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The Brian Lehrer Show

Is This What Democracy Looks Like?: Heather Cox Richardson

The Brian Lehrer Show

WNYC

Arts, Lerer, Radio, York, Wnyc, News, Media, New, Npr, Nyc, Bryan, News Commentary, Politics, Daily News, Public

4.71.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Heather Cox Richardson, professor of American history at Boston College, offers a historian's take on the first weeks of the second Trump presidency.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Listener supported WNYC Studios.

0:07.0

It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC.

0:21.9

Good morning again, everyone coming up later this hour.

0:24.9

A call in for a group we've never singled out before for a specific call in.

0:29.2

We're going to have one specifically for Canadians.

0:31.6

If you are in or originally from Canada, how has the Trump administration so far made you feel about this

0:38.9

country or that country coming up in about a half hour? We're very happy to have with us now,

0:45.1

Boston College historian and these days a very popular newsletter writer, Heather Cox Richardson.

0:50.5

Her newsletter is called Letters from an American. She is also the author of many books,

0:54.9

including her latest Democracy Awakening Notes on the State of America, which came out in paperback

1:01.5

just last October. That book traces what Richardson calls Donald Trump's authoritarian experiment

1:06.8

back through American history. In her latest newsletter, Richardson focuses largely on the

1:13.2

battle for democracy taking place right now in the courts. One judge, as you probably

1:17.9

heard in the news, ordered Trump to stop deporting people based on the 1798 Alien Enemies

1:23.7

Act. That's supposed to apply only to times of actual war or actual invasion by another

1:29.5

country. Another declared Elon Musk's shutdown of USAID, likely unconstitutional, including for

1:37.0

Musk's unappointed role in it. And besides the rulings themselves, she notes Trump's

1:43.2

argument that the judge in the deportations case

1:46.4

should be removed from the case or even impeached. Now, Chief Justice John Roberts weighed in on

1:53.2

that yesterday, very rare, writing, quote, for more than two centuries, it has been established that

1:59.2

impeachment is not an appropriate response

2:02.0

to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. So how far is Trump taking us in this authoritarian

...

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