President Donald J. Trump’s second administration has transgressed basic rules and norms of democracy and the rule of law in myriad ways.  Below, I have laid out my own top ten list of transgressions, though others could surely have made out a good case for their own “favorites.”  It would not be difficult to come up with a longer list, yet the purpose of my Levine Lecture is less to describe where we are than to explain how we got here.  Following an enumeration of Trump administration transgressions, my lecture turns to two questions.  First, why have traditional checks on executive usurpation—both from within government and from civil society—failed?  Second, why have tens of millions of Americans become so alienated from politics and society that they would prefer an openly authoritarian president to democracy and the rule of law?