SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Is the United States moving towards autocracy? Many people who study authoritarian regime say they see the seeds of that in President Trump's moves to control the Department of Justice and civil service, the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents around the country and more. Anne Applebaum joins us now. She covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and communism across Eastern Europe and other shifts in history. She now writes for The Atlantic and hosts the podcast "Autocracy In America" and joins us now. Anne, thanks so much for being with us.
ANNE APPLEBAUM: Oh, thanks for having me.
SIMON: What do you think - what do you see happening in the United States today?
APPLEBAUM: So I want to make it clear that the United States is not an authoritarian state right now. But what we see is a party in power that is seeking to end or curb the rule of law and to create a situation where we become, in effect, a one-party state. And the path that the Republican Party under Trump - and it's not really the Republican Party, it's the MAGA movement under Trump - is following is one that's very familiar and has been followed by other parties in other democracies, whether in Hungary or Turkey or Venezuela, in the past. And it starts, as you say, with firing civil service - civil servants, in our case, illegally, and replacing them with loyalists. So the Trump administration has asked Department of Justice officials and FBI officials to tell them as a form of knowing whether they can be promoted who won the 2020 election, and, of course, they're supposed to lie and say that Trump won. So they ask people - they put loyalty tests into the system.
The control over universities, museums, the Kennedy Center, our cultural institutions, is a way of trying to redirect culture and change the way our understanding of history works. That's another classic move. The use of ICE and the creation of a kind of paramilitary that appears to be personally loyal to the president rather than subject to the rule of law. So they wear masks. They don't have to obey the law about searching and entering. They arrest people based on their race and not based on suspicion of having committed a crime. You know, the idea of a personalized, militarized force loyal only to the leader or to the ruling party.
I mean, this is - these are signs that we know from other places. And then maybe the two most important are corruption, so the way in which the Trump administration, and especially people around Trump and his family, have accepted money from foreign governments and others in - seemingly in exchange for U.S. policy. So policies are now not being done in the name of Americans but in the name of the personal interests of people power. And then, of course, the elections, the conversation about nationalizing elections, the pressure on election officials and states. I mean, that seems to be the phase that we're in this year, and that will be the most important.
SIMON: Is this just the government that Americans elected in 2024?
APPLEBAUM: I don't know that all Americans voted for Donald Trump in order to end democracy. No. I mean, it seemed clear to me during the election campaign based on the kind of rhetoric that they were using and the way they talked about their political opponents that they saw themselves as a group who had a right to power and had no right to be challenged. But I don't know that everybody in America heard that or saw that. And our political system, our Constitution, does provide for opposition politics and different ideas, and I don't think most Americans are yet ready to end that.
SIMON: There are still independent courts and only a slender majority in Congress that backs the president. Is that worth noting too?
APPLEBAUM: Absolutely. No, no. Again - I state again, we're not talking about the U.S. being an authoritarian state. We're talking about a group in power who are pushing in that direction, who are following all - you know, it's following all - the path that others have taken in the past in order to establish a state. And I - you know, the purpose for them is to create a situation in which they can't lose an election, in which elections are a combination of the way elections are run and the way people are afraid of voting and the way civil service and government departments are oriented to do their bidding, that it just becomes very difficult...
SIMON: Yeah.
APPLEBAUM: ...For anybody else to win.
SIMON: Isn't he - I mean, isn't that often the way of history? A party will come to power by winning an election, and then that's the last free election.
APPLEBAUM: Very often, and very often in recent history. And it's not necessarily a right-wing or a left-wing phenomenon. As I said, Venezuela is a great example, you know, Viktor Orban's Hungary.
SIMON: There's still plenty of public lampooning of the president. Isn't there still a free press, or do you have concerns about that too?
APPLEBAUM: So clearly, there's still a free press 'cause you and I are having this conversation.
SIMON: Yeah.
APPLEBAUM: But, you know, there is enormous pressure on the press. There's pressure on the broadcasters, whose owners can be pressured by the government because of their different economic interests. We've just seen what happened to The Washington Post. There was a - you know, the owner of The Washington Post has big interests outside of the Post, and he's - he put pressure on the Post that has destroyed its reputation. And so you can see pressure on media - especially bigger media - happening. That doesn't mean, you know, we can't continue to speak. But it's important to look at what they're trying to do and the direction that they're going.
SIMON: And I've left 30 seconds for this. Do you think the American people are grappling with this?
APPLEBAUM: I think people are beginning to understand it, yes. I mean, I - I'm on the West Coast now. I was in - I was on the East Coast last week, and I hear - everywhere I go, I hear people expressing concern. I think the murders in Minnesota woke a lot of people up to the nature of this administration.
SIMON: Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and host of The Atlantic podcast "Autocracy In America," which is out now. Thanks so much for being with us.
APPLEBAUM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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