Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has published a scathing critique of President Donald Trump, framing the upcoming Tuesday election as a referendum on the president himself and urging voters to deliver what he calls “a rejection beyond mere repudiation” and “a clear vote of no confidence.” With Trump’s name not on the ballot, votes held during a president’s term have traditionally been read as early signals of voter sentiment toward the party holding the White House.

Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who served as secretary of labor from 1993 to 1997 under President Bill Clinton, mockingly referred to “pretend-I’m-on-the-ballot” Trump, arguing that his election to the nation’s highest office — twice — will remain “a stain on the judgment of the American people.”

He described Trump as a president who “lies incessantly,” accusing him of generating fear and fueling hatefulness, viciously attacking the free press and political opponents, using his office for personal gain, and cozying up to dictators such as Vladimir Putin while turning against historic friends such as Canada, a NATO ally and one of the United States’ largest trading partners.

“For the sake of our democracy and our future, we must send a clear signal on Tuesday,” Reich wrote.

According to Reich, Trump and his Republican enablers have manufactured false threats to America — targeting Muslim Americans, Mexican Americans, Latino Americans, transgender Americans, alleged fraudulent voters, and “globalists” — while dismissing the threats he says are growing worse by the day: climate change, widening inequalities of income, wealth, and political power, unregulated AI, and the most expensive and least effective healthcare system in the world.

Reich warned that every branch of the federal government is now under the control of the Republican Party, and that the Republican Party is under the control of Trump. Unless constrained, he argued, they will be emboldened to eliminate what remains of the Affordable Care Act (the 2010 law that expanded health insurance coverage), further cut Medicare and Medicaid (the federal health programs primarily serving older and lower-income Americans), eviscerate Social Security (the nation’s retirement and disability benefits program), and hand even more tax cuts to the rich and large corporations.

He asserted that the Republican Party “has lost its right to govern.” The party once stood for a set of ideas — states’ rights, free trade, and fiscal prudence — that, whatever their shortcomings, at least gave it a reason for being, Reich wrote. “Now it stands for nothing but Trumpism.”

Reich called for renouncing the “hatemongering and race-baiting” engulfing the nation and affirming that Americans are “a tolerant and courageous people — not the bigots and fearful cowards Trump and the Republicans have made us out to be.” He urged the country to lead the world again rather than pretend it can isolate itself, arguing that America’s greatness lies not in skin color or ethnic uniformity but in a “dedication to democracy, equality of opportunity, tolerance of others, and freedom.”

“It is time to throw the bums out,” Reich declared, telling readers to “Vote Tuesday as if your life and the lives of those you love depend on it. They do.”

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as secretary of labor from 1993 to 1997. His writings can be found at .