If Can he say that? was a broad theme of Trump’s first term, Can he do that? is the even graver theme of his second. The deportations. The tariffs. The dismantling of the civil service, of scientific research, of government records, of civil rights, of voting rights, of basic standards of due process: The president’s efforts to destabilize his own government from within—to defund agencies, to “purge” the civil service of people he views as insufficiently loyal—have not merely been escalations of the attempted power grabs he made in his first term. They have been direct assaults on the delicate balance of power: an executive laying siege to the legislative and judicial branches. Lippmann did not predict this turn of events, but he understood their consequences. Democracy, under the sway of lies, becomes a form of anarchy.

-Megan Garber in The Atlantic