Is America becoming an autocracy?

Summary

Summary of "Is America Becoming an Autocracy?" from NPR's Up First

Release Date: May 18, 2025

In the May 18, 2025, episode of NPR's Up First titled "Is America Becoming an Autocracy?", host Aisha Rascoe delves into the pressing question of whether the United States is shifting away from its longstanding liberal democratic foundations toward a more authoritarian governance model. Through insightful discussions with political scientists, scholars, and individuals from authoritarian backgrounds, the episode examines the current state of American democracy, drawing comparisons with established autocratic regimes.

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1. Assessing the Health of American Democracy

The episode opens with alarming assessments from renowned scholars about the state of American democracy. Stephen Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, alongside Shebnam Gumushu, a political scientist at Middlebury College, and Kim Lane Shepley, a sociologist at Princeton, express concerns that the U.S. is rapidly moving towards authoritarianism.

• Bright Line Survey Findings
  Aisha Rascoe highlights the results from the Bright Line survey, conducted by Dartmouth's John Kerry. The survey, which evaluates democracy across 30 indicators, shows a significant decline in America's democracy score—from 67 to 53—the steepest drop ever recorded. This places the U.S. roughly midway between Canada and Russia on the democracy scale. As Kerry summarizes, "If you had asked me five years ago, I never would have expected the United States to have fallen this far" ([07:50]).

2. Understanding Competitive Authoritarianism

Rascoe elucidates the concept of competitive authoritarianism, distinguishing it from outright authoritarian regimes like China. In a competitive authoritarian system, leaders are democratically elected but systematically undermine democratic institutions to consolidate power.

• Key Characteristics
  Shebnam Gumushu explains, "We'll attack the media, the universities, to kind of blunt public criticism" ([06:35]). This strategy involves filling government positions with loyalists, intimidating or co-opting business leaders, and manipulating electoral processes to favor the ruling party.

3. Personal Stories Highlighting Democratic Erosion

A poignant anecdote shared by Rascoe involves a scholar from an autocratic Asian nation who became fearful after witnessing U.S. federal agents detain a doctoral student at Tufts University.

• The Tufts University Incident
  Rascoe recounts, "They grab her wrists. She begins to resist, she starts to yell... and then they take her phone, they handcuff her, and then they lead her off to a car" ([02:25]). The student, Ramesa Osterk from Turkey, was detained without charges for co-authoring an op-ed advocating for divestment from companies doing business with Israel. This incident mirrors tactics seen in authoritarian regimes, causing fear that such methods could be employed domestically ([05:27]).

• Scholar’s Fear
  Stephen Levitsky underscores the gravity of the situation: "Coming from a country where occasionally they sort of disappear activists from the streets, this felt like a very familiar pattern" ([04:56]). The scholar, now a green card holder in the U.S., worries about potential targeting and deportation, reminiscent of his experiences in his homeland.

4. Comparative Case Studies: Turkey and Hungary

The episode draws parallels between the actions of leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Viktor Orban of Hungary with current U.S. political dynamics.

• Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey
  Fulja Pinar, an anthropologist at Middlebury College, details Erdogan's gradual consolidation of power: "Newspapers were taken over or shut down. Journalists were imprisoned or exiled" ([10:40]). This suppression extended to academia, hindering intellectual freedom and forcing talents like Pinar to emigrate to seek safety and academic liberty ([11:34]).

• Viktor Orban in Hungary
  Kim Lane Shepley discusses Orban's strategies: cutting state advertising to independent media and slashing university budgets by 40% to control educational institutions ([14:06]). Initially met with mass protests, the pro-democracy movement in Hungary eventually shifted focus to grassroots engagement, addressing practical community issues to garner broader support ([15:56]).

5. Divergent Expert Opinions on America's Path

While the majority of scholars express concern over America's drift towards authoritarianism, some offer alternative perspectives.

• Polarization as a Barrier
  Todd Kent from Texas A&M suggests that extreme political polarization prevents a cohesive move toward authoritarianism: "The party out of power is always going to be kind of accusing the one in power of being anti-Democratic" ([19:50]). This entrenched division acts as a check against unilateral power grabs.

• Imperial Presidency Concerns
  Darren Shaw of the University of Texas at Austin introduces the concept of an "imperial presidency," noting that even if full authoritarianism isn't achieved, President Trump's actions have already eroded democratic norms, posing long-term risks to the rule of law ([19:50]).

• Constitutional Safeguards
  Kurt Whelan, also from the University of Texas at Austin, argues that significant constitutional changes are unlikely without overwhelming public support: "These populist leaders managed to engineer new constitutions that seriously concentrated power... But in the United States, that's out" ([21:26]).

6. Voices from the Frontlines of Democracy and Autocracy

The episode introduces Yaqiao Wang, a Chinese American human rights activist and director at Freedom House, who provides a personal narrative linking her experiences in authoritarian China with current U.S. policies.

• From Activism to Advocacy
  Wang shares her journey from aspiring to influence change in China to facing setbacks in the U.S., where policies under President Trump led to the shutdown of Voice of America and funding cuts to organizations like Freedom House, directly impacting her work ([28:08]).

• Hope Amidst Challenges
  Despite these obstacles, Wang offers an optimistic message: "Believe in yourself. Believe in your neighbors. Believe in the fundamental yearning, the fundamental belief in democracy and human rights. We will prevail" ([30:16]).

7. Concluding Insights and Future Outlook

The episode wraps up with a reflection on the resilience of democratic institutions and the role of individual and collective action in safeguarding democracy. While acknowledging the significant challenges and the damage done to democratic norms, the voices featured in the episode advocate for continued vigilance and active participation to prevent further erosion of democratic values.

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Notable Quotes

• Stephen Levitsky [04:56]:
  "Coming from a country where occasionally they sort of disappear activists from the streets, this felt like a very familiar pattern."

• Fulja Pinar [11:34]:
  "Many of my professors, mentors, colleagues were criminalized while I was still there, just for advocating for peace or labor rights or unionization rights."

• Shebnam Gumushu [15:14]:
  "Resisting is not enough. You have to understand their grievances and respond carefully."

• Yaqiao Wang [30:16]:
  "Believe in yourself. Believe in your neighbors. Believe in the fundamental yearning, the fundamental belief in democracy and human rights. We will prevail."

---

This episode of Up First offers a comprehensive examination of the fragile state of American democracy, enriched by expert analyses and personal stories that highlight both the risks and the enduring spirit to defend democratic principles. It serves as a crucial resource for listeners seeking to understand the complexities and challenges facing the United States today.

Transcript

[Aisha Roscoe]

Aisha.

[Frank Langford]

I'm Aisha Rascoe, and this is THE Sunday Story, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. We are more than three months into Donald Trump's second term as president, and there's a question that's coming up a lot what is the state of American democracy? Last year, at a Fox News town hall campaign event, Trump insisted he would be a dictator, but only for one day is energy.

[Aisha Roscoe]

We're going to drill, baby, drill. After that, I'm not going to be a dictator. After that, I'm not going to be a dictator.

[Frank Langford]

Now, many scholars say the US Is moving swiftly away from liberal democracy and towards some form of authoritarianism.

[Aisha Roscoe]

It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy.

[Shebnam Gumushu]

We are very certain that United States is moving in the direction of autocratization.

[Aisha Roscoe]

I think we're on a very fast slide into what's called competitive authoritarianism.

[Frank Langford]

That was Stephen Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard Shebnam Gamushu, a political scientist at Middlebury College, and Kim Lane Shepley, a Princeton sociologist. Of course, there are scholars who disagree with them, but in recent surveys, hundreds of political scientists from all over the country were asked to rate the health of American democracy, and they downgraded America's democracy score more than ever before. NPR's Frank Langford has been covering democracy for some time and was intrigued by these landmark results. He decided to speak to some scholars and others who've come here from authoritarian countries and find out what they make of President Trump's first months in office. Welcome to the show, Frank.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Hey, Aisha, great to be here.

[Frank Langford]

What struck you in your conversations with these scholars?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, there's one particular thing, Aisha. I had arranged to interview this guy, a scholar. He's originally from an autocratic country in Asia, and at first he agreed to speak on the record. And then like a day or two before the interview, he writes me this. I want to read it to you. It says, I've been following with concern the news this week, and I've decided for now I don't want to be quoted in a news piece.

[Frank Langford]

So what was the news, and why did he have this change of heart?

[Aisha Roscoe]

He'd seen this video. I'm sure you've probably seen it, too. It was widely covered in the news. They're these plainclothes Homeland Security agents. They detain a doctoral student at Tufts University. This all happens in broad daylight on a street outside of Boston. So this student, she's from Turkey. Her name is Ramesa Osterk. And she's here in the US On a student visa. And in the video you can see these men, and it's a woman or two come up to her. They grab her wrists. She begins to resist, she starts to yell. Then they take her phone, they handcuff her, and then they lead her off to a car.

[Frank Langford]

Yeah, I remember there was a huge reaction to that video. And so what happened to this student?

[Aisha Roscoe]

So after she was picked up, they sent her to Louisiana. She's never charged with a crime. And a little more than a week ago, a federal judge released her, said the only evidence the government provided for holding her was that she co wrote an op ed in the student newspaper urging the university to divest from companies doing business with Israel. Of course, this is not how Secretary of State Marco Rubio had described the whole thing. He said that the US had revoked her visa, suggesting she's some kind of troublemaker. This is what he said. I think it's crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it. We're just not going to have it. So we'll revoke your visa. And once your visa is revoked, you're illegally in the country and you have to leave. Every country in the world has a right to decide who comes in as a visitor and who doesn't.

[Frank Langford]

So that's what scared your source?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, I mean, he told me that when he saw that video, he recognized this exact tactic. And essentially what he was seeing was an abduction. And it reminded him a lot from what happens in his homeland.

[Frank Langford]

He's worried that he could be detained as well?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Oh, definitely. He's on a green card here, and he's worried that officials could get more aggressive and they could target him. He's also concerned, frankly, about the potential for being deported. His home government went after him some years ago because he criticized the government in a private online post. And he's worried he could be detained if he ever ends up getting sent back to his homeland. Now, eventually, Aisha, he did agree to talk to me, but only if we didn't use his voice or his name. So we got an NPR producer to voice his answers. And so I asked the professor what he was thinking when he watched that video.

[Stephen Levitsky]

This was the problem that I felt like I left back home, and it's here. Coming from a country where occasionally they sort of disappear activists from the streets, this felt like a very familiar pattern. The lack of faces, the lack of uniforms, the arbitrariness of the whole process. Some authority figure says, come with me, and then this person vanishes. It felt a lot like this was the problem that I thought I'd left an ocean away and suddenly there it was.

[Frank Langford]

So, Frank, I'd like to talk to you about something that we heard from some of the political science professors at the top of our conversation. They refer to something known as competitive authoritarianism. What is that?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, first I guess I want to point out what it isn't because I don't want to overstate this. We're not talking about hardcore authoritarianism like what you would see in China. Of course, that's a one party state. There are no meaningful elections. Instead, we're talking about a case where a leader is democratically elected and then from office reshapes the state to maximize executive power. And it kind of works like this. The executive fills the civil service with, with key appointments and I mean, we're talking the prosecutor's office. The judiciary fills them with loyalists. And then he or she, they'll attack the media, the universities, to kind of blunt public criticism. And also we'll either intimidate or co op business leaders. And the idea is to tilt the electoral playing field in the ruling party's favor. And that would mean, you know, elections would happen, but they wouldn't be fair.

[Frank Langford]

So political scientists were recently asked to rate the health of American democracy. Can you tell me more about how the survey works?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, so it's a national survey. It's called Bright Line. Watch John Kerry. Not that John Kerry. He's a Dartmouth professor, this guy, and he's co director of this, of this survey. And this is how he explained what they do. We always ask our respondents to rate the performance of American democracy on a 0 to 100 scale. So 0 would be complete dictatorship and 100 would be perfect democracy. The professors consider 30 different indicators. So for instance, whether the government interferes with the press or punishes political opponents, whether the legislature and judiciary check executive authority. Right after Trump's election, political scientists rated democracy in the US at a 67. Late last month, scholars downgraded democracy here to 53. The survey started back in 2017. Kerry says that's the biggest plunge ever. If you had asked me five years ago, I never would have expected the United States to be to have fallen this far. And the US Score actually landed midway between our neighbor Canada and Russia, which, as we all know, is a hardcore authoritarian state.

[Frank Langford]

After the break, we consider two political leaders who people say concentrated power and transformed their countries. Stay with us.

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[Frank Langford]

We'Re back with the Sunday Story. I'm here with NPR correspondent Frank Langford. Frank, when people talk about President Trump's second term, they sometimes say he's following a playbook from other leaders, like in countries like Turkey and Hungary.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, one leader that they'll talk about is Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He's the president of Turkey. A little bit of background. Erdogan was formerly he was the mayor of istanbul. Then in 2002, his party won a parliamentary majority and Erdogan became prime minister. Now, under Erdogan, there was a really nice period economically, what they refer to as the golden years. There's a lot of strong economic growth and he leveraged his popularity to basically take control of the levers of power.

[Fulja Pinar]

We didn't just wake up one morning in an authoritarian system. Of course, it happened very gradually.

[Aisha Roscoe]

This is Fulja Pinar. She's an anthropologist who studies Turkey and the Middle east at Middlebury College in Vermont. And she says she watched Erdogan slowly tighten his grip on power in her homeland.

[Fulja Pinar]

Newspapers were taken over or shut down. Journalists were imprisoned or exiled. Even one of my older sisters who is a journalist, she lost her job.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Pinars sister, she worked for a major.

[Fulja Pinar]

Newspaper there, and it was taken over by a pro government corporation after it revealed an arms deal that Turkey made. And soon after, many critical journalists were basically pushed out of other newspapers, too. So this wasn't just about one newspaper. It was part of basically a broader pattern of media consolidation and silencing people.

[Aisha Roscoe]

And Pinar says the government also targeted a lot of academics.

[Fulja Pinar]

So many of my professors, mentors, colleagues were criminalized while I was still there, just for advocating for peace or labor rights or unionization rights. So this wasn't really abstract for me. These were the people who shaped me, who taught me how to think and express myself. And it became clear that I couldn't build a future in Turkey without fearing for my safety or freedom.

[Aisha Roscoe]

And so PINAR, this is 2016, she moves to the U.S. she's basically seeking academic freedom. And she's also studying for a PhD at Rutgers. But the US has not, over time, proven to be the haven that she'd hope. And since taking office, you know, Trump has withheld, as we've reported, billions of dollars from universities that he says haven't done enough to fight antisemitism. And Pienaar, she's untenured. She's kind of worried and has changed, actually, the way that she's teaching right now.

[Fulja Pinar]

So I'm trying to be more careful. You know, at the end of the semester, students usually provide feedback about professors, and then your promotion depends on that.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Before, in her lectures, she used to cite death tolls for conflicts like the war in Gaza. Now what she'll do is just direct students to readings where they can find the answers on their own. And otherwise, she's kind of worried that students who disagree with her might report her to the school administration. And Pinarch says she wants to protect herself against any possible charges of bias. Did you think before and even during your time in the United States you'd ever have to do this?

[Fulja Pinar]

No, I didn't see that coming, honestly. And this was actually the reason why I came to the United States.

[Aisha Roscoe]

So how do you feel about being in America now?

[Fulja Pinar]

I feel quite fragile because I feel like I can't work freely here. It just feels like I'm stuck, Frank.

[Frank Langford]

So let's shift to the country that some scholars say is even more of a model for the Trump administration, and that's Hungary. Hungary's government has close ties to the Trump administration. And Trump has called Prime Minister Viktor Orban a strong man and a tough person. And strong man, like that's a compliment from Trump. It is, yeah. So how did Orban turn Hungary into what the European Union says is no longer a full democracy?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah. So this is an interesting story, too. Orban becomes Hungary's youngest prime minister. This is back in 1998. He's 35 years old. He was defeated four years later. But then he sweeps back to power in 2010, and his party won so many seats in the parliament, it had enough to change the constitution. And then over time, basically, he took control of the country's media, universities, and courts. Kim Lane Shepley of Princeton, she's studied Hungary for many years, and she offered a couple of examples of Orban's tactics that, you know, might sound a little familiar to Americans right now. For instance, Orban targeted the business models of news companies. Orban comes into power and realizes that whole media culture is sustained by state advertising. Overnight, he cuts all the advertising to the independent and opposition media. They all have a hole blown in their budget. Nobody expected that would happen. Shepley says Orban also took aim at higher education, the universities a bastion of criticism of the government. In the first two years, Orban cut the university budgets by 40%.

[Frank Langford]

So how did Hungarians respond?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Well, I think in the early years, first couple of years, there were a lot of mass protests. But I was talking to Stefania Kaprancai. She used to run the Hungarian equivalent of the aclu, and she says those big protests, they didn't really have much impact.

[Shebnam Gumushu]

A key lesson that we learned is that resisting is not enough. I really believe that people who are pro democracy, who are pro human rights, really have to think hard about how to attract and how to reach new audiences. And I think that starts with understanding their grievances, listening to what they care about, and really responding carefully to those.

[Frank Langford]

So did her organization do that?

[Aisha Roscoe]

They did. They basically got out of Budapest and headed to the provinces. They opened local offices. They went to food fairs.

[Shebnam Gumushu]

After four or eight years, we realized that what we need to understand is why people don't care so much or don't care enough about these anti democratic measures.

[Aisha Roscoe]

And what did you learn?

[Shebnam Gumushu]

So what we learned is that people are disillusioned by democracy.

[Aisha Roscoe]

And so what they said they realized they needed to do was connect the concept of people's rights to practical issues. They were struggling with and, you know, everything from, like, access to social services to the things that they sort of needed it in their day to day lives. And she says, you know, it took a few years, but they're finally working much more effectively with grassroots groups.

[Shebnam Gumushu]

We were saying, oh, so this is the local issue that you are interested in, because this is something pressing for you. Let us help you. Let us work with you with our expertise, acknowledging that you have expertise on a topic that is important for you. So we have seen much more engagement like this that is actually interesting and relevant for people.

[Frank Langford]

How are these two strongman populist leaders in Turkey and in Hungary? How are they doing right now? What's the current situation?

[Aisha Roscoe]

It's a really interesting time. Orban has some big challenges. He's facing a much more energized opposition, and it's led by a former protege who's actually ahead of Orban in the polls. And in Turkey, after more than two decades, Erdogan's competitive, authoritarian model, it's under a lot of strain. In March, police arrested the Istanbul mayor. This is Erdogan's main rival in any future election. And this set off the largest protests in Turkey in a decade. Another Turkish scholar that I spoke to, she teaches at Middlebury College. Her name is Shebnam Gumushu, and she's actually in Turkey right now doing research. And she's been watching this all play out.

[Shebnam Gumushu]

Frankly, I wasn't expecting this kind of a mobilization, extensive mobilization in Istanbul and across the country. So that's quite surprising to me because I thought, and probably Erdogan did, too, that he already established some sense of understanding that his was a repressive regime, and he thought he intimidated people into submission, and he thought he succeeded. Clearly, he did not.

[Aisha Roscoe]

The mayor, this guy who was arrested, he's still in prison. And Gumushu says the country is at an inflection point because Erdogan, he can no longer keep up the pretense that this is a free and fair democratic system.

[Shebnam Gumushu]

So there are two options ahead of us. So it's going to be either like Russia or it's going to become a full, functioning democratic country.

[Frank Langford]

So a system that some say the Trump administration is trying to take a page from could be running out of steam.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, I mean, a competitive, authoritarian system, it doesn't really work for a ruling party if it ends up losing major elections.

[Frank Langford]

Okay. So we've heard a number of parallels between some of what the Trump administration is doing and what autocratic leaders have done elsewhere. But America is still a Democracy, at least in some forms. The midterms are coming in 18 months. We're still talking to each other freely. So I have to ask, did you talk to scholars or experts who think maybe there are some who are being overly dramatic here or that the concern about autocracy in America is overblown?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, it's a great question, Aisha. I talked to 14 scholars, and the vast majority are, I think, are very worried about an authoritarian slide. But there are some who see things differently, and I think it's worth listening to them. There's a guy, Todd Kent, he's a political scientist at Texas A and M, and he says the United States is so polarized today that the party out of power is always going to be kind of accusing the one in power of being anti Democratic. And so we tend to see things in the world through our own ideology and political persuasion. So Republicans now are looking at the world and saying, this is what we voted for. Democrats are saying, no, this is anti Democratic. I also talked to a guy named Darren Shaw. He's a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, and he says the pendulum is swinging towards what he calls the imperial presidency. But he also says that Trump is raising a lot of valid questions that resonate with a lot of voters, however much you dislike where it's coming. Can we sit down and have a serious conversation about, you know, what is.

[Stephen Levitsky]

Harvard doing with his admissions policies, and.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Do students feel safe on campus?

[Frank Langford]

Do scholars really think that Trump will ultimately succeed in reshaping American government?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Many are really worried, I think, but a few are skeptical. There's a guy that I know, a professor. His name's Kurt Whalen. He's also a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.

[Stephen Levitsky]

It's way too early to say the United States is sliding into competitive authoritarianism. Trump's actions would end up having this effect, but only if they remained uncontested.

[Aisha Roscoe]

And Whelan points out that so far, you know, the lower courts are checking Trump, and the United States is still, of course, a democracy, and popular opinion really matters. And this is a point that Whelan makes. He said, you know, if you look at these autocratic leaders like Hugo Chavez, the late Venezuelan leader, and El Salvador's Nayibu Kele, they needed overwhelming popular support. Like, we're talking approval ratings from 65 to more than 90% to change their country's political systems.

[Stephen Levitsky]

These populist leaders managed to engineer new constitutions that seriously concentrated power. That was the breakpoint that put those countries on the path towards competitive authoritarian rule. But in the United States, that's out.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Of the question because, you know, Whelan says Trump doesn't nearly have the support he'd need to change the Constitution, which, of course, if you remember, he recently said he wasn't sure he had uphold anyway. And there's another way of looking at this moment, too. I spoke to Jeremy Pope. He's a political scientist at Brigham Young University. And he says even if the US does not slide into some form of authoritarianism, the long term effects of this kind of governance will be profound.

[Stephen Levitsky]

I think he's doing immense amounts of damage. I think he's perhaps, and it does not give me pleasure to say this, unalterably changing our norms in a way that is going to free up future presidents from both parties will feel more free to do the kinds of things that Trump has done and that will frankly threaten the rule of law. And even if we don't move towards competitive authoritarianism all the way, you don't really have to believe that that will happen to be very nervous about the future of American democracy.

[Frank Langford]

What does the White House have to say about all of this?

[Aisha Roscoe]

Well, I sent them some emails laying out the various things that people are saying that I've interviewed and the White House didn't have any comment. The only thing that they asked, interestingly, was the identity of one of my academic sources and they wondered if this professor might have donated money to Democrats. I checked and the professor had not.

[Frank Langford]

When we come back, a pep talk for some Americans from an unlikely source.

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[Frank Langford]

We'Re back with the Sunday story. Frank, you've reported overseas for many years. You've lived and reported from autocratic countries, including China and Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Cuba. What does autocracy look and feel like to you?

[Aisha Roscoe]

You know, I'd like to go back to that scholar at the beginning, the one who didn't want to talk with his voice or name. I think he put it really, really well. Let's give a listen.

[Stephen Levitsky]

I think many Americans have a cartoon vision of what authoritarianism looks like. They think it's sort of jackboots in the streets and prison camps in rural parts of the country. They don't recognize that for many people, indeed most of the population most of the time, authoritarianism is sort of banal.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Yeah, I kind of feel the same way. You know, I spent altogether about a decade in China, but on a daily basis, Aisha, you couldn't really tell that it was an authoritarian state, at least not the way that, you know, he describes or the way people would imagine it. If you and I, right now, if we're strolling along the river in Shanghai, we'd be looking at these huge buildings in my old neighborhood. There are three skyscrapers. They're taller than the Empire State Building, and lovely restaurants along the river. And so when you look at it, there's no sign of the authoritarian state. But here's the part that's super creepy. I could also take you about 20 minutes from there to a public park where I did some reporting. And there are these little holiday cottages where the government would detain critics without any charges. They would just hold them there for days. And it would be really strange because kids would be playing in the park near the pond around the cottages. The public had no idea what was going on inside.

[Frank Langford]

And so really, it wasn't like, you know, everything stops and everyone's going, I'm in authoritarian country.

[Aisha Roscoe]

No, authoritarianism in China is mostly invisible most of the time.

[Frank Langford]

Unless they step out of line.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Exactly.

[Frank Langford]

Now, while you were in China, you met many activists and ordinary people who were fighting for democracy. So then how does that impact the way you're now reporting on democracy in.

[Aisha Roscoe]

The U.S. i see what's happening in the U.S. through a very different lens because like some of those folks that you were hearing from, from overseas who've lived in authoritarian countries, I too, have recognized some of these things. And what I'd like to do is talk about this one human rights activist that I've been in touch with, particularly the last couple of years. Her name's Yaqiao Wang. She's Chinese. She lives here in Washington.

[H]

America has treated me so well. I'm so grateful for America.

[Aisha Roscoe]

She grew up not too far from Shanghai. She first learned English while listening to Voice of America online. And she says that when she was a teenager, she kind of fell in love with democracy.

[H]

The Internet was relatively freer at the time. So, like, you start to learn the concept of freedom of expression. It is a right in America, the Bill of Rights. And then, you know, you start to aspire. You know, I wanted to go to that country, become that part of culture and, you know, way of life. I want to first go to study in America, learn from America, then come to China and to try to change China.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Wang Xi moved to America for college. And then during the Arab Spring, there was this talk of some kind of a similar Jasmine revolution in China. So Wong, she goes on this anonymous Twitter account that she set up, and she encouraged people to go out and protest. Well, the next year, Aisha, she flies back to Shanghai, and she's almost immediately detained by police.

[H]

Then they interrogated me for three days or two days.

[Aisha Roscoe]

What did they ask you?

[H]

What are you doing in America? Who do you know at the State Department? I was, like, so confused. So I was so shocked. Like, I was nobody. What did I do? Like, why, like, suddenly I'm in this situation? I was very, very traumatized. Now I can just tell the story freely. I couldn't tell the story for a few years.

[Aisha Roscoe]

She realized she couldn't do the activism she wanted to do in China. Eventually, she came to the US for good. Then a couple of years ago, Wang became the China director at Freedom House. That's the human rights think tank here in Washington. Wang is no fan of President Trump, but obviously there are a lot of Chinese Americans who actually do like the president. But for Wang, the Trump presidency, it's really affected her personally. The administration has effectively shut down Voice of America, which, of course, is how Wang learned to speak English in the first place. And then they slashed funding for Freedom House, and that cost Wong her job working on human rights.

[H]

I got laid off because of him. Right.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Wang sees Trump as an autocrat, but she also says the United States and China are still vastly different countries. And she says there's at least one big difference, you know, between what happened to her in Shanghai and what happened to that Tufts University graduate student who, you know, federal agents just grabbed off the streets outside of Boston.

[H]

I had no support. Nobody knew that happened to me here. You know, the news media, thanks to the free press in the US that we know about this top student, right?

[Aisha Roscoe]

And Aisha, here's the twist. You know, Wang learned democracy from America and now she has advice for people here who are worried about the state of democracy in the United States right now.

[H]

I want to say that you might feel shocked right now. You might feel powerless and paralyzed. It's very, very normal. I experienced it. But trust me, you will become more courageous. Believe in yourself. Believe in your neighbors. Believe in the fundamental yearning, the fundamental belief in democracy and human rights. We will prevail.

[Frank Langford]

Frank, thank you so much for this reporting and just kind of shining a light.

[Aisha Roscoe]

Well, Aisha, very happy to do it, but I think these are voices that lots of Americans should be hearing.

[Frank Langford]

That's NPR's roving national correspondent, Frank Lankford. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Justine Yan. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt. Gilly Moon mastered the episode. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo and our senior supervising producer, Liana Simstrom. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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