Friends,

The venerable New York Times — the “gray lady” of American journalism that not only determines what’s news but sets the standard for how it should be reported — has been describing the upcoming midterms as if it were a competition between two equally passionate and roughly equivalent sides.

For example, in describing the recent debate between the two candidates vying to represent Michigan in the Senate, Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the Times offered its readers an analysis of social media feeds —“one curated for a left-wing audience and one for a right-wing audience.”

The Times did this by collecting more than 13,000 posts from X, and then — using a social media analytics company — categorizing the posts according to their apparent political leanings and whether they were “personal attacks and criticism” or concerned a particular issue area.

Then the Times presented it all in a vertical graph, starting with the beginning of the debate at the top and the end at the bottom, with responses to El-Sayed on the left side and responses to Rogers on the right.

What did the Times report that might be useful to its readers? It turned out that “viewers following the event on social media likely came away with two very different impressions, depending on their own political inclinations.”

Well, duh. People choose social media depending on their political inclinations to begin with.

The Times then suggested that the two very different impressions were roughly equal, both in the degree to which they distorted the truth and in how troubling we should find those distortions.

“An algorithm attuned to Democrats … served up commentary depicting the Democratic candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, as a firebrand who delivered quick-witted attacks that left his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, scrambling. A feed curated for Republicans … created an impression of Mr. Rogers as calm and composed onstage as he landed blistering critiques of Dr. El-Sayed.”

When the candidates talked about the Iran war, according to the Times, “left-leaning users” praised “Dr. El-Sayed’s opposition to the conflict” while “right-leaning users” posted “personal criticism of Dr. El-Sayed’s Muslim beliefs.” As the debate shifted to the economy, “left-leaning users” posted about affordability, while the posts of “right-leaning users” were “often laden with personal attacks against Dr. El-Sayed.”

As the debate progressed, the Times reported, these “dueling narratives” became more pronounced. When Dr. El-Sayed again referred to the economy, left-leaning accounts “posted about the high cost of living” while Rogers’s supporters posted that “high gas prices are only temporary.” When Dr. El-Sayed talked about improving healthcare, Rogers’s supporters expressed “skepticism about Dr. El-Sayed’s medical background.” (The Times then noted that although Dr. El-Sayed has a medical degree from Columbia University, he has never practiced medicine.)

So what is the average reader or voter supposed to take away from this so-called analysis?

Note for starters that all the responses analyzed by the Times were on Musk’s “X” — which already leans authoritarian.

Beyond this is circular reasoning. People identified as "left-leaning users” were assumed to be “left-leaning” because their comments showed they were for El-Sayed and against Rogers, and “right-leaning users” were “right-leaning” because they were for Rogers and against El-Sayed.

The worst ad populum fallacy is that both sides deserve equal weight. They engaged in “dueling narratives” and they posted about the same number of comments. Even the graph represented a kind of equivalence.

Rubbish. Doesn’t The New York Times have a responsibility to tell readers that Rogers has been a rubber-stamp for Trump, including Trump’s war in Iran; that he voted for the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, and surveillance legislation; that he has a political record of suppressing Black votes in Detroit and across Michigan; and that he has long represented corporate interests over the interests of average working people?

And doesn’t the Times also have a responsibility to tell its readers that El-Sayed takes the opposite position on these — and is pushing for a single-payer healthcare system, breaking up large healthcare monopolies, taxing billionaire wealth and regulating AI and data centers, banning corporate campaign contributions, ending gerrymandering, reforming the Supreme Court, and ending U.S. military aid to Israel?

Two weeks from an election that will determine whether guardrails will be erected against America’s first dictator, and what does The New York Times do? Depict it like any other contest between America’s two major political parties — in which they present “dueling narratives” from their “left-leaning” or “right-leaning” perspectives.

This depiction is irresponsible and dangerously fraudulent. Don’t accept it.

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Friends,

Our fifth class begins our focus on power — and on the weakening power of workers and the increasing power of big corporations.

In case you missed them, here are the classes that have been released so far: Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, and Class 4.

For Class 5, just double-click on the video below, and you’re in the fifth week of class.

Background: It’s one of the oldest struggles inside the American economy and within capitalism worldwide: between labor and capital. And it has a direct effect on inequality.

Today we’ll look at antitrust laws designed to contain the market power of corporations, and labor laws designed to increase the market power of workers.

Both sets of laws have been altered over the last 40 years, contributing to a huge power shift. Corporations have gained greater market power, while the power of organized labor has been dramatically reduced. We’ll examine why these changes have occurred.

Questions:

• What happened to antitrust in the United States over the last 50 years?

• What happened to labor unions?

• Why are antitrust (anti-monopoly) laws stronger in Europe than they are in the United States?

• Why is a higher percent of European (and Canadian) workforces unionized than in the United States?

• What’s the relationship among degrees of monopolization, levels of unionization, and inequality, and why?

Readings for you —

On organized labor:

• Louis Uchitelle, “How the Loss of Union Power Has Hurt American Manufacturing,” The New York Times.

• Steven Greenhouse, “How Walmart Persuades Its Workers Not to Organize,” The Atlantic.

• David Madland, “Wage Boards for American Workers,” Center for American Progress.

On monopolization:

• John Cassidy, “The Biden Antitrust Revolution,” The New Yorker.

• Kate Bahn, “McDonalds, monopsony, and the need for joint employer standards,” Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

• Peter Thiel, “Competition is for Losers,” The Wall Street Journal.

• David Dayen, “Special Investigation: The Dirty Secret Behind Warren Buffett’s Billions,” The Nation.

• Dipayan Ghosh, “Don’t Break Up Facebook — Treat It Like a Utility,” Harvard Business Review.

For a full list of readings and the student handout for today’s class, you can visit the course website here.

Subscribe now

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A huge thanks to the Wealth and Poverty team — to Michael Lahanas-Calderón, Kyle Parker, Dan Davis, and Emmett Tjen — as well as Coro Fellows Ammar Ansari and Meagan Turner for preparing these course materials to be shared with all of you. And to Heather Kinlaw Lofthouse for making all this happen on this page.

Friends,

The Republican Party once stood for limited government, active opposition to Soviet aggression, and a balanced budget. Now it stands only for Trump and his authoritarian neofascism, demanding total loyalty to him.

Yet Trump’s approval among U.S. adults now stands at 33 percent, with 66 percent disapproving; 52 percent said they disapprove strongly. (That approval rating is 4 percentage points lower than in July and 8 points lower than at this point last year. It’s lower than at any point in his first term.)

In other words, the Republican Party has tied itself to Trump, but the vast majority of Americans believe Trump a failure.

So where does that leave the GOP? Nowhere. The GOP is dead.

The death of the Republican Party is tragic to me personally. I got my first job in government in Republican Gerald Ford’s administration. I argued Supreme Court cases in Ford’s Department of Justice. Years later, as secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, I worked closely with Republicans in the House and Senate to enact the Family and Medical Leave Act, raise the minimum wage, and protect workers’ pensions. My father was a Republican who voted for Dwight Eisenhower for president in 1952 and 1956. His father, my grandfather Alexander Reich, was a Republican who voted for Alf Landon for president in 1936 and Wendell Willkie in 1940.

Gerald Ford is as far from the current Republican Party as was or is any Democratic president. Sad to say, in 2024, the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation declined to present the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service to former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney out of fear that, should he become president again, Trump would retaliate against the organization by taking away its tax-exempt status.

In response, Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer David Hume Kennerly resigned from the board. In his resignation letter he wrote that “Gerald Ford became president, in part, because Richard Nixon had ordered the development of an enemies list and demanded his underlings use the IRS against those listed. That’s exactly what the executive committee fears will happen if there’s a second coming of Donald Trump.” Kennerly added:

“Did [Lieutenant] Gerald Ford meet the enemy head-on [in World War II] because he thought he wouldn’t get killed? No. He did it despite that possibility. This executive committee, on the other hand, bolted before any shots were fired. You aren’t alone. Many foundations, organizations, corporations, and other entities are caught up in this tidal wave of timidity and fear that’s sweeping this country. I mistakenly thought we were better than that. This is the kind of acquiescent behavior that leads to authoritarianism. President Ford most likely would have come out even tougher and said that it leads directly to fascism.”

Ford’s biggest mistake as president was to pardon Nixon. Ford believed that America had to be shielded from the pain and disruption of a president put on criminal trial and possibly imprisoned. Yet to many Americans, the fact that Nixon would not be held accountable felt like another assault on the common good.

All subsequent Republican presidential candidates, including Trump, have used Nixon’s playbook, relying on a coalition of corporate America and the white working class, and using bigoted racial dog-whistles.

Nixon infected the modern Republican Party with a sickness that would ultimately kill it. Trump applied the coup de grace.

The Republican Party purged their honest lawmakers who refused to go along with Trump’s Big Lie, the most dangerous one in American history in terms of its consequences for Americans’ confidence in democracy.

On April 14, 2024, on ABC’s “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos asked New Hampshire’s then Republican governor Chris Sununu about his switch from supporting former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination to supporting Trump.

“Your words were very, very clear on January 11, 2021,” Stephanopoulos reminded Sununu. “You said that President Trump’s rhetoric and actions contributed to the insurrection. No other president in history has contributed to an insurrection. So, please explain.”

Sununu responded, “For me, it’s not about him as much as it is having a Republican administration.”

Near the end of the interview, Stephanopoulos said: “Just to sum up, you would support [Trump] for president even if he is convicted in classified documents. You would support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You would support him for president even though you believe he’s lying about the last election. You would support him for president even if he’s convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?”

Sununu replied, “Yeah, me and 51 percent of America.”

Stephanpoulos: “I’m asking you about right and wrong. You’re comfortable with the idea of supporting someone who’s convicted of a federal crime as president?”

Sununu: “No, I don’t think any American is comfortable with any of this. They don’t like any of this, of course, but I mean, when it comes to actually looking at each of these trials as they kind of take place whether it’s this year or next year or as they kind of line up. Right now this is about an election. This is about politics.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Politics is not about right and wrong? It has no moral content? Is it only about winning?

Chris Sununu’s willingness to destroy American democracy so his party could stay in power — a rejection of our system of government and an abrogation of the self-government that generations of Americans have fought and died for — is shared by most Republican officeholders today.

The Republican Party’s end is tragic because America needs two parties capable of governing; two parties with a sense of the common good, even if their interpretations of it differ; two parties dedicated to democracy, even if politics is sometimes dirty and often frustrating.

The death of the Republican Party illustrates what happens when presidents are not held accountable. It is evidence of what occurs when a large portion of the public feels it’s been cheated. It shows that many Americans have lost sight of our history and ideals or have become so cynical and hopeless that they are willing to chuck it all in favor of an atrocious human being who claims to be on their side.

The Republican Party went from a governing institution into a crazed cult, intent on turning America into an authoritarian nation. A large, angry, anxious working class craved a strongman who’d shake up the system, but strongmen are utterly inconsistent with democracy. Hence, the GOP’s death.

I fervently hope that many of the Trump cultists now in Congress who call themselves Republicans will be thrown out on November 3. That would be the best thing that could happen to the Republican Party, because it could give the GOP the chance it desperately needs — to start over.

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Friends,

This past week 4 of “Wealth and Poverty” focused on inequalities of place. If you haven’t had a chance to join, here’s a VERY short summary:

Reminder: Tomorrow we begin Week 5, when we’ll turn our focus to the giant “power shift” that began in the 1980s — weakening the power of workers and increasing the power of big corporations.

Week 5 will be released tomorrow at 2 pm PT, 5 pm ET.

In case you missed them, here are the classes that have been released so far: Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, and Class 4.

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Friends,

Please submit your caption in the Comments section, and, as before, please use the Comments section only for captions.

Winners will be announced next Sunday. For consideration, please post your caption by Monday at 9 pm PT, 12 midnight ET.

Leave a comment

Last week’s winners:

“Hegseth’s three bullets: Incompetent, Vainglorious, Sadistic.”

(Congratulations, Laurence Hoffmann.)

“I’d rather watch a live impeachment hearing.”

(Congratulations, Charles Welsh.)

Runners-up:

“Rated R for Republican.”

(Congratulations, Adam Laurie.)

“Murder, he wrote.”

(Congratulations, Steven Horowitz.)

“I didn’t know we got TV reception from Afghanistan.”

(Congratulations, Mike Hammer.)

“Honey, do we really have to have Dark Web TV as part of our bundle?”

(Congratulations, Kathleen Weber.)

“Making America Gruesome Again.”

(Congratulations, Martin Mayland.)

“He likes DIE better than DEI.”

(Congratulations, Rachel Brown.)

“Looking forward to Hegseth’s trial for treason. They execute for treason, right?”

(Congratulations, CJGallagher23.)

“News isn’t fit for adults, let alone the children.”

(Congratulations, Danny Moran.)

“If they are the party of family values, it must be the Manson family.”

(Congratulations, John Breen.)

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Friends,

America makes its choice two weeks from Tuesday.

It’s not really a choice between two parties. After all, a record 45 percent of American voters now call themselves “independent” and don’t align with either party. And most of us who still describe ourselves as Republicans or Democrats don’t have much love for whichever party we’re registered with.

Nor will it be a choice between the “left” and the “right,” as those terms have been used for the last half-century — representing preferences by the left for more and bigger social safety nets and by the right for lower taxes. These days, big business wants more government in the form of subsidies, bailouts, no-bid government contracts, and a giant military-technology state.

The real choice is between ever more concentrated wealth and power at the top — in the billionaire class, tech bros, Wall Street, and the C-suites of giant corporations — versus more wealth and power in what used to be the American working middle class.

That’s what the “affordability crisis” is all about. It also underlies America’s growing concern about corruption.

For the last few weeks it’s looked as if America was about to choose the second path, for The People and against Big Money.

But Big Money is now striking back. Elon Musk is pouring hundreds of millions into supporting Republican candidates, as are Big Crypto, AIPAC, AI, and Trump’s MAGA Inc. (and its related super PACs).

“Dark money” — anonymous campaign donations flowing through so-called “nonprofits,” mostly from wealthy individuals and CEOs — is also dropping into the system.

Democratic candidates are being outspent 2-to-1 by super PACs and megadonors. More than in any midterm since the Supreme Court’s shameful Citizens United decision, Big Money is going almost exclusively to the GOP. The Supreme Court has given Republicans an additional spending advantage by allowing super PACs to work in close cooperation with candidates.

Texas’s James Talarico hasn’t taken any corporate PAC money, for example, and has an army of volunteers going door to door for him and has accumulated one of the largest small-donor war chests of any candidate in this election cycle. But his opponent, Ken Paxton, is relying almost entirely on $158 million he’s got from Musk via a Republican super PAC.

This enormous gusher of Big Money for Republicans has no regulatory oversight because the Federal Election Commission has no quorum and therefore can’t function.

At the state level, Big Money is attacking ballot measures to increase taxes on the super-rich — such as California’s Proposition 40, a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires. Google multibillionaire Sergey Brin is sinking hundreds of millions into defeating it. Gavin Newsom also opposes it. But another California presidential hopeful, Ro Khanna, is pushing for it, to his great credit. (Note to California voters: Vote YES on 40 and NO on the poison pills, Props 41 and 42.)

This election is the clearest contest yet between Big Money and The People. Spending by super PACs and other megadonors in the current midterms is over 50 percent higher than in the 2022 midterms, in inflation-adjusted dollars.

I wish I were more confident that The People will prevail. Democrats are doing well in the polls, but polling is flawed when it comes to the influence of Big Money. Many so-called “low-information” voters are more likely to be swayed by media advertising and less likely to respond to polls or tell pollsters truthfully how they intend to vote.

When this is over, if the Democrats take back the House and at least come close to retaking control of the Senate, high on their agenda must be seeking to get Big Money out of our politics — via constitutional amendment or public financing of elections (matching small-dollar donations). And also going after the source of much of the Big Money by enacting a national wealth tax.

In the meantime: stay calm, support good candidates, do whatever you can to get out the vote, and vote as soon as you can.

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Friends,

Today, with just over two weeks to go until the midterm elections, Michael, Kamau, and I take stock of where we are: Trump is acting weirder than ever (which is saying something), his polls are lower than ever, inflation is higher than it’s been in years, his war in Iran is getting even worse and his cozying up to Putin even more bizarre.

So please grab a cuppa, pull up a chair, and join the conversation.

Robert Reich

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Friends,

AI data center construction is diverting capital and labor away from building everything else we need. AI is the biggest, most costly, and least popular economic bet America has ever made. Why are we making it? Who stands to gain? Who’s going to lose? What can we do?

Please watch and share:

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Friends,

The Democrats’ focus on affordability seems to be a winning strategy (we’ll know for sure in a little over two weeks). But we mustn’t lose sight of the moral squalor at the core of the Trump regime.

It’s that moral squalor — the utter disregard for the opinions, norms, and ideals of the nation or, for that matter, of humanity — that uniquely marks Trump and the reprobates he has attracted to Washington. It has also poisoned much of the Republican Party, including the billionaires and tech bros who finance it.

To put this despicable era behind us, we’ll need to renounce and reverse this squalor.

What are loosely described as Trump’s “conflicts of interest,” for example, extend way beyond enriching himself from his presidency. He has violated the basic norms of presidential decency.

He just decided to host the Group of 20 annual summit of world leaders at his private golf club in Miami in December. When he sought to do this during his first term, it was viewed as a blatant violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Now, after America’s moral sensibilities have been numbed by Trump’s appetite for foreign gifts — such as Qatar’s “donation” of a $400 million jumbo jet — it barely merits a mention.

He sells advance notice of his market-altering announcements for $100,000 a month, thereby profiting by tipping off people who trade on the information before it becomes publicly available. He files a trademark application for “Trump TV” to control the name of a streaming service that the White House uses for official presidential communications, thereby pocketing the benefits from taxpayer funds used to create and run the channel.

His family-backed crypto firm introduces a stablecoin just months before he signs legislation promoting it. His wife is paid tens of millions for a self-promotional film by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, a federal contractor and major retailer subject to a myriad of regulations. His son has a Russian oligarch, close to Putin, pick up the tab for part of his wedding afterparty in the Bahamas.

He arranges for the Justice Department to grant him and his family immunity for any back taxes and penalties they might owe.

And so on. Trump has tossed away all constraints on making money off his presidency “because I got no credit in the first term” and “I found out that nobody cared.”

Credit? Someone who is entrusted with the highest office in the land must receive “credit” for doing what’s right, in order to continue doing what’s right? Nobody cares? A president can embrace corruption if the public doesn’t mind?

It’s not just the blatant self-dealing. His moral squalor extends to every aspect of governing.

He lies incessantly — a gushing firehose of deception.

His foreign policies make Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik seem principled by comparison. He orders the abduction of the president of another nation, installs a new president of his choosing, and announces he’s taking that nation’s oil — and doesn’t even account for what he does with the oil money.

He attacks Iran without consulting America’s traditional allies or even Congress.

Eager to reduce diesel prices (which are hurting Republicans in the midterms), he turns his back on Ukraine and sides with Putin, the aggressor in that conflict — making a deal to import Russian diesel fuel (a windfall for Putin who can now bomb Ukraine even harder) while demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries. Trump then blames Ukraine president Zelenskyy for high oil prices rather than Trump’s own war with Iran, and says Ukraine should get a new president.

If this isn’t moral squalor, I don’t know what is.

The squalor also extends to usurping the authority of Congress to decide on tariffs, wars, and whether and how to spend taxpayer money.

And extends to his cynical defiance of Supreme Court orders. When the high court invalidates Trump’s tariffs, he reimposes them under a different statute. When the court rules that he doesn’t have grounds to remove a member of the Fed board of governors, he concocts a means to do so anyway. When the court says he has to remove his name from the Kennedy Center, he closes the center and threatens to demolish it.

It extends to his using the Justice Department and the FBI to prosecute people who have stood up to him, including courageous judges and prosecutors.

It extends to his overt bigotry and racism — claiming Mexicans are “bringing drugs and crime”; calling Somali-Americans “garbage” and denouncing “what they’ve done to Minnesota, these people from Somalia”; and taunting Muslims (calling Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan, “Mohammed”).

It extends to giving a gigantic tax cut to America’s wealthiest people, financed by cutting nutrition assistance and health care to America’s most vulnerable people.

The moral squalor has turned much of America into a police state — terrorizing large numbers of people residing here, including many here legally. Deploying ICE agents at schools, courthouses, and hospitals. Forcibly taking parents away from their children. Allowing masked gunmen without identification to grab suspected undocumented immigrants off our streets, from their cars, and out of their homes — giving them no opportunity to defend themselves in front of third parties before putting them into often overcrowded and unhealthy prisons or sending them to other countries where they’re imprisoned. Killing and murdering — even murdering Americans who are trying to monitor their activities — then refusing even to conduct official inquiries into the murders.

When asked if there are limits to his authority, Trump replies: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

“My own” morality is no morality at all. Morality reflects collective judgments about right and wrong, shared values about what we owe one another as citizens of the same society. Morality refers to the ideals we seek to achieve together.

Trump is not guided by any sense of right and wrong. He is guided only by what enriches him or gives him more power and glory — a nihilistic might-makes-right ethos in which the strong do whatever they want and the weak suffer what they must.

To be sure, Trump’s moral squalor could not have permeated America — he could not have been elected a second time — had our shared norms and ideals not already been compromised.

Vast inequalities of income and wealth, coupled with a growing sense that the social contract at the heart of the American system was coming undone and that those at the top have rigged the game, were already fueling anger and distrust. Trump ignited that fuel.

But without shared ideals or common moral values, there is nothing pushing back against this despicable president and regime — no countervailing moral force against the ongoing squalor.

Part of the project of ridding ourselves of Trump, therefore, must be to rekindle our understanding of the common good and appreciation of what we owe one another as members of the same society.

Of course we must make life more affordable; Democrats are wise to emphasize this in the midterms. But we also must demand common decency from our president.

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Friends,

Trump and Vance claim they’re putting “America first.” They’re not. They’re putting themselves first and America last.

So what would a REAL “America first” agenda look like? Take a look:

Our real America First agenda doesn’t exclude or vilify people. It doesn’t surveil them, take away their healthcare, or give billionaires and corporations unrestricted power over their lives.

America First means taking care of and investing in everyone who resides within our borders. Helping people abroad, not bombing them. Ensuring working people have freedom and control over their own lives.

Don’t let Trump and Republicans claim they put America first. They don’t. This agenda does.

Please share.

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Friends,

He’s Exhibit A on why billionaire wealth should be taxed, why we have to get big money out of politics, why billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to buy up major media, and why our government shouldn’t give them huge military contracts.

I’m talking about Elon Musk, of course.

Yesterday, former Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov thanked Musk for restoring his Starlink satellite’s vital high-speed connectivity: “Thank you, @elonmusk. We hope for your continued support.” (Connectivity had slowed after Musk posted Saturday that “Zelensky has gone too far.”)

But who gave Musk authority to slow his satellite service in the first place — or, for that matter, to publicly comment on Ukraine President Zelensky? (Musk says Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government, and that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” But if that’s the case, why did Fedorov thank Musk?)

Every time I list another of Musk’s outrages, someone says, “Yes, but he’s an innovator!”

He’s not. As is made clear in Alex Gibney’s smart new documentary, “Musk,” Elon didn’t invent Tesla. He didn’t invent X. He didn’t invent SpaceX. He didn’t invent Starlink satellites. He didn’t invent squat.

Musk is to innovation what Trump is to governing. Both are conmen. Both are megalomaniacs. Both love authoritarians and detest democracy. Both are racist and misogynistic. Neither believes in (or harbors an ounce of) empathy toward anyone. Both think nothing of corrupting governments for personal gain. Both say they’re self-made men — and both worship their creators.

Both spout bigoted filth all hours of the day and night to hundreds of millions of people.

Okay, let me just say it out loud: Both Musk and Trump are loathsome human beings.

Someday historians will come up with an explanation of how two such awful people could have become the two most powerful people in America if not the world (what was there about America in the early 21st century?).

But for now the goal of sane people must be to defund both of them and get them as far away from politics as possible.

That will be difficult, to be sure. Musk has so far sunk roughly $366 million into the 2026 midterm election cycle, $276 million of it since July — all ​to help Republicans retain control of Congress. That makes him the largest single known donor in the entire midterm elections. And he’s aiming to collect a lot of quid pro quos.

Hell, he spent a quarter of a billion dollars in 2024 to help Trump win reelection and was rewarded by Trump with access to every bit of data the U.S. government keeps on every one of us, along with billions of dollars’ worth of no-bid contracts with the Pentagon. (His Starlink satellite system is now key to the military strategy of the United States as well as that of Ukraine.) He was also rewarded with a chain saw inaptly named “Department of Government Efficiency,” which he used to destroy U.S.A.I.D. and slash other government agencies he doesn’t like.

In the last few months Musk has given at least $10 million to a Texas super PAC seeking to elect Republican Ken Paxton to the Senate, despite (or is it because of?) Paxton’s long record of ethical lapses, legal controversies, and official misconduct. Musk’s businesses are headquartered in Texas, so he needs to buy friends there.

On Sunday, Musk pushed the false story to his 242 million followers on X that James Talarico, Paxton’s Democratic opponent, was absent from the campaign trail because he had suffered a mental breakdown and was receiving counseling at the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health center in Ohio.

Musk’s story has been thoroughly debunked. Security camera footage shows Talarico at home, not at an Ohio mental health facility. (Meanwhile, according to The Wall Street Journal, on New Year’s Eve 2024, Paxton partied in Dubai with his extramarital girlfriend and two fugitives from charges of over $300 million in healthcare fraud in the U.S. One of the men donated $190,000 to Paxton, $25,000 of it after he was indicted.)

The project of defunding Musk will probably have to wait until after January 20, 2029, when, let’s pray, we have a sane administration in Washington that will end all government contracts with him (his support for right-wing extremists around the world makes him a security risk), bust up his monopolies (a reinvigorated Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission will see to it), and impose a significant wealth tax on him.

But you don’t have to wait until then. Stop buying Teslas. Don’t use X. Don’t sign up for Starlink. And support politicians who promise to defund him.

Oh, and what about deporting him? Hmmm. Didn’t he lack proper work authorization during his student-to-entrepreneur transition time in the mid-1990s?

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Friends,

Last week, Trump predicted “big surprises” ahead of the midterm elections. During an appearance last Wednesday in Maryland, Trump turned to Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and stated, “We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right Russ?” without specifying further — thereby teasing the prospect of a big measure later in October.

I’ve asked a number of political advisers, economists, and Trump-watchers what they think Trump has in mind. I’ve grouped their responses below. Please choose one that best matches your sense of Trump’s most likely “October surprise.”

Read more

Friends,

I keep hearing from political insiders that there’s a growing chance Trump will be removed from office soon after the midterms. See this:

It’s becoming apparent that Trump is becoming more demented by the day. He can’t be trusted to do the job — which is why Congress ratified the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, section 4 of which reads:

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the pwers and duties of the. office as Acting President.”

As you see, even if Trump’s cabinet lapdogs won’t declare he’s unable, Congress may set up a “body” to decide it.

As the above video makes clear, there’s ample reason to believe this is already in the works.

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Friends,

In these last weeks before the midterms, Democratic candidates have been gaining ground by talking about two things: the affordability crisis and political corruption.

If Democrats regain control of Congress and genuinely want to respond to affordability, they’ll need to do everything possible to root out the corruption.

The two are inseparable. In large part, prices are rising faster than paychecks because so much of the economy has become subject to political bribery, Trump Republican pay-to-play schemes, and kickbacks to Trump and his cronies.

1. Trump’s war and the corruption underlying it

Trump’s war on Iran is causing Americans to spend almost 50 percent more on gas than before the war, on average. And the diesel fuel needed to transport almost everything else we buy now averages more than $6.00 a gallon, which is also being passed on to consumers.

These price increases due to Trump’s war tell only half the story. The other half is the political corruption at the root of the war — enriching Trump’s friends and family.

The war has been a huge windfall for Big Tech supplying the military — such as Palantir, a core artificial intelligence and data-integration partner for the U.S. Department of Defense, founded by Trump and JD Vance’s buddy Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk.

Musk’s SpaceX reportedly quintupled its connection fees for the Pentagon, from $5,000 per terminal to $25,000 per terminal for terminals integrated into U.S. “kamikaze” (LUCAS) drones deployed in the conflict.

Not incidentally, Musk has quietly funneled more than $275 million to Republican candidates in the midterms, making him by far the largest single donor to either party.

Meanwhile, investment companies backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have accumulated billions in Pentagon contracts and future contract options, according to the government’s official contract reporting. (Congressional Democrats continue to demand that the Pentagon’s inspector general investigate the approved deals.)

2. Trump’s tariffs and the corruption beneath them

Trump’s tariffs offer another example of higher prices connected to corruption. The tariffs are import taxes that have increased annual household costs by an estimated $1,100, according to The Budget Lab at Yale.

Again, though, the price increases tell only half the story.

Trump’s tariffs have enabled Trump to give out tariff waivers and carve-outs to industries and companies that do him favors.

After Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and promised major domestic investments, Apple got tariff exemptions for imported smartphones, computers, semiconductors, and flat panel displays, all of which saved Apple huge amounts of money.

After Elon Musk sank a quarter of a billion dollars into Trump’s 2024 campaign, Tesla got a tariff exemption for electronics.

Reyes Holdings, a bottler that ranks among the largest privately held companies in the U.S. and is owned by brothers who have donated millions to Republicans, got a tariff exemption for polyethylene terephthalate, used to make plastic bottles. And so on.

3. Trump’s promotion of AI and the corruption underlying it

A third example linking higher prices to corruption is artificial intelligence. Together with the costs of Trump’s war in Iran, AI’s borrowing of over $500 billion so far this year has contributed to sky-high interest rates on mortgages, auto loans, and credit-card overdrafts. And AI data centers are raising electricity prices in areas where data centers are sucking up energy.

As with the war and the tariffs, Trump’s support for AI is tied to political payoffs. Tech companies and their executives donated over $300 million to support Trump’s 2024 reelection efforts and MAGA ​Inc, the political action committee aligned with Trump. (This doesn’t include Musk’s more than a quarter billion dollars in donations to Republicans.)

According to a CNBC analysis of FEC records, megadonor contributions from AI, crypto, and online gambling executives have overwhelmingly favored Republicans, with 14 of the 20 largest donor groups nearly exclusively backing GOP candidates or outside groups.

To see how Trump’s war, his tariffs, and his support for AI interact on prices, consider housing affordability, which is among voters’ top concerns.

While Trump’s war and encouragement of AI have contributed to the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rising to over 7 percent, Trump’s tariffs have caused the prices of lumber and building materials to soar. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that tariffs on lumber and building materials have added $10,900 to the cost of constructing a new U.S. single-family home.

The price of copper, a key material for electrical wiring in residential and commercial construction, has risen 40 percent in the past year due to Trump’s tariffs and the demands of data centers — adding even more cost to building a typical home, which requires hundreds of pounds of copper.

4. Trump’s giant tax cut for the rich and the corruption it rests on

A final illustration of the close connection between rising prices and corruption is Trump’s tax cuts. Trump’s megadonors in the 2024 campaign demanded another big tax cut as a condition for their investments, which came in the form of Trump’s “Big Beautiful” (Big Ugly) bill.

But the tax cuts have come at the expense of healthcare for average Americans.

To pay for the tax cuts demanded by their largest donors, Trump and congressional Republicans have slashed Medicaid and failed to renew healthcare tax credits. As a result, millions of Americans are now forced to spend far more for health insurance coverage or do without it altogether.

5. The Democrats’ agenda if they retake control of Congress

If Democrats regain control of Congress, they will need to focus not only on alleviating high prices but also on eliminating the causes of those high prices. It will be impossible to do the former without attacking the latter.

In addition to ending Trump’s war and his arbitrary tariffs, they must reform campaign financing, and help reduce the influence of big money in politics. One method would be to match public financing with small-dollar donations.

They’ll also need to resurrect the systems of accountability Trump has dismantled —the independent civil service, independent inspectors general, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Federal Election Commission.

Under Trump and his Republican enablers, the richest Americans and biggest corporations have made out like bandits. Average working Americans are paying dearly for what the bandits have stolen. The grift and the graft must end.

***

PS: Today I’m joining Bernie Sanders, Stacey Abrams, Paul Krugman, Naomi Klein, Mehdi Hasan, Rebecca Solnit and others for “How We Win,” a weekly Guardian newsletter about defeating Trumpism. Sign up here for bold ideas to build a better future.

Friends,

Sorry to intrude on your inbox again today, but I wanted to bring your attention to Monday’s raid by federal agents on the Washington-area home of Rep. Ilhan Omar — three weeks before she faces reelection to Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District.

The raid reportedly concerns Omar’s immigration history, including allegations of fraud that she has repeatedly denied.

Omar accuses the Trump regime of weaponizing law enforcement against a political opponent:

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.”

Months ago, Trump called Omar — a Somali-born Muslim who became a U.S. citizen and was elected to Congress in 2018 — “garbage.” He said she shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman and stood by as his supporters chanted to “send her back” to her native Somalia.

This past weekend — before Monday’s raid — Trump renewed his attacks on Omar. “She comes from Somalia,” Trump said, where “they don’t have a government, they don’t have police, all they have is crime and squalor.” He continued:

“She comes into our country and she says ‘my Constitution allows me.’ She’s talking about our Constitution. What they’ve done to Minnesota, these people from Somalia, should never be allowed.”

Let me remind you that this is the president of the United States mouthing this bigoted, racist, nationalistic filth.

In this weekend’s rant, Trump also stated that “JD Vance and our people are looking at it” — referring to Omar.

After the raid on her home, Trump said he has “always found [Omar] to be totally crooked” and called her “a terrible person.”

JD Vance has previously accused Omar of immigration fraud without providing any evidence. In March, Vance reiterated that claim, which he said he had discussed with White House senior aide Stephen Miller.

“We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud,” Vance told a conservative podcaster. The next step, he said, was to figure out how to “build a case.”

In a democracy, the highest officials of one party do not “build cases” to pursue legislators from the opposing party.

Nor do they investigate their political opponents within days of an election, in violation of explicit Department of Justice rules.

The Department of Justice guidance for protecting election integrity explicitly states that the department should not engage in investigative measures that might “chill legitimate voting and campaign activities” or “interject an investigation itself into ongoing campaigns.”

The Justice Manual further states that federal prosecutors and agents “may never select the timing” of investigative steps, charges, or public statements for the purpose of affecting an election or giving an advantage or disadvantage to a candidate or political party.

Election-year guidance dating back to at least 2008 has emphasized that “politics must play no role” in investigative or charging decisions and that prosecutors should exercise particular caution close to elections.

If Democrats regain control of the House, they must investigate this flagrant abuse of power by Trump, Vance, and the Department of Justice.

In the meantime, you might consider making a contribution to Ilhan Omar’s campaign, here. And if you’re able to volunteer for her campaign, do so here.

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Good morning, friends,

This week’s Class 4 explores why geographic segregation by income, wealth, and race has been on the rise.

In case you missed them, here are the classes that have been released so far: Class 1, Class 2, Class 3.

For Class 4, just double-click on the video below, and you’re in the fourth week of class.

Some background:

Inequalities that depend on where you live are widening in particularly divisive ways.

To be rich in today’s America means never having to come into contact with anyone who isn’t. To be poor in today’s America means being trapped on islands of poverty from which escape has become more and more difficult.

The questions we’ll focus on today:

• Why is it becoming easier for the wealthier to segregate from the poorer within a nation?

• What forms does this segregation take in addition to geographic?

• What are the consequences?

• Is this much different from a nation as a whole cutting itself off from others around the world who are poorer?

Thanks for joining me!

Recommended Readings:

• Editorial Board, “The Cities We Need,” The New York Times

• Phillip Longman, “Why the Economic Fates of American Cities Diverged,” The Atlantic

• Jonathan Kozol, “Life on the Mississippi: East St. Louis, Illinois,” Savage Inequalities

• Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, “Separated by Design: How Some of America’s Richest Towns Fight Affordable Housing,” ProPublica

For a full list of readings and the student handout for today’s class, you can visit the course website here.

Subscribe now

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A huge thanks to the Wealth and Poverty team — to Michael Lahanas-Calderón, Kyle Parker, Dan Davis, and Emmett Tjen — as well as Coro Fellows Ammar Ansari and Meagan Turner for preparing these course materials to be shared with all of you. And to Heather Kinlaw Lofthouse for making all this happen on this page.

Friends,

Everywhere he goes on the campaign trail, Trump is telling Republican voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

He’s not, of course, but his approval rating is so low that telling voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot is backfiring big-time.

Which is why so many Republican candidates are trying to distance themselves from him. They’re not mentioning his name. They’re not talking about his policies. They avoid the word “MAGA.” A dozen have removed his name, image, or endorsements from their campaign websites.

They don’t want to appear with him. When Mike Schrimpf, a spokesman for John Sununu’s Senate campaign, was asked why Trump isn’t campaigning with Sununu, Schrimpf limply explained,“John’s focus the entire campaign has been on New Hampshire, and [he] doesn’t plan to campaign with anyone from outside New Hampshire.” Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins told The New York Times she has no plans to campaign with Trump.

Several prominent Republican candidates are openly criticizing Trump. Michigan’s Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers released a direct-to-camera ad that takes on Trump’s trade war with Canada. “Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy,” Rogers says, holding a can of the Canadian-brewed beer Labatt. “We need to end this tariff war — now.”

Yet Democrats in key battleground states aren’t letting their Republican opponents get away with distancing themselves from Trump. At last week’s Senate debate in Maine, Troy Jackson accused Susan Collins of failing to oppose Trump’s war in Iran and his tariffs. “We are in a crisis now because she wouldn’t stand up to Trump.”

In last week’s Georgia debate, Jon Ossoff tied his Republican challenger, Rep. Michael Collins, to Trump — charging that “Whatever Donald Trump says, Mike Collins does” and at one point even calling Trump’s tariffs the “Mike Collins Donald Trump tariffs.”

In last week’s Michigan debate, Democrat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed accused his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, of being a “sock puppet” for Trump.

The more voters “pretend” Trump is on the ballot, the better for Democrats.

Yet I doubt Trump cares. He isn’t really campaigning for Republicans anyway. He’s campaigning for himself.

His “midterm convention” in Dallas at the start of September — invented by Trump to kick off the campaign season — was little more than a pep rally to glorify himself. His photographs covered the walls of the arena where the Dallas Mavericks play. His face was even plastered on coffee cups, in elevators, over mirrors in lavatories.

His endorsements of Republican candidates have been laced with self-absorption. When asking South Carolinians to vote for Darline Graham for the Senate, for example, he recounted that his “dear friend Lindsey” always told him Darline was the finest, most reliable, smartest, and most loyal person he had ever known. Then Trump said (cue Trump’s ego): “I would be upset with Lindsey for saying this, because I thought I had all of those qualities.”

When Trump appears on the road with Republican candidates who still want to be seen with him, he talks mostly about himself — explaining, for example, why he takes large doses of aspirin daily (he says he “psychologically” needs it); claiming that he has one of the highest IQs “anywhere in the world”; warning that if Democrats take over Congress he’ll be impeached; blaming his lousy polls on “an extremely poor job of promotion,” complaining that his hair is thinning; and railing at the media for not reporting the “huge crowds I’m attracting” to “my” rallies.

He barely mentions the Republican candidates. He doesn’t even talk about America as a whole. Instead, he praises Americans who support him and criticizes Americans who oppose him — such as those in Los Angeles and San Diego, whom he invited Iran to nuke.

He discounts polls showing a blue wave as “fake” because, he insists, the polls haven’t factored in his campaign appearances. “They don’t account for the fact that Trump is out campaigning,” he says. “MY RALLIES ARE SAVING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AGAIN!!!”

He’s been deaf to bipartisan concerns over his use of millions of taxpayer dollars to run ads boosting himself — finally conceding last week that he’ll pay for them out of his MAGA, Inc. PAC but won’t commit to reimbursing the public for the cost of the ads he’s already run.

Will Republicans blame him if the GOP loses Congress? More than 30 percent of non-MAGA voters who backed Trump in 2024 say they will blame him for any loss. (Half of Democratic midterm voters say they’ll attribute the loss to Trump, and 46 percent of Democratic voters say they’re casting ballots mainly to oppose Trump.)

But I don’t think he gives a fig. Trump isn’t out campaigning for Republican candidates. He’s campaigning for his boundless ego.

His rallies are delivering to him what he craves more than anything else: audiences that worship him. Although the crowds are far smaller than before, he’s still basking in their adoration.

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Friends,

Please submit your caption in the Comments section, and, as before, please use the Comments section only for captions.

Winners will be announced next Sunday. For consideration, please post your caption by Monday at 9 pm PT, 12 midnight ET.

Leave a comment

Last week’s winner:

“It’s not deep enough, but let him keep digging.”

(Congratulations, Laurence Hoffmann.)

Runners-up:

“He’s searching for his latest ratings.”

(Congratulations, Steven Horowitz.)

“It’s not just a hole, it’s an A-hole!”

(Congratulations, Poetic Polemics.)

“Too bad it’s not a black hole. He’d be gone forever into a different universe.”

(Congratulations, Armando Lopez.)

“He likes to cover shit up, why shouldn’t we?”

(Congratulations, sjcasey71.)

“Just like the economy, the president is in the hole!”

(Congratulations, Adam Laurie.)

“Get the shovel! Let’s bury him and the entire GOP .... FAST.”

(Congratulations, Karen Cooper.)

“I really don’t think it’s deep enough. You know how crap always floats to the top.”

(Congratulations, Danny Moran.)

“He’s trying to bury the Epstein files.”

(Congratulations, Pete Anderson.)

“Hit the road Don and don’t you come back no more no more.

Pack up your lies and walk out that door.

Leave us with nothing we are better than before.

Hit the road Don and don’t you come back no more.

(Verse 3)

You etch your name on every tower wall.

A monument to an inevitable fall.

A golden mirror for a hollow soul.

You lost your grip and let go of control.

The concrete crumbles where your vanity stands.

We see the blood on your pathetic hands.

Your legacy is just a pile of stone.

And now you sit on a forgotten throne.

(Chorus)

Hit the road Don and don’t you come back no more no more.

Pack up your lies and walk out that door.

Leave us with nothing we are better than before.

Hit the road Don and don’t you come back no more.”

(Congratulations, John F. M. O’Sullivan O’ Shea.)

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Friends,

I’m allowing myself to believe that sane people may be in charge of Congress starting next January 20. I know, I know: Polls have gotten our hopes up before only to have them dashed on the rocky shores of political reality.

But this time it does seem as if congressional Republicans will finally get their comeuppance for their blind loyalty to Trump.

The sense of relief in the land is palpable.

We may soon witness the beginning of the end of this daymare — unless Trump goes full-throttled dictator and prevents votes for Democrats in the Senate and House from being certified.

It’s important that we acknowledge that the forces that made Trump president — twice — are still embedded in America. I’m not referring to Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” or Mitt Romney’s “47 percent.” They aren’t to blame.

I’m talking about the anger and frustration tens of millions of Americans began to feel some 40 years ago when the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy — that if you worked hard and played by the rules, your standard of living would rise through your working life and your children would eventually do even better than you — started coming undone.

Since the 1980s, an increasing amount of wealth has been siphoned off to the top — which has given those at the top enormous power to alter laws and rules, and thereby siphon off even more. It’s been a vicious cycle of compounding riches for a privileged few accompanied by compounding anxieties for almost everyone else, especially working Americans without college degrees.

Trump has channeled their anger into rage at carefully selected scapegoats — immigrants, trans people, Black people, “socialists,” women, Muslims — and asserted white male Christian nationalism as a cure-all.

But it’s become evident to a growing number of Americans that white male Christian nationalism has cured nothing whatsoever. It’s just made it more difficult for us to join together to reestablish the basic bargain.

If all goes well in a few weeks (and I write these words with a mixture of hope and trepidation), we will have a chance to start anew, to plunge into the work of rebuilding what has been destroyed. But also to go beyond rebuilding. To join together to change the balance of power in this land so that we, the majority, can decide our fates — not the billionaires, the tech bros, and the titans of Wall Street.

We can get big money out of our politics. We can achieve Medicare for all, universal childcare and excellent schools, and affordable homes. We can bust up monopolies that keep prices high, rein in AI and its data centers, and provide a universal basic income so AI doesn’t take away our livelihoods. And we can raise taxes on the super-wealthy and the richest corporations to pay for what Americans need.

We can do all this and more — not immediately, not with Trump and his regressive regime still occupying the executive branch and much of the Supreme Court — but we can prepare for it; we can lay the foundation for our future.

That’s what the beginning is all about.

Friends,

Today, Heather and I are joined by our colleague Vishal Shankar to review where the midterm elections now stand and the issues emerging from them. We take a deep dive into what Trump is doing to save — or, in reality, hurt — Republican Senate and House candidates, and what a Democratic Congress (if we get one) might realistically do.

Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, and join the conversation.

RR

P.S. Heather and I will be at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, October 14 for a screening of The Work in Progress film followed by a Q&A. Please join us and invite your friends! Tickets ($5 for students) here.

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