While Democrats celebrate polling fantasies and independents drift uneasily, Trump quietly tightens his grip on Republican power, reminding America that political death remains greatly exaggerated.

Donald Trump has spent nearly a decade turning political obituaries into campaign literature. Every few months, another poll drops, another panel of overconfident pundits appears on television, and another chorus of political “experts” announces that this time, finally, Trump is finished. Last night’s Republican primaries should have shattered that fantasy …

Peace talks mask a darker reality: Iran wants survival without surrender, America wants denuclearization without endless war, and the world keeps pretending both are compatible.

The fantasy being sold to the American public is that peace with Iran is just one diplomatic handshake away. One more summit. One more backchannel negotiation. One more carefully staged photo op where everyone smiles while secretly reaching for the knife under the table. That fantasy is nonsense.

The reality …

While Washington plays global chess with missiles and egos, Americans play roulette at the gas pump, praying their debit card survives another fill up.

Americans are angry. Not irritated. Not frustrated. Angry. The kind of angry that sits in your chest like bad scotch and follows you from the kitchen table to the gas pump to the voting booth. Republicans screaming at Democrats. Democrats screaming at Republicans. Independents looking at both parties like two drunks …

As Putin’s missiles rain terror across Ukraine, swarms of cheap drones now bring the war home to Moscow, shattering the illusion of Russian invincibility.

There’s an old saying we’ve all heard since childhood: you can dish it out, but you can’t take it. Nobody embodies that phrase better than Russian President Vladimir Putin.

For four years, Putin has sold the world a fantasy wrapped in propaganda and soaked in blood. Ukraine was supposed to collapse …

America is no longer merely witnessing an aggressive presidency; it is watching the rise of a government where perceived enemies can be hunted, targeted, and destroyed anywhere.

There was a time when American presidents, regardless of party, at least attempted to preserve the appearance of restraint. They understood that immense military and legal power required caution, deliberation, and accountability. The office carried enough authority on its own; it did not need to become personal.

Today, …

With Cuba collapsing under sanctions and Trump threatening another confrontation, America edges toward a dangerous future where intimidation replaces diplomacy and instability becomes strategy.

There’s an old baseball expression my son used to hear from coaches when he played competitive ball: “Dig in. Stay in the batter’s box.” It means don’t bail out when the heat comes high and tight. Don’t flinch when the pitcher wants to intimidate you. Keep your feet planted. Keep your …

As Trump praised friendship and spectacle in Beijing, Xi delivered a chilling warning on Taiwan, exposing how dangerously fragile America’s relationship with China has become.

The chandeliers sparkled. The military band played. The tables were spaced with such precision that the banquet hall almost looked like a carefully choreographed reminder of the Covid era. And there sat Donald Trump beside President Xi Jinping at one of the most lavish state dinners China has ever hosted …

While Americans sleepwalk toward another election, Republican operatives quietly redraw democracy itself; locking in power before voters ever realize the game was already rigged.

There’s an old lesson in politics that too many Democrats, too many journalists, and frankly too many Americans keep relearning the hard way: never underestimate the other guy’s desire for power. Especially when the “other guy” is Donald Trump.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it until people stop …

Nothing says “America First” quite like paying extra for imported sneakers so billion dollar corporations can pocket tariff refunds while consumers proudly finance the scam.

For years, I’ve been repeating the same line until people probably wanted to throw a sneaker at my head: tariffs are taxes, and consumers pay tariffs. Not China. Not Vietnam. Not some faceless cargo ship drifting across the Pacific. You. Me. Every exhausted parent standing in line at the mall …

The world’s most feared strongman now hides underground as Ukraine’s cheap drones humiliate Russia, exposing how modern warfare can shatter empires, dictators, and global stability.

Four years ago, Vladimir Putin launched what he thought would be a weekend project. Roll the tanks into Ukraine, flatten resistance, install a puppet government, seize strategic territory and resources, and strut through Red Square looking like some shirtless reincarnation of Peter the Great. Easy. Quick. Profitable.

Instead, the mighty …

On a holiday built to honor sacrifice, millions of mothers are quietly rationing groceries, dodging bills, and smiling through an economy crushing American families daily.

Mother’s Day. The one sacred Sunday where America collectively pretends it has its priorities straight.

So first, to every mother reading this: Happy Mother’s Day. Truly. Whether you are raising toddlers, adult children, grandchildren, or just trying to survive the emotional warfare of a family group chat, today is yours. …

Three deaths aboard a drifting cruise ship expose a terrifying reality: America’s fractured public health system may already be dangerously unprepared for the next outbreak.

The thing about pandemics is that they never arrive politely. They do not send engraved invitations. They do not wait for your political talking points to clear legal review. They do not care whether your public health agencies are fully staffed, hollowed out, or run by people who spent the …

When governments, media, and political tribes all sell competing realities, Americans are left drowning in propaganda, suspicion, rising gas prices, and dangerous uncertainty about war.

The most dangerous thing happening in America right now is not inflation. Not Iran. Not even the possibility of another endless Middle East conflict.

It is the collapse of objective truth.

Somewhere along the way, facts stopped being facts and became customizable accessories. Pick your narrative. Pick your tribe. Pick …

Americans cannot afford groceries, gas, or rent, but Washington somehow found a billion dollars for a presidential ballroom while Republicans quietly panic about the midterms.

There is something profoundly broken about a country where millions of Americans are standing in grocery store aisles doing mental math over eggs, milk, and gas while Washington debates the urgent national necessity of…(wait for it) a presidential ballroom.

Read that sentence again slowly because it sounds like satire. Unfortunately, …

Under oath, cornered by his own words, Lutnick faces a brutal reckoning where contradictions collide, documents close in, and Trump decides whether he’s still useful or finished.

For the last two months, I have said repeatedly that the theory floating around social media that the war with Iran was orchestrated to distract from the Epstein files was nonsense.

Not because this administration isn’t capable of manufacturing chaos. God knows chaos is their native language. But …

Fourteen Americans dead, billions burned, and a Defense Secretary outmatched, outplayed, and out of his depth, turning war into performance while the consequences keep mounting.

There are moments when incompetence is not just embarrassing, it is dangerous. This is one of those moments. And at the center of it sits Pete Hegseth, a man who walked into the Pentagon like it was a television studio and now appears stunned that the consequences are measured in …

From rubble to retaliation, Ukraine rewrites modern warfare as cheap drones shatter Russia’s oil lifeline, disrupt global markets, and expose the fragile illusion of military dominance.

There was a time, just a few months ago, when the moral clarity of this war felt almost surgical in its precision. Every morning began the same way. Images out of Ukraine. Civilians bloodied, dazed, pulled from the wreckage of apartment buildings that had stood the night before. Missiles …

Affordability did not disappear in theory, it collapsed at the airport gate, stranding thousands, killing jobs, and exposing a government dangerously out of touch with reality.

There’s a special kind of arrogance that comes from power insulated by privilege. It is the kind that allows a sitting president and his well fed chorus line of cabinet loyalists to look directly into the camera and tell you that affordability is not a real problem. That Americans …

Power is not seized in one moment. It advances through repetition, testing limits until resistance fades, and what once felt impossible begins to feel inevitable and permanent.

Power does not collapse a system overnight. It studies it first.

Quietly. Patiently. Like a hand pressing against a wall, searching for the soft spots. Not to break it all at once, but to understand where it gives.

That is what you are watching right now.

Not chaos. …

By Robert Reich

The Trump critic and satirist has also been one of the most thoughtful, funny, and genuinely decent people on television

Friends,

Stephen Colbert’s last show is this Thursday evening.

CBS refused to renew his contract, and you know exactly why: He mocked and criticized Trump.

CBS says it’s ending “The Late Show” because the show was costing CBS some $40 million a year. That’s utter bullsh*t. Colbert allowed CBS to charge higher …

By Robert Reich

And the cowardice of the ruling class

Friends,

My first quote of the week comes from Trump on Air Force One, on his way back from Beijing on Friday — telling David Sanger of The New York Times:

“I had a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you, write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy. We had a total military victory. I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you …

By Robert Reich

We must use words that accurately describe who Trump and his lackeys really are — and what they are actually doing to America

Friends,

Words matter. When describing a government, they inevitably carry moral weight.

Over the last 16 months, Trump and his appointees have so profoundly undermined the United States government that we should use different words to describe these people than we’ve used to describe all previous administrations.

To begin …

By Robert Reich

They all have something in common, and it's not the interest of America

Friends,

Trump calls the entourage of 12 CEOs accompanying him to China an “incredible gathering” of America’s “Greatest Businessmen/women.”

Well, it may be an incredible gathering. But to characterize them as America’s greatest business leaders — who are assumed to be leading America’s competitive charge against China — is misleading.

The American CEOs traveling with Trump to China don’t …

By Robert Reich

My conversation with Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones

Friends,

Yesterday I spoke with Tennessee state representative Justin Jones, one of the nation’s young Black leaders who’s been a rising star in Tennessee politics, about the Supreme Court’s shameful April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Jones told me that, at Trump’s urging, Tennessee Republicans had prepared a redistricting map even before the Court announced its …

By Robert Reich

You really need to know this

Friends,

The U.S. national debt just crossed a once-unthinkable threshold on the way toward breaking the record set in the wake of World War II: It now exceeds 100 percent of America’s gross domestic product.

As of March 31, our publicly held debt was $31.27 trillion, while America’s GDP in 2025 was $31.22 trillion. This puts the ratio at 100.2 percent, compared with 99.5 percent when …

By Robert Reich

And why this past two weeks has made it especially hard to recall

Friends,

When I was very young and frustrated about one thing or another, my mother reassured me that “everything works out in the end.”

Her optimism used to drive me nuts. “When is the end?” I’d ask her. “Next week? Next year? After we die? In a century? What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Just wait?”

…

By Robert Reich

Hint: It's not Chuck Schumer or Rahm Emanuel

Friends,

Last Thursday, populist Democratic candidate Graham Platner shook up the Democratic establishment when his primary competitor, Maine Governor Janet Mills, suspended her Senate campaign amid polls showing her badly trailing Platner, an oyster farmer who had come out of nowhere to win a national following.

Platner is the latest example of the rise of anti-establishment outsiders in the Democratic Party — a trend …

By Robert Reich

Friends,

Two weeks ago, I listed the top four potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates by current name recognition: Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Out of the 7,174 of you who voted on these four, only 6 percent chose Kamala Harris; 12 percent were for Gavin Newsom; 26 percent of you chose Pete Buttigieg; and 6 percent were for AOC.

The rest of you — 49 percent — wanted …

By Robert Reich

He's convincing the public of the necessity of doing this

Friends,

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the three or four wealthiest people in the world, with a net worth hovering around $260 billion to $277 billion, is devoting some of his wealth to fighting California’s wealth tax on billionaires.

So far, he’s spent $57 million trying to defeat the measure.

Brin’s actions — along with Elon Musk’s $250 million “investment” in …

By Robert Reich

And What Democrats Should Pledge to Do About it

Friends,

How can the stock market be rising to record levels while jobs and wages are going nowhere, most Americans are paying higher prices for just about everything, and consumer sentiment is in the dumps?

Answer: Stock prices reflect corporate profits, which have risen to record levels. And corporate profits are soaring for two big reasons:

1. Corporations have more monopoly power than …

By Robert Reich

The Supreme Court's shameful decision last Wednesday released a flood of memories — and worse.

Friends,

When I learned what Samuel Alito and the other Republican appointees to the Supreme Court did to the Voting Rights Act last week, I thought of Mickey.

(Forgive me if I’ve already told you about him, but he was very important to me.)

I met Mickey the summer after third grade. His family had rented one …

By Robert Reich

Hint: It's not that he's afraid of losing the vote

Friends,

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted last Thursday on the Ellison family’s purchase of the company. Some 1.743 billion shares were cast in favor of the sale; 16.3 million were cast against it, a ratio of roughly 99 to 1.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that Trump doesn’t need Congress’s approval to continue the war past the 60-day mark because …

By Robert Reich

Trump's purge of all political opponents, including Senator Bill Cassidy, leaves it with no purpose other than helping Trump achieve his lawless goals

Friends,

On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other …

By Robert Reich

Using the 25th Amendment

Friends,

I had dinner recently with a group of political operatives — sophisticated people who for years have been advising politicians and candidates. During dinner they shared with me their fantasy, which they gave 30 percent odds of becoming a reality within the next four months.

In my dinner companions’ fantasy, Trump’s failed war will elevate gas and food prices so high and long that much of the …

By Robert Reich

What we can do to stop and reverse Trump's takeover of the media

Friends,

Our media is controlled by just a handful of billionaires and their corporations. And Trump is making it worse.

Trump’s FCC just approved a massive merger that would let one huge media company control what over 80 percent of American households see. One of these merging companies, called Nexstar, tried to silence late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

Trump’s FCC …

By Robert Reich

Out of the rubble and embers of this catastrophe

Friends,

I’m not going to dwell on this week’s outrages by Trump and his regime — his Supreme Court appointees gutting the Voting Rights Act, his bizarre claim that his war doesn’t require congressional approval because it’s “terminated,” his murders of additional sailors he suspects of smuggling drugs, his ongoing ICE raids, his continuing efforts to use the Justice Department to punish perceived …