The tragic change a single year has made in America | Margaret Sullivan

One year ago, everything was so different. In late October 2024, before the US presidential election, thoughtful Americans could certainly acknowledge the deep flaws of their country – its injustices and inequality – but they could still recognize it as the United States. A democracy. A place where the rule of law meant something. A nation led by a dignified and decent public servant, despite his advanced age and increasing frailty.

These days, in late October 2025, many of us barely recognize the nation we live in. People suspected of being illegal immigrants are rounded up and shoved into vans, sometimes denied due process. The East Wing of the “people’s house” – the White House – is being destroyed for an obscene ballroom. Donald Trump is persecuting his political rivals or supposed enemies and demanding the justice department hand over $230m. Armed military personnel are being sent into American cities on false pretexts. The Pentagon, relabeled the Department of War, has – in effect – rid itself of day-to-day journalistic scrutiny as it spends what could amount to nearly $1tn of taxpayer money. Universities, law firms, news companies are buckling under the president’s threats, and billionaires are treated like members of the royal family.

“The United States, just months before its 250^th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism,” Garrett Graff, the American historian and author, wrote in August. “In the end, faster than I imagined possible, it did happen here.”

One awakes to new horrors each day. And it is difficult to grasp – and painful to realize – just how far gone we are, and how quickly it has happened.

Yet, we know that Trump was duly elected. Even after his deeply disturbing first term and even after the warnings that came with the knowledge of Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint for an authoritarian second term – even after Trump himself said publicly he would be a dictator just on day one – enough Americans chose him over Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent.

Frightening as the current reality is, it’s even scarier to realize that we’re only nine months into this presidential term. Where will three more years of this decline leave us? And what if the three years turns into something even longer, since there is no one to restrain this president from deciding that a third term is necessary, perhaps for national security reasons?

Granted, all is not lost. There will be midterm elections next year that could bring a different balance of power, if Democrats regain one or both houses of Congress. There are elected officials who are trying to exert some accountability, like the Democratic congressmen Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia, ranking members, respectively, of the House judiciary and oversight committees, who are launching an investigation into the attempted money grab from the justice department.

And a presidential election in 2028 could start us down the road to recovery just as last year’s election put us on this regrettable path.

There are millions of Americans protesting in the streets of their cities and communities, as they did last weekend in the No Kings rallies.

Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, wrote recently that “the great sleeping giant of America is awakening”, just as it did after the Communist witch-hunt era in the 1950s or during the Vietnam war protests or during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s.

On those occasions, the listing ship eventually was righted.

Reich says he knows the signs of that awakening and sees it happening now. As evidence, he cites the recent massive protests, the widespread, bipartisan pushback against late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s removal from television and the near-unanimous refusal by journalists to sign the defense department’s demands they report only what is sanctioned.

“The sleeping giant always remains asleep until some venality becomes no noxious, some action so disrespectful of the common good, some brutality so noisy, that he has no choice but to awaken.”

It’s an optimistic take, and I respect Reich’s experienced view. Maybe he’ll prove to be right.

Meanwhile, the big questions remain: can America ever recover? Can it reclaim its status in the world and its adherence to the rule of law?

Or must we acknowledge that the 250-year-old experiment worked for a while, and then – suddenly, utterly – failed?

My pessimistic brain tells me that the latter is true; that all may indeed be lost. My hopeful heart, however, tells me that we must try, in whatever ways we can.

For me, as a media critic, that’s about urging journalists to live up, more fully, to their mission of holding power to account. For others, it may be working on congressional campaigns, or organizing rallies, or finding ways to protect voting rights.

Less than a year ago, we were in a very different place. A year from now? Or three years from now? The truth is, we don’t know. All we can do is try to not give up.

What’s giving me hope now

The contact I have in the classroom with young journalists, who are both idealistic and realistic, always lifts my spirits. I’m also hopeful about the journalism I see from the crop of startup news organizations, many of them non-profits, that are helping to fill the gaps left by the tragic decline of local newspapers. And I’m heartened by the recent No Kings protests, where millions of Americans peacefully gathered and showed their patriotism and love of country.