Three new national polls—from CNN, Gallup, and The Washington Post—show that President Donald Trump’s job approval is decidedly underwater. Importantly, the polls also show majorities rejecting Trump’s authoritarian governance. And Elon Musk, who’s carrying out Trump’s most autocratic designs, fares even worse. Are we finally seeing a real public backlash to Trump’s authoritarianism, the one that was supposed to materialize during the election, but didn’t? If so, what does that mean for how Democrats should proceed? We talked to political scientist Julia Azari, who writes on these matters for her “Good Politics, Bad Politics” Substack, about why Democrats have an opening to run harder against Trump-Musk autocratic overreach—and what that might look like. 

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President Donald Trump unleashed a long, angry tirade on Wednesday that falsely blamed Volodymyr Zelensky for Russia’s invasion. Trump pushed many other lies that sounded unsettlingly like Russian propaganda, even calling Zelensky a “dictator.” This forced Republicans into wild, comically evasive contortions. Which raises a question: What should Democrats say about all this? It seems like an unusually good opportunity to indict the craven GOP embrace of Trump and all he represents. We talked to Brian Beutler, author of the great Off Message Substack, who explains how Democrats can seize on moments like this to drive a wedge into the GOP—and why the Russia-Ukraine war will get much more brutal politically for Trump and Republicans going forward. Listen to this episode here.

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On Tuesday, top White House adviser Stephen Miller unleashed a wild, angry rant on CNN after tough questioning from CNN’s anchor about Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. This comes even as one of Musk’s silliest absurdities yet—the idea that DOGE found rampant fraud in Social Security—imploded spectacularly under basic scrutiny. There’s a through line here: The great illusion that Musk, Miller and President Trump are trying to push—that they’re rooting out immense amounts of governmental waste and fraud—is collapsing all around them. We talked to writer Jill Lawrence, who has a new piece for The Bulwark arguing that the Musk enterprise has been exposed as a sham, about the larger MAGA mythology about the “deep state,” and why it’s proving unsustainable. 

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Our descent into authoritarian rule continues. Over the weekend, Elon Musk raged on Twitter that people at CBS News deserve a “long prison sentence” based on a fabricated rationale. Meanwhile, President Trump tweeted out a line saying straight out that his presidency is above the law. And Trump nominated a nominee for U.S. Attorney in D.C. who has elevated the idea that DOJ should have no independence from the president. According to scholars of authoritarianism, these are the things that happen when a country is sliding into authoritarian rule. We talked to one such scholar, Steven Levitsky, co-author of a great new piece that charts what the path to American autocracy looks like. He explains how Trump-Musk’s latest moves, show how far along on this slide we truly are.

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On Thursday, after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mitch McConnell, the only Republican to vote no, issued a powerful statement citing RFK’s anti-vax conspiracy theories and crediting vaccines for saving millions of lives around the world. That prompted two unhinged, angry rants from Trump in which he absolutely savaged McConnell as a loser, a failure, and worse. We talked to veteran congressional observer Norm Ornstein, who explains what this Trump-McConnell rift tells us about Trump’s ability to terrorize today’s GOP into submission—and why we can’t count on Republicans to stand up to him going forward.

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With President Donald Trump’s agenda suddenly facing a huge wave of lawsuits, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt unleashed a long, angry tirade on Wednesday about the mounting court rulings against the president. Laughably, she claimed that this constitutes “the real constitutional crisis” we’re facing right now. It’s a revealing moment: Trumpworld is building a case for ignoring judicial rulings because they know their agenda is now vulnerable to legal challenges on many different fronts. We talked to legal commentator Leah Litman, author of the book Lawless, about the prospects for stopping Trump in the courts, what happens if he defies them, and what’s likely coming in the next few months.

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Little by little, congressional Republicans are waking up to discover that their own voters are in revolt against Elon Musk’s efforts to wreck the federal government. New reports from CNN and The Bulwark show that Republicans are quietly seeking to tamp down voter angst in all kinds of revealing ways. These are voters in GOP districts, but very few Republicans will prominently take on Musk, even though he is usurping their power. We talked to political science professor Elizabeth Saunders, author of a new piece for Foreign Affairs about the threat posed by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. She reflects on how complicit GOP lawmakers are in the destruction we’re seeing unfold—and on what, if anything, might prompt them to defend the system before the damage is irreversible. 

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In an interview on Fox News, President Donald Trump angrily signaled that his goal of making Canada into a “51st state” is “real” while ranting that Canada is supposedly taking advantage of us. Whatever Trump actually intends, Vladimir Putin has been cheering on Trump’s various threats toward Canada, especially the threat of tariffs. Russia is also happy about Elon Musk’s efforts to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development. We talked to international relations professor Nicholas Grossman, who explains why Trump’s rising anger at Canada is alarming even if he doesn’t fully intend to send in troops. Grossman also details how all these moves show that Trump is signaling a genuine repositioning of the U.S.’s place in the international order—and why this repositioning has Putin so gleeful.

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Rage is mounting among President Donald Trump’s allies over the losses that Trump’s agenda has suffered in court, which are clearly becoming a serious obstacle to him. It’s gotten so bad that Elon Musk shared a tweet from someone who suggested that it may be time to defy the courts. Musk also boosted Trump allies who are seething over these rulings. All that amounts to a pretty dark threat from Musk: He and MAGA appear to be steeling themselves to defy judicial rulings. We talked to Norman Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action, who is litigating against Trump, about how successful the legal resistance has been thus far, whether Trump and his allies will defy the courts, and what would happen if they did. 

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President Donald Trump unleashed an angry rant Thursday about the U.S. Agency for International Development. He falsely claimed billions of dollars had been stolen there to fund pro-Democrat media. But only hours later, CNN posted video of Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly praising USAID in the past and describing foreign aid as crucial to U.S. national interests. So what position will Rubio be put in if Trump and Elon Musk continue trying to destroy USAID? We talked to Jeremy Konyndyk, a former USAID official, who explains why Rubio will inevitably clash with Trump and Musk, their dark and unstated reasons for attacking USAID, and why the humanitarian consequences of all this are terrible to contemplate.

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