Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Pirkid Media. I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

When Americans worry about affordability, one of the most expensive and necessary elements is childcare.

From daycare to after-school care, parents need to know. One of the most expensive and necessary elements is child care.

From daycare to after school care, parents need to know that their children will be all right,

especially in a functioning democracy.

Yet our political leaders haven't yet demonstrated that they know how to deliver for our youngest residents or their parents.

One of the leading voices on how we're falling

behind but can catch up is this week's guest, Reshma Shujani. Look, affordability isn't purely an

American issue and neither is authoritarianism. And I'm going to talk about that and more with our

guest, Reshma. But before we do so, I want to talk about something that happened this weekend.

Across the Atlantic Ocean in Hungary, Victor Orban's 16-year reign as the autocrat-in-chief came to a stunning end.

You see, this is the man who has taken Hungary through all of the steps of

authoritarianism. In fact, the work in the Ten Steps campaign is based on a study of his reign, led by

Dr. Kim Sheppel. Hungary matters because this was a democracy that backslid all the way to authoritarianism.

It took 16 years, but they hit all 10 steps. He expanded executive power. He controlled the legislative

and the judicial branches. He changed the constitution of Hungary to expand and deepen his power.

He trafficked in the kind of rhetoric that marginalized communities, that terrified the disadvantaged, and that made average citizens

believe that speaking up was dangerous. He did everything right if what you want is to end

democracy forever.

He engaged in a level of corruption that we have become all too familiar with here in the

U.S.

But he did something else.

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