Every Strongman's First Move: How Trump Follows a Pattern History Knows Well

Perón, Orbán, and Marcos all neutralized their judiciaries before anything else. The pattern is older than Trump — and more dangerous for that.

In the previous series, The Fall, we examined how authoritarian regimes end. Ten case studies, from Portugal’s Carnation Revolution to the synthesis of what history teaches about democratic recovery. Readers kept asking a version of the same question: how did these regimes get so entrenched in the first place? That question is for this series.

The Stron…