Robert B. Reich's Blog, page 29

Trump’s Failed Coronavirus Response Part 2In February he knew...

Trump’s Failed Coronavirus Response Part 2In February he knew COVID-19 was dangerous, but he intentionally downplayed it.

In March he didn’t want to be held responsible for it.

He told governors they were responsible for getting ventilators and protective equipment – setting off bidding wars, state against state, city against city.

He peddled an unproven remedy, hydroxychloroquine, which the FDA warned against.

There was no national response. No national standards. Governors and mayors haphazardly closed businesses and schools.

In April he suggested more quack remedies.

He pushed governors to reopen states earlier than the Centers for Disease Control thought wise.The CDC warned him such reopenings could mean a “significant risk of resurgence of the virus.”

In May he continued to minimize the threat.

He blamed the increasing number of cases on excessive testing.

In June he suggested slowing the testing down.

In July he muzzled CDC experts. The Trump administration directed hospitals to stop reporting key coronavirus data to the nonpartisan CDC, and instead report it to HHS, which falls under the supervision of the administration.

He demanded schools ignore CDC guidelines, and plan to fully reopen in the Fall – even threatening to cut off funding if schools refused.

His political appointees pressured the CDC to change warnings and scientific conclusions they didn’t like.

He lied about how well America was doing relative to the rest of the world.

When extra unemployment benefits ended July 31, he didn’t push to extend them.

In August he peddled hydroxychloroquine again, even after the FDA revoked its emergency authorization in June.

He blamed the “deep state” for making it difficult to test vaccines.

He suggested the FDA was trying to deliberately delay treatments until after Election Day.

In September he claimed a vaccine could be available before the election.

He continued holding campaign rallies where many went without masks.

He blamed the mounting number of COVID deaths on “blue states.”

His lackeys pressured the CDC to remove language on its website confirming that airborne droplets could transmit the virus, before being forced to reverse the change.

At the first presidential debate, he mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask.

He didn’t want his White House staff to wear masks. He criticized a White House reporter for wearing a mask. He held White House events where people didn’t wear masks or maintain social distancing.

In October the White House itself became a hotspot for the disease.

Trump himself tested positive for coronavirus and was airlifted to Walter Reed Medical Center for emergency treatment.

When he announced he’d be discharged, he told the American people: “Don’t be afraid of COVID.” He then tweeted COVID is “far less lethal” than the flu. Both Facebook and Twitter flagged this as misinformation.

Despite all the infections, the White House did no contact tracing, and declined the help of the CDC to do so.

And the White House still did not require masks because, according to the Deputy Press Secretary, “everyone needs to take personal responsibility.”

Now 225,000 Americans are dead. 

America has suffered the worst rate of coronavirus deaths among all advanced countries – a death toll equal to 9/11 every three days. And, as a recent Cornell study confirmed, Trump’s blatant disinformation has been the largest driver of COVID misinformation in the world.

This is not leadership. It is pure, malicious incompetence and it’s killing Americans.  

Reversing the GOP Power Grab

Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation as the ninth justice on the U.S. Supreme Court is a travesty of...

How to Reverse the GOP’s Power Grab

Barring a miracle, Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed on Monday as the ninth justice on the U.S....

The 4 Biggest Takeaways from The Final Debate

Biden was more passionate and forceful than he’s been in any debate so far – including in the...

What Happened to the Voting Rights Act?This country has a long...

What Happened to the Voting Rights Act?

This country has a long history of disenfranchising and suppressing the votes of people of color, particularly in the South. But in 2013 the voter suppression efforts of yesteryear came roaring back. That’s when the Supreme Court gutted key provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those provisions had stopped states with histories of voter suppression from changing their election laws without an okay from the federal government. 

Let’s take a look at how that shameful decision has played out over the years, shall we?

Today’s voter suppression often takes the form of purging eligible voters from the rolls, cutting back early and absentee voting, closing polling places, and using strict voter ID requirements – disenfranchising voters of color at every turn.

Voter roll purges have become increasingly common. 

Officials purged nearly 4 million more names between 2014 and 2016 than between 2006 and 2008 — a 33 percent increase. Officials in states that used to be under federal oversight purged voters from the rolls at a rate 40 percent higher than those in states with no history of voter suppression.

As it turns out, Chief Justice John Roberts was dead wrong when he argued “things have changed dramatically” in the South.

Election officials in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia have all conducted illegal voter roll purges. In Virginia in 2013, nearly 39,000 voters were removed from the rolls when state officials relied on a faulty database – removing voters who had supposedly moved out of the state.

Even if you make it past a voter roll purge, you may get stuck in endlessly long lines to vote. 

Since the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013, 1,688 polling places have been shuttered in states previously bound by the Act’s preclearance requirement. Texas officials closed 750 polling places. Arizona and Georgia were almost as bad. Not surprisingly, these closures were mostly in communities of color.

In Texas, officials in the 50 counties that gained the most Black and Latinx residents between 2012 and 2018 closed 542 polling sites, compared to just 34 closures in the 50 counties that gained the fewest Black and Latinx residents. In Georgia’s 2020 primary, 80 polling places were closed in Atlanta, home to Georgia’s largest Black population — forcing 16,000 residents to use a single polling place.

And even if you get to a polling place after standing for three hours to cast your ballot, you may end up being turned away because of a restrictive voter ID law. 

Republican lawmakers in 15 states have passed such laws since the Supreme Court’s shameful decision.

Texas Republicans put a voter ID law into effect almost immediately following the decision — a law that they had been prevented from passing in 2011 when the Voting Rights Act was still intact. That law has been struck down five times since it went into effect, with multiple courts finding it intentionally discriminates against Black and Latinx voters. A federal appeals court finally allowed a watered-down version that’s still one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the country.

In Georgia, the state’s restrictive “exact match” ID law — requiring a voter’s ID to exactly match the name on their registration, down to any dots or dashes — allowed state officials to throw out 53,000 majority-Black voter registrations less than a month before the state’s tight 2018 gubernatorial race. Stacey Abrams, who would have been the country’s first Black woman governor, lost the election by just under 55,000 votes — after years of her rival Brian Kemp systematically suppressing the votes of people of color.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, a court found that the state’s voter ID law “target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision,” and struck the law down in its entirety. Imagine all we could accomplish with all the time, money, and resources that go into prolonged legal battles against these discriminatory laws that should never have seen the light of day in the first place.

Voter suppression is wreaking havoc on our electoral process. 

When the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act seven years ago, it passed the buck to Congress to update it, but Senate Republicans haven’t lifted a finger. 

In December 2019, John Lewis presided over the House of Representatives to pass H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, now named the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act in his honor, to restore the Voting Rights Act and stop this pervasive voter suppression. It’s been collecting dust on Mitch McConnell’s desk ever since. He and his GOP colleagues think they can sit idly by as Republican state officials suppress the vote with no accountability.

They’re wrong. The people are ready to fight back against their agenda and build a 21st century democracy that is representative of and responsive to our growing, diverse nation.

If your vote didn’t count, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to suppress it. Make sure you check your registration, stay up to date on your state’s rules for mail-in voting, find your polling place, and get involved with organizations on the frontlines of protecting the vote.

There’s no telling what we’ll be able to accomplish when we win the battle for voting rights.

How to Stop Trump from Stealing the ElectionTrump is likely to...

How to Stop Trump from Stealing the ElectionTrump is likely to claim that mail-in ballots, made necessary by the pandemic, are rife with “fraud like you’ve never seen,” as he alleged during his debate with Joe Biden – although it’s been shown that Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud.

So we should expect him to dispute election results in any Republican-led state he loses by a small margin – such as Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin.

The 12th Amendment to the Constitution provides that if state electors deadlock or neither candidate gets a majority of the votes in the Electoral College needed to win the presidency (now 270) – because, for example, Trump contests votes in several key states – the decision about who’ll be president goes to the House, where each of the nation’s 50 states gets one vote.

That means less-populous Republican-dominated states like Alaska (with one House member, who’s a Republican) would have the same clout as large Democratic states like California (with 53 House members, 45 of whom are Democrats). 

So if the decision goes to the House, Trump has the advantage right now: 26 of state congressional delegations in the House are now controlled by Republicans, and 22 by Democrats (two — Pennsylvania and Michigan — are essentially tied).

But he won’t necessarily keep that advantage after the election. If the decision goes to the House, it would be made by lawmakers elected in November, who will be sworn in on January 3 – three days before they’ll convene to decide the winner of the election.

Which is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is focusing on races that could tip the balance of state delegations – not just in Pennsylvania and Michigan but any others within reach. “It’s sad we have to plan this way,” she wrote recently, “but it’s what we must do to ensure the election is not stolen.”

The targets are Alaska (where replacing the one House member, now a Republican, with a Democrat, would result in a vote for Biden), Montana (ditto), Pennsylvania (now tied, so flipping one would be enough), Florida (now 14 Republicans and 13 Democrats, but 3 Republicans are retiring) and Michigan (where Republicans now have 6 members and Democrats 7).

Congress has decided contested elections only three times in U.S. history, in 1801, 1825, and 1877. But we might face another because Donald Trump will stop at nothing to retain his power.

That’s why it’s even more critical for you to vote. Make this a blowout victory for Joe Biden and Democrats down the ballot, and stop Trump from stealing this election.

The Public, the Personal, and the Utter Hypocrisy of the GOP

Trump and many Republicans insist that the decisions whether to wear a mask, go to a bar or gym, or...

Vote NO On CA Prop 22: Reject This Corporate Power GrabHere’s...

Vote NO On CA Prop 22: Reject This Corporate Power Grab

Here’s what you need to know about Proposition 22 on the California ballot, and why I’m urging you to vote NO on this corporate power grab.

Right now, massive corporations like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates, and Instacart are pouring nearly $200 million into a giant PR campaign designed to get you to vote for this. It’s their measure – they put it on the ballot – and it’s the most expensive ballot measure ever, not just in California, but in the entire country.

Prop 22 would allow companies like Uber and Lyft to continue to misclassify employees as independent contractors, and eliminate the rights of millions of other workers – who’d no longer be entitled to unemployment insurance, overtime, sick leave, protections against discrimination and sexual harrassment, or the right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

A study by my colleagues at UC Berkeley found that under Prop 22, Uber and Lyft drivers would be guaranteed only $5.64 an hour – a far cry from the $13 an hour minimum wage they’d otherwise get. And the vast majority would not qualify for the health benefits outlined in Prop 22.

Uber and Lyft claim most drivers want to remain independent contractors because they prefer the flexibility. Rubbish. Uber cites two surveys to support this claim, one of them unscientific and the other paid for by Uber itself.

The fact is, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates, and Instacart and other corporations are spending hundreds of millions on this ballot measure so they won’t have to pay the costs of worker rights and protections. By not paying into unemployment insurance, for example, Uber and Lyft have saved a combined $413 million since 2014. But as a result, their drivers don’t qualify for unemployment benefits.

Make no mistake: Prop 22 is a lousy deal for Uber and Lyft drivers, and for millions of other workers.

This is why I’m urging you to vote NO on Prop 22, and to urge your friends and family to do the same. Don’t let big corporations pay hundreds of millions to strip workers of the rights and protections they need. 

How to Beat Republicans at Their Own GameI keep hearing from...

How to Beat Republicans at Their Own Game

I keep hearing from progressives who lament that even if Biden wins, Trump and McConnell have tilted the playing field forever.

They point to McConnell’s rush to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, after blocking President Obama’s nominee for 293 days because it was “too close” to the next election. And to the fact that Republicans in the Senate represent 11 million fewer Americans than their Democratic counterparts, and are still able to confirm a Supreme Court justice and entrench minority rule.

But that’s not the end of the story.

The Constitution doesn’t prevent increasing the size of the Supreme Court in order to balance it. Or creating a pool of circuit court justices to cycle in and out of it. In fact, the Constitution says nothing at all about the size of the Court.

I also hear progressives express outrage that this imbalance of power exists in the Electoral College, which made Trump president in 2016 despite having lost the popular vote by 3 million, and made George W. Bush president in 2000, despite losing the popular vote by about half a million.

But this doesn’t have to be the end of the story, either. From granting statehood to Washington, D.C. to abolishing the Electoral College, nothing should be off the table to strengthen our democracy. 

There is no reason to accept the structure of our democracy when it repeatedly empowers a ruthless minority to impose its will over the majority. Or when it denies full representation to U.S. citizens, as is the case for Puerto Rico, which absolutely deserves self-determination.

Pay no mind to those who argue that these moves would be unfair abuses of power. Unfair, after what Trump and McConnell have done?

Abuses of power? When Trump is urging his followers to intimidate Biden voters? When he won’t even commit to a peaceful transition of power and refuses to be bound by the results? When he’s already claiming the election is rigged against him and will be fraudulent unless he wins? When he’s threatening to have states that he loses declare the votes invalid and certify their own slate of Trump electors in January?

I’m sorry. There’s nothing unfair about making our democracy fairer. There’s no abuse of power in remedying blatant abuses of power.

The End of Trump’s Fifth Avenue

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose...