We’re at the end of a week it will be hard to forget.
I’ve spent the last few days with our Guardian US team in New York, as they geared up to deliver journalism for Americans and the world on this hugely consequential election. The evening of 5 November started with pizza in the office and an uneasy calm: we were well-prepared for either outcome, a victory for Harris or for Trump. We were ready.
But as the night wore on, and as the results were clearly going against the Democrats, the prospect of a second Trump presidency, with all that might entail, became very real.
After dialling in to the Guardian’s morning conference in London, I then joined a series of NY meetings in the office. My main message to our US colleagues: I’ve got your back, and we’ve got a job to do. The audience demands it.
At big moments such as these, the Guardian’s mission feels clearer than ever: to hold those in power accountable for what they do, across the world; and to report in a fair way, based in facts, on people as well as power. What this means in practice is that we will never minimise Trump’s authoritarianism, or normalise his attacks on the climate, immigrants, women’s rights, science, sexual freedom and journalism.
That is our task for the next four years. We will maintain the important distinction between facts and opinion. We will seek to analyse and explain. We will pull together the global threads that make this election so consequential for the planet. We will energetically and forcefully hold Trump and his enablers to account. And, as hard as it might feel this week, we will try to understand the lives and economic realities of many of those who voted for him, while never making excuses for the racism and misogyny the election unleashed.
I’m sure you all devoured our coverage of the election, but I wanted to highlight a few things to make sure you didn’t miss them. First, the definitive results tracker; the visual analysis of how the votes went; the abortion ballot tracker; the special Today in Focus episodes, Politics Weekly America, the Anywhere but Washington video series, Science Weekly on Trump’s approach to science, and our Techscape newsletter on how Elon Musk bent X to his – and Trump’s – will. I also loved our series Deadlocked: dispatches from an election background, for which Chris McGreal spent six weeks living in Saginaw, Michigan, to take the temperature. His final piece on the “swing county in the swing state that swung right”, like the series, is an eye-opening piece of on-the-ground reporting.
Finally, the US team put together a series of pieces called the Stakes, which provide jaw-dropping insight into what the next four years might look like. In short, Trump will trash climate and environmental regulations, roll back rights for LGBTQ+ people, withdraw military aid to Ukraine and potentially alter the map of the Middle East at Palestinians’ expense. He has also vowed mass deportations and retribution against his enemies, including the media.
As we wrote in our editorial: it was, in the Guardian’s view, a bleak day for America and the world.
As I said, we have a job to do.
The next four years will be complex and challenging for our reporters, and a time when quality journalism will be critical. If you don’t already, please consider supporting the Guardian today. Thank you.
