I was actually at a breast cancer retreat and I, during the coffee break, I looked at my emails

to see, you know, if I had to, was there anything that I had to deal with?

And I got this email from the university and, you know, it was a real gut punch.

My knees basically buckled and I had to sit down.

I never imagined that it would be possible

that funding for life-saving research

would be terminated for issues

that were totally unrelated to the quality of the work

or the progress that we had made in the work.

From the Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America.

I'm Anne Applebaum.

In this new season, I'm asking how the Trump White House

is rewriting the rules of U.S. politics

and talking to Americans whose lives have been changed as a result.

Today's episode examines the administration's attacks on science, medicine, culture, and education,

a combination of verbal threats and funding cuts that look very much like an attempt to control knowledge.

Maybe there's a broader goal, too, to build distrust and ultimately to reshape all Americans' perceptions of reality.

I know that sounds dramatic, but I spent many years writing about authoritarian regimes, and almost all of them try to undermine admired institutions in order to radically alter the way people think.

Let's start with the attacks on science.

Joan Brugie was stunned when her research became a target.

I've been doing cancer research for almost 50 years now, not just at Harvard.

When I was an undergrad, my sister was diagnosed with a highly

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