Autocracy in America

When heavily armed agents of the federal government arrived in Minneapolis, the people of the Twin Cities responded with surprising strength. In this episode, residents describe what drove them to act, and host Anne Applebaum speaks with Atlantic contributing writer Robert Worth about what he learned when he observed the tactics of the federal agents and the response of Minnesotans.Get more from...

The Trump White House is changing the rules of our political system through intimidation, the distortion of information, financial corruption, and the dismantling of government offices. In the final episode of this season, we examine whether the administration is also trying to change the rules of our elections. Dawn Baldwin Gibson, a North Carolina pastor, tells us about how, in 2024, her vote...

Kathleen Walters was only 23 days away from qualifying for early retirement at the IRS when she decided to quit, rather than acquiesce to a Trump-administration request that she break the law and compromise millions of people’s privacy. She’s one of hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have left or been fired from their federal-government jobs in the past year. In this episode, host Anne...

Joan Brugge has worked for nearly 50 years as a cancer scientist, studying the earliest signs that someone might become sick. Then the Trump administration canceled her lab’s funding. The administration’s attacks on medicine, culture, and education—which include funding cuts and verbal threats—are about more than just budgeting and bravado. Our host, Anne Applebaum, speaks with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a...

Brandon LaRoque kept his life savings in a cryptocurrency account. One morning, as he went to check his balance, he discovered that it was all missing. LaRoque is one of many victims of the unregulated crypto industry. President Donald Trump has rolled back regulation of the industry, while he and his family have earned untold billions of dollars from new crypto ventures. Host Anne Applebaum...

The transformation of ICE into a type of national police force, backed, in some cases, by soldiers from the National Guard, has been covered as immigration story—but these forces are reshaping democracy for all of us. This shift was evident even before the shootings in Minneapolis and Portland this week. In this episode, George Retes, a U.S. citizen and an Army veteran, recounts how he was...

The Trump administration is making radical, unprecedented changes to American institutions. By doing so, it is seeking to transform the American political system as well. To explain Donald Trump’s project, and to talk about where it might be going, The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum is returning to host a new season of Autocracy in America. She’ll introduce listeners to Americans whose lives were...

Despite growing up in the Soviet Union, host Garry Kasparov admired American values—believing America was one of the good guys. But is that still the case? In the final episode of the second season of Autocracy in America, Garry is joined by Admiral Bill McRaven, perhaps best known as the military commander who oversaw the SEAL Team Six raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Recently, he’s...

Michael McFaul witnessed Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent as U.S. ambassador to Russia. He has a warning for Americans.McFaul and host Garry Kasparov discuss how recent moves by the Trump administration mirror the consolidation of power that McFaul saw after Putin was re-elected Russian president in 2012.Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited...

When host Garry Kasparov created the Renew Democracy Initiative in 2017, the founding manifesto warned that “the liberal-democratic order is under attack from within and without.” Eight years later, things have not changed for the better.Garry is joined by Bret Stephens, a columnist for The New York Times and the principal author of that 2017 manifesto. Both Garry and Bret agree that democracy is...