‘How Worried Should I Be?’

Lee Drutman and Yascha Mounk were quoted in a New York Times article about the level of concern over Trump in the political science community: 

For scholars of democracy who have kept anxious watch over the tumultuous first months of this presidency, this week’s firing of James Comey set off a new round of alarm bells.

As President Trump attacked judges, intelligence agencies, the press, even the Congressional Budget Office — all potential independent constraints on presidential power — they constantly adjusted their scorecards, trying to sift the alarming from the merely noisy. But firing the official who heads an investigation into possible collusion between a presidential campaign and a foreign power crossed a line, they agreed.

“My alarm-o-meter definitely jumped,” said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. “I’d say I went from a 4 to a 7 out of 10.”