Hey, Andrew.

So I would consider you a friend of the pod at this point.

You've been on many times to talk about your various pieces.

You've written about figures like Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson.

You've done extensive reporting on conservative political organizations around the world.

And most recently, you published an article called Is It Happening Here, in which you ask a question that you and I have been talking about a lot for the past few months, which is, is America still a functioning democracy or are we seeing a kind of slide into autocracy, the same

slide that we've seen elsewhere around the world?

I think you and I have slightly differing views on how cooked we are, but we can get into

that in a bit.

To start, I'm wondering if you can just tell me, is there one event in the first 100 days of Donald Trump's second term that has you the most concerned about the future of democracy?

Yeah. There are a lot of events that I could pick, but I think the most concerning are the ones that involve people being physically removed without due process and brought somewhere

against their will.

So, I mean, to pick the two probably best known cases of that, one is Mahmoud Khalil,

the student activist of Colombia, the other Kilmara Brago-Garcia, who was, I don't even want to say deported, I would say disappeared to El Salvador.

There's a lot of other stuff that is like gross or vulgar or, oh my God, I can't believe Trump tweeted that or whatever.

But when it comes to people who don't get to be where they are legally entitled to be,

and there's like no court procedure, no due process,

that for me is a pretty red line thing.

So you could say before March 8th, when Mahmong Khalil was taken,

and after are like really two different worlds,

and after you have officers coming up to someone in the street, taking them away,

and then when someone says, what did that guy do, they say,

...