It appears that, last week, Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, made the decision to pull an endorsement of Vice-President Kamala Harris by the Washington Post editorial board, after he met with Donald Trump. As others have pointed out, no one would have noticed an endorsement of Harris by the Post–that’s definitely a dog-bites-man story, but pulling the endorsement is noticed. According to Brian Stelter and others, the massive cancellation of subscriptions has panicked the Post leadership.

But what this really tells us is what a second Trump term would be like. It’s clear that most powerful people will ‘pre-comply’ with authoritarianism, either because they’re afraid or because they like it. Our other institutions have failed for the same reasons. So now, the last line of defense against fascism–and Trump is a fascist–is the voters. We must hope that we hold the line, because it’s clear our supposed betters will capitulate.