The Opinion columnist David Brooks, the contributing Opinion writer E.J. Dionne Jr. and the former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” Robert Siegel convened on Tuesday to discuss the week’s news for The Conversation. They debate President Trump’s shows of strength and how voters and politicians — including members of Trump’s own party — are responding.

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Robert Siegel: I’m Robert Siegel. I used to host “All Things Considered” on NPR, which included one of my favorite weekly features, a Friday talk about politics with two sharp columnists — David Brooks of The New York Times and E.J. Dionne, then of The Washington Post now an Opinion writer at The New York Times.

Well, seven and a half years after our last political chat, we are reunited again for a New York Times conversation about what’s happening in America today and what’s changed since we last spoke back in 2018. E.J., David, it’s great to see you both together.

David Brooks: Great to see you.

E.J. Dionne Jr.: It’s a joy to be with you.

Siegel: Let’s start with the big question about Donald Trump’s second administration, which is, are we or have we slipped into a state of authoritarianism in America? David, what’s your answer?

Brooks: Yeah, I don’t think there’s a day we’re going to wake up and we’re in authoritarian land. I think it’s a slow deterioration and we’ve seen what’s happened in the Justice Department, ICE — I don’t need to recite all the examples of authoritarian behavior. But I guess the way I see it is a little broader.

In 2010, a historical tide shifted. We go through these moments periodically in world history, when you get a tide. In the early part of the 20th century, you had a totalitarian tide: the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Nazis. People thought totalitarianism was the way to go. Then in the 1990s, you had a liberal tide — what some people call a neoliberal tide. You had Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton in their own ways. You had Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping.

Since 2010, we’ve been in a tide of global populism. That’s not only Trump, but also Viktor Orban. I would say it’s also Putin, and the way Xi plays on populist tides. To me, what we’re looking at is not a momentary shift to authoritarianism, but a generational shift toward savagery. What I worry about is the complete deterioration of the global order. That includes the order at home — the way rule of law works here — but it also includes the global order all around the world.

So my worry is less about how much our rights are being restricted, which I don’t think they are too much right now, and more about how much the global atmosphere is deteriorating. Is civilization deteriorating? My answer would be: a lot.

Siegel: A lot. There’s much to pursue there, but I want to hear first from E.J. What’s your answer to the same question?

Dionne: Well, I think what’s happening here in the United States is the issue we have to think about. I was struck by what Ezra Klein wrote this week: This is not just how authoritarianism happens — this is authoritarianism happening.

And again, as David said, we can go through the whole list. But I think we also need to be mindful that there are different kinds of populism. What’s dangerous here is not populism, which can often have a democratic face, can push us to be more equal, more fair, more just. This is an authoritarian wave. And the very particular things that are happening here are what we have to grapple with.

I don’t think we take seriously enough how troubling what’s happened in the Republican Party really is. We were accustomed to divisions and disagreements within the party, and those still exist under the surface. But now, even Republicans are afraid to express opposition to the president. You have Senator Tillis leaving, Senator Ernst leaving. I think that tells you they’re worried their party can’t speak up — that members feel constrained in speaking up. And I think that’s contributing to this wave.

Siegel: Does that amount to authoritarianism?

Dionne: Yes. I think the list includes things like masked ICE agents — who don’t even have warrants — arresting people, interference with the election process and with a president telling state legislatures, “You have to gerrymander.” That is Orban-like, and I think we have crossed the line.

Siegel: Viktor Orban of Hungary.

Dionne: Yes, of Hungary.

Siegel: David, those immigration crackdowns, including raids on workplaces, remind us why people actually come here and stay here: because there are jobs for them. Does the behavior of ICE scare you? I mean, does it make you worry about the prospect of a national police force made up of guys who wear masks?

Brooks: Yeah, a bunch of uniformed guys with masks seizing people off the street. What’s scary about that? I do think it’s scary, but it’s also a reminder when they went to the Hyundai plant that this is our economy.

Derek Thompson is on Substack these days, and he noted that 2025 could be the first year in American history where we lose population because more people will be going out than coming in, and the domestic birthrates aren’t that high, and that just has a tremendous economic cost. We saw a pretty mediocre jobs number last week, and that was caused by lack of immigration because they can’t get people to fill these jobs.

It’s worth pointing out that even today we talk about the loss of manufacturing. There are 500,000 manufacturing jobs — jobs that are unfilled because we don’t have the people with the skills. And so it’s not only terrifying for anyone with Hispanic ethnic heritage, whether they’re documented or undocumented. Everybody I know is afraid. That’s one thing. But the economic costs, and the way this drags down the economy, are less serious but still noteworthy.

Siegel: E.J.?

Dionne: I think it’s very scary when you have the Supreme Court saying it’s OK for ICE to arrest people if they look Latino, speak Spanish and work in a working-class job.

And that has, at least for now, been ratified by the Supreme Court. When Trump made his promises, he said he would contain the southern border and round up people who had committed crimes — something Barack Obama also did. But this extends far beyond that.

What’s troubling is that Congress is adding all of these people to ICE at this moment. This could turn into a completely different kind of federal law enforcement agency, one very much answerable to the president. And yes, David’s right — there are also economic consequences that will affect many people who are not immigrants. Lots of people in this country need a growing economy, and immigrants can help with that — if we had a sane immigration law.

Siegel: One question I have, as someone who is retired: I’m not taking trips to southern Ohio to ask people what they think about America today. I follow events in the media, and I can’t quite understand how many Americans truly feel alarmed by the prospect of mass policing or by a breakdown of the separation of powers — the loss of tariff authority from Congress to the executive branch.

Are these things that mostly lawyers, journalists and people who know their constitutional amendments by heart are concerned about, while the rest of the people just want to make a living? Or is there some deeper commitment to the way our Republic has been working — or is supposed to work?

Dionne: I think the striking thing about the polling in the early period of this Trump term is that Trump is losing a lot of ground with people who were for him. NBC did a survey where the proportion of people saying they are furious, angry or dissatisfied far outweighs those who are satisfied, happy or thrilled. In fact, only 10 percent are thrilled with the president.

I think those numbers suggest that many of the people who voted for Trump last time — especially a significant share of swing voters — are looking at this and saying, “This is not what we were voting for.” They may not analyze it entirely in terms of “What does the Constitution say? What do I think of that?” But I think they are very uneasy with the direction this has taken.

Siegel: I just wonder how transactional most Americans are. That is, if things are going well, prices are stable and there are good jobs available and you can afford school or college for your kids and a house, which branch does what is a matter for somebody else to care about.

Brooks: A significant chunk of my friendship group is Trump supporters, and I’d say over the last two weeks I’ve had lunch or dinner or coffee with maybe five to seven of them and I haven’t noticed from them a sense of walking away from Trump. The people I tend to know would never go to a MAGA rally. If you’re going to cover Trump and MAGA or the Trump movement, do not go to a MAGA rally. That’s not the representative sample.

Most people I know who voted for Trump don’t like him. They find him troubling in a zillion ways. They disagree with certain policies like the tariffs but they basically buy his story. They buy his story that the elites have betrayed us. And one of the ways the elites have betrayed us, they would say — and I sort of agree — is, in the Biden years, immigration just massively exploded. I heard from a guy from Montana last week and he said, talking to progressives: “You guys had 40 years to police yourselves and you didn’t do it, and therefore now it’s our turn. You had your shot.”

I would say they would say that about immigration. They would say that about the universities. A survey found that 82 percent of college students think they have to lie to professors and pretend they’re more progressive than they are in order to get through school, and that’s a form of soft authoritarianism, frankly. If the universities did not police themselves and get more diversity, then somebody was going to crack down. So I would say a lot of the people I know still think Trump is the right answer to a bunch of serious social problems, even if they have a zillion different reservations about the guy.

Dionne: Could I just say that the people I am talking about who are really showing real qualms about Trump are those who voted for him to solve particular problems like prices, like the situation at the border. They didn’t bargain for this. And so I don’t think we should underestimate how much that unease could translate into stronger opposition down the road, and in particular, in turnout in the next election. I think those strong disapproval, weak approval numbers suggest real problems for Trump down the road.

Siegel: I want to ask you both about the two political parties. What do you think they should be doing? Let’s start with the Democrats. There’s a big discussion about what the Democrats should be doing. What’s the best step? E.J., you’ve already cited the essay by Ezra Klein.

Should the Democrats, for example, not provide the votes needed to end debate and thereby keep the government open? Or should they say: So long as this is what the administration is doing, we’re for shutting down the government?

Dionne: Well, I think that they should not say we’re for shutting down the government. I was broadly sympathetic to what Ezra wrote, and I think there was a very good kind of friendly amendment, if you will, to Ezra’s argument by Bill Scher in the Washington Monthly where he said that the point is Democrats shouldn’t say we want to shut down the government. Rather, Democrats should say we want an on-the-level, good-faith negotiation, and we can’t have that if we know that whatever we negotiate Trump is going to back off on, and Republicans in Congress are going to go along with cuts that we would not have agreed to in a negotiation.

So I think their position should be: Republicans, if you are not willing to make this a real negotiation, do it yourselves. You want to end the filibuster? Go ahead and end the filibuster. But we are not going to participate in what amounts to a sham process as long as the president of the United States exercises power to not spend money that Congress approved of.

Siegel: David?

Brooks: I think a larger philosophical question is: When Trump goes low, should the Democrats go low? And of course, Michelle Obama famously said many years ago: When they go low, we go high. And I think the Democratic Party has pretty much dismissed that. I think that’s a mistake.

Siegel: The dismissal is the mistake?

Brooks: The dismissal. I think Michelle Obama was right. So when the Republicans redistrict, Gavin Newsom redistricts. The Republicans are threatening to shut down the government, so the Democrats pull a Newt Gingrich and threaten to shut down the government.

E.J. said earlier that there are a lot of people who are losing faith with Donald Trump. If that’s true, then they are persuadable. And the way you persuade is by telling a moral story where the other side seems contemptible and your side seems kind of admirable, and that was basically the story of the civil rights movement.

And to me, the Democrats have an opportunity to do that, but they have to behave in ways that are admirable. If you’re complaining about authoritarianism and lawlessness and the erosion of our cultural and moral norms, then you can’t credibly represent that position if you’re eroding our moral norms. So I think the long-term play is for Democrats to say: No, this is how the government is supposed to work. We’re not going to do things that seem nihilistic and destructive or erode norms.

Dionne: It’s not nihilistic to say straight up: This negotiation is not a real negotiation if the president is going to use arbitrary power to overturn it. In the case of redistricting, Newsom’s position is: Look, we would rather keep this commission. And indeed, his bill in California has the commission coming back to draw nonpartisan lines in 2030.

But to say, we’re going to ignore people rigging the rules one way and just sit there and not do anything — for one thing, that doesn’t answer the concerns of all the people who support you. And for another, it pretends that it’s “going low” simply to respond in a practical way to what you’re confronted with. I think that’s different from meanness. It’s different from being authoritarian yourself. It’s just saying: This is what’s happening, and we’re going to call it out.

Brooks: It all depends on what kind of fight we’re in the middle of. Back in the more civilized days of NPR, it was normal. Take George W. Bush — you might like him, you might not, but even Barack Obama might like him. We’ve now crossed into a revolutionary situation around the world, of which Trump is just one part.

What populism offers people is a culture, a morality, a way of being — a picture of masculinity and femininity, a sense of belonging. It’s a full-service religion, as well as a political ideology. The Democrats don’t have any of that. What they have are policy ideas — tax policies, things you might use on a day-to-day basis. But if you’re the Democrats, you have to think: We need to create a countermovement to what populism has. We need to create a culture, a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, a sense of right and wrong, a sense of masculinity and femininity, and all sorts of other things. To me, that’s a generational project.

Populism didn’t just start yesterday. It goes back to America First, to the Know Nothing movement, to writers like Sam Francis and Christopher Lasch. It took decades to create the culture that MAGA is part of. And it’s going to take decades for Democrats to come up with a counterculture. But positioning themselves in the realm of values, ideas and vision — that’s the first task. What happens in the legislative game? That’s not important.

Dionne: We don’t have decades to protect our constitutional democracy. Of course, liberalism and social democracy have to have a moral story to tell, and I think they do. It’s a story about how fairness and justice can create better lives for people, better family lives.

But right now, we are in a crisis. Either you believe we are in a crisis or you don’t. I do believe we are in a crisis and that requires acting like it. In the meantime, we can have the long-term discussions you want to have. But I don’t think you can just sit there and say, “Nothing’s happening; we’ll think for the long term.”

Brooks: One little addendum. Back in April, I wrote a column saying: Where the hell is everybody? We need a social movement. We need an uprising. I was reading all these lefty sociologists and thought, hell yeah. I was turning into Mr. Saul Alinsky.

Dionne: I liked that column actually.

Brooks: And I still believe that. To me, the virtue of a social movement is that it’s always on behalf of a vision. It’s ground-up. It’s people embodying a certain way of being. So to me, Chuck Schumer’s not going to save you. Hakeem Jeffries isn’t going to save you. It’s not the politicians who come up with a new vision or a new movement. It always has to be a much broader social movement.

Siegel: But isn’t it — I mean, is it that there is no Democratic worldview, or “religion,” as you would say? Or is it that there is one, and it’s all about diversity, that its main source of moral authority is not citing Jefferson or Lincoln, but citing Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.? And that there is a set of beliefs that tie Democrats together — just beliefs that are losing at this particular moment?

Brooks: Yeah, I agree. But like all of us in this room, I used to be more conservative than I am. E.J. used to be more moderate than he is probably, and we’re all liberals and we all basically believe in pluralism and Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideals, et cetera.

I’ve just watched those ideals on the back foot for a decade. Let’s take a look at what happened in the U.K. recently. The Labour Party managed to win an election, and Keir Starmer walked into office — crushed. His polls are terrible. His government is widely seen as a failure. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage, the populist leader, is surging and might even form a government if there’s another election in the future. So when you’re running against a historical tide, even if you randomly win one election, you don’t gain momentum.

The same is true of what just happened in the Japanese elections, and it’s happening all around the world. So I don’t just want to win an election. I want to push back against the whole global tide of politics.

Dionne: By the way, the Norwegian Labour Party just won an election on Monday night — so the center left is not dead. Broadly speaking, I think what the center left, the liberal-progressive side, needs is to figure out how to link economics and culture again. That’s their underlying vision.

Read F.D.R.’s speeches. They’re all about creating a society that allows people to live fulfilling lives by shaping the right economic circumstances. But the point of those economic circumstances is to enable fulfilling lives — lives that include raising kids, a loving culture and having a sense of respect from the rest of society. Yes, we need that message. But again, I go back to this: We’ve got to deal with a crisis right now.

Siegel: There’s so much discussion of what the Democrats should do that I think we tend to neglect what choices face the Republicans. Donald Trump is term limited. We think he observes that constraint in the Constitution. But the hearings that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified at revealed a split within the Republican Party between people who think that Donald Trump deserves a Nobel Prize. I’m not sure if it’s for medicine or for whatever.

Brooks: Physics.

Siegel: For Operation Warp Speed, which was a remarkable, record-breaking achievement of bringing a new vaccine to market within a year, a fraction of the time people thought it would take. One position is: Give him a Nobel Prize. The other position is: The vaccine killed more people than it saved. Which way do Republicans go? When do they start thinking about their future?

Brooks: Should they weigh evidence and tell the truth about things? That’s politically ruinous. So I would not ——

Siegel: Just a wacko thought.

Brooks: I think where the Republican Party should go is to serve the people who voted for it. And so obviously it was mostly working-class voters who voted for Donald Trump, and what does he do? He hires a bunch of Ivy League elite college types — of which the three of us are too, I should say. And so what do they do? They’re waging a little civil war within the circles of the elite. So they go after N.I.H., they go after the universities. They cut PBS and NPR. How does that help workers? They’re focusing on revenge against the elites they hate. They do very little for the people who actually voted for them, and that’s going to take a generational shift and maybe a JD Vance will come along, or a Josh Hawley or somebody we’ve never heard of yet will actually have an agenda for working-class folks.

If I’m a Republican, one of the things I worry about is a poll that came out in The Wall Street Journal last week. It asked: Do you believe in the American dream anymore? Seventy percent said no. Then they asked: Do you see any prospect of your living standard rising? Only 25 percent said yes. That’s a tremendous loss of faith in our economy, in our country and in the American dream. Republicans were presumably elected to do something about that. And so far, the net effect is zilch.

Dionne: I’m glad you sound like Bernie Sanders today on that subject. The Republican Party, to take it one step further, voted for a budget bill that substantially cuts benefits — particularly health benefits — to the very people who voted for them. There’s a long list of issues where they’ve betrayed part of their base.

Another thing is that a lot of these folks have had trouble being true to themselves. Senator Cassidy is in a really difficult position because he voted to confirm Robert Kennedy Jr. I lost a bet with someone: I thought there’d be enough Republicans to defeat at least some of the people most Republicans probably shouldn’t have supported — Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert Kennedy Jr. Now they’re stuck with the people they voted to confirm.

So, looking at the long run and watching the deterioration of the president’s numbers, Republicans might start to think that showing a little independence — beginning to demonstrate that opposition to Trump is possible within the party — would be a good idea. Instead, you see a strategy of flight. Senator Tillis is leaving. Senator Ernst is leaving. I don’t blame them for leaving. And yet, that’s a terrible commentary on what they think they could accomplish as Republican senators.

Siegel: Isn’t this all reflecting the fact, though, that if you ask people at random who the president is, they would all know Donald Trump or nearly all would know Donald Trump? A great many could name the vice president. But if you ask them who their senators are ——

Brooks: Lucky them.

Siegel: Or who their members of Congress are, they have no idea. And the people whom we in Washington look to and say, why isn’t this guy saying something? Why isn’t he doing something with his objections — that’s someone who realizes that he’s a virtual unknown to his electorate.

Dionne: I heard a great story about this from a Republican congressman who actually ran ahead of Trump in his district. He got 74 percent, and Trump got 70, or something like that. A friend said, “Why don’t you take on Trump? You’re more popular than he is.” The Republican replied: “Oh, yeah, I could do that. And Trump would end up with his 70 percent, and I’d end up with my 4 percent.” And that’s the fear inside the Republican Party.

Brooks: That’s why I keep harping on it — it’s a historical tide. People have a sense of where Trump wants to go, and many of them are now further than Trump. Steve Bannon told me weeks ago — months ago now — that MAGA is more conservative than Trump is. I think they’re moving in that direction as they get more and more disillusioned.

I don’t know where that ends up, but it’s very hard to push against that kind of tide. You have to leave. One of the reasons I emphasize the tide is that I’ve watched so many people who shared my values — like Ben Sasse, the former senator from Nebraska — have to go. They all go. Bill Frist. If John McCain were alive, I don’t know what he’d do. He might have been the last one to go down fighting. He was ornery, but it’s very hard to buck a tide.

Siegel: Very briefly, as we conclude here, I want to set politics aside for a moment and just wonder, in these trying and often argumentative times, if there’s been some path to joy for either of you. Any experience that you can relate that makes you feel good about life, despite all that goes on around us.

Brooks: All the political anxiety has caused me to care fanatically about sports. And so in the first two months of the spring, the New York Mets — the team I’m fanatically devoted to — were fantastic and I was joyous about that. In the last four months, they’ve sucked, and so that joy has been robbed from me.

I am trying to get in better shape. I bought an Oura Ring and I thought that I’m going to be healthy; it’s going to tell me what a great sleeper I am. It turns out all the Oura Ring is, is another form of judgment in your life that you didn’t get enough REM sleep or you didn’t get enough deep sleep. So that’s another source of joy taken out of my life. I can’t enjoy sleeping anymore because of the pressure. So now I’m left with computer video solitaire on my phone and that’s all I’ve got, basically.

Siegel: E.J., how are you doing?

Dionne: Well, two things. One, I can root in good conscience for the Red Sox again; they lost me when they lost Mookie Betts. But the big thing is our daughter Julia married Devin Stein last month — somebody she met 12 years ago on the first day of college. It was one of the most beautiful weddings ever, and her father actually managed to give a non-embarrassing dad speech, and that was a miracle.

Siegel: I’ll share with you a joyful experience that I had. In this age of streaming, my wife and I seldom go out to see a movie in a movie theater. Indeed, I fear for the existence of the movie theater. But we went out to a movie theater to see “The Naked Gun,” with Liam Neeson now being a comic actor in the role. About two dozen other strangers in the dark watched the movie with us. As funny as the movie was, it was equally funny to listen to the belly laughs — people choking on their guffaws — for a solid 90 minutes of nonstop laughter. When the lights came on, I thought: Boy, that is one of the most joyous things I’ve been part of in quite a while. I highly recommend it.

It’s also been wonderful seeing the two of you again after all these years, together.

Brooks: We look the same as we did 10, 20 years ago.

Siegel: It is amazing.

Dionne: A real joy.

Thoughts? Email us at theopinions@nytimes.com.

This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

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