The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Friends, Today, Heather, Michael, and I do a deep dive into the cruel incompetence of the Trump regime — how Trump is hurting millions of people for no reason, whether he’s doing it because of cruelty or incompetence, and what all of us can do about it between now and the 2026 midterm elections (including not calling him “President,” because he considers himself president of only the people who vo...

Friends, Happy Fourth of July weekend. Today Heather and I examine Trump’s newly enacted Big Ugly Bill — its record-breaking redistribution of income upward , its budget-busting deficits, and its creation of an anti-immigrant police state. And we explore whether there’s anything positive that could possibly come of this. Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, take our poll, and join the conversatio...

Friends, Today, Heather and I come to you from Central Park in New York City, where we assess the remarkable upset victory of 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, over former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, in the race for New York City mayor . We also take a look at the bind Trump and his lackeys have gotten themselves into — with an attack on Iran that the Defense I...

Friends, Today Heather and I look at the war in Iran through the lens of Donald Trump’s insatiable need to expand and display his power. How can he even consider getting America into this war without consulting Congress? Doesn’t doing so also violate his promise to the American people in the 2024 election that he would avoid foreign entanglements? And who is advising him, now that half of the prof...

Friends, Today, Michael and I take a deep dive into Trump’s most authoritarian week yet. (Heather will be back next week.) We ask: Why did he choose this week to escalate his dragnet raids? From what does he want to deflect our attention? What kind of trap is he laying? What must we be careful to do and avoid doing today, as he conducts a military parade in Washington to celebrate his military mig...

Friends, That any of us have to care about the messy breakup of these two malignant narcissists — and that they both individually wield such massive power — is an indictment of our political system and further proves the poisonous influence of Big Money on our democracy. That’s today’s Coffee Klatch theme. Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, take our survey, and join the conversation. This is a...

Friends, Today Heather and I examine whether the three big political events of this week — Musk’s leaving the White House, the U.S. Court of International Trade’s striking down Trump’s tariffs, and Senate Republicans’ being stymied over Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful” (actually Ugly) budget bill — signal the beginning of the end of Trump. Is Elon really gone for good? Are Trump’s tariffs in real...

Friends, V Spehar invited me to join them today to talk about how we should deal with America’s aging politicians — our “gerontocracy.” I’m something of an expert on the subject because I’ve been around politicians for over 50 years. Also I’m getting up there (I’ll be 79 years old soon). And I recently retired from teaching because I didn’t want to give students anything less than my best. So I kn...

Friends, One of my favorite people in the world is the Reverend Dr. William Barber, whose moral and strategic insights at this horrific moment in our nation’s history are invaluable. I asked him to join me today to talk about what all of us can do to unite people in America in pursuit of social justice and against Trump. Barber is a Protestant minister, social activist, professor in the Practice o...

Friends, Today Heather and I look at the Trump regime’s decision to bar international students from Harvard and ask, what’s the difference between a neofascist diktat and Trump’s orders? As in fascism, Trump arbitrarily targets particular institutions and people, then takes away their freedoms for no reason other than that they’ve opposed the regime. (In recent days, the regime has also charged, i...

Friends, Today, Heather and I look into the schemes that Trump and the people around him are using to make themselves rich at the expense of the American people — starting with Trump’s business trip this week to the oil-rich kingdoms of the Middle East. Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, take our poll, and join the conversation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other...

Friends, Today Heather and I take a deep dive into the most corrupt presidential administration in history. We look in detail at Trump’s crypto deals designed to enrich him and his family and milk the presidency, and Musk’s deals to enrich himself by, for example, having the State Department push other nations to use his Starlink satellites. The stench from these and other examples of self-dealing...

Friends, Today Heather and I examine the outlook for Trump, the Trump White House, Congress, and the economy. Now that we’ve finished the first hundred days, where does America go from here? Is there room for hope? I’m more optimistic than Heather because I believe opposition to Trump is growing. And it will become even larger if Trump and Republicans in Congress cut programs most Americans depend...

Friends, Today, Heather and I take a look at the shi*tstorm of Trump’s first hundred days (which doesn’t officially conclude until Wednesday), and ask what happened, why it’s so horrible, and how we’re likely to look back on it. Along the way, we examine whether its major theme has been chaos or cruelty, what’s happened to the economy, and why Trump’s polls are taking a dive. In sharp contrast, we...

Friends, Today Heather and I take a deep dive into Trump’s three escalating confrontations — with Harvard University, China, and the Supreme Court — and ask what Trump’s strategy might be. He can’t “win” any of these because Harvard, China, and the Supreme Court are all large and powerful enough to force him to blink, but nor can he afford to “lose” and maintain his credibility as an invincible fo...

Friends, Today, Heather and I take a deep dive into this week’s wild ride in the stock and bond markets — why it occurred and what it means. Ten and a half weeks ago, the American and world economies were in fairly good shape, but now there’s a serious risk of what’s called “stagflation.” Tens of millions of people could be seriously hurt. And even more will be hurt if the Republican budget plan g...

Friends, Today Heather and I take a look at the economic emergency Trump created this week with his gargantuan tariffs on imports. It’s the largest peacetime tax hike in American history — and one that keeps rising as other countries retaliate by raising tariffs on our exports to them. It’s all based on another Trump lie — this one, that the tariffs will cause global corporations to create good ma...

Friends, Today Heather and I assess how far the Trump regime is falling — starting with this week’s “Signalgate” fiasco, the regime’s increasing detention of international students without due process of law, wildly unconstitutional executive orders, brainless tariffs, and coming assault on Greenland (of all places). We also take a look at how voters seem to be responding — overwhelmingly against...

Friends, Today Heather and I delve into the forces holding Trump back — specifically, the federal courts, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post , and Republican constituents in Republican town halls. Which of these, if any, is likely to be most effective over the long term in preventing Trump and Musk from doing their worst? We also have a special guest — Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, who...

Friends, Today Heather and I take a deep dive into the Trump regime’s efforts to suppress free speech on university campuses in America, starting with the detention of a Columbia University graduate student for no reason other than his beliefs and his participation in peaceful demonstrations that the regime disapproves of. We then zoom out to the larger story of the Trump-Musk attack on American u...

Friends, Michael is filling in for Heather today (thank you, Michael, and we miss you, Heather). Michael and I assess week 7 of this horrendous regime, starting with Trump’s interminable speech and ending with his decision to pull back from imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, after the stock market nearly tanked. We also examine the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to rein in Trump, congressional R...

Friends, Today, Heather and I discuss Trump’s and Vance’s disgraceful treatment of Ukraine President Zelensky in the Oval Office yesterday — a man who for more than three years has courageously held off Putin’s aggression, maintained the will of the Ukrainian people, and risked his life to contain the Russian dictator. Trump did this to undermine Zelensky’s heroic image in the eyes of the American...

Friends, Today, Heather and I assess the fifth week of the regime, when Trump took America over to the dark side by endorsing Vladimir Putin’s narrative of how the Ukraine war began and why Europe should defend itself rather than be an ally of the United States. We also have as our special guest Rohit Chopra, the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who was fired by Trump a...

Friends, Today, nearing the end of the fourth week of the Trump-Vance-Musk regime, Heather and I assess Musk’s Oval Office press conference — in which he accused federal employees of dishonesty but provided no evidence — and analyze Musk’s own dishonesty and conflicts of interest. We also examine Trump’s promise in the 2024 election to bring prices down, in light of new evidence of inflation. We a...

Friends, Today Heather and I assess week 3 of the Trump regime — a week marked by Trump’s bonkers talk about turning Gaza into a riviera tourist destination by removing all Gazans and setting up “beautiful” beachfront resorts, and by Elon Musk’s almost total takeover of the federal government, including the destruction of USAID. Where is this heading? What’s the meaning of “law” in this lawless en...