We’ve just witnessed an extraordinary, devastating moment in the history of the United States. In 2016, we promised that our coverage of a Donald Trump administration would meet the moment – and I think it did. Throughout those tumultuous four years we never minimised or normalised the threat of Trump’s authoritarianism, and we treated his lies as a genuine danger to democracy, a threat that found its expression on 6 January 2021.
Now, with Trump months away from taking office again – with dramatic implications for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the health of American democracy, reproductive rights, inequality and, perhaps most of all, our collective environmental future – it’s time for us to redouble our efforts to hold the president-elect and those who surround him to account.
It’s going to be an enormous challenge. And we need your help.
Last week, Guardian US media columnist Margaret Sullivan spelled out in black and white the threat to a free press from another Trump presidency.
“Trump,” she wrote, “poses a clear threat to journalists, to news organisations and to press freedom in the US and around the world.” He has, for years, stirred up hatred against reporters, calling them an “enemy of the people” and referred to legitimate journalism as “fake news”.
Kash Patel, a potential Trump pick for FBI director or attorney general, has said, “We’re going to come after people in the media” and Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump presidency, includes plans to make it easier to seize journalists’ emails and phone records.
We will stand up to these threats, but it will take brave, well-funded independent journalism. It will take reporting that can’t be leaned upon by a billionaire owner terrified of retribution from a bully in the White House.
The work starts now.
