This is on point. I'm Magna Chakrabardi. Each year, the Swedish International Institute

for Democracy and Electoral Assistance publishes a report about the state of democracies worldwide.

Its most recent findings are sobering.

The number of stable democracies has shrunk since 2000, the Institute finds.

More recently in the past decade, half of the world's democracies showed signs of being in retreat, meaning freedom of expression, representative governments,

impartial administration of the law, clean elections,

personal security, civil liberties, and more

are diminishing in those nations.

Case in point, Poland.

In 2015, Poland's Law and Justice Party,

a right-wing populist party, took power winning the parliamentary

elections that year, and the new government acted quickly.

Poland's lower House of Parliament has passed the controversial law that gives the

government more power over the Supreme Court. It would mean the removal and

replacement of all Supreme Court judges. Many Polish people roared in protest, filling the streets to fight against the new government's push.

We want a veto and free the courts, they shouted.

Those protests and actions by the European Union helped delay, but not end the party's judicial reforms.

By 2021, the Law and Justice Party successfully stripped Poland of its judicial independence,

replacing all 15 judges on its constitutional court.

And judicial independence is one of the hallmarks of a flourishing democracy.

Now, it's often thought that once a democracy is in retreat,

that nation is trapped in an inexorable decades-long slide

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