Author: Robert Reich

Trump’s attempted coup against the United States continues. We are now in phase three. Phase one was his refusal to concede the loss of the 2020 election and his big lie that the election was “stolen” from him, without any basis in fact. Trump’s actions in phase one were not illegal, but they were immoral. They violated the norms that every president before Trump had dutifully followed. Phase two was his plot to overturn the result of the 2020 election. Phase two was hatched even before election day. On 31 October 2020, Trump’s confidant Steve Bannon told associates that...

Whether they intend to be or not, third-party groups such as No Labels and the Green party are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024. No Labels has pledged to spend $70m to support a third-party candidate in 2024 who could easily draw enough votes from President Biden to tip the presidential election to Trump. No Labels has already qualified as a presidential party that can run candidates on the ballot in 10 states, including in both Arizona and Florida. It claims to be a centrist organization seeking a new bipartisanship, but it will not reveal its donors,...

The “Washington Post” recently called Donald Trump’s vision for a second term as “Authoritarian.” That vision includes mandatory stop-and-frisk. Deploying the military to fight street crime, break up gangs and deport immigrants. Purging the federal workforce. Charging leakers. “In 2016, I declared I am your voice,” Trump said at his first 2024 campaign rally in Waco, Texas. “Today, I add I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” How do we describe what Trump wants for America? “Authoritarianism” isn’t adequate. It is fascism. Fascism stands for...

Republican leaders have mastered the art of manufacturing crises to divert the public’s attention from the real crisis of our era, the siphoning of income, wealth, and power from most Americans by a small group at the top. Consider the fake fears they have been whipping up. Wokeness Florida’s governor (and now Republican presidential candidate) Ron DeSantis has declared a “war on woke.” Immediately after the mangled launch of his presidential campaign, DeSantis claimed on Fox News that “the woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism.” What exactly is “woke?” The term gained popularity at the...

The real significance of Ron DeSantis’s presidential announcement on Twitter had little to do with DeSantis but everything to do with Elon Musk. It was that Twitter, under Musk, has fully embraced the political right. Why is Musk doing this? He acts as if he wants to be the darling of libertarian bros. But he is really aiming to lead democracy’s foes. Musk wants to crush unions and declare the United States a free-to-make-as-much-as-you-can-on-the-backs-of-working-stiffs zone. He calls himself a “free speech absolutist”, but that is utter nonsense. He wants to elevate the speech of people like DeSantis but suppress...

I hate to say this, but America no longer has two parties devoted to a democratic system of self-government. We have a Democratic Party, which is still largely committed to democracy. And we have a Republican Party, which is careening at high-velocity toward authoritarianism. Okay, fascism. What occurred in Nashville in April is a frightening reminder of the fragility of American democracy when Republicans obtain supermajorities and no longer need to work with Democratic lawmakers. The two Tennessee Democrats expelled from the Tennessee House were not accused of criminal wrongdoing or even immoral conduct. Their putative offense was to...