A quick but important question for you.

[Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, Do you think the war on democracy is being covered like the hair-on-fire moment that it is? I don't. And that's what I write about, fairly at length, in the email below that went out Monday, kicking off our big December fundraising drive and asking the MoJo community to [support our work with a year-end donation and help us reach our urgent $350,000 goal by December 31](. But I know that following the news, let alone thinking about the rise of American authoritarianism, can be exhausting, and I'm genuinely not sure whether a lot of folks in the MoJo community really have the appetite for heavy stuff like that right now, or at least didn't on Monday. So I wanted to [send you the big picture]( again today, and if you want to dig in, I hope you'll be inspired to join us with a year-end gift. And if you already get it, and don't need any convincing that MoJo's hard-hitting journalism is essential right now, [please consider making a year-end gift today and we'll be done asking you for the month](. We can all use a break, and the truth is, it's going to take a lot of asking over these next two and a half weeks to hit our big $350,000 goal. —Monika [Donate]( P.S. If you recently made a donation, thank you! And please accept our apologies for sending you this reminder—our systems take a little while to catch up. MoJo Reader, I wish I could do this without mentioning Donald Trump. This was supposed to be the year when things went back to a little more normal, but as it winds down and I try to take stock of what it all means, and what those of us who care about the issues MoJo covers can do to show up in 2022, I keep coming back to Trump and Trumpism as the things we need to be focused on right now. It's unfortunate. A lot of us were hoping that one of the most perilous periods for American democracy in the modern age was coming to an end around this time last year. The election was over. Results were certified. And I know it can get exhausting giving headspace to the rise of American authoritarianism—[I feel that](. But the facts are the facts: The system barely held. So that's a big part of what I write about in my annual column, "[What if Media Covered the War on Democracy Like an Actual War?](," that just published, and it's a big part of why [I hope you'll consider a year-end donation to support Mother Jones' nonprofit journalism as we kick off our December fundraising drive](. It's the most important month for bringing in the donations that make our work possible, and we've got an always-urgent goal of raising $350,000 online over these next few weeks. Please [pitch in]( today if you can; $5 or $50, it all matters. It feels like I have a bit of a balancing act to do here: On one hand, I need to take a sober look at the challenges we face and the factors driving them so I can offer informed solutions for the year ahead. But that's heavy stuff, and do any of us really have the appetite for more heavy stuff right now? I don't know where you fall on that spectrum. But I do know that Mother Jones has a lot of reporting to do in 2022, that it's damn urgent, and that we need to give it everything we've got—especially right now. So this is my short ask: If you feel that in your bones like I do, [please consider making a year-end donation today and we'll be done asking you for the rest of the month](. We can all use a break. Now let me give you a quick glimpse at the bigger picture of why I feel like Mother Jones' reporting is so urgent right now, starting with two contradictory things about the news business that are true at the same time: - There is less actual journalism being created. - There is more news coming at us all the time on more platforms. As a result of both these things, the flood of daily news can numb us to the fundamental issues we need to pay attention to, like the brazen, far-reaching attacks on democracy. That's the Big Story right now. That's what journalists need to be shouting from rooftops. And it's a terrifying failure of my profession that it's not covered as the extreme and unjust assault that it is, from every angle every day. By any objective measure, Republicans have fully committed themselves to the project of undermining democracy. More than 33 anti-democracy bills have been passed in 19 states this year, and hundreds more are on the docket. Some aim to make it harder to vote, some to ensure that certain voters' (you can guess whose) choices don't count. Some give state legislatures the power to send whomever they want to the Electoral College. Some are creating redistricting maps that guarantee a 2-to-1 Republican advantage in state and congressional elections even in states that went for Biden. For decades, the default mode for covering fights like this in America has been sports coverage: which partisan team is winning, which is losing, what the star players are doing, which tactics the coaches are pursuing, all within a framework of rules that everyone knows and mostly respects. That model, rooted in the need to maximize revenue and minimize offense to audiences or advertisers, has always been problematic. But its most dangerous blind spot is that it can't see what happens outside of the game. Say, if someone is setting the arena on fire. That's pretty much where we are. We smell the smoke. And we have a choice: We can keep our eyes on the field and hope there's a firefighter nearby. Or we grab a fire extinguisher. You know where Mother Jones stands, and I hope you'll [have our back with a year-end donation today if you can](. Light stuff, right? I don't want to pile on how exhausting it can feel following the news right now, so just one concrete example of what makes Mother Jones' journalism essential, and hopefully worth supporting, for the work ahead. Remember that day when we learned about Trump lawyer John Eastman's coup memo? You'd be excused if you don't. It is a staggering document, straight out of Weimar circa 1932. But it received, as my colleague Tim Murphy noted in a piece called "[Maybe We Should Be Talking More About the Coup Memo](," absolutely no attention from the network news. Tim, who has a knack for getting to the key point, explained why: "It is ironic, given the prevalence of the word 'dogwhistle' in popular discourse to refer to things that everyone can actually hear, but there is something about the specific pitch of the threat that perhaps strains the capacity of some institutions to process. They're not programmed to take on problems like this—it disturbs the comfortable equilibrium that defines a lot of political media. Republicans come on to speak to one side of things, and Democrats come on (slightly [less often]() to speak to the other side of things, and there are arguments, and sometimes people win and sometimes people lose. But there is always, basically, a sense that everyone is sort of acting within the constraints of the same known universe." That's exactly it. Those constraints are gone: Few details from the December 2020 coup attempt are so chilling as the fact that it fell to ex-VP Dan Quayle to finally tell Mike Pence that "you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away." Did you know that? This is exactly why, at Mother Jones, we have a team of journalists on our democracy beat who look at the forces behind the headlines and report on the systemic failures and threats to democracy 365 days a year. Voting rights and voter suppression, dark money and who's pulling the strings behind the scenes, disinformation and extremism, fights in Congress, the courts, and state Capitols, they're all part of a coordinated effort to undermine democracy and they're gaining steam. (Have you read Barton Gellman's latest in the Atlantic yet? [Buckle up](.) Reporting that can zero in on the big issues of the day without fear or favor, every day, is what the moment demands. And it's what your support, plus that of thousands of your fellow readers this month, will help keep going strong in 2022. If you can right now, [please help us reach our always critically important $350,000 December goal with a year-end donation today](. There's a lot more to this than I can fit in here, and I hope you'll take the time to read my [full post]( as you make your year-end giving decisions—and to see why despite the very real challenges we face, my glass is more than half full. We can all use that, too. Thanks for reading, and for everything you do to make Mother Jones what it is. [Monika] Monika Bauerlein, CEO Mother Jones [Donate]( [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? 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