days against Trump’s criminal indictment of Jerome Powell — including major financial institutions, former Fed chiefs, global finance ministers, and former Republican secretaries of the treasury.

They see this as the potential start of an establishment backlash against Trump’s authoritarian fascism. What’s needed now, they say, is for these people to broaden their protest into a giant public repudiation of Trump. They recommend we pressure particular CEOs to do so (for example, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase) and threaten to boycott their products and services if they don’t.

Skeptics tell me this is pie-in-the-sky. There’s no way the liberal corporate establishment is going to risk Trump’s wrath. They have too much to lose. The only reason they’re joining together to protect Jerome Powell is they’re afraid Trump’s attack on the Fed will hurt their own bottom lines.

4. Let Trump overreach to the point where Americans are so disgusted they overwhelmingly repudiate him in the midterms — resulting in a Democratic takeover of both chambers of Congress by wide margins, which severely limits what he’s able to do after January 2027.

Others I contacted tell me nothing more can or should be done over the next year, beyond organizing and mobilizing for November’s midterms. They say we should aim for an overwhelming vote against Trump’s Republicans — so large as to constrain Trump’s every move from then on.

Skeptics tell me that if Trump senses a huge midterm wave election against congressional Republicans, he won’t allow a free and fair election in November. They also say that unless action is taken between now and then to stop Trump, irrevocable damage will be done to America, so by January 2027 our democracy will be gone.

Hence, today’s Office Hours discussion question: What if anything should be done to counteract this new and far more dangerous stage of the Trump regime? (You may have other ideas than those listed above; please include them in the comments.)

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 latest gauge on inflation, released this morning, showed prices increasing 2.7 percent in December compared with the same period a year ago. Food prices were up 3.1 percent. (Reminder: Trump was elected on two issues: bringing prices down, especially food, and avoiding foreign entanglements.)

Today, Trump traveled to Detroit to deliver an address to the Detroit Economic Club. It was about “affordability” and he filled it with lies — such as Americans aren’t paying for his tariffs (of course they are) and inflation was “way, way, down” (it’s about the same as it was when he took office).

And he insisted that “affordability” is a “fake word by Democrats.” Unfortunately for Trump, “affordability” has become even more politically potent than immigration or crime. And in his first year at the helm, he’s made America less affordable.

He’s also been putting forward some ass-backward ideas for bringing down prices that will actually increase them. His biggest: Fire the current chair of the Federal Reserve Board and install a chair who’ll lower interest rates — and thereby, in Trump’s addled brain, bring down the costs of borrowing to buy homes and cars. (In his speech today, he called Fed chair Jerome Powell Powell, a “jerk.”)

Trump’s decision to open up a criminal investigation of Powell is a bizarre escalation of his pressure campaign against the central bank to cut interest rates. And it’s truly ass-backwards. Without an independent Fed committed to using interest rates to fight inflation, everyone who buys or sells or invests will have to assume the risk of runaway prices in the future. The result is a risk “premium” that makes everything more expensive instead of more affordable.

What should be done to make America more affordable? Ten commonsense initiatives:

1. Get rid of Trump’s tariffs

Trump’s blanket, unpredictable, on-again-off-again, gigantic and then sometimes modest tariffs have caused prices to jump on just about everything. That’s because tariffs are import taxes that are paid by the companies that do the importing and by their consumers.

Tariffs can be a tool to create American jobs, but only if they’re used in a targeted and responsible way. Targeted and responsible are two adjectives that no one uses in describing Trump’s tariffs.

The first step to make life more affordable for the average American is to get rid of them.

2. Bust up monopolies

Trump’s overriding goal is to boost share prices. He doesn’t seem to understand that most Americans aren’t directly affected by share prices: Over 90 percent of the value of shares held by Americans is held by the richest 10 percent; over half by the richest 1 percent.

In pursuit of high share prices, Trump has essentially given up on antitrust enforcement. Big corporations are now merging and buying up potential competitors at a rapid rate. But this means less competition, and less competition results in higher prices.

It’s another ass-backward approach to affordability. Trump’s overriding goal of high share prices collides with what should be the real goal: keeping prices low.

A real affordability agenda would bust up big corporations that dominate their industries and prohibit price gouging.

3. Fight for stronger unions

Trump hates unions and has done everything he can do to weaken the National Labor Relations Board and the Labor Department. He’s given free rein to corporate union-busting.

Here again, Trump’s goal of high share prices and corporate profitability is at direct odds with the needs of average workers for higher wages, which are necessary if the goods and services they require are to become more affordable to them.

Workers need more bargaining power to get higher wages. Unions do that. A real affordability agenda therefore would make it easier for workers to start or join them.

4. Raise the national minimum wage

For the same reason Trump believes unions and higher wages are bad for the economy — that is, his definition of the economy, which is the stock market — he’s been dead set against raising the national minimum wage.

But the federal minimum wage has been stuck at a measly $7.25 since 2009. Raise the damn wage. And raise it even higher for employees of big corporations that pay their top executives hundreds of times more than their workers.

5. Pass Medicare For All

Trump has been trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act because it was passed under his predecessor, Barack Obama. His latest gambit has been to block any extension of the subsidies that Americans need to be able to afford health insurance under the ACA. (The fight over this issue resulted in the longest government shutdown in history.)

Without those subsidies, the typical American will be paying 30 to 100 percent more for health insurance this year than last — which is already driving many people out of the ACA marketplace and forcing them to live without health insurance at all.

Extending ACA subsidies is necessary but not sufficient. A real affordability agenda would make Medicare available to all Americans. This will bring down health care costs for everyone, because Medicare is cheaper and more efficient than for-profit health insurance.

6. Make housing more affordable

Last Wednesday, Trump called for a ban on institutional investors buying single-family housing. I suppose it’s nice that he’s finally gotten around to this, but I’ll believe it when he actually signs the legislation.

A real affordability agenda would ban Wall Street firms from buying up housing, crack down on corporate landlords that collude to jack up rent prices, get rid of zoning laws that make it harder to build homes, and increase funding to boost the construction of housing in cities that need it most.

7. Make child care and elder care more affordable

The costs of child care take a third of the incomes of parents with young children, on average. The costs of elder care can be even higher for working people with elderly parents. Both are essential for working families.

An affordability agenda would include a universal child care program for parents and boost funding for caregivers of aging parents.

8. Give Americans paid leave

Here again, the goal of fat corporate profits and high share prices collides with what American workers need. Trump consistently opts for the former and argues that the nation “can’t afford” paid family leave.

Baloney. We’re the richest country in the world. Every other advanced nation provides paid leave. Working Americans need it. We should provide it, too.

9. Stop Big Finance from siphoning off people’s incomes

Trump has deregulated big banks and allowed them to charge up to 30 percent interest on credit cards. (The banks love it because credit cards provide them with four times the return of any other line of business.) Trump has gotten rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which stopped other sleazy financial practices. And he’s allowed more consolidation of big financial institutions, which means even less competition, higher prices, and shadier deals. (His Justice Department recently approved the merger of Capital One and Discover, which will pile even more debt on low-income consumers.)

The captains of Wall Street have never had it so good. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon made $770 million last year. But average working people are being shafted.

A real affordability agenda would cap credit card interest rates at 5 percent, stop the banks from charging late fees on unsuspecting consumers (Trump’s OMB director, Russ Vought, withdrew the late fee rule in April), and bust up the biggest banks whose market power is allowing them to charge absurdly high interest rates on all borrowing.

10. Raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations

Besides tariffs, Trump’s economic policy has cut taxes mainly on wealthy individuals and big corporations. He’s imbibed the “trickle-down” Kool-Aid that assumes tax cuts at the top make everyone better off.

The reality, as we’ve learned since Trump’s first tax cut mostly benefiting the wealthy and big corporations (as we should have learned from Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s trickle-down tax cuts also mainly benefiting the rich and big corporations) is that nothing trickles down. Trickle-down economics is a cruel sham.

The cumulative effects of all these tax cuts has been to make America’s rich far richer — now owning a record share of the nation’s wealth — and big corporations far more profitable (corporate profits are also near record levels), while dramatically enlarging the national debt.

And what do we get with a bigger debt? More inflation, which makes everything less affordable. Again, Trump has it ass-backward.

It’s time we ended the trickle-down hoax once and for all.

Besides, it’s only fair that the super rich pay more in taxes so that the rest of America can afford what Americans need: housing, health care, child care and elder care.

And by the way, even after paying more in taxes, the rich will still be richer than they’ve ever been, and giant corporations will still be exceedingly profitable.

These 10 steps are crucial for making America affordable again. Don’t fall for Trump’s ass-backward agenda, which will only make the rich richer and big corporations more profitable. You and I and everyone who wants to lower the cost of living for Americans should back the real affordability agenda.

Please share this with any Democrat or independent (hell, share it with any Republican) interested in running for office and improving Americans’ standard of living.

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/.

If agents of the federal government can murder a 37-year-old woman in broad daylight who, as videotapes show, was merely trying to get out of their way, they can murder you.

Even if Trump and his vice president and his secretary of homeland security all claim, contrary to the videotapes, that Renee Nicole Good was trying to kill an agent who acted in self-defense, they could make up the same about you.

Even if Trump describes her as a “professional agitator” and his goons call her a “domestic terrorist,” they could say the same about you regardless of your political views or activism. If you have left-wing political views and are an activist, you’re in greater danger.

How can we believe what the FBI turns up in its investigation, when the FBI is working for Trump and is headed by one of his goons, and is investigating possible connections between Renee Good and groups that have been protesting Trump’s immigration enforcement?

What credence can we give federal officials who are blocking local and state investigators from reviewing evidence they’re collecting?

You could be murdered because Trump’s attorney general has defined “domestic terrorism” to include impeding law enforcement officers. What if you’re merely standing in the way — in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or maybe you’re engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience?

In October, Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen in Chicago, was in her car trying to warn people about ICE when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Federal officials say she “rammed” the car. Her lawyers say she was sideswiped by it.

The agent then got out of his car and shot her five times. She survived. The Justice Department then charged her with assaulting a federal officer.

You could be next. All of us need to realize this. The people who are being assaulted and murdered are abiding the law.

The regime has also been grabbing people from their homes who are legally in the United States with permanent status — not just visas permitting them to work or study here but green cards — and whisking them away to prison because they’ve engaged in constitutionally protected speech the regime doesn’t like.

This is what happened to Mahmoud Khalil — who graduated from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, who has a green card, and whose wife is an American citizen.

Plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents appeared at his apartment building on March 8 and then detained him without charges in a Louisiana ICE detention facility for three and a half months. (He missed his graduation and the birth of his first child.)

The Trump regime continues to try to deport him. A federal court heard arguments on October 22 in the regime’s ongoing deportation case against him but has not issued a verdict.

Khalil did nothing illegal. He was in the United States legally. He has never been charged with a crime. He expressed his political point of view — peacefully, nonviolently, non-threateningly. That’s supposed to be permitted — dare I say even encouraged? — in a democracy.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump conceded Khalil was snatched up and sent off because of his politics. “This is the first arrest of many to come,” wrote Trump. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”

Trump could just as well arrest and expel permanent residents who voice support for, say, transgender people or DEI or “woke” or anything else the regime finds “anti-American” and offensive.

What’s to stop the Trump regime from arresting you for, say, advocating the replacement of Republicans in Congress in 2026 and electing a Democrat to the presidency in 2028?

Renee Nicole Good was murdered. Marimar Martinez was shot but survived. Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and jailed and is still fighting deportation. There are many others. The next could be you or someone you love.

What’s at stake isn’t just American democracy. It’s also your safety and security and that of your friends and loved ones. This is personal — to every one of us.

A dictatorship knows no bounds.

We must commit to peacefully fighting this regime, to ending Republican control of Congress in 2026, and to sending this dangerous gang packing in 2028 — assuming we’re still free and alive by then.

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 the same time agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol are swarming into Minnesota and other states and cities, Trump is planning bombing raids on other countries.

Domestically and internationally, he is putting America on a war footing.

ICE is reportedly investing $100 million on what it calls “wartime recruitment” of 10,000 new agents, in addition to the 20,000 already employed. Its recruitment is targeting gun and military enthusiasts, people who listen to right-wing radio, who have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship fights or shopped for guns and tactical gear, live near military bases, and attend NASCAR races. It’s calling for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.”

Meanwhile, Trump has announced that he’ll ask Congress for a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the next fiscal year — a 66 percent increase over the 2026 defense budget Congress just authorized.

There’s coming to be no difference between Trump’s foreign and domestic policies.

Both are based on the same eight maniacal ideas: (1) Might makes right. (2) Law is irrelevant. (3) America is at war with the world’s “radical left,” who are defined chiefly by their opposition to Trump. (4) Fear and force are better weapons in this war than hope and compromise. (5) The U.S. stock market is the best measure of Trump’s success. (6) Personal enrichment by Trump and other officials is justified in pursuit of victory. (7) So are lies, cover-ups, and the illegal use of force. (8) Trump is invincible and omnipotent.

These ideas are at such fundamental odds with the norms most of us share about what America is all about and how a president should think and behave that it’s difficult to accept that Trump believes them or that his White House thugs eagerly endorse them. But he does, and they do.

Rather than some “doctrine” or set of principles, they’re more like guttural discharges. Trump is not rational, and the people around him trying to give him a patina of rationality — his White House assistants and spokespeople — surely know it.

The media tries to confer on Trump a coherence that evaporates almost as soon as it’s stated. The New York Times’s breathless coverage of its recent Oval Office interview with Trump — describing his “many faces” — is a model of such a vapidity.

According to the Times, Trump “took unpredictable turns” during the interview. But instead of seeing this unpredictability as a symptom of Trump’s diminishing capacities and ever-shorter attention span, the Times reported it as “a tactic he embraces as president, particularly on the world stage. If no one knows what you might do, they often do what you want them to do.”

Attempts to show inconsistencies or hypocrisies in Trump’s domestic or foreign policies are fruitless because they have no consistency or truthfulness to begin with.

Nor is it possible for the media to describe a “big picture” of America and the world under Trump because there is nothing to picture other than his malignant, impulsive, unbridled grandiosity all the way up and all the way down.

Trump has unleashed violence on America’s streets for much the same reason he has unleashed violence on Latin America and is planning to unleash it elsewhere: to display his own strength. His motive is to gain more power and, along the way, more wealth. (On Sunday, he even posted an image referring to himself as the “Acting President of Venezuela.”)

“Policy” implies thought. But under Trump, there is no domestic or foreign policy because it is all thoughtless. It is not even improvised. It is just Trump’s ego — as interpreted by the toadies around him (Miller, Vought, Vance, Kennedy, Rubio, Noem) trying to guess what his ego craves or detests, or fulfilling their own fanatical goals by manipulating it.

We must stop trying to make rational sense out of what Trump is doing. He is a ruthless dictator, plan and simple.

All analyses of what is happening — all reporting, all efforts to understand, all attempts at strategizing — are doomed. The only reality is that an increasingly dangerous and irrational sociopath is now exercising brutal and unconstrained power over America and, hence, the world.

Trump is putting America on a war footing because war is good for him as it is for all dictators. War confers emergency powers. It justifies ignoring the niceties of elections. It allows dictators to imprison and intimidate opponents and enemies. It enables them to create their own personal slush funds. It distracts the public from other things (remember Jeffrey Epstein?).

War gives dictators like Trump more power and more wealth. Period.

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 man who notoriously said in his first campaign for president that he could murder someone on Fifth Avenue without losing a vote is now effectively murdering Americans on the streets of our cities and murdering Venezuelans and Cubans in Caracas and the Caribbean Sea, and doesn’t have to face voters in another presidential election.

He is unconstrained in every other way as well: not subject to congressional oversight because supine Republicans are in control. Not subject to judicial oversight because the Supreme Court has given him a pass. Not subject to international law because the U.N. charter has no teeth.

“The only thing that can stop me,” he told reporters for The New York Times, “is my own morality. My own mind.” He was responding to a question about his power to attack other nations but his answer is as relevant to what he believes to be his power inside the United States.

He now seems intent on using armed agents of ICE, border security, and homeland security to frighten, harass, intimidate, or even murder likely Democratic and independent voters in November’s midterm elections.

Everyone gives wide berth to an unconstrained madman capable of wreaking havoc, fearing his havoc will harm them as well. Hence, Trump’s power to silence and extort — the news media, universities, law firms, museums and libraries and art institutions, Wall Street, giant corporations, and foreign nations.

But an unconstrained madman who reveals how dangerous he is also encourages the forces of sanity and restraint to rise up against him. Visibility matters. The more Trump’s violence is out in the open, the larger the resistance to him, both here and abroad.

I’m nauseously optimistic because Trump and his thugs are brazenly revealing how unconstrained their violence and treachery have become. Peaceful anti-ICE protests are spreading across the country. America’s traditional allies are joining together against Trump.

This past week, Trump’s assistant for nativist bigotry, Stephen Miller, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that “we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Rubbish. If it were just strength, force, and power, America and the world would be engulfed in continuous warfare and no one would ever be safe.

We will strive for a nation and a world governed by laws, rules and norms that constrain the powerful, including Trump and his thugs.

We will stop Trump not with violence but with our steadfast dedication to democracy, the rule of law, and social justice. We will stop him with our determination that our children and grandchildren will not live under a dictatorship. We will stop him with our power, our courage, and our resolve.

We will not succumb to despair or doom. We will not become paralyzed with fear. We will not abandon our principles or abdicate our power.

We will win this, but winning is not enough. From the rubble Trump and his thugs are making of our laws and values, we will also rebuild.

We will build an America whose strength comes not from its bombs and bullets but from its moral authority. An America whose greatness comes not from the value of its stock market or the wealth of its billionaires but from laws and values that serve us all.

My friends, we will win and we will rebuild. We have no choice.

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

What does Trump have against Minnesota? Not only is ICE causing mayhem in Minneapolis, but Trump is halting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for social services programs there, according to a Tuesday announcement from Health and Human Services.

It’s not just Minnesota. Trump is also stopping billions in funding for social services in Colorado, Illinois, New York, and California.

Why? Could it be because all of them are led by Democrats and inhabited by voters who overwhelmingly rejected Trump in 2024?

It’s not the first time Trump has openly penalized “blue” states. What’s new is how blatant his vindictiveness toward blue states has become.

Angry at Colorado’s votes against him in three successive elections and at its refusal to free Tina Peters — the former clerk of Mesa County, who was convicted in 2024 of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed plot to prove they had been used to rig the 2020 election against Trump — Trump has cut off transportation money to Colorado, relocated the military’s Space Command, vowed to dismantle a major climate and weather research center located there, and rejected disaster relief for rural counties hammered by floods and wildfires.

Two weeks ago Trump used the first veto of his second term to kill a pipeline project that had achieved bipartisan congressional support, to provide clean drinking water to Colorado’s parched eastern plains. (Trump’s action enraged Republican congresswoman and formerly dedicated Trumper Lauren Boebert, who stated: “Nothing says America First like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in southeast Colorado, many of whom voted for him in all three elections.”)

If there were any doubts about Trump’s sentiments toward Colorado, he posted a New Year’s Eve message telling Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, and Daniel P. Rubinstein, the Republican district attorney in Mesa County who prosecuted Ms. Peters, to “rot in Hell,” adding “I wish them only the worst.”

Is it even legal for Trump to reward red states and penalize blue ones? In a word: No.

In early December, Justice Department lawyers openly admitted that Trump withheld Department of Energy grants to Minnesota and other states according to “whether a grantee’s address was located in a State that tends to elect and/or has recently elected Democratic candidates in state and national elections.”

It’s the first time the Trump regime clearly acknowledged in court that which states get what depends on whether most people in a state voted for or against him.

What’s the legal argument? Trump’s Justice Department lawyers claim that such overt political vindictiveness “is constitutionally permissible, including because it can serve as a proxy for legitimate policy considerations.”

This, my friends, is utter rubbish.

Punishing states based on whom their residents voted for directly violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which requires that the government treat citizens equally under the law: No “State [shall] deprive … to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Penalizing a state for how its citizens vote also violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. Voting is one of the most basic forms of speech in a democracy; it cannot be abridged or punished depending on for whom one votes.

And it violates a president’s duty under the Constitution to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” At the least, this requires that a president apply the law in a nonpartisan way. Congress may award grants or benefits to certain states and not others, but this power is reserved for Congress, not the president.

The issue will almost certainly end up in the Supreme Court. Although my expectations for our highest court could not be much lower, I’d be surprised if the justices sided with Trump here.

Any other result would effectively allow Trump to pit red states against blue and wreak havoc on the very idea of a national government.

Trump has made it clear he regards himself as president only of the people who voted for him. But that’s not how the Constitution works. Nor is it how American democracy works.

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/.

In Minneapolis yesterday, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three. The shooting occurred on a residential street in south Minneapolis (less than a mile from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020).

Trump claimed that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over” the ICE agent. Kristi Noem claimed that “our officers were out trying to get a car stuck out of the snow when they were surrounded and assaulted and blocked in by protesters.”

Several videos taken from different angles (see, for example, here) and several analyses of the videos (see here) make it clear that Trump’s and Noem’s descriptions of what occurred are blatant lies.

According to an eyewitness, ICE agents yelled contradictory instructions at Good — one telling her to leave and then, as she complied, another tried to open her door and told her to get out, while a third shot her in the face.

As horrific as this murder is, Trump and his regime’s response has been almost as chilling.

Trump accused Good of being a “professional agitator” and blamed the tragedy on “the Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate.” Noem accused Good of being engaged in “an act of domestic terrorism.” JD Vance called her “part of a broader left-wing network” and said the killing was “a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left.”

I don’t know Renee Good’s politics. But why would her political leanings be relevant to her murder? Are Trump and his sycophants suggesting that it’s okay for federal agents to murder someone based on their political beliefs?

Minnesota’s investigators have been told by the FBI that they will not be allowed to investigate; only the FBI will investigate. As Governor Tim Walz noted, it will be “very difficult for Minnesotans to think in any way this is going to be fair when Kristi Noem is judge, jury, and basically executioner.”

A cold-blooded murder was committed inside the United States by an agent of the United States federal government acting under the authority of Donald Trump.

That is cause for deep concern by us all — right and left, Democrat and Republican.

During a conversation with The New York Times that was reported today, Trump said, “the only thing that can stop me” is “my own morality. My own mind.”

Trump was responding to a question about checks on his power to attack nations around the world. But his response is increasingly relevant to his power domestically.

Dictators murder whomever they choose. That’s not how the United States is supposed to work.

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/.

While Trump and his henchmen are stripping Americans of our constitutional rights and illegally taking over other nations, America’s supposed leadership class is silent. Or worse, they’re helping Trump.

Too many university presidents are silent or caving to Trump’s demands. Too many senior managers of law firms have surrendered to his tyranny. Too many directors of large nonprofits are remaining silent. Almost all Republican leaders are rubber stamping his authoritarianism. Too many Democratic leaders are barely putting up a fight.

The worst offenders are the CEOs of some of America’s most powerful and influential corporations.

Some stood up with the rest of America against Trump when he tried to overturn the 2020 election. Now they’re silent about what Trump is doing to our democracy and international law. Or they’re actively enabling him in order to protect and pad their bottom lines.

Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, recently said that he “fully supports” Trump and would welcome National Guard troops in San Francisco. (He later walked back his comments on the National Guard but continues to back Trump.)

Follow the money: Salesforce’s biggest customer is the federal government. Trump has shown how eager he is to use federal contracts to reward his friends — and Benioff doesn’t want to anger him.

Benioff is also seeking even more massive federal contracts to help ICE hire thousands of agents at a time when ICE is disappearing people off the streets and violating due process.

Or look at Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who recently gave Trump a plaque with a 24-karat golden base and then showered him with praise at a convening of Big Tech billionaires at the White House.

Apple followed up by removing an ICE tracking app from its app store at the request of Trump’s Department of Justice.

Why would Cook suck up to Trump? Because Trump has given Apple special exemptions from his tariffs. And of course, both Cook and Apple benefit substantially from Trump’s latest round of tax cuts.

Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta.

Zuckerberg has ended Facebook and Instagram’s fact-checking policies, parroting Trump’s claims that the practice censored conservative views. And Meta shelled out $25 million to Trump to settle a lawsuit claiming the company censored him when it removed his accounts. Facebook has also removed an ICE tracking page.

Why? Meta is investing billions in AI and the power-hungry data centers that fuel it, and the company needs a friendly White House to ramp up development.

And whatever happened to Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, the largest bank in the United States, who relishes his position as “spokesman” of the American business community? What has he said about Trump’s lawlessness?

He’s nowhere. He’s said nothing.

In October, Dimon and JPMorgan announced what they called the Security and Resiliency Initiative, with the bank pledging $1.5 trillion to “facilitate, finance and invest in industries critical to national economic security and resiliency.”

Pure fluff and corporate PR — a repackaged set of aspirations. Just like Dimon and his bank’s $2.5 trillion Sustainable Development Target, unveiled with much self-gratulation in 2021 — a package of hoped-for environmentally related investments that, as The Wall Street Journal recently noted, “the bank doesn’t talk about that much anymore.”

Dimon also used to talk about the wide-ranging benefits of diversity and inclusion. No longer. His bank basks in Trump’s good graces — and the tax cuts and financial regulatory rollbacks that accompany them.

You see the pattern.

Benioff, Cook, Zuckerberg, Dimon, and all the other billionaires and CEOs selling out to Trump are happy to back his anti-democracy agenda as long as their businesses keep raking it in.

They get tax cuts, federal contracts, and deregulation, and Trump gets to trample on our fundamental rights and on the basic tenets of international law with no pushback from America’s so-called “leaders.”

They’re showing us a reality we should have known years ago, but many of us didn’t want to see: America’s leadership class no longer leads. It hides. It enables. It sucks up.

If they were true leaders, they’d speak out and speak up against Trump. But they won’t and don’t. They go along with Trump’s authoritarian agenda so they can enlarge their wealth and power.

How do we fix this?

Courageous politicians would call out this ugly alliance between the so-called “leadership class” and Trump’s anti-democracy agenda.

But too many politicians eagerly take money from billionaires and big corporations to keep winning elections. Yet what’s the point of winning if they’re in the pockets of the powerful?

We must support only politicians who swear off big money and fight for the people who don’t have power.

Some politicians are already doing this, but too few.

What else can we do to fix this?

We don’t have to wait around for politicians or other formal leaders to grow spines. We can be that spine.

You can run for office.

Even if you don’t hold a formal office or have official authority, you can still organize your community, your workplace, or your campus.

Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr., Dolores Huerta, and countless others who have moved the world held no official authority or formal position of power. They had moral power to tell the truth and mobilize others to fight back.

At a time in our nation’s history when America desperately needs leaders but too many official leaders are intimidated or have been bought off — it’s up to the rest of us to step up.

We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.

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’s domestic and foreign policies — ranging from his attempted coup against the United States five years ago, to his incursion into Venezuela last weekend, to his current threats against Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland — undermine domestic and international law. But that’s not all.

They threaten what we mean by civilization.

The moral purpose of civilized society is to prevent the stronger from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Otherwise, we’d be permanently immersed in a brutish war in which only the fittest and most powerful could survive.

This principle lies at the center of America’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It’s also the core of the post- World War II international order championed by the United States, including the UN Charter — emphasizing multilateralism, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

But it’s a fragile principle, easily violated by those who would exploit their power. Maintaining the principle requires that the powerful have enough integrity to abstain from seeking short-term wins, and that the rest of us hold them accountable if they don’t.

Every time people or corporations or countries that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are not, the fabric of civilization frays. If such aggression is not contained, the fabric unravels. If not stopped, the world can descend into chaos and war. It has happened before.

We now inhabit a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated than ever before. This invites the powerful to exploit the weaker because the powerful feel omnipotent.

The wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Charles Koch, and a handful of others is almost beyond comprehension. The influence of Big Tech, Big Oil, and the largest aerospace and defense corporations extends over much of the globe. AI is likely to centralize wealth and power even more. The destructive power of the United States, China, and Russia is unmatched in human history.

Trump — enabled by cowardly congressional Republicans and a pliant majority on the Supreme Court — has turned the U.S. presidency into the most powerful and unaccountable agent of American government in history.

Put it all together and you see the threat.

A direct line connects Trump’s attempted coup five years ago to his capture of Nicolas Maduro last weekend. Both were lawless. Both were premised on the hubris of omnipotence.

That same line extends to Trump’s current threats against Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland.

You see much the same in Putin’s war on Ukraine. In Xi’s threats against Taiwan. In global depredation and monopolization by Big Tech and Big Oil. In Russian, Chinese, and American oligarchs who have fused public power with their personal wealth.

But unfettered might does not make right. It makes for instability, upheaval, and war.

History shows that laws and norms designed to constrain the powerful also protect them. Without such constraints, their insatiable demands for more power and wealth eventually bring them down — along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten world war.

Trump’s blatant lawlessness will haunt America and the world — and civilization — for years to come.

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/.

Five years ago tomorrow was the most shameful day in American history.

We must not allow Trump to persuade America that it did not happen or that he was innocent, or let him deflect the nation’s attention from the fifth anniversary of what occurred that day.

Less than three weeks ago, Jack Smith, the former special counsel to the Justice Department, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee and testified under oath:

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”

The sole reason Donald Trump is not now behind bars is that Smith dropped the case after Trump was elected to a second term, because the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States — written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by five other justices, three of whom were nominated by Trump — prevented the prosecution of a sitting president.

Let us ponder this for a moment.

Although the peaceful transfer of power lies at the heart of American democracy, Trump sought to overturn the result of the 2020 election. He is now president once again.

Five years ago tomorrow, on January 6, 2021, when Vice President Mike Pence walked into the Capitol, he faced a withering pressure campaign by Trump.

Trump and his henchmen had already twisted the arms of governors and election officials around the country to change the result of the election in his favor. They had coaxed loyalists in five swing states to submit signed certificates falsely claiming they were “duly elected and qualified” members of the Electoral College.

Pence was about to throw out the slates of false electors. As he began the electoral vote count, thousands of Trump supporters — many of them armed — stormed the Capitol. Some chanted they wanted to “hang Mike Pence” for refusing to block the certification.

They came directly from a rally Trump held on the Ellipse, in which Trump repeated his false claim that the election had been stolen and told the crowd, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

According to the criminal indictment,

“After it became public on the afternoon of January 6 that the Vice President would not fraudulently alter the election results, a large and angry crowd — including many individuals whom the Defendant had deceived into believing the Vice President could and might change the election results — violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding.”

The FBI estimated that between 2,000 and 2,500 people entered the Capitol Building in the attack, some of whom participated in vandalism and looting, including of the offices of members of Congress. Rioters also assaulted Capitol Police officers. They occupied the empty Senate chamber while federal law enforcement officers defended the evacuated House floor.

Within 36 hours, five people died. One was shot by Capitol Police; another died of a drug overdose; three died of heart attacks or strokes, including a police officer who died the day after being assaulted by rioters. Many were injured, including 174 police officers. Four other officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.

“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said subsequently. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

A week after the attack, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection. In February 2021, after he left office, the Senate voted 57–43 in favor of conviction but fell short of the required two-thirds majority, resulting in his acquittal.

Senate Republicans then blocked a bill to create a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the attack, leaving the House to organize its own select committee.

After an 18-month investigation including more than 1,000 witnesses and nine televised public hearings, the House’s select committee identified Trump as the “central cause” of the Capitol attack by the pro-Trump mob.

The panel, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, voted unanimously to recommend charges to the Justice Department to prosecute Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Following a special counsel investigation by the Justice Department, Trump was indicted on four charges in August 2023.

As I’ve noted, all charges against Trump were dismissed after his reelection to the presidency.

Of the 1,424 people charged with federal crimes relating to the riot, 1,010 pled guilty and 1,060 were sentenced and served time in prison. Enrique Tarrio, then the chairman of the Proud Boys, received the longest sentence, a 22-year prison term.

Upon retaking the presidency, Trump pardoned them all.

***

Trump and his lackeys in the Republican Party have since promoted a revisionist history of the event — downplaying the severity of the violence, spreading conspiracy theories, and portraying those charged with crimes as hostages and martyrs.

Trump has tried to recast the violent events as a “day of love.”

On December 8, 2024, in his first broadcast news interview since the 2024 election, Trump said members of the House committee that investigated the riot “should go to jail.”

***

We must never forget. We must teach our children and our children’s children and all future generations of Americans what happened on January 6, 2021— so that, as Mike Pence hoped, “history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

January 6, 2021 was the most shameful day in American history. It should live in infamy, as should the traitor who refused to accept the election results and incited the attack on the U.S. Capitol — Donald J. Trump.

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

The story of what’s happening in Venezuela is unfolding quickly and big questions are mounting. The immediate danger in Venezuela (and potentially in Colombia and Cuba) is chaos.

Asked tonight who’s in charge of Venezuela, Trump answered: “We’re in charge.”

What the hell does this bluster really mean?

U.S. troops are not prepared to occupy Venezuela. Trying to do so would be a disaster.

Maduro’s system of oppression is still entrenched there. It includes the national guard, the army, the national police, the intelligence service, and the Colombian guerrilla group ELN. All remain intact.

Maduro’s top lieutenants also remain, including several who were involved in his alleged crimes. Not to mention his thugs and narco-traffickers who have been controlling Venezuela through violent repression and stolen elections.

Venezuela has roughly 28 million people. There’s no way to determine the emerging balance of power between pro- and anti-Maduro camps, but it’s a safe bet that any power void is likely to be filled with violence.

Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke of “coercing” the Venezuelan government to make policy changes over its oil reserves, rather than “running” the country: American forces will prevent oil tankers from entering and leaving Venezuela until the government opens up the state-controlled oil industry to foreign investment — presumably giving priority to American companies.

But since August, America has had an arsenal of warships, jet fighters, and some 15,000 troops on Venezuela’s doorstep, which hasn’t stopped oil shipments. How big must the arsenal be to do the job? How long will it remain there? At what cost? Will we bomb Russian or Chinese tankers coming into or out of Venezuela?

Rubio emphasized that “the national interest of the United States … is No. 1.” But what exactly is the “national interest” of the United States here? Big Oil? Chevron has been in Venezuela for years. Do we declare victory when Exxon-Mobil is there, too? Do we insist that Venezuela not charge America oil companies any extraction fees? How profitable must Big Oil’s extractions of oil from Venezuela become before Trump is satisfied?

Rubio says Trump hasn’t ruled out troops on the ground. But does anyone remember what happened in Iraq after the U.S. invasion there? Libya? Syria? Hello? How many failed states do we need to create before we understand their danger to the stability of an entire region of the globe?

Meanwhile, the Trump regime is fanning the flames of anti-Americanism, both in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America.

Asked tonight whether the United States would conduct an operation against Colombia, Trump said, “it sounds good to me.” He also suggested Mexico could be another target, saying the Mexican cartels are “very strong,” drugs are “pouring” through the country, and “we’re gonna have to do something.” As to Cuba, it “looks like it is ready to fall.”

He didn’t even stop with Latin America. Trump made clear he also wants to take control of Greenland. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security and the European Union needs us to have it and they know that,” he told reporters on Air Force One.

This is nuts. Trump is already on his way to destroying the rule of law in America. Now he’s destroying the rules-based system of international law and diplomacy that the United States created in the wake of the horrors of World War II.

“America is respected again,” he gloated in his address to the nation on December 9. For Trump, “respect” means the power to bully, regardless of law. “Our nation is strong, and America is BACK.”

Wrong. What’s back is lawless gunboat diplomacy.

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/.

Friends,

In the first year of Trump’s second term, he imposed his thuggery on the United States. In the second year, apparently he will impose it on the hemisphere.

America’s takeover of Venezuela — because it’s in our “backyard” and we didn’t like its leader — strengthens Putin’s claim over Ukraine, Xi’s over Taiwan, and Netanyahu’s over the West Bank and Gaza.

Make no mistake: Venezuela’s Maduro was a vicious dictator who harmed Venezuela and its people. But the world is populated by many vicious dictators. We don’t take over their countries.

The postwar order was supposed to stop thugs who use aggression to take over their “backyards,” as Hitler had done in Europe and Japan in East Asia.

But Trump is now reverting back to the pre-World War II, might-makes-right, spheres-of-power, order.

For more than 80 years, America’s moral authority has rested on our claim to be on the side of democracy. That claim was often belied by American aggression that bolstered dictators — in Vietnam in the 1960s, in Latin America in the 1970s, and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq — but it at least gave a patina of legitimacy to our alliances and to our “soft power” through USAID and the United Nations.

Now we’re back to the rawest form of neo-imperialism.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump explained early this morning.

Let’s be clear: When it comes to Venezuela’s giant oil reserves, America’s oil companies will be making money for themselves. During the 2024 campaign they made a deal with Trump on which they’re still cashing in.

In December, Trump tried to justify his blockade of Venezuela by referring to its “expropriation” of U.S. oil company assets, presumably referring to the nation’s nationalization of its oil reserves in 1976.

“They’re not going to do that again,” Trump told reporters. “We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”

Rubbish. The 1976 nationalization was the culmination of decades of efforts by both left-wing and right-wing administrations in Venezuela to regain financial control over oil that earlier had largely been given away.

Trump seems intent on carving up the world into three large power blocs: one under the thuggery of Putin, the second under the thuggery of Xi, and the third under Trump’s thuggery (allied with sou-thugs like Israel’s Netanyahu).

To be a “neighbor” of a thug is to surrender to the thug’s wishes or to the thug’s direct control. Within Putin’s thuggery fall Ukraine and quite possibly Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the rest of the former Soviet bloc.

Within Xi’s thuggery fall Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, and possibly Nepal.

Within Trump’s thuggery fall the rest of Latin America, including Mexico, and possibly even Greenland and Canada.

Beware. The Trump world order makes the world safe only for major tyrants.

As we bid goodbye to 2025 — and all the thuggery, corruption, squalor, and cruelty it spewed — I want to thank you for standing up to it.

Thank you for your activism and your tenacity.

Thank you for not giving up hope, despite the daily horrors.

Thank you also for receiving my posts, sharing them, commenting on them, and becoming a member of this community.

My purpose in sending you at least one post a day (and sometimes more, with apologies to your inbox) has been, first, to assure you that you’re not alone and you’re not crazy.

You’ve received that assurance and run with it.

I’ve also wanted to fortify your resolve and strengthen your arguments.

You’ve excelled beyond my wildest imaginings.

My third goal has been to help you get through this nightmare without drowning in denial or despair.

You haven’t drowned. You’ve swum — sometimes against raging currents in your community and state — and you set an example for other swimmers.

One of the most important lessons of this horrendous year is that it’s been up to us — up to you and me and everyone we can reach — to stop this scourge.

Not with violence, but with good trouble.

Not just in rage at politicians who have been too willing to allow Trump to tyrannize the country, but with the steadiness, stamina, and organization necessary to force them to respond to the people rather than to the tyrant or the billionaires behind him.

Not with anger at those of our fellow citizens who fell for Trump’s lies, but with an understanding that the reason those lies were seductive was because so many of our fellow citizens have been shafted by the system.

So, it has been up to us to contain this menace.

It will continue to be our responsibility.

Most of the people who in previous decades sought to justify their power by claiming they were the “leaders” of America — CEOs, Wall Street bankers, presidents of our major universities, heads of our giant media corporations, managers of the nation’s giant law firms, directors of our largest and most prestigious nonprofits — have lacked the courage to stand up to Trump and his tyranny.

Some have shamelessly sucked up to him — flattering him, presenting him gifts, enabling him, making excuses for him.

Their behavior should be a lasting reminder that we are the real leaders of America, we are the voices of democracy, we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for — not them.

Your leadership this year has included:

Organizing and mobilizing for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City, Katie Wilson’s victory in Seattle, and gubernatorial and special election wins across America.

Participating in the largest demonstrations in American history.

Bombarding your members of Congress with telephone calls and letters. Attending their town halls and demanding answers.

Boycotting big corporations that are enabling this tyranny (Palantir, Tesla, Home Depot, Amazon) and shafting their workers (Starbucks, Walmart, Amazon).

Protecting the vulnerable in our communities. Letting them know when ICE is in their neighborhoods. Demanding that local officials not cooperate with tyranny. Organizing food banks and pantries.

And sharing these posts with your friends and colleagues so they have the facts, arguments, and analyses they need to effectively resist.

Despite this squalid year, our resistance is growing. Despite the loathsome person occupying the Oval Office, we will prevail.

In 2026 — if we work hard — we will take back Congress and restore some decency to our government.

I write and post every day because I believe in your values. In your thoughtfulness. In your determination to leave this nation and this world a better place than they were before Trump.

Thank you for helping preserve what’s good in 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/.