Nobel Peace Prize laureate and investigative journalist Maria Ressa has long fought for global

press freedom. Her book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, detailed her experience running the

news site Rappler under the increasingly autocratic regime of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines.

She recently sat down with Amna Vaz to discuss parallels she's seeing

between the Philippines and the U.S. under President Trump. It's part of our new series on

democracy, which focuses on the laws, institutions, and norms that have shaped this country

and the challenges they face today. Maria, welcome back to the News Hour.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So there's been a lot of concerns you've seen

about President Trump's continuing attacks on the press

and concerns about a loss of press freedom.

I want you to start by just comparing

what you lived through, what you documented,

what you covered under Duterte with what we've seen

in the first several weeks of this second Trump administration so far.

It's exactly what we've lived through except accelerated.

It's incredible how fast it's going, and part of that is organization, right?

But what we did in the Philippines is within six months of the

constitution of the Philippines is patterned after the United States. We have three branches of government and a powerful executive.

But within six months of the election of Rodrigo Duterte, of him taking office, all of the checks and balances had collapsed. He was an all-powerful,

the most powerful leader the country had ever known. And critical to that, crucial to that,

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