Professor Timothy Snyder, Professor Timothy Snyder in his book on tyranny, written during Trump's first administration, makes the list of 20 rules on how to survive authoritarianism.

His number one rule, do not obey in advance. Do not obey in advance. That is the number one rule. He writes,

much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. So resist the urge to anticipate and comply

with what a repressive regime might want, unquote.

Trump's not even done with his first 100 days in the compliance in advance we're witnessing

in this country, mind-boggling on the part of news organizations, settling lawsuits with

Trump, law firms offering Trump $100 million each

in pro bono work for whatever cause, universities, professors, public figures, all refusing

to state the obvious about what Trump and Musk are doing to our institutions and our rule of law.

It's all happening at lightning speed. There are those who study the rise of late 20th and early

21st century, authoritarian regimes in places like Russia, Poland, Hungary.

And they say they have never seen a system buckle so quickly as ours.

How bad is it going to get?

Just ask Kilmore Abrago Garcia. He's a 29-year-old El Salvadoran immigrant

in our country with protected legal status who was accidentally shipped off to a prison in El

Salvador. We have a judge ordering ICE, which admits it made a mistake to bring Garcia home,

but a Trump Justice Department refusing that judge's order,

despite our own Supreme Court ruling this week to facilitate Garcia's return.

We have pro-Palestinian college students and professors in this country legally,

having violated no laws, getting rounded up by ice,

ice agents wearing masks, and then shipping these college professors

and students off to detention centers in Texas and Louisiana, 1,500 miles away from their

...