In a report last week in the New York Times (“‘This Is Worse’: Trump’s Judicial Defiance Veers Beyond the Autocrat Playbook,” Amanda Taub highlights the assessment of Steven Levitsky.
“Honest to god, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and coauthor of “How Democracies Die” and “Competitive Authoritarianism.”
“We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary and Poland and Turkey. And in a lot of respects, this is worse,” he said. “These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding.”
Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orbán forced out hostile judges and packed the courts with allies — over many years. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey purged thousands of judges — over several decades. Both used subterfuge. Trump has been in office barely two months and his methods have been transparent.
Mr. Levitsky said he was struggling to find a precedent for what the Trump administration is doing.
“The zeal with which these guys are engaging in increasingly open, authoritarian behavior is unlike almost anything I’ve seen. Erdogan, Chavez, Orban — they hid it,” Mr. Levitsky said.
The Trump 2 administration is much different than Trump 1. Trump’s allies have had four years since the attempted insurrection on January 6 to prepare for this moment. The Project 2025 guys paved the way with a master plan. Trump cronies who populate the second administration hit the ground running. While their advances have often been clumsy, they’ve charged ahead at full speed.
MAGA has seized control of the federal government and is racing to remake it — just as Donald Trump promised during the 2024 campaign. The assault is degrading our democratic institutions.