Robert Reich

Right now some 800,000 government employees aren’t collecting paychecks. Nor are hundreds of thousands of government contractors being paid. None of them can buy as much as before.

Trump is treating the government of the United States as a bargaining chip. He is asserting power by any means possible. This is the method of a dictator. 

The wealthiest Americans used to pay for the government through taxes. Now they pay for the government by lending it money, with interest, and profit from the rest of us. This has to stop.

The Demorcats will make life harder for Trump, but they will do little to change the imbalance of wealth and power in this country—unless they are pushed to do so.

"Our institutions remain strong, but I’m not sure they can endure two more years of this."

A long shutdown will hurt millions of people.

After two years of Trump we may have overlooked the essence of his insanity: His brain sees only private interests transacting. It doesn’t comprehend the public interest.

Trump has effectively raised taxes on most Americans.

“Making America great again” has nothing to do with making American corporations great again. The real challenge is to make American workers great again.

Another president violated these, but America wouldn’t allow it. Nixon resigned before Congress impeached him.

Amazon's decision to split its new headquarters between New York and DC reveals much about the political and economical divides in America today.

Donald Trump wasn’t on the ballot but he made the election into a referendum on himself.

Bombs mailed to political leaders. Threats against the media. A shooting in a place of worship. The hatefulness is unconstrained.

Never before has a president of the United States been so determined not to be president of all Americans.

Look at the living standards of most Americans, and you get a very different picture.

House and Senate Republicans have morphed into Trump acolytes and toadies—intimidated, spineless, opportunistic.

The drama that took place in the Kavanaugh-Ford hearings on September 27 was a window into our bullying culture of privileged white men.

In my thirty-five years of teaching college students, I’ve not encountered a generation as dedicated to making the nation better as this one.

Trump promised to “drain the swamp”, but he made it bigger and filthier.

Everybody on the inside knows what’s going on here.

The U.S. economy crashes when it becomes too top heavy—the rich don’t spend nearly as much of their income as the middle class and the poor.

If Mueller finds indisputable evidence that Trump conspired with Putin, his presidency would not be authorized under the United States Constitution.

Musk seems to genuinely care about the future of humanity. But, like Trump, Musk loves to upend the status quo by breaking norms and maybe even some laws.

He’s creating a new form of trickle-down economics—where the benefits go to corporate executives and major investors, while the costs and risks land on the rest of us.

Russian attacks on our democracy are a clear threat aimed at the heart of America, but Trump is more concerned with his wall.

No democracy can function under a continuous bombardment of unmediated lies.

True patriots don’t fuel racist, religious or ethnic divisions. They aren’t homophobic or sexist.

The current occupant of the White House does not represent the views of the majority of Americans.

Even if the Pentagon budget were cut in half, the United States would still outspend China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea combined.

The crux of America’s crisis: Our system of government was designed to constrain power, but Trump doesn’t want his power to be constrained.

Only once in our history—in 1861—did enough of us distrust the system so much we succumbed to civil war.

The president's megalomania means there is no clear strategy.