Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policies Editor-in-Chief.

This is FP Live.

In the past two months, the Trump White House has been testing the power of the judiciary.

Trump says he won't defy the courts, but his team has certainly flirted with the idea,

around deportations and other issues.

We have bad judges, we have very bad judges.

Even calling for certain judges to be impeached.

I think at a certain point, you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.

Now, clashes between the executive and judiciary aren't unique. Just look at Brazil,

Turkey, or Israel. But how do those countries compare with the United States and are there lessons

to learn from them? Well, my guest this week is an expert in democratic backsliding and how that relates to the rule of law.

In a recent essay in FP, political scientist Andrew O'Donohue wrote that the Trump administration's

attacks on the courts follow a troubling pattern. A pattern you can see in Brazil, India, Israel, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, and Turkey. But he also says

the United States is dangerously unique because it lacks some of the support systems that

those countries have. As you'll see in my discussion with Andrew, there are lessons to learn

from clashes between the executive and courts abroad.

But there's a flip side to that.

Autocrats and budding dictators are also learning from each other.

We've included a gift linked to the essay and the show notes. And remember, you can catch these discussions live and on video at foreign policy.com.

Let's dive in.

Andrew, welcome to FP Live. Good to see you, Ravi. Thanks for having me.

So let's just start with explaining what's happening in the United States before we move to

...