This morning, I heard a commentator allude to “Mitch McConnell and other conservative senators.” Yesterday, a news report described the upcoming Alaska Republican primary as pitting Trump’s “conservative wing against Murkowski’s more moderate base.” I keep seeing references to the “conservative majority” on the Supreme Court. Can we get real? There is nothing conservative about these so-called “conservatives.” They don’t want to preserve or protect our governing institutions — the core idea of c...
Jul 11, 2022•6 min
My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we talk about the impending midterms, whether Biden should run again in 2024, Boris Johnson’s resignation, the failure of Democratic messaging, and the limits of hype in Silicon Valley. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe...
Jul 09, 2022•14 min
Friends, Much of today’s Republican Party is treacherous and treasonous. So why are Democrats facing midterm elections that, according to most political observers, they’re likely to lose? Having been a loyal Democrat for some seventy years (my father liked Ike but my mother and I were for Adlai), including a stint as a cabinet secretary, it pains me to say this, but the Democratic Party has lost its way. How? Some commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left — too far from the so-...
Jul 08, 2022•10 min
The link is tightening between America’s move toward theocracy and its slide toward autocracy. It is important to understand these connections. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, its expanded reading of the Second Amendment, and its eagerness to elevate religious freedom over the Constitution’s guarantee against established religion come from the same cloth as Republican state legislative attacks on democracy, the GOP’s fealty to Trump’s Big Lie, and white supremacy. At the Faith & Freedom ...
Jul 07, 2022•4 min
On Saturday, President Biden demanded on Twitter that Big Oil “bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product.” This prompted Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, to call Biden’s statement either “straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.” That’s rich. Bezos of all people should know that a major reason prices are rising is hugely profitable corporations like his Amazon have been usin...
Jul 05, 2022•6 min
I have no patience for all the handwringing by Democratic lawmakers in Washington over the Supreme Court’s regressive decisions on abortion and the climate. “This MAGA, regressive, extremist Supreme Court is intent on setting America back decades, if not centuries,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last Thursday after the Court dumped its final opinions for the term. Well, yes. So what are you going to do about it, Chuck? Last I looked Democrats were still in control of the Senate and H...
Jul 04, 2022•5 min
On this Fourth of July, it's worth pondering the true meaning of American patriotism. It is not the meaning propounded by the “America First” crowd, who define it as securing our borders. For most of its existence America has been open to people from the rest of the world fleeing tyranny and violence. Nor is the meaning of patriotism found in the ravings of those who want America to be a white Christian nation. America's moral mission has been to widen inclusion -- providing equal rights to wome...
Jul 04, 2022•5 min
My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we talk about the rogue Supreme Court and what Democrats can — and must — do. In particular, Senate Dems still have the power to carve out filibuster exceptions for reproductive rights, voting rights, and the climate — and then enact national legislation protecting reproductive rights and voting rights, and authorizing the EPA to move forwa...
Jul 02, 2022•13 min
Friends, I recently gave a lecture to students who were considering careers in public service, either in the public sector or in nonprofits. My lecture was about why so many public problems have worsened over the last decades — climate change, economic inequality, gun violence, access to healthcare, public education, child poverty, homelessness, even democracy itself. When I finished, one of them asked, “given everything you’ve told us, why should any of us want to enter public service now?” The...
Jul 01, 2022•2 min
Today the Supreme Court — again, with the 6 Republican appointees on one side and the 3 Democratic appointees on the other — limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. This ruling deals a major blow to America’s (and the world’s) efforts to address climate change. Also — as with its decision reversing Roe v. Wade — today’s ruling has far larger implications than the EPA and the environment. West Virginia v. EPA is the latest battle pitti...
Jun 30, 2022•4 min
After today’s explosive testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson — who served as chief assistant to Mark Meadows and was literally and figuratively in the middle of Trump’s White House — I don’t see how Attorney General Merrick Garland can avoid prosecuting Trump, as well as Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani. If you didn’t hear or see her testimony, Hutchinson portrayed a plot, in which Trump was directly involved, to stop the counting of electoral ballots on January 6. Meadows, Giuliani, Mike Flynn, and Ro...
Jun 28, 2022•2 min
Donald Trump’s legacy — a proto-fascist movement we might call Trumpism — includes a Supreme Court rapidly taking America backwards, state legislatures suppressing votes and taking over election machinery, and an emboldened oligarchy taking over the economy. While the January 6 committee is doing a fine job exposing Trump’s attempted coup that culminated in the attack on the Capitol, it is not part of the committee’s charge to reveal why so many Americans were willing — and continue to be willin...
Jun 28, 2022•10 min
When I was in kindergarten in 1951, I was the shortest kid in all of Lewisboro Elementary School, Public School #1. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I was cast as Baby Jesus in the annual school Christmas pageant. My role didn’t require much preparation or talent. I just had to lie on some straw strewn on the stage and look at children playing Mary and Joseph, the three Wise Men, and assorted angels, and then sit up and join the rest of the school in prayer and carols. The problem for me was that even...
Jun 27, 2022•3 min
Friends, Like many of you, I found it a difficult weekend. As Friday’s decision by the six Republican nominees on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade sank in — along with Clarence Thomas’s threat to use the same logic to put a whole range of other rights on the chopping block, including marriage equality and full access to contraception — I became aware once again just how fragile are the rights we assumed we had. In just two days last week, the court deferred to the states on reproductive...
Jun 27, 2022•5 min
My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we talk about three things giving Heather a headache and making Bob’s blood boil — the Supreme Court become so radically rightwing that even John Roberts has lost control over it, a Republican Party become so nuts that it’s impervious to the January 6 committee hearings, and economists and policymakers at the Fed become such apologists for...
Jun 25, 2022•11 min
If there’s any doubt about the extremism of the Supreme Court’s six Republican appointees, it was on full display today with their opinion in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , which overrules Roe v. Wade, establishing the right to an abortion. Roe had been the law of the land for almost fifty years. Even more ominous is Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion, in which he argues that the same rationale the court used to overrule Roe should be used to overturn cases establishing rights...
Jun 24, 2022•5 min
Yesterday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, said outright that the Fed’s higher interest rates won’t lower the prices of gas or groceries. Hello? Gas and food prices are the two items hitting families the hardest, and the Fed is openly admitting that raising interest rates will do nothing to ease the burden? What rate hikes will do is force millions of Americans into joblessness and make families poorer. As Senator Elizabeth Warren said during her question...
Jun 23, 2022
Yesterday, the Supreme Court knocked down part of the wall between church and state with a ruling that’s likely to force taxpayers to fund religious indoctrination at Christian schools. So, today’s questions: (1) How much do you think the same conservatives championing this decision would freak out if they thought their tax dollars were being used to fund Islamic madrasas? And (2) if religious institutions can receive tax dollars and make partisan political endorsements , while receiving billion...
Jun 22, 2022•55 sec
Today’s fourth hearing focused on how Trump corruptly pressured state legislators and election officials to change election results — leaning on state officials to alter the vote and to create slates of fake electors pledged to Trump — and their unwillingness to go along with Trump. But under the surface of today’s hearing and its revelations lurks the civil war that Trump has created within the Republican Party — between the dwindling number of Republican officials who maintain their oaths to t...
Jun 21, 2022•7 min
Friends, As Congress prepares for summer recess, average working Americans are facing increasingly hard economic times — including a likely recession (see here ). Yet Congress has so far failed to provide most Americans with what they need to weather the storm — subsidies for childcare and eldercare, paid sick leave, an increase in the federal minimum wage, lower pharmaceutical costs, additional help with the next strain of COVID, and so on. At the very same time, American corporations are linin...
Jun 21, 2022
We fool ourselves if we believe that the televised hearings of the January 6 committee are changing the direction of the Republican Party, or that the hearings will end the attempted coup that Trump launched immediately after the 2020 election. The G.O.P. is becoming ever more divorced from reality. Trump’s attempted coup continues unabated. The first three hearings of the House January 6 committee demolished the myths of voter fraud repeated incessantly by Trump and his supporters and amplified...
Jun 20, 2022•9 min
My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we cover the third hearing of the January 6 select committee, why the committee isn’t turning over its transcripts to the Justice Department, what’s the connection between Ginni Thomas (wife of Justice Clarence Thomas) and John Eastman, the Fed’s dangerous decision to raise interests rates by another 0.75 percent, and celebrating the summe...
Jun 18, 2022•15 min
Today marks the end of the school year for many public schools. Every year about this time I think of Alice Camp. I arrived in her third-grade classroom in Lewisboro Elementary School, in South Salem, New York, as an extremely short, shy, insecure 8-year-old who was often bullied and mocked on the bus and made to feel like a loser on the playground, and had no particular interest in school. But she saw in me something I didn’t see. She fed me books, projects, ideas. She challenged me and praised...
Jun 17, 2022•4 min
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol held its third public hearing today — focused on Trump's efforts to pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count lawful electoral votes on January 6: the gonzo plan that lawyer John Eastman came up with. But where did John Eastman come from? And how did he ever reach Trump in the first place? The committee didn’t touch on this today. (When Eastman appeared before the committee he invoked his Fifth Amendment right ...
Jun 16, 2022•5 min
Last Sunday night, as cryptocurrency prices plummeted, Celsius Network — an experimental cryptocurrency bank with more than one million customers that has emerged as a leader in the murky world of decentralized finance, or DeFi — announced it was freezing withdrawals “due to extreme market conditions.” Earlier this week, Bitcoin dropped 15 percent over 24 hours to its lowest value since December 2020, and Ether, the second-most valuable cryptocurrency, fell about 16 percent. Last month, TerraUSD...
Jun 16, 2022•9 min
Friends, Bennie Thompson, chair of the January 6th Committee, has told reporters that the committee has no plans to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department. This strikes me as absurd. The major purpose of the committee’s carefully constructed prosecutorial brief is to clear the runway for indictments. The pushback on Thompson’s statement was instant, beginning with vice chair Liz Cheney, who put out a statement flatly contradicting Thompson: “The January 6th Select Committee has not i...
Jun 15, 2022•2 min
Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its May Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, which showed inflation worsening. Yet the bigger story — and bigger worry — is not inflation. It’s the distinct possibility of recession. Or perhaps both (what’s termed “stagflation.”) Here are the questions I’m getting asked most often, and my answers. 1. Are we heading for a recession? Many signs point in that direction. New home construction slowed in April. Mortgage demand continues to decline. So...
Jun 14, 2022•8 min
Friends, I trust Joe Biden’s steadiness and judgment, and if he runs again, I’ll probably back him in 2024. But today I want to suggest someone who isn’t even a Democrat, and whose positions on many issues I (and I suspect you) strongly disagree with — but who could possibly be the best president of the United States for the perilous time we’re entering. I’m referring to Liz Cheney. Before you reject this idea out of hand, please bear with me. Even if you still end up thinking it’s a ludicrous n...
Jun 13, 2022•10 min
My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we cover how to measure the success of the hearings of the House January 6 committee, which began Thursday night; inflation (the Consumer Price Index came out yesterday, showing that inflation continues to increase) and its impact on the midterm elections and on the rest of the economy; and — in the midst of all this — Salsa dancing and sp...
Jun 11, 2022
What’s the use of the hearings by the House committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection —hearings that began last night and will run for the next several weeks — unless they lead to criminal prosecution of Donald Trump for his patently criminal actions? In a word: History. We tend to underestimate the importance of an historic record. But it is vastly important. It charts the course of the future by illuminating the course of the past. It is literally the final word. I don’t know whether...
Jun 10, 2022•2 min
