Robert Reich

Friends,

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 also 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.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Friends,

The fog of war is getting thicker.

According to the Washington Post, a “U.S. delegation was expected to depart Tuesday for a second round of face-to-face peace talks with Iran” but “was delayed for ‘additional policy meetings’ involving Vice President JD Vance.”

So, the reason for the delay was additional policy meetings in Washington?

Not quite. According to the New York Times, Vance’s trip was “suspended because Tehran did not respond to American negotiating positions.”

Well, not really. The Wall Street Journal reports that plans for negotiations are “in flux” because “Tehran hasn’t yet decided on sending a delegation.”

Wait. According to CNN, Iran isn’t participating in peace negotiations because of “contradictory messages, contradictory behaviors, and unacceptable actions by the American side.”

These are just the latest in a series of confused reports.

Why the confusion? Is it because these news organizations are getting inconsistent information? Because the U.S. is getting inconsistent messages from Iran? Because U.S. decision makers don’t themselves know what’s happening? Or because no one on the U.S. side is in charge?

It’s probably all of the above, but I fear it’s largely the last — no one on the U.S. side is in charge.

On April 18, the Journal reported:

“After the president learned that an American jet had been shot down in Iran, with two airmen missing … Tump screamed at aides for hours….
Aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful, instead updating him at meaningful moments, a senior administration official said ….
Six hours later, the chest-thumping president was back with another audacious gamble to loosen Iran’s grip on its most powerful point of leverage, the Strait of Hormuz. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” he blasted on social media Easter morning from the White House residence, adding an Islamic prayer to the post.
A president who thrives on drama is bringing an even more intense version of his unorthodox, maximalist approach to a new situation—fighting a war. He is veering between belligerent and conciliatory approaches and grappling behind the scenes with just how badly things could go wrong.
At the same time, the president sometimes loses focus, spending time on the details of his plans for the White House ballroom or on midterm fundraisers—and telling advisers he wants to shift to other topics.”

I’ve served three presidents and advised a fourth. I’ve been in and around several White Houses. When presidential aides tell reporters that they’ve had to keep a president out of the room because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful, what they’re really saying is they’re dealing with someone who’s so irrational they don’t trust his judgment.

This is the most chilling thing I’ve heard so far about Trump and his war in Iran. It means Trump isn’t in charge. But neither, presumably, is anyone around him — neither JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Dan Caine, or the staffers clustered around each ot them. Even assuming that each of them is trying to do the best job they can, even assuming they’re trying to coordinate with each other, the most likely scenario is an ongoing mess.

At best, the fog of war causes many to lose sight of where they are and what their priorities should be. At worst — when the judgment of the commander-in-chief isn’t trusted — the fog is impenetrable. I fear that’s where we are now.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Friends,

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 20th 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 50 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 an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Friends,

I want to make sure you know that Lori Chavez-DeRemer has resigned as Secretary of Labor [translated: she was told to resign by the White House], after facing investigations by the Department’s inspector general into multiple allegations of misconduct.

She’s alleged to have been drinking during the workday from a “stash” of alcohol in her office, arranging official trips for herself that were extended vacations, taking subordinates to an Oregon strip club while on one such trip, showing no interest in the work of the department, and having an affair with a member of her security team.

Sources have described Chavez-DeRemer as the “boss from hell,” saying she demanded staffers run personal errands for her or perform other menial tasks unrelated to their government jobs. More than two dozen department employees from across the political spectrum described in interviews with The New York Times a toxic workplace characterized by an absentee secretary, hostile aides, and a deeply demoralized staff.

In other words, Chavez-DeRemer was turning the great department I once headed and loved into s--t. And I hold Trump responsible because he appointed her.

As I shared with you a few weeks ago, I loved the Department of Labor from the moment I entered the Frances Perkins Building on Constitution Avenue as secretary of labor in January 1992. I loved its mission: to protect and raise the standard of living of working Americans.

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

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

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

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

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

But like so much else Trump has done, he’s turned what was once a great department into a f---ing mess. And it frankly breaks my heart.

It’s what you get when you have a president and White House staff who don’t give a rat’s a-- about whom they appoint to positions of power except for their loyalty to Trump and how they look on television.

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

What they do mind is if a cabinet member makes Trump look bad, which is why Krisi Noem and Pam Bondi are now history — along with Chavez-DeRemer.

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

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

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

In the meantime, goodbye and good riddance to Madam Secretary Chavez-DeRemer.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Friends,

You’ve got to hand it to Pope Leo, who used a speech Thursday in Cameroon to express “woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”

I can’t imagine who Leo was talking about, can you?

In case there was any doubt, the pope added: “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters.”

The tyrant in the Oval Office has been trying to portray his war in Iran as a “just war” backed by the will of God and Jesus Christ. Pope Leo disagrees. Jesus, he says, “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.”

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s self-described secretary of war, has promised to give “no quarter” to the “barbaric savages” of the Iranian regime, and called on the American people to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

At a worship service at the Pentagon on March 25, Hegseth asked God for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Hegseth’s words apparently provoked Pope Leo to preach on Palm Sunday that God ignores the prayers of those whose “hands are full of blood” from making war.

This past Sunday, Trump attacked the pope on social media as “terrible on foreign policy,” and suggested that Trump himself was the reason Leo was selected to be pope in the first place.

On Tuesday, JD Vance said the pope should be more “careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

Hello? What in heaven’s name is the vice-president to the least-careful-of-what-he-says president doing telling the pope to be more careful of how he interprets Catholic theology?

I’m not Catholic, but I always thought the pope’s words about matters theological were considered by Catholics to be as close to God’s own words as humans can get.

Yesterday in Cameroon, the pope also said: “The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is not enough to rebuild. They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation.”

At this rate, Trump is going to demand the Justice Department open a criminal investigation of the pope. Trump will get hold of all the bills for restoring the Sistine Chapel and claim the pope misappropriated funds. He’ll have Jeanine Pirro seek an injunction against the pope to block any further papal statements. He’ll threaten that unless the pope stops criticizing him, he’ll get God to reconvene the College of Cardinals and fire Leo.

So far, though, Pope Leo isn’t backing down.

Praise the Lord.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Friends,

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.”

Bulls---. 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.

Wednesday’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 an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

The past terrifying week has caused me to wonder: How did America ever get to a point where one man, backed by the military might of the United States, could credibly threaten death to an entire civilization?

I’m also wondering how 19 super-rich American households could have added $1.8 trillion to their wealth in just the last 24 months — roughly the size of the economy of Australia — while the rate of child poverty in the U.S. has more than doubled, from a low of 5.2 percent in 2021 to over 13 percent now?

How have we come so perilously close to climate catastrophe, with spring temperatures in the Western United States already shattering records — and yet governments are spending over a trillion dollars a year subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and banks have channeled over $3 trillion to fossil fuel companies since the Paris Agreement, while there are almost no funds to protect living ecosystems?

How have we allowed artificial intelligence, the most powerful technology the world has ever seen, to threaten millions of jobs; make vulnerable the software that runs our financial, energy, and defense systems; and potentially destroy the human race — while allowing it to amass so much political power that it eludes all guardrails and regulations?

I have served at the highest levels of the U.S. government. I’ve watched our political and economic systems grow and change over the last 50 years, and I’ve spent much of that time writing about their evolution. I’ve never been reluctant to accuse those in power of abusing their authority.

While I have some ideas about how and why our system has sacrificed democracy and critical thought to the false gods of greed and growth (anyone interested in my tentative thoughts is more than welcome to read my recent Coming Up Short), I cannot state with certainty how we arrived at this point.

Yet notwithstanding how we got here, how do we change course? I refuse to accept that we cannot, or that it’s too late.

On Friday, I taught students who are seeking degrees in public policy. They wanted to know why — given all this — I remain optimistic.

I told them that I have faith in the goodness and reasonableness of the American people when they become aware of huge problems that threaten our and the world’s existence. And that the problems I’ve mentioned have now reached such size and dangerousness that the public can no longer ignore them.

We are, I think, coming to a tipping point in how we understand the challenges to our continued existence.

As author Jeremy Lent has written:

“A civilization built on a different foundation would start from an acknowledgment that the deep interconnectedness of all life is not romantic aspiration but scientific fact — confirmed by complexity science, systems biology, and Earth science, and affirmed by wisdom traditions of cultures that never lost that understanding.

From this recognition, different goals follow: not perpetual growth but setting the conditions for all people to flourish on a regenerated Earth. Not maximization of returns on capital but the kind of reciprocal, mutualistic relationship with living systems that makes long-term human wellbeing possible.

There is no blueprint that will save us. No one person or group can design in advance what such a civilization will look like in its particulars. But a framework of core principles can orient us — the way a distant horizon orients a traveler moving through unmarked terrain.

You may not yet see the exact path, but knowing the general direction changes everything about which opportunities you embrace and which you recognize as alluring detours.

The trance that keeps us from seeing this is powerful. But it has been broken before. Every paradigm that once seemed like reality itself — the divine right of kings, the natural inferiority of women, the Earth at the center of the universe — turned out to be a myth that was shattered.”

I agree with Lent. It’s time to eschew the myths that contributed to the reelection of the most dangerous person ever to occupy the White House, myths that continue to limit our beliefs and imaginations: that widening inequality and an ever-larger military are necessary and inevitable, that we need a billionaire oligarchy to guide our economy and a “strongman” to lead our government, that a political revolution founded on returning American democracy to the ideal of self-government would be too destabilizing, that continued growth of the Gross Domestic Product is an unmitigated good, and that more “productivity” and “efficiency” are always beneficial.

The most dangerous myth of all is that there is no alternative to the path we’re on, that we have no control over our destiny, and that, just as it was inevitable that we came to where are, our unraveling is similarly inevitable.

I refuse to accept this deterministic myth. The first act of genuine systemic change is to stop believing it.

It’s been a terrifying week, but one that is awakening millions of people.

Thank you for being an ally in seeking a better world.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Friends,

Trump gas — like Trump shoes, Trump cologne, the Trump Bible, Trump shoes, Trump NFTs, Trump crypto, Trump resorts, and Trump University — 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, nearly a 40 percent jump.

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, Trump gas is likely to remain pricey because it’s likely to 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 every day on the street have a particular potency. Trump can’t accuse the heads of government bureaus that track inflation of being Democratic hacks and can’t 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 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 an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Friends, 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 the 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 today? 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 today’s 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 pissed off at Trump for any number of things, and today’s news conference was a way of letting him know she’s capable of making his life miserable.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Friends,

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 crap 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 an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

On Sunday, Trump posted:

Trump's Truth Social post (Truth Social)

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.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Friends,

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.)

WHO THEY ARE

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 s--ts sits

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org