The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

In a comment on this past Saturday’s post, Paula OH said: “It’s a very tough time. We need a hope machine! Anyone know how to build one?”

My answer to Paula is a resounding: “yes!” And in a moment I’ll give Paula and you some hammers, nails, and solar panels to build one.

First, though, I want to validate your discouragement.

We expected COVID to be gone by now. We thought the minimum wage would be raised by now, that bold measures to slow climate change would be enacted by now, that pharmaceuticals would be cheaper and childcare widely available by now. We never thought we’d be back in a Cold War with Russia, that racist “replacement” theory would lead to a massacre by a crazed gunman, that Trump would be back stirring up nationalist racism, that a single Democratic senator named Joe Manchin would destroy a progressive agenda most Americans favor, that inflation would rip through the economy, or that Roe v. Wade would be repealed. And now we face the serious possibility that the next Congress will be under the control of crazy right-wingers.

Don’t kick yourself for feeling lousy. You have every right to feel that way.

But let me say something else as clearly as I can. I’ve been at this fight a very long time, and right now I find lots of reasons for hope. Ten, to be exact. (Here’s where the hammers, nails, and solar panels for Paula’s hope machine come in.)

1. First, unions are stronger today — and more workers want to join a union — than at any time in the last four decades. Between October 1, 2021 and March 30, 2022, the National Labor Relations Board recorded a 57 percent increase in workers filing for the petitions to allow union elections. That’s a good thing. Unions give workers a voice. They lead to higher wages and better working conditions.

2. A second reason for hope: Many issues now on table — with serious odds of being enacted within the next five or six years — would have seemed leftwing fantasies a decade ago. We haven’t achieved them yet, but most Americans have come around to supporting them. A majority is in favor of Medicare for All. There’s also a surge of support for Universal Basic Income. Also for free public higher education. And for a wealth tax on billionaires.

3. The more America sees of Trump, the more most people are reminded of how disastrous he was for the nation and why we need stable and thoughtful individuals in positions of power. If Trump gets back on Twitter, his divisive and racist drivel will be harmful, of course. But it will also pull many Democrats, Independents and young people back into the fight against Trumpist racist nationalism. Ditto for all the Trump wannabes who have been advancing in Republican primaries.

4. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority is a horror show — but it’s also another reminder to most people of why we need a Democrat in the Oval Office and a Democratic senate. The imminent reversal of Roe is galvanizing a new and even stronger wave of activism.

5. The young people I teach and work with are some of the most committed, talented, and progressive people I’ve ever had the privilege of teaching and working with. I’m not talking only about Berkeley, or even the coasts. I’m finding such young people across America. Many are entering politics. AOC is the leading edge of a generational wave that is transforming American politics for the common good.

6. Speaking of waves: Tucker Carlson may bemoan it, and his older and whiter Fox News viewers may hate it, but the demographic forces now reshaping America cannot and will not be reversed. We’re a more diverse society than ever before. This diversity will be a huge strength in the future. And it will be an additional bulwark against racist nationalism.

7. The myth of the decline of the West and the rise of the East — propounded by China and Russia — is proving itself bankrupt. Putin’s war on Ukraine is showing the world that totalitarian systems can’t even execute a war efficiently. Because dissent is stifled, accurate information doesn’t get back to headquarters. Because oligarchs have ravaged government funds, weapons systems don’t work. Because hierarchies are rigid and education in short supply, armies lack the training they need. Putin’s war is also revealing how fragile the Russian economy is, as is any economy whose strength turns on raw materials.

8. But the pandemic has revealed the unnecessary harshness of American capitalism. The horror of COVID has built public support for paid family leave, universal childcare, and universal access to healthcare. The pandemic has also shown us how essential our “essential” workers really are — fueling measures to raise state minimum wages (even if the federal minimum lags behind).

9. At the local and community level, the pandemic has shown most Americans just how kind we can be to one another, how much we depend on each other, and — as Tocqueville noted almost 180 years ago — how rich this nation continues to be in grass-roots voluntary efforts for the common good. Take a day off from the grim national and international news to walk around your town, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

10. Finally, let me remind you this is a long game. Fifty years ago, a person could be imprisoned for being gay, there was virtually no Black middle class, women were second-class citizens, no women headed large corporations or sat on the Supreme Court. Fifty years ago, tens of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese were dying in a purposeless war, the Democratic Party was under thumb of big city bosses, Los Angeles was buried under smog, we suffered a crime wave far larger (in proportion to our population) than anything seen today, poverty was deeper, and Richard Nixon was unleashing his “plumbers” to break into the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

The struggle never ends. It is hard because it has to be hard — because the fight is about overcoming fundamental imbalances of power, and those with power will not give it up without a fight. Martin Luther King Jr., was almost correct when he reminded us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He would have been more accurate had he also reminded us that there are bumps and potholes in that arc, some of which send us into temporary tailspins.

What do you think? Where do you find hope these days?

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My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (my former student and executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action), exploring the lows and few highs of the week. As usual, pull up a chair and bring your morning cup.

If you somebody who might enjoy a conversation over coffee, please share.

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 again, friends.

After pro-choice protesters showed up outside the homes of Justice Samuel Alito and two other justices — peacefully chanting while walking in the street that lacked sidewalks — the editorial board of the Washington Post described such protests as “problematic” because they “bring direct public pressure to bear on a decision-making process that must be controlled, evidence-based and rational if there is to be any hope of an independent judiciary.”

I’m sympathetic to this view. It’s one thing to picket the Supreme Court as an institution; it’s quite another to demonstrate in front of the homes of individual justices. But surely the pro-choice protesters have a First Amendment right to be heard. I’m reminded of a 1994 case (Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, Inc.) in which the Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment rights of anti-abortion protesters to picket the residences of employees of an abortion clinic, saying the ordinance barring such protests within 300 feet of such residences was too broad.

The underlying question is how to weigh the First Amendment rights of protesters against the privacy rights of individual justices. The irony, of course, is that Justice Alito’s leaked opinion finds no right to privacy in the Constitution.

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Alito’s leaked decision has led me to reflect back on my years briefing and arguing cases before the Supreme Court almost fifty years ago. The Court I argued before understood that its role was to balance the scales of justice in favor of the powerless. The two political branches of government (Congress and the executive branch) could not be relied on to do this.

Republican appointees to the Supreme Court understood this role as did Democratic appointees. Even Richard Nixon’s appointees — Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and Warren Burger — exemplified this. It was Blackmun who wrote the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, and Powell and Burger joined him, as did four Democratic appointees to the Court — William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, and Potter Stewart.

The cases I argued were insignificant. I was a rookie in the Justice Department who was given either sure winners or sure losers to argue because the Department didn’t want to take a risk on a rookie — a wise move. (At my first argument, I mistakenly referred to Justice Stewart as Justice Brennan, which caused the two of them to guffaw and me to be mortified.)

But I was in awe of that Court.

I especially recall Douglas, who had recently suffered a stroke and was in obvious discomfort, looking sharply at me as I made my arguments. Here was the justice who wrote the 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, finding that a constitutional right to privacy forbids states from banning contraception — a right that would be jeopardized by Samuel Alito’s current analysis because, again, Alito doesn’t recognize a privacy right in the Constitution.

Douglas was also the man who decided that the Vietnam war was illegal and issued an order that temporarily blocked sending Army reservists to Vietnam. He was the justice who wrote in the 1972 case Sierra Club v. Morton that any part of nature feeling the destructive pressure of modern technology should have standing to sue in court — including rivers, lakes, trees, and even the air — because if corporations (which are legal fictions) have standing, shouldn’t the natural world?

Sitting not far away from him on the bench was Thurgood Marshall — who two decades before had succeeded in having the Supreme Court declare segregated public schools unconstitutional, in the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education. Marshall did more than any person then alive to break down the shameful legal edifice of Jim Crow.

Douglas, Marshall, and Blackmun were the intellectual leaders of that Supreme Court. Their opinions gave the Court its moral heft. They drew not only from the Constitution as written but also from the nation as it had evolved. They understood the moral leadership America needed to protect the rights of the voiceless and the powerless.

Today’s Supreme Court majority doesn’t have a clue about the Court’s moral authority, and couldn’t care less. They are political hacks, rigid ideologues, and small minds intent on entrenching the power of the already powerful, comforting the already comfortable, and inflicting pain on the already inflicted. (Five were nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote. Three were nominated by a president who instigated a coup against the United States; they were confirmed because a rogue Republican Party mounted scorched-earth campaigns to put them on the Court.)

The intellectual leader of today’s majority (if “intellectual” is the appropriate adjective) is Samuel Alito, perhaps the most conceptually rigid and cognitively dishonest justice since Chief Justice Roger Taney (who authored Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1857, finding that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories and that Black people could not become citizens).

The authority of the Supreme Court derives entirely from Americans’ confidence and trust in it. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers No. 78, the judiciary has no influence over “the sword” (the executive branch’s power to compel action) “or the purse” (the Congress’s power to appropriate funds). The Supreme Court I was privileged to argue before almost 50 years ago had significant moral authority. It protected the less powerful with arguments that resonated with the core values of the nation. Americans didn’t always agree with its conclusions, but they respected it. That respect and trust allowed the Court to lead the way, charting a moral course for the nation.

Today’s cruel and partisan Supreme Court majority is squandering what remains of the Court’s moral authority. That is perhaps the deepest tragedy of all.

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Hello friends. I hope you’re reasonably well, under the circumstances. Today I want to talk to you about leaks. I’ve had a lot of experience with them. I spent almost half my adult life in Washington.

Justice Samuel Alito’s first draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade — which was leaked to Politico — was dated February 10. It is probably obsolete by now, as other justices have had time to offer critiques, dissents, and revisions. But according to another leak from the Supreme Court — this one occurring last week — the five-member majority to overturn Roe remains intact. (This second leak came to the Washington Post from “three conservatives close to the court who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.”)

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These Supreme Court leaks aren’t the only ones shaking official Washington right now. Last Wednesday the New York Times — citing “senior American officials” — disclosed that the United States is providing Ukrainian officials with locational details of Russian movements that Ukrainians have used to target and kill Russian generals. Then on Thursday, NBC reported — again citing American “officials” — that U.S. intelligence helped Ukraine locate the Moskva, Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea, which Ukraine subsequently sank.

President Biden was so livid about these leaks (according to Times columnist Tom Friedman, who received a leak about Biden’s reaction to the leaks) that Biden called the director of national intelligence, the director of the C.I.A. and the secretary of defense to make clear in the “strongest and most colorful language” that this kind of loose talk is reckless and has got to stop immediately, before the U.S. ends up in an unintended war with Russia.

Supreme Court drafts don’t normally leak (insiders tell me the Alito draft isn’t the first, though) because the stakes aren’t normally as high as they are with the Court’s decision to abandon Roe. The machinations of American foreign policy do tend to leak quite a lot. Richard Nixon’s Watergate “plumbers” were, after all, trying to discover who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. (Nixon couldn’t plug the leaks. Every time he tried, they grew leakier. They ultimately drove him out of office.)

Years ago, when I was Secretary of Labor, I sent a memo marked “confidential” to Bill Clinton, about why and how the minimum wage should be raised. I took pains to make sure only his eyes saw the memo. The next day it was in the Wall Street Journal.

People in power always want to plug up leaks. I felt that way when I saw my memo in the Journal. But the goal is often misguided. In my experience, people in power pay too little attention to why they want to withhold information in the first place. Much of it stems from not wanting to be embarrassed. (I didn’t want my minimum-wage memo publicized because I didn’t want to embarrass Clinton, or embarrass myself by looking like I was trying to pressure Clinton.)

Besides, most leaks can’t be plugged up.

Some people in Washington leak information to the media to make themselves feel important. Others, to kill initiatives they don’t like. Others, to fuel initiatives they want. A few (journalists, spies, inside traders) make money by buying and selling leaks.

But the biggest reason Washington is so leaky has to do with the way the city is organized. Washington is a one-company town. Just about everyone who works in the upper reaches of government has a spouse, best friend, or lover who works in another part of the upper reaches of government, or in a firm that’s lobbying the government, or in the media that’s reporting on the government. In a one-company town like this, personal intimacies are indistinguishable from public gossip. Everyone knows someone extremely well who knows someone else extremely well who knows someone who has a delicious secret.

Every city has its public gossip — the juiciest tidbits of which no one else yet knows but everyone will be talking about as soon as the tidbits are circulated. In Boston, it’s about sports and coaches. In San Francisco, it’s restaurants and chefs. In New York, it’s money and insider financial deals.

In Washington, it’s politics and power. Possessing and leaking confidential political information confirms that the leaker has power. And in leaking the information, the leaker confers some of that power on the leakee. Leaks thereby move swiftly from one dear ear to the next — shared over breakfast, brunch, lunch, coffee, cocktails, receptions, dinners, late drinks, wee-hour assignations, early-hour get-togethers, early coffees — all in a slightly lowered voice or a behind-the-hand whisper, typically with a knowing smirk. These conversations and handoffs cement personal relationships in the nation’s capital.

When it comes to secrets, the size of a city depends not on the number of people inhabiting it but on the velocity with which secrets flow. By this measure, Washington D.C. is one of America’s tiniest villages with a main street running about a block. Every juicy secret will get out. Every hot memorandum will leak. Every intoxicating paper marked “confidential” will leak even faster.

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My informal weekly morning coffee with Heather Lofthouse (my former student and Executive Director of Inequality Media), exploring the lows of the week. As usual, pull up a chair and bring your morning cup.

If you know others who might enjoy a conversation over coffee, please share.

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

The Supreme Court’s upcoming decision to reverse Roe v. Wade (an early draft of which was leaked Monday) doesn’t ban abortions; it leaves the issue to the states. As a result, it will put another large brick in the growing wall separating Blue and Red America.

Some say we’re on the verge of a civil war, but that’s not right. It won’t be a formal secession (we tried that once), but a kind of benign separation analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce. We are already quietly splitting into two Americas — one largely urban, racially and ethnically diverse, and young; the other largely rural or exurban, white, and older — each running according to different laws and with different sources of revenue.

The split is accelerating. Red ZIP codes are getting redder and blue ZIP codes, bluer. Of the nation's total 3,143 counties, the number of super landslide counties — where a presidential candidate won at least 80 percent of the vote — jumped from 6 percent in 2004 to 22 percent in 2020.

Surveys show Americans find it increasingly important to live around people who share their political values. Animosity toward those in the opposing party is higher than at any time in living memory. 42 percent of registered voters believe Americans in the other party are “downright evil.” Almost 40 percent would be upset at the prospect of their child marrying someone from the opposite party. Even before the 2020 election, when asked if violence would be justified if the other party won the election, 18.3 percent of Democrats and 13.8 percent of Republicans responded in the affirmative.

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While Red states make it nearly impossible to get abortions, they’re making it easier than ever to buy guns — even easier to carry concealed guns without a permit. They’re suppressing votes. (In Florida and Texas, teams of “election police” have been created to crack down on the rare crime of voter fraud, another fallout from Trump’s Big Lie.) They’re banning the teaching of America’s history of racism. They’re requiring transgender students to use bathrooms and join sports teams that reflect their gender at birth. They’re making it harder to protest; more difficult to qualify for unemployment benefits or other forms of public assistance; and almost impossible to form labor unions. And they’re passing “bounty” laws — enforced not by governments, which can be sued in federal court, but by rewards to private citizens for filing lawsuits — on issues ranging from classroom speech to abortions to vaccinations.

Blue states are moving in the opposite direction. Several, including Colorado and Vermont, are codifying a right to abortion. Some are helping cover abortion expenses for out-of-staters. When Idaho proposed a ban on abortions that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from other states. Maryland and Washington have expanded access and legal protections to out-of-state abortion patients. One package of pending California bills would expand access to California abortions and protect abortion providers from out-of-state legal action.

After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California lawmakers proposed making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families. Another California proposal would thwart enforcement of out-of-state court judgments removing children from the custody of parents who get them gender-affirming health services. California is also about to enforce a ban on ghost guns and assault weapons with a California version of Texas’ recent six-week ban on abortion, featuring $10,000 bounties to encourage lawsuits from private citizens against anyone who sells, distributes or manufactures those types of firearms.

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The new separation extends even to government revenue. A little-noticed trend is toward a growing share of total government taxing and spending occurring in the states — thereby making Blue states (which are overall wealthier than Red states) more financially autonomous.

For years, the inhabitants of Blue states have been sending more tax dollars to the federal government than they get back (in the form of federal assistance to the poor, education, social services, and infrastructure), while Red states have been sending Washington fewer dollars than they receive back. But the significance of this Blue state subsidy to Red states is declining as an ever-larger percentage of total federal and state taxes paid by the inhabitants of Blue states are being spent in such Blue States. (A record half of all government revenue is now raised and spent by state and local governments.)

We’re also seeing more coordination among Blue states. During the pandemic, Blue states joined together on policies that Red states rejected — such as purchasing agreements for personal protective equipment, strategies for reopening businesses as COVID subsided, even on travel from other states with high levels of COVID. (At one point, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut required travelers from states with high positivity rates — Arkansas, Florida, North and South Carolina, Texas, and Utah — to quarantine for two weeks before entering.)

We are splitting more quickly than anyone imagined. But the split raises a host of questions. For one, what will happen to the poor in Red states, who are disproportionately people of color? “States rights” was always a cover for segregation and harsh discrimination. The poor — both white and people of color — are already especially burdened by anti-abortion legislation because they can’t afford travel to a Blue state to get an abortion. They’re also hurt by the failure of Red states to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act; by Red state de facto segregation in public schools; and by Red state measures to suppress votes.

One answer is for Democratic administrations and congresses in Washington to prioritize the needs of the Red state poor and make extra efforts to protect the civil and political rights of people of color in Red states. The failure of the Senate to muster enough votes to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, let alone revive the Voting Rights Act, suggests how difficult this will be.

But Blue states have a potential role here. They should spend additional resources on the needs of Red state residents, such as Oregon is now doing for people from outside Oregon who seek abortions. They should prohibit state funds from being spent in any state that bans abortions or discriminates on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender. California already bars anyone on a state payroll (including yours truly, who teaches at UC Berkeley) from getting reimbursed for travel to states that discriminate against LGBTQ people (as of now, that list includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia).

Where will all this end? Not with two separate nations. What America is going through is less like a civil war and more like Brexit — a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy, and civil and political rights). We’ll still be America. But we’re becoming two versions of America. The open question is analogous to the one faced by every couple that separates — how will we find ways to be civil toward each other?

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The beginning of May before midterm elections marks the start of primary season and six months of fall campaigning. The conventional view this year is Democrats will be clobbered in November. Why? Because midterms are usually referendums on a president’s performance, and Biden’s approval ratings are in the cellar.

But the conventional view could be wrong because it doesn’t account for the Democrats’ secret sauce, which gives them a fighting chance of keeping one or both chambers: Trump Sauce.

According to recent polls, Trump’s popularity continues to sink. He is liked by only 38 percent of Americans and disliked by 46 percent. (12 percent are neutral.) And this isn’t your normal “sort of like, sort of dislike” polling. Feelings are intense, as they’ve always been about Trump. Among voters 45 to 64 years old — a group Trump won in 2020, 50 percent to 49 percent, according to exit polls — just 39 percent now view him favorably and 57 percent, unfavorably. Among voters 65 and older (52 percent of whom voted for him in 2020 to Biden's 47 percent) only 44 percent now see him favorably and more than half (54 percent) unfavorably. Perhaps most importantly, independents hold him in even lower regard. Just 26 percent view him favorably; 68 percent unfavorably.

Republican lawmakers had hoped — and assumed — Trump would have faded from the scene by now, allowing them to engage in full-throttled attacks on Democrats in the lead-up to the midterms. No such luck. In fact, Trump’s visibility is growing daily.

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The media is framing this month’s big Republican primaries as all about Trump — which is exactly as Trump wants them framed. But this framing is disastrous for the GOP. Today’s Republican Ohio primary, for example, has become a giant proxy battle over who’s the Trumpiest candidate. The candidates have been outdoing each other trying to imitate him -- railing against undocumented immigrants, coastal elites, “socialism,” and “wokeness,” all the while regurgitating the Big Lie.

Trump’s April 15 endorsement of JD Vance could make the difference today — as could Trump’s backing of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s May 17th primary and of Hershel Walker in Georgia’s May 24 primary. But whether Trump’s endorsements pay off in wins for these candidates is beside the point. By making these races all about him, the media is casting the midterms as a whole as a referendum on Trump’s continuing power and influence. This is exactly what the Democrats need.

June’s televised hearings of the House January 6 committee will likely show in detail how Trump and his White House orchestrated the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and rekindle memories of Trump’s threat to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless Ukrainian president Zelensky came up with dirt on Biden. But the real significance of the hearings won’t show up in Trump’s approval ratings. It will be in the heightened reminders of Trump’s reign in Washington, as well as Trump’s closeness to Putin. The result is an almost certain shift in marginal voters’ preferences toward the Democrats in November.

The leaked decision by the Supreme Court to uphold Mississippi’s ban on abortions after fifteen weeks and reverse Roe v. Wade — courtesy of Trump’s three Court nominees — will green-light other Republican states to enact similar or even tighter bans, and spur Republicans in Congress to push for national legislation to bar abortions across the country. Republicans believe this will ignite their base, but it’s more likely to ignite a firestorm among the vast majority of Americans who believe abortion should be legal. Score more Democratic votes.

There is also the possibility of criminal trials over Trump’s business and electoral frauds (such as his brazen attempt to change the Georgia vote tally) — whose significance will be less about whether Trump is found guilty than additional reminders, in the months before the midterms, of Trump’s brazen lawlessness.  

Meanwhile, Trump will treat America to more rallies, interviews, and barnstorming to convince voters the 2020 election was stolen from him, along with incessant demands that Republican candidates reiterate his Big Lie. More help to Democrats.

Somewhere along the line, and also before the midterms, Elon Musk is likely to allow Trump back on Twitter. The move will be bad for America — fueling more racism, xenophobia, and division. But it will serve as another memento of how dangerously incendiary Trump and Trumpism continue to be.

Accompanying all of this will be the ongoing antics of Trump’s whacky surrogates — Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Steven Bannon, Madison Cawthorn, Trump Junior, et al — who mimic Trump’s bravado, bigotry, divisiveness, and disdain for the law. All are walking billboards for Trumpism’s heinous impact on American life. All will push wavering voters toward Democrats in November.

I’m not suggesting Democrats seeking election or reelection center their campaigns around Trump. To the contrary, Democrats need to show voters their continuing commitment to improving voters’ lives. Between now and November, Democrats should enact laws to help Americans afford childcare, cut the costs of prescription drugs, and stop oil companies from price gouging, for example.

But Democrats can also count on Americans’ awakened awareness of the hatefulness and chaos Trump and his Republican enablers have unleashed. And it’s this combination — Democrats scoring some additional victories for average Americans, and Trump and others doing everything possible to recollect his viciousness — that could well reverse conventional wisdom about midterms, and keep Democrats in control.

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Consider the larger pattern.

Putin invades Ukraine. Trump refuses to concede and promotes his Big Lie. Rightwing politicians in America and Europe fuel white Christian nationalism. Rightwing television pundits encourage racism and spur bigotry toward immigrants. Police kill innocent Black people with impunity. Powerful men sexually harass and abuse women. Politicians target LGBTQ youth. CEOs who are raking in record profits and pay give workers meager wages and fire them for unionizing. The richest men in the world own the most influential media platforms. Billionaires make large campaign donations (bribes) so lawmakers won’t raise their taxes.

All are abuses of power. All are occurring at a time when power is concentrated in fewer hands.

Throughout history, the central struggle of civilization has been against brutality. The state of nature is a continuous war in which only the fittest survive — where lives are “nasty, brutish, and short,” in the words of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Without norms, rules, and laws preventing the stronger from attacking or exploiting the weaker, none of us is safe. We all live in fear. Even the most powerful live in fear of being attacked or deposed.

Civilization is the opposite of this state of nature. A civil society doesn’t allow the strong to brutalize the weak. Our job — the responsibility of all who seek a decent society — is to move as far from a state of nature as possible.

Certain inequalities of power are expected, even in a civil society. Some people are bigger and stronger than others. Some are quicker of mind and body. Some have more forceful personalities. Some have fewer scruples. Some inequalities of income and wealth may be necessary to encourage hard work and inventiveness, from which everyone benefits.

But when inequalities become too wide, they invite abuses. Without laws and norms that protect the weaker, the stronger will abuse their positions of power. Such abuses invite further abuses, until society degenerates into a Hobbesian survival of the most powerful. People with great wealth or celebrity; people who occupy high positions in government, business, the media, or the church; people whose race, ethnicity, religion, or gender is dominant; people who command vast armies — such people may be tempted to use their power to demean, harm, or even annihilate weaker people. Unless they are stopped, an entire society — even the world — can descend into chaos.

Every time the stronger bully the weaker, the social fabric is tested. If bullying is not contained, the fabric unwinds.

Some posit a moral equivalence between those who seek social justice and those who want to protect individual liberty, between “left” and “right.” But there is no moral equivalence between bullies and the bullied, between tyranny and democracy, between brutality and decency — no “balance” between social justice and individual liberty. It is a false equivalence and a false choice. No individual can be free in a society devoid of justice. There can be no liberty where brutality reigns. The struggle for social justice is the most basic struggle of all because it defines how far a civilization has come from a Hobbesian survival of the most powerful.

Defending voting rights or LGBTQ rights or women’s rights is not the moral equivalent of attacking them. Coming to the assistance of refugee children is not morally equivalent to putting them in cages. Prosecuting police who kill innocent Black people is not one side of an equally respectable stance defending the freedom of police to kill innocent Black people. Fighting racism is not of equal moral value to fueling racism. Seeking stronger safety nets for those in need is not on an equal moral footing with seeking to unravel safety nets. Championing stronger unions is not just the other side of pushing for weaker unions. Demanding higher taxes on billionaires is not morally equivalent to demanding lower taxes on them.

We inhabit a society and a world growing more unequal, in which political and economic power is becoming ever more concentrated. To claim that “both sides” — both the more powerful and the weaker — have the same moral standing is to avert one’s eyes to this reality. Lobbyists for large corporations, publicists for the wealthy, lawmakers for the privileged, pundits for the powerful, celebrity peddlers of racism and xenophobia — none deserves equal space in the public square to those fighting against abuses of the powerful. The powerful already have the largest megaphones and the deepest pockets. To allow the richest to own the means by which we receive the truth is to enable oligarchy. To allow the worst demagogues free rein is to open wide the gates to tyranny.

Our duty is to stop brutality. Our responsibility is to hold the powerful accountable. Our moral obligation is to protect the vulnerable.

Putin must be stopped. Trump must be held accountable. Rightwing politicians who encourage white Christian nationalism must be condemned. Celebrity pundits who fuel racism and xenophobia must be denounced and defunded. Police who kill innocent Black people must be brought to justice. Powerful men who sexually harass or abuse women must be prosecuted. CEOs who treat their employees badly must be exposed and censored. Billionaires who bribe lawmakers to cut their taxes or exempt them from regulations must be penalized, and lawmakers who accept such bribes must be sanctioned.

Norms and laws must prevent such brutality. This is what civilization demands. This is why the fight is worth it.

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My informal weekly coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse (my former student and Executive Director of Inequality Media) exploring the highs and lows of the week. As usual, pull up a chair and bring your morning cup.

If you know others who might enjoy a good conversation over coffee, please share.

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

Guardrails against dangerous lies on Twitter?

Now that Elon has total control over one of the major ways Americans find out what’s happening (I know, I know -- Twitter is vapid and filled with smears and jeers, but it has a hugely important role in shaping the news), what can be done to establish guardrails against dangerous lies? It seems likely that Musk will take down the few guardrails that remain on Twitter — but some guardrails are surely needed to prevent malicious harassment or dangerous instigation of violence. Twitter (like Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Instagram) is more like a public utility than a private company. It has public functions and no direct competitors.

What to do?

Much of the answer boils down to making Twitter (and Facebook and Instagram) more responsible for what users say on its platform – just as any other publisher is responsible. In every other dimension of public life, tort laws allow people who are defamed, harassed, or otherwise injured by malicious or hateful speech to sue. There’s a high bar: plaintiffs must establish that the publisher knew or had reason to know that the published material was false and injurious. But the mere possibility of being sued causes publishers to take at least a modicum of responsibility.

In 1996, Congress enacted Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — shielding website owners from liability by decreeing that they shouldn’t be treated as a “publisher.” But back then Congress could not possibly have foreseen what would happen over the next quarter century: giant firms like Twitter and Facebook making huge amounts of money by posting incendiary content that attracts lots of eyeballs and gives them mountains of user data that they then monetize — even if the content encourages political violence, riots, or gang shootings.

I’ve been talking for some time about the various ways the rich and powerful in our society shield themselves from accountability. I’m well aware of arguments on the other side of this issue (and will share them with you), but I’ve come to the conclusion that Congress should repeal Section 230. Doing so would be one step toward restoring accountability.

**

How to stop inflation without a recession?

The mainstream media, meanwhile, continues to mislead the American public about inflation. (Ideological blinders are not — and should never be — subject to liable laws. But they need to be called out.)

A lead article in this week’s New York Times, by Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman, is a case in point. It attributes inflation largely to a “red-hot labor market.” The authors write that “America’s heady pay gains could mean that the Fed has to react more aggressively to slow down the economy,” and quote Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, as saying that higher wages can be a “feeder for inflation,” and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, that the job market is “unsustainably hot” and that it’s the Fed’s job “to get to a better place where supply and demand are closer together.”  

Rubbish. Labor costs aren’t pushing inflation. Corporate profits are. If the Fed keeps raising interest rates to prevent labor costs from rising, we’ll be in a recession before you know it.

According to a new report by Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute, over half of price inflation since March 2020 (he estimates 53.9 percent) is attributable to fatter profit margins, while labor costs account for less than 8 percent. As the chart below shows, from 1979 to 2019, profits contributed only a bit over 11 percent to price growth, and labor costs over 60 percent. Corporate power has built up over the last forty years, and the pandemic-driven demand surge has given firms even more pricing power vis-à-vis their customers. Powerful firms have also been free to pass on cost increases to their customers because they don’t face strong competition, and have been using the cover of “inflation” to add even more to their profit margins.

Bivens suggests that a temporary excess profits tax could provide some countervailing weight to the pricing power firms currently have vis-à-vis their customers. I agree. (Pity that the Times doesn’t report any of this.)

***

How to win a war?

Notwithstanding Putin’s efforts to persuade the Russian people that his war is going well (and Putin’s generals’ efforts to convince Putin that it’s going well), all available evidence suggests it’s going terribly badly for Putin. I’m in awe of Ukraine’s ability to take on the Russian Goliath and push it back.

When the history of this horror is written, NATO and Joe Biden will get enormous credit as well. Their steady hands and steadfast strategy appear to be working. Patience, tenacity, and careful use of every tool available to them — short of putting NATO or American troops into Ukraine — is turning the tide. We have no way of knowing how this will turn out (and I continue to fear what a cornered Putin may resort to), but the courage and intelligence of Ukraine, NATO, and Biden deserve our commendation and thanks.

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