In the wake of the unprecedented election of President Donald Trump, and now punctuated by the COVID-19 pandemic and summer of protests, many scholars and public figures have argued that the U.S. is descending into autocracy. Following the recent violent intervention of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, concerns about the state of America’s democracy have grown.

Samuel Moyn, historian and Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale University, and Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, join Then & Now to explore the utility of historical analogies, President Trump’s role in the trajectory of American history, and the state of American democracy today.