Robert Reich

In unity, there’s strength to confront Trump. In disunity, cowardice



Friends,

Let me first congratulate the 504 law firms that have thrown their support behind Perkins Coie in a friend-of-the-court brief. Perkins Coie was the first firm to receive a vindictive executive order from Trump that jeopardized its ability to represent government contractors and limited its access to federal buildings, all because one of its attorneys had helped investigate Russia’s support for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The 504 firms rightfully declare that Trump’s attack on law firms poses “a grave threat to our system of constitutional governance and to the rule of law itself.” Their brief goes on to say:


“Unless the judiciary acts decisively now, what was once beyond the pale will in short order become a stark reality. Corporations and individuals alike will risk losing their right to be represented by the law firms of their choice and a profound chill will be cast over the First Amendment right to petition the courts for redress.”

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Robert Reich

The real reason we’re in a national emergency
Trump is creating national emergencies to gain more power. In the process, he’s subjecting millions to real harm.






Friends,

It’s hard to remember that only 10 weeks ago, the American economy was quite good, our foreign relations were on the whole positive, we were on the way to dealing with climate change with subsidies for wind and solar energy, and we still lived in a democracy.

Today, all that is disappearing. The economy is in acute danger, our relationships with traditional allies are collapsing, we’re subsidizing fossil fuel polluters, and we’re turning into a dictatorship.

This has happened in part because of Trump’s continuing creation of fake national emergencies.

He has declared foreign trade a national emergency and used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to raise tariffs to levels not seen since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump pledged to bring Americans immediate relief through lower prices. Scratch that. Americans now face higher prices for automobiles, groceries, clothes, and other goods.

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Robert Reich

10 rules for dealing with Trump’s demands for capitulation
Whether it’s universities, law firms, or entire countries, here are 10 basic rules for hitting back



Friends,

On Tuesday, the Trump regime targeted Harvard University, threatening to withdraw about $9 billion in contracts and multiyear grants unless Harvard capitulates to unspecified demands.

Last week, Trump targeted major Washington law firms, threatening to cut off their access to government buildings and government contracts unless they capitulated to various demands.

Yesterday, the regime placed 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and “reciprocal” tariffs on imports from all other nations. Some governments say they’ll retaliate. Others — Israel and Vietnam, for example — are responding by rolling back their own tariffs. Trump says he’ll continue to raise tariffs until other countries capitulate to various unspecified demands.

What do all these have in common? Trump’s unquenchable thirst for power, dominance, and intimidation.

Here are 10 rules for dealing with this.

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Robert Reich

Office Hours: Trump’s worst Cabinet member?
Not including Elon Musk, because he isn’t officially in the Cabinet





Friends,

Granted, it’s too early in the life of the Trump regime to be able to know the full extent of its awfulness or how bad his Cabinet is, but enough has happened already to form some preliminary views.

It is by far the worst presidency in American history — far surpassing James Buchanan’s, Andrew Johnson’s, Warren G. Harding’s, and even Trump’s first term in cruelty, corruption, and incompetence.

It has the least qualified people working in it and the worst Cabinet ever assembled. Don’t just take my word for it. Polls show a majority of American voters are disappointed with Trump’s Cabinet members, registering a record-high level of dissatisfaction over the last four presidential administrations.

The regime is filled with bottom-feeders, frauds, fanatics, and fools — but so far, four really awful Cabinet members stand out (I’m not including Elon Musk, because he’s not officially in the Cabinet; in fact, he’s not officially in the Trump regime):

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Robert Reich

Sunday thought
Comedy and tragedy




Friends,

The past week has been another horror show, and I share your anxiety and sleeplessness.

But the past week also reveals the utter incompetence of Trump and his regime.

Even The Wall Street Journal criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for trying to dismiss “Signalgate” as a hoax, calls Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff “out of his depth in dealing with world crises,” and condemns the administration for thinking “it can bully its way through anything by shouting Fake News.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) instructs the administration to “own it and fix it.”

During the ensuing uproar, Witkoff goes off the deep end, telling Tucker Carlson that Vladimir Putin is “straight up” and not a “bad guy,” claiming he’s “100 percent” certain Russia “doesn’t want to overrun Europe,” and embracing Russia’s claim that people in the seized Ukrainian territory “want to be under Russian rule.”

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Robert Reich

Is the Trump Fever Breaking? | Saturday Coffee Klatch for March 29, 2025
With Heather Lofthouse and yours truly, Robert Reich



Friends,

Today Heather and I assess how far the Trump regime is falling — starting with this week’s “Signalgate” fiasco, the regime’s increasing detention of international students without due process of law, wildly unconstitutional executive orders, brainless tariffs, and coming assault on Greenland (of all places).

We also take a look at how voters seem to be responding — overwhelmingly against Trump and Musk — and ask if the Trump fever is finally breaking.

Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, take our survey, and join the conversation.

WHATCH NOW...

Robert Reich

Six small morsels of hope





Friends,

I’m not going to sugarcoat this. We’re in the worst national emergency of our lives.

It is not coming directly from threats we should be coping with — climate change destroying our planet, another pandemic threatening millions of lives, artificial intelligence taking over our jobs and brains, nuclear proliferation threatening the future of life on earth.

No. This national emergency is coming from a madman determined to turn America into a dictatorship and from his crazed assistants, including the richest person in the world.

What can I say that’s even remotely encouraging at this point?

Six things.

1. Voters are furious.

On Tuesday, Democrats flipped a Trump-voting seat in the Pennsylvania state Senate. James Malone defeated a well-funded and well-known Republican, Josh Parsons, in Lancaster County. Malone openly campaigned against Trump and Musk and made sure his opponent was tied to them.

This was a red Republican area that went +15 for Trump in 2024. The last time a Democrat won this seat was in 1889.

Other state and federal districts are showing the same trajectory — away from Trump and Musk.

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Robert Reich

Where the HELL are the Democrats?






Friends,

I’ve asked this question before. Now I’m SHOUTING it.

Where the HELL are the Democrats?

It should be the Democrats’ moment — the time when Democrats are everywhere, on everyone’s lips, in everyone’s eyes.

But Democrats are nowhere. AWOL. Almost invisible.

They’re squandering this opportunity.

Can you imagine a more important moment for Democrats to sound the alarm? At the request of a Republican president, the richest person in the world is taking a sledgehammer to Social Security, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, the entire Department of Education, and much else that Americans need and want.

He’s doing all this so the president can give a huge tax cut to the wealthiest members of our society and the biggest corporations in America.

Worse, the president chose this man for this job because he sank a quarter of a billion dollars into getting the president elected. And this man, already one of the government’s biggest contractors, is salivating over the prospect of turning even more of government into his or other corporate hands.

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Robert Reich

A fitting monument to Trump?









Friends,

Imagine we are alive a decade from now. We’ve survived Trump, Vance, and Musk. We are trying to cope with the wreckage they’ve left us with — trying to put back together our government, our democracy, our Constitution.

What do you believe will be a fitting monument to the memory of Trump?

I raise this question because Trump’s Republican lapdogs in Congress aren’t waiting until after the Trump regime to come up with such a monument.

They’ve already filed a rush of bills seeking to honor Trump while he is still in office.

It’s a brown-nosing effort without precedent in congressional history — revealing the lengths Republican suck-ups are willing to go to curry favor with the nation’s would-be dictator.

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Robert Reich - Is the Muskrat working for China? (Is Trump working for Putin?)

The fact we don't know and can't know is itself a problem







Friends,

There are two huge national security questions at the heart of the Trump regime.

The first is whether Elon Musk is working, at least in part, for China’s Xi Jinping. Consider:

(1) China is the location of Musk’s largest Tesla factory in the world in which China invested $2.8 billion. The state-of-the-art facility was built in Shanghai with special permission from the Chinese government, and now accounts for more than half of Tesla’s global deliveries.

(2) China is the world’s biggest market for Teslas and is the only electronic vehicle market where Tesla sales are continuing to grow.

(3) Chinese investors have been funneling money into Musk’s other businesses.

(4) China is a hotbed of other technologies that Musk would like to get his hands on.

(5) In 2022, Musk told The Financial Times that China should be given some control over Taiwan by making a “special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable.”

(6) In 2023, at a tech conference, he called Taiwan “an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China,” and compared the Taiwan-China situation to Hawaii and the United States.

(7) On X, the social platform he owns, Musk has long used his account to praise China, encouraging more people to visit the country.

(8) One of the Pentagon’s biggest worries is that China has developed a suite of weapons capable of attacking U.S. military and non-military satellites.

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Robert Reich -The biggest upward transfer of wealth in history

Trump’s tariffs will especially hurt lower-income Americans, while his tax cuts will especially benefit the wealthy.




Friends,

Donald Trump believes his tariffs will bring so much money to the U.S. treasury that the U.S. will be able to afford another giant Trump tax cut.

But Trump’s tariffs — and the retaliatory tariffs already being imposed on American exports by the nation’s trading partners — will be paid largely by the American working class and poor.

And the people who will benefit most from another giant Trump tax cut are America’s wealthy.

It will be a giant upward transfer of wealth.

Trump has made astronomical estimates about how much money tariffs can raise.

“We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before,” he said during his recent joint address to Congress. “Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again.”

Last Sunday on Air Force One, Trump was even more ebullient. “We’re going to become so rich, you’re not going to know where to spend all that money,” he said.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that if Trump’s already-announced tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada went into effect, they’d bring about $120 billion a year into the U.S. treasury, and $1.3 trillion over the course of 10 years.

Among Trump’s first actions at the outset of his second term was to order the treasury to establish an “External Revenue Service” to collect tariff revenue that would enable the U.S. to pay down its debt and reduce taxes.

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s secretary of commerce, said on Fox News in late February that the goal of the External Revenue Service “is very simple: to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay.”

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Robert Reich: More of Trump’s descent into dictatorship

Friends,

I would not impose on you for a third time today unless it was particularly urgent.

This afternoon, Trump illegally fired the two Democratic commissioners on the five-member Federal Trade Commission — Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya.

Commissioner Slaughter had this to say:


“Today, the President illegally fired me from my position as a Federal Trade Commissioner, violating the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent. Why? Because I have a voice, and he is afraid of what I’ll tell the American people. …

The administration clearly fears the accountability that opposition voices would provide if the president orders Chairman Ferguson to treat the most powerful corporations and their executives – like those that flanked the President at his inauguration – with kid gloves.”

Commissioner Bedoya said this:


“I’m a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. The president just illegally fired me.

The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists. Our staff is unafraid of the Martin Shkrelis and Jeff Bezos of the world. They take them to court and they win.

Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies.

Together with Chair Lina Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, I spent my time at the FTC fighting for small town grocers and pharmacists and for people in Indian country going hungry because food was too expensive. I fought for workers getting screwed on pay and benefits and overtime. I fought for their right to organize. I fought tech companies who think they can track you and your kids every hour of every day so they can pocket their next billion.

Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or someone who’s so disgusted with Washington you can barely watch the news, the FTC has worked for you.

Who will Trump’s FTC work for? Will it work for the billionaires? Or will it work for you?

It was an honor to serve my country at the FTC. It was an honor to work alongside its staff.

And to everyone who is watching all of this unfold, don’t be scared. Fight back.”

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Robert Reich

Friends,

The major weapon of the Trump-Vance-Musk regime is fear that causes people to be intimidated into silence and submission.

The regime is using fear — of being deported, job loss, loss of federal contracts, loss of access to sources of news, of arrest and imprisonment — to intimidate potential critics.

This is what all tyrants do, but we are unaccustomed to it in the United States.

I want to share with you three rules for fighting tyrannical fear and intimidation, gleaned from discussions I’ve had with a number of people who have lived in repressive regimes.

1. If at all possible, do not give into it.

Fear works only if people are intimidated. Intimidation is effective only if people surrender to it.

I cannot presume to tell anyone how to balance their personal well-being against their obligations to the nation or the world. I’m in no position to suggest that anyone sacrifice their livelihood or freedom to make a point.

So if you’re a civil servant in the U.S. government, especially an attorney in the Justice Department, I can understand your fear that speaking out or refusing to follow Trump’s orders will get you fired. If you’re a journalist or editor, you may be justifiably fearful that if you report the truth you’ll be barred from Trump press briefings or may even lose your job.

Likewise, if you’re in America on a student visa or even hold a green card, you may be understandably reluctant to speak your mind now. Trump has threatened that the recent arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University grad student who is a permanent resident of the United States and who peacefully spoke out against Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza, will be the first of “many to come.”

On the other hand, if you’re the president of Columbia University, you’re in a different position altogether. I can understand your concern that your institution will suffer loss of federal funds if you allow full freedom of speech on your campus, yet that doesn’t mean you should surrender to Trump’s tyranny. If you do not stand up to it, you and your institution and other American universities will sacrifice far more over the long term.

If you’re a Republican lawmaker, you have every reason to worry that if you vote against Trump, you’ll be primaried in the next election. But that doesn’t justify your silence in the face of Trump’s tyranny, either. What’s the point of being in politics if you have no principles?

If you’re a Democratic lawmaker, you might worry that if you speak out — as did Congressman Al Green during Trump’s address to Congress — you’ll be tagged by Trump as a radical “left-wing” troublemaker. Good! Make good trouble, as Congressman John Lewis used to say. Stand up and speak out! Americans want to know there’s a loud and vital Democratic opposition to Trump.

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An Analysis

 

[For more analysis and commentary, please join me at robertreich.substack.com]

The General Strike of 2021
On Tuesday, the Labor Department reported that some 4.3 million people had quit their jobs in August. That comes to about 2.9 percent of the workforce – up from the previous record set in April, of about 4 million people quitting.


All told, about 4 million American workers have been leaving their jobs every month since last spring.


Add this to last Friday’s jobs report showing the number of job openings at a record high. The share of people working or actively looking for work (the labor force participation rate) has dropped to 61.6 percent. Participation for people in their prime working years, defined as 25 to 54 years old, is also down. Over the past year, job openings have increased 62 percent.


What’s happening? You might say American workers have declared a national general strike until they get better pay and improved working conditions.


No one calls it a general strike. But in its own disorganized way it’s related to the organized strikes breaking out across the land – Hollywood TV and film crews, John Deere workers, Alabama coal miners, Nabisco workers, Kellogg workers, nurses in California, healthcare workers in Buffalo.


Disorganized or organized, American workers now have bargaining leverage to do better.


After a year and a half of the pandemic, consumers have pent-up demand for all sorts of goods and services. But employers are finding it hard to fill positions.


This general strike has nothing to do with the Republican bogeyman of extra unemployment benefits supposedly discouraging people from working. Reminder: The extra benefits ran out on Labor Day.


Renewed fears of the Delta variant of COVID may play some role. But it can’t be the major factor. With most adults now vaccinated, rates of hospitalizations and deaths are way down.


Childcare is a problem for many workers, to be sure. But lack of affordable childcare has been a problem for decades. It can’t be the reason for the general strike.


I believe that the reluctance of workers to return to or remain in their old jobs is mostly because they’re fed up. Some have retired early. Others have found ways to make ends meet other than remain in jobs they abhor. Many just don’t want to return to backbreaking or boring low-wage shit jobs.


The media and most economists measure the economy’s success by the number of jobs it creates, while ignoring the *quality* of those jobs. That’s a huge oversight.


Years ago, when I was Secretary of Labor, I kept meeting working people all over the country who had full-time work but complained that their jobs paid too little and had few benefits, or were unsafe, or required lengthy or unpredictable hours. Many said their employers treated them badly, harassed them, and did not respect them.


Since then, these complaints have only grown louder, according to polls. For many, the pandemic was the last straw. Workers are burned out, fed up, fried. In the wake of so much hardship, illness and death during the past year, they’re not going to take it anymore.


To lure workers back, employers are raising wages and offering other inducements. Average earnings rose 19 cents an hour in September and are up more than $1 an hour – or 4.6 percent – over the last year.


Clearly, that’s not enough.


Corporate America wants to frame this as a “labor shortage.” Wrong. What’s really going on is more accurately described as a living-wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a health care shortage.Unless *these* shortages are rectified, many Americans won’t return to work anytime soon. I say it’s about time.