Words matter. When describing a government, they inevitably carry moral weight.

Over the last 16 months, Trump and his appointees have so profoundly undermined the United States government that we should use different words to describe these people than we’ve used to describe all previous administrations.

To begin with, they shouldn’t be called an “administration” at all. They should be referred to as a regime.

The Trump regime has flagrantly defied court orders. In February 2026, a federal judge (appointed by President George W. Bush) identified approximately 200 orders from the District of Minnesota alone that ICE had ignored since the start of the year, concluding that ICE had “likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” The regime has also vilified judges who rule against it and demanded their impeachment.

The regime has usurped Congress’s powers to declare war, issue tariffs, and appropriate public funds. It is using tariffs as cudgels for Trump’s political aims. The regime is seeking to stifle speech and silence criticism — in universities, law firms, and the media.

Secondly, this regime is not headed by a “president,” as the Constitution of the United States and our laws and history have designated the head of the executive branch of the U.S. government. To put the term “President” before Trump’s name defiles the Constitution. He is an authoritarian.

Trump has illegally fired more than 300,000 career civil servants. He has fired inspectors general who are charged with holding political appointees accountable. He punishes whistleblowers who protest abuses. He attacks marginalized groups and foments bigotry. He is openly persecuting political opponents. He has given out pardons to convicted felons who are political supporters or financial contributors — including nursing home fraudsters, a Honduran president who smuggled 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, and January 6 seditionists. He has sent federal troops into states and cities headed by Democratic officials.

Thirdly, Trump has no interest in governing. He wants only to impose his will and make money from his office. His regime’s disregard for law is so monumental that it negates what we have come to understand as a “government of laws.” A better word for it is lawless.

During the first 16 months of Trump’s lawless regime, immigration agents have shot or killed 16 people, including three U.S. citizens. More people died last year in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — a total of 32 — than in the preceding 20 years. People only suspected of being in the U.S. illegally have been detained or deported by masked and armed immigration agents, without a hearing. People only suspected of smuggling drugs have been murdered by the U.S. military in international waters, in violation of international law.

Meanwhile, Trump is accepting gifts from foreign powers. He blatantly promotes his family’s crypto business and implements policies favorable to it. He has sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion and is now in settlement negotiations with his own Justice Department, which reportedly has offered to drop any future IRS audits of Trump, his family, or his businesses.

Finally, the true test of a successful president of the United States and his (eventually her) administration is not how much power he accumulates or how much he gets done. The real test is how much better off are the American people and how much stronger is our democracy. By these measures, Trump and his regime are not just lawless. They are a 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/

Trump calls the entourage of 12 CEOs accompanying him to China an “incredible gathering” of America’s “Greatest Businessmen/women.”

Well, it may be an incredible gathering. But to characterize them as America’s greatest business leaders — who are assumed to be leading America’s competitive charge against China — is misleading.

The American CEOs traveling with Trump to China don’t think of themselves as being in competition with China. In fact, they’d like nothing better than to make more money for themselves and their shareholders by setting up more lower-cost, highly productive factories and research facilities in China and hiring more Chinese talent.

It’s an important distinction. The CEOs of Chinese companies are in business not only to make money but also to strengthen China’s geopolitical power in the world. The CEOs of American companies want to make gobs of money, of course, but they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about strengthening America’s geopolitical power in the world.

This basic difference is airbrushed away in breathless media stories about the competitive race between the American and Chinese economies — the so-called “race for supremacy” in AI, advanced semiconductors, supercomputers, solar wafers, biotechnology, and other industries of the future.

The distinction never appears in the breezy press coverage of Trump’s trip to China, along with his “U.S. corporate” delegation.

Take Elon Musk, obviously a conspicuous presence in Trump’s CEO delegation. Musk’s Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai produces over a third of Tesla’s global car sales. It’s also Tesla’s most productive factory. In February 2025, Musk opened a second factory in Shanghai, a $200-million plant focused on producing Megapack batteries. Nearly 40 percent of Tesla’s entire battery supply chain relies on Chinese companies.

All good for Musk and for Tesla shareholders, but what about American workers, who aren’t getting this work? What about America’s national security, which could be compromised if China gains further global dominance over batteries (as well as other renewables)? Do you think Musk cares?

Or consider Apple’s Tim Cook, also in Trump’s CEO delegation. China has become the gravitational core of Apple’s supply chain. Indeed, much of Apple’s success is due to Cook’s move to consolidate virtually all of his company’s manufacturing in China. About 90 percent of iPhones are assembled there, backed by massive investments in local supplier expertise and infrastructure. Cook explains that he’s taking advantage of China’s “unmatched” expertise in advanced tooling and manufacturing.

Since 2008, Apple has worked with Chinese suppliers to train 30 million workers there and has transferred practical engineering knowledge of how to make complex things from American engineers to thousands of Chinese engineers in hundreds of Chinese factories and research centers. Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters has sent so many American engineers to China to teach Chinese engineers that it even persuaded United Airlines to schedule three weekly flights from San Francisco to Chengdu and Hangzhou.

A third CEO in Trump’s delegation is Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup. Her goal has been to expand the bank’s (and its clients’) investments in China by growing Citigroup’s team in China and capturing market share for the corporation in high technology and advanced manufacturing.

Fraser’s moves may be good for Citigroup’s bottom line, but they may not be good for America. As she connects international investors with opportunities within China, she may be siphoning off potential investments in high technology and advanced manufacturing in the United States.

Another American CEO in Trump’s delegation is Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. Huang’s goal is to get China to buy Nvidia’s AI and its advanced H200 processors, even at the risk that Chinese computer scientists and engineers might reverse-engineer them, as they have so many other technologies America once dominated.

Huang argues that with roughly half of all the world’s AI researchers, China is strategically vital for American tech companies. Huang may be right, but what’s strategically vital for American AI companies may not be in the strategic interest of the United States. The capacities that increase these corporations’ profits and returns to their American investors (including the pay packages of their CEOs) do not necessarily increase the productivity, knowledge, or strategic strength of America’s AI.

Doesn’t Trump know this? Does he assume that the rest of us don’t know? Is he really ignorant of the fact that Chinese corporations are tethered to China, but the CEOs of Tesla, Apple, Nvidia, and other so-called “American” corporations are not strategically bound to America? American CEOs aren’t paid to worry about the competitiveness of the United States, nor the number of good jobs in America, nor even about American national security.

Maybe Trump knows all this but doesn’t care. When it comes to making big money doing global deals, Trump’s merry band of CEOs has about as much loyalty to the United States as does Trump himself.

The Senate just confirmed Kevin Warsh to become the next chair of the Federal Reserve on a 54-45 vote.

This marks a new chapter in the history of an institution that depends for its credibility on political independence. That independence is important to you and everyone else who wants prices to remain stable and avoid inflation.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the Fed and its former chairman, Jerome Powell (not incidentally, a Trump appointee) for not lowering interest rates as quickly as Trump wants. Presumably, Trump wants lower interest rates because he figures that a “hot” economy is good for Republicans going into the 2026 midterms and perhaps even the 2028 general election, even if it means faster inflation.

Trump launched a trumped-up (pardon me) criminal investigation of Powell based on alleged cost overruns for refurbishing the Fed building and another against Fed member Lisa Cook based on alleged mortgage fraud. Neither of these individuals has left the Fed. (Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but he has announced he’ll fill the remainder of his term, which runs until January 31, 2028, as a Fed governor. He says Trump’s pressure campaign against the central bank left him no choice but to stay on. The case against Cook has been taken up by the Supreme Court, which is expected to issue an opinion before its current term ends in July.)

Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina and a member of the Senate Banking Committee, blocked Warsh’s nomination until Trump dropped his legal threats against Powell. (Tillis thereby earns one of my Joseph N. Welch Awards for courage in the face of Trump’s tyranny.)

The big question now is whether Warsh will do Trump’s bidding and advocate lower interest rates even in the face of rising inflation — a move that would worsen the inflation even if it gives the economy (along with Trump and the Republicans) a temporary boost. (All but one Democrat in the Senate voted against confirming Warsh, reflecting concerns about his willingness to maintain the Fed’s political independence. During his confirmation hearing, Senate Democrats derided Warsh as Trump’s “sock puppet.”)

Why Fed independence is so important

The reason why the Fed, like most nations’ central banks, is supposed to be independent of politics is so people who are buying and selling financial assets don’t base their transactions on Trump’s or any other political leader’s desire for a booming economy in the short run (that is, until the next election) even at the risk of inflation.

Otherwise, inflation could easily get out of control. As William McChesney Martin Jr., the longest-serving chairman of the Federal Reserve, famously put it, the role of the Fed is “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.”

Martin’s “party” is an expanding economy with growing inflationary pressures, and the “punch bowl” is low interest rates and easy credit that fuel these growing pressures. As the designated chaperone, the Fed has to raise interest rates to prevent the economy from overheating, even if doing so harms a president’s political prospects.

I was in the Carter administration when Fed Chair Paul Volcker decided to “break the back” of inflation by raising interest rates so high that he put the economy into a recession and, arguably, caused voters to boot Carter out of office in 1980.

I was in the Clinton administration when Fed Chair Alan Greenspan threatened to raise interest rates (which might also have led to a recession and caused voters to boot Clinton out of office in 1996) unless Clinton reduced the federal budget deficit — which Clinton did (over my strenuous but failed objections).

Can Warsh succeed?

Warsh’s success on the job depends on the perceptions of millions of financial traders, who presumably will be looking for any hint that he’s soft on inflation.

Ironically, Trump’s loud insistence on lower interest rates, coupled with rising inflation due to Trump’s war in Iran and his tariffs, all make Warsh’s job far more difficult.

I don’t expect the Fed to lower interest rates before the end of the year, regardless. Warsh’s first meeting as chair will be June 16-17.

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

Yesterday I spoke with Tennessee state representative Justin Jones, one of the nation’s young Black leaders who’s been a rising star in Tennessee politics, about the Supreme Court’s shameful April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Jones told me that, at Trump’s urging, Tennessee Republicans had prepared a redistricting map even before the Court announced its decision. Then, despite pleas from Black voters and voting rights advocates, the white Republican legislators moved their meeting to another room without allowing the public in to watch, passed the new map out of committee, and enacted it within 24 hours.

The new map has eliminated Tennessee’s one remaining Democratic district around Memphis, a city of about 610,000 people, about two-thirds of whom are Black — by cracking it into three majority-white district, one stretching hundreds of miles. The map has also divided Nashville, another city with a Black majority, into five white-majority districts.

Jones described Tennessee house speaker Cameron Sexton as the “grand wizard in chief,” explaining that “that’s what they want to do. They want to create a process that is unfair and unequal.”

Other Southern states have joined Tennessee’s rush to redistrict.

Louisiana’s governor has ordered that the state’s ongoing congressional election be set aside while state lawmakers redraw maps to eliminate a Democratic-majority – that is, a Black-majority – seat covering Baton Rouge.

At Trump’s request, Alabama Republicans have approved legislation directing the governor to schedule new primary elections this year under a GOP-friendly map that would end districts represented by Black lawmakers, if courts lift an injunction on its redistricting.

The Mississippi legislature will soon convene in a Confederate-era capitol building that it hasn’t used in 100 years, presumably to eliminate the Democratic majority in the one Mississippi district held by a Black representative.

South Carolina’s Republican majority in the statehouse voted Wednesday to extend its legislative calendar, allowing time to consider whether they should eliminate the state’s sole Democratic-majority, Black-majority district, held by long-serving representative James Clyburn.

Florida was already in a special redistricting session when the Supreme Court announced its decision, enacting a congressional map for its 28 districts that packs Black and brown voters into four districts on the south Florida coast and Orlando, eliminating every other Democratic majority.

“We’re going backwards at warp speed,” Jones told me. “In just over a week, we’ve gone from the 1965 Voting Rights Act back to the era of Jim Crow.”

I asked him what he and other Black political leaders in the South were planning to do.

“There’ll be a lot of litigation,” he said, “but we can’t be optimistic with this Supreme Court.”

“So, what’s the strategy?”

“We need the biggest voter turnout in history this fall. Every Black person, every Brown person, every Democrat, everyone who cares about the moral soul of this nation has to vote for equal voting rights. Take over Congress. Increase our power in state legislatures. This is the only way to respond.”

“I’m with you,” I said, “but I really wonder whether that’s possible.”

“How about a new Freedom Summer?” Jones responded, with a smile. “A multi-racial force of young people fanning out across the South, registering voters, getting them to the polls, just like they did in 1964.”

“I remember. I lost a dear friend in Mississippi Freedom Summer.”

“I have no direct memory, of course,” Jones said. “I was born in 1995, thirty-one years after Freedom Summer. But the South is almost back to where it was then. So, yes, it’s possible. It’s got to be possible.”

I told him I’d share his idea with you, and ask you for your responses.

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

The U.S. national debt just crossed a once-unthinkable threshold on the way toward breaking the record set in the wake of World War II: It now exceeds 100 percent of America’s gross domestic product.

As of March 31, our publicly held debt was $31.27 trillion, while America’s GDP in 2025 was $31.22 trillion. This puts the ratio at 100.2 percent, compared with 99.5 percent when the last fiscal year ended September 30.

That 100.2 percent figure will likely climb, because the federal government is running historically large annual deficits of nearly 6 percent of GDP, which add to the debt. The final tally will depend on Iran war spending, tariff refunds, and the strength of the economy.

Should you worry? Well, it’s not as if we’re heading into a depression. Passing the 100 percent threshold won’t suddenly cause the world to lose confidence in the dollar.

The real problem is that an increasing portion of our nation’s budget — and your tax dollars — is dedicated to paying interest on this growing debt. That’s money we don’t spend on education, healthcare, roads and bridges, social safety nets, or (if we actually needed more spending on it) national defense.

As the debt continues to grow, interest payments continue to soar. We’ll soon be paying more in interest on the federal debt each year than we spend each year on Medicare.

So, who exactly receives these interest payments? This is an issue you hear very little discussion about, because the wealthy and powerful of this country would rather you didn’t know.

You probably do hear that a chunk of our debt is held by foreign governments and foreign investors. That’s true, but they hold only about 30 percent of our debt. The rest — roughly 70 percent — is held domestically. That is, we pay the interest to ourselves.

And who, exactly, is the “ourselves” who receive these interest payments? The Federal Reserve holds part of this debt, state and local governments hold part.

But the biggest chunk — nearly half — is held by mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, and banks. And who owns them? The Americans who invest in these funds — and who thereby, directly or indirectly, hold Treasury bills.

And who, exactly are these Americans — the Americans who are directly or indirectly collecting a large amount of the interest we’re paying on the national debt? It’s the people at the top.

The richest 1 percent of U.S. households hold about 35.6 percent of all financial assets — shares of stock, corporate bonds, and Treasury bills — so it’s safe to assume they hold at least a third of all Treasury bills.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Here’s where things get really interesting.

Decades ago, wealthy Americans financed the federal government mainly by paying taxes. Their tax rate was far, far higher than it is today. In the 1950s, under President Dwight Eisenhower, the richest Americans paid a marginal tax rate of 91 percent. (Tax deductions and tax credits meant that the top effective marginal rate was lower than this.)

Fast forward. Now, wealthy Americans finance the federal government mainly by lending it money and collecting interest payments on those loans.

Interest payments on the national debt this year are expected to reach $1 trillion.

There are roughly 128 million households in the United States. Dividing $1 trillion in annual interest among U.S. households would amount to $650 per household per month. (This is a simplified average, of course; actual burdens vary based on tax status, income, and spending.)

The point is that a big chunk of the growing interest payments American taxpayers make on the federal debt is going to wealthy Americans.

Keep following the money. One of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts — starting with the George W. Bush administration in 2001 and extending through Trump’s 2018 and 2024 tax cuts — have reduced government revenues by $10.6 trillion.

Most of the benefits from those tax cuts are going to the wealthy. Since 2000, 65 percent of the benefits from tax cuts have gone to the richest fifth of Americans — 22 percent to the top 1 percent.

So, you see what’s happened?

The wealthiest Americans used to pay higher taxes to finance the government. Now, the government pays wealthy Americans interest on a swelling debt, caused largely by lower taxes on wealthy Americans.

Which means a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are now paying wealthy Americans interest on those loans, instead of paying for government services everyone needs.

So, from now on, whenever you hear someone say how huge, horrible, and out-of-control the national debt is, explain to them that it’s because of tax cuts to the wealthy — who are also the major recipients of interest on that debt.

America’s wealthy have never been wealthier. If they paid their fair share of taxes, we wouldn’t have such a huge federal debt. And we wouldn’t be paying them so much interest on that debt.

Know what’s happened, and pass it on.

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/.

We are witnessing what happens to a person who is consumed with the need to dominate but cannot.

Iran is unlikely to give in. It can withstand the economic pressure of a blockade better than Trump can withstand the political pressure that comes with rising gas prices (now nearly $4.50 a gallon, on average), soon followed by rising food prices.

His looming failure in Iran is not just a serious geopolitical defeat for the United States; it’s a personal crisis for Trump.

Those rising prices coupled with an increasingly unpopular war have increased the likelihood that Democrats will take back control of the House and even possibly the Senate in the upcoming midterms.

Here again, not just a political defeat for the Republican Party but a personal crisis for Trump.

His ego cannot accept a humiliating loss, as we saw after the 2020 election. His need to bully, dominate, and gain submission is so hardwired inside his insecure head that the defeats he’s now facing — to Iran and to Democrats — are already setting off explosions.

He’s posting more wildly than ever — attacking, insulting, ridiculing, threatening.

On Sunday, Trump posted that Democrats had “RIGGED the 2020 Presidential Election. GET TOUGH REPUBLICANS—THEY’RE COMING, AND THEY’RE COMING FAST! They’re no good for our Country, they almost destroyed it, and we don’t want to let that happen again!” He demanded that Republicans “approve all of the necessary Safeguards we need for Elections to protect the American Public during the upcoming Midterms.”

More of his posts are bizarre AI-generated paeans to himself, his godlike powers, his wished-for physique, and his self-image of omnipotence. On Friday night, he posted an AI-image of himself, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Doug Burgum, all shirtless and with young physiques, standing in the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, along with an unidentifiable woman in a bikini. Minutes later he posted an image of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries holding a baseball bat, with a caption calling Jeffries “low IQ,” “a THUG,” and “a danger to our Country.” On Tuesday, he posted AI-images of Joe Biden on one knee with the caption “COWARDS KNEEL,” Barack Obama with the caption “TRAITORS BOW,” and himself with his fist raised and the caption “LEADERS LEAD.”

His mouth — never in control — is now in diarrheic mode. He’s even back to attacking the pope, accusing him of “endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people,” adding, “but I guess if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

His thin-skinned vindictiveness is beyond anything we’ve seen before, which is saying a lot. Last week, after German chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was “being humiliated by the Iranian leadership,” Trump repeatedly attacked and ridiculed Merz. The Defense Department then said it was pulling 5,000 troops out of Germany, and Trump said he was increasing tariffs on European cars and trucks to 25 percent (from 15 percent).

He’s becoming ever more obsessed with monuments to himself — his ballroom, his arch, his so-called “garden of heroes,” his Trump-embossed passports, his image on 24-karat gold commemorative coins, and his name plastered or etched all over Washington. His plans for self-monuments are becoming larger by the day, more grotesque, more grandiose, and more expensive. Senate Republicans just proposed $1 billion more for Trump’s ballroom, which, recall, was supposed to “cost taxpayers nothing.”

He has even directed the Treasury to announce that his own signature — yes, the same one that appears in a book of birthday greetings for Jeffrey Epstein — will replace the Treasurer’s on all new U.S. paper currency. This will be the first time in American history that a sitting president’s name will appear on circulating cash money.

His thirst for vengeance is exploding, too. Last week the Department of Justice launched another criminal case against former director of the FBI James Comey (whose earlier indictment was quashed by the courts) for posting a picture of seashells spelling out “86 47” on Instagram a year ago. Trump is also insisting that the Justice Department restart its criminal investigation of Jerome Powell and double-down against former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley and others he considers “enemies.”

Facing the two monumental failures of Iran and control over Congress, Trump is fanatically seeking other ways to assert dominance. On Tuesday, his Education Department announced a civil rights investigation into Smith College over enrolling transgender students. Expect more of this.

Regardless of what happens in Iran, he’ll claim victory. That will be difficult to do convincingly when gas prices remain over $4 a gallon, but he’ll undoubtedly try.

What if Democrats win control of one or both chambers of Congress in the midterms and he claims they lost or cheated? The nation barely survived the last time Trump’s fragile ego faced a major loss.

We’ll also have to cope with Trump as a lame-duck president who can no longer dominate and gain submission as he did before. Will he try to remain president beyond his second term to avoid this?

The man is unwell. Seriously unwell. Lame-duck presidents fade away, but injured dictators can be dangerous.

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/

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the three or four wealthiest people in the world, with a net worth hovering around $260 billion to $277 billion, is devoting some of his wealth to fighting California’s wealth tax on billionaires.

So far, he’s spent $57 million trying to defeat the measure.

Brin’s actions — along with Elon Musk’s $250 million “investment” in getting Trump reelected in 2024 — should be Exhibits A and B in why America needs a wealth tax.

First, let’s stipulate that there is nothing inherently wrong about being a billionaire, a multibillionaire, or even, as Musk is likely to become, a trillionaire.

Wealth isn’t a “zero-sum” game in which these vast accumulations at the top depend on the rest of us losing an equal amount. In fact, the super-wealthy may help the rest of us do somewhat better than we were doing before.

Even though the wealth of the top 0.1 percent has soared in recent years, the bottom 50 percent are doing somewhat better than before. (See chart here.)

But wait.

The problem is that political power is a zero-sum game. The more political power is concentrated in a few hands, the less political power in everyone else’s hands.

It’s almost impossible to separate wealth from power, because the wealthy turn their fortunes into campaign contributions to politicians who will change laws to their liking and stop laws they’d detest — such as higher taxes on the super-wealthy. The wealthy also finance public relations campaigns and think-tanks to persuade the public of the wisdom of their positions.

Billionaire spending on presidential elections has soared even faster than billionaire wealth. And if you believe they’re donating because they want people with great integrity and excellent character to be elected president, consider that most billionaire political spending in 2024 went to Trump.

They’re donating because they want to protect and enlarge their fortunes and don’t want politicians elected who support higher taxes on them.

Nor do they want politicians elected who support stricter anti-monopoly legislation or who would make it easier to form labor unions or stop climate change (all of which might reduce the profits of, say, Google).

Take Sergey Brin and his $57 million against California’s tax on billionaires — which, not incidentally, was proposed because California must now pay more for Medicaid for lower-income Californians, because Trump and his Republican lackeys enacted a giant federal tax cut whose benefits have gone mostly to the wealthy.

Brin has become a major Republican donor. Last May, he donated nearly half a million dollars to the Republican National Committee.

Why? Because the Republican Party is more dedicated to protecting and enlarging the wealth of the super-wealthy than is the Democratic Party.

By spending his fortune trying to stop California from taxing billionaires, Brin is illustrating why we need to tax billionaires. He’s making the argument for a billionaire wealth tax more clearly and articulately than anyone else possibly could.

Thank you, Serge.

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

I’m not going to dwell on this week’s outrages by Trump and his regime — his Supreme Court appointees gutting the Voting Rights Act, his bizarre claim that his war doesn’t require congressional approval because it’s “terminated,” his murders of additional sailors he suspects of smuggling drugs, his ongoing ICE raids, his continuing efforts to use the Justice Department to punish perceived enemies, his renewed attempts to silence comedians such as Jimmy Kimmel, his giant self-aggrandizing triumphal arch (what triumph?) and grotesque ballroom, his never-ending corruption and lies.

Yet in the midst of this cataclysm, the backlash against Trump is growing. Your work has been critical — your demonstrations and No Kings marches, your letters and phone calls to Congress, your boycotts and your local activism. Trump’s approval ratings are in the cellar. Two-thirds oppose his war. Many are demanding an end to his reign. Even some MAGA faithful are turning on him.

But it’s more than resisting Trump.

A new progressivism is being born.

Many of you are leading this. You are the activists in Montana and Hawaii pushing a new vision for reining in corporate power. You’re the activists in California and New York devising new ways to tax the super-wealthy to pay for what most people need.

You’re the activists in Massachusetts taking the lead on reproductive rights and access to health care. In Washington state, pushing new and more aggressive environmental regulations and renewable energy. In San Diego, Oakland, and San Francisco, devising new ways to address homelessness. Organizations like Voz in Portland, Oregon, empowering immigrant day laborers.

You are the activists in red states refusing to let warehouses be turned into migrant detention centers or let their towns host giant AI data centers.

You’re raising the minimum wage across America. Since the start of this year, 22 states have raised it, bringing the total number of jurisdictions raising the minimum — including cities and counties — to almost 90, with 18 states and the District of Columbia now mandating $15 an hour or more.

You’re supporting a new generation of young progressives in Congress: Maxwell Frost, Summer Lee, Greg Casar, Delia Ramirez, and the just-elected Analilia Mejia. And new progressive local leaders like New York’s mayor Zohran Mamdani.

You’re encouraging a new cohort of progressive rising stars, including Minneapolis’s Omar Fateh, Tennessee’s Aftyn Behn, Wisconsin’s Francesca Hong, Illinois’s Kat Abughazaleh, Texas’s James Talarico, San Francisco’s Saikat Chakrabarti, Maine’s Graham Platner, Tennessee’s Justin Pearson, Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, Florida’s Elijah Manley, and many others.

In my six decades in and around American politics, I’ve never seen anything close to the progressive talent and energy that’s now emerging.

Make no mistake. 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?) Trump and his goons are doing everything they can to destroy America and much of the world.

But out of the embers and rubble that Trump and his despicable regime have wrought, a new America is being born. We are making it happen.

As long as we are alive and as long as we are resolved, as long as we are taking action to stop the worst of this catastrophe and also trying to make America and the world better, have no doubt: We will prevail.

Be safe. Hug your loved ones. Never, ever give up.

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

Yesterday marked 60 days since the start of Trump’s failed war in Iran. The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8) gives Congress the power “To declare War,” and the War Powers Resolution of 1973 — enacted over Nixon’s veto — mandates that troops be withdrawn within 60 days unless Congress extends the deadline or declares war.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that Trump doesn’t need Congress’s approval to continue the war past the 60-day mark because the ceasefire agreement with Iran has effectively stopped the clock. (Trump echoed Hegseth’s claim today in a letter to Congress.)

That’s bull----, of course. But the interesting question is why — when Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress — Trump doesn’t want such a vote. Why not just let Republicans vote in favor of continuing his war, and be done with it?

It’s possible, of course, that Trump is worried that some Republican members might vote against the war — joining with all or almost all Democrats in voting against its continuation. Even a close vote could force a debate and pressure Trump to set the conditions and timeline for a withdrawal.

But there’s an easier and more straightforward reason.

Trump’s war is so unpopular that Republican members of Congress don’t want to have to go on record as voting in favor of it. With midterm elections in six months, they know their votes in favor of Trump’s war could be held over their heads — especially if the war drags on, or if gas prices continue to rise because Iran is blocking the Strait of Hormuz, or both.

They’ve let the White House know that forcing them to vote on the war will hurt their chances of maintaining control of Congress.

So congressional Republicans are choosing the coward’s way out: agree with Hegseth and Trump that there’s no need for such a vote because the ceasefire has tolled the clock. Or claim, even more absurdly (as has Speaker of the House Mike Johnson) that there’s no “war” to begin with, and hence no reason for such a vote.

Republicans in Congress are not brave people. To the contrary, they may be the most cowardly group ever to claim to represent the American people.

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/.

You can be Secretary of Defense (War) and cause the mightiest military in the world to be brought to its knees, and still keep your job in the Trump regime.

You can be in charge of public health and cause measles to reemerge as a major hazard to Americans, and still keep your job.

You can be illegally enriching yourself and your family as Commerce Secretary, and still keep your job.

But you’ll be fired for actively and unnecessarily getting bad press.

A few days ago, a senior White House official told Politico that FBI director Kash Patel’s bad press was “not a good look for a cabinet secretary” and had frustrated Trump. “It’s only a matter of time,” they said, before Patel is canned.

Like Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Patel has been his own worse press agent.

He filed a $250 million defamation claim against The Atlantic magazine over its April 17 report claiming that his FBI colleagues were alarmed by his excessive drinking and unexplained absences. The report included claims that his security detail struggled to rouse him due to intoxication several times in the past year and that he drank heavily at a private club in Washington. Bureau employees expressed concerns that his behavior posed a threat to public safety.

I doubt it’s Patel’s excessive drinking and absences that are making Trump upset; it’s that they’re being reported, and that Patel has made them even bigger stories by suing The Atlantic over them.

Last week, Patel added to the drinking story when he erupted at NBC’s Ryan Reilly who asked Patel at a press conference whether, as The Atlantic also reported, he feared he had been fired when he was unable to log into his government computer.

“The problem with you and your baseless reporting is that is an absolute lie,” Patel shot back. “It was never said. It never happened. And I will serve in this administration as long as the president and the attorney general want me to do so.” Patel added, “you are off topic,” and “the answer to your question is you are lying.”

Worse yet, from Trump’s viewpoint, is that some of Patel’s drinking has been in the public eye. One video showed him drinking a beer, banging his fist on a table and celebrating with the US men’s hockey team at this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy.

Nothing gets Trump angrier than when one of his underlings is caught doing something stupid on videotape. After the video of Patel spread on social media, Trump called Patel to convey his discontent, Politico reported.

Soon after Patel sued the Atlantic, the New York Times reported that the FBI had been investigating Elizabeth Williamson. Williamson was the New York Times journalist who revealed that Patel had used a swat team to protect his country singer girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, when she was invited to sing the national anthem at the annual convention of the National Rifle Association. And that Patel had “ripped into” the swat team’s commander when the team left after it became apparent there was no threat to her.

It’s not that Patel misused government funds on his girlfriend. Or that Patel exploded at the FBI swat team’s commander. Or even that Patel ordered an investigation of the journalist who reported this. No, it’s that all of this became a national story — twice. Such self-generated negative press infuriates Trump.

The same day that the Times reported on the FBI’s investigation of Elizabeth Williamson, NBC reported that a federal judge in Texas had tossed out a defamation case brought by Patel against former FBI assistant director-turned-MSNBC contributor Frank Figliuzzi. Patel had brought the case over Figliuzzi’s remark on “Morning Joe” that Patel had been “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building.”

More self-generated negative press: Not that Patel has been doing the nightclub circuit and disregarding his job, but that he invited a story about it by suing Figliuzzi.

Similarly, it’s not that Patel has repeatedly wrongly accused people of federal crimes (announcing someone had been arrested for the murder of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk when the real murderer hadn’t yet turned himself in, and that a person of interest had been detained in the Brown University shooting, only for that individual to be released hours later).

It’s that Patel’s wrong accusations were widely reported, making Patel — and, indirectly, Trump — look dumber than dirt.

Patel simply doesn’t know how to keep a low profile. Like so many others in the Trump regime, he made his name by promoting himself. As a frequent guest on right-wing programs before Trump appointed him FBI director, he pushed conspiracy theories about the “deep state,” the 2020 presidential election, and the January 6 Capitol attack.

But the occupant of the Oval Office doesn’t want his underlings engaging in self-promotion and vindictive lawsuits. If anyone’s going to be self-promotional and vindictive, Trump wants it to be himself.

Patel has been trying to win back Trump’s favor by escalating FBI investigations into Trump enemies. But so far, the investigations haven’t yielded adequate evidence to indict, another mark against him in Trump’s book.

A week ago Sunday, Patel promised that the Justice Department would soon make arrests related to the 2020 election, stating on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that “We’ve got all the information we need, we’re working with our prosecutors at the Department of Justice under [acting] Attorney General Todd Blanche, and we are going to be making arrests, and it’s coming, and I promise you, it’s coming soon.”

Patel’s plea was obviously directed at Trump.

I doubt it will work. Patel will soon be locked out of his computer for good.

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/

For as long as I can remember, the White House Correspondents dinner was where the Washington press corps and Washington officials basked in each other’s celebrity.

Last night’s ended abruptly with gunshots, Secret Service officers screaming at attendees to “get down,” Trump and other officials being rapidly ushered out of the ballroom, plates crashing and chairs falling, and general pandemonium.

Last night, the celebrities became normal people feeling panic and fear.

Most of the time, Washington is a stage on which actors take on roles and dress up for assigned parts. I remember wearing an uncomfortable tuxedo to the White House Correspondents Dinner, trying to make pleasant conversation with people who had skewered me that very morning.

The glamor and swish of the event was at such sharp odds with the hard daily slog of my job that the event seemed strangely disembodied, as if everyone had been given a script that they knew was total bull----.

Trump has changed much of this. He has brought a grim hostility to the jobs of doing the public’s work and reporting on those who do the public’s work. This was the first White House Correspondents dinner he agreed to attend, and by all accounts he was prepared to give the media pure hell in his remarks.

And then hell erupted in the form of another crazed gunman. As I write this, it appears that one Secret Service agent was injured but none of the luminaries was hurt.

There is a close relationship between Trump and violence — not just the attempts on his life but also the violence he’s unleashed on the world, the violence his ICE and Border Patrol agents have caused inside America, the violence he has incited among his followers. (A few of last night’s attendees were in Congress on January 6, 2021 when Trump’s thugs attacked the U.S. Capitol.)

Trump’s violence has resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries. That is no justification for last night’s attack, of course, but it is part of what he has wrought in America. He has changed the script in Washington.

It is no longer the hard slog I remember. The drama in Washington is now a chaotic tragedy, most of whose actors — those who make the news and those who report it — live in continuous uncertainty and turmoil.

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 and “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth say Operation Epic Fury has destroyed Iran’s military capacity.

“We’ve taken out their navy, we’ve taken out their air force, we’ve taken out their leaders,” Trump said Tuesday.

At a Pentagon briefing on April 8, shortly after Trump declared a ceasefire with Iran, Hegseth said “Operation Epic Fury was a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield, a capital V military victory.” He added, “By any measure, Epic Fury decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come.”

But CBS News’s Jennifer Jacobs, Eleanor Watson, and James LaPorta report a very different reality. They interviewed “multiple officials with knowledge of intelligence,” who say the Islamic Republic of Iran “maintains more military capabilities than the White House or Pentagon has publicly admitted.”

According to three of the officials, about half of Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles and its associated launch systems were still intact as of the start of the ceasefire in early April.

Roughly 60 percent of the naval arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in existence, the officials said, including fast-attack speed boats.

Although the U.S. and Israel have destroyed much of Iran’s conventional navy, the naval arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, equipped with many smaller vessels, remains partly intact, and it’s that navy that’s hampering oil shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

On Wednesday, Iranian gunboats attacked several commercial ships in the strait, shortly after Trump announced he was unilaterally extending a ceasefire to allow more time for peace talks.

Iranian air power has been significantly degraded but not erased. U.S. officials say that about two-thirds of Iran’s air force is still believed to be operational.

According to a written statement submitted to a House Armed Services Committee by Marine Lt. Gen. James Adams, head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Iran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack UAVs that can threaten U.S. and partner forces throughout the region, despite degradations to its capabilities from both attrition and expenditure.”

The regime in Tehran is showing itself to be far more tenacious and hardline than the regime it replaced. Iran seems more committed to building a nuclear bomb than it was before Trump’s war, and is less constrained than it was after the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration.

And the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed, not by the United States but by Iran — causing global oil prices to resume their upward trajectory. (Reminder: It was open before Operation Epic Fury.)

Epic Fury is likely to go down as an epic failure.

What will Trump do next? No one knows.

What do you think?

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

Tucker Carlson told the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that Trump is “a wonderful person. I know him well. By the way, the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life, actually. You can’t be funny without perspective or without empathy, which is true.”

But on Tuesday, Carlson admitted that he’ll be “tormented” for a long time by his support for Trump in the 2024 presidential election and that “I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

Well, thank you, Tucker. I — and I’m sure many others — appreciate your apology.

And we hope your torment continues.

By the way, I’ve got to ask: Are you also tormented by — and apologetic for — supporting Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen?

And what about your minimizing the presence of white nationalists among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021? And your claim that the attack on the Capitol “barely rates as a footnote?”

Are you now tormented and apologetic for any of this?

And while we’re at it, Tucker, what about your racist screeds? Does any of the filth you’ve spewed for years make you ashamed?

You pushed the “great replacement theory,” claiming that immigrants made America “poorer and dirtier.”

You said a Black Democratic politician spoke like a “sharecropper.”

You told your viewers that America is a “civilization under siege” — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters, by diseased migrants from south of the U.S.-Mexico border, and by refugees importing alien cultures.

When hundreds of refugees from Africa began crossing into Texas from Mexico during the first Trump administration, you warned that Africa’s high birthrates meant the new arrivals might soon “overwhelm our country and change it completely and forever.”

Amid the nation’s outrage over George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, you called those who protested the murder “criminal mobs.”

When Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, you asked rhetorically, “Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?” And: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

Are you troubled by any of this, Tucker? Are you apologetic? Ashamed?

And if not, why the hell not?

Why should anybody believe you when you say you’re now “tormented” and “sorry” for misleading people about Trump if you express no remorse for supporting his blatant lies about the 2020 election, for backing the rioters at the Capitol, for justifying the murders of protesters, and for poisoning America with your bigoted screeds?

Tucker, we know you’d like to be the Republican candidate for president in 2028 and you think distancing yourself from Trump on his idiotic war is the way to do it — especially with JD Vance as your likely opponent in the primaries.

Well, I have news for you, Tuck. You’re not fooling anyone with your newfound conversion. You’re the same intolerant, dogmatic, puerile fanatic you always were. And just as dangerous for this country and the world as ever.

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

Trump’s domestic and foreign policies — ranging from his attempted coup against the United States in January 2021, to his ICE and Border Patrol excesses (including murders in Minnesota), to his incursion into Venezuela and abduction of its president, to his attack on Iran, and his threats against Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland — all undermine the rule of law, domestically and internationally.

But that’s not all. They threaten what we mean by civilization.

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

Trump believes that might makes right — that the stronger are entitled to attack and exploit the weaker. Violence against those who are or appear weaker is a hallmark of his presidency and his outlook in general.

He is profoundly and dangerously wrong.

In January, he called the unilateral military intervention that ended in the kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro an example of the “iron laws that have always determined global power.”

What “iron laws” is he referring to? “Might makes right” is not an iron law. It marks the destruction of the rule of law.

When challenged about the Maduro operation, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller mocked Jake Tapper on CNN for his apparent naïveté about “international niceties” like the United Nations charter. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” said Miller.

Sorry, Stephen. Strength, force, and power do not “govern” anything. They’re the exact opposite of governing. They’re survival of the fittest — the law of the jungle.

On April 7, Trump told the Iranian regime to surrender to American might or “a whole civilization will die tonight.” That kind of talk doesn’t enlarge American power. It delegitimizes American power.

In reality, Trump is destroying any remaining faith that the United States can be trusted to exercise power responsibly. He is also, not incidentally, erasing any distinction between the exercise of American might and Russian conduct in Ukraine and Chinese behavior in the South China Sea or (potentially) over Taiwan.

If the United States stays on this course, it will find itself bereft of allies and friends, a lonely superpower in a lawless international system it has helped to create.

The genius of America’s post-1945 foreign policy was to embed America’s power in international institutions and laws, including the UN charter, emphasizing multilateralism, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

America didn’t always live up to these ideals, of course. But all nations, regardless of their size or power, had a stake in them. They not only helped legitimize American power but maintained international stability and avoided another world war.

The same moral underpinning provides the foundation for a good society. To be morally legitimate, any system of laws must be premised on preventing the stronger from attacking and exploiting the weaker. If a system is to be broadly accepted and obeyed, the entire public must believe that it is in their interest to support it.

But this aspiration is easily violated by those who abuse their wealth and power. Maintaining it requires that the powerful have enough integrity to abstain from seeking short-term wins, and that the rest of us hold them accountable if they don’t.

Yet we now inhabit a society grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated and less constrained than at any time since the first Gilded Age. This invites the powerful to exploit the weaker because the powerful feel omnipotent.

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

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

A direct line connects Trump’s attempted coup in 2020 and January 2021 to his capture of Maduro to his attack on Iran without congressional authority to his blatant corruption. All are lawless. All are premised on the hubris of omnipotence.

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

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

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

Trump’s blatant lawlessness is already bringing him down. It will haunt America and the world for years to come.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s admission yesterday that it “could be next year” before gas prices return to below $3 a gallon is causing trauma in Republican circles because “next year” is after the November 3 midterm elections.

Initially Trump said he could end the war “in two or three days.” It then became “four to five weeks.” He then stretched it to six. His so-called “cease-fire” ends Wednesday.

We’re now in the eighth week of what Trump called his “little excursion” into Iran (he hasn’t called it a “war” because under the Constitution he needs Congress’s okay to go to war), with no end in sight, and oil prices are again on the rise.

Over the weekend — only hours after Trump said the Strait of Hormuz had been “reopened” — Iran said it had closed the strait.

Yesterday, Trump claimed that his blockade would quickly bring Iran to its knees:

“Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it. They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing. … We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

But Trump’s blockade isn’t working as Trump intended.

Last night, the U.S. Navy opened fire on an Iranian-flagged cargo ship to disable its engines after it apparently refused to stop despite repeated warnings.

Following the incident, oil prices soared higher, and experts predict it will make ships even less likely to brave the strait.

Last week’s Quinnipiac poll shows that almost two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) blame Trump for the spike in gas prices, including 73 percent of independent voters.

This is important. The economic costs of this war to average Americans are understood by average Americans to be the direct result of Trump’s personal decision. Trump went into this war without consulting anyone or getting anyone else on board — not Congress, not America’s allies, not NATO or the United Nations — and didn’t even explain to America why he was taking the nation into war. So, it is indubitably his own war.

If Trump believes he’s holding all the cards, he has no idea whom he’s dealing with.

The new regime in Iran believes it has more leverage than Trump because (1) it’s able to stop traffic in the strait as easily as can the U.S., and (2) it’s better able than Trump and the U.S. to wage a long war of attrition. It knows Trump is under increasing political pressure in the U.S. to bring down gas prices and is facing midterm elections in less than seven months — but all it needs to do in the meantime is survive.

The Iranian regime has also likely concluded that it hasn’t yet inflicted sufficient pain on Trump (and American consumers) to prevent America from attacking it again, so it will hold out for ironclad guarantees from the United States that the U.S. won’t resume bombing — guarantees Trump not only refuses to grant, but continues to threaten Iran every time he opens his mouth or posts another screed.

This is a war without end.

Meanwhile, today marks the opening of the government’s new tariff refund portal, through which businesses can claim reimbursements for the import taxes — that is, tariffs — they’ve paid, which were struck down by the Supreme Court.

The government — that is, we taxpayers who fund the government — owes tens of thousands of importers a total of up to $175 billion in refunds for the tariffs imposed by Trump last year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

But the people who have actually borne much of the cost of these import taxes — American consumers — won’t see a penny of refund. The $175 billion will just contribute to the record profits of American corporations.

If corporations worried that competitors might pass these refunds on to their consumers in the form of lower prices, presumably all corporations would do the same. But corporate power is so concentrated now — monopolies and oligopolies now dominate most industries — that corporations have no such worry.

So you and I and other taxpayers are in effect refunding American corporations for the import taxes they paid, although we paid for most of them in the form of higher prices — which they won’t now lower because they have monopoly power to keep them high.

Which means — like Trump’s war and its effect on oil prices — Trump’s tariffs will continue to require us to pay more.

Put the two together, and you see why American consumers are f------.

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 light of Trump’s increasingly cruel and bonkers behavior — toward Iran, toward the pope, his posts, his bottomless vengeance, his continuing ICE raids, his continuing use of the Justice Department to target his enemies, his shameless corruption — many of you want to know: “What can I do now?” Here are 10 recommendations, in rough order of importance.

1. Protect the decent and hardworking members of your communities who are most vulnerable.

This is an urgent moral call to action. As Trump’s ICE and Border Patrol continue their roundups and deportations, many of our neighbors and friends are endangered. They and their families are understandably frightened.

Trump’s executive orders allow ICE to arrest undocumented immigrants at or near schools, places of worship, health care sites, shelters, and relief centers — thereby deterring them from sending their kids to school or getting help they need.

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. Join others in voluntary efforts to keep ICE away from hospitals, schools, and shelters. And to alert all members of your community when ICE is present.

Organize and mobilize your community to support it as a sanctuary city and to support your state as a sanctuary state. Trump’s Justice Department is investigating cities and states that go against federal immigration orders. Your voice and organizing can be helpful in fighting back.

You might also consider sponsoring a refugee family.

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

2. Protect them against bigotry and hate — LGBTQ+, immigrants, “hyphenated” Americans, and people of color. Trump continues to try to make life far more difficult for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other people through executive orders, changes in laws, alterations in civil rights laws, or changes in how such laws are enforced. He’s also fueling bigotry against immigrants, especially Muslims and immigrants from Iran, and against people of color.

I urge you to work with others in being 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. Get your churches and synagogues involved. If you trust your local city officials, get them involved. If you trust your local police, alert them as well.

3. Help protect officials in your community or state whom Trump and his administration are targeting for vengeance. Some may be low-level officials, such as election workers. If they don’t have the means to legally defend themselves, you might help them or consider a GoFundMe campaign. If you hear of anyone seeking to harm or intimidate them, immediately alert local law-enforcement officials.

4. Organize and mobilize for the midterms. It’s not too early to plan to get out the vote on or before November 3 — ensuring that people who are eligible to vote are registered, that they know when and how to vote, that they know how to vote by mail or are otherwise able to get to polling places. Knock on doors, raise money for progressive candidates, and mobilize your friends, neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances. Join your local Indivisible organization (find the nearest group here).

If you hear of any plans for ICE or Border Patrol agents to be deployed at voting places, contact the ACLU (you can locate the nearest office by visiting aclu.org/affiliates). If you hear or know of any plans by Republican election officials to meddle in the upcoming elections, notify the League of Women Voters, here, or local representatives of the Democratic Party.

5. Participate in or organize boycotts of companies that are enabling the Trump regime — including Elon Musk’s X and Tesla, Amazon, Meta (Facebook), and any companies that advertise on X or on Fox News. 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 prices of corporations’ shares of stock.

6. To the extent you are able, fund groups that are litigating against Trump. Much of the action stopping Trump and his regime is occurring in the federal courts. The groups initiating litigation that I know and trust include the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, Environmental Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, Center for Biological Diversity, Democracy Forward, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Common Cause. All could use your help and encouragement.

7. Spread the truth. Get news through reliable sources, and spread it. If you hear anyone spreading lies and Trump propaganda, including local media, contradict them with facts and their sources. Urge friends, relatives, and acquaintances to avoid Trump propaganda outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, X, and, increasingly, Facebook and Instagram. They are filled with hateful bigotry and toxic and dangerous lies. For some people, these propaganda sources can also be addictive; help the people you know wean themselves off them.

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, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of course, this Substack.

8. Push for progressive measures in your community and state. Local and state governments retain significant power. Join groups that are moving your city or state forward, in contrast to regressive moves at the federal level. Lobby, instigate, organize, and fundraise for progressive legislators. Support progressive leaders.

9. Call your members of Congress. Tell them to oppose Trump and support progressive initiatives. And keep calling! Your calls count. (Staffers do keep count of how many constituents are for or against various issues.) The main U.S. Capitol switchboard phone number is (202) 224-3121. The operator can connect you directly to the office of your Senator or Representative. To find your specific representative, you can also look up their contact information on www.house.gov or www.senate.gov.

10. Keep the faith. Do not give up on America. This is a long and difficult slog but we have no choice. The fight we’re in will determine the future of this nation and much of the world. I understand if you’re tired and sometimes discouraged, but we can and must win.

Trump won the popular vote in 2024 by only 1.5 points, and 35 percent of eligible voters didn’t even vote. By any historic measure, this was a squeaker. In the House of Representatives, 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. Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, Democrats have won all special elections or dramatically over-performed in them.

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.

---

Beyond these, please be sure to find room in your life for joy, fun, and laughter. Do not let Trump and his darkness take you over. Just as it’s important not to give up the fight, it’s critically important to take care of yourself. If you obsess about Trump and fall down the rabbit hole of outrage, worry, and anxiety, you won’t be able to keep fighting.

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/.

You can almost feel the change in the air we breathe.

It’s not just that Dems are winning special elections by wide margins (and even where they’re not, they’re “overperforming” in ruby-red areas by an average of 16 points).

Nor just that Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was overwhelmingly defeated after 16 years of authoritarian rule, with almost 80 percent of eligible voters turning out. (The victor, Peter Magyar, overcame Orbán’s rigged system by focusing on Orbán’s corruption and linking it to the economic difficulties facing average Hungarians.)

Or that Trump posted an image of himself as Jesus, revealing his God complex and causing even evangelical Christians in his MAGA base to question his religiosity and mental stability.

Or that Trump and Vance were dumb enough to pick a fight with Pope Leo, who has used it to explain his (and, for Catholics, Jesus’s) objections to war and to tyrants everywhere.

Or that Trump’s major ally in Europe (and the only European leader to attend his inauguration), Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Malone, described Trump’s attack on the pope as “unacceptable” (Trump responded by attacking her for “lacking courage” in refusing to join his war on Iran).

Or that Trump threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization — prompting even Tucker Carlson to call Trump’s threat “vile on every level,” Candace Owens to demand that the 25th Amendment be invoked to remove him from office, conspiracist Alex Jones to accuse Trump of threatening “genocide,” and Megyn Kelly to concede that Trump’s coalition is “completely fractured and in smithereens.”

Or that Trump’s war has been such an abominable failure that it’s demonstrated his dangerous ignorance and diminishing mental capacity.

It’s all these, together.

Add in Trump’s legal failures to prosecute his political enemies, to target universities and law firms, to impose his tariffs, and to mount defamation lawsuits — and you understand why the air around us is beginning to feel different.

I hesitate to say we’ve reached a turning point in this horrific time. But something profound seems to be changing.

America and the world’s democracies are beginning to win this overriding fight — against the forces of authoritarianism, corruption, bigotry, ignorance, lies, greed, and violence.

We are starting to win because Trump and the forces he’s unleashed are so deeply repulsive to the consciences of most Americans and much of the rest of humanity.

The more Trump and these forces reveal themselves for what they are, the more that decent people — whether they call themselves Republican or Democrat, conservative or progressive, right or left, American or non-American — are recoiling from them.

We have not yet prevailed, of course. But, my friends, we are making progress. And we will prevail.

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

I’ve long assumed that Samuel Alito was the worst.

Alito — who authored the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), the case that ended constitutional abortion rights by merely asserting that the high court’s prior opinion in Roe v. Wade (1973) was wrongly decided; who accepted a 2008 luxury fishing trip to Alaska, including private jet travel, from hedge fund billionaire and GOP donor Paul Singer yet failed to disclose it on Alito's financial forms and didn’t even recuse himself from decisions involving Singer’s subsequent business before the Supreme Court; who hoisted an inverted American flag outside his Virginia home shortly after the January 6 Capitol riot, a symbol of support for Trump's false claims of a stolen 2020 election — has the moral and intellectual stature of a poisonous toad.

But I’ve come to revise my view of the court’s worst Justice.

Clarence Thomas is 77 years old. He has now served on the Supreme Court for over 34 years, making him the longest-serving member of the Court. He is a bitter, angry, severe hard-right, intellectually dishonest, ideologue. After reading his latest thoughts on America, I’ve concluded Thomas is even worse than Alito.

Last Wednesday, Thomas gave a rare public address at the University of Texas in Austin that began as a banal tribute to the Declaration of Independence before degenerating into a misleading screed against progressivism.

“At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream,” Thomas intoned. “The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism.”

Thomas went on to blame progressives for the worst crimes of the 20^th century, insisting that “Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao” were all “intertwined with the rise of progressivism,” as was “racial segregation,” “eugenics,” and other evils.

This is pure rubbish.

In reality, America’s Progressive era emerged at the start of the 20th century from the corruption and excesses of America’s first Gilded Age (we’re now in the second, if you hadn’t noticed) — its record inequalities of income and wealth, its “robber barons” who monopolized industries and handed out sacks of money to pliant legislators, it’s dangerous factories and unsafe working conditions, its violent attacks on workers who tried to form unions, its corporate control over all facets of government, its widespread poverty and disease, and its corrupt party machines.

In many ways, the Progressive Era — whose most prominent leader was Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, not Woodrow Wilson, by the way — saved capitalism from its own excesses by instituting a progressive income tax, an estate tax, pure food and drug laws, and America’s first laws against corporate influence in politics.

Then, under Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin (Franklin D.), came Social Security, the 40-hour workweek (with time-and-a-half for overtime), the right to form unions, and laws and regulations that limited Wall Street’s ability to gamble with other people’s money.

Clarence Thomas got it exactly backwards. Had we not had the Progressive Era and its reforms extending through the 1930s, America might well have succumbed to fascism — as did Germany under Hitler, and Italy under Mussolini, or to communist fascism, as did Russia under Stalin. Progressive and New Deal reforms acted as bulwarks against the rise of fascism in America.

In fact, it’s been the demise of such reforms since Ronald Reagan that have opened the way to Trumpian neo-fascism.

Over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized in the 1950s, giving them bargaining leverage to get higher wages and better working conditions. Now, fewer than 6 percent are unionized, which has contributed to the flattening of wages, a contracting middle class, inequalities of income and wealth rivaling the first Gilded Age, and an angry and suspicious working class that’s become easy prey for demagogues.

Wall Street has been deregulated — allowing it to go on gambling sprees such as the one that produced the financial crisis of 2008, which claimed millions of working peoples’ homes, savings, and jobs.

America’s social safety nets have become so frayed that almost a fifth of the nation’s children are now in poverty. Yet Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump have slashed taxes on the rich and on big corporations and have allowed giant corporations to merge into giant monopolies rivaling the trusts of the first Gilded Age. And Trump has ushered in an era of corruption the likes of which America hasn’t seen since that earlier disgraceful era.

Thomas claims that “The century of progressivism did not go well.” Baloney. It helped America create the largest middle class the world had ever seen, while also extending prosperity to millions of Black and brown people.

The tragedy is that America turned its back on progressivism and on social progress, in part because of the Supreme Court and Justice Clarence Thomas.

Flashback: I was in law school in 1973 when the Supreme Court decided Roe, protecting a pregnant person’s right to privacy under the 14th amendment to the Constitution.

Clarence Thomas was in my law school class at the time, as was Hillary Rodham (later Hillary Clinton) and Bill Clinton.

The professors used the “Socratic method” – asking hard questions about the cases they were discussing and waiting for students to raise their hands in response, and then criticizing the responses. It was a hair-raising but effective way to learn the law.

One of the principles guiding those discussions is called stare decisis — Latin for “to stand by things decided.” It’s the doctrine of judicial precedent. If a court has already ruled on an issue (say, on reproductive rights), future courts should decide similar cases the same way. Supreme Courts can change their minds and rule differently than they did before, but they need good reasons to do so, and it helps if their opinion is unanimous or nearly so. Otherwise, their rulings appear (and are) arbitrary — even, shall we say? — partisan.

In those classroom discussions almost fifty years ago, Hillary’s hand was always first in the air. When she was called upon, she gave perfect answers – whole paragraphs, precisely phrased. She distinguished one case from another, using precedents and stare decisis to guide her thinking. I was awed.

My hand was in the air about half the time, and when called on, my answers were meh.

Clarence’s hand was never in the air. I don’t recall him saying anything, ever.

Bill was never in class.

Only one of us now sits on the Supreme Court. And he has shown no respect for stare decisis.

Nor has he respected judicial ethics.

A federal law — 28 U.S. Code § 455 — requires that “any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Thomas’s wife, Ginni, actively strategized with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on overturning the election results. Between Election Day 2020 and the days following the January 6th attack on the Capitol, she exchanged 29 text messages with Meadows, in which she spread false theories about the election, urged Meadows to overturn the election results, and called for specific actions from the White House to help overturn the election. She also served as one of nine board members of a group that helped lead the “Stop the Steal” movement and called for the punishment of House Republicans who participated in the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack.

Yet Clarence Thomas has repeatedly participated in cases that have come to the high court directly or indirectly involving the 2020 election results, refusing to disqualify himself.

In addition, he failed to disclose his wife’s income from her work at the Heritage Foundation, in violation of the Ethics in Government Act.

Finally, there’s his speech last week in Austin. How can Americans be expected to believe in the impartiality of the Supreme Court in general and Clarence Thomas in particular when he condemns an entire philosophy of government — progressivism — and all the people who continue to call themselves progressives, in effect labeling them neo-fascists?

At the start of his speech last week in Austin, Clarence Thomas noted that “My wife Virginia and I have many wonderful friends and acquaintances here, and it is so special to have our dear friends Harlan and Kathy Crow join us today.”

He was, of course, referring to the Republican mega-donor who has spent the last twenty years lavishing Thomas with personal gifts, luxury yacht trips, fancy vacations, and funding for Ginni Thomas’s political organization.

Small wonder that Clarence Thomas prefers the Gilded Age over the Progressive Era. He’s the living embodiment of The Gilded Age’s public-be-damned excesses.

Hence, he’s my nominee for the worst justice in modern Supreme Court history.

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

It’s a catastrophe on the way to becoming a cataclysm.

Trump is rapidly going stark-raving mad. He’s a clear and present danger to the United States and the world.

Yesterday he lashed out at The New York Times after its chief White House correspondent questioned his mental health and stability and pointed to his “erratic behavior and extreme comments.”

“HAVE THEY NO SHAME? HAVE THEY NO SENSE OF DECENCY?” Trump posted in CAPITAL LETTERS about the Times, inadvertently echoing the famous words of Joseph Welch when standing up to Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Trump went on to take issue with the Times’s coverage of his war in Iran rather than his mental state, as if to prove the Times’s point.

He keeps saying he’s “won” the war with Iran, although he’s never said what “winning” means. At one moment his goal is to free Iran’s people. At another, it’s to end Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. At another, to destroy Iran’s missiles. At another, to achieve “regime change.” At another, to open the Strait of Hormuz (which was open before Trump started his war). At another, he says he’ll know the U.S. military operation in Iran is over when he feels it "[in] my bones.”

He can’t even stay on the same subject for more than a few minutes. In the middle of a high-level Cabinet meeting about the war, he spends five minutes talking about his preference for Sharpie pens. He interrupts another Iran war update to praise the White House drapes.

He threatens that if Iran doesn’t reopen the strait, “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Then he says America doesn’t need the strait reopened. Then he says: “Open the F-----’ Strait, you crazy b------, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

He calls the Pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” because the Pope wants peace. He posts an AI-generated picture of himself as Jesus, then says he was only depicting himself as a physician.

He won’t give up on his illegal and dangerous (for the economy) criminal investigation of Fed Chief Jerome Powell, claiming it’s not just about Powell’s renovations at the Fed but also a “probe on incompetence,” adding he’ll fire Powell if he doesn’t resign after his term as chair ends.

He claims that the United States “needs” Greenland. He confuses Greenland with Iceland. He says whales are being killed by windmills. He claims that he won all 50 states in 2020. That he defeated Barack Obama in 2016. He says the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed. He goes on an eight-minute ramble about poisonous snakes in Peru. He boasts of ending a fictional war between Cambodia and Armenia.

After Robert Mueller’s death, he says, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” He blames the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle on “the anger [Rob Reiner] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” After Joe Biden is diagnosed with an aggressive form of Stage 4 prostate cancer, Trump says, “I’m surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to Stage 9, that’s a long time” (there is no Stage 9 cancer).

He’s been losing it for a while now, but in the last few months it’s become far worse.

In 2017, 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals concluded in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump that Trump’s mental condition posed a “clear and present danger” to the nation.

In 2021, members of Trump’s own Cabinet — horrified by the January 6, 2021, violence at the Capitol and Trump’s lack of urgency in stopping it — discussed whether to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office due to mental incompetence.

During his 2024 campaign, he attacked Kamala Harris and then went into the stratosphere of his bonkers mind:

“She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s – and I own a big building there – it’s no – I shouldn’t talk about this, but that’s OK, I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world – sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson, they say, was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?”

It’s no longer possible to overlook his conspiracy-obsessed paranoia, his uncontrolled rage, his emotional volatility, his delusional claims, his vengeful rantings, his foul-mouthed posturing, his increasing detachment from reality.

Yet his Cabinet members and aides keep their heads down. Republican members of Congress pretend not to notice. His billionaire supporters dare not speak of his rapid decline. The media tries to “sanewash” his growing incoherence.

But some voices on the right — people who have long been supporters of Trump — have had enough.

Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s civilization is “not tough rhetoric, it’s insanity.” Far-right podcaster Candace Owens calls him “a genocidal lunatic.” Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones says Trump “does babble and sounds like the brain’s not doing too hot.” A White House lawyer in Trump’s first term, Ty Cobb, says Trump is “clearly insane.” Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham says “he’s clearly not well.”

The public is catching on. Fully 61 percent of Americans think he’s become more erratic with age, while just 45 percent say he is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges” (down from 54 percent in 2023).

For the good of the nation and the world, it’s time we face the reality: The most powerful man in the world does not have the mental capacity to do the job. Donald Trump — who has a family history of dementia — is increasingly unhinged.

We are all endangered. What happens if, in a demented rage, he hurls a nuclear bomb? Who is watching the “football” with the nuclear codes? Who’s ready to stop him to save the world?

Don’t wait. Impeach him now.

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

Trump’s chief bigot, Stephen Miller, said on Fox News that immigrants to the United States bring problems that extend through generations.

“Not only is the first generation unsuccessful,” Miller claimed. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

Bullshit. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of most immigrants are models of upward mobility in America.

In a recent paper, researchers found that immigrants today are no slower to move into the middle class than immigrants were a century ago. In fact, no matter when their parents came to the U.S. or what country they came from, children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers.

Stephen Miller’s great-great-grandfather was born in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl in what is now Belarus. He came to America in 1903 with $8 in his pocket and spoke no English. Three generations later, little Stephen was born in 1985 to American parents but somehow developed a visceral hatred for immigrants.

Miller and Trump have been dealing with immigrants the same way Pete Hegseth and Trump have been dealing with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz — inflicting pain on both them and the United States, in the hope their pain will be worse than the pain we endure.

Today’s Tax Day was supposed to be a big PR boon for Trump, in which he touts his “no taxes on tips” and other ersatz tax “cuts” for average working Americans (while hiding that his Big Ugly bill actually gave most of its benefits to the wealthy and big corporations, and paid for them by taking money from Medicaid and food stamps and other programs the working class and poor rely on).

But the war in Iran has made everything — even Stephen Miller’s war on immigrants — feel like the Strait of Hormuz.

Consider that before Miller ordered the Internal Revenue Service to give ICE officials the addresses of people subject to deportation, undocumented immigrants had been paying roughly $60 billion annually in federal taxes, much of it going into Social Security and Medicare — programs from which they don’t benefit.

Now, tax experts fear many immigrants won’t file returns, and those who formerly had their taxes withheld in every paycheck will shift into under-the-table jobs. The Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, projected lost tax revenue of about $300 billion over a decade.

Meanwhile, Miller’s vast, sadistic crackdown on undocumented workers is causing significant pain for the U.S. economy. There aren’t enough workers in construction, hospitality, and agriculture to keep these sectors going. Another Strait of Hormuz situation.

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

As Ronald Reagan put it in a 1988 speech,

You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk. But … anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American. A person becomes an American by adopting America’s principles, especially those principles summarized in the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration of Independence, such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Reagan understood that America is a set of aspirations and ideals more than it is a nationality.

Miller and Trump, on the other hand, want to fuel bigotry. Their entire project depends on hate. Like dictators before him, Trump’s road to tyranny is paved with stones hurled at “them” — whether “they” are immigrants, Iranians, or anyone else who doesn’t fit the white Christian nationalist mold.

America is better than Trump and his chief bigot.

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/.

Speaking at a January 6 retreat for House Republicans, Trump stated, “You gotta win the midterms ‘cause, if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”

This was before Trump’s agents murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, before the Justice Department released more Epstein files, before Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, before Trump threatened death to the entire Iranian civilization, before a gallon of gas hit $4 or more, before other prices also began rising because of the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, and before additional price hikes associated with Trump’s tariffs had kicked in.

It was also before Trump’s polls slid to record lows, before the MAGA faithful began complaining that Trump had betrayed his promise to avoid foreign entanglements, and before a slew of special elections in which Democratic candidates have won Republican districts (and even when they didn’t win, lost by far smaller margins than Trump won by in 2024).

Until recently I thought impeaching Trump and convicting him in the Senate was a pipe dream. I was concerned that even talk of impeachment at this stage might distract attention from the affordability crisis brought on by Trump and could even fortify Republican charges of Democratic “extremism.”

No longer.

The president of the United States is stark-raving mad. He’s a clear and present danger to America and the world. The American public is beginning to see it.

We’ve got to do whatever we legally can to remove him from office. The 25th Amendment would be useful if Trump’s Cabinet and key advisers had any integrity, but they don’t. They’re ambitious, unprincipled traitors.

Which leaves impeachment.

You may be skeptical. After all, he’s already been impeached twice, to no avail. How can the third time be the charm?

Because it seems likely that Democrats will retake control of the House and the Senate in this fall’s midterm elections (unless Trump prevents free and fair elections).

And because it’s also possible that there will be enough votes in the Senate starting next January to convict Trump of impeachable offenses and send him packing.

I understand how difficult this may seem. Both times Trump was impeached in the House, he was saved by the Constitution’s requirement that two-thirds of the Senate (67 senators, assuming all 100 are present) convict in order to remove a president.

The highest Senate vote count against Trump came in 2021, and it was 10 votes short of the constitutional requirement. Fifty-seven senators, including seven Republicans, voted to convict him of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in U.S. Senate history, but it still fell well short of the 67 votes needed to convict Trump.

So why do I think it’s possible now? Because public sentiment has swung further against Trump now than it was in 2021. And it’s likely to swing even further against him, because he’s going out of his mind at a rapid rate.

The way to accomplish this is to defeat enough incumbent Republican senators who are up for reelection in 2026 to create a Democratic majority in that chamber, totaling some 54 votes, and pressure at least 13 Republicans up for reelection in 2028 to vote to convict him.

That’s not impossible. In the upcoming midterms it’s likely that Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins will be replaced by a Democrat (either Janet Mills or Graham Platner). I also assume that former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper will replace Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who’s retiring.

And I’d like to believe that the good people of Ohio will see the light and reelect Sherrod Brown over Jon Husted, the dullard who was appointed to fill the remainder of JD Vance’s term.

James Talarico could take the Texas Republican Senate seat now occupied by John Cornyn. In Alaska, I’d put odds on Mary Peltola defeating incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. In Nebraska, assume that Dan Osborn prevails over incumbent Republican Senator Pete Ricketts. And so on.

Republican senators last elected in 2022 who will be on the ballot in November 2028 include some who are vulnerable because they’re in swing states, such as North Carolina’s Ted Budd and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson; or are in states that could be competitive, such as Indiana’s Todd Young; or are vulnerable to internal party shifts, such as Louisiana’s John Kennedy and South Carolina’s Tim Scott.

Those vulnerabilities mean that their constituents could push them to vote to convict Trump in an impeachment, or else threaten to vote against them in 2028.

So it’s possible to get the 67 Senate votes, my friends. And it’s absolutely necessary that we try.

The vast No Kings demonstrations should be considered a prelude to targeting enough Republican Senate incumbents and open races to flip the Senate this fall, and pressuring Republicans up for reelection in 2028 to do their constitutional duty.

Now is the time to show the size and intensity of America’s commitment to removing Trump from office, for the good of us all.

Trump’s rule for “flooding the zone” has been straightforward: Whenever the subject that everyone’s talking about becomes too uncomfortable for him — he changes it.

Too much Jeffrey Epstein? Send federal agents to Minnesota to brutalize American citizens. Too much brutality by federal agents? Fire the head of Department of Homeland Security and start a war with Iran. War goes badly? (Well, we’ll soon find out.)

So, why did Melania Trump hold a news conference? Standing at a lectern in the Grand Foyer of the White House, the first lady labeled as “lies” unspecified allegations linking her to Epstein, and said they “need to end today.”

“The false smears about me from mean-spirited and politically motivated individuals and entities looking to cause damage to my good name to gain financially and climb politically must stop.”

But who’s even been thinking about Melania and her potential relationship with Epstein or Maxwell in the midst of Melania’s husband’s threat to obliterate 90 million Iranians? Who cares about Melania and Maxwell when the price of gas is through the roof? Why would anyone be interested in such “unspecified allegations” when Iran still possesses 970 pounds of highly-enriched uranium and now has more motive than ever to turn it into nuclear weapons?

Besides, there hasn’t been the faintest whiff of scandal about the relationship between Melania and Maxwell, let alone Epstein.

Back in January (which seems years ago), the Justice Department released an email Melania sent to Maxwell. But the email got little attention. It was part of millions of pages of correspondence released about the Department’s investigation into the disgraced financier. Also, the correspondence took place in 2002, more than two years before Melania became Trump’s third wife.

There’s not even a smoking gun in her email. Melania merely expressed friendliness toward Maxwell and says she can’t wait to visit her in Palm Beach.

Melania also refers to a “nice story about JE” in New York magazine — presumably the 2002 story in which Donald Trump indicated he knew about his former pal’s penchant for young girls. It was in that story that Trump boasted:

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Granted, this quote suggests Trump was on to Epstein’s proclivities and may have even shared them. But the quote is old news. It’s been circulating ever since Trump was first discovered to be cavorting with Epstein.

Why, then, did Melania hold this news conference?

I can think of three possible reasons:

1. She was urged to do it as a way to revive interest in the Epstein scandal. You heard me right. The White House figures that Epstein is easier to handle right now than the fallout from the catastrophe of Trump’s war in Iran. Plus, Pam Bondi is gone and won’t be testifying, and the emerging regime at the Justice Department — Todd Blanche and Harmeet Dhillon — can more reliably be counted on to bury anything in the Epstein files that might incriminate Trump. In other words, a great way to change the subject.

2. Amazon is now in negotiations over streaming rights to Melania’s 2026 documentary Melania, which has been a box office bomb, grossing only $16.6 million worldwide against a massive $40 million production budget and $35 million in marketing, and leaving Amazon with a significant financial loss. Amazon and Bezos urged Melania to stir up publicity for herself, and what better way to get attention than to deny any relationship with Epstein?

3. Melania is p----- off at Trump for any number of things, and the news conference was a way of letting him know she’s capable of making his life miserable.

What do you think?

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

Trump gas — like Trump shoes, Trump cologne, the Trump Bible, Trump shoes, Trump NFTs, Trump crypto, Trump resorts, Trump University, and everything else he’s tried to sell as a good deal — is turning out to be a ripoff.

The average cost of gas tracked by the AAA was $4.17 a gallon yesterday. The station at the end of my street is selling it for over $5 now. If you drive a Mini-Cooper, as I do, which demands premium grade, you’re shelling out over well over $6.

To put this in perspective, the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. the day before Trump launched his war was $2.98. Between then and today, the U.S. has experienced the largest increase in gas prices in 60 years.

Despite the tentative cease-fire in the Middle East, a gallon of gas is expected to cost at least as much for quite a while.

Even if Iran soon allows all tankers through the strait, gas is likely to remain pricey because it will likely take months to repair and reconstruct the oil infrastructure that’s been destroyed in and around the Persian Gulf.

Crude futures — bets that traders are making on the future price of crude — have returned to over $100 a barrel, which translates into over $4 a gallon extending for months. Given that the Strait of Hormuz is still largely closed, the actual price that global buyers are paying for real-world shipments is up around $150 a barrel.

The price of gas is always the most conspicuous signal of affordability because most people know precisely how much a gallon of gas costs, down to the decimal point. It’s exhibited on every street corner with a gas station. They know what they pay to fill up their tanks. They’re aware of exactly when gas prices rise or drop, by how much, and what competitors are charging.

No amount of Trump spin can change this reality. Numbers observed everyday on the street have a particular potency. Trump can’t accuse the heads of government data bureaus that track inflation of being Democratic hacks and can’t fire fire them and replace them with people who will parrot his lies. Consumers know what they’re paying.

Will the high price of Trump gas matter seven months from now when Americans go to the polls to elect the next House of Representatives and a third of the next Senate? Assuming we have free and fair elections, the answer is probably yes.

Gas prices are a stronger predictor of presidential approval or disapproval than any other broad macroeconomic indicator, such as the overall rate of inflation or unemployment. Historically, every 10-cent increase in the price of gas correlates with a 0.6 percent decrease in presidential approval.

And presidential approval or disapproval is, in turn, a stronger predictor of how the American public will vote in midterm elections than any other broad political measures, such as the public’s approval of Congress or of either political party.

It’s been a nightmarish month in every respect. Trump’s war will go down as one of the worst political and humanitarian blunders in history. Thirteen U.S. military personnel died in the conflict. Hundreds more have been injured. A human rights group estimates that 1,665 civilians have been killed in Iran, including 248 children.

America will be paying for this war for many years, in one way or another. Hence, it may be small comfort to think the war will likely contribute to a Democratic Congress starting next January. But I’ll take whatever comfort I can.

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 suing the IRS for $10 billion.

He accuses the IRS of not doing enough to prevent a former IRS contractor from leaking Trump’s tax returns to The New York Times in 2020. (Using those tax returns, The Times published a series of articles revealing that Trump had paid little or no income tax for many years.)

On February 18, Trump’s lawyers served the government with the lawsuit, giving the Justice Department 60 days to respond — a deadline that will be reached, ironically, just around tax day, April 15.

So who’s representing you and me and other American taxpayers in this lawsuit? After all, if he wins, we’ll be the ones to have to fork over the $10 billion to him.

This is beyond bizarre. Trump heads the executive branch of the United States government. And since being installed as president for the second time, he’s consolidated that power into the closest thing to a dictatorship we’ve ever had in this country.

He’s decided on his own to wage a war in Iran, decided on his own not to spend money that Congress has appropriated, decided on his own to move money from one purpose to another, decided on his own to shut down entire federal agencies without Congress’s okay, decided on his own to fire the heads of “independent” agencies and to fire “independent” inspectors general.

He’s also taken over the Justice Department — instructing his attorney general to prosecute particular people he deems to be his enemies and to pardon those he believes are his friends and supporters (including 1,200 people jailed for rioting at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021).

He’s also issued an executive order that binds all government lawyers to his own interpretation of the law.

In other words, Trump has cast himself as the legal embodiment of the United States. So how can the United States defend itself against a lawsuit coming from him?

Assigning a Justice Department lawyer to defend the United States from Trump’s lawsuit would pose an insuperable conflict of interest, given that Trump has made it clear that any such person ultimately works for him.

Even if the Justice Department asks the unlucky judge who’s presiding over this absurd case (Judge Kathleen M. Williams, an Obama nominee) to appoint an independent counsel to defend us taxpayers from Trump’s lawsuit, who will represent us in the inevitable settlement negotiations with Trump and his lawyers?

Who’s going to tell Trump’s lawyers that we’ll cough up, say, $2 billion instead of $10 billion? And how can we trust “our” lawyer to represent our interests, anyway?

Here’s a better way.

The Supreme Court has given Trump and all future presidents immunity from lawsuits that arise from his (eventually her) official duties.

But Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS for leaking his tax returns to The Times has nothing whatever to do with his official duties. He’s therefore not immune to a lawsuit against him for bringing that suit.

I have a simple recommendation.

Congressional Democrats (and any Republican member of Congress with sufficient guts to join them) should sue Trump for $20 billion.

Their lawsuit should allege that Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS and the United States, is (1) frivolous and fraudulent, (see Neitze v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325 (1989)); (2) instigated for the sole purpose of defrauding the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371; (3) intended to obstruct normal proceedings of the IRS, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1512(c); and (4) an interference with the congressional members’ constitutional duties to conduct oversight of the IRS, in violation of Article I of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump can’t call on the Justice Department to defend himself from these charges because he has undertaken his lawsuit against the United States as a private citizen. So he’ll have to defend himself — using (and paying for) his own legal team.

The members of Congress bringing this lawsuit against Trump should be willing to settle it with Trump for whatever amount Trump is willing to settle his lawsuit against the IRS, plus costs.

Congressional Democrats, take it away.

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

The Justice Department has just launched a criminal investigation of Cassidy Hutchinson. Remember her?

Hutchinson was the young, courageous former White House aide whose testimony before Congress implicated Trump in the violence that erupted at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Not surprisingly, her testimony enraged Trump. So, the Justice Department is now accusing Hutchinson of having lied to Congress, which is a criminal offense.

It’s just the latest example of Trump’s vindictive and perverse use of the Justice Department to go after people he perceives to be his enemies.

Who’s been assigned to carry out this vicious investigation? Not anyone in the criminal division, which you might expect would have expertise in pursuing a criminal case. No, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, has assigned the case to the Civil Rights Division, which in normal times focuses on civil rights abuses like police misconduct and racial discrimination.

Blanche has given the case directly to Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Civil Rights Division. Dhillon, an unblinking Trump loyalist, has emerged as an effective advocate for Trump’s agenda.

She’s also reputedly on the shortlist to be Trump’s next attorney general.

So, what do we know about Harmeet Dhillon?

Although she’s taken on the investigation of Cassidy Hutchinson, in January Dhillon refused to investigate the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.

Dhillon’s decision not to investigate Good’s killing marked a sharp departure from past Civil Rights Division chiefs, who have always moved quickly to probe shootings of civilians by law enforcement officials.

Four senior DOJ civil rights officials resigned over Dhillon’s refusal to investigate.

Dhillon also refused to assign civil rights attorneys to investigate the subsequent Minneapolis shooting death by two federal agents of Alex Pretti. Instead, she tapped a lawyer who handles civil investigations involving workplace discrimination.

Yet a few weeks after Good’s killing, Dhillon took on the investigation of a group of people (including journalist Don Lemon) who had protested Good’s shooting by disrupting a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The protesters had targeted the church because a pastor there, David Easterwood, was identified as the local ICE field office director.

Dhillon characterized the disruption as a “desecration of a house of worship” and therefore a violation of federal civil rights laws. By April, nearly 40 people faced federal charges in this case of conspiracy against the right of religious worship.

Dhillon has also been the force behind condemning universities for allowing what she deems “antisemitic” protests — and withholding research funding unless they agree to explicit measures supposedly to prevent antisemitism.

Last summer, the The New Yorker published an extensive piece on Dartmouth College titled “How Dartmouth Became the Ivy League’s Switzerland,” claiming that Dartmouth President Sian Beilock had successfully avoided Dhillon’s ire — and the federal funding cuts that have threatened Harvard and Columbia — by adopting a “neutral” position on Trump’s attempt to take greater control of higher education.

Dhillon calls Dartmouth “one of the good guys” in higher education. (Rather than neutral Switzerland during World War II, a more accurate analogy for Dartmouth’s response to Trump under Beilock would be Britain under Neville Chamberlain, who appeased Hitler.)

I was a Dartmouth trustee in the 1980s when its president, James O. Freedman, who was Jewish, endured the antisemitic barbs of an ascendant right-wing student group headed by Dhillon, then a Dartmouth student. (Other members included Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza.)

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

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

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

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

Granted, this was 1988. Dhillon’s history of publishing such antisemitic c---- doesn’t necessarily cast her recent crusade against campus antisemitism as hypocritical. It’s possible that her undergraduate escapade into antisemitism caused her such remorse that she subsequently experienced a conversion of sorts and became committed to ridding universities of similar acts of bigotry.

But nothing in her history after Dartmouth or her official biography suggests such a conversion. The most probable explanation for her turnaround is simple ambition.

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

JD Vance said in a 2021 speech titled “The Universities are the enemy,” that “we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” He never mentioned antisemitism.

Dhillon admits that her overall vision is not just slowing down civil rights in America but “turning the train around and driving in the opposite direction,” as she told the conservative Federalist Society after her appointment as head of the division.

She has eliminated federal oversight of police departments accused of discrimination, once the centerpiece of the Civil Rights Division’s work.

She has directed universities to end all types of affirmative action, once defended by the Civil Rights Division.

She is now suing states to acquire voter databases in an effort to disenfranchise minority voters. The Civil Rights Division once existed to protect their voting rights.

Harmeet Dhillon is no advocate for civil rights. She’s a legal hack for Trump’s cruel agenda of attacking Americans trying to stop ICE and Border Patrol agents from doing their worst, of seeking to destroy academic freedom in American universities in favor of Trump’s narrow view of what should be allowed, of undermining equal opportunity for people of color, and of prosecuting anyone — like Cassidy Hutchinson — with the courage and integrity to stand up against Trump’s despotism.

Harmeet Dhillon is the last person who should be running the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. She should never become attorney general — which means Trump will probably nominate her.

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/.

Pam Bondi has been booted out of the Justice Department and Kristi Noem is gone from the Department of Homeland Security. Who’s next?

It’s not unusual for a president to shake up the Cabinet ahead of crucial elections, and Trump especially needs to look like he’s shaking things up. His approval ratings are in the cellar, he can’t find an exit strategy for his unpopular war, the prices of gas is soaring, and other prices are rising. Worse yet for him, the midterm elections are on the horizon, and Republicans now have the slimmest of majorities in the House and Senate.

“He’s very angry and he’s going to be moving people,” an official familiar with potential personnel changes told Politico. Presumably Trump also knows that new Cabinet appointments may be difficult to confirm next year, especially if Democrats gain more seats in the midterm elections.

I’ve worked in and around enough White Houses to know the signs. Here’s one: White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Friday that Trump has “the most talented Cabinet and team in American history.” That’s a tell that Trump is looking to get rid of some of them, and soon. But who?

It will be one or all of the following:

Lori Chavez-DeRemer
Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Chavez-DeRemer, is facing misconduct allegations that include drinking during workdays from a “stash” of alcohol in her office, taking subordinates to an Oregon strip club while on an official trip, and having an affair with a member of her security team.

The White House has already forced her top aides to resign amid these and related scandals. (As if these weren’t enough, her husband has been barred from the Labor Department building after female staff accused him of unwanted sexual advances.)

In January, sources described Chavez-DeRemer as the “boss from hell,” saying she demanded staffers run personal errands and do other menial tasks unrelated to their government jobs. More than two dozen department employees described in interviews with The New York Times a toxic workplace characterized by an absentee secretary, hostile aides, and a deeply demoralized staff. It’s a f------ mess. I say this with particular sadness because I really loved the Department of Labor when I was its secretary.

Tulsi Gabbard
Trump’s Director of National Intelligence p----- off Trump by failing to condemn former counterterrorism chief Joe Kent after Kent criticized Trump’s attack on Iran and then abruptly resigned.

In addition, Gabbard has been noticeably lukewarm in her support for Trump’s war. She has a long history of criticizing U.S. involvement in Middle East conflicts. Earlier last week, Trump told reporters that Gabbard was “a little bit different in her thought process than me” on Iran. “She’s probably a little bit softer on that issue, but that’s okay.” (These words don’t bode well for her.)

Gabbard, recall, is a former Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 before crossing over and supporting Trump in the 2024 election.

One additional hint that Gabbard’s time in the Trump regime may be coming to an end: Trump’s communications director says Trump “has total confidence” in Gabbard, “and any insinuation otherwise is totally fake news.” Doth protest too much.

Both DeRemer and Gabbard may hang on for now if Trump doesn’t want to be seen firing another woman so soon after firing Noem and Bondi. On the other hand, he’s never been reluctant to insult the fairer sex.

Howard Lutnick
Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, is also skating on thin ice.

Lutnick admitted in February that he had traveled with his family to Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island in 2012, four years after Epstein was convicted of child sex trafficking. The real problem for Lutnick is that he’d previously denied any relationship with Epstein and stated that he “barely had anything to do with that person.” His late admission has stirred up bipartisan calls from Congress for him to resign.

Lawmakers are also questioning a $1.6 billion Commerce Department funding deal involving Cantor Fitzgerald, a company Lutnick headed before becoming Commerce secretary that’s now led by his sons. In January, the Commerce Department agreed to provide critical-minerals startup USA Rare Earth with $1.6 billion in funding. Rare Earth selected Cantor Fitzgerald to help secure additional funding, a clear conflict of interest.

In addition, White House aides have been irritated by Lutnick’s style of freelancing policy ideas and potential deals without prior approval.

Yet Wall Street isn’t eager to get rid of Lutnick, fearing that removal of one of Trump’s top economic aides would ruffle the Street at a time when it’s already ruffled.

Pete Hegseth
Trump won’t fire his Secretary of Defense (War) as long as the U.S. is fighting Trump’s war with Iran. But after Trump has declared victory and exited — which is likely to be quite soon — Trump will need someone to take heat for the war’s failures.

Hegseth is utterly inept, which doesn’t distinguish him from others in Trump’s Cabinet. But his ineptness has become especially apparent during this war, with Hegseth making absurd claims such as “We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump we’re finishing it” and “America is winning decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy.”

At a recent press briefing, Hegseth complained about a CNN report that Trump had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt global oil traffic by closing the Strait of Hormuz — saying we “don’t need to worry about it” — even as the Strait’s blockage was already proving to be Iran’s most powerful leverage in the war.

He also denied that the U.S. bombed the school where some 175 children were killed, although evidence shows that to be the case. His insistence that the U.S. “never targets civilians” is refuted by the U.S. military’s killing of at least 157 people on 40 small boats in the Caribbean without evidence they were “narcoterrorists” rather than civilians.

So, today’s Office Hours question: Who will Trump fire next?

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

Yesterday, Trump posted:

substackcdn.com

Now, I ask you: If you were in the Iranian regime, would you be: (1) frightened by this post or (2) relieved that you were finally causing Trump to melt down?

I’d guess (2). You’d see his post and figure that Trump — posting on Easter Sunday — has finally gone utterly and definitively bonkers. You’ve done it. He’s mad as a hatter.

I was bullied as a kid. The way I knew I was winning against the bullies was when they started to scream and swear and rant and rave at me. That’s when I knew they felt powerless. They’d done everything they could to beat me down, and yet they couldn’t. I was tougher than their fists. They went nuts.

Is there any other explanation for Trump’s outburst? Many of Trump’s posts are really intended for domestic consumption. Perhaps he wanted to sound tough for his American followers?

That’s unlikely. Just Wednesday night he told America that the U.S. doesn’t “need” the strait to be open. If we don’t need it open, why threaten to blow up Iranian power plants (most likely war crimes) if Iran doesn’t open it?

The easiest explanation is the simplest: Trump is cornered, and he’s going stark-raving mad.

No less an expert on the workings of Trump’s brain than Marjorie Taylor Greene had this to say about Trump’s post:

“Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness. I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.”

I’ve never agreed with Marjorie Taylor Greene on anything, until today.

Sleep well.

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

It’s important that we demonstrated against Trump’s assertion of royal powers.

It’s at least as important to follow the money — and learn the identities of America’s billionaire royalty who crowned Trump in the first place. They’re now spending another regal fortune to keep Congress under his control.

Today I’m going to name names.

As of March 1, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness, the 50 biggest-spending billionaires in American politics had already contributed over $433 million to the upcoming midterm political campaigns.

Not surprisingly, 80 percent of this haul is in support of Republican candidates or conservative issue groups.

Given how early we are in the process, and how contributions tend to accelerate closer to Election Day, 2026 will almost surely set a new record for billionaire money in midterm elections. (Because of our current pathetically weak campaign finance laws, courtesy of the Supreme Court, fat-cat contributors are funneling huge sums through super PACs. While such spending is supposed to be independent of the campaign being supported, rules against coordination are now going largely unenforced.)

MUSK

The single biggest contributor is, of course, Elon Musk — the world’s richest person — who has plunked down almost $71 million into Republican midterm campaigns so far.

Musk contributed a total of $278 million in the 2024 election cycle, mostly for getting Trump reelected. His “investment” has paid off nicely. Musk’s net worth has grown 220 percent since Trump won in 2024.

Musk’s latest cash infusion to Republicans came after his short destructive stint as head of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” where he helped place his cronies into high-level positions throughout the federal government.

Yes, I know. Musk and Trump had a falling out. But since then both have realized they have more to gain as political partners. And now that Musk’s SpaceX satellite system is integral to Pete Hegseth’s Department of “War,” Musk has filed for an initial public offering, seeking a valuation over $2 trillion and potentially raising $75 billion, which would make it the largest IPO in history.

The New York Times reports that Musk participated in a phone call on Tuesday with Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. Musk’s companies have taken on significant investment from sovereign wealth funds from Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and he has long coveted a greater commercial presence in India.

YASS
Musk is followed in the billionaire-spending-on-politics sweepstakes by Wall Street financier Jeff Yass, who has contributed more than $55 million so far in this midterm election cycle. He’s donated $16 million to MAGA, Inc., Trump’s super PAC, dedicated to supporting candidates he backs.

The Yass donations came as Trump was deciding whether to delay the forced sale of the social media app TikTok, in which Yass was a major investor. Trump repeatedly delayed the sale, saving Yass’s lucrative investment.

In addition, Yass has donated $10 million apiece to the anti-tax Club for Growth PAC; to another PAC that wants to drain funds from public schools to support private ones; and to a PAC that supports the political ambitions of former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Yass has also donated $7.5 million to a PAC dedicated to supporting House members of (and House candidates aspiring to belong to) the radical-right Freedom Caucus.

BROCKMAN
In third place is San Francisco AI tech mogul Greg Brockman, who has given $25 million in midterm money so far — mostly to Trump’s super PAC, presumably because Brockman wants to dismantle state-level AI regulations through federal preemptive action and thinks Trump will help him.

As president of OpenAI, Brockman recently agreed to let the Pentagon use his company’s AI technology — which his competitor Anthropic publicly refused to do over concerns about mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.

UIHLEIN
Packaging titan Dick Uihlein has long been a major donor to right-wing candidates and causes. (Among the beneficiaries of his largesse have been many politicians who denied Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.)

The biggest recipients of Uihlein midterm money so far are two super PACs for which Uihlein and his wife are the principal backers: $5 million to Restoration of America, supporting conservative political candidates; and $3.5 million to Fair Courts America, which the Uihleins founded to support conservative candidates for judicial office.

SCHWARZMAN
Private equity mogul Stephen Schwarzman has long been a major Republican Party megadonor. As CEO of the giant investment management company Blackstone, Schwarzman has built a career on predatory business practices and disregard for the public good, while leveraging his immense wealth to rig the system in his favor.

So far in the midterms, Schwarzman has spent: $5 million for Trump’s super PAC; $5 million for the Republican Senate Leadership Fund; $1 million for the Republican Congressional Leadership Fund; and $1 million to a super PAC exclusively backing Republican Senate Whip John Cornyn.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence from the British monarchy, it’s more important than ever to commit ourselves to getting big money out of American politics.

As I’ve noted, here’s a potential way to do this without waiting for the Supreme Court to reverse its Citizens United decision or amending the Constitution. Another is through small-donor financing. The two aren’t mutually exclusive; indeed, we should push for both.

Billionaires are not singularly responsible for corrupting our system of government, of course — and not all billionaires are doing this.

But as wealth continues to concentrate at the top, America finds itself in a doom loop in which giant campaign donations from the super-rich buy political decisions that make them even richer.

This doom loop is the power behind the throne on which Trump sits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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