Former President Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election over Vice President Kamala Harris. On the evidence of Trump’s first term, American democracy is under threat – yet nonetheless, the country will have to persist. “We, as a nation, have decided to get back with our abusive ex in hopes that this time, things really are different. Only time will tell if we were right,” Editor-in-Chief Wyatt Meyer wrote. Graphic by Wyatt Meyer
As Donald Trump was elected as the 47th President of the United States by the will of the people, so too must the public protect America’s democracy from his potential threats.
When the Associated Press called the 2024 presidential election for Donald Trump in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the American people learned two things.
First, and most directly, they learned that a misogynistic, election-denying, 78-year-old convicted felon would be returning to the White House four years after the end of a disastrous first term.
But second, and more importantly, they learned that America’s democracy – the same one that elected, rejected and elected Trump again – will be under threat for the next four years.
Donald Trump gives a victory speech in the early hours of Wednesday morning after winning several pivotal swing states. Video by Fox 5 Atlanta
In his first term in office, Trump set about accomplishing his ends – sweeping immigration reform, inflammatory foreign policy and whatever else happened to strike his fancy – by whatever means necessary. He invoked a national state of emergency to secure funding for his border wall in an unprecedented, widely litigated 2019 decision, in doing so circumventing the Congressional legislature which had refused to fund the initiative.
Read that again: the sitting President, having been rebuffed by the will of the people, took matters into his own hands to get what he wanted.
And, unfortunately, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Trump is the man who attacked the press as they went about doing their jobs, who politicized the U.S. Department of Justice’s formerly nonpartisan work, who obstructed an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections – an election Trump won.
And of course, all his offenses – reprehensible though they are – pale in comparison to the insurrection Trump incited on Jan. 6, 2021. After losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Trump refused to accept the results. Instead, months after the election, he gave a 70-minute address on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., empowering his supporters to march on Congress where politicians had met to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s win. Five people died in the attacks in one of the darkest days in American democracy.
Live video from the U.S. Capitol is shown on Jan. 6, 2021. Then lame duck president Donald Trump played in inciting the deadly riots. Video by NBC News
The ironic thing is this: Trump was clearly the person the American people wanted in office. There was no photo finish, no days-long saga to decide the finest of margins.
Across the country, people turned out to vote for Donald Trump instead of Vice President Kamala Harris in even greater numbers than in 2016 – 72,169,126 in 2024 compared to just 62,979,879 in 2016. It remains to be seen whether Trump will win the popular vote – something he still didn’t do in his eventually uncompetitive 2016 election win – but most projections say he will.
We need to brace ourselves for the next four years. If things are anything like 2016, Americans from all sides of the political spectrum will face an assault
Overcomplicating the notion risks damaging the truth: the will of the people spoke, and the name on their lips was Donald Trump.
So, here we are, as a country, as a society, as a community. We, as a nation, have decided to get back with our abusive ex in hopes that this time, things really are different. Only time will tell if we were right.
In the meantime, we need to brace ourselves for the next four years. If things are anything like 2016, Americans from all sides of the political spectrum will face an assault – possibly on their freedoms and livelihood, but almost certainly on their voice.
A video from the popular educational channel “Schoolhouse Rock” explains the system of checks and balances. Video by Schoolhouse Rock
In elementary school, students learn about checks and balances – the system whereby the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government hold power over each other so none is too powerful.
Trump has shown no interest in being checked by anybody in government. By calling our representatives, advocating for the issues important to us and participating in democracy, we, as the American people, have to check him instead.
