Hello everyone and welcome to Ammanpur. Here's what's coming up.

So the line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime.

As Donald Trump defends his so-called crime crackdown, I asked journalist and historian Garrett Graf,

how much more pressure American democracy can take. Then, it's the sound of the people today.

Grammy Award-winning artist Jean Batiste tells me about his genre-defying new album, Big Money,

and how he's reclaiming American music. Plus, there are many parts of New Orleans that have never

recovered. Two decades on from Hurricane Katrina, what lessons have we learned?

We revisit Christian's conversation with award-winning director John Whitley,

examining the medical response to the disaster.

The Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Biona Gola Grigga in New York, sitting in for Christiana Amunpore.

Armed troops on the streets of Washington, D.C., and threats from the U.S. president that more cities will soon follow.

President Trump is ramping up his anti-crime agenda with immigration raids across the country and deportations surging.

And Trump's critics are increasingly in the firing line as the administration seeks to bend the U.S. legal system to its will. There's also a grinding assault on America's cultural

institutions, with the White House demanding to vet future exhibitions at D.C.'s renowned Smithsonian

museums and research centers. It's a weight of evidence that has many asking, is the world's

leading democracy losing the fight to protect its founding democratic values? My next guest says

that the answer is clear and that the United States has already slipped into fascism.

Garrett Graf is an author and historian and joins me from Vermont. Garrett, it is good to see you,

quite chilling to hear these words from you. You are not known for hyperbole and faux outrage. So the

fact that you are sounding the alarm now and the fact that you have said that this has been a pivotal

week in what you've concluded has been the U.S. term to fascism

really speaks volumes. What specifically about this current environment in this week that we're in

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