I'm Ann Applebaum.
Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered,
don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals?
Well, maybe they are afraid.
And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions,
even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year.
to make sure their opponents can't win.
Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats.
We could win, but we are very, very,
very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual.
Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about what might happen next.
The new season of Autocracy in America, available now.
Well,
I guess I'm thinking about it
because I just turned 29 and a great age a perfect age My friends keep doing this bit that no matter how old I turn they keep saying a perfect age for a woman So it was like 27 the perfect age for a woman and I turned 28 perfect age now Once again somehow I've turned the perfect age for a woman,
but I always remember thinking like 28 for some reason really stood out to me as the time that I like thought a lot of my life would be together.
And now that I'm past that age,
it's so funny to me to think that I thought that everything would magically be figured out at that time.
But I find myself now just being like 34.
34 it's gonna work out for me by 34 which I know then I'm gonna turn 34 and laugh at that and be like what I thought was 34 is actually 42.