BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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There has never been a more consequential term for the United States Supreme Court. Today, like every first Monday in October, is the start of the court’s new term. But never, in all my years of watching the court, have there been so many cases that could so radically change America and give Donald Trump even more power in the process.

The court is stacked with …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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To celebrate Steve Miller’s birthday today we have chosen one of the Steve Miller Band’s biggest hits, “The Joker,” as our reason to smile.

I sat down with Miller a few years ago to talk about his career and his eponymous band.

Miller grew up surrounded by music. He was partial to jazz and blues as his mother was a singer, with a voice like Ella …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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The reports I’m seeing make all this government shutdown business seem so complicated. But it’s not, in its simplest and most direct terms. This fight boils down to one thing: your money.

Republicans want to use your money for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and more border control agents — among other things. Democrats, seizing a rare political opportunity, are trying to claw some money …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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January 6, 2021, will — or at least should — always be considered one of the darkest days in our nation’s history. It is a date cemented to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn a free and fair election that he lost. Trump had a lead responsibility for the violence that day, according to an exhaustive congressional study, among other analyses.

Those are facts, whether Trump likes …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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This week’s reason to smile is a catchy little tune by a fellow Texan and one of my favorite singers, Roy Orbison. His song, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” hit No. 1 61 years ago this week.

Orbison, who wrote the song with his friend and collaborator Bill Dees, says he was inspired by his beautiful wife Claudette.

The song, which is now part of the fabric of …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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We now have an administration in Washington that exists for one reason: the self-importance of Donald Trump. Watching from a distance, it has become a sad spectacle, the worst of its kind many of us have ever witnessed.

Scoring political points is everything, with little or no room for negotiation, collateral damage be damned. And the number of people likely to fall victim to Trump’s vengeful …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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I have been waiting years to make Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” our reason to smile. Years because today is the 21st of September … which is in the song’s first line: “Do you remember, the 21st night of September?” Following one of the best opening horn sections in popular music.

Earth, Wind & Fire front man Maurice White was often asked the significance of the …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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The message to broadcasters from the Trump administration is simple: Do as we say, or pay the consequences. We are now in the realm of comedians being a threat to the president’s ego and our freedom of speech.

It is time to pay special attention. If the past eight and a half months have taught us anything, it’s that it can get worse … and this …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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As journalists, we have long been taught that writing a comprehensive news story requires answering the five Ws. Who, what, when, and where are the easy ones. It’s that last one, the why, that is almost always the most difficult to answer.

In some cases, motivation for an act, especially a murder, may never be known. How does one get to the point of purposely killing …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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Forty years ago, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Young were inspired by the words of another musician to help save the American farm.

On stage at Live Aid, a benefit concert to raise money and awareness for African famine relief, Bob Dylan said he hoped some of the funds collected could be used to help American farmers facing foreclosure.

That light-bulb moment led Nelson, Mellencamp, …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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Here’s hoping you are ready to pay attention, my Steady friends. You are about to read some ideas that may seem far-fetched, even radical, especially for Democrats. But the dissolution of our great democracy is happening faster than most rational Americans thought possible. Time to be calm and steady, yes, but also time to think tough and be smart.

For many who oppose Donald Trump and …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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Sam Cooke, one of the all-time great singer-songwriters, released his first ever single, “You Send Me,” 68 years ago today. That sunny love song would launch Cooke’s career. And it is this week’s reason to smile.

Cooke is considered one of the most influential soul artists of all time, but he didn’t start out as a soul singer. Born in Mississippi in 1931, Cooke learned to …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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The United States has long strived to be a nation of laws, a nation committed to the ideal of justice that respects human rights and due process. But quickly, very quickly, we are sinking into an authoritarian state whose leader answers to no one. Donald Trump rules by whim. He rules by acting as the trial judge, the jury, and, as we saw earlier this week, …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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Anyone who has bought groceries recently knows prices are up, in some cases way up. The cost of everything from milk to beef to lettuce has increased since Donald Trump took office. That, plus employment worries, a housing shortage, and tariffs are causing a majority of Americans to be pessimistic about the economy in general and their futures specifically.

The very issue that ushered Trump back …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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All hail the American worker. On Monday, we celebrate Labor Day, an excellent reminder to honor the people who make this country run: the construction workers, the nurses, the line cooks, the librarians, the school bus drivers, good-hearted Americans who show up every day. Hopefully you get the day off!

There have been a lot of songs written that salute working Americans, but I am partial …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

Yesterday I heard from an old friend who urged me to slow down. “You’re overdoing it, Bob,” he said. “A new book. Movie. Substack. Videos. You’re pushing 80, for crying out loud. What are you trying to prove?”

I told him I’m not trying to prove anything.

He warned me I was going to harm my health.

Rubbish.

I’m not going to play golf or lie in a hammock and sip …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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Alarm bells have sounded so many times over the past seven months that you might feel the need to tune them out. But please don’t cover your ears on this one … because the newest one-two punch from the government authority designed to keep us healthy threatens to put the entire U.S. population in jeopardy.

First, the newly confirmed head of the Centers for Disease Control …

By Robert Reich

Fascist capitalism will do him in

Friends,

I’m old enough to remember when American politics was divided between those who wanted less government (they were called “conservatives,” or the Right) and those who wanted more social safety nets (called “progressives,” or the Left).

It’s hard to find Right or Left these days. Instead we have something no one has ever seen in America — a personal takeover of nearly all the institutions …

By Jill Lawrence

He’s acting out all his fantasies in the capital, and I fear where that may lead.

When Donald Trump said he’d patrol the streets of my city last week with the National Guard and federal law enforcement officers, I rolled my eyes. What a photo op, right?

Imagine it: The commander in chief, surrounded by a phalanx of masked, uniformed agents, looking solemn (or maybe gleeful?), perhaps wearing a bulletproof vest (insert …

By Robert Reich

The iron law of grovelers and those to whom they grovel

Friends,

This morning, a former student came up to me where I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop and asked, “Professor Reich, are you enjoying your retirement?”

I said “no.”

My answer confused and embarrassed her. “I’m … I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.

“Oh, I’m enjoying life,” I reassured her. “But I haven’t retired.”

“But … you retired …

By Robert Reich

The iron law of grovelers and those to whom they grovel

Friends,

Monica Crowley, a former Fox News personality who is now Trump’s chief of protocol, apparently left behind in a public area of an Alaskan hotel documents describing confidential planned movements of Trump and Putin during their Friday meeting in Alaska.

That’s nothing compared to Emil Bove, Trump’s new nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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After a long week of political upheaval and deceit, we could all use a break with something genuine and heartfelt.

So today is the perfect day for the dulcet tones of Louis Armstrong. His hopeful ballad “What A Wonderful World” is our reason to smile.

The incomparable jazz trumpeter and singer recorded his most well-known song 58 years ago this weekend. After performing at the Tropicana …

By Robert Reich

It’s not just Mamdani

Friends,

It’s fitting that today — on the 90th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing Social Security into law — we understand Zohran Mamdani’s remarkable win in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in his simple progressive message: New York City is in an affordability crisis and the wealthiest New Yorkers must help respond.

Mamdani’s three main proposals to help working families cope with it are to make …

By Robert Reich

It would be communism under any other dictator

Friends,

If “state capitalism” were proposed by Democrats or progressives, it would be considered socialism or communism. Done by a neofascist president — as chronicled by the The Wall Street Journal — it’s simply considered inefficient (as the Journal concludes).

But Trump’s state capitalism is already large and growing, and it’s profoundly altering what we once thought of as the private sector. Consider what …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

Over the past several weeks, Trump and his MAGA stooges in Congress have passed legislation to strip health care from 10 million people; cut food stamp benefits for 40 million Americans, half of them children; slash $8 billion from lifesaving foreign aid programs; defund public radio and television stations nationwide; kill hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs; and hand $4.5 trillion in tax breaks to Trump and his billionaire friends. …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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Graceland, the former home and current museum of everything Elvis, celebrates “Elvis Week” every August. So we thought we’d join the party and make Mr. Presley this week’s reason to smile.

Elvis Aaron Presley is one of the most important figures in American music and popular culture. Elvis was so popular he was known by just his first name, becoming the first mononymous recording artist.

In …

By Robert Reich

And what do they provide him, in turn?

Friends,

I don’t believe in conspiracies, but I’ve heard a number of theories about whom Trump is really working for that seem reasonable to me. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe at least one of them is sufficiently credible to merit more investigation. Trump fires the commissioner of labor statistics because the job news is bad, he says Obama ought …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

This week’s Joseph Welch Award — which goes to a person who stands up to tyranny in America, just as attorney Joseph Welch stood up to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s — goes to Lonnie Griffith Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsonian said today it would restore information about Trump’s two impeachments to an exhibit about impeachment in the National Museum of American History, a …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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We have made so many advances in my lifetime, especially as they relate to gender equality, and that includes women’s health. It may not always seem true, but as someone who has witnessed it firsthand, I can promise that we are worlds away from where we were back in the 1950s, when health care for women was an afterthought.

But all that progress is quickly being …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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Billy Joel is a music legend. The 76-year-old singer-songwriter has admittedly had a life of ups and downs but has managed always to land on the upside.

You can learn almost all there is to know about Joel’s life in HBO’s new two-part documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes.” The trailer is certainly enticing.

Joel’s songs are deeply personal, as though each one tells a …

By Robert Reich

is to create the largest and most powerful counter-force possible

Friends,

Columbia University. The European Union. Japan. CBS.

All have just concluded deals with Trump, and all are claiming they did well — or as well as they could. Reportedly, Harvard is also about to make a deal.

When will they learn? It’s impossible to make a deal with a tyrant because a tyrant will never be satisfied. Giving in to Trump …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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If you know me, you know I am a fan of country music. When times are challenging — and I think we can all agree that at this point, challenging is an understatement — I like to listen to country classics.

“I Hope You Dance,” a No. 1 hit for singer-songwriter Lee Ann Womack back in 2000, got me smiling. Womack, a Texan and pure-country vocalist, …

By Robert Reich

The public conversation has become so distorted by the moral squalor of Trump and his lackeys that I fear we’re confusing what’s exciting with what’s important.

“Epsteingate” is exciting. The story excites because Trump seems unable to stop it from growing — and it therefore offers a bit of hope that it will undermine his support or even topple him.

Yet I worry that it’s crowding out other stories that Americans need …

By Robert Reich

Colbert, The Washington Post, Columbia University … and on it goes

Friends,

The latest casualty of Trump’s efforts to silence media criticism is Eduardo Porter, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent critics of this heinous regime.

On Tuesday, Porter wrote his last column for The Washington Post. In it, he criticized Trump’s attempt to dismantle the global trading system.

Porter didn’t stop there. He also explained why he was leaving the …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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To understand why independent, hard-hitting journalism that speaks truth to power is more important than ever, we bring you this revelation: Nielsen, the television ratings company, is reporting that Fox “News” is now the most watched television channel in the country.

Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing propaganda machine, which is home to anything and everything pro-Trump, is being watched by more Americans than any of the major broadcast …

By Robert Reich

The Trump regime is using the specter of socialism to make America even more authoritarian. The regime will lose.

Friends,

When Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem unleashed her ICE shock troops on Los Angeles last month, she said: “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist” leaders.

Minutes later, California Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from the press conference and put in …