Hi John,

What ails us is not only Donald Trump.

To be sure, a president who believes he is the state, who rules by the standards of l’etat c’est moi, is a clear and present danger to the American people and American democracy. My Prospect colleagues and I have been going deep this year into the consequences of Trump’s deranged autocracy. We’ve told stories of the disruptions he’s inflicted on immigrant families and the communities where they live and work, and how those communities have come together to push back against Trump’s ethnic cleansing. We’ve analyzed the havoc wrought by his economic policies, his taking funding from health insurance programs on which millions depend, and repurposing it to further enriching the rich, through tax cuts only an Elon Musk could love. We’ve documented his dismantling of every agency of government that protects the public’s interest—defending bank depositors against scams, workers against rapacious bosses, consumers against corporate price-fixing—and documented the corporate abuses that have followed, inevitably, in its wake.

To do all of this and more, we need your support. We’re a reader-supported organization, beholden to no one except for you. No corporate sponsors, no billionaire backers, and no paywall.

But the roots of many of these problems extend well beyond Trump. In our latest print issue, we’ve unpacked what’s behind the Unaffordability Economy, looking not only at oligopolistic pricing but also the anti-union policies that have reduced the share of national income going to the bottom 90 percent of American workers. A lot of that problem, in short, is actually existing American capitalism. And every day, my colleagues David Dayen, Bob Kuttner, Ryan Cooper and I work to show where it’s gone awry and present strategies and policies for a more vibrant and sustainable economy. A lot of that problem is due to policies that have been put in place by Democrats as well as Republicans, policies that wouldn’t exist but for the hold that big money has over too many elected officials. Prospect editor Gabrielle Gurley, staff writer Whitney Curry Wimbish, and writing fellows Emma Janssen, Naomi Bethune, and James Baratta regularly report on those elected officials and candidates who challenge that system, and their contests with those who defend it. They’ll be doing more of that next year.

All of that runs up a tab. The only way we can pay for it is with your help.

Because we’ll be doing a lot more of the above in 2026, as the autocratic abuses mount, the pushback grows stronger, and the midterm elections loom. As last month’s elections make clear, progressives who focus on creating a better social and economic order have the wind in their sails, and we know that we helped shape some of the platforms, and some of the innovations, they ran on. In 2026, our mission at the Prospect—analyzing what’s gone wrong and why, promoting better policies and how to enact them—will be more important than ever. Please help us do our job.

Onwards,

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