From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer.

This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, January 30th.

On this program, in addition to covering the many new policies coming out of the Trump administration, we will keep asking, is this what democracy looks like?

Is Trump, as many people are concerned he is, trying to transform our very system of government into something more authoritarian?

We are not assuming a yes answer to that.

It's sometimes too easy, I think, to yell dictator when there's a balance of powers action that people don't like. But in fairness, the question is in play. And we remember that three of Trump's top national security officials, of all people, from his first term, have labeled him a fascist. So that's a serious context that I think requires us to keep

asking, is this what democracy looks like when that question is relevant? And so it is with the

blizzard of executive orders that Trump has issued so far. New ones in the last day include

using the prison at Guantanamo Bay to house up to 30,000 migrants

facing deportation proceedings, one that would rescind the student visas for international students

who committed crimes during pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, and one that would seek

to stop schools from teaching about what Trump

calls gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology. And those, of course, come after the

headline ones in recent days freezing almost all foreign aid and most domestic federal grant programs, plus the

offer to pay an eight-month salary buyout to almost any federal employee willing to leave

their job. It's questionable whether that is actually something that's in the law. So like those

policies or not, most of them raise

questions about whether they are even legal or constitutional. And so we will go over some

of them now to ask, is this what democracy looks like? With Kate Shaw, law professor at the

University of Pennsylvania, co-host of the Legal Affairs podcast,

strict scrutiny, and a contributing opinion writer with The New York Times. Kate, always good

to have you. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you so much for having me back, Brian. And as you try to

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