The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Yesterday, Donald Trump threatened that if he is indicted on a charge of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” adding “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”These words followed on last month’s threat by Senator Lindsey Graham that if Trump is prosecuted, there would be “riots in the street.” Trump appeared to endorse Graham’s threat, sharing a video link on his Truth Social platform.Trump’s latest threat requires four responses:1. Trump is daring the Justice Department to prosecute him, in effect asserting he is above the law. He is not above the law. The Justice Department is methodically and carefully sifting through evidence and presenting it to a grand jury. Neither the Department nor the grand jury should be intimidated by Trump’s latest threat.2. Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous. We have already seen the consequences of what happens when Trump invites a mob to the streets. Five people died on January 6, 2021. Many more – including members of Congress and the former Vice President – could have been killed on that day. Since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s incendiary words have fueled death threats to numerous federal officials, judges, and lawmakers. All Americans should condemn Trump’s latest threat and incitement to violence. 3. We are dealing with a sociopathic narcissist who wants nothing more than to divide the nation over himself. This is not a matter of left versus right, liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican. It is a question of the Constitution and the rule of law versus authoritarianism and tyranny. If Trump prevails — if he intimidates law-enforcement officials from doing their jobs over his attempted coup or his theft from the White House of secret documents — we lose our democracy. The media must stop covering this as if there are two sides to this story. There are not. 4. The time has come for Republican lawmakers, candidates, and rightwing media owners and personalities to show some backbone and vigorously repudiate Trump. Their failure to do so before now has created a monster that threatens to consume this country. It is up to them to tell their constituents, followers, readers and viewers that there is no place in America for Trump’s threats to law enforcement and his incitements to violence. Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Rupert Murdoch, and others must say it loudly and clearly: We repudiate Trump and his threats. No person is above the law. 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

A few days ago, I received an email from an associate producer at the Dr. Phil Show. They recently came across my film “Inequality for All” and wanted to know “if I’d be interested in joining Dr. Phil as an expert guest for an upcoming episode.” Hey, why not? The Dr. Phil Show is the number 1 rated daytime TV talk show in America. It has over 2 million viewers. I have lots to say to those viewers about the perils of widening inequality. Then I read the rest of the email. “For this conversation we will be asking questions like do college admissions enroll minorities over prospective Caucasian students? Are Caucasian teachers and professors being laid off to ‘make up for past discriminations’ against minority educators, as seen in Minneapolis?” These were the only questions included in the email. In other words, it will be a show about favoritism to Black people over white people. What’s going on here? The Dr. Phil Show isn’t on Fox News. It’s carried by CBS. Phil McGraw himself isn’t a rabid right-winger. At least not that I know of. (He did appear on Fox News soon after the start of the pandemic to argue against temporarily closing down the economy — claiming that the likelihood of dying from COVID was no greater than likelihood of dying in a car accident or drowning in a swimming pool. By that time 3,000 people had died of the infection. Two years later, it had taken the lives of 1 million.)But the point I want to make isn’t solely about Dr. Phil. It’s about the people who produce popular TV talk shows. They decide two hugely important things: (1) the topics to be discussed, and (2) how those topics are framed.These two decisions determine what issues the the public focuses on (out of an almost infinite number bubbling up each day) and what’s debatable about them (out of an almost infinite number of possibilities). And these two determinations in turn fuel public emotions — ranging from anger, indignation, and outrage, to hope, pride, and confidence. They affect our daily conversations. They shape our politics. They divide or connect Americans. They help set the national agenda. Take the recent contract agreement between the Minneapolis teachers union and the Minneapolis school district — the issue Dr. Phil’s associate producer wants me to talk about. That contract says that if school budgets must be cut, white teachers will be laid off before those from “underrepresented” populations, regardless of seniority. If school budgets then expand, “underrepresented” teachers will be reinstated before white teachers, regardless of seniority.MAGA outlets, blogs, and social media sites have gone nuts over this. Racial preferences for Black people have become a hot-button issue, especially among struggling working-class whites. Viewed this way, this issue lends itself to the rightwing argument that “coastal elites” have rigged the economic game against white working people in favor of “less-deserving” people of color. Naturally, this infuriates a lot of working-class whites.Presumably, this is the debate Dr. Phil’s producer has in mind. But it’s the wrong issue and the wrong debate. Go a bit deeper and you’ll see why. The goal of the Minneapolis school board is to remedy continuing effects of past discrimination, by supporting “the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups” [emphasis added]. This is a particularly important goal in Minnesota’s schools, where 5.6 percent of licensed teachers identify as a teacher of color or American Indian, compared to 30 percent of students.Research shows having teachers of color in the classroom has a positive impact on students — not just students of color but also on white students — including improved test scores and higher graduation rates.But in a last-in-first-out seniority system, teachers of color are more likely to be laid off when budgets are cut. That’s because they’ve entered the profession more recently, so have less seniority.In the Minneapolis public schools, fewer teachers of color are tenured than white teachers. State law requires that teachers be on probation until completing three consecutive years of work.So the new Minneapolis contract is serving a particularly important public purpose in a system where seniority and tenure would otherwise discriminate against people of color. The contract is leveling the playing field and helping insure that more teachers of color are in classrooms. But do you think for a moment that I’d be able to explain all this on the Dr. Phil Show? Not a chance. I’ve been doing television interviews for forty years. I’d be lucky if I got out two sentences before another guest, representing the “other side” of the issue, jumped down my throat, charging “racism!” So what are millions of daytime TV viewers likely to learn from this discussion about whether “Caucasian teachers” are “being laid off to ‘make up for past discriminations’ against minority educators, as seen in Minneapolis?” That government is favoring Black teachers over white teachers — and that lots of people are mad about it. I’m sending my regrets. My bigger regret is that the national conversation is in the hands of producers chasing ratings and advertising dollars, with no regard for how they’re distorting the public’s understanding of what’s important or the core choices lying ahead.** 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

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week, over morning coffee. Today we discuss:— The death of the Queen, what she symbolized for Britain and America, and why King Charles III may be the last of the British royals.— Judge Eileen Cannon — the Trump appointee whose decision this week to appoint a “special master” to look over the top-secret documents Trump stole from the United States and review for executive privilege makes absolutely no logical sense. — The midterm elections coming closer, and why the Supreme Court’s decision overruling Roe v. Wade may be an even bigger motivator of voters than Trump Republicans’ attacks on democracy.— My pick for the season’s best TV series.— Why Californians have been willing to voluntarily reduce electricity consumption during this heat wave. And today’s poll: 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

In early August, the good people of Kansas voted against a ballot measure that would have stripped from their state constitution a woman’s right to choose — and they did it by a whopping 18-point margin. Since then, and largely in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, women have been registering to vote across the country in astounding numbers. Many appear to be supporting Democratic candidates even in states such as Kansas, where Democrats have almost become an endangered species. One hundred years ago this week, the writer and political philosopher Walter Lippmann published Public Opinion, his account of how democracy actually functions. Lippmann claimed that the public doesn’t form opinions rationally. Opinions emerge from particular events (say, a Supreme Court decision) that galvanize the public’s “irrational” sentiments. Lippmann didn’t trust those sentiments. He was concerned how easily they could be manipulated. “As a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.” (He wrote these words years before the Nazi’s and Soviets chillingly and effectively used propaganda to distort public opinion.)To deal with this danger, Lippmann proposed the creation of a "specialized class" of professionals to collect and analyze data and then present their conclusions to society's decision makers. The decision makers would in turn use the "art of persuasion" to convince the public what was good for them. Not exactly a democratic vision. Lippmann’s proposal may have found its way into graduate schools of public policy, many founded in the late 1960s. They are worthy and important institutions. (I have taught at three outstanding ones — Harvard, Brandeis, and Berkeley.) Yet they do not as a rule emphasize democracy over analysis. Even today, some of my students regard public policy-making as a matter of finding the “right” answers to public problems and then doing end-runs around politics to implement them. I’ve done my best to disabuse them. Yet how can democracies avoid what Lippmann feared — the manipulation of public sentiment? Five years after Lippmann wrote Public Opinion, another political philosopher published a criticism of Lippmann’s ideas and offered a far more optimistic view of democracy. His name was John Dewey. His book was The Public and its Problems. Dewey centered his hopes for democracy on education. Public sentiments are not to be feared, he argued, if schools give people the skills they need to engage in discussion and deliberation — the ability to separate facts from opinions, to communicate effectively, and then come to their own judgments. The Dobbs decision was leaked May 2. It was formally released June 24. Since then, something dramatic has happened — even in the reddest of Republican states. It seems that people — especially those who bear children — have deliberated with one another and come to a judgment. We saw the outcome of that judgment in Kansas, in early August. We won’t know about any larger consequences for another two months. But John Dewey may have been right. This messy, unpredictable, passionate, and sometimes mean-spirited process called democracy could just be working. 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

I have a serious question. It’s for people who have power in America and who continue to deny the outcome of the 2020 election and enable Trump’s Big Lie: What are you saying to yourself in private? How are you justifying yourself in your own mind?I don’t mean to be snide or snarky. I’m genuinely curious. I’m not interested in Trump’s answer to this question. He is too far gone — lost in the depths of his own pathological ego. I’m also not asking the millions of Trump followers, Fox News viewers, and rightwing social media fans who have been fed the Big Lie nonstop for almost two years. Two-thirds of registered Republicans now believe it. No, I am asking my question to people with power in our society — people who presumably know the truth. If you hold public office and still deny the outcome of the 2020 election, how are you explaining this to yourself? Are you telling yourself that despite the overwhelming evidence that Biden won and the lack of evidence of fraud, you still genuinely doubt the outcome? But you must know that sixty federal courts have found no basis in Trump’s claim, nor have any state so-called “audits,” and that even Trump’s own Attorney General found the claim baseless. Or are you telling yourself that it will soon be over — that Trump will fade, that the Big Lie will disappear, that your party and America will soon move on? But you must know you’re wrong. The Big Lie is growing. It has metastasized into a cancer that’s dividing the nation and devouring our democracy. Or are you telling yourself that you have no real choice but to support the lie if you want to keep or obtain political power? But is power so intoxicating to you — so important as an end in itself — that you’ll do anything for it? Where will you draw the line? If Trump is reelected and imposes martial law? If he or another Republican president forbids public criticism of his administration? If he calls for violence against those who oppose him?And what do you tell yourself about the measures your party is taking based on the Big Lie: suppression of votes, takeovers of election machinery, assertions that state legislatures can overturn voter preferences in the certification process, rejection of the January 6 committee’s findings?You have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. How do you defend yourself in your own mind? I’m asking you, Kevin McCarthy. And you, Lindsey Graham. And you, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson. And others.And I’m asking those of you with significant power in the GOP who have remained silent in the face of all this – such as you, Mitch McConnell, and you, Mitt Romney: How do you justify your silence?And I ask those of you now running for office who are denying the 2020 election results and pushing other aspects of Republican authoritarianism – such as you, JD Vance, and Blake Masters, Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, Doug Mastriano, and Kari Lake: What are you telling yourself in private? How are you excusing yourself? Why are you even running? And I ask the billionaires and CEOs who are bankrolling these people: How do you rationalize spending millions, even tens of millions, helping them get or remain elected? I’m asking you, Peter Thiel, and you, Stephen Schwarzman, and Ken Griffin and Steve Wynn and Mike Lindell and Patrick Byrne and others: Is this really the way you want to spend your fortune? Is this your legacy to the nation?And I ask all the people making money off this rot – the TV hosts and producers and media moguls who are raking it in while poisoning the minds of America with bald face lies – what are you telling yourself in private? I’m asking you, Rupert Murdoch, and you, Tucker Carlson, and you, Sean Hannity, and you, Laura Ingraham: How are you defending yourself to yourself? I don’t expect any of you to answer me. This is a question for you to answer to yourself, alone and in private. But before you do, may I have a confidential word? Whether you’re a politician supporting the Big Lie, a billionaire backer of it, or a broadcaster who’s pushing it, it is not too late for you to get off the road you are on. Yet if you continue to promote or enable this lie, you are undermining our democracy and the norms of our society. The crisis you have helped create is worsening. You bear part of the responsibility for what comes next. Know this: When the history of this trying time is written, future generations of Americans will judge your actions and your silences harshly.They will recall your cowardice and your self-justifications. They will remember your lust for power and your moral blindness. They will recollect your unwitting ignorance or your witting failure to come to democracy’s defense in this perilous time. Generations to come will sit in judgment about what you have wrought. And if the democratic experiment called America continues to unravel because of what you did or failed to do, you will live in infamy.   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

Today marks the start of the school year for many public schools. Which makes me think of Alice Camp. (I wrote about her some months ago. Many of you have asked me to repost what I wrote — and add a bit more about her and about our teachers. So here goes.)I arrived in Mrs. Camp’s 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 me. She made me feel special. Her slightly whacky sense of humor connected with mine. Her curiosity fueled mine (she didn’t mind if I stayed in at recess and barraged her with questions). Her enjoyment of literature made it okay for me to love books.She made me understand that I wasn’t a freak, that I might even be talented, that the drawings and writings I did (up until then alone at my small desk in my bedroom) were okay — perhaps even good. And there was no reason for me to be so sad and ashamed, so fearful, so alone in the world.I think of Mrs. Camp when I see America’s teachers blamed these days for almost everything imaginable — yelled at by parents over masks, reprimanded by school boards about books they assign or let their students read, vilified by politicians for teaching about America’s history of racism, even told to arm themselves against the possibility that their classrooms will be invaded by murderous young men with semi-automatics.That’s wrong.Instead of berating our teachers, we should honor them. Instead of imposing ludicrous demands on them we should free them to teach and inspire. Instead of demeaning them we should express our gratitude to them — every day.And we should pay them twice as much as they’re now earning, or three times.Did you know that 94 percent of America’s teachers have had to dip into their own pockets to buy school supplies? This, at a time when the average Wall Street employee bonus for 2021 hit $257,500.Why in hell should investment bankers get paid fortunes for moving money from one set of pockets to another, when our teachers can barely afford to live on what they make? Bankers watch over our financial capital. Teachers watch over our human capital — and therefore our future.I don’t think there’s a “teacher shortage.” I think there’s a shortage of teaching jobs that treat educators with the dignity — and give them the pay — they deserve.I never saw Alice Camp again after third grade ended for me that June of 1954. I never had a chance to thank her (although I do remember sitting cross-legged on the floor at the end-of-year school assembly, quietly crying about leaving her and trying desperately not to show it).She passed away long ago.I had the great fortune to have other wonderful teachers over the rest of my years of public elementary and high school, and then in college and graduate school. I don’t recall thanking any of them, either. Most are gone by now. But I think of them often. And I am forever in their debt.I suppose one way I’ve managed to pay back a small portion of that debt is to teach — which I’ve done for most of the last forty years. I love teaching. I love my students. I can’t imagine a more rewarding or noble profession.When I expressed my appreciation of America’s teachers last June, and of Alice Camp in particular, I received lots of emails thanking me. Among them was a lovely letter from one of Mrs. Camp’s sons. He wrote:I want to thank you for your moving tribute to my mother, Alice Camp. It brought tears to my eyes because you so completely nailed who she was. She loved teaching. She spent endless hours at home after school working on projects and lesson plans and so on. To the point of exhaustion it seemed. For she did all the "single mom," work, too.She was deeply interested in her "kids" and not just the best and brightest such as you but equally the troubled, the disadvantaged, the ones who struggled. My mother was all about justice and fairness. … I could go on, but let me again on behalf of myself, my brother and sister (and my kids, because they all know the story, too)  thank you for your loving words about Alice. She was my hero. 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

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student). Today we discuss: * Biden’s speech to the nation — and why the media ignored it, or treated it as just another “political” event. * Ron DeSantis — and why he (and Mitch McConnell and much of the right-wing establishment) is just waiting for Trump to falter. * Merrick Garland — and why he’s reluctant to prosecute Trump, but why he must. * Friday’s jobs report — and why it left out the most important information about jobs, wages, and the economy. * Sarah Palin — and how she lost in Alaska. * And wishes for a happy Labor Day weekend — remembering what Labor Day represents, and what we celebrate. Thank you to to Bob Chartier and Dave Mancuso who composed (and sang) the latest tunes we use as today’s coffee klatch theme songs. Happy Labor Day weekend! 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

One week after a team of F.B.I. agents descended on his private club and residence in Florida, Trump warned that things could get out of hand if the Justice Department kept the heat on him. “People are so angry at what is taking place,” Trump told Fox News, predicting that if the “temperature” isn’t brought down, “terrible things are going to happen.”But Trump and his allies are doing all they can to increase the temperature. Last Sunday, one of Trump’s closest allies, Senator Lindsey Graham, warned of “riots in the streets” if Trump is prosecuted.On Tuesday, Trump spent much of the morning reposting messages from known purveyors of the QAnon conspiracy theory and from 4chan, an anonymous message platform where threats of violence often bloom. Some of Trump’s reposts were direct provocations, such as a photograph of President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi with their faces obscured by the words, “Your enemy is not in Russia.”Online threats are escalating against public servants. Bruce E. Reinhart, the federal magistrate judge who approved the warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, has been targeted with messages threatening him and his family.How to respond to this lawlessness? With bold and unwavering law enforcement. If Trump has broken the law – by attempting a coup, by instigating an assault on the U.S. Capitol, by making off with troves of top-secret documents -- he must be prosecuted, and if found guilty he must be imprisoned. Yes, such prosecutions might increase tensions and divisions in the short term. They might provoke additional violence.But a failure to uphold the laws of the United States would be far more damaging in the longer term. It would undermine our system of government and the credibility of that system -- more directly and irreparably than Trump has done.Not holding a former president accountable for gross acts of criminality will invite ever more criminality from future presidents and lawmakers. It is also important for all those in public life who believe in democracy to call out what the Republican Party is doing and what it has become: not just its embrace of Trump’s Big Lie but its moves toward voter suppression, takeovers of the machinery of elections, ending of reproductive rights, book bans, restrictions on what can be taught in classrooms, racism, and assaults on LGBTQ people. Last week, Biden condemned “ultra-MAGA Republicans” for a philosophy he described as “semi-fascism.” Today he will deliver a rare prime-time speech outside the old Independence Hall where the Framers of the Constitution met 235 years ago to establish the basic rules of our democratic form of government. The speech is will focus on what the White House describes as the “battle for the soul of the nation” – the fight to protect that democracy.President Biden's earlier conciliatory tone and talk of uniting Americans and “healing” the nation from the ravages of Trump has obviously not worked on most of the Republican Party. With the notable and noble exceptions of Liz Cheney and a few other courageous Republicans — most of whom have been or are being purged from the GOP — the Republican Party is rapidly morphing into an anti-democracy movement. With each passing week, it becomes more rabid in its opposition to the rule of law. Republican lawmakers who took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution are repudiating it in word and deed. Republican candidates are lying about the 2020 election and whipping up our fellow countrymen into angry mobs. And as Republican lawmakers and candidates exchange their political integrity for power, Fox News and other rightwing outlets continue to exchange their journalistic integrity for money. The essential political choice in America, therefore, is no longer Republican or Democrat, right or left, conservative or liberal. It is democracy or authoritarian fascism. There can be no compromise between these two — no halfway point, no “moderate middle,” no “balance.” To come down squarely on the side of democracy is not to be “partisan.” It is to be patriotic.As Adam Wilkins suggested on this page yesterday, while today’s Republican party does not have its own paramilitary, such as the Nazi’s Brownshirts, the GOP is effectively outsourcing these activities to violent fringe groups such as the “Proud Boys," "Oathkeepers," and others who descended on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and who continue to threaten violence.Yet Democrats cannot and must not take on this battle alone. They must seek common ground with Independents and whatever reasonable Republicans remain. As Eric T noted on this page, we must continue to appeal to truth, facts, logic, and common sense. We must be unwavering in our commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law. We must be clear and courageous in exposing the authoritarian fascist direction the Republican Party has now chosen, and the dangers this poses to America and the world. It is also important for Democrats to recognize -- and to take bold action against — the threat to democracy posed by big money from large corporations and the super-wealthy: record amounts of campaign funding inundating and distorting our politics, serving the moneyed interests rather than the common good.Indeed, the two threats – one, from an increasingly authoritarian-fascist Republican Party; the second, from ever-larger amounts of corporate and billionaire money in our campaigns and elections – are two sides of the same coin. Americans who know the system is rigged against them and in favor of the moneyed interests, are more likely to give up on democracy and embrace an authoritarian fascist demagogue who pretends to be on “their side.”The battle to preserve and protect American democracy is the most important battle of our lifetimes. If we win, there is nothing we cannot achieve. If we lose, there is nothing we can achieve. 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

Billionaire GOP mega-donor Steve Wynn has some free messaging advice for Republicans, which he proffered in a conference call last Wednesday with Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and Newt Gingrich (the audio was obtained by Politico): He urged the GOP to run TV ads telling average working people that Democrats have funded the IRS to hammer them. Wynn even offered a script: “Tell them the IRS is ‘coming after you if you’re a waiter, if you’re a bartender, if you’re anybody with a cash business … they’re coming after you.’”Unfortunately for Wynn, the funding for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act targets the very wealthiest Americans — such as Steve Wynn — whose complicated businesses dealings and small armies of accountants and tax attorneys require lots of IRS resources if they’re to be audited.Over the past decade, Republican lawmakers cut the IRS budget by roughly 20 percent — with the result that just 2 percent of the richest Americans had their taxes audited in 2019, down from 16 percent in 2010. Not surprisingly, the richest 1 percent of Americans are estimated to be hiding more than 20 percent of their earnings from the IRS, accounting for more than a third of all unpaid federal taxes. The newly-added IRS funding is projected to raise some $100 billion in net tax revenue over the decade, mostly from the very rich.Wynn isn’t the first to dream up the bogus story about the IRS going after average working people. Senator Ted Cruz warns of a “shadow army of 87,000 IRS agents,” threatening Americans, and Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, ties the increase in IRS agents to the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and concludes that, “Not a single one of us is safe.” Many other GOP candidates are telling the same lie. This lie isn’t even consistent with the older GOP lie that the rich pay most income taxes and almost half of Americans pay none (remember Mitt Romney’s 47 percent?), which isn’t true when you include Social Security taxes, state and local income taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes.  But the billionaire class will do anything to avoid paying taxes. Why do you suppose Wynn and others like him bankroll Republicans in the first place? (Hint: Republicans cut their taxes.)During that same conference call last Wednesday, Wynn asked RNC chair Ronna McDaniel to recommend dark-money nonprofits to which he and other wealthy contributors can donate without their names being revealed. Some donors, Wynn said, “are self-conscious for reasons that are personal to them, business people and folks like that,” and would rather give to the GOP anonymously. (Wynn should know. His big campaign donations became embarrassingly toxic in 2018 after The Wall Street Journal detailed rape, assault, and harassment allegations against him.)Recall that the Supreme Court’s shameful 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision allows unlimited political spending by such nonprofits, to which billionaires like Wynn can secretly funnel unlimited donations. Meanwhile, The New York Times reported last week that electronics mogul Barre Seid gave 100 percent of the shares of his surge protector and data-center equipment manufacturer Tripp Lite to a dark-money nonprofit called the Marble Freedom Trust. The gift is worth a jaw-dropping $1.6 billion. The Marble Freedom Trust is controlled by Leonard Leo, a former chairman of the Federalist Society, known for his decades-long campaign to fill the federal courts with conservative judges and for his legal challenges to abortion rights, voting rights, and measures to ameliorate climate change. Seid’s $1.6 billion gift is the largest single donation ever made to a nonprofit political group. It would have been secret had an insider not tipped off the Times.Dark money nonprofits also enable super-wealthy political donors to avoid taxes. Had Seid sold his company outright, he would have had to pay about $400 million in capital gains taxes on the increased value of Tripp Lite’s shares. But because nonprofits like the Marble Freedom Trust are exempt from paying taxes, handing his shares over to the Trust enabled Seid to transfer the entire $1.6 billion to Leo — thereby having average taxpayers effectively subsidize Leo’s political influence-peddling to the tune of $400 million.What to do? At the very least, Congress should enact the Disclose Act, which would reveal to voters who’s trying to buy their votes. The Act has been blocked in Congress for more than a decade by Republican filibusters.Which brings me back to Steve Wynn’s advice to the Republican Party to tell working-class Americans that Democrats are unleashing the IRS on them.In truth, the Republican Party has been going all out to help its major backers avoid paying taxes. Those backers are among the wealthiest people in America — such as Steve Wynn — who have in recent years become far wealthier than ever before. Much of this is in secret. But as a result, most other Americans have to pay more taxes to make up the difference, or not receive the sorts of public benefits (healthcare, unemployment insurance, assistance with childcare and elder care, free college) commonplace in most other advanced nations.My free messaging advice to the Democrats: Get this truthful story out. 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

I like to tweet. Not as much as I like to write here on Substack where I get to share my thoughts at some length. On Twitter it’s a different kind of conversation, and pace — like speed chess.Last Tuesday I tweeted: I was surprised at the outrage my little tweet provoked. The Washington Examiner, for example: Ultra left-wing elitist and former secretary of labor during the Clinton administration Robert Reich tweeted earlier this week, “Just wondering if ‘DeSantis’ is now officially a synonym for ‘fascist.’” This insulting slur has no basis, of course. This is just what left-wing ideologues do when they discuss Republican politicians who pose any threat to the existence of their political ideology. It's not grounded in any reality and is a sham. Yet, it never stops any of them from repeating the lie. Anyone the Democrats don’t like or disagree with is a fascist…. Any person using such hyperbolic, unhinged name-calling is not a serious person, and anything they say should not be deemed credible.Fox News’s digital outlet took umbrage as did many others, with rightwing rage at my tweet ricocheting through the echo-chambers of Republican social media.Don’t worry about me. After a half-century in and around politics, I’ve got a thick skin. But the size of the blowback on my little tweet makes me think I struck a nerve. DeSantis has become a favorite of the GOP’s Fox News-viewing base, and the most likely rival to Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024. The Harvard and Yale educated DeSantis (what do they teach at Harvard and Yale?) has been called “Trump with a brain.” Lately DeSantis has been campaigning on behalf of Republican election-deniers around the country, including gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and US Senate candidate JD Vance in Ohio.DeSantis is the nation’s consummate culture warrior. Consider what he has wrought in Florida: * Discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity are now barred in Florida schools. * Math textbooks have been rejected for what Florida officials call “indoctrination.” * Abortions are banned in Florida after 15 weeks. (DeSantis recently suspended an elected prosecutor who said he would refuse to enforce the anti-abortion law.) * A new state office has been created to investigate “election crimes.” * Florida teachers are limited in what they can teach about racism and other tragic aspects of American history. DeSantis has got personally involved in local school board races, endorsed and campaigning for 30 board candidates who agree with him (so far, 20 have won outright, five are going to runoffs). * Claiming tenured professors in Florida’s public universities are “indoctrinating” students, DeSantis spearheaded a law requiring them to be reviewed every five years. * Florida’s Medicaid regulator is considering a rule to block state-subsidized health care from paying for treatments of transgender people. Florida’s medical board recently began the process of banning gender-affirming medical treatment for youths. * Disney (Florida’s largest employer) has been stripped of the ability to govern itself for the first time in more than half a century, in retaliation for the company’s opposition to the crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. conversations with schoolchildren. * Florida’s congressional map has been redrawn to give Republicans an even bigger advantage.How much of a reactionary bully is DeSantis? Don't take my word for it. Here’s a smattering of some of his pearls of (dare I say, fascist) rhetoric:  “We are not going to surrender to woke,” DeSantis said last Tuesday. “Florida is the state where woke goes to die.” He has described an America under assault by left-wing elites, who “want to delegitimize our founding institutions.” DeSantis envisions his job as governor as fighting critical race theory, “Faucian dystopia,” uncontrolled immigration, Big Tech, “left-wing oligarchs,” “Soros-funded prosecutors,” transgender athletes, and the “corporate media.” The state of Florida, DeSantis says, has become a “citadel of freedom.” He charges — using a standard racist dog whistle — that “We’re not letting Florida cities burn down … In Florida, you’re not going to get a slap on the wrist. You are getting the inside of a jail cell.” So, back to my tweet: Is it useful to characterize DeSantis’s combination of homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny, along with his efforts to control the public schools and universities and to intimidate the private sector (e.g., Disney), as redolent of fascism? America’s mainstream media is by now comfortable talking and writing about “authoritarianism.” Maybe it should also begin using the term “fascism,” where appropriate. (Even Joe Biden, who has never been known as a rhetorical bomb-thrower, last Thursday accused the GOP of “semi-fascism.” A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee called Biden’s comment “despicable.”)Authoritarianism implies the absence of democracy, a dictatorship. Fascism (the word comes from the Latin fasces, denoting a tightly-bound bundle of wooden rods that typically included a protruding axe blade, adopted by Benito Mussolini in the 1930s to symbolize his total power) is different from mere authoritarianism. Fascism also includes hatred of “them” (people considered different by race or religion, or outside the mainstream, or who were born abroad), control over what people learn and what books they are allowed to read, control over what had been independent government units (school boards, medical boards, universities, and so on), control over women and the most intimate and difficult decisions they’ll ever make, and demands that the private sector support the regime. Perhaps my “just wondering” tweet about DeSantis hit the nerve of the fascism now taking root in the Republican Party? Or is DeSantis’s own nascent presidential campaign behind the outsized reaction to my tweet? After all, if you’re seeking a presidential nomination in today’s GOP, there’s nothing like an accusation of fascism to rally Trump supporters. It might be a particularly useful strategy if your primary opponent in 2024 will be Trump.What do you think? 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