Author: Robert Reich

I want to talk about Kаnsаs. Not about its corn as high as an elephant’s eye, nor about Dorothy and Toto trying to find their way home, but about Kаnsаs as the geographic and Republican center of America, Kаnsаs as the vintage Norman Rockwell core of America, Kаnsаs as what the Republican Party was before being hijacked by Newt Gingrich and then mugged by a New York real estate con artist. I m moved to do so because on August 2 the good people of Kаnsаs voted against a ballot measure that would have stripped from their state constitution...

The committee has produced history’s most detailed account of an American president’s cruel and seditious pursuit of power. Even now, Trump continues to push states to alter the outcomes of the 2020 election. The House of Representatives’ select committee investigating the January 6 attack has finished its hearings, at least for now. But Trump’s attempted coup continues. He has not stopped giving speeches to stir up angry mobs with his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen. He gave another fiery address on July 22 in Arizona, the day after the latest hearings on July 21. He is...

Much of today’s Republican party is treacherous and treasonous. So why are Democrats facing midterm elections that, according to most political observers, they are likely to lose? Having been a loyal Democrat for some 70 years, including a stint as a cabinet secretary, it pains me to say this: the Democratic party has lost its way. Some commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left – too far from the so-called “center.” This is utter rubbish. Where has the center between democracy and authoritarianism, and why would Democrats want to be there? Others think Biden has not...

Democracy is not just under attack in America. In some states, it is being lost. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once suggested that states could serve as laboratories of democracy, but these states are more like laboratories of autocracy. Take Wisconsin. The GOP has so successfully rigged state elections through gerrymandering that even when Democrats get more votes, Republicans win more seats. In 2018, Republicans won just 45% of the vote statewide, but were awarded 64% of the seats. Wisconsin is one of several states where an anti-democracy movement has taken hold — but it wasn’t always this way....

We tragically fool ourselves if we believe that the televised hearings of the January 6 committee will change the Republican party or end Trump’s attempted coup. The Republican party is becoming ever more divorced from reality, and Trump’s attempted coup continues unabated. The first four hearings of the committee demolished the myths of voter fraud repeated incessantly by Trump. Yet the Republican response to those hearings has ranged from indifference to hostility. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House, tweeted that the members of the committee “will not stop lying about their political opponents,” and called the...