Checks and Balances and Democratic Backsliding

It's consider this, where every day we go deep on one big news story Today, the Trump administration backs down. We are not moving forward with the fund. eriod. The fund being the controversial one point eight billion dollars so called anti weaponization fund ing atttorney general Todd Blanche told a House subommittee this week the Justice Department would comply with a recent court ruling temporarily blocking the fund Now, to be clear, one point eight billion dollars is not a lot compared to about seventy billion dollars of spending, which the Senate advanced this week to support the Trump administration's immigration enforcement through the rest of his term But Republican lawmakers were actually holding up that immigration package because of the weaponization fund Many saw it as funneling federal money to the president's supporters, possibly including january sixth rioters. I led the charge against that so called anti weaponization fund. Pennsylvania Cgressman Brian Fitzpatrick was one of those Republicans. He spoke to NPR Thursday. I think about what's good for America If we start thinking about what's good for the Republican partarty or the Democrat Party, we've lost sight about what our job is. This is not the first time in recent weeks that we have seen the Trump administration reverse course In April, the Justice Department also backed off its investigation into former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell only after Republican Senator Tom Tillis Held up confirmation of the new Fed chair in protest Consider this, for a president who claims broad authority over nearly everything What can we make of his administration backing down? We will ask a scholar of modern authoritarianism I'm PP. I'm Sott Tetr NPR's tiny desk can't come to you. I mean it's a desk, but the tiny desk contest tour can New York City join NPR's tiny desk contest winner, Cure for Paranoia at Warsaw this july ninth. It's all the NPR tiny Dk Energy minus the office furniture Get your tickets now at tinydktour. org Each story you hear on Planet Money starts with a question What happens if we refund tariffs Why are groceries so expensive MPR we stand for your right to be curious because the forces shaping our world can be hard to see Follow NPRs planet Money wherever you get your podcast and start seeing how the economy really works It's consider this from NPR The Trump administration has gotten its way so much over the past sixteen months. Republicans in Congress, especially, that it feels unusual to see it back down anywhere. So what if anything, do this week's events mean for concerns about democratic backsliding To answer that question, let's bring in Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for the Atlantic and a Pulitzerrize winning historian of authoritarian regimes. Anne welcome. Thanks for having me. Let me start with this. What to you was so particularly alarming about this one point eight billion dollars fund It was alarming because number one, it was the president illegally directing federal money. so taxpayers' money towards his supporters, including some who had clearly and obviously broken the law. It was also disturbing because it seemed like the process by which they got to this figure was also less than legal. And so you saw the president bending the law in order to fund essentially his own political supporters That's what happens in regimes where one party or one clique or one person has captured the state. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because you have written so clearly, whether it's about Trump or whether it's about many other countries where we've seen similar trends An authoritarian or an authoritarian type leader will push and they'll push and they'll push and they'll push and they don't stop pushing Here we saw try to do something, his own party say, no, this is too far and Trump backing off What you're seeing now is the American system of checks and balances beginning to work the way it's supposed to work When Trump first came to office the second time, it almost seemed as if his party, in particular, his party in Congress, had decided to ignore the Constitution, to forget that they are also supposed to play a role in American government for reasons of intimidation, ideology fear they did it anyway. Now that the president is unpopular and now that he's lost some important court cases, now that some of the arguments that people have been making about him breaking the system are beginning to seep through what you're seeing is The leaders of Congress, in this case, it's the Republicans who lead both the Senate and the House deciding to use the power that they have And that's a sign that our political system still has some health in it. As somebody who's closely following and worried about anti deemocratic drift, does it matter to you whether or not this pushback is happening because Republicans are worried about saving their own seats or because they have broader constitutional concerns I mean, I suppose I would prefer it if Republicans had broader constitutional concerns and were thinking about the welfare of all Americans. But if it happens in some cases that their motivation is political, in other words, they see that these things are unpopular And maybe they're unpopular also because they appear to a lot of Americans to be undemocratic, then so be it You've studied leadeers in other countries, Hungary, Russia, Poland specifically. Is overplaying hand part of the storyline sometimes? Is that sometimes something that that kind of leads to losing power Some of them do. So we just saw in Hungary, we saw a prime minister who'd been in charge for sixteen years and who very much overplayed his hand, who captured most of the state institutions who controlled ninety percent of the media. we saw that for a majority of Hungarians, that became too much finally. People recognized that that system had enabled quite a lot of theft, quite a lot of graft, quite a lot of corruption, and Hungary was becoming poorer actually very rapidly. And so you had a mobilization of voters and a pushback. And so it can happen. I mean, there are, of course, states where it doesn't happen. Uually that's because The authorities either find ways to cheat in the elections or they begin to use violence against their opponents. Do you think this is a turning point or could be a turning point? or are you still a little skeptical to call it that I'm skeptical to call it that because I want to see how The midterms play out. and by that, I don't mean who's going to win. I mean, are the elections fair Are they conducted fairly Do all states respect the rules Does the federal government try to play any games with voterlists? is Iice used on election day to intimidate voters, all those kinds of things that people have been talking about