BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

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For all those who have served and sacrificed so much, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States Army is fitting. But the Army doesn’t need to celebrate Donald Trump. That’s what’s about to transpire in the shadow of the White House — a ridiculous, self-aggrandizing display that would look right at home in Moscow or Tiananmen Square. It should not happen here. Ever.

But with …

By Robert Reich

In face of Trump’s emerging police state?

Demonstrations against Trump’s emerging police state are growing, not just in Los Angeles but around the nation. In New York yesterday, demonstrators walked through the streets after assembling in Lower Manhattan near a large government building that houses federal immigration offices and the city’s main immigration court.

Thousands gathered in Chicago, chanting anti-ICE and anti-Trump slogans while marching through the city.

This coming Saturday, in …

By Robert Reich

Time for non-violent civil disobedience

Friends,

What is our moral responsibility as citizens of the United States when the President of the United States moves to deploy thousands of American soldiers against us?

Trump signed a memo late yesterday ordering 2,000 members of the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles County after federal immigration agents in riot gear squared off with hundreds of protesters for a second consecutive day.

Trump’s …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

Credit: Getty Images

Every year during Harvard’s graduation ceremony, the university bestows honorary degrees on a handful of accomplished people. At this year’s 374th Harvard Commencement, one of those accomplished people was award-winning actress, singer, and dancer Rita Moreno. The legendary entertainer and EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) winner was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Arts.

Moreno won the 1962 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

I’m trying not to be too delighted about the new reality TV show starring Elon and Donald, but the dialogue is truly extraordinary (I’m quoting them verbatim but putting their volley in what appears to be its intended order).

ELON (February 7, 2025): “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man.”

ELON (June 3, 2025, four days after leaving the Trump regime): “[Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

Credit: Getty Images

Not many things you can take to the bank, but believe me — this reporter has, through many decades of employment, never felt discriminated against because I’m white. But to hear Donald Trump tell it, times have changed dramatically in America.

Trump insists that white American heterosexual men are now a persecuted group. It is his basic argument for vanquishing all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

Trump’s personal money-making schemes haven’t elicited the outrage that would once have generated huge political blowback, televised hearings, official investigations, and damage control.

Does the dearth (if not death) of outrage illustrate how far Trump has moved the norms of acceptable presidential behavior?

Or is outrage still there, but the American public has no means of calling him out because Trump has dismantled the system of accountability?

I’d appreciate your view …

By Robert Reich

He wants America to be ignorant because ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny

Friends,

Why is Trump trying to cancel “Sesame Street,” which has helped children learn to read and count for over half a century?

Why is he seeking to destroy Harvard University?

Why is he trying to deter the world’s most brilliant scientists from coming to the United States?

Because he is trying to destroy American education — and with …

By Robert Reich

They are the most important bulwark against Trump, which is why he has targeted them and why they’re endangered. Here’s what should be done.

Friends,

One of our highest priorities in this darkness must be to protect the people who are doing the most right now to push back against Trump’s tyranny: our judiciary.

In some 180 judicial rulings so far, federal judges have at least temporarily stopped Trump from (1) deporting …

By Robert Reich

Now in Trump’s Big Bad Ugly budget bill

Friends,

One of my purposes in sending you this daily letter is to give you the truth about an important issue that Trump and his lapdogs in Congress are demagoguing — so you can spread the truth.

Right now, the Senate is taking up Trump’s “Big Beautiful Budget Bill” (really a Big Bad Ugly bill) that just emerged from the House.

If enacted, it …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

Today ends Part 1 of the second Trump regime.

First, Elon Musk has departed the Trump White House, not altogether happily.
He signed off via X after 128 wild days of mayhem and havoc, but the damage Musk did to our government and its capacities to serve the people will be felt for years — although many of his cuts were swiftly reversed by the courts. His slash-and-burn tactics, his raids …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

Credit: Getty Images

All the money in the world couldn’t rescue Elon Musk from Washington politics. The Beltway bunch made their decision: “Enough!” they said, and without so much as an adios, he was run out of town. The eccentric, multibillionaire conspiracy theorist, who was once joined at the hip with the president, has suddenly found himself untethered from Trump.

And just like that, Musk is relegated to the …

By Robert Reich

The 19th-century doctrine that most closely resembles Trumpism

Friends,

Cut Medicaid to give billionaires a huge tax cut. But why?

They say they want a smaller government, but that can’t be it.

Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the government’s powers of search and surveillance inside the United States — expunging undocumented immigrants, “securing” the nation’s borders. They want stiffer criminal sentences. …

By Dan Rather and Team Steady

Understanding Trump’s endgame

We have talked early, often, and a lot about the chaos being wrought by Donald Trump. Every day we wake up to yet another norm-destroying executive order that thumbs its nose at checks and balances and continues to feed the administration’s everything-at-once offensive.

We have called out Trump’s contempt for the rule of law. We have conveyed his disdain for those he believes are less than. …

By Robert Reich

Thinking about education reform in the Trump era

Friends,

Trump’s latest idiotic idea of redistributing $3 billion in grant money from Harvard to trade schools, which he posted yesterday, masks a larger and more serious issue.

It’s absurd that a four-year college degree has become the only gateway into the American middle class.

Many high school seniors feel compelled to go to college because they’ve been told over and over that a …

By Robert Reich

A new phase of Trump neofascism

Friends,

I thought I couldn’t be more shocked and sickened than I already was, but what’s happened this week is truly horrifying.

In the Oval Office, before cameras and journalists, Trump openly lied to the president of South Africa about alleged violence against white South Africans. The Trump regime has also granted refuge to white South Africans while continuing to bar or deport people of color …

Credit: Getty Images

When we started A Reason To Smile more than four years ago, we had no idea how sorely we would all need a weekly respite from the deranged, whiplash-inducing, march toward chaos we are all living through. And I mean “we.” I always look forward to your comments, so please keep them coming.

Now to this week’s reason to smile … 52 years ago tomorrow, on a cool, overcast day, Central Park …

By Robert Reich

He and his regime are mounting an assault on the American mind. Why? Because ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.

Friends,

Yesterday, Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, notified Harvard University that “effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.”

Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students. Existing foreign students must transfer to another university or lose their legal status.

This could affect more than …

By Robert Reich

Don't let this happen

Friends,

I’ve been following with a mixture of dismay and disgust Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill, soon to emerge from the House. I’ll report back to you on it.

But I want to alert you to one detail inside it that’s especially alarming. With one stroke, it would allow Trump to crown himself king.

As you know, Trump has been trying to neuter the courts by ignoring them.

…

Joe Biden called me out of the blue last month. Something was on his mind. It was a few weeks before he went in for tests on the small nodule found on his prostate and received the tough diagnosis that was released publicly on Sunday. “Mr. President, what’s up?” I asked, as I stepped outside a D.C. restaurant to hear better, leaving my family at the dinner table.

What was up? He wanted to talk …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

I was struck by something J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush, wrote recently to columnist Thomas Edsall.

Referring to Trump, Luttig said there has never

“been a U.S. president who I consider even to have been destructive, let alone a president who has intentionally and deliberately set out to destroy literally every institution in America, up to and including American democracy and …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

I’m truly sorry that Joe Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

But the Biden news that’s been dominating headlines, exciting columnists, lighting up social media, and grinding up endless podcast hours has been something else: a so-called “cover-up” of the extent of Biden’s declining cognition before he resigned.

(Unless you’re Donald Trump Jr., in which case you suspect that even Biden’s prostate cancer was covered up.)

In their explosive …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

Last Friday, the credit rating of the United States was downgraded. Moody’s, the ratings firm, announced that the U.S. government’s rising debt levels will grow further if the Trump Republican package of new tax cuts is enacted. This makes lending to the United States riskier.

(Moody’s is the third of three major credit-rating agencies to downgrade the credit rating of the United States.)

So-called “bond vigilantes” are being blamed. They’ve already …

Credit: Getty Images

I hope you will allow a slight departure for this week’s Reason To Smile, as a powerful video caught our eye.

Bruce Springsteen has never been one to mince words. Thursday night in Manchester, England, was signature Springsteen. At a concert on his “Land of Hopes and Dreams” tour, he diverged from his usual song set to speak directly and forcefully about the state of our country. He articulated the anger and …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

The Resistance is strong and growing. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are turning out to demand our democracy back and loudly reject Trump’s quasi-dictatorship. Last month some 1,300 pro-democracy, anti-Trump protests occurred around the country. May Day alone saw more than 1,000 of them. Citizens are also protesting at local Town Hall meetings across America.

Many of you are deeply involved. Others of you would like to be. I’ll keep you …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

People keep asking: How can Trump do this?

It’s not just a legal question about how Congress and the courts can allow his outright corruption, open use of the Justice Department to target perceived enemies, explicit threats to universities and law firms if they don’t cede their independence to the regime, direct attacks on media that criticize him, and defiant trampling on constitutional rights.

It’s also a question about how a …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

Credit: Getty Images

With congressional Republicans marching in lockstep, Donald Trump has quickly demonstrated he can do whatever he wants, challenging the courts to stop him. That is a very dangerous place for anyone and everyone living in America.

While we all should remain focused and steady, let’s clearly remind ourselves of what’s now at stake: our fundamental rule of law. It is not hyperbolic to say that the …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

Credit: Getty Images

Today we bring you another chapter in our ongoing series: Is Donald Trump the most corrupt president in American history? It’s a question that answers itself with a resounding “yes” after more disgusting evidence has come to light.

To set the stage, we need to go back three weeks. Trump’s son Eric was in the Middle East, where he signed a deal to build a Trump-branded …

By Robert Reich

Trump just can’t resist bribes

Friends,

Trump is overplaying his hand.

Not just by usurping the powers of Congress and ignoring Supreme Court rulings. Not just abducting people who are legally in the United States but have put their name to opinion pieces Trump doesn’t like and trucking them off to “detention” facilities. Not just using the Justice Department for personal vengeance. Not just unilaterally deciding how much tariff tax American consumers …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

Credit: Getty Images

Paul McCartney has written dozens of classic songs, but none makes me smile more than “Let It Be.” The song is especially meaningful on Mother’s Day. This three-word piece of maternal advice is part catharsis, part inspiration, and a balm when things are going wrong.

“Let It Be” is the title track from the Beatles 12th and final studio album. Many believe the song is an …

Friends,

On Saturday, the town of Starbase, Texas, was born. The town includes Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch facility and company-owned land covering 1.6 square miles.

If Musk and Trump have their way, America as a whole could eventually be Starbase, Texas.

Consider:

Starbase is a company town. That company is Musk’s SpaceX. Its new mayor, Bobby Peden, is a SpaceX vice president. He was the only name on the ballot. Its two commissioners are also …

Friends,

With Mother’s Day this Sunday, I wanted to raise a real problem — but one that’s being grotesquely distorted by Trump and his lackeys.

Births in the United States increased by just 1 percent in 2024, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s nearly a record low.

It means ever-fewer workers supporting ever-more retirees. There are now about 3 workers for every retiree in America. That ratio is …

BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY

Credit: Getty Images

When it comes to the wealthy, there are those who are “good rich” and those who can generously be described as “bad rich.” Let’s begin with the latter.

As Donald Trump is telling American consumers that their children can make do with fewer toys this Christmas because his Grinch-like tariffs will make prices jump and supplies shrink, he is getting richer by the hour. Quite literally.

…

By Robert Reich

Friends,

Demonstrations against Trump are getting larger and louder. Fabulous. This is absolutely essential.

But at some point we’ll need to demonstrate not just against Trump but also for the America we want.

Trump’s regressive populism — cruel, tyrannical, bigoted, authoritarian — must be met by a bold progressive populism that strengthens democracy and shares the wealth.

We can’t simply return to the path we were on before Trump. Even then, big …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

Words matter. When the media points out Trump’s “potential conflicts of interest,” as it has in recent days when describing Trump’s growing crypto enterprise, it doesn’t come close to telling the public what’s really going on — unprecedented paybacks and self-dealing by the president of the United States, using his office to make billions.

The correct word is corruption.

Trump holds a private dinner at the White House for major speculators …

Dan Rather with R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe in 2017.

Happy Sunday to you all! I ask for your indulgence for a moment as we have a song to share that I hope will leave you smiling. The legendary rock band that performs this week's song upholds an ideal that I very much support: a free and independent press. And, not coincidentally, they’re re-releasing — on World Press Freedom Day — one of their hits, to …