Item: Trump demanded loyalty — not to his office, but to the person of the president — from James Comey.

Item: Trump admitted on live TV that he fired Comey to stop the ongoing investigation into Russia’s connections with his campaign.

Item: a woman was arrested for laughing at a Trump administration official.

Item: Another Trump official has commended police for arresting a reporter who shouted questions at him.

Item: Republicans in Congress show absolutely no inclination to do anything about any of this.

So, has America already become an authoritarian regime where law enforcement serves the supreme leader, not the Constitution, where questioning or even ridiculing the regime’s officials has become a crime, and in which the legislature is just a rubber-stamping operation?

We don’t know the answer yet; we’ll have to see how things unfold in the next few weeks. But future historians may well record that American democracy died in May 2017.