Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former U.S. secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, is calling for President Donald Trump to be removed from office, arguing that the president's threatened $5 billion defamation lawsuit against the Center for American Progress is evidence that he has "truly lost it."

The dispute centers on a Center for American Progress report concluding that Trump's deployment of the National Guard to cities across the country has had little effect on reducing violent crime. In response, Trump is threatening the prominent liberal think tank with a $5 billion defamation suit. The Center for American Progress, founded in 2003 and based in Washington, has long been one of the country's most visible liberal policy organizations and has maintained close ties to the Democratic establishment.

In the column, Reich laid out three objections.

First and most obviously, he argued, the lawsuit violates the First Amendment. Even if the Center for American Progress's report is factually wrong — and Reich noted that every study he has seen on the subject suggests it is accurate — the organization has a constitutional right to publish it. That protection is anchored in New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court's 1964 ruling that public officials suing for defamation must prove a false statement was published with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for the truth — a demanding standard that courts have applied to claims involving public officials and public figures ever since. It is bad enough, he wrote, for a sitting president to file defamation lawsuits against news organizations such as the BBC and The New York Times, as Trump has done; it is "utterly absurd," he added, to sue a research organization for producing an analysis and a conclusion he dislikes. If the suit ever reaches a federal court — which Reich said he hopes it does — the court should not only throw it out but impose a fine on Trump for filing such a "completely frivolous complaint."

Second, Reich wrote, the use of a personal lawyer to deliver such a legal threat takes the president's rage "to a new and bizarre level," and it is irresponsible for any lawyer to agree to carry it out. He said this alone is grounds for disbarring the attorney in question, Alejandro Brito. Brito has filed multiple failed suits on Trump's behalf, and last month a federal judge in Florida referred him for potential disciplinary proceedings after ruling that a suit he filed for the president against the IRS amounted to an improper exercise in self-dealing.

Third, Reich described the episode as "the smoking gun" for anyone seeking evidence that Trump has lost it. The president's rage at opponents, he wrote, has morphed into an attack on a group merely for issuing a report whose conclusions he finds offensive — something "no sane president" would do.

Reich stated his conclusion bluntly: Trump's "mind has gone," he is "capable of doing almost anything," and the people around him are evidently unable to control him. His continuation in the presidency, Reich argued, "constitutes a clear and present danger to the United States." The 25th Amendment must be invoked, Reich wrote, or Trump must be impeached and convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors — now. The remedies Reich names are steep by design: under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet may declare the president unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, while impeachment requires a majority vote in the House and conviction by two-thirds of the Senate.

The immediate questions raised by the episode are whether the threatened $5 billion suit is actually filed in court and how the disciplinary process against Brito unfolds.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at