Trump, the Republican party and Project 2025 are echoing Orbán's autocratic playbook - along with strategies of other leaders who got elected democratically and then turned their nations into autocracies. Key steps: pack courts and agencies with their cronies, slander and intimidate the media, and denigrate their opponents as "evil" and "vermin." Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority, tells us why it could take years to rescue America's democracy - even if Trump loses the upcoming election.

Sesame Street changed TV by using music to help kids learn how to spell and how to share. Singer-songwriter Anya Rose and the group Ants on a Log write social action songs to help children in primary school learn edgier lessons, about problems from environmental pollution to racist and sexist behavior - inspired in part by 60s satirist Tom Lehrer. After hearing these tunes, the 9-year-olds in your family might feel inspired to research a problem in your own neighborhood - and then write your members of Congress about it!

Now that Judge David S. Tatel has retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, he feels freer to warn us all: the Supreme Court is threatening America's democracy by inventing spurious legal doctrines and grabbing more power for itself. There are also lighter moments in this revealing interview, as David pulls the curtain aside and tells us how the judges on this powerful court really do their work. Spoiler alert #1: It used to involve a red children's sand pail. Spoiler alert #2: Because David is blind, he used to hire "readers" who rattled off every word of laws, books and briefs out loud to him, at such mind-boggling speeds that most people couldn't understand them.