Where does American democracy stand as we are headed into the summer? About a month ago, around the 100-day mark, the idea that Trump was losing, that maybe we were already experiencing the beginning of the end of MAGA’s attempt to erect authoritarian rule, started gaining currency among prominent commentators. We look at the main arguments presented by those who believe that Trump is losing: The constant chaos and incompetence, public opinion turning sharply away from Trump, the courts pushing back and civic society resisting. All of these are important factors. But we are not convinced that means Trump is “losing.” He isn’t “winning” either. In fact, binary ideas of winning/losing (or strength/weakness) may not be very helpful if we want to understand America’s trajectory. The regime might be back-paddling in some areas, while escalating in others; periods of acceleration might be interrupted by treacherous phases of perceived “normalcy.” A key question we should be asking: What does an authoritarian movement like MAGA do when they run into problems, as frustrations start to mount? Will they settle and moderate – or further radicalize? The uncomfortable answer is: We don’t know, and we should accept the openness and uncertainty of the situation – just as we should resist the temptation to measure everything by some rigid idea of an authoritarian “playbook.” American democracy might not crumble exactly the way it has elsewhere; the specifically American, specifically 21st century version of authoritarianism might not look like either the historical examples or the present-day examples from countries around the world. We have much to learn from both the historical analogy and the international comparison. But they don’t offer exact blueprints - instead, they can help us ask the right questions and guide our attention where it needs to be directed.  

Finally, we talk about what will be next for the podcast, as Thomas’ professional (leaving academia) and personal (leaving America) situation is changing. Spoiler: The podcast will go on – and in fact, there will be a lot more, and more frequent, “Is This Democracy” soon!

Show notes:

Jennifer Rubin, “Trump is worse off than he was 100 days ago,” The Contrarian, April 28 https://contrarian.substack.com/p/trump-is-worse-off-than-he-was-100

Zack Beauchamp, “Trump is losing,” Vox.com, April 30 https://www.vox.com/politics/410966/trump-democracy-100-days-losing

Andrew Marantz, “Is It Happening Here?” The New Yorker, April 28 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/05/is-the-us-becoming-an-autocracy

Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt, “How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?” New York Times, May 8 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/opinion/trump-authoritarianism-democracy.html

Jonathan V. Last, “The Secret Police Are Here,” The Bulwark, June 2 https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-secret-police-are-here

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Since early March, the Trumpist assault on the rule of law and the constitutional order has been most visible in the radicalizing attempt to purge the nation from anyone this regime deems unwelcome or “undesirable.” Foreign students who are labeled a threat to American foreign policy, Venezuelan migrants who are declared foreign “invaders,” innocent people like Kilmar Abrego Garcia who are treated as “terrorists.” Every day brings new horror stories of the Trump administration’s complete disregard for the fundamental rights of people who live in the United States, of the gleeful cruelty with which the government is destroying their lives. What is happening to these people isn’t adequately described as “deportation”: The U.S. government strips them of all rights and imprisons them in a brutal labor camp in a foreign country. A regime that so aggressively curtails and ignores fundamental rights for one group today will not hesitate to violate and suspend them for others tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. It’s never far from “illegal aliens” and “alien enemies” to “the enemy within.” We talk about how all these cases are connected, about the role of the courts and what to make of the Supreme Court’s interventions, about the response from Democrats and the American public. And we discuss why this constitutes such an acute threat to constitutional government – a threat to the very survival of the Republic. To what extent is the constitutional order still in effect? If we must ask, we are fully in a crisis situation; once we don’t have to ask anymore, the constitutional order will have already been overthrown.

Show notes:

“He Was Deported by Administrative Error. We Talked to His Lawyer,” Amicus Podcast, April 5 https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus/2025/04/trump-tariffs-are-they-legal

Mark Joseph Stern, “The Crisis Over Trump’s Salvadoran Gulag Has Reached a Terrifying Breaking Point,” Slate, April 14 https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/trump-defying-supreme-court-el-salvador-bukele.html

Trump v J.G.G, 5-4 Podcast, April 15 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trump-v-j-g-g/id1497785843?i=1000703569102

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, “In Kilmar Abrego Garcia Case, Trump Administration Escalates Its War on Due Process,” Immigration Impact, April 16 https://immigrationimpact.com/2025/04/16/kilmar-abrego-garcia-case-trump-due-process/

Chris Geidner, “Supreme Court blocks some Alien Enemies Act removals in Texas-based case,” Law Dork, April 19 https://www.lawdork.com/p/supreme-court-aea-april-late-night-order

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Are you feeling “liberated”? The long-dreaded “Liberation Day” saw America declare a trade war on the rest of the world. We discuss why Trump loves tariffs and what to make of the different rationales emerging from the regime. Most importantly, we unpack the politics of the tariff madness, what it can tell us about how this government operates, and how it all fits (or doesn’t) with the broader political project of Tumpism. There is no cunning masterplan, no coherent policy process – but that doesn’t mean these actions aren’t rooted in a worldview of hierarchies and tied to a broader political project seeking domination. Finally, it wasn’t all bad lately: “Liberation Day” was preceded by what has been termed “Resistance Day” and, crucially, followed by the “Hand Off” mass protests. The Trumpist regime’s main justification for its authoritarian assertion of power - that Trump has a “mandate,” that he’s enacting the “will of the people,” that his agenda represents a broad consensus - is a dangerous lie that we must not perpetuate.

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Over the past two weeks, the Trumpists have significantly escalated their assault on the rule of law as well as on both individuals and institutions they regard as the “enemy within.” We focus on two dimensions of this truly dangerous escalation: We start with the Trump government ramping up its attempt to purge the nation from what they now officially call “alien enemies.” Ten days ago, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, claiming emergency wartime powers to detain and deport foreign nationals – specifically a group of Venezuelan migrants, disappeared into a prison labor camp in El Salvador with no due process whatsoever. This is outrageous in at least three different ways: There is the way these people are being treated; there are the pseudo-legal justifications brought up by the Trump administration to justify such an extreme assertion of executive power; and there is the way the Trumpists are ignoring court orders and moving ever more aggressively towards denying the courts’ authority to check and curtail their power outright. We then move to the escalating attack on universities. The Trumpists, it is evident, will use whatever pretext they can come up with to subdue institutions they deem insufficiently deferential or a potential source of “leftist” subversion. Unfortunately, as the example of Columbia University caving to the regime’s demands demonstrates, those institutions are choosing to capitulate and acquiesce. That is the really scary part: Any assumption of democratic resilience in the United States was predicated on the idea that civil society actors with enormous resources at their disposal – universities, law firms, media companies… – would push back. But so many simply won’t.

Show notes:

Chris Geidner, “Court blocks deportations hours after Trump says he invoked Alien Enemies Act,” Law Dork, March 15, 2025 https://www.lawdork.com/p/alien-enemies-act-venezuela-tro

Amicus podcast, “The Rule of Law Took A Very Dark Turn This Week,” March 22, 2025 https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus/2025/03/trump-regime-flights-of-venezuelans-to-el-salvador-land-in-a-constitutional-crisis

“Columbia Yields to Trump in Battle Over Federal Funding,” Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2025 https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/columbia-university-trump-demands-federal-funding-e94d41ca?st=n8GS7V&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

“Law Firm Bends in Face of Trump Demands,” New York Times, March 20, 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/politics/paul-weiss-deal-trump-executive-order-withdrawn.html

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A little over six weeks since Trump returned to the White House – and the assault on democratic self-government and the modern state is not slowing down. We start with Trump’s speech before a joint session of Congress. On the one hand, he didn’t say anything he hasn’t said many times before. But on the other, the whole spectacle revealed so much about Trumpism as a political project – and about a Republican Party that is entirely defined by its devotion to it. Similarly, the Democratic (non-)response offered a window into America’s nominal opposition party: Split between those who still cling to politics-as-usual, dreams of bipartisan “unity,” and impotent accommodation – and those who understand the emergency we face. We then talk about the Supreme Court intervening this week, siding against the Trumpist regime’s egregious attempt to freeze all foreign aid funding and simply not pay the government’s bills. The good news: The Court narrowly held that the rule of law and the constitutional order still somewhat matter. The bad news: This should not have been close at all, and yet it was. And, crucially, we must resist the temptation to legitimize John Robert’s idea of judicial supremacy – even when he occasionally tells the most extreme rightwing forces to knock it off. The Roberts Court is the spearhead of the reactionary mobilization against modern democracy. Finally, One Big Thing we have been thinking about lately: Lily brings up the pushback Republicans have been getting from the base in town halls around the country. Is a reverse-Tea Party a possibility? Thomas has been asked the same question over and over again: Don’t the Trumpists understand how much they are weakening America at home and abroad? The most plausible answer: What they are doing to America is not an accident or an unintended consequence. They really mean it.

Show notes:

‘Trump’s 2025 joint session address, fact checked and annotated,’ CNN, March 5, 2025 https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2025/03/politics/transcript-speech-trump-congress-annotated-dg/

The Exploding Heads, ‘Historians Will Forever Remember When We Held Up Very Small Signs,’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5ZbiR0003Q

Chris Geidner, ‘The Supreme Court, barely, upholds our three-branch system of government,’ Law Dork, March 5, 2025 https://www.lawdork.com/p/supreme-court-usaid-payments-order

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Exactly one month into the Trumpist regime, we reflect on what has happened since Trump returned to the presidency, what might be coming next, and what we have learned about America along the way. We start by discussing Trump’s declaration that the law doesn’t apply to him because he is chosen to “save his nation” (and because he seems to believe he is a king): Such assertions of unchecked power are not just distractions – they are manifestations of what MAGA really is as a political project. We then dive deep into the much-discussed essay “The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown,” written by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, published in Foreign Affairs last week. We talk about what the authors get right and where we might disagree – which helps us crystallize some big-picture thoughts about the current state of American democracy. Finally, we each bring up One Big Thing we have been thinking about lately: Lily sees reason for optimism because the corrupt bargain between the Trumpist regime and NYC mayor Eric Adams led to a mass resignation of top Department of Justice officials; Thomas worries about crumbling state capacity as the Trumpist sabotage is destroying the state’s ability to tackle the collective problems we face as a society, which will rapidly make all our lives more dangerous.

Show notes:

Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown,” Foreign Affairs, February 11, 2025 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/path-american-authoritarianism-trump

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We take stock of our rapidly escalating constitutional crisis and how our interpretation has evolved over the first few weeks of the Trump regime. We talk about the role of Elon Musk, the political project the feudal tech barons are pursuing, and how Musk’s side coup relates to what the other MAGA factions have been up to: the Project 2025 crew, the America First nativists, and Trump himself. We also zoom in on what the stakes are in the fight over the agencies and departments the Trumpists want to eliminate – specifically USAID: If the regime can just shut down whatever part of the government they don’t like, dissolve agencies created by Congress, ignore existing law, then constitutional government is over – then we are no longer in a constitutional crisis, but in a situation in which an autocratic regime has suspended the constitution and ended democratic self-government. We end with a discussion of why the response by the nominal opposition party has been so fundamentally inadequate so far – and how we might finally be seeing signs of life from a Democratic Party that must abandon politics as usual and instead find ways to make the constitutional crisis visible for the American people.

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Is This Democracy is back! And what a time to be discussing the conflict over how much democracy, and for whom, there should be in America. We reflect on the Inauguration and the first 72 hours of the Trump regime: What stood out from the transfer of power on Monday and Trump’s speech(es)? Most importantly: What have we learned from the onslaught of presidential executive orders and proclamations? We try to establish a framework for how to think about what is happening around us: This is not merely a presidential transition, but an attempted regime change. The Trumpists want to change the rules of how the system works and how power is being wielded; they seek to roll back the post-1960s civil rights order; and they aggressively set out to redefine the boundaries of who gets to belong in America, who has a right to be part of the polity. This is an inflection point - a test for the Constitution, the courts, the system. In the regime’s early initiatives, MAGA has, once again, revealed its true face: An ideologically driven project seeking to roll back much of the racial and social progress of (at least) the past century.

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“Landslide” is a new NPR podcast series that tells the story of American politics in the 1970s, specifically of the 1976 and 1980 presidential elections, of Jimmy Carter’s unlikely path to the White House and, most importantly, of how Ronald Reagan and the New Right rose to power. And as you will hear in our conversation with our guest Ben Bradford, the man who created, hosted, narrated, and produced “Landslide,” it is also so much more. For this episode, I recruited the help of Seth Cotlar, professor of history at Willamette University (and our first returning guest on the show), who is currently writing a book about the relationship between establishment Republicanism and far-right activism in Oregon since the 1950s. Together, we discuss the story of “Landslide” with Ben Bradford – and the many questions of fundamental historical and political importance it tackles. We investigate the Republican Party’s radicalization to the Right and the role Ronald Reagan played in this process; the emergence of a new kind of politics and political culture; the relationship between Reagan and Trump – and between the political styles, promises, and projects they embody: Reaganism and Trumpism. And we reflect on the lessons we ought to learn (or not learn) from the 1970s for our own political moment, and whether the story of Gerald Ford and is best interpreted as a role model for a more moderate politics oriented towards compromise – or as a cautionary tale of what happens when the Republican establishment tries to appease and harness, rather than oppose, the forces of rightwing extremism. If you are interested in the pre-historie(s) of our present and how we got to where we are today, I promise this conversation is for you. We actually had so much to talk about that we are releasing the conversation in two episodes – look out for Part II early next week.  

Show notes:

“Landslide” at the NPR podcast network: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510376/landslide

Nuance Tales – Ben Bradford’s podcast production studio https://www.nuancetales.com/home