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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All progress.

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

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

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

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

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

Trump has ordered the U.S. Treasury to draft a $1 coin featuring him on both sides, for the purpose of “honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUS,” according to Treasury officials.

Meanwhile, Trump wants the Washington Commanders to name their planned $3.7 billion stadium after him. A senior White House source told ESPN: “It’s what the president wants, and it will probably happen.” Presumably, Trump’s name will be carved into a granite facade at the stadium’s entrance.

The giant $300 million ballroom that Trump is adding to the White House is called “the President Donald J. Trump Ballroom” on the list of donors to the project, and senior administration officials say the name is likely to stick.

Trump is moving to immortalize himself with his name etched into coins, carved into pediments, and inscribed into White House marble. He wants to glorify himself in the most permanent ways possible.

This is what fascist dictators do when in power. Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini built monuments to glorify themselves so they’d be exalted in history.

Democracies don’t do this. They memorialize their heroes only after they’ve died, and only if the public wants them commemorated.

Trump deserves to be remembered — but not as a hero. To the contrary: It is our solemn duty to ensure he is remembered for all that he has done and may still do to destroy American democracy.

He must be remembered as the president who claimed without evidence that an election was “stolen” from him. Who then instigated a coup that included false electors, threats to state officials, and an assault on the U.S. Capitol that resulted in five deaths and injuries to 174 police officers.

He should be remembered as the president who, after being reelected, tried to erase the nation’s memory of what he had done by pardoning 1,600 rioters who had been criminally convicted for participating in the Capitol attack and 77 people who had conspired with him to carry out the attempted coup. He called them all “patriots.”

He must be remembered as the president who then usurped the powers of Congress. Who denied people due process of law. Who prosecuted his political opponents. Who violated international law by killing people he labeled enemy combatants. Who sent the military into American cities over the objections of their mayors and governors. And who openly and brazenly took bribes.

We must not allow Trump to erase this history with false tributes to himself, etched into silver, marble, or granite.

Instead, after he is gone, a monument should be erected to remind future generations of Trump’s treachery and the treachery of officials who supported him.

It would be a simple building constructed of iron and cement, containing the records of his attacks on democracy and the names of everyone who aided him.

Over its doorway would be the words “Trump’s Treason.”

It would be situated on the White House lawn where the Trump ballroom (since demolished) once stood. It would face Pennsylvania Avenue so that families visiting the nation’s capital — including those commemorating America’s 500th anniversary — have easy access, and will long remember this catastrophe.

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/

Chuck Schumer couldn’t hold his senators together at a time when their unity and toughness were essential. Yet Trump cracks the whip and gets all Republicans to do his bidding.

Does this mean Schumer should go? Yes.

But the problem runs deeper — to a fundamental asymmetry at the heart of American politics: Democrats are undisciplined. Republicans are regimented.

For as long as I remember, Democrats have danced to their own separate music while Republicans march to a single drummer.

That was the story in 1994, when Bill Clinton couldn’t get the Democratic Senate to go along with his health care plan, on which Clinton spent almost all his political capital.

And when Al Gore didn’t demand a statewide recount in Florida in 2000.

And when a majority of Democratic senators voted for Bush’s 2002 resolution to use military force against Iraq.

And when Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocked Biden’s agenda.

And now, when Democrats appear weak and spineless in response to Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the government.

I don’t want to over-generalize. Of course Democrats have on occasion shown discipline while Republicans have fought one another bitterly.

But overall — and even before Trump — Democrats have tended to cave or come apart when the going gets tough, and Republicans have tended to hold firm.

There’s a psychological-structural difference between the two parties.

Democrats pride themselves on having a “big tent” holding all sorts of conflicting views. Republicans pride themselves on having strong leaders.

People who run for office as Democrats are, as a rule, more tolerant of dissent than are people who run for office as Republicans. Modern-day Democrats believe in diversity, E Pluribus. Republicans believe in unity, Unum.

Research by the linguist George Lakoff has shown that in our collective subconscious, Democrats reflect the nurturing mother: accepting, embracing, empathic. Republicans represent the strict father: controlling, disciplining, limiting.

The reason why the Democrats’ “brand” has been weak relative to the Republican brand, why Democrats often appear spineless while Republicans appear adamant, and why the Democratic message is often unclear while the Republican message is usually sharper has a lot to do with this asymmetry.

Even over the last few weeks, as Democrats tried to hold the line over expiring health care subsidies that could send millions of Americans’ insurance prices soaring, voters have still favored Republicans on the economy and cost of living. Why? Because the Democratic message has been so garbled.

I don’t mean this as either criticism or justification of Democrats; I offer it as an explanation.

As America has grown ever more unequal and contentious, people who identify as Democrats tend to place a high value on the tenets of democracy: equal political rights, equal opportunity, and rule of law. That’s a good thing.

People who identify as Trump Republicans tend to place a high value on the tenets of authoritarianism: order, control, and patriarchy. (In fact, Trump authoritarianism is the logical endpoint of modern Republicanism.)

A majority of the current Supreme Court, comprised of Republican appointees, is coming down on the side of order, control, and patriarchy — which they justify under the legal fiction of a “unified executive” — rather than equal political rights, equal opportunity, and the rule of law.

None of this lets Chuck Schumer off the hook. He failed to keep Senate Democrats in line at a time when they finally had some bargaining power, and when the public mainly blamed Republicans for the shutdown. And none of what I’ve said exonerates the seven Senate Democrats and one Independent who broke ranks to join with the Republicans.

What’s the lesson here? Not that Democrats should adopt a more authoritarian organization or process. If they did, they wouldn’t be Democrats.

The real lesson is that when we — their constituents — want Democrats in Congress to hang tough, we need to force them to hang tough.

Republican voters can pretty much assume their senators and representatives will be unified and tough because that’s what Republicans do: they march to the same drummer (who these days sits in the Oval Office).

But we Democrats cannot and should not make this assumption. When we want our senators and representatives to be unified and tough, we have to let them know in no uncertain terms that we expect them to be unified and tough. We must demand it.

And if they’re not, we must hold them accountable.

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/.

Over the last month, Trump’s mental decline has appeared to worsen. Consider:

• On Sunday, he posted an image claiming that Barack Obama had been collecting millions in taxpayer dollars from “royalties linked to Obamacare.” (The bogus item was from a satirical website called the “Dunning-Kruger Times,” a reference to the Dunning-Kruger effect — the well-observed tendency of stupid people to vastly overestimate their abilities or intelligence.)

• After last Tuesday’s elections, he called “affordability” a “new word” and said Republicans had not talked enough about it, but then blasted it as a Democratic “con job” and declared “I don’t want to hear about the affordability.”
• Seemingly oblivious to the economic struggles Americans find themselves in, he has posted incessantly about the new Lincoln bathroom, remodeled in black and white marble with gold faucets and light fixtures; his new White House ballroom, to be built in marble and gilded in gold; and renovations at the Kennedy Center, which he said would be outfitted in marble and “magnificent high end carpeting.”
• When responding to a question about his mental acuity, he confused a dementia screening test for an IQ test.

• When he addressed America’s top military brass, he veered abruptly from discussing Marine morale to “Biden’s autopen” and said, “I have to sign for a general because we have beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper. I said, ‘Throw a little more gold on it, they deserve it.’ Give me — I want the A paper, not the D paper. We used to sign a piece of garbage.”
• He claimed that he had halted a “nuclear” war between Iran and Pakistan, repeatedly confusing Iran and India without noticing his mistake.
• He insisted he had “solved” an imaginary conflict between Cambodia and Armenia — two nations 4,000 miles apart. Days before, he bragged he’d stopped a showdown between Azerbaijan and Albania, apparently meaning Armenia.
• Speaking to reporters one day after meeting with Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to avert a shutdown, Trump discussed his talks with “Chuck Schumer, who was here yesterday, along with ... uhh, the, a very nice gentleman who I didn’t really know. You know who I’m talking about.”
• On October 18, when more than 7 million Americans protested against him, he posted an AI video depicting him bombing the protesters with feces.

I could go on, but you get the point. Trump appears to be rapidly losing his mind.

Yet the media isn’t covering his mental deterioration. Why not? When I ask in the media, I usually get one of the following responses:

1. There’s been no noticeable decline in Trump’s mental faculties. They tell me that Trump has always been incoherent. He’s always veered off script into bizarre tangents. He’s always made bonkers factual mistakes (along with his ubiquitous lies). So, they say, there’s been no noticeable decline in recent months.

2. His decline can’t be substantiated. A second response I get is that Trump’s declining mental condition can’t be substantiated. Yes, there are abundant anecdotes, such as those I listed above, but no hard evidence. Unless or until he says or does something totally and dangerously bonkers or his decline is substantiated, this isn’t news.

3. Media owners are blocking stories about his mental decline. A third response I get is that yes, his mental faculties have been in free fall, but no media owner wants to cover this for fear of retribution. The owners of all major media are either being sued by Trump for defamation or have recently settled with him, or are dependent on Trump’s FCC or fear Trump’s FTC and don’t want to risk his wrath.

4. Journalists don’t want to cover this. A final response is that, while the evidence of his decline is overwhelming, reporters themselves are self-censoring. There are so many other important Trump stories to cover, and his mental condition is such a controversial topic, that they’ve put any investigation into his mental deterioration on the back burner.

Hence, today’s Office Hours question: Why in your view is the media not reporting on Trump’s mental decline?

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,

“TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT, according to Pollsters,” Trump posted after Tuesday’s blowout, not naming the pollsters.

Yet the media obediently repeated Trump’s words, as if they were news.

They aren’t news. They’re postures. His words and thoughts add nothing to our understanding of anything. Yet the media reproduces them as if they did.

He says whatever happens to be in his brain at the moment. He posts about whatever annoys him at the moment. He constantly changes his mind. His brain wanders in ways that cause many to question whether he — who will be 80 in June, and whose family has a history of dementia — is all there. He lies like most people breathe. He is impetuous and capricious. He has the attention span of a fruit fly.

With Trump in the Oval Office, “news” should no longer be defined as what the president of the United States says or writes or thinks, because the president of the United States is incapable of coherent thought.

One minute America is resuming tests of nuclear weapons, the next moment it’s testing only particular mechanisms involved in nuclear weapons, the next moment he accuses China and Russia of resuming testing and says we’ll do the same — although Russia hasn’t tested a nuclear weapon since 1990 and China has not since 1996.

One minute he’s raising tariffs on Canada because an official in a Canadian province aired an ad showing Ronald Reagan to be against tariffs, the next moment he changes his mind. He threatens to hike tariffs on all sorts of countries for all sorts of reasons — to take effect in a month, in two weeks, in 10 days. Or maybe never.

Isn’t it time that the media understood that Trump does not make decisions. Instead, he has moods.

He berates, soothes, scolds, threatens, compliments, and rages.

But moods are not, and should not, be news.

Only actions should be news — not threatened actions, not possible actions, not proposed actions that are mere bubbles on a stream of consciousness — but concrete actions.

Those who report on such actions should let us know exactly who is behind them, because often it’s not Trump.

More likely it’s one of his fanatics — Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., Kash Patel, or Pam Bondi — who has ordered specific things to happen. Sailors on certain fishing vessels in the Caribbean, killed. People with brown skin living in southwest Chicago, pulled from their homes in the middle of the night along with their children, tied up, and loaded into vans. An agency of the government stripped of its funding and its public servants fired. Foreign students legally in the U.S. to study have their visas revoked because they’ve said or written things that someone in the regime finds objectionable. Vaccines no longer available.

Trump is responsible, of course, because it’s his regime. Yet we also deserve to know — so we can eventually hold them accountable — the people who are making America into the frightening, bigoted, lawless mess it’s fast becoming.

What is “news” under a president who doesn’t give a damn about anything other than amassing personal power and wealth and getting even with people he believes have wronged him? What’s “news” with a president who lies incessantly? What’s “news” when a president’s mind does not move along rational pathways?

The real news is he’s losing his mind, but the media isn’t reporting on this. The media watched Joe Biden’s mind as if it were watching a giant wounded beast, reporting every hitch and hesitation.

But Trump’s rapid mental decline is somehow uninteresting. The media takes for granted that Trump is maniacal, paranoid, and malignantly narcissistic. So what if he’s becoming ever more so? The norm is abnormal.

Memo to the media: Report on his mental decline but not his moods. Give us details of policies implemented under his name but not his posts. Let us know who is accountable for what the regime is doing and don’t attribute all of it to him.

Give us the news.

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,

The Democrats had a great day yesterday. It’s crucial that they hone their economic message for next year’s midterms on affordability, based in fairness.

Trump is doing the opposite. Although a federal court ordered Trump to continue to provide food stamps to about 42 million low-income Americans who depend on them, Trump yesterday threatened to deny them anyway until the end of the government shutdown.

In a post on social media, he said benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps, “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up the government, which they can easily do, and not before!”

How low Trump has sunk.

Eighty-eight years ago, in his Second Inaugural Address, Franklin D. Roosevelt told America that “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

It was not a test of the nation’s military might or of the size of the national economy. It was a test of our moral authority. We had a duty to comfort the afflicted, even if that required afflicting the comfortable.

The Trump regime has adopted the reverse metric. The test of its progress is whether it adds to the abundance of those who have much and provides less for those who have too little. It is passing this test with flying colors.

The regime initially signaled its willingness to tap $4.65 billion in emergency money to fund food stamps, which would cover about half of this month’s benefits. As a result, some food aid would have started to go to American families who need it, but not nearly as much as they require — and not for weeks. New applicants this month wouldn’t get any.

Now, in direct defiance of the judge’s order, Trump is saying no food stamps will be provided at all — unless congressional Democrats relent on their demand.

And what is that demand? That lower-income Americans continue to receive subsidized health care. Otherwise, health care premiums for millions of lower-income Americans will skyrocket next year by an average of 30 percent because the Trump Republican “Big Beautiful” (Big Ugly) bill slashed Obamacare subsidies.

Republicans had rammed the Big Ugly through Congress without giving Senate Democrats an opportunity to filibuster it because Republicans used a process called “reconciliation,” requiring only a majority vote of the Senate.

The Big Ugly also requires Medicaid applicants and enrollees — also low-income — to document at least 80 hours per month of work.

Many people dependent on Medicaid won’t be able to do this, either because they’re incapable of working or won’t be able to do the required paperwork to qualify for an exemption from the work requirement.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the work requirement will be the largest source of Medicaid savings, reducing federal spending on the needy by $326 billion over 10 years and causing millions to become uninsured.

All told, the Big Ugly cuts roughly $1 trillion over the next decade from programs for which the main beneficiaries are the poor and working class, and gives about $1 trillion in tax benefits to the richest members of our society.

It is the most dramatic reversal of FDR’s moral test in American history.

In the face of this outrage, the shutdown is the only practical leverage Democrats have.

By the time of FDR’s Second Inaugural in 1937, most of the country was still ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-clothed. Yet we were all in it together. The fortunes of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age had mostly been leveled by the Great Crash of 1929.

Perhaps it was easier under those circumstances to accept the idea that the test of our progress wasn’t whether we added more to the abundance of those who had much but provided enough for thosse who had too little.

Today, though, the moneyed interests lord it over America — exerting so much economic and political power that the nation is badly failing FDR’s test.

Last weekend, just as millions of low-income Americans were losing their food stamps, Trump threw a lush “Great Gatsby”-themed party at his Mar-a-Lago estate, replete with 1920s flappers and Gatsby-inspired music from the Roaring Twenties.

Some critics have called it “tone deaf,” but it was an accurate rendition of the tone Trump has set for America.

Trump is throwing a huge party for America’s wealthy — giving them tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks to ensure that their wealth (and support for him) continues to grow.

Meanwhile, he is throwing to poor and working-class Americans the red meat of hatefulness — hate of immigrants, people of color, the “deep state,” “socialists,” “communists,” transgender people, and Democrats.

This is the formula strongmen have used for a century — more wealth for the wealthy, more bigotry for the working-class and poor — until the entire facade crumbles under the weight of its own hypocrisy.

But yesterday, millions of American voters refused to go along with this unfairness. They repudiated, loudly and clearly, the formula Trump and his regime have used.

It is now the responsibility of all of us — whether Democrat or Republican or Independent; whether wealthy or middle class or working class or poor; whether conservative or progressive — to return the nation to a path that is morally sustainable.

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

Trump is incapable of allowing tensions and stresses to ease without creating new ones.

Case in point: After meeting with China’s president Xi Jinping this past week, he announces that China and the United States — the largest and second-largest economies in the world — will de-escalate the trade war.

Sounds good, I suppose (until you realize that the two nations are now back to where they were before Trump created the trade war in the first place).

Not content to calm any waters, Trump also announces that the United States will immediately restart nuclear weapons testing, after not doing so for more than 30 years. Why? He doesn’t explain except to say “other nations” are doing so. (None of the world’s three major military powers has conducted a nuclear weapons test since 1996, but they will if the U.S. resumes.)

The mad would-be king cannot abide even a moment of calm. He thrives on crises, emergencies, chaos, disarray — all of which give him more power, if we let them.

He refuses to fund SNAP (food stamps) during this government shutdown, although Congress set aside funds to do just that. He won’t extend Obamacare subsidies. His tariffs are killing farmers and small businesses. To say nothing of his violent ICE raids, his criminal prosecutions of political foes, his “war” on Venezuela.

In every sphere of our lives, he is ramping up the stress.

How should we cope with this Trump chaos?

Not by ignoring the news. This only plays into Trump’s playbook: He figures he can cause even more mayhem if we’re not paying attention.

Not by pretending that none of this matters. It does matter. Denial only weakens our resolve.

Certainly not by falling into despair or hopelessness. That’s what Trump and his ilk want more than anything. Hopelessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Then he wins it all.

We cope by becoming stronger.

We demonstrate, as we did October 18 in record numbers — and as we’ll do again in even larger numbers.

We call our members of Congress. Appear at their town halls. Protect vulnerable people in our community. Organize for the midterms.

We also pace ourselves. Stay abreast of the news but don’t try to read everything that’s coming at us. Take a break from time to time.

We keep ourselves and others apprised of positive things that are happening: the likelihood that California’s Proposition 50 will pass on Tuesday, that Zohran Mamdani will become mayor of New York, that Virginia and New Jersey will elect Democrats.

We’re grateful for the courage and resolve of our nation’s judges (including some who were appointed by Trump) in stopping his vicious and illegal rampages.

We note the downward lurch in Trump’s poll numbers, largely as a result of his insane economic policies. Even Trump voters are turning on him.

We keep the faith in America’s ideals. We stay as close as we can to our loved ones and dearest friends. And we celebrate small and noble acts of decency, wherever they occur.

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/.

According to memos reported in recent days, Trump and his military top brass have ordered the National Guard in every state to develop a “quick reaction force” of troops trained to deal with civil disturbances and riots that can be ready to deploy with just hours’ notice, in order to respond to violence from protesters.

The memos direct Guard units in all 50 states and U.S. territories to train a contingent of soldiers in a specialized course that includes the proper use of batons, body shields, stun guns and pepper spray. The memos give numbers for each state’s force that total more than 23,000 troops in all.

At the same time, Trump is drawing up plans to use the Insurrection Act to enable him to move quickly to suppress anything he interprets as a disturbance. Trump told reporters Wednesday that he has the authority to send U.S. military forces beyond the National Guard into U.S. cities, claiming not even the courts could stop him.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said he could send the “Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines,” and “anybody I wanted” into U.S. cities, and would do so “if I thought it was necessary.” Earlier last week he told U.S. troops at the Yokosuka naval base near Tokyo that he was prepared to send “more than the National Guard” into U.S. cities if needed.

Meanwhile, a number of Trump cabinet, sub-cabinet, and White House officials, have moved into military housing.

These are the latest indications of longer-term Trump administration plans to dispatch far more soldiers to U.S. streets.

But Trump cannot stop us. He cannot intimidate us. He cannot scare us. We will remain peaceful, non-violent, and civil. But we will not abide a dictator.

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

For years, voters believed that, despite all of Trump’s chaos and controversies, he’d still do a good job with the economy.

No longer. Voters are furious about high prices.

Trump’s economic approval numbers have hit new lows in all major polls: CNBC, Quinnipiac, Pew, Economist/YouGov.

Trump’s tariffs have caused prices to soar, as has his massive push to deport unauthorized immigrant workers. And Affordable Care Act enrollees are now learning about double-digit increases in their payments starting January 1st, due to Trump’s refusal to extend ACA subsidies.

So, today’s Office Hours discussion question: Will higher prices sink Trump (along with Trump Republicans running for reelection in next year’s midterms)?

I’ve heard several views:

1. Yes. He was reelected mainly because voters thought he’d bring prices down. Yet just the opposite is occurring. He won’t be able to weasel out of this, nor will his lapdogs in the Republican Party. If Dems focus on the economy, they’ll win overwhelmingly next year.

2. Yes, but with caveats. While it’s clear that Trump’s policies — on tariffs, immigration, agriculture, and health care — are causing prices to rise, these are all complicated issues, and Trump is an expert at sowing confusion and blaming his opponents. Dems need to clearly explain the connections between his policies and rising prices.

3. Not really. While the economy is important to voters, so are the other issues Trump is focused on: immigration, crime, and national defense. Most polls still show Trump is more popular among the public now than he was at this point in his first term. Moreover, he dominates the media. The Dems have no spokesperson anywhere near as charismatic.

4. Not at all. History shows that economic stresses can cause a public to defer to a strongman more than they’d normally do. Trump is adept at acting as if he’s in charge. The larger the economic crisis, the more voters will defer to him. In fact, he’ll use an economic crisis to expand his power. Besides, the public’s view of Democrats and the Democratic Party is even worse than its view of Trump.

What do you think?

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

He’s now saying it out loud — blurring the line between his so-called “war” on alleged foreign drug smugglers and his war on the “enemy within” the United States. Both now involve the deployment of the U.S. military. Neither requires proof of wrongdoing.

That was his message yesterday when Trump told American troops in Japan that he would send “more than the National Guard” into cities to enforce his crackdowns on crime and immigration:

“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled. And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities … . We’re not going to have people killed in our cities. And whether people like that or not, that’s what we’re doing.”

In the same speech, Trump defended U.S. military strikes against suspected drug smugglers — more than a dozen on vessels from South America that have killed 57 people so far, without evidence they were actually smuggling drugs. (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yesterday that the military had carried out three more strikes on Monday.)

He repeatedly condemned Joe Biden. He told the troops that the 2020 election had been rigged. He savaged Democratic governors who have resisted the military in their cities. “People don’t care if we send in our military, our National Guard,” Trump told the troops. “They just want to be safe.” Trump also called out the “fake news media,” and encouraged the troops to deride journalists.

This was the third politically-charged speech Trump has made to members of the U.S. armed forces within the month — following his late-September address to the military’s top brass and his self-described “rally” of U.S. Navy sailors in Virginia the following week.

Trump’s speech yesterday to American troops — seeking to justify the use of lethal force against anyone suspected of acting illegally, domestic or foreign — is his clearest statement yet about what’s really motivating him and his lapdogs.

He’s not seeking to stop drug smuggling, nor to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, nor to display the military might of America to world leaders, nor to extrude undocumented immigrants from the United States, nor rid the U.S. of alleged criminals.

These are all pretexts. His real goal is quite different.

In the short term, it is to intimidate Democratic mayors and governors and potential Democratic voters in order to suppress Democratic turnout in next fall’s midterm elections.

His long-term goal — shared by his sycophants Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi — is to turn America into a police state.

I don’t think it an exaggeration to say that Trump envisions himself as commander-in-chief of a domestic military force that would target alleged criminals (but not the white-collar sort), rid the nation of undocumented people, and remake America into a white, straight, male, Christian nation.

The good news is he’s now starting to say some of this in the open — directly to active-duty troops. He’s openly readying them for the role he wants them to play.

Essentially, he’s daring the top brass of the military to stop him. For now, they won’t. They’re worried and bewildered. He’s their commander-in-chief but they have an overriding responsibility to the nation to uphold democratic institutions, including the Constitution.

He’s also daring the rest of us to stop him — in the courts, in the now-defunct Congress, in the now-shuttered government. Also to stop him with our votes, our unwavering determination, and our nonviolent resistance.

Every American who shares the values for which American troops have been fighting and dying for almost 250 years, should join us on the side of democracy and against Trump’s emerging police state.

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

The resistance is becoming an uprising.

Last Saturday, more than 7 million of us poured into the streets to reject Trump’s dictatorship. That’s more than 2 percent of the adult population of the United States.

Historical studies suggest that 3.5 percent of a population engaged in sustained nonviolent resistance can topple even the most brutal dictatorships — such as Chile under Pinochet and Serbia under Milosevic.

Which means we’re almost there.

Other evidence of the backlash is all around us. Seven of the nine universities Trump selected to join his extortion compact — offering preferential treatment for federal funds in exchange for a pledge to support his agenda — have rejected it.

Most major airports have refused to show Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s propaganda video attacking Democrats for the government shutdown.

Almost all of America’s news outlets have refused to sign Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s media loyalty oath.

Trump’s destruction of the East Wing of the White House (after promising he wouldn’t) and posting an AI video of himself shitting on America is causing even loyal Trumpers to worry he’s losing his marbles.

I believe future generations will look back on this scourge and see not just what was destroyed but also what was born.

Even prior to Trump, American democracy was deeply flawed. The moneyed interests were drowning out everyone else. Inequality was reaching record levels. Corruption — legalized bribery through campaign contributions — was the norm. The bottom 90 percent were getting nowhere because the system was rigged against them.

Many of you are now sowing the seeds of fundamental reform.

Whether it’s demonstrating as you did last Saturday, appearing at Republican town halls, jamming the Capitol and White House switchboards, generating mountains of emails and letters, protecting the vulnerable in your communities, or going door-to-door for candidates like Zohran Mamdani, your activism is paying off.

The backlash against Trump is growing. His approval rating has sunk to a level not seen since Richard Nixon last sat in the White House, according to the latest Gallup poll, out Wednesday.

These are terrible times — the worst I’ve lived through, and I’ve lived through some bad ones. (Remember 1968? Nixon’s enemies list? Anyone old enough to recall Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunts?)

But as long as we are alive, as long as we are resolved, as long as we are taking action to stop the worst of this, as long as we are trying to make America and the world even a bit better — have no doubt: We will triumph.

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 the first Gilded Age, which ran from the 1890s through the 1920s, captains of American industry were dubbed “robber barons” for using their baronial wealth to bribe lawmakers, monopolize industry, and rob average Americans of the productivity of their labors.

Now, in a second Gilded Age, a new generation of robber barons is using their wealth to do the same — and to entrench their power.

The first Gilded Age was an era of conspicuous consumption. The second is an era of conspicuous influence.

The new robber barons are having their names etched into the pediments of the giant new ostentatious ballroom Trump is adding to the White House.

They already own — and influence — much of the news Americans receive. And they are eager to promote their views.

Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder and CEO of Salesforce, told The New York Times that Trump should send the National Guard to San Francisco. (After his remarks drew condemnation from many of the city’s civic leaders, he apologized. He seems about to get his wish nonetheless.)

Marc Rowan, the billionaire chief executive of Apollo Global Management, is the force behind Trump’s recent “compact” calling on universities to limit international students, protect conservative speech, require standardized testing for admissions, and adopt policies recognizing “that academic freedom is not absolute,” among other conditions. The Trump regime dangled “substantial and meaningful federal grants” for universities that agree.

(It didn’t work. Seven of the nine universities approached rejected the deal.)

Billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone, is also shaping the Trump regime’s campaign to upend American higher education. Schwarzman has emerged as a key intermediary between Trump and Harvard University.

Other of America’s new robber barons are rapidly consolidating their control over what Americans read, hear, and learn about what’s occurring in our country and the world. They include Jeff Bezos; Larry Ellison and his son, David; Mark Andreessen; Rupert Murdoch; Charles Koch; Tim Cook; Mark Zuckerberg; and, of course, Elon Musk.

Perhaps the new robber baron’s most lasting impression on the U.S. government will be the lavish White House ballroom Trump is constructing — a 90,000-square-foot, gold-leafed, glass-walled banquet room that will literally overshadow the so-called People’s House.

It will not be an assembly hall, dance hall, music hall, dining hall, village hall, or town hall. It will be a giant banquet and ballroom designed to accommodate 650 wealthy VIPs.

Trump claims that the East Room, the largest room in the White House, is too small. Its capacity is 200 people. He doesn’t like the idea of hosting kings, queens, and prime ministers in pavilions on the South Lawn.

Trump’s real intention is to have the White House resemble Versailles.

Potential billionaire donors have already received pledge agreements for “The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House.” In return for donations, contributors are eligible for “recognition associated with the White House Ballroom.”

Their names will be etched in the ballroom’s brick or stone edifice.

Trump last week hosted a dinner at the White House for the project’s donors, which included representatives from Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and other companies, as well as Schwarzman, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and other billionaires.

Meredith O’Rourke, a top political fundraiser for Trump, is leading the effort, paired with the Trust for the National Mall, an organization that supports the National Park Service.

The trust’s nonprofit status means donations come with a federal tax write-off.

Construction began Monday. Trump is now literally taking a wrecking ball to the White House — sending parts of the East Wing’s roof, the building’s exterior, and portions of its interior crumbling to the ground.

It seems fitting that in this second Gilded Age — an age of conspicuous influence and affluent access — the People’s House will be replaced by the Billionaire’s House.

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

When it comes to becoming part of the Trump regime, there’s been only one litmus test, at least until now: total loyalty to Trump. Pass that test and nothing else matters.

But Senate Republicans have now set a limit to how low Trump loyalists can go if they want to be confirmed.

At least five Senate Republicans just opposed the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel — enough to block his confirmation.

Ingrassia was among Trump Republican operatives who have been exposed exchanging racist, sexist, Nazi-loving text messages — calling Black people “monkeys” and “watermelon people,” talking about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide, lauding Republicans who they believe support slavery, imagining putting political opponents into gas chambers and subjecting them to “the greatest physiological torture methods known to man,” calling rape “epic,” and writing “I love Hitler.”

JD Vance brushed off the messages: “Kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.”

Jokes? Not funny.

Kids? Members of the group range from 18 to 40. One is a state legislator. Others are in their 30s and well-established in Republican politics.

Ingrassia, age 30, is now the Department of Homeland Security’s liaison to Vance and Trump’s White House.

In his text messages, Ingrassia described himself as having “a Nazi streak” and suggests Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell.”

But because of his utter loyalty to Trump, Trump nominated Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistleblower complaints and allegations of political interference in the civil service.

Vance has responded quite differently toward anyone making negative comments about the late Charlie Kirk.

“Call them out,” Vance angrily demanded, “and hell, call their employer.”

Many who have expressed critical views about Kirk have now lost their jobs.

At least 21 teachers in school districts across the country have been fired, put on administrative leave, or placed under investigation by their employers for comments allegedly critical of Kirk. Firefighters, members of the military, a sports reporter, an employee of the Carolina Panthers, and a city council official in Indiana have faced similar treatment or calls to resign.

The State Department has even revoked visas of foreign nationals who have made slightly negative comments about Kirk on social media, including banal statements such as “Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero.”

Senate Republicans apparently don’t share Vance’s hypocritical tolerance for racist, sexist, and Nazi-loving comments by people Trump wants to confirm for positions in his regime.

Unlike Vance and the GOP operatives who feel that their loyalty to Trump allows them to promote the sickest and most hateful views imaginable, Senate Republicans have a bottom below which they won’t sink.

It’s low but, hey, it’s a bottom.

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/.

On Saturday, 7 to 8 million of us took to the streets to demonstrate against Trump.

That’s not all.

Every major media outlet — including Fox News — has refused to sign Pete Hegseth’s unconstitutional demand that they report only what the Defense Department wants them to report or lose their press credentials. They’ve all turned in their press credentials, which means no one is turning up for Hegseth’s press briefings.

What’s the sound of a press briefing without the press?

Seven of the nine universities Trump “invited” to join his university compact — in which they give up academic freedom for a priority place in government funding — have said, essentially, f*ck no.

Disney was forced into reinstating Jimmy Kimmel after consumers threatened to boycott a wide range of Disney products. According to Strength in Numbers, the Disney boycott quickly became four times as large as any boycott over the last five years.

The great sleeping giant of America is awakening.

I’m old enough to have witnessed the sleeping giant awaken several times before.

Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt destroyed countless careers before the giant roared: “Have you no sense of decency?”

McCarthy melted almost as quickly as the Wicked Witch of the West. His national popularity evaporated. Three years later, censored by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy drank himself to death, a broken man at the age of 48.

The giant roared again a decade later, after television showed civil rights marchers getting clobbered by white supremacists. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.

It roared again after tens of thousands of young Americans were killed in the jungles of Vietnam, finally bringing to an end one of the nation’s costliest, deadliest, and stupidest wars.

It roared again at Richard Nixon after Nixon was heard on tape plotting the cover-up of Watergate — then was forced to exit the White House by helicopter on his way back to California.

It is starting to roar now — at the sociopathic occupant of the Oval Office who won’t tolerate criticism, who has revealed his utter contempt for the freedom of Americans to criticize him, to write or speak negatively about him, even to joke about him.

I’ve seen a lot. I know the signs. The sleeping giant always remains asleep until some venality becomes so noxious, some action so disrespectful of the common good, some brutality so noisy, that he has no choice but to awaken.

And when he does, the good sense of the American people causes him to put an end to whatever it was that awakened him.

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

- YouTube youtu.be

No Kings 2.0 was a huge success. More than 7 million (by some estimates, more than 8 million) showed up. We were peaceful. We were patriotic (many of us waved American flags). We stuck to one message: that we refuse to live under a dictator. We had fun (the costumes and signs were fabulous). We felt powerful in our solidarity.

And we are powerful.

What’s next? How do we use that power? What should we do now? I’ll leave to others bigger or more dramatic suggestions. Mine boil down to a dozen simple ones:

1. Organize for the 2026 midterms.

Millions of us just participated in one of the largest demonstrations in American history. The most important thing we do with that power is wrest back control of Congress from zombie Republicans who are rubber-stamping whatever Trump wants. Otherwise, we will continue to lose our democracy and rule of law to this tyrant. We must:

• Counter-balance Republican gerrymandering in red states with, at least temporarily, Democratic gerrymandering in blue states (in California, be sure to vote YES on Proposition 50).
• Work with local, county, and state grassroots organizations to identify qualified voters who rarely vote, and make sure they do so next year.
• Organize young people to participate and vote.
• Make sure everyone you know — including friends and relations who have voted Republican in the past — are aware of the stakes in the midterms, and vote against Trump Republican candidates and incumbents.

2. Protect the decent and hardworking members of our communities who are undocumented.

This is an urgent moral call to action. As Trump’s ICE continues its vicious roundups and deportations, many of our neighbors and friends are endangered and understandably frightened.

If you haven’t done so already, consider forming an unofficial “sanctuary community” that widely shares information about where ICE agents are located, where ICE raids are occurring, and how ICE is violating the rights of people here legally as well as the undocumented, and that takes videos of what ICE is doing and provides those videos to local and national media.

It’s especially important to protect access to schools, public hospitals, and courthouses. Undocumented parents should not feel afraid to send their children to school. Undocumented people who are ill, including those with communicable diseases, must not be afraid to go to clinics and hospitals for treatment. People who believe they are here legally should never be afraid to report to court.

If you trust your mayor or city manager, check in with their offices to see what they are doing to protect vulnerable families in your community.

If you haven’t done so already, I recommend you order these red cards from Immigrant Legal Resource Center and make them available in and around your community: Red Cards / Tarjetas Rojas. You might also find this of use: Immigration Preparedness Toolkit.

3. Help people who are losing their jobs and benefits.

Tump’s cruel budget is eliminating food stamps for hundreds of thousands of Americans and reducing or eliminating health insurance for millions more by cutting Affordable Care Act subsidies and making it harder for people to qualify for Medicaid.

The federal government shutdown gives Democrats bargaining leverage to extend the expiring Obamacare premium subsidies in order to head off a spike in insurance premiums for more than 22 million Americans.

But the shutdown is creating its own hardships — such as eliminating paychecks for two million federal workers. Trump is also using the shutdown to fire tens of thousands of federal workers.

As a result, our generosity is needed now more than ever — to support community food pantries, local food banks, community charities, and shelters.

4. Call your members of Congress.

Phone your representative and your two senators. If they’re Democrats, tell them that as their constituent you support the shutdown as a way to extend Obamacare subsidies, and ask them to hang in there.

If they’re Republicans, tell them that as their constituent you demand they join Democrats to extend the Obamacare subsidies, and also stop doing whatever Trump wants.

Never underestimate the power of a constituent phone call. Every office keeps track of how many there are and what they’re supporting or opposing.

The Capitol Hill switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. The switchboard operator will connect you to your representative or senators.

5. Protect LGBTQ+ and Black and brown members of our communities.

Trump and his lapdogs are already making life more difficult for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other people — through executive orders, changes in laws, alterations in civil rights laws, and changes in how such laws are enforced.

The Trump regime is also changing laws to favor white people and disfavor people of color. He is prioritizing white refugees over refugees of color. He is strong-arming corporations to eliminate programs that have fostered diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Trump’s rhetoric is encouraging hatefulness.

Please be vigilant against prejudice and bigotry, wherever it might break out. When you see or hear it, call it out. Join with others to stop it. If you trust your local city officials, get them involved. If you trust your local police, alert them as well.

6. Participate in or organize boycotts of companies that are enabling the Trump regime — starting with Tesla, X, Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart, and Palantir Technologies.

Never underestimate the effectiveness of consumer boycotts. Corporations invest heavily in their brand names and the goodwill associated with them. Loud, boisterous, attention-getting boycotts can harm brand names and reduce the value of corporations’ shares of stock.

7. Support groups litigating against Trump.

Some of the most important measures for resisting Trump are occurring in the federal courts. Groups behind this litigation include the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Common Cause. They deserve your support.

In addition, Lowell & Associates, Democracy Defenders Fund, and the Washington Litigation Group are representing clients battling to get their jobs back, avoid prosecutions, and recoup millions of dollars that Trump has illegally blocked.

8. Spread the truth.

Get accurate news through reliable sources, and spread it. If you hear anyone spreading lies and Trump propaganda, contradict them with facts and their sources.

Here are some of the sources I currently rely on for the truth: Democracy Now, Business Insider, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Americans for Tax Fairness, Economic Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Guardian, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, The Bulwark, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of course, this Substack.

9. Join coworkers in getting employers to resist Trump.

If you work for a university, law firm, media company, museum, or any other organization that is being pressured (or could be) by the Trump regime to surrender its autonomy to the regime, urge them not to.

Join with your coworkers, colleagues, and alumni to pressure boards of directors and trustees, explaining that it’s impossible to appease a dictator. Join with other organizations or companies in the same industry to demand resistance. Most labor unions are on the right side — seeking to build worker power and resist repression. Support them by joining picket lines and boycotts and encouraging employees to organize in places you patronize.

10. Push for progressive measures in our communities and states.

Local and state governments retain significant power for good. Join groups that are moving our cities and states forward, in sharp contrast to regressive moves at the federal level by Trump and his lapdogs.

Lobby, instigate, organize, and fundraise for progressive leaders and legislators. Support higher taxes on the wealthy and on big corporations to finance affordable housing, health care, child care, and elder care.

11. Meanwhile, keep the faith. Do not give up on America.

Remember, Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5 points. By any historical measure, this was a squeaker. In the House, the Republicans’ lead is the smallest since the Great Depression. In the Senate, Republicans lost half of 2024’s competitive Senate races, including in four states Trump won.

America has deep problems, to be sure. Which is why we can’t give up on it — or give up the fights for social justice, equal political rights, equal opportunity, and the rule of law. The forces of Trumpian repression and neofascism would like nothing better than for us to give up. Then they’d win it all. We cannot allow them to. We will never give up.

12. Finally, please be sure to find room in your life for joy, fun, and laughter. We must not let Trump and his darkness take us over.

Just as it’s important not to give up the fight, it’s critically important to take care of ourselves. If we obsess about Trump and fall down the rabbit hole of outrage, worry, and anxiety, we won’t be able to keep fighting.

Be careful. Be strong. Hug your loved ones. We will win 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/

Saturday, millions of us affirmed the foundation of the common good.

Across America, people who never before participated in a demonstration showed their solidarity: with immigrants being targeted by Trump, with current and former public officials whom Trump is prosecuting, with the students and universities whose freedom to learn and speak is being threatened by Trump, and with every American who’s determined to reject dictatorship.

Most of the people who came together in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and Mineola, Texas, and Newberry, North Carolina, and thousands of other towns and cities to express their outrage at what Trump is doing weren’t heard or seen by the rest of the nation.

But their solidarity is echoing across the land.

That solidarity is stronger than Trump and his lapdogs. Our determination is more powerful. The connection between yesterday’s demonstrations and our coming victory over tyranny is clear:

As our solidarity grows, we feel more courageous.

As we feel more courageous, we are better able to resist Trump and his tyrannous regime.

As we resist Trump and his regime, we weaken it.

As we weaken Trump and his regime, we have less to fear and more reason for hope.

As we have less to fear and more reason for hope, we are able to vanquish tyranny and build a better future.

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/.

Behind yesterday's NO KINGS DAY 2.0 is a question of strategy and power. Marching is fine, but it’s hardly enough.

I keep hearing from Democrats that they have to “fight fire with fire” in meeting the Republicans’ authoritarian assault on American democracy. But what does this actually entail, and what’s the downside?

Consider, for example, California governor Gavin Newsom’s intent to redistrict California to elicit five new Democratic seats — the same number as Texas governor Greg Abbott has eked out for Republicans by redistricting Texas. Newsom calls this “fighting fire with fire,” but some critics worry he’s unleashing a race to the bottom. (Btw, I’m in favor of Newsom’s move and plan to vote “yes” on Proposition 50.)

Or think about the government shutdown, now well into its third week. Senate Democrats aren’t budging. Many Democratic voters applaud their tenacity. But critics worry that the standoff could wreak even more havoc on the federal government and workforce than the Trump regime has already wrought.

Finally, consider the oft-repeated threat by elected Democrats that when they’re back in power, they’ll do to Republicans exactly what Republicans have now done to them — including defunding and canceling projects that have been appropriated for Republican states and congressional districts. Where will this end?

Underlying all this is a fundamental issue that was raised in Michelle Obama’s famous quip that “when they [Republicans] go low, we [Democrats] go high.” As Trump’s Republicans go lower and more authoritarian than anyone ever imagined, should Democrats stop taking the high road? Or should they go as low as Republicans are going? Or even lower?

The danger is that going low may undermine the very democratic values that Democrats are trying to uphold.

To put the question bluntly, is it justifiable to use low-road authoritarian tactics to rescue democracy from authoritarians?

When I ask this question, I usually get back three types of answers. I’d be interested in knowing which of them you’re most comfortable with. Herewith:

1. It’s entirely justifiable to use authoritarian tactics to rescue democracy from authoritarianism. Otherwise, Dems are fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. When they regain control of the presidency and Congress, they can once again take the high road. But unless they fight like Republicans, there won’t be any road left for them to run or govern on.

2. Democrats should only go so far as to neuter the authoritarian tactics Republicans are using. Instead of competing in a race toward authoritarianism, Democrats should simply remove any incentive for Republicans to enter the race to begin with. So, for example, Dems shouldn’t try to exceed the number of House seats Republicans are creating through redistricting; Dems should only seek to match them.

3. It’s not justifiable to use authoritarian tactics to rescue democracy from authoritarians. Doing so normalizes and legitimizes authoritarianism and sacrifices the moral authority of democratic institutions to an immediate political goal. Dems must stick to the high road even if that means losses in the short term, because they have to exemplify to America what the high road looks like and why democratic institutions and processes matter.

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 formal organization chart of the Trump regime would show Trump on top, his Cabinet officers arrayed underneath him, the White House staff below them, and an assortment of lower-level appointees at the bottom.

The reality is far different.

Today I want to give you what might be described as a power map of the regime — where power really lies and who really reports to whom.

At the top center of the map is the troika of Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and JD Vance. Their joint goal appears to be to destroy American democracy.

Their power comes from their knowledge, tenacity, connections, and fanaticism — and from Trump’s apparent willingness to sign off on whatever they want to do.

Stephen Miller wants to return America to the 1950s, when it was dominated by white, straight, Christian men whose ancestors were born here. Miller is pushing for high tariffs, managing the ICE raids on Democrat-run cities, summoning National Guard and federal troops, and seeking to provoke enough violence to justify invocation of the Insurrection Act.

Russell Vought wants to create an all-powerful executive branch dictatorship, usurping the roles of the other branches. Vought has illegally impounded over $410 billion so far. During the shutdown, he has frozen nearly $28 billion for more than 200 projects mostly in Democrat-led cities and congressional districts, has fired thousands of federal employees, and is threatening not to provide back pay to furloughed federal employees.

JD Vance wants to prevent the Democrats from taking control of one or both chambers of Congress in the 2026 midterms and become president after Trump. He’s urging Republican states to engage in more gerrymandering to eke out more Republican House seats, managing the legal assault on the Voting Rights Act and mail-in voting, and pushing universities and the media to the right.

A fourth person also near the center of the regime’s power structure is RFK Jr., whose tenacity and fanaticism are doing incomparable damage to America’s system of health care, health research, and public health. He’s got a lot of power but organizationally is out of the loop.

The second tier, just below them

Under Miller are Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security; Howard Lutnick, secretary of commerce; and Pete Hegseth, secretary of defense (or war).

Under Vought are Scott Bessent, secretary of the treasury, and what remains of Musk’s DOGE.

Under Vance are Pam Bondi, attorney general; Kash Patel, director of the FBI; Linda McMahon, secretary of education; and Marco Rubio, secretary of state.

Under RFK Jr. is a vast (and increasingly dysfunctional) public health system including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

The third tier

Beneath the second tier is a ragtag collection of ambitious bottom-feeders and misfits who are trying to rise through the muck.

For example: William Pulte, who, in his capacity as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has come up with flimsy evidence of mortgage fraud allegedly committed by people Trump wants to harm, such as New York State Attorney General Letitia James, California Senator Adam Schiff, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Pulte reports to Bondi and Miller.

There’s also Peter Navarro, the fanatical trade isolationist and anti-China hand who in the first Trump regime publicly advocated hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 and condemned public health measures that aimed to stop the virus’s spread. After refusing to tell Congress what he knew about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Navarro was convicted of contempt of Congress and spent four months in prison. Navarro reports to Lutnick and Miller.

Tom Homan, the so-called “border czar,” who accepted a bag of $50,000 in an FBI sting operation (the investigation has been dropped by Trump’s Justice Department and the FBI).

Heather Honey, a well-known election denier, now heading the Office of Election Integrity.

Where’s Trump?

Depending on the day and the issue, Trump wafts around the power map.

Because he is not a decision-maker and is pursuing little other than power, money, and praise, no one actually reports to him. They listen to him rave, laud him, tell him how wonderful he is and that he’s right about everything, and then report to the people with real power.

Trump will be out in front on an issue that’s likely to get a lot of positive attention, generate him a lot of money, or enlarge his power. Otherwise, he’s off the map, watching television and playing golf.

The fringe

Around the fringe of the power map is a Star Wars cantina of weirdos. Although not officially inside the regime, they exercise power by gaining fleeting access to Trump or to one of the troika.

They include Laura Loomer, Curtis Yarvin, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and various other Fox News personalities whose phone calls Trump will take and who may influence his thinking for a moment but have only indirect influence on what the regime actually does.

The oligarchy

At the top of the power map you’ll see billionaire oligarchs who have extraordinary clout in the Trump regime. In effect, the regime reports to them.

They include:

Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who got JD Vance his job. He has a direct pipeline to Vance.

Stephen Schwarzman, the private equity CEO. Schwarzman takes a variety of roles. For example, he’s behind the scenes in the regime’s fight with Harvard and other major institutions.

Bill Ackman, the investor. He, too, influences the troika. He’s the main intermediary between Trump and Elon Musk.

Musk himself still wields significant influence over Miller, Vought, and Vance.

Marc Andreessen, the unofficial godfather of Silicon Valley and co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He’s heavily invested in artificial intelligence startups and financial technology firms and informally advises the regime.

Also: tech oligarchs Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Tim Cook.

And Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Jared Kushner. As members of the Trump family, they depend on, and are depended on by, the powers within the regime.

What’s in it for the oligarchs?

Money and power. Most basically, the oligarchs don’t trust democracy. Their definition of freedom is the ability to accumulate and retain as much wealth as they wish.

Their deepest fear is that the majority of Americans, if fully informed, would expropriate their fortunes. As Thiel wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Marc Andreessen’s red line was a proposal that wafted around the Biden administration to tax unrealized capital gains. Others are freaked out by the possibility of a wealth tax on billionaires and multimillionaires.

The oligarchs are not entirely anti-government because they also want government funding for their giant projects, such as AI and the exploration (and exploitation) of space, which require vast amounts of capital and resources.

Hence, their enthusiasm for the defense industry, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, and Chinese technology and the Chinese market.

No one in the Trump regime reports directly to these oligarchs. Instead, those with power inside the regime keep a keen eye on the oligarchs — courting them, seeking their approval, wanting their connections, using their power, pocketing their money, and channeling their influence.

The oligarchs know their decisions can make or break Trump. They likewise depend on the regime. Power in the Trump regime is a function of such mutual dependence.

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

Bad enough that planes are delayed due to the government shutdown. Now, thousands of stranded passengers have to watch Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blame Democrats in a video where she says:

“It is T.S.A.’s top priority to make sure that you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible while we keep you safe. However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this many of our operations are impacted and most of our T.S.A. employees are working without pay.”

It’s the same across much of the shuttered federal government.

If your farm is losing global customers because other nations are retaliating for Trump’s tariffs and you go to the Department of Agriculture’s website to see if you have any recourse, you now read that the government is closed “due to the Radical Left Democrat shutdown.”

If you try to get through to the Small Business Administration to check on your SBA loan, you get an automated phone message: “I am out of office for the foreseeable future because Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal funding bill (H.R. 5371) leading to a government shutdown that is preventing the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) from serving America’s 36 million small businesses.”

If you check the Department of Justice’s website, you get a banner saying, “Democrats have shut down the government.”

When I served in the federal government — once in a Republican administration, then in two Democratic ones — I was prohibited from making any public comment or taking any action that might be considered “partisan.”

I was told I couldn’t even sign a letter asking the residents of my home state (then Massachusetts) to be sure to vote in an upcoming federal election.

At that time I was working in Gerald Ford’s Justice Department. The letterhead was from the Justice Department, and several of us from Massachusetts were prepared to sign on.

“You can’t do that,” the departmental lawyer said. “It violates the Hatch Act, which bars federal executive branch employees from partisan activities.”

“But this letter isn’t partisan,” I recall arguing. “It just urges people to vote.”

“You’re missing the point,” the lawyer responded. “It’s coming from you as an employee of the Justice Department in a Republican administration, so it could be seen as a Republican endorsement.”

And that was the end of that.

The Hatch Act was passed in 1939. Its purpose was to ensure federal programs were administered in a nonpartisan way and to protect federal employees from any political coercion on the job.

The Hatch Act is still the law. As is the Anti-Lobbying Act of 1919, which prohibits the use of appropriated funds for activities designed to “support or defeat legislation pending before Congress.”

So what’s with all the government employees in the Trump administration putting out partisan propaganda during the shutdown?

Can Kristi Noem tell airport passengers that Democrats are to blame for the shutdown? Can the secretary of agriculture or the director of the Small Business Administration or the attorney general announce on department webpages and automated responses that the shutdown is occurring because Democrats have refused to fund the federal government?

The answer in all these cases is no. These statements and messages violate the legal obligations of agency employees to “provide nonpartisan service to their constituents.” All involve Trump or his appointees requiring nonpartisan civil servants to engage in highly partisan actions.

According to the law, penalties for violating the Hatch Act can result in removal from federal office and civil penalties of up to $1,000.

But as with so much in Trump world, illegal actions have no consequence. There’s no mechanism for holding anyone accountable.

A number of Hatch Act complaints have been filed against Cabinet secretaries and agencies posting partisan messages. But Hatch Act violations are investigated by the Office of Special Counsel in the White House, so they’re ending up in the circular file.

The good news is that some administrators at the ground level — literally — are enforcing the Hatch Act on their own.

Many airport authorities are simply refusing to show Noem’s video.

Kara Hansen, a spokeswoman for the Port of Portland in Oregon, explained in a statement that the port wouldn’t show it because the video violated the Hatch Act.

Ken Jenkins, the Westchester County, N.Y., executive who refused to show the video at the White Plains airport, said the video is “inappropriate, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the values we expect from our nation’s top public officials.”

Exactly.

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 recently had a minor health scare — not unusual when you’re pushing 80. Everything is fine, at least for now.

But it got me thinking.

Trump is 10 days older than me. He doesn’t look the model of robust health.

Even though we’re almost the same age, Trump has one big health problem I don’t have: his hatefulness.

“I hate my opponents,” he says.

Hate is a corrosive. It eats away at one’s health. It attacks a hater’s central nervous system by releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. It compromises a hater’s cardiovascular system with high blood pressure and heart disease. It weakens immune systems, making the hater more vulnerable to all sorts of illnesses. It weakens gastro-intestinal systems, causing stomachaches, nausea, and other digestive problems. It leads to difficulties falling and staying asleep. It causes muscle tensions that harm the jaw and neck, such as clenching and teeth grinding, and contributes to headaches and migraines.

On Friday, Trump spent roughly three hours at the Bethesda Naval Hospital for what his doctor, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, called a “scheduled follow-up evaluation.” (While there, anti-vaxxers please note, Trump also got his yearly flu shot, as well as a COVID-19 booster.)

The White House initially described Trump’s Walter Reed visit as a “routine yearly checkup,” although Trump had his annual physical in April. The White House then called the Walter Reed visit a “semiannual physical.”

Even without hate, a body nearing 80 suffers from the wear and tear that accompany aging.

When I get together with old friends, our first ritual is an “organ recital” — how’s your back? Knee? Heart? Hip? Shoulder? Hearing? Prostate? Hemorrhoids? Digestion?

The recital can run — and ruin — an entire lunch.

I doubt Trump does organ recitals with old friends. That’s because I don’t think he has old friends.

When it comes to other people, Trump isn’t relational. He’s transactional. Every interaction is a deal. Transactions don’t foster friendships.

Yet as gerontologists will tell you, one of the most important ways of keeping healthy in later years is through good friendships.

Another thing I’ve been noticing when I get together with old friends is the subtle and awkward issue of mental decline.

It doesn’t arise directly. We don’t ask each other, “So, how’s the dementia coming along?” Instead, we quietly listen and notice: Are words garbled? Thoughts coherent? Syntax reasonable?

I’m becoming more forgetful. I make long lists trying to coax myself into remembering what I’m supposed to. Then I forget where I put the lists.

Inevitably, minds begin to go. Trump’s seems to be disappearing at a particularly rapid rate. Just get a transcript of the full remarks he made several weeks ago to the military top brass. It has dementia written all across it.

At Trump’s April physical, he passed a short screening test to assess brain functions. Beforehand, Trump bragged about how well he had done on his last cognitive test. “I had a perfect score. And one of the doctors said he’s almost never seen a perfect score. I had a, had a perfect score. I had the highest score. And that made me feel good.”

Let me ask you: Do you consider someone mentally healthy who needs to constantly and continuously brag about himself?

Another important way of measuring mental health is one’s sense of humor — especially of the self-deprecating sort. As I age, I’ve found that the sharpest of my friends have retained great capacities to laugh at themselves.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen or heard Trump make a joke at his own expense. In fact, as far as I can tell, he has no sense of humor.

Probably the best predictor of how long you’ll live is how long your parents lived. Genes aren’t everything, but they’re almost everything.

My mother died at the age of 86. She was unwell for the last two years of her life. My father stuck around until two weeks before his 102nd birthday, and his mind remained sharp as a tack.

Trump’s mother died at the age of 88; his father at 93. Fred Trump was diagnosed with Alzheimers at the age of 86.

Three score and ten is the number of years of life set out in the Bible. Modern technology and Big Pharma should add at least a decade and a half, unless RFK Jr. has his way. It’s now thought a bit disappointing if a person dies before 85.

But as one approaches 80, it’s not just lifespan that looms. It’s also health span — how many years you feel good, feel able, have your wits about you.

If Trump can cause as much mayhem and suffering as he’s doing every day, I can at least keep writing and talking about how horrific he is, every day.

After all, I’m 10 days younger than him.

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 happens when huge amounts of money pour into poorly understood and unregulated industries that promise spectacular profits for a few winners?

At best, some investors lose their shirts while the lucky ones make fortunes. At worst, the bubble bursts and takes everyone down with it — not just its investors, but the entire economy.

My purpose today isn’t to worry you but to give you some economic information that may help you. I’m deeply concerned that two opaque industries are creating giant bubbles on the verge of bursting.

One is AI.

AI is worrisome enough as is — its insatiable thirst for energy and water, its capacities to override the wishes of human beings, its potential to destroy the planet.

My immediate concern is that AI is becoming a financial bubble whose bursting will harm lots of innocent people.

Anyone remember the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s? The housing bubble of 2006? The tulip-mania bubble of the 1630s? The South Sea bubble of 1720?

They all followed a well-worn pattern.

An asset generates excitement among investors because its value starts rising — mainly because other investors are also becoming excited and investing in it. Investors borrow piles of money to get in on the action.

The bubble bursts when it becomes evident that way too much has been invested relative to the potential for real-world profits. Smart investors cash out first. Everyone else is left with worthless pieces of paper. Borrowers go broke. Those insuring the borrowers disappear. If bad enough, governments have to bail out the biggest borrowers.

The Bank of England recently warned that AI stock market valuations appeared “stretched” — risking a “sudden correction” in global markets. Translated: The bubble will burst.

AI has many of the characteristics of a bubble.

Market valuations of its major players — OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon, Meta, and Musk’s xAI — have soared. Most of this is on the basis of hope and hype.

Shares of stock surrounding AI and its data centers account for an estimated 75 percent of the returns to America’s biggest corporations, 80 percent of earnings growth, and 90 percent of the growth in capital expenditures.

Yet, according to an MIT report, 95 percent of companies that try AI aren’t making any money from it.

Taxpayers are footing some of this bill. Thirty-seven states have passed legislation granting hundreds of millions of dollars of tax exemptions for the building of data centers.

Meanwhile, factory construction and manufacturing investments in the rest of the American economy have slowed. Manufacturing has lost 38,000 jobs since the start of the year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos recently admitted that AI is likely a bubble but that some investments will eventually pay off.

“When people get very excited, as they are today, about artificial intelligence, for example ... every experiment gets funded, every company gets funded. The good ideas and the bad ideas. And investors have a hard time in the middle of this excitement, distinguishing between the good ideas and bad ideas.”

The flood of money into AI has made America’s billionaire oligarchs far richer.

By Forbes’ count, 20 of the most notable billionaires tied to the explosive growth in AI infrastructure have already added more than $450 billion to their fortunes since January 1.

Oracle cofounder and chief technology officer Larry Ellison’s wealth has increased $140 billion in the past year, as Oracle’s shares jumped 73 percent (compared to 15 percent for the entire stock market). This was due to projected revenue from Oracle’s cloud infrastructure to power AI.

This has made Larry Ellison the second-richest person in America (just behind Elon Musk). The Ellison family is pouring some of this wealth into a media empire aligned with Trump.

The wealth of Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang has increased $47 billion this year as shares of his chipmaking giant have risen 40 percent.

Wait for the burst.

Oracle is carrying more debt than ever, issuing another $18 billion of debt in September. The S&P’s credit rating bureau downgraded its outlook for the company to “negative” in July, citing concerns about free cash flow.

Other major players are also deep into debt.

Frankly, I don’t care which giant corporations or ultra-wealthy investors strike it big and which lose their shirts.

I worry about the economy as a whole, about working families who could lose their jobs and savings. The losses when the AI bubble bursts could ricochet across America.

Trump has put David Sacks, co-founder of an AI company and, of course, a fierce Trump loyalist, in charge of AI and cryptocurrencies. So far, Sacks has killed any restrictions and regulations that might stand in the way of either.

The Trump regime has been opening the doors for trillions of dollars in pension funds to be invested in crypto, AI, venture capital, and private equity. Even 401(k) plans have joined the flood.

Crypto is my second bubble concern. It’s a classic Ponzi scheme. It’s growing because investors believe other investors will keep buying it. And like AI, crypto’s meteoric growth has also been powered largely by the ultra-wealthy. (Trump and his family are said to have made $5 billion off it so far.)

Also like AI, crypto uses up massive amounts of energy but doesn’t actually create anything. Gertrude Stein’s famed description of Oakland, California, seems apt: There’s no there there.

Consider the online brokerage firm Robinhood, whose stock rose 284 percent in the year through September. What fueled this extraordinary increase in value? Trading in cryptocurrency and in betting on sports games.

Last month, Robinhood joined the S&P 500 — the index of America’s biggest corporations. As Jeff Sommer noted in The New York Times, had Robinhood been a member of the S&P 500 for the entire year, its meteoric rise would have been enough for it to lead the index.

Crypto tokens are even being sold as ways to get pieces of private firms like SpaceX and OpenAI. Watch your wallets.

When will the crypto bubble burst? Maybe it’s already started.

Friday’s cryptocurrency selloff — apparently triggered by Trump’s talk of a 100 percent tariff on China — wiped out more than $19 billion in crypto assets. Bitcoin dropped 12 percent, forcing liquidations that triggered more selling, pushing prices even lower. The token for World Liberty Financial, a crypto project backed by Trump and his sons, fell by more than 30 percent.

The sharp downturn exposed the huge amount of borrowing behind crypto’s nine-month rally, which began after the election of an administration seen as friendly to the industry.

The flood of money into these two opaque industries — AI and crypto — has propped up the U.S. stock market and, indirectly, the U.S. economy.

AI and crypto have created the illusion that all is well with the economy — even as Trump has taken a wrecking ball to it: raising tariffs everywhere, threatening China with a 100 percent tariff, sending federal troops into American cities, imprisoning or deporting thousands of immigrants, firing thousands of federal workers, and presiding over the closure of the U.S. government.

When the AI and crypto bubbles burst, we’ll likely see the damage Trump’s wrecking ball has done.

I fear millions of average Americans will feel the consequences — losing their savings and jobs.

Again, I’m not writing this to alarm you. You already have more than enough reason to be alarmed by what’s happening to America.

I want you to take reasonable precaution.

This isn’t an investment letter, but if you have savings, please make sure some are in low-risk assets such as money-market funds. As to your job, hold on.

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

You know Trump Republicans are worried when they slam a planned protest — more than a week before it occurs.

Last Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson described this coming Saturday’s No Kings rally as the “hate-America” rally that would draw “the pro-Hamas wing” and “the antifa people.”

I’m sure these phrases have been distributed to senior Republicans by the White House. They’re all delivering the same lines.

Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) claims Democrats are refusing to vote to fund the government “to score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold ... a hate-America rally” on Saturday.

So what is the White House worried about? Why are they trying to discredit the rally before it’s even occurred?

Because it’s likely to be even larger than the first No Kings rally — which was the largest demonstration against Trump since his return to the Oval Office.

And it will happen all over America, so it’s likely to generate a huge number of news clips on local television.

Trump’s power depends on maintaining the illusion that he’s all-powerful, and that most Americans (apart from those he and his lapdogs label “pro-Hamas,” “terrorists,” and “antifa”) adore him.

But that illusion is harder to maintain if a significant part of the population of every town and city is on the streets decrying him. The Emperor has no clothes.

Rather than it being a “hate-America” rally, Saturday’s rally is an opportunity for all of us who love America to express our determination that our nation’s ideals not be crushed by the Trump regime.

It’s a chance for us to publicly rededicate ourselves to democracy, the rule of law, equal protection under the law, and our rights to believe what we want, say what we want, and choose our leaders without fear of recrimination.

I urge you to participate. (Here’s where.)

And when you do, please help make it:

1. Peaceful.

The first No Kings rally was overwhelmingly peaceful, which made it hugely effective. This one must be, too.

If you see or hear of any potential violence, please do whatever you can to discourage it. We don’t want to give the regime any excuse to characterize it as violent or to call out the National Guard or active military troops or invoke the Insurrection Act.

Over the weekend, JD Vance said Trump “has not felt he needed to” invoke the Insurrection Act right now,” but he has “not ruled it out.” Vance claimed that crime is “out of control” in major American cities.

2. Fun.

The underlying issue — the usurpation of American democracy by a tyrant — is dead serious. But it’s important that we also use satire, mockery, ridicule, parody, and humor to make our points.

Not only do these drive Trump nuts, but they show that we’re able to stand up to his hatefulness and fear with cheerfulness and wit. And they can make the event fun.

3. Clear.

This is about saving our democracy. It’s not about other issues that we may feel strongly about such as climate change, immigrants’ rights, LGBTQ+ rights, universal health care, Israel’s war in Gaza, or Putin’s war in Ukraine.

All these are important, of course, but the purpose of this demonstration is to show America and the world the extent of our determination to wrest back control of our democracy from an authoritarian regime. Please don’t give Republicans any fuel to characterize it as about anything else.

4. Relevant to the 2026 midterms.

If they’re to have a real-world effect, demonstrations need to be linked to real-world politics. The highest political priority right now is to regain control of Congress.

Saturday presents an opportunity to remind our communities about the importance of the midterm elections of 2026.

We must do what we can to stop Republican states from super-gerrymandering to eke out more Republican seats in the House. And help Democratic states offset any such gerrymanders with additional Democratic seats (hence the importance of voting Yes on California’s Proposition 50).

We have a constitutional right to demonstrate. Trump and his lapdogs haven’t yet been able to take that right away from us. Let’s use it.

Happy Columbus (Indigenous Peoples’) Day.

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

Something dramatic has happened.

Many people who consider themselves non-political or independent, or moderate Republican, or who even voted for Trump last November, can’t avoid seeing what’s now come so clearly into the open.

And they’re finding it terrifying.

They’ve watched Trump order the Texas National Guard into Portland and Chicago, over the objections of the mayors of those cities and the governors of Oregon and Illinois. They’ve heard him call for jailing the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois for opposing these moves.

They’ve heard him threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act and send federal troops all over America.

They’ve watched Trump’s ICE agents drag people out of their beds in the middle of the night, zip-tie them and their children, and haul them away.

They’ve seen Trump’s prosecutors indict the attorney general of New York state because she held Trump accountable for fraud. And seen him threaten to do the same to a California senator because he conducted hearings in the House exposing Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol.

They’ve heard Trump say he can kill anyone who he claims is an enemy combatant trafficking drugs.

They’ve heard Trump direct the IRS, FBI, and Justice Department against liberal groups that oppose him — George Soros’s Open Society Foundation; ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising organization; Indivisible, the community-based resistance organization.

And they watched him take off the air comedians who criticize him — Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel.

All across America, millions of people who have avoided politics, or identified as independents or moderate Republicans or even Trump voters, are shaken by what they’re seeing and hearing.

It’s no longer Democrat versus Republican or left versus right.

It’s now democracy versus dictatorship. Right versus wrong.

It’s no longer a war on undocumented immigrants. It’s now a war on Americans.

It’s no longer a foreign enemy. It’s now the “enemy within.”

Across the land, average Americans are realizing that they too could be dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night by Trump’s ICE agents, or tear-gassed and arrested by Trump’s National Guard, or targeted by Trump’s prosecutors, or shot by Trump’s military.

The Big Reveal is that all of us are now endangered.

Multiple polls show Trump’s approval tanking, but I think it runs deeper than this.

Something dramatic has happened over the last two weeks — as America sees more vividly than ever who Trump is, where he and his trio of lapdogs (Miller, Vought, and Vance) want to take the country, and how we’re all potential targets.

The Big Reveal is impossible not to see. Trump and his lapdogs are doing all of this completely in the open. They have no shame.

Most Americans abhor what they see, because what they see is abhorrent.

This is how the great sleeping giant of America awakens, roars, and puts an end to it.

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

Flying blind is dangerous, but it’s what Trump and his lackeys are forcing America to do.

For starters, the current government shutdown means that critical economic statistics — such as job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that normally would have appeared last Friday — are delayed. No one knows when they’ll appear.

The BLS also produces data on inflation and wages — also delayed.

At a time when there’s reason to worry that the American economy is weakening — when Trump’s tariffs (import taxes) are pushing prices higher, his ICE dragnet is causing labor shortages, and he is asserting control over the Fed’s interest-rate decisions — turning the lights off on the economy is a particularly bad idea.

But even if the government weren’t shuttered, Trump is still turning out the lights.

His firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, on the basis of a jobs report showing a dramatic slowdown in the number of new jobs created under Trump’s watch, has caused many to wonder whether Americans will ever know the truth about how the economy is doing.

Once Trump completes his takeover of the Fed, there will be no inflation cop on the beat, with the result that no one can have any confidence that inflation will be controlled in the future.

Trump intends to replace quarterly earnings reports by publicly traded companies with twice-annual updates. This would put investors in the dark.

Trump and the sycophants surrounding him don’t mind turning the lights off on the economy because they’d rather Americans not know how badly it’s doing under Trump.

Besides, Trump doesn’t like data. He eschews facts. He wants investors and consumers — and everyone else — to be in the dark, because then he can lie without fear of factual contradiction. He can create even more of a fantasy world. He can pretend that he’s been wildly successful even when he’s been a terrible failure.

Trump’s concealment extends beyond the economy. He’s been misrepresenting evidence on vaccines. He’s slowing or stopping data collection on climate change and on bird flu.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced it was defunding its annual survey on food security. This is the nation’s longest-running and most consistent measurement of whether American families are meeting their basic nutritional needs.

Without this information, policymakers and researchers can’t track how many Americans are hungry and how many children are failing to receive adequate nutrition.

Trump doesn’t mind, because he and his Republican enablers in Congress just enacted the largest cuts to food assistance ever to hit American families. Meanwhile, his tariffs — combined with lack of antitrust enforcement — are making food prices soar.

In April, the Trump administration laid off all the analysts at the Department of Health and Human Services responsible for updating the federal poverty guidelines used to calculate eligibility for more than 40 programs, such as the National School Lunch Program and Low-Income Home Energy Assistance and parts of Medicaid and Medicare.

I doubt Trump wants Americans to know that poverty is rising on his watch, as it surely is. Nor is he especially concerned about updating eligibility for programs that keep Americans out of poverty — programs he’s actively and illegally cutting.

In March, the Department of Health and Human Services suspended data collection for the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a database on maternal mortality. In April, the full PRAMS team was put on administrative leave.

Trump doesn’t want Americans to know that women are very likely getting sicker and dying at higher rates due to his (and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s) absurd policies limiting access to drugs and vaccines, his bonkers announcement that pregnant women shouldn’t take Tylenol (even if they’re running a fever), and policies denying women abortions — such as ending Medicaid payments to reproductive health care clinics that offer abortions.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in May that it will no longer be updating its Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters data, which tracks major weather and climate disasters that have total damages or costs of $1 billion or more.

I’m sure Trump is fine with this because he believes climate change is a “hoax.” He’s stopped funding wind and solar energy and instead given carte blanche to the oil companies. Of course he doesn’t want to track large climate disasters.

The lights are going out across America.

The problems that we as a nation have sought to illuminate, so that we can remedy them, are disappearing — not because the problems are disappearing or have been remedied, but because we will no longer know about them.

It is impossible to protect American consumers, workers, investors, families, and children without adequate data. Trump and his lackeys have little or no interest in protecting them — and even less in allowing Americans to know how little they care.

When this Trump daymare is over, one of our first priorities must be to restore all the ways of knowing what’s happening to Americans — and dedicate ourselves and the nation to sharing the truth.

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

The direction we’re going is either martial law or civil war.

Americans from so-called “red” states, with the backing of their Republican governors and legislatures, are on the brink of using lethal force against Americans in so-called “blue” states, whose Democratic governors and legislatures strongly oppose the moves.

I pray we don’t come close to this, but Trump has now ordered the deployment of 400 members of the Texas National Guard to several states, including Oregon and Illinois — ostensibly to protect ICE agents and facilities from protesters. The first group of Texas Guard troops is expected to arrive in Chicago tomorrow.

The troops are under the control of the Pentagon, with Trump as commander-in-chief. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “the orders will be effective immediately for an initial period of 60 days.”

Less than an hour after Trump’s order, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, responded that he “fully authorize[s]” such a move by Trump. “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it,” Abbott said in a post on X.

The Democratic governors of Oregon and Illinois have sought emergency injunctions against these and similar deployments.

Late Sunday night, a federal judge in Oregon (appointed by Trump) temporarily blocked the mobilization of any state National Guards to that state. Today, a federal judge in Illinois declined to block the deployment of National Guard units there.

Yesterday Trump said he was considering invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. That act would allow him to deploy troops despite any court orders stopping him.

“We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump said, adding, “I’d do that if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”

What is Trump’s plan? What is the troika behind him (Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Russell Vought) seeking to accomplish, and how?

Sad to say, I believe Trump and his enablers have worked this out in advance. At the Pentagon on September 30, Trump pitched the plan to use American soldiers for the purpose of punishing his political enemies.

He told hundreds of United States military leaders that they must prioritize “defending the homeland” against the “invasion from within” in American cities run by “radical-left Democrats.” He stated his intention is to use certain cities “as training grounds for our military.”

The first step has been for the Department of Homeland Security to deploy ICE agents to use aggressive tactics in targeted cities.

ICE has sent masked and armed federal agents into cities with Democratic mayors to do the following:

• Arrest and detain people outside immigration courtrooms.
• Fire tear gas and chemical munitions on city streets without warning.
• Raid homes and apartments in the middle of the night and arrest their occupants willy-nilly, including Americans, people legally in the country, and children.
• Use racial profiling to stop anyone looking Latino and demand proof of citizenship without warrants.
• Detain people they believe are here illegally, and do so without due process.

The second step is for such aggressive tactics to provoke demonstrations, and for Trump to exaggerate the scale and severity of them.

Trump has described Portland as a “war-ravaged” city “burning to the ground” with “insurrectionists all over the place.” In fact, demonstrations there had been muted and rarely expanded beyond a one-block radius of the immigration detention facility in the city.

On September 6, Trump posted on social media an image of the Chicago skyline in flames with the words “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR” and a depiction of himself in the image of the fictitious warmonger character Lt. Col. Kilgore from the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now,” titling the post “Chipocalypse Now.”

Yesterday, he described Chicago as a crime-ridden “war zone.”

The third step is for Trump and Hegseth to deploy federalized National Guard troops to control the demonstrators, an act that’s already enflaming the public and provoking some actual violence.

Until Trump’s announcement that he was sending troops into Portland, protests rarely numbered more than two dozen people. Since his announcement, clashes have become more violent.

The fourth step will be for Trump and Hegseth to invoke the Insurrection Act.

He said as much today. The Insurrection Act empowers a president to deploy the U.S. military and to federalize the National Guard units of the individual states to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or armed rebellion against the federal government of the United States.

It is a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the president’s power to deploy the U.S. military within the United States.

The Insurrection Act requires that after invoking it but before exercising its powers, a president must formally order the dispersion of people committing civil unrest or armed rebellion.

The major clause of the Insurrection Act reads:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States, or of any individual state or territory, where it is lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed, it shall be lawful for him to employ, for the same purposes, such part of the land or naval force of the United States, as shall be judged necessary, having first observed all the pre-requisites of the law in that respect.

***

As I said, I hope we don’t come near to this. I hope the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, stop Trump’s plan. But I believe it is Trump’s plan (the details of which have been worked out by the troika of Vance, Miller, and Vought), and they are implementing it as quickly as they can.

I don’t want to unduly alarm you, but you need to be aware of this imminent danger. It’s unfolding very rapidly.

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

When over the weekend federal Judge Karin Immergut (a Trump appointee) blocked Trump from deploying Oregon’s National Guard to Portland, Trump said she “should be ashamed of herself” because “Portland is burning to the ground.”

Trump promptly ordered the California National Guard to Portland.

Apart from the obvious question of how Trump can so blatantly defy a federal judge, there’s a deeper puzzle here. Where did he get the idea Portland is burning to the ground?

Nine days ago, when Trump first threatened to send troops to Portland, Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, told him there was no reason. “He thinks there are elements here creating an insurrection,” Kotek said after her call with Trump. “I told him there is no insurrection here and that we have this under control.”

Trump responded to Kotek this way:

“I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? … They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place … it looks like terrible.”

Why the factual discrepancy between what Governor Kotek told Trump about Portland and what he believed was happening there?

In the suit seeking an injunction to stop Trump from sending troops to Portland, which Judge Immergut granted, the state of Oregon alleged that Trump relied on videoclips from Portland protests over the murder of George Floyd that took place in 2020.

According to the lawsuit,

On September 5, 2025, “Fox News aired a report on Portland ICE protests that included misleading clips from Portland protests in 2020. Shortly thereafter, President Trump appeared to reference events in the same misleading Fox News report when speaking to the press. A reporter asked which city President Trump planned to send troops to next, and he said he was considering targeting Portland because of news coverage the night before. President Trump alleged that ‘paid terrorists’ and ‘paid agitators’ were making the city unlivable, further stating … ‘if we go to Portland, we’re gonna wipe them out. They’re going to be gone and they’re going to be gone fast.’”

During the hearing on Oregon’s lawsuit, Trump’s Justice Department argued that “the record does show a persistent threat,” offering as evidence a Trump post on Truth Social.

“Really?” asked Judge Immergut. “A social media post is going to count as a presidential determination that you can send the National Guard to cities? That’s really what I should be relying on?”

The Justice Department’s attorneys then cited reports from the Portland Police Bureau that protest crowds were “very energized,” numbering “over 50 to 60” people.

But attorneys for Oregon pointed out that the same police documents showed the protests had become much smaller and subdued — 8 to 15 people at any given time, “mostly sitting in lawn chairs and walking around … Energy was low, minimal activity.”

What can we learn from this mess?

First, Trump is now openly defying the order of a federal court.

Second, the most powerful person in the world apparently decided to use potentially lethal force on Americans on the basis of a five-year-old Fox News clip that crossed his television screen.

Third, Trump evidently does not have a process for getting current, verified information before he makes big decisions.

For over a century, every other president has been at the center of a system of information, flowing from people who have expertise in assessing the relevance and truth of that information — people who provide him with recommendations as to how to respond to a crisis, along with alternatives and assessments of the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative.

Trump, by contrast, is making potentially lethal decisions on the basis of whatever happens to be shown on the television he’s watching.

Fourth, although Trump has never thought much about the quality of information he receives before making decisions — in his first term he bragged about his infallible “intuition” — we have every reason to believe he’s becoming demented (see here) and his capacity to think more compromised than ever.

Fifth, to the extent anyone is making decisions in the White House, it’s the troika of Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and JD Vance — who appear to have taken control over much of what Trump hears and sees (including, perhaps, five-year-old Fox News clips?). Their strategy seems to be aimed at making war on Democratic states.

Which brings me to the sixth point: We should be very concerned. A disturbed man and his fanatical advisors are making potentially life-threatening decisions on the basis of what he sees on television.

He’s also defying a federal court. He’s ordering federal troops to forcefully occupy an American city whose mayor and governor don’t want him to. He’s already causing people — some of whom are American citizens — to be arrested and detained without due process.

He’s also bombing vessels in international waters — killing people whom he claims, without evidence, are smuggling drugs into the United States.

Meanwhile, much of the federal government is shuttered. Republicans in Congress are AWOL. Democrats in Congress are trying to use their limited leverage to get health insurance back for some 20 million Americans.

We’re in trouble, friends.

Trump and his enablers want a violent confrontation in Portland to justify their illegal move. I urge you not to fall into their trap. Don’t protest there.

But do peacefully demonstrate on October 18 — in every town and city across 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’d like to talk with you about a difficult subject.

A significant number of you are disoriented by what Trump and his lapdogs are doing. Many are deeply anxious. Some of us are depressed.

For years, medical experts have recommended that Americans be screened for “anxiety disorders.”

But what many of us are feeling now is not a personal disorder. It’s a rational response to a nation that’s becoming ever more disordered.

What we’re experiencing is not a sickness or individual distress. It’s a sensible reaction to a society becoming sicker and more stressed.

Trump and the enablers around him aren’t just violating the Constitution and disregarding laws. They’re not merely doing cruel and vindictive things.

They’re also spreading fear and fueling hate.

This fear and hate are harming every one of us, even the shrinking minority who support the regime. Hate is a corrosive that eventually consumes the haters. Fear breeds more fear, which causes everyone to be afraid.

The harm may continue long after the reasons to fear and sources of hate have passed into history.

I have a friend who suffered trauma at the hands of abusive parents. She’s spent much of her life trying to cope with that trauma, trying not to let it rule (and ruin) her life.

Another friend is the child of a Holocaust survivor. He has spent much of his life trying to escape the ghosts of relatives he never knew who were murdered by the Nazis, whose deaths have cast a dark shadow over his own life.

Most of us are fortunate enough not to have suffered childhood trauma from abusive parents or been raised in the dark shadow of the Holocaust or other horrors.

But most of us are now suffering a trauma of a different sort — from an abusive president and his lapdogs, and from the dark shadows of fear and hate they cast.

Just as with my friends, many of us now feel powerless and afraid. We don’t recognize our nation. We’re disoriented, vulnerable, anxious.

Trump apologists call it “Trump derangement syndrome,” but the actual derangement is in and around the Oval Office.

I don’t think we’re talking enough about the national trauma most of us are now enduring.

Some of you may assume there’s something wrong with you when you can’t sleep or awaken feeling anxious. You may feel alone in this.

You should be aware of how widespread, and reasonable, your reaction is.

Trump’s cruelty and vengeance will pass. Years from now we’ll look back on this as a terrible period in America’s history. Our nation will survive.

But the fear and hate he has sown could cause lasting blight.

Recognizing this — being aware of the toll it’s taking and will continue to take on us, even years from now — is important to our eventual recovery, that of our loved ones, and the recovery of our nation and the world.

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

This week, the top brass of America’s military — more than 800 four-star generals, lieutenant generals, major generals, and admirals — were summoned from their posts around the world to a conclave in Quantico, Virginia. The apparent reason? To listen to “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth and their commander-in-chief, Donald Trump.

Hegseth delivered a diatribe against political correctness, beards, fat generals, and women in combat missions. Trump gave a long, rambling, incoherent mess of a speech.

It seemed unlikely that the military’s top brass were summoned merely for this.

But if not, what was the real purpose of this unprecedented gathering? Other than Hegseth’s and Trump’s bonkers speeches, we don’t know. Was the event also used to distribute highly sensitive information? To enable face-to-face communications about pending changes in the use of military force? To get buy-in from the top brass for an agenda that had to be communicated in person?

Here are several of the views I’ve gleaned from military-watchers I trust about the real purpose of this gathering:

1. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says it was nothing but a pep talk. He and Trump merely wanted to speak to the generals and admirals about what Hegseth calls a shift toward a “warrior ethos” at the Pentagon.

Maybe. But without falling into a conspiratorial mode, I’ve heard some other possibilities.

2. Trump is gearing up to use the military to go after undocumented immigrants on a far larger scale than he’s already done. This is the concern of many who worry about Trump’s tendency to treat the military as an arm of politics.

3. Trump is preparing to use the military to occupy cities inhabited largely by Democrats, in order to intimidate people from voting during the upcoming midterm elections. Although it was an incoherent speech, in it Trump said he told Hegseth to use American cities as “training grounds” for the military.

Here are Trump’s words: “It seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places. And we’re going to straighten them out one by one, and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room ... This is a war from within. We should use some of these dangerous places as training grounds for our military.”

4. The worst fear of all: He’s planning to turn America into a police state. He and his regime (Vance, Hegseth, Miller, Vought, and Bondi) plan to take over all government power, negate the Constitution, and destroy democracy. Two of the people I spoke with fear this is the real agenda.

Hence, today’s Office Hours question: What do you believe was Trump’s major purpose in meeting with America’s military leaders on Tuesday?

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

I’ve been directly involved in government shutdowns, one when I was secretary of labor. It’s hard for me to describe the fear, frustration, and chaos that ensued. I recall spending the first day consoling employees — many in tears as they headed out the door.

In some ways, this shutdown is similar to others. Agencies and departments designed to protect consumers, workers, and investors are now officially closed, as are national parks and museums.

Most federal workers are not being paid — as many as 750,000 could be furloughed — including those who are required to remain on the job, like air-traffic controllers or members of the U.S. military.

So-called “mandatory” spending, including Social Security and Medicare payments, are continuing, although checks could be delayed. (Trump has made sure that construction of his new White House ballroom won’t be affected.)

There have been eight shutdowns since 1990. Trump has now presided over four.

But this shutdown — the one that began yesterday morning — is radically different.

For one thing, it’s the consequence of a decision made in July by Trump and Senate Republicans to pass Trump’s gigantic “big beautiful bill” (I prefer to call it “big ugly bill”) without any Democratic votes.

They could do that because of an arcane Senate procedure called “reconciliation,” which allowed the big ugly to get through the Senate with just 51 votes rather than the normal 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster.

The final tally was a squeaker. All Senate Democrats opposed the legislation. When three Senate Republicans joined them, Vice President JD Vance was called in to break a tie. Some Republicans bragged that they didn’t need a single Democrat.

The big ugly fundamentally altered the priorities of the United States government. It cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act — with the result that health insurance premiums for tens of millions of Americans will soar starting in January.

The big ugly also cut nutrition assistance and environmental protection, while bulking up immigration enforcement and cutting the taxes of wealthy Americans and big corporations.

Trump and Senate Republicans didn’t need a single Democrat then. But this time, Republicans couldn’t use the arcane reconciliation process to pass a bill to keep the governing going.

Now they needed Senate Democratic votes.

Yet keeping the government going meant keeping all the priorities included in the big ugly bill that all Senate Democrats opposed.

Which is why Senate Democrats refused to sign on unless most of the big ugly’s cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act were restored, so health insurance premiums won’t soar next year.

Even if Senate Democrats had gotten that concession, the Republican bill to keep the government going would retain all the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations contained in the big ugly, along with all the cuts in nutrition assistance, and all the increased funding for immigration enforcement.

There’s a deeper irony here.

As a practical matter, the U.S. government has been “shut down” for over eight months, since Trump took office a second time.

Trump and the sycophants surrounding him — such as Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and, before him, Elon Musk and his DOGE — have had no compunctions about shutting down parts of the government they don’t like — such as USAID.

They’ve also fired, laid off, furloughed, or extended buyouts to hundreds of thousands of federal employees doing work they don’t value, such as at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (The federal government is already expected to employ 300,000 fewer workers by December than it did last January.)

They’ve impounded appropriations from Congress for activities they oppose, ranging across the entire federal government.

Yesterday, on the first day of the shutdown, Vought announced that the administration was freezing some $26 billion in funds Congress had appropriated — including $18 billion for New York City infrastructure (home to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries) and $8 billion for environmental projects in 16 states, mostly led by Democrats.

All of this is illegal — it violates the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 — but it seems unlikely that courts will act soon enough to prevent the regime from harming vast numbers of Americans.

Vought is also initiating another round of mass layoffs targeting, in his words, “a lot” of government workers.

This is being described by Republicans as “payback” for the Democrats not voting to keep the government going, but evidently nothing stopped Vought from doing mass layoffs and freezing Congress’s appropriations before the shutdown.

In fact, the eagerness of Trump and his lapdogs over the last eight months to disregard the will of Congress and close whatever they want of the government offers another reason why Democrats shouldn’t cave in.

Were Democrats to vote to keep the government going, what guarantee do they have that Trump will in fact keep the government going?

Democrats finally have some bargaining leverage. They should use it.

If tens of millions of Americans lose their health insurance starting in January because they can no longer afford to pay sky-high premiums, Trump and his Republicans will be blamed. Months before the midterms.

It would be Trump’s and his Republicans’ fault anyway — it’s part of their big ugly bill — but this way, in the fight over whether to reopen the government, Americans will have a chance to see Democrats standing up for them.

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

I recall participating in heated debates in late 1968 and early 1969 about why Democrats lost the presidency to “tricky Dick” Nixon. And another set of debates in the early 1980s about why Democrats lost to smooth-talking right-winger Ronald Reagan.

And then, after the disastrous midterm elections of 1994, why they lost both houses of Congress. And then in 2000 and again in 2004, why they lost to the insipid George W. Bush. And, worst of all, in 2016 and then again in 2024, to the monstrous Trump.

These debates usually occur within the rarified precincts of Democratic think tanks located in well-appointed offices in Washington, D.C.

They feature people called “political consultants” and “political operatives,” whose sole distinction is to have participated in one or more Democratic campaigns. Few have ever run for office. Fewer have ever served in office. Almost none live in the hinterlands; they live in or around Washington. They all make their money consulting and operating.

And for more than 50 years, they’ve almost always said exactly the same thing: Democrats must move to the “center” in order to “recapture” the “suburban swing” voters who are up for grabs.

May I say, based on my experience in and around politics over the last 60 years, including a run for office and stints in two Democratic administrations, that this is utter horse----?

Democrats have been moving to the putative “center” for over five decades. This has never helped them. It has only hurt.

The conventional lore among the Democratic consultant class is that Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 and saved the party by tacking to the “center.”

Wrong. Clinton won only a plurality of voters in 1992 because Ross Perot grabbed Republican voters from George H.W. Bush.

Moreover, Clinton didn’t run on a centrist message. He ran on a message Franklin D. Roosevelt would have been proud of.

I should know. I advised him during the campaign and then joined his Cabinet. Clinton ran on raising taxes on the wealthy, cutting them for the middle class, and establishing universal health care.

I was in Little Rock when, in announcing his run for president, Clinton “refuse[d] to be part of a generation that commits hardworking Americans to a lifetime of struggle without reward or security” and condemned a system in which “middle-class people spend more time on the job, less time with their children, bringing home less money to pay more for health care and housing and education.” He said it was “wrong” that “while the incomes of our wealthiest citizens went up, their taxes went down.”

Since the Clinton administration, the Democratic Party’s biggest problem hasn’t been the “left” but its dependence on wealthy donors and corporate PACs, which have consistently argued for moving the party to the “center” and away from the working class. The moneyed interests in the party also back much of the Democratic consultant class.

So it’s no surprise that another Democratic think tank is now being formed, financed by billionaire donors, to push the party to the “center.”

This one is called the Searchlight Institute, and its head is Adam Jentleson, who The New York Times describes as “a veteran Democratic operative” who wants to “minimize the sway that left-leaning groups have over candidates before what is expected to be a crowded 2028 presidential primary.”

Jentleson says “the folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions” (i.e., the left).

Searchlight starts with an annual budget of $10 million and a staff of seven in its Capitol Hill offices. According to the Times, the organization is subsidized by “a roster of billionaire donors” including Stephen Mandel, a hedge fund manager, and Eric Laufer, a real estate investor.

What?

If Democrats have learned anything from their losses over the years, especially their two horrific losses to Trump, it should be that they need a charismatic messenger with a clear and convincing message about how to lower the costs of living for average working families — especially housing, health care, and child care. And raise taxes on the rich to pay for it.

At least since Richard Nixon, Republicans have been honing a cultural populist message telling working-class Americans that their problems are due to Black people, brown people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, government bureaucrats, “coastal elites,” socialists, and high taxes on the wealthy.

Democrats could have been honing an economic populist message that told working Americans that their problems are largely due to monopolistic corporations, greedy CEOs, rapacious billionaires, and Wall Street gamblers. And therefore what the nation needs are high taxes on the wealthy and big corporations, including a wealth tax, that allow the nation to meet the minimum needs of average working families for housing, health care, child care, and the rest.

This economic populist message is a winner. The most prominent candidate to capture the Democratic Party’s imagination this year, Zohran Mamdani, won the primary for mayor of New York by focusing on working families’ needs for affordable housing, groceries, and child care, to be financed by a tax hike on the wealthy.

This message also has the virtue of being accurate.

It accounts for the nation’s near-record inequalities of income and wealth, the tsunami of money flowing into American politics, the steady decline in tax rates paid by the ultra-wealthy, the near impossibility of forming unions, the near-monopolization of industries such as food and fossil-based energy, and the seeming inability of the richest nation in the world to respond to the needs of its working people.

But, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mamdani, and a few other brave elected Democrats and young candidates, Democrats have eschewed economic populism because they haven’t wanted to bite the hands that feed them.

As a result, working Americans understandably concerned about stagnant incomes, decreasing job security, and soaring costs of housing, health care, child care, and much else are hearing only one story — Republican cultural populism — and not the other, truthful populism.

It is a political truism that if one party gives you an explanation for your problems and a set of solutions for overcoming them, while the other party does neither, you’re apt to go along with the party that gives you the explanation and prescriptions, even if they’re rubbish.

Not surprisingly, the “rosters of billionaire donors” to Democratic think tanks like the new Searchlight Institute are not interested in offering the real explanation or real solutions. But because they don’t want to sell the Republicans’ cultural populism, they’re left opting for the so-called “center. ”

And what’s at their center? Lists of insipid policy proposals that don’t require raising taxes on the wealthy or on big corporations, or getting big money out of politics, or empowering average Americans. In other words, proposals that maintain the status quo.

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

Over the weekend, on his Truth Social, Trump shared a video purporting to be a segment on Fox News — it wasn’t — in which an AI-generated, deepfaked version of himself sat in the White House and promised that “every American will soon receive their own MedBed card” that will grant them access to new “MedBed hospitals.”

What?

Believers in the “MedBed” conspiracy theory think certain hospital beds are loaded with futuristic technology that can reverse any disease, regenerate limbs, and de-age people. No one has an actual photo of these beds because they don’t exist.

Trump also posted (again, without any basis in fact) that the FBI “secretly placed … 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during” the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, during which they were “probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists.”

Trump added that this “is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again!” and went on: “Christopher Wray, the then Director of the FBI, has some major explaining to do. That’s two in a row, Comey and Wray, who got caught LYING.”

In fact, the Department of Justice’s inspector general reported that there were no undercover FBI agents at the January 6 riots. (FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that the few FBI agents present on January 6 were there on “a crowd control mission after the riot was declared.”)

Trump also announced Saturday that he intends to send the U.S. military to Portland, Oregon, authorizing “Full Force, if necessary” to “protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”

Hello? Although protesters have been camping on the sidewalks outside the ICE office for months, the demonstration has dwindled to almost nothing. Of the 29 related arrests, 22 happened on or before July 4, when the protests were at their peak.

What’s been the media’s response to Trump’s bonkers postings and announcements this weekend? Nada. The media either ignored them, mentioned them as part of Trump’s “strategy,” or assumed Trump was just being Trump.

But there’s another explanation.

Trump is showing growing signs of dementia. He’s increasingly unhinged. He’s 79 years old with a family history of dementia. He could well be going nuts.

You might think this would be covered in the news, but he isn’t facing anything like the scrutiny for dementia that Joe Biden did.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of Trump’s growing dementia is his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is centering much of his presidency.

The paranoia was becoming evident in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. On November 11, 2023, he pledged to a crowd of supporters in Claremont, New Hampshire, that:

“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”

Most media commentators chalked this up to overheated campaign rhetoric.

But since occupying the Oval Office, Trump has demanded that his attorney general target political opponents, urged the head of his FCC to threaten a major network for allowing a late-night comedian to say things Trump disliked, suggested that the government revoke TV licenses of network broadcasters that allow criticism of him, and pulled government security clearances from former officials whom he deems his enemies.

Less than two weeks ago, he demanded that the Justice Department prosecute a handful of named political opponents “now!” — including James Comey, whom Trump fired from his post in 2017 after Comey oversaw the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election; Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who indicted Trump; and Adam Schiff, U.S. senator from California, who played an active role in the House hearings on January 6, 2021.

On September 19, Erik Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (initially selected for the position by Trump) resigned after Trump told reporters “I want him out.” Siebert had concerns about the strength of the evidence against both Comey and James.

The following day, Trump posted a message to his attorney general, Pam Bondi. “Pam,” it began, “Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’”

He said he was promoting Lindsey Halligan, one of his former personal attorneys, to take Siebert’s place, and fumed: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

On September 22, three days after Halligan assumed office, she secured a simple, two-count indictment against Comey for allegedly lying to Congress and for allegedly obstructing justice.

“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey,” Trump exalted on social media following the indictment. “He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”

The Comey indictment was a blip in the weekly news cycle. The media appeared to shrug: Yes, of course Trump is vindictive, so what else is new?

But wait. Are his acts those of a sane person? Or of an aging paranoid megalomaniac?

Even if it’s unclear to which category Trump belongs, shouldn’t this question be central to the coverage of his presidency? At the very least, shouldn’t the media be actively investigating?

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/.