The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Has Joe Manchin really, finally seen the light? Word is that President (sorry) Senator Manchin has agreed to roughly $433 billion in new spending, much of it focused on lowering energy costs, increasing clean energy production, and reducing carbon emissions.Part of the Manchin-approved deal would raise $739 billion in taxes over the next decade — including a new minimum tax on corporations and additional funding to help the Internal Revenue Service pursue tax cheats. 1. A few grounds for skepticismIf this deal happens, great. But by my count this is the third time Manchin has agreed to support something Democrats desperately want, only to reverse himself a bit later. There’s also the inconvenient reality of the ever-elusive, often bizarre Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who has made opposition to tax increases on the wealthy one of the cornerstones of her short, regressive time in the Senate. (Remember, Dems need 50 votes.)Putting all the blame on Manchin and Sinema for stopping Dems from raising taxes on big corporations and the wealthy lets too many other Democratic lawmakers off the hook.Democratic senators and representatives from New York, New Jersey, and California have insisted that any tax bill must raise or eliminate the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction, which has hit higher-income taxpayers in these states. (It was the only slightly progressive feature of the Trump tax cut, thrown in to penalize these anti-Trump jurisdictions.) Will they go along with the Manchin-supported tax increase? Many Democratic lawmakers cried foul recently when Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee considered imposing Social Security payroll taxes on wages and self-employment earnings above $400,000, to help fortify Social Security. Will they go along with the Manchin tax increase? Meanwhile, Democrats such as Senator Jon Tester of Montana blocked Biden’s plan to tax unrealized capital gains at death, expressing concerns about what it would mean for family-owned farms and businesses. Translated: They’ve been bought by Big Ag. Will Big Ag go along with the Manchin tax increase? House Democrats shot down a plan to require banks to report annual account flows to the Internal Revenue Service, saying it was too intrusive. Why should Democrats object to giving the IRS the data it needs to collect taxes that are due? Will they go along with the Manchin tax increase, some of whose revenue will beef up IRS enforcement? The record isn’t encouraging. Democrats have so far failed to increase taxes on big corporations or the wealthy, even though a Democratic president now occupies the White House and Democrats control both houses of Congress. 2. The Manchin-approved tax is still small potatoesEven if the Manchin-approved $739 billion tax increase over ten years gets enacted, it would still be small potatoes considering that large corporations have been enjoying record profits (even with the current economic turmoil, they’re sufficiently flush to be buying back their own stock at near-record levels); that the ratio between the pay of CEOs in large corporations and the pay of average workers has never been as large as it is today; and that the richest Americans have by now accumulated the largest share of the nation’s wealth since the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. And it’s small potatoes considering that tax revenue collected from corporations is at a record low as a share of the economy, and that the super-rich are paying a lower effective tax rate than the average tax rate paid by workers in the bottom half of the income distribution.3. What’s behind the Democrat’s failure to raise taxes so far?Part of the Democrat’s problem is that the party has become such a big tent that it’s no longer a tent at all. It’s more like a leaky tarp — and what’s been leaking in is big money. As I’ve noted here, the Democratic base has steadily shifted to include more high-income suburban voters while drifting away from its working class roots. So when it comes to raising taxes on the rich, Democrats increasingly find themselves facing their own most active constituents. Another part of the Democrat’s dilemma is their dependence on big corporations and the wealthy to fund their political campaigns. Many big American corporations are equal-opportunity bribers whose executives and PACs give generously to both parties. Meanwhile, rich liberals who fund Democrats tend to be almost as unwilling to part with their money as the rich conservatives who fund Republicans. The result is a reluctance among legislators, Democrats almost as much as Republicans, to bite the hands that feed them. There is also the inconvenient fact that nearly half of retiring Democratic lawmakers are ending up as lobbyists for big corporations and the wealthy, as are Republican lawmakers. (It’s not that they’re greedier than former generations of retired lawmakers; it’s that lobbying has become far more lucrative.) And what do Washington lobbyists do? A significant part of their time and energy is focused on preventing tax increases on big corporations and the rich, and seeking tax cuts and loopholes for them. 4. Where does all this leave us?When more of the nation’s wealth and income have moved to the top than at any time in the last century, and when taxes on the top are at their lowest in more than fifty years, the least we should expect from Democrats is to raise taxes on the wealthy and on big corporations. Such taxes not only help the nation pay for what it needs (including measures that slow climate change). They also reduce record levels of inequality. If the latest Manchin deal becomes law, two cheers for the Democrats. Even though it’s not up to the scale of the challenge, it will give Democrats something to crow about in the upcoming midterms. If the deal falls through, shame on them. The difficulties Democrats have had so far in raising taxes illustrate the vicious cycle at the heart of American capitalism today: Because wealth and power are inseparable, as more of the nation’s wealth concentrates in a few hands, the greater the power those hands have to reduce taxes on themselves and to shift taxes onto those with less wealth and power. The bottom 80 percent of Americans (by income) is now paying a larger share of the nation’s total tax bill (including Social Security taxes, sales taxes, user fees, tolls, and property taxes) than ever before, yet arguably getting less return on their tax dollars. Meanwhile, their incomes have stagnated or declined, adjusted for inflation, and they have little or no savings. Let’s hope that Joe Manchin’s change of heart results in legislation. But let’s not forget the twin challenges of growing inequality and big money drowning American politics. They are two sides of the same crisis of American capitalist democracy. More than at any time since the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, America needs a pro-democracy movement focused on getting big money out of politics and reducing near-record inequalities of wealth and income. One cannot be achieved without achieving the other. Please consider a paid or gift subscription. This is a public episode. 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Today, Donald Trump returns to Washington — his first visit since leaving in disgrace after January 6 — to deliver the keynote address for the America First Policy Institute’s “America First Agenda Summit.”The purpose of this confab is to give Trump some policy creds as he prepares to announce a 2024 run for re-election. Brooke Rollins, one of the organizers of the Institute and the Summit (who was domestic policy adviser in Trump’s White House) says “having worked next to him for almost three years in the White House, a lot of people didn’t give him enough credit for his policy vision.”Sane people don’t give Trump credit for having a policy vision at all. In the annals of political oxymorons, a “Trump policy vision” must rank very high. To have a policy vision, it is first necessary to have some capacity for thinking about policy. Trump never did and never will. To think about policy is to contemplate something beyond oneself. Trump can only think about how something will reflect on his own reflection. The only policies he’s ever cared about are those that advance Trump.Policy entails a degree of deliberation, of assessment based on logic and fact. That’s not the Trump we’ve known, either. When president, Trump never read memos. He never looked at graphs or charts. He hated numbers. He is contemptuous of data, analysis, science, reality.To have a vision is to be forward-looking. But Trump always looks backwards – to vindicate himself, retaliate, take revenge, exact retribution, settle scores, counterattack, return fire.“It’s an opportunity for President Trump to come to Washington and give a visionary speech about why the future would be better with his leadership — and to the degree he focuses on that it could be a very important speech,” says Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker who remains close to Trump, about tonight’s address. But Trump can’t get over the past. Especially now — after weeks of the Jan. 6 committee hearings exposing his conduct before and during the insurrection at the Capitol — does anyone seriously expect him to stay on message about the future?Maybe if they drug him and administer an electric shock every time he diverges from the teleprompter text his policy advisers have prepared for him, he may surprise. But the outtakes from the remarks he was supposed to give on January 7 suggest even this will pose a challenge.On the rare occasion Trump has offered a vision about the future, it’s been a weather prediction. Remember when he warned the public that Alabama was going to be hit by Hurricane Dorian — long after Dorian was already heading toward the Carolinas, leaving Alabama back in the sunshine? Rather than admit error, Trump had his White House policy staff release a 225-word statement defending his erroneous warning, and spent the next four days defending himself with a doctored and outdated hurricane map that looped in Alabama with a black marker, followed by assertions that his prediction was accurate at the time he issued the warning (it wasn’t), a week-old map that showed a low probability of tropical-storm winds in a small corner of Alabama, and incessant tweets culminating with “What I said was accurate! All Fake News in order to demean!” and “I accept the Fake News apologies!”It's been the same with all his bogus claims – starting with the crowd size at his inaugural, to voter fraud in 2016 and again in 2020, to “unknown Middle Easterners” streaming across the southern border in migrant caravans. He lies, then defends his lies with more lies, then rips into those who tell the truth. That’s always been his MO.The worst job I can imagine is to be a Trump policy adviser. It would be like running behind an elephant with a giant pooper-scooper.In addition to Rollins, the America First Policy Institute -- described gingerly as a “White House in waiting” -- is run by Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, and Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser. It has a staff of 150 and an operating budget of $25 million.I have no idea if they’re doing serious policy analysis. Trump’s former trade adviser Peter Navarro, appearing on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast Friday, called the organization “a dumping ground and haven for a lot of the failed people from the first administration, the RINOs, and the disloyalists who let Trump down.”It’s the nicest compliment I’ve heard anyone give the Institute’s personnel, but I still doubt they’ll get Trump to be a policy visionary. 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

Friends,On June 30, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case called Moore v. Harper. With all the controversial decisions handed down by the Court this term, its decision to take up this case slid under most radar detectors. But it could be the most dangerous case on the Court’s upcoming docket. You need to know about it. Here’s the background: Last February, the North Carolina Supreme Court blocked the state’s Republican controlled general assembly from instituting a newly drawn congressional district map, holding that the map violated the state constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering. The Republican Speaker of the North Carolina House appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, advancing what’s called the “independent state legislature” theory. It’s a theory that’s been circulating for years in right-wing circles. It holds that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures alone the power to regulate federal elections in their states.We’ve already had a preview of what this theory could mean. It underpins a major legal strategy in Trump’s attempted coup: the argument that state legislatures can substitute their own judgment of who should be president in place of the person chosen by a majority of voters. This was the core of the so-called “Eastman memo” that Trump relied on (and continues to rely on) in seeking to decertify Biden’s election. The U.S. Constitution does grant state legislatures the authority to prescribe “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections.” But it does not give state legislatures total power over our democracy. In fact, for the last century, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the independent state legislature theory.Yet if we know anything about the conservative majority now controlling the Supreme Court, it’s that they will rule on just about anything that suits the far-right’s agenda. Conservatives on the Court have already paved the way for this bonkers idea. Then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist was an early proponent. In his concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore, the 2000 case that halted the recount in Florida in the presidential election, Rehnquist (in an opinion joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) asserted that because the state court’s recount conflicted with deadlines set by the state legislature for the election, the court’s recount could not stand. The issue returned to the Supreme Court in 2020, when the justices turned down a request by Pennsylvania Republicans to fast-track their challenge to a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that required state election officials to count mail-in ballots received within three days of Election Day. In an opinion that accompanied the court’s order, Justice Alito (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch) suggested that the state supreme court’s decision to extend the deadline for counting ballots likely violated the U.S. Constitution because it intruded on the state legislature’s decision making. Make no mistake. The independent state legislature theory would make it easier for state legislatures to pull all sorts of additional election chicanery, without any oversight from state courts: ever more voter suppression laws, gerrymandered maps, and laws eliminating the power of election commissions and secretaries of state to protect elections. If the Supreme Court adopts the independent state legislature theory, it wouldn't just be throwing out a century of its own precedent. It would be rejecting the lessons that inspired the Framers to write the Constitution in the first place: that it’s dangerous to give state legislatures unchecked power, as they had under the Articles of Confederation.The Republican Party and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court call themselves “originalists” who find the meaning of the Constitution in the intent of the Farmers. But they really don’t give a damn what the Framers thought. They care only about imposing their own retrograde and anti-democracy ideology on the United States. But we can fight back. First, Congress must expand the Supreme Court to add balance to a branch of government that has been stolen by radicalized Republicans. This is not a far-fetched idea. The Constitution doesn’t specify how many justices there should be – and we’ve already changed the size of the Court seven times in American history.Second, Congress must impose term limits on Supreme Court justices, and have them rotate with judges on the U.S. courts of appeals. Third, Congress must restore federal voting rights protections and expand access to the ballot box. We need national minimum standards for voting in our democracy. Obviously, these reforms can happen only if Democrats retain control of the House in the midterm elections and add at least two more Democratic senators — willing to reform or abolish the filibuster.So your vote is critical, and not just in federal elections. Make sure you also vote for state legislators who understand what’s at stake to preserve our democracy. Because, as this Supreme Court shows, the future of our democracy is not guaranteed.Thanks for subscribing. Please consider a paid or gift subscription to help sustain this work. 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My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week: The just-finished series of January 6 hearings. Why more Republicans still want Trump to run in 2024 than Democrats want Biden to run in 2024. Why 195 House Republicans voted against a bill to protect contraception (and why every American male over the age of 40 now needs a vasectomy). Trump’s outtakes on January 7, 2021. The Hawley Trot. Please pull up a chair. 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

Friends, One final point about the Select Committee on January 6 as it concludes this series of hearings. Its members and staff deserve our heartfelt thanks for a job (although not over) extraordinarily well done.So much has gone so wrong with so many aspects of our government and other institutions we rely on that I think it’s important to recognize and salute this sort of excellence. And courage.Liz Cheney alone deserves a medal. Bennie Thompson handled the committee with grace and thoughtfulness. Adam Kinzinger did his job beautifully. Jamie Raskin was eloquent. Other members deserve kudos for their powerful presentations.The committee’s format has remained disciplined and consistent since the committee aired its first televised hearing last month. Each hearing has dispensed with the usual awful aspects of congressional hearings -- bloated running times, grandstanding, endless speeches, badgering, cheap shots – while creating a coherent narrative across separate sessions. The hearings have constituted the most compelling televised hearings in history, Watergate included.You’ll remember that Congressional Republicans initially stymied the formation of an independent commission to investigate January 6, then tried to appoint bad-faith wreckers to the House committee formed in lieu of the commission. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocked those appointments, which prompted Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to declare that Republicans would boycott the panel altogether. Many pundits criticized Pelosi at the time, arguing that the committee’s work would be perceived as purely partisan and therefore lack credibility. (“Those hoping that the committee might help us understand what happened on January 6,” CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote, “should give up on those hopes now.”) The fact that two Republican representatives, Cheney and Kinzinger, independently joined the committee, despite McCarthy’s wishes, apparently didn’t count as “bipartisanship” in the eyes of these critics. But Pelosi has been proven correct. America owes a deep debt of gratitude to the members of Congress and staff who have given us the most powerful and memorable depiction of the near-death of American democracy ever presented. Now it’s up to the rest of us – including Merrick Garland and the Justice Department – to display the same degree of excellence and courage, and ensure that American democracy endures. 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

On Tuesday, in a House Democratic primary contest to represent a predominantly Black middle-class district north and east of Washington, DC., Glenn Ivey, a former state’s attorney for Prince George’s County, defeated Donna Edwards, the first Black woman elected to the House from Maryland. (Edwards left the seat to run unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 and had hoped to return.) Progressive groups backed Edwards, but television and radio were saturated with ads questioning her willingness to perform basic services for her constituents and to make the kinds of compromises necessary for legislative success. The argument was horse manure. Where did the money for those ads come from? The American-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its new super PAC, the United Democracy Project (along with another group, the Democratic Majority for Israel). Together they spent almost $7 million to defeat Edwards. That’s a staggering sum for a single Democratic primary. What did Edwards do to deserve this degree of AIPAC enmity? Could it have been because she was an early supporter of a nuclear deal between Iran and five industrial countries, including the United States? Probably not, because that hardly distinguished her from most other Democrats. Besides, the Obama administration supported the deal. Was it because Edwards took a number of votes that expressed support for Palestinian rights and the resumption of a meaningful peace process? These were hardly outside of the mainstream.So what was it? Dig deeper. Remember, AIPAC never used to endorse candidates. Until this election cycle, it didn’t even have a super PAC. But it’s on the way to spending nearly $20 million in the 2022 Democratic primaries alone. That makes it the single most influential political group in Democratic electoral politics. And what’s the criterion for whom AIPAC supports in Democratic primaries? If AIPAC were simply aiming to promote Israel or deter antisemitism, presumably it would be as active in Republican primaries as it is in Democratic ones. But it has barely spent a dime in Republican primaries — not even against Republican candidates who have been widely criticized for antisemitic comments. And its United Democracy Project super-PAC hasn’t spent a penny. AIPAC hasn’t supported a Republican primary challenger to Marjorie Taylor Greene (who claimed that Jewish space lasers were behind California’s 2018 wildfires), for example. But AIPAC has endorsed Republican Scott Perry, who compared Democrats to Nazis.The real criterion for AIPAC’s support or enmity in Democratic primaries seems to have more to do with which candidate is friendlier toward America’s moneyed interests and the Republican agenda. When Edwards was last a member of Congress, she backed single-payer health care and was one of the early champions of sweeping campaign finance reforms. Both irked big money. In the pending race between Haley Stevens and Andy Levin in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, AIPAC is supporting Stevens (who has a history of fighting worker protections) against Levin (who is a labor champion). AIPAC is on the way to becoming a Republican front group. Much of AIPAC’s trove is coming from Republican donors. In May, Republican billionaires Paul Singer and Bernie Marcus donated $1 million each to AIPAC’s super PAC. Marcus famously gave $7 million to President Trump’s campaign in 2016.So far in this election cycle, AIPAC has endorsed over 100 Republican candidates who refused to certify the 2020 election results.What to do about this?First, Democrats must stop allowing AIPAC to be a Democratic kingmaker. The Democratic leadership in Congress must openly criticize AIPAC’s role in Democratic primaries. Democratic candidates should cease taking money from AIPAC in primaries and condemn candidates who do.Second, all of us need to get behind campaign finance reforms that prevent big money from whatever source from corrupting our elections. Such reforms are possible notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s horrific Citizens United decision. The House has already passed legislation that would encourage small-dollar donations by matching them dollar-for-dollar with public financing. Like most other reforms, it’s been stalled in the Senate. We must elect Democrats to the Senate who will pass this. Finally, if you’re concerned about Israel’s future or about antisemitism in America, I’d recommend you not give another penny to AIPAC and urge others to cease funding AIPAC, too. Instead, consider supporting “J Street,” the pro-Israel nonprofit group that advocates diplomacy-based solutions and supports progressive candidates, or If Not Now.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

Tonight is the eighth and last of the scheduled public hearings of the House Select Committee on the January 6 attack (the committee is still gathering evidence and may schedule additional hearings). So this is a good time to press the pause button and examine what the committee is accomplishing. The committee is clearly building a criminal case against Trump and his closest enablers of seditious conspiracy, a crime defined as “conspiring to overthrow, put down, or destroy by force the government of the United States or to oppose by force the authority thereof.” I expect the committee will make a criminal referral to the Justice Department, handing over all its evidence. Ideally, Trump, along with Giuliani, Powell, Stone, Flynn, Navarro, Bannon, Meadows, and other co-conspirators, will be convicted and end up in jail. But the Committee has a second purpose — one that has received too little attention: to stop Trump’s continuing attack on American democracy. Even as the committee reveals Trump’s attempted coup in the months leading up to and during the January 6 attack, the attempted coup continues. Trump hasn’t stopped giving speeches to stir up angry mobs with his Big Lie — he’ll be giving another tomorrow in Arizona. Trump hasn’t stopped pushing states to alter the outcomes of the 2020 election — last week he urged Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to support a resolution that would retract Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes cast for Biden. Trump is actively backing candidates who propound the Lie. Several prominent Republican candidates for the Senate and for governor — such as JD Vance in Ohio, Blake Masters in Arizona, and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania — are running on it. Republican candidates across America are using increasingly violent language. Republicans lawmakers in several states are enacting legislation to take over election machinery and ignore the popular vote. Meanwhile, the lives of committee members and their families have been threatened. Witnesses are receiving gangster-style warnings not to cooperate. The committee’s message to all of America, including Republicans: Stop supporting this treachery. In other words, the committee’s work is not just backward-looking — revealing Trump’s attempted coup. It is also forward-looking, appealing to Americans to reject his continuing attempted coup. In order to accomplish this, the committee is doing six important things:First, it’s making crystal clear that the continuing attempted coup is based on a lie — which is why the committee has repeatedly shown Trump’s Attorney General William Barr, saying:I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations [of voter fraud], but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people, members of the public, that there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn't count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense. And it was being laid out there, and I told them that it was — that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that. And it was doing a grave disservice to the country. Second, the committee is showing that the battle between democracy and authoritarian is non-partisan. Not only are the committee’s vice-chairman Liz Cheney and committee member Adam Kinzinger, Republican representatives, but most of the committee’s witnesses are Republicans who worked in the Trump White House or as Republican-elected state officials, or they staffed Republican legislators or served as judges appointed by Republican presidents. All appear before the committee as American citizens who are disgusted by and worried about Trump’s attempted coup. When Cheney displayed a message Trump tweeted after the assault on the Capitol began, in which he claimed Vice President Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done," Cheney asked former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for her reaction. Hutchinson responded:As a staffer that works to always represent the administration to the best of my ability, and to showcase the good things that he had done for the country, I remember feeling frustrated, disappointed, it felt personal, I was really sad. As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic, it was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.Third, the committee is appealing to Republican lawmakers to stop supporting Trump’s continuing attempted coup. During the first televised hearing, Liz Cheney issued an explicit warning: We take our oath to defend the United States constitution. And that oath must mean something. Tonight. I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain. Fourth, the committee wants the public to see that average Americans have fallen for Trump’s treachery, with disastrous results. Witness Stephen Ayres, who described himself as “nothing but a family man and a working man” participated in the January 6 attack because Trump “basically put out, you know, come to the Stop the Steal rally, you know, and I felt like I needed to be down here. … I was, you know, I was very upset, as were most of his supporters.” When Liz Cheney asked Ayers, “Would it have made a difference to you to know that President Trump himself had no evidence of widespread fraud?” he replied, “Oh, definitely … I may not have come down here then.”Fifth, the committee is reminding Americans of their duties to democracy. Committee chair Bennie Thompson, last week:When I think about the most basic way to explain the importance of elections in the United States, there's a phrase that always comes to mind. It may sound straightforward, but it's meaningful. We settle our differences at the ballot box. Sometimes my choice prevails, sometimes yours does, but it's that simple. We cast our votes. We count the votes. If something seems off with the results, we can challenge them in court, and then we accept the results. When you're on the losing side, that doesn't mean you have to be happy about it. And in the United States, there's plenty you can do and say so. You can protest. You can organize. You can get ready for the next election to try to make sure your side has a better chance the next time the people settle their differences at the ballot box. But you can't turn violent. You can't try to achieve your desired outcome through force or harassment or intimidation. Any real leader who sees their supporters going down that path, approaching that line has a responsibility to say stop, we gave it our best, we came up short, we try again next time, because we settle our differences at the ballot box.Others on the committee have spoken about the danger to democracy of mobs and demagogues. Here’s committee member Jamie Raskin: In 1837, a racist mob in Alton, Illinois broke into the offices of an abolitionist newspaper and killed its editor, Elijah Lovejoy. Lincoln wrote a speech in which he said that no transatlantic military giant could ever crush us as a nation, even with all of the fortunes in the world. But if downfall ever comes to America, he said, we ourselves would be its author and finisher. If racist mobs are encouraged by politicians to rampage and terrorize, Lincoln said, they will violate the rights of other citizens and quickly destroy the bonds of social trust necessary for democracy to work. Mobs and demagogues will put us on a path to political tyranny, Lincoln said. This very old problem has returned with new ferocity today, as a president who lost an election deployed a mob, which included dangerous extremists, to attack the constitutional system of election and the peaceful transfer of power. Finally, the committee is showing that Trump’s attempted coup is ongoing. Near the end of last week’s hearing, Cheney revealed that:After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump's call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us and this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice. Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.I have no idea whether the hearings will lead to criminal indictments and convictions of Trump and his enablers, but I do believe the hearings are finding their way into the public’s consciousness. This may prove to be as — if not more — valuable than a criminal proceeding. Not even a criminal conviction will change the minds of those who believe Trump’s Big Lie; to the contrary, it may make them even more suspicious or paranoid, possibly leading to further violence. But the hearings may begin to convince Trump supporters that he’s a dangerous charlatan. The hearings already appear to be having an effect. The percentage of Republicans who say Trump misled people about the 2020 election has ticked up since last month, while a majority of Americans say Trump committed a crime. At the same time, Trump’s enormous fundraising operation has slowed. A New York Times/Siena College poll last week that showed nearly half of Republican primary voters would rather vote for a Republican other than Trump in 2024. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who may run in 2024, has been gaining on Trump in some polls, including in New Hampshire, the first primary state, where one recent survey had DeSantis statistically tied with Trump among Republican primary voters. In 1954, I watched the Army-McCarthy hearings from our living room sofa — my father and I squinting into a tiny television screen (my father yelling “son-of-a-b***h!” every time McCarthy or his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, spoke). McCarthy had picked a fight with the U.S. Army, charging lax security at a top-secret army facility. The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case. At a session on June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch's young staff attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. As the television audience looked on, Welch responded with the lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"Almost overnight, McCarthy's immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man. Is there a lesson here?Please consider a paid or gift subscription to help sustain this work. 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

Friends, Today I want to connect some dots. What do congressional Republicans, Joe Manchin, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban have in common? They all oppose the Biden administration’s proposed global minimum corporate tax — designed to stop corporations from playing one country against another in a worldwide race to the tax bottom. The reason for Manchin’s opposition? As he told a West Virginia radio host on Friday, other countries have yet to adopt the tax and he doesn’t want to put American companies at a competitive disadvantage.This, my friends, is utter baloney. More than 100 other countries have already agreed to the global minimum tax, including all European Union members except Hungary. It’s the United States that’s the laggard. The reason for Hungary’s opposition? As Hungary recently revealed, Republicans in Congress secretly asked Hungary to block it. (Each country in the European Union has veto power over the bloc’s tax agreements.) Top Republicans in the House Ways and Means Committee even sent a letter to the Hungarian ambassador to the U.S., thanking him for Hungary’s help.Think about it. One of America’s two political parties has been in cahoots with Europe’s most authoritarian government, to allow global corporations based in the United States to avoid paying ever more of what they owe the United States.It’s jaw-dropping. Republicans who march under the banner of nationalism — “American first,” “control our borders,” “Make America Great Again” — eagerly conspire with foreign governments to make America’s borders even more porous to global capital and deprive America of needed tax revenue. While they criticize supposed “global elites” that have “hollowed out” America’s heartland, they connive with global elites to make them even richer. Missouri Republican Senator Josh HawIey — who fist-bumped January 6 rioters at the Capitol — relishes attacking what he calls “the cosmopolitan economy” of global corporations that “move jobs and assets overseas to chase the cheapest wages and pay the lowest taxes.” Yet Hawley opposes the global minimum tax. “I don't know that it’ll really work,” he says, “so I'm skeptical about it.”We’re way beyond hypocrisy here. We’re in a realm of duplicity that should make even a Trump blush. Follow the money. Big corporations want to to shift ever more of their profits to low-tax nations. So they’re using a small portion of their humongous profits to bribe Republican lawmakers and a few Democrats like Manchin to vote against the global minimum. What’s Hungary’s interest? Start with the fact that Viktor Orban and his government don’t believe in democracy. They’re pushing white Christian nationalism instead. It’s the same culture war advanced by the likes of Trump, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, among others. White Christian nationalism is the perfect foil for the rising tide of global corporate predation. This way, sovereignty becomes a matter of race and ethnicity rather than economics. Focusing on immigrants “replacing” the white race diverts attention from how much tax revenue global corporations are forcing average people to replace. A similar coalition between global capitalists and nationalist cultural warriors in the 1920s set the stage for the horrors of the 1930s and the ravages of World War II. Beware. 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

On Friday, after putting a final spear through the heart of what remained of Biden’s and the Democrat’s domestic agenda, West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Joe Manchin also rejected any tax increases on big corporations or the wealthy — until inflation is no longer a problem.This is rich, in every sense of the word. Raising taxes on big American corporations and the wealthy would not fuel inflation. It would slow inflation by reducing demand — and do it in a way that wouldn’t hurt lower-income Americans (such as those living in, say, West Virginia).Manchin’s state is one of the poorest in America. West Virginia ranks 45th in education, 47th in health care, 48th in overall prosperity, and 50th in infrastructure. Tax revenue from corporations and billionaires could be used to rebuild West Virginia, among other places that need investment around America.But Manchin doesn’t seem to give a cluck. After all, the Democrat’s agenda — which Manchin just obliterated — included pre-K education, free community college, child subsidies, Medicare dental and vision benefits, paid family leave, elder care, and much else — all of enormous value to West Virginia. (On a per-person basis, West Virginians would have benefitted more than the residents of all but two other states.)It’s not as if Manchin has championed anything else Democrats have sought. Remember Manchin’s “bipartisan compromise” on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act? Nothing came of it, of course. Nothing has come of any of the fig leafs Manchin has conjured to cover his unrelenting opposition to every other Democratic goal. What’s going on here? It’s spelled m-o-n-e-y. Few if any American-based global corporations or billionaires reside in West Virginia, but lots of money flows to Manchin from corporations and billionaires residing elsewhere. Manchin has not only taken more campaign contributions from oil, gas and coal companies than any other senator (as well as dividends from his own coal company), he has one of the largest war chests from all big American corporations. If the Democratic Party had any capacity to discipline its lawmakers or hold them accountable (if pigs could fly), it would at least revoke Manchin’s chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. To continue to allow this key position to be occupied by the man who has single-handedly blocked one of the last opportunities to save the Earth is an insult to the universe.I’m told the Democrats don’t dare take this step for fear Manchin would leave the Democratic Party and switch his allegiance to the Republicans. Why exactly would this be so terrible? Manchin already acts like a Republican. Oh, no! they tell me. If Manchin switches parties, Democrats would lose control over the Senate. Well, I have news for Democrats. They already lost control over the Senate. In fact, the way things are right now, Biden and the Democrats have the worst of both worlds. They look like they control the Senate, as well as the House and the presidency. But they can’t get a damn thing done because Manchin (and his intermittent sidekick Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema) won’t let them. So after almost two years of appearing to run the entire government, Democrats have accomplished almost nothing of what they came to Washington to do. America is burning and flooding but Democrats won’t enact climate measures. Voting rights and reproductive rights are being pulverized but Democrats won’t protect them. Gun violence is out of control but Democrats come up with a miniature response. Billionaires and big corporations are siphoning off more national wealth and income than in living memory and paying a lower tax rate (often zero), but Democrats won’t raise taxes on big corporations and the wealthy. Which means that in November’s midterm elections, Democrats will have to go back to voters and say “we promised a lot but we delivered squat, so please vote for us again.” This does not strike me as a compelling message. By kicking Manchin out of the party, Democrats could at least go into the midterms with a more realistic pitch: “It looked like we had control of the Senate, but we didn’t. Now that you know who the real Democrats are, give us the power and we will get it done.” Maybe this way they’ll pick up more real Democratic senators, and do it. 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

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 Joe Manchin’s final destruction of Biden’s domestic agenda, Schumer’s and Biden’s inability to hold him accountable, this week’s terrifying inflation number and its potential effect on the midterms, appreciation for the House January 6 committee, Heather’s inability to tell a joke, and my aging irritability. 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