The Fast Track To Autocracy
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a special new year retrospective, Amicus host Dahlia Lithwick revisits an important episode from early 2025. Back at the beginning of February, Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International affairs at Princeton University, pointed to the speed and viciousness of the very opening legal gambits in Trump 2.0 as evidence that America had already switched over to the fast track for autocracy on January 20th, 2025. An expert in the law of autocracy, Scheppele has seen firsthand what happened to constitutional courts, the media, the academy and the democratic norms that protected them in Russia and Hungary. In this interview, Scheppelle explains how Trump’s executive orders on everything from government funding to transgender people in the military reveal a familiar global playbook that has chillingly familiar endpoints.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Where do you find a clear signal in a world of static? |
| 0:03.2 | In a time of rapid change cut through the noise. |
| 0:06.2 | The Economist goes beyond the headlines to decode the forces shaping today and defining tomorrow. |
| 0:12.7 | Get the full story. |
| 0:14.1 | It's more than news. |
| 0:15.4 | It's a trusted global perspective. |
| 0:17.7 | The Economist know which way is up. |
| 0:21.4 | This episode is brought you by Shopify. With Shopify, 2026 is the year you make it happen. |
| 0:27.9 | It gives you the tools to build your dream store, online and in person. Plus with marketing built-in, |
| 0:34.0 | it'll help you reach exactly who you need to. Join the millions who've already made |
| 0:38.4 | the leap, like Jim Shark and all birds, and ring in the new year with Shopify. |
| 0:44.2 | Sign up for your £1 per month trial at shopify.com.ukau.ukes slash Spotify. |
| 0:53.1 | Hi, I'm Dahlia Lithwick. Welcome to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, and the U.S. Supreme Court. |
| 1:02.8 | Everything that this administration does now that is bringing down democracy and causing pain should be met with friction. |
| 1:12.2 | You may not be able to stop it, but you can slow it down. |
| 1:18.0 | Hello and happy new year, brackets, complicated emoji. |
| 1:22.6 | We are three days into 2026 and just over two weeks away from the first anniversary of President Donald |
| 1:29.3 | J. Trump's second inauguration. We are also three days away from the fifth anniversary of the |
| 1:35.5 | January 6th insurrection when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and tried to stop the certification |
| 1:41.6 | of the 2020 election. A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people lost their lives in connection |
| 1:49.9 | with that January 6 attack. |
| 1:52.1 | Four years later, on his first day back in office, President Trump granted blanket clemency |
... |
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