We stand on the precipice.

In under 72 hours, Nov. 5 will mark the climax of perhaps the most intense and historic presidential campaign season in recent memory.

The divisions in our society have only grown deeper since 2020 as political polarization has ramped up even further.

This stratification of America has had immense and damaging consequences for our democracy and our civic discourse. Fears about the abuse of our political system and its institutions by the wealthy and powerful that once felt distant now seem closer to fruition than ever before.

In recent days, a wave of resignations within the editorial boards of the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post over endorsements for Vice President Kamala Harris that were blocked by the papers’ billionaire owners has provoked an uproar across the country.

Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Times, and Jeff Bezos, owner of the Post, both claimed that their separate decisions to prevent the editorial boards of their papers from endorsing Harris were meant to counter assumptions of bias and tamp down on polarization.

But the notion that these non-endorsements were standard policy decisions made with the consent, explicit or implied, of their papers’ editorial boards is contradicted by revelations in the wake of those resignations that both boards had already planned and begun drafting their endorsements for the presidential race.

Instead, these endorsement pieces, which have been commonly published by the opinion sections of these publications for decades, were unceremoniously killed by the owners of these papers.

Many journalists at these publications suggest that personal motives, including Bezos’ business ties with the United States government and Soon-Shiong’s prior efforts to secure an appointment in the Trump administration, motivated their decisions, framing them as attempts to placate former President Donald Trump and avoid reprisals should he return to the Oval Office this January.

In a post on the social platform X, responding to The Washington Post’s announcement that it would not be making an endorsement in the race, the paper’s former executive editor, Marty Baron, summed it up: “This is cowardice.”

The interference of these billionaires feels like an inevitable consequence of a media landscape where a handful of affluent owners and companies control a dwindling set of publications across the nation.

But Soon-Shiong and Bezos are not alone in seeming to take a pragmatic approach to the possibility of a Trump victory next week. Recent reports suggest that other billionaires and business executives, particularly from Silicon Valley, have made overtures to Trump in recent months.

This news is alarming but unsurprising. As long as the ultra-wealthy hold outsized levels of influence over our society and electoral processes, they will almost never allow themselves to lose.

It is in these circumstances that our board recognizes the privilege we hold in being free from billionaire owners or university influence. The Daily Bruin’s central mission as an institution is to serve the members of our campus community.

While we, as the editorial board, are separate from the broader paper, we stand for that same ideal.

The Daily Bruin Editorial Board endorses Kamala Harris for president.

Not only because there is no other option in our view, but because the very existence of our democracy is in doubt.

The fact that some of our nation’s most widely regarded papers of record have already started censoring themselves even before the votes are tabulated is evidence enough to show this is true.

While we may not agree with every single policy proposal the Harris campaign has offered, the contrast with her main opponent is simply night and day.

We fear that the Trump campaign’s main policy initiatives on almost every issue, from immigration and the economy to reproductive healthcare and foreign policy, will do irreparable harm to millions of people across our country and the globe if enacted.

Our country’s future, now hanging in the balance, will probably be shaped by a margin of only thousands of votes cast in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

The presidential election will not be decided in California, where an electoral win for Harris seems like a foregone conclusion.

But we nevertheless feel a moral obligation to use the platform we’ve been given.

Recently, former LA Times editorials editor Mariel Garza was interviewed in a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review in which she explained her decision to resign following Soon-Shiong’s move to nix the LA Times’ endorsement for Harris.

“In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up,” Garza said. “This is how I’m standing up.”

With so much on the line, that may be the only thing we can do.