Yves here. Ralph Nader sounds an important and hopeful note for 2026, that there are some among the top wealthy who are alarmed by Trump’s accelerating authoritarianism and are inclined to saddle up to Do Something. Keep in mind that the rich are not monolithic; for instance, real economy elites regularly have different interests than Wall Street or tech squillionaires. Nader sets forth some key elements of a regime change program.
By Ralph Nader, a lawyer and political activist whose 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, led to the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966. He founded the Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Auto Safety, and Public Citizen. In 2006 The Atlantic Monthly called Nader one of the hundred most influential Americans in history. Originally published at his website
There are reportedly about 900 billionaires (probably more) in the U.S. About five percent can be described as enlightened people who know the importance of contributing to organizations that advance justice. They are also appalled by the Trump dictatorship and are not placated simply because he gave them tax cuts, deregulation, and maybe corporate welfare. On their minds is the well-being and freedoms of millions of their fellow Americans, whose lives are being cruelly and viciously wrecked by Trump, as he destroys the federal civil service.
I’ve talked with some of these very rich people (VRP) and heard them say they want to get engaged, so appalled are they by the lawless, egomaniacal, self-enriching, violent plutocrat Trump and his dump. Trump and COMPANY are only going to get MUCH WORSE. What follows are some suggestions on how the VRPs can get underway.
1. Sponsor a massive day of protest demanding the impeachment or resignation of Tyrant Trump. More will turn out than did the seven million Americans marching in hundreds of communities under the “No Kings” banner. – A growing majority of people already want this to happen.
With skilled management and verification, these marchers can be asked to take out their iPhones and contribute what they can to create strong local groups that resist Trump’s ongoing wreckage of our basic social safety net, our regulatory health, safety, and economic protections, and our voting rights against Trumpian planned interference in the 2026 elections. Even with just an average of a $10 contribution, at least $100 million would be raised on the protest day to give Americans daily organized power to focus on the White House’s outlawry, violent actions and thievery. People organizing where they live, work, and raise their families is the first step to reclaiming our democracy.
2. Sponsor a group to counter Trump’s shattering of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), firing thousands of staff responding to calls by middle-class taxpayers, and hundreds of highly skilled accountants and lawyers working on many cases of giant tax evasions by big corporations and the super-rich. Many of these cases have been dropped, and the already starved IRS budget was cut sharply by the Trumpsters.
This project can be ably assisted by seven outspoken former IRS directors from both Parties who have already testified and written open letters warning that the shoe will heavily drop next year, with tens of billions of uncollected dollars adding to the federal deficit and, worse, longer delays for taxpayers’ inquiries. (See, More Tax Breaks For the Wealthy by Jesse Drucker, New York Times, November 10, 2025).
3. Take on the further shredding of our preparedness toward climate violence and “not if, but when” pandemics (see, The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics by Dr. Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker). This should be an easy one to organize and fund with advocates by the VRP. Trump is boosting oil, gas, and coal (the sources of omnicidal greenhouse gases) while crazily doing whatever he can to depress or stop commercial solar energy and wind energy projects. The project would have the public health and scientific professions as well as the solar industry behind it.
4. This White House project is bold because the VRP know they would be assailed by Tyrant Trump. But the case against his extortion of companies, law firms, and universities, forcing them to engage in bribery if they comply with his unlawful demands, is powerfully grounded. Trump— the Bully-in-Chief—likes to dish out the slander and libel, calling for the impeachment of any judge ruling against his misrule, and naming other critical law enforcers as “deranged,” “crazy,” “communist,” “crooked,” “low IQ,” and and more. A drive to counter these slurs and hurl some back at Trump would drive this thin-skinned Fuhrer to more self-immolating performances, further lowering his dropping polls.
5. A broad-ranging counterforce can cover the largest shutdown of federal agencies and programs in American history. Vastly immobilized from their Congressionally mandated missions are the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Education, and the Agency for International Development. The latter’s illegal abolition is already costing many lives lost overseas, endangering millions of children and adults who are without medicines, food supplements, shelter, and safe drinking water. All kinds of other mandated missions have been cut at CDC, NIH, NOAA (weather research and forecasting), USDA, assistance to people with disabilities, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, AmeriCorps, Medicaid, and food programs for tens of millions of Americans, and much more.
6. There are very-rich corporate and plaintiff tort lawyers who could address the slumber of the 50-state Bar Associations and the American Bar Association. They are supposed to be the First Responders to the destruction of the Rule of Law and our Constitution by the Rule of Raw Power criminal attacks by the Trump regime. Recall Trump’s 2019 declaration, “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President,” which he is exhibiting every day with his brazen, boasting serial violations and blatant racism.
Waking up the legal profession would receive support from both lawyers who see themselves as Republicans or Democrats. They just need jumpstart leadership – as the lessons of reformist history demonstrate time and time again. (See our letter to the Bar Associations.)
7. Finally, a prostrate GOP-dominated Congress is facilitating or enabling, contrary to their sworn vows to uphold the Constitution and the faithful execution of the laws, the deepening fascist state driven by the White House’s seizure of authority exclusively given to Congress by our Founding Fathers. This project would activate the grassroots, which has been calling for strong action at Town Meetings nationwide.
The Super-Rich are sitting on trillions of dollars of “dead money.” It only takes a few dozen of them to save the Republic with “live money” comprising a fraction of one percent of their assets. Most of them are looking over their shoulder to see who takes the first steps.
Who takes the first steps? Aristotle had the answer over 2000 years ago. He said, “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”
Hate to be a Debbie Downer here but I do not think that Ralph Nader’s points here will work. Certainly in an era like the 70s they would have worked but now? The present regime is too ruthless and habitually breaks laws and are never called to account for doing so. People taking part in Nader’s suggested program would be labelled as un-American terrorists and the full weight of the Federal government would come down on them like a ton of bricks with police raids, lawyers being barred from practicing law, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment on trumped up charges.
Chagrin & bear it?
I agree, not to sound typically pessimistic, but Nader has touted such ideas for years. His 2009 book fell on deaf ears, and I didn’t bother to read it.
True, the oligarchy are not monolithic, but they do have many common interests. Since the rule of law is not often applied to the elites, and the plebs are badly misinformed by the oligarchy-owned mass media cartel, the prospects for his suggestions are slim. I do agree that massive protest and civil disobedience is in order, but I just don’t see that happening. What resistance we have had so far in the US is thinly-disguised cheer-leading for the D faction and hypocrisy. Partisan politics is to maintain the status-quo. They just want a “blue wave” in the midterms to maintain the illusion of democratic choice. It’s just hollow PR and Kabuki theatre as usual.
Even if the D faction take control of both houses, the bipartisan support for wars, kleptocracy, and institutional corruption will continue. The Ds will push a slick-talking, “tall and handsome” Gavin Newsom to head the PR campaign. Genocide with a smiley face
Maybe, but when Nader is begging for the super rich to save the rest of us, that doesn’t sound like winning. The super rich calling the shots before Trump weren’t doing such a bang up job.
During the French revolution many in the upper class tried to compromise with the revolutionaries but it was too little, too late and that may be the case here. Plus I don’t really think Trump is winning with his dictatorial approach and is more likely to self destruct than be defeated by a few good hearted billionaires.
The one good thing you can say about Trump is that he doesn’t seem much interested in the sort of great power confrontation that Biden favored and that could get us all killed.
Um, you need to read up on the Revolution. The salons were full of Revolution-sympathetic ideas before the Revolution. Aristocrats from very old lineages, such as Talleyrand, played key roles. It was Talleyrand, for instance, that read out the edict seizing Church property. The issue was that more radical waves kept killing off earlier factions.
>>>The issue was that more radical waves kept killing off earlier factions.
This was true for both sides. What is very amazing about the American War of Independence is that despite some of violence especially in the South where it became clan based blood feuds in in places, the violence ended without a Vendee or a Reign of Terror, with a peaceful agreed upon system of government.
The French Revolution was horrible not just for itself, but because it happened so soon after the American Revolution. The differences between the two freaked everyone out.
One of the reasons the French became progressively more extreme was that while the American revolution managed to get the backing of great powers (for geopolitical reasons) which ultimately played a key role in the peace treaty, the French rev soon found itself in a solitary struggle against surrounding reactionary European coalitions that were set on destroying it, which of course helped fuel the increasingly extreme factions.
In a way he’s like Netanyahu. If peace were reached in Ukraine and the SMO stopped, what would happen to the support he’s got now? The reason people want him in the office would start evaporating.
Dems in Congress have no team spirit. To me it’s like they’re just ambling to midterms. To make it so a land slide is perceived as likely they’ll have to make one more likely. If any Reps or Senators happen to be reading here, I’ve got a link that should convince you to shut down the proxy war…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUnkfq1YoxA
And, if you did, you could count on more votes. Oh but when you come out against it you’re going to need a style other than Trump’s, cause folks I think are coming to associate that style with no results.
Nader is right in the sense that intra-class conflict and class betrayal among elites is very helpful/necessary for resistance to be effective, but far less so when it comes to anything prescriptive.
Recall that Trump’s first term showed disagreement within the Overclass, with Finance, Media and Tech largely cleaving to the D’s, and Energy, Ag, mining and other extractive industries supporting Trump, but instead of leading to real resistance, it gave us Russiagate and idiotic, self-discrediting Lawfare.
So Ralph Nader is proposing the left double-down on:
1. Protests, specifically protests that raise money for grifters…
2. Save the IRS?!
3. Climate change and making energy expensive as possible.
4. Calling Trump names…
5. Save the Deep State?! wont someone think of the bureaucrats?
6. More lawyers
7. something, something “grassroots”
Sounds like a winning strategy to me (sarcasm)
Last night I watched the desert island movie Eden which is based on a true story from the 1930s about a small group of characters with different motives who retreat from post WW1 Europe to an island in the Galapagos. The doctor turned would be philosopher played by Jude Law starts out thinking he can come up with new ideas that can reform the world and ends up deciding it is, after all, about nature red in tooth and claw after conflicts with new arrivals–a sort of Lord of the Flies but with adults.
Unsurprisingly such a premise didn’t do well at the box office but I’d say it earns props for rising above the general inanity coming out of H’wood these days. Nader tried to reform capitalism back in the 60s and 70s but the push back from the tooth and claw crowd has been considerable. It could be a hope for good intentions is not enough.
1-he’s not asking for your money
2-the Country needs money to run public services unavailable in, like, Sudan
3-same old same old is making the only planet you live on inhospitable for you to live on
4-not the names you hear him called by thousands at nationwide protests
5-bureaucrats like wildfire managers, Air traffic controllers and VA intake technicians
6-lawyers to sort out wrongful and partial laws passed by partial lawyer lawmakers
7-anybody who recognizes self serving vested policy direction and is willing to step up
You left out those bureaucrats who monitor dangerous diseases and nuclear safety…
UhHunh-left room for you ;-]
another example of the silly, but popular idea that the rich parasites that created our problems can be trusted to solve the problems that they have created. show me the billionaire who wants to pay higher taxes to provide universal health care. trump is not the problem. he’s just the most extreme example of the real problem: money rules politics.
Speaking of money…Taking bribes from foreign nationals and boasting about it is a recent example of the corruption. I would think that is a form of treason, especially when foreign-bought US policy undermines US national interests and national security. (Of course, this depends on how so-called national interest is defined)
Point 1.
Let us assume that Nader is right, and ~5% of the 902 billionaires in the US (Forbes, March 2025) are the “good ones”. Basic arithmetic would suggest that 100% – 5% = 95% of said billionaires are either the “bad ones”, enthusiastically backing whatever Trump is doing – hello, Peter Thiel! – or are neutral, so long as their specific parochial interests are left alone.
From that standpoint, the “good ones” would be mad to rock the boat, and potentially face the wrath of their counterparts. Unless they felt they were facing an existential crisis that could not be resolved autonomously. When the Great Depression hits only a decade after a whole slew of (mostly failed) socialist revolutions rolled across Europe, that’s when you get FDR and his ilk stepping in, and still they faced considerable opposition (up to the threat of a fascist coup, if you believe Smedley Butler) from the other super-rich. This? Now? I very much doubt anyone “up top” feels like an existential crisis is in the works, and very much think most of these people believe Trump and his “excesses” have a natural expiration date, whether electoral or biological. Why stir the pot now, I suspect is what they are thinking. [I myself would disagree about the depth of the crises we are facing, their longevity, or how much time we really have to address them – but my opinion is not the issue here.]
Put differently, if a significant fraction of the super-rich had felt the need, would they not have already, say, lobbied the Supreme Court justices to put the kai-bosh on a bunch of the questionably legal stuff Trump is engaged in? [To wit – the tarriff case…] Because let us not pretend these people make any decisions based on “legal doctrine” or some “ideological conviction” – they are political animals just as everyone else in the system.
Point 2.
I have a fairly high confidence, including from some amount of personal observation, that the higher up the food chain you go, the more insular one’s social circles become. Simply put, whom does a billionaire interact with on a daily basis, aside from his staff and servants? Other rich people; politicians; CEOs and the like…it quickly becomes a very small cocktail circuit. People are susceptible to insularity and groupthink to begin with – what happens when an already immensely entitled and self-important rich person spends 90% of their time interacting with other entitled and self-important rich people?
Marie Antoinette may never have said “let them eat cake”, but the vast disconnect between the aristocracy of the day and the real world implied by this phrase was very much palpable.
Point 3.
So let’s address Nader’s actual proposals. Category-wise, they are – protests and “town hall meetings”, which, if not paired with direct action (general strikes, elections, revolutions) hardly ever achieve anything; having the billionaires fund things that the government used to do, because that can only end well; and a legal slash PR offensive, and here, yes, I believe that if the billionaires “cared” they could legally box in the White House given the complexity of the US political system – but a PR offensive to drop Trump’s already low ratings? Really?
And again – why would these billionaires care if the little people are suffering, or the government’s institutions designed to help the little people are being destroyed, or whatever else Nader is railing about? They care about existential threats to themselves, and to their wealth i.e. power and status. Collectively, I mean, of course there will be lone individuals of all sorts in a cohort of 902 people. I don’t think we’re there, and even if we were, certainly Nader isn’t making a good enough case here. [Now, if Trump had said – I am going to confiscate the assets of 451 billionaires and give them over to the other 451…that might get some attention.]
Nader’s Point 6 is his best one. We need true “Resistance lawyers” to devise legal countermeasures for the Trumpist onslaught. The best contribution they could make is come up with creative and low-cost ways to tangle up the power-drunk police and prosecutors who plan to use malicious prosecution float their mythical “Antifa” agenda to attack protestors. A good example is yesterday’s Coffee Break column by Nat Wilson Turner. What our neoStassi wants is quick convictions on ruinous plea bargains. What we need are ways to checkmate their “lawfare”.
Back in the day when there was a real resistance, one tactic when the police were targeting student protestors was for a bunch to get arrested and then refuse to even give their names. The the local court system was stuck sorting everything out on their own dime. The gold standard of this kind of resistance was the McLibel lawsuit in the UK in the 1990s. In this action, a few activists and their enlightened attorneys lowballed a multinational corporation for years (with the corporate attorneys getting fat on billable hours to McDonalds).
To be sure, today’s Trump resistors would have to put some of their own skin in the game if they plan to do anything effective. But if they knew that some VRPs funding the legal profession would have their backs once the arrest happened, they could be more effective activists. And, who knows?, maybe some fence sitters might be inspired to join them.
The talk of VRPs brings to mind a John Cleese Tweet I saw some years ago:
Sad, just sad. Nader sounds way beyond naive, like he’s gone Emeritus – lost touch with what’s happened since he was a Big Fish.
Even if he’s right about 5% of Billionaires who “…can be described as enlightened people…” “…appalled by the Trump dictatorship…”, that implies that the other 95% (who prolly have 98% of the $) are permanent Enemies of Everything.
Perhaps worse, Nader makes it All About Trump, which is the same mistake that too many Liberal Democrats make.
A few years ago, there was some hope that Elite infighting might make Real Change possible, but AI has killed that hope. AI requires ever more electricity, and the Oil/Gas/Coal sector is glad to provide it. All other financial power-centers are on board, because AI promises to increase their profits by reducing Headcount. The Zillionaires are OK with ‘mitigating’ Climate Change because they can just buy higher islands and the yachts to travel between them. Everybody else is screwed.
But hey, I’m an optimistic kinda guy. Maybe the AI bubble will pop soon enough to take all those bastards down with it.
The AI bubble seems like it should pop by next summer at the latest. Enough people know now that it’s fraudulent and lacking a path to profitability for the companies spending (and borrowing) big on it. Maybe the “good billionaires” should start massively betting against AI to try to pop the bubble earlier, since that’s the sort of maneuver that’s more up their alley (as opposed to starting protest movements). Not enough of the people who matter in this country (the top 25-30% in terms of wealth) are feeling the pain that is already being inflicted on the rest of us. More of them need to feel that before people get real about what they’re protesting.
A civil war such as this will not go away with protests, fiery language, or even sabotage. Sadly, all this comes down to one proposition – some people are going to have to die. Any takers?
A start on “Resistance Lawyers” has been made by a group of lawyers that includes some good friends of mine, and in a few months has shown signs of taking off nationwide. Lawyers for the Rule of Law I’ve signed up.
I get really excited (at least initially) when I add new variables to my theoretical framework.
Nader really needs to try doing this with his own theoretical outlook, especially for what he labels as “the lawless, egomaniacal, self-enriching, violent plutocrat Trump and his dump.”
It just may be that beginning to pay attention to the social anthropology that created Trump (the nuclear family structure as practiced in the United States) would open up a whole new set of strategies and tactics for the type of changes he wants.
Try starting with the assumption that American culture made Trump as Russian culture made Putin.
Maybe this assumption will also help to explain some of Trump’s popularity among half of our citizens.
MacKenzie Scott ~~3 PU’s this year and still her net worth went up—though still only ~~15PU’S
1PU=1/365th of the 2026 Pentagon Budget
The tactics that worked some of the time up through the 1980s just don’t accomplish anything useful now. Protest marches and appealing to your Congress persons have no effect because no one in power feels threatened by them. And the performances that the polite left-center folks put on don’t even have a unified message. Protests will feature “no kings” signs, rainbow flags, even Ukraine flags, ban the bomb icons, etc. What might get the attention of TPTB is a national strike with a simple theme (comparable to “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”) and no more than two or three concrete demands, the fewer the better. Like “no more taxpayer money for foreign countries, period” (I realize the money is created out of the ether and not based on tax receipts, but it sounds better this way). But enough people would have to be prepped to go on strike for whatever the simple demand is, so Nader’s “good rich” would have to fund that and develop the information channels to put it across. That would be a major task.
I still believe that the old tactics don’t work anymore because the information environment has totally changed in the last forty years. Not saying it was great in the preceding forty years, but it was easier for people like Nader and other bottom-up organizers to work with. Now the Empire of Lies is enthroned and beyond reach thanks to the pervasive reach of the Lie Factories that have been given oligopolistic control over what Americans hear and see. To displace the Empire of Lies and get the USA back, the Lie Factories must be neutralized, one way or another.
Late stage monopoly capitalism is in crisis and the majority will feel it the most while the minority hold on to theirs.
Hare-brained/hair-shirt Ralph Nader at it again. Like many here, I’ve been in the room with him and shaken his hand — and concluded that he’s a bit of a nut-job. His claimed 45-odd billionaires (should they actually exist outside his febrile — and now possibly senile — imagination) could easily donate his $100M dollars without anybody needing to get out their iPhone. It’s pocket-lint to any one of them.
Their accumulation vast personal wealth is how our troubles began. How about they pledge their entire personal fortunes over $500M to obtaining ballot access for a third party that chooses candidates through open primaries?
Otherwise, Ralph’s imaginary billionaire pals can drop dead as far as I’m concerned.
FACTS BRO
The most promising spark in recent history was the Occupy movement. Their encampments were loud, educational, legitimate, intriguing and apparently scared the pants off the Obama Administration. That’s the kind of serious focus on policy proposals and effective organizing that could push us closer to expanding into something even more explosive, like a national strike. They were aggressively squashed as they seemed to be building energy.
Trump is here because 40% of the electrorate wanted him to be, not once but twice( and almost thrice). Blame goes on the people who voted him in(first) , then the corrupt establishment Dems and of course the GOP. It was a perfect storm and more radical presidents are about to take office in the future.
If we looked at billionaires for what they are, its a bunch of gluttons who strive to weigh more than the other other gluttons, vis a vis money.
Is that who is going to save us from ourselves?
The country would have to turn on them first, and then the real hero would appear, somebody who doesn’t worship manna.
It doesn’t appear as if something of this magnitude could happen, but you get the feeling the public is sick of the every billionaire must be a god mantra, and treated as such.