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Robert Reich

Robert B. Reich, a co-founder of The American Prospect, is a Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. His website can be found here and his blog can be found here.

Recent Articles

What We Must Do Now

Robert ReichJul 03, 2018
AP Photo/Evan Vucci President Donald Trump walks off after speaking at a Foxconn facility in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin M y friends, this is a dark hour. Intolerance, cruelty, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and environmental destruction have been let loose across the land. Trump controls the Republican Party, the Republican Party controls the House and Senate, and Trump may soon control the Supreme Court. But here’s the thing. Only 27 percent of Americans are Republican, according to the Gallup poll. Moreover, the vast majority of Americans disapprove of Trump. He lost the popular vote in 2016 by 2.8 million. Since then, his approval ratings haven’t exceeded 45 percent. The GOP itself is no longer a political party, anyway. It is now little more than Donald Trump, Fox News, a handful of billionaire funders, and rightwing Christians who oppose a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, and the Constitution’s separation of church and state. Yet Trump is about to make the second Supreme Court...

Trump's Fourth of July

Robert ReichJun 26, 2018
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta President Donald Trump gestures upon arrival at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. O n this coming Fourth of July, it’s worth pondering the true meaning of American patriotism—as opposed to the malignant, distorted view of it propounded by Donald J. Trump. For Trump, the central challenge of American patriotism is to secure our borders. “Without borders, there can be no nation,” he says. But excluding foreigners has never been a dominant part of American patriotism. For most of its existence America has been relatively open to people from the rest of the world, especially those fleeing tyranny and violence. America’s core struggle has been one of inclusion, not exclusion. We have strived to extend equal citizenship to Native Americans, African Americans, women, and LGBTQs. The poems of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, and the songs of Woody Guthrie, expressed loving devotion to America while turning that love into a demand for justice. “This...

The Military-Industrial Drain

President Trump's call for ramping up military spending leaves most Americans behind. 

Robert ReichJun 19, 2018
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik President Donald Trump walks to the Oval Office after a news conference A s Trump stokes tensions around the world, he’s adding fuel to the fire by demanding even more Pentagon spending. It’s a dangerous military buildup intended to underwrite endless wars and enrich defense contractors, while draining money from investment in the American people. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once noted, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." Eisenhower was a Republican and a former general who helped win World War II for the allies, yet he understood America’s true priorities. But Washington—and especially Trump—have lost sight of these basic tradeoffs. Since 2001, the Pentagon budget has soared from $456 billion—in today’s dollars—to $700 billion, including the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other national security...

The Constitutional Crisis Is Now

Robert ReichJun 12, 2018
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci) President Donald Trump boards Air Force One for a trip to the G7 Summit in Charlevoix, Canada, on June 8, 2018. I keep hearing that if Trump fires Mueller we’ll face a constitutional crisis. Or if Mueller subpoenas Trump to testify and Trump defies the subpoena, it’s a constitutional crisis. Or if Mueller comes up with substantial evidence that Trump is guilty of colluding with Russia or of obstructing justice but the House doesn’t move to impeach him, we’ll have a constitutional crisis. I have news for you. We’re already in a constitutional crisis. For a year and a half the president of the United States has been carrying out a systemic attack on the institutions of our democracy. A constitutional crisis does not occur suddenly like a coup that causes a government to collapse. It occurs gradually, as a system of government is slowly weakened. The current crisis has been unfolding since the waning days of the 2016 campaign when Trump refused to say whether he’d...

A Second American Civil War?

Robert ReichJun 05, 2018
AP Photo/Evan Vucci Audience members listen as President Donald Trump speaks during a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery I magine that an impeachment resolution against Trump passes the House. Trump claims it’s the work of the “deep state.” Fox News’s Sean Hannity demands every honest patriot take to the streets. Right-wing social media call for war. As insurrection spreads, Trump commands the armed forces to side with the “patriots.” Or it’s November 2020 and Trump has lost the election. He charges voter fraud, claiming that the “deep state” organized tens of millions of illegal immigrants to vote against him, and says he has an obligation not to step down. Demonstrations and riots ensue. Trump commands the armed forces to put them down. If these sound far-fetched, consider Trump’s torrent of lies, his admiration for foreign dictators, his off-hand jokes about being “president for life” (Xi Xinping “was able to do that,” he told admirers in March. “I think it’s...

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