How's the United States' 249-year-old experiment in democracy going? On this show, we've discussed how the long-vaunted system of checks and balances is being tested by a president who's made a grab for more power than any US leader since the Second World War. 

Does that executive power extend to firing the first Black woman ever appointed to the US Federal Reserve's board of governors? Ostensibly it's because Donald Trump wants his way on a malleable central bank that would lower interest rates at his command. But why single out Lisa Cook?

Watch moreTrump orders dismissal of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook

Similarly, it’s in the name of lowering the crime rate that the US president is bent on deploying federal troops to major cities. But is it also because the likes of Chicago, Washington DC and Baltimore are opposition strongholds whose mayors just happen to be African American?

Watch moreHow accurate are Trump's claims about crime in Washington DC?

More broadly, when Trump signs executive orders that reverse affirmative action measures, feels the need to make English the official language of the land and enables manhunts for foreigners who follow the legal path to residency and citizenship, is it simply another nativist swing – the kind that Americans have seen before – or, in a nation of immigrants, a whole new direction?

Produced by Ilayda Habip, Aurore Laborie, Alessandro Xenos and Charles Wente.