I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday story where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story.

We are more than three months into Donald Trump's second term as president, and there's a question that's coming up a lot.

What is the state of American democracy?

Last year, at a Fox News Town Hall campaign event, Trump insisted he would be a dictator,

but only for one day.

There is energy.

We're going to drill baby drill.

After that, I'm not going to be a dictator.

After that, I'm not going to be a dictator.

Now, many scholars say the U.S. is moving swiftly away from liberal democracy and towards some form of authoritarianism.

It is certainly reversible, but we're no longer living in a liberal democracy.

We are very certain that United States is moving in the direction of autocratization.

I think we're on a very fast slide into what's called competitive authoritarianism.

That was Stephen Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, Shepnam Gamushu, a political

scientist at Middlebury College, and Kim Lane Shepley, a Princeton sociologist. Of course, there

are scholars who disagree with them, but in recent surveys, hundreds of

political scientists from all over the country were asked to rate the health of American

democracy, and they downgraded America's democracy score more than ever before.

NPR's Frank Langfitt has been covering democracy for some time and was intrigued by these

landmark results.

He decided to speak to some scholars and others who've come here from authoritarian countries

and find out what they make of President Trump's first months in office.

...