Will our democracy survive this election?

The decline of democracy in the United States. Lessons from 150 books about President Trump and his time in office. And, the rise of Sarah Cooper. 

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On multiple occasions, President Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if former vice president Joe Biden wins the election. That concerns a lot of people, including Sarah Repucci, vice president of research and analysis at Freedom House, an organization that studies democracies around the world. 

“Democracy is not an end point that you reach and you achieve it and then you don’t have to worry any more,” Repucci says. “Democracy is something that needs to be cultivated and something that needs to be cared for. And our democracy has not been cared for over the past number of years.” 

Nonfiction book critic Carlos Lozada has read a lot of books about Trump. This year, he took everything he learned from those books, and captured it in a book of his own, called “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.” He talked with Lillian Cunningham, host of the podcast “Presidential,” about those lessons.

In the spring, Sarah Cooper went viral for lip-syncing to Trump on TikTok. And with a sitcom in development and a Netflix special on the way, arts reporter Geoff Edgers says the comic won’t be going back to her day job anytime soon. 

Our colleagues at The Washington Post podcast “Can He Do That?” have spent the better part of four years reporting on the Trump presidency. They have a new series out this week about the ways that the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric have contributed to a more sharply divided country.

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