An alarm bell for American democracy
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Hey there, it's Shamita. I've got a quick request for you. If Apple News Today is an essential part of your morning routine, follow the show in Apple Podcasts. And if you have another 30 seconds, leave us a rating and a review too. It helps other people find our show and it helps us know what you like about it. Thanks. Good morning. It's Friday, April 25th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, a stark warning about the state of democracy in the United States, a number of setbacks for President Trump in court, and why you might want to stop saying please and thank you to ChatGPT. Let's start with the warning about democratic norms in the U.S. As we approach President Trump's 100th day in office for the second time, a survey of more than 500 political scientists found the vast majority believe the United States is quickly swinging from a liberal democracy to some form of authoritarianism.
It's an assessment that depending on who you stop on the street in any town USA, someone might completely agree with and share the alarm of these academics. Or someone might disagree entirely, even say that President Trump is saving our country. I decided to call up NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She's a historian and expert on authoritarianism and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Strongmen, Mussolini to the Present, which tells the history of authoritarianism over the last 100 years. And I asked her to start, what would she say to these two groups of people, the people who deeply believe that we're already in the throes of an autocracy and the people who say the opposite?
Authoritarianism is an evolution. And so if you're a historian, you can pick up these patterns over 100 years. So, for example, autocrats go after the same groups over 100 years. They go after the opposition politicians. They go after judges, prosecutors, journalists, anybody who can expose their corruption and is a threat to them. They go after LGBTQ people, religious minorities. So we can look at who is being targeted today, such as immigrants. And this is a through line, even in my book, this idea that the strongman arrives to save the nation from unacceptable people coming over the border. to have too many babies because they have the wrong skin color, or to spread anarchy through crime.
This is one of the oldest themes in authoritarianism, and it started with Mussolini. And I would say that today it can become more difficult to diagnose and recognize autocracy. Because in the old days, you had these one-party states with dictators. So it's very clear. There's no opposition media. There's no other parties involved. Today we have something called electoral autocracy, where even in Russia, in Turkey, in Hungary, you keep other parties going. Your parliament or your legislator is kind of a rubber stamp, but it still exists. And you also have some independent media. And so you hold elections, but you game the system so the elections are neither free nor fair. But you still hold elections.
So we have to keep that in mind that it doesn't look like the old days. Things are happening extremely fast. And this will sound dramatic, but it is dramatic. There is no parallel, even in early Putin or Orban, for the speed at which this transition to autocracy is happening. And the reason that could happen so fast is that while Trump was out of office during the Joe Biden years, they developed with Project 2025 a whole plan of governance, and he consolidated his control over his partners. So consolidated his control over the GOP. The Supreme Court, which is supposed to be a major check in the checks and balance system, gave the office of the president immunity for official acts. So he came in with an incredibly strong autocratic style of power.
So let me ask you, as we approach the 100-day mark of Trump's second term here, what specific actions are you observing that concern you?
Many. There's a few structural things that correspond to authoritarianism, where you make the government into a place for loyalists, and your cabinet, your inner circle, is chosen less for competence or experience. And we could think of Tulsi Gabbard, who had not much experience in intelligence, Pete Hegseth, who's been in the news for Signal Gates.
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