Reporter Extra: If Dems win in 2028, how can they roll back Trump’s changes?

Imagine a Democratic presidential win in 2028. Democrats would be thrilled! But pretty quickly, they would face a tough question: How do you undo years of institutional change without weakening democratic norms in the process?

Vox senior reporter and producer Miles Bryan wanted to understand how this might unfold, so he and Today, Explained host Noel King spent a week reporting in a country where a similar dynamic is already playing out: Poland. 

After taking power in Poland in 2015, the conservative Law and Justice party reshaped the courts, tightened control over public media, and weakened key institutions. When a liberal coalition won in 2023, it inherited a system that had been fundamentally altered by its predecessors.

Since then, the government has faced a big dilemma: move quickly to reverse the changes and risk bending the rules, or proceed cautiously and leave parts of the old system intact. Poland’s experience underscores the challenge of democratic recovery — how to fix institutional damage without deepening it.

For more on Miles’s reporting, check out Today, Explained’s recent two-part series.

Part 1: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/VMP5705694065?selected=VMP7986816236Part 2: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/VMP5705694065?selected=VMP9835744560