The first month of President Trump's second term in office has seen rapid and wide-ranging contraventions of norms that have long been taken for granted in the American governance and politics. Things are changing rapidly. How can we try to understand what is happening? What does political science say about democratic norms, the stability of institutions, and the murky path between liberal democracy and authoritarian government? Noah Buckley analysed all this and more last night in the Thomas Davis Lecture Theatre.