It's very real' Tracking the rush towards autocracy

It reads like a checklist of milestones on the road to autocracy.

- Robert Tait

A succession of opposition politicians are handcuffed and arrested by law enforcement for little more than questioning authority or voicing dissent. A judge is arrested in her own courthouse and charged with helping a defendant evade arrest. Masked snatch squads spirit people away in public in what seem to be consciously intimidating scenes. The president deploys the military on a dubious legal premise to confront protesters contesting his mass roundups.

Five months after Trump's inauguration, seasoned analysts with years of studying one-time stable democracies degenerating into autocracies are voicing alarm at the speed of the Trump administration's authoritarian assault on institutions and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of expression.

Some people voice doubts about the judiciary's capacity to act as a democratic safeguard, despite a wave of legal challenges to the president's executive orders. They cite the six-three conservative majority of the US supreme court and its history of issuing rulings friendly to Trump, who appointed three of its justices during his first administration.